Woodsy Gobo Gohan

Quick and easy, awesome and yet wholesome brown rice with root and sea vegetables that anyone can whip up! Marrying Kinpira to One-pot Rice! Burdock Root or gobo is a nutritive powerhouse which is high in fiber and low in calories. It is also a blood purifier in herbal medicine but not suitable for pregnant and lactating women due to the plant's uterine actions.

Preparation:        15 mins  Cooking time:    30 mins

Ingredients (serves 2)

°          200g brown rice, washed and soaked and drained

°          1 tablespoon barely

°          500ml water

°          100g gobo/burdock root, cut into thin match-stick length

°          4 shiitake mushrooms, sliced

°          25g carrot, peeled and cut into match-stick length

°          2 pieces konbo (4cmx 6cm)

°          4 tablespoons light soy sauce

°          1½  tablespoons cooking rice wine (optional)

°          ½  tablespoon sugar or to taste

Garnish

°          some coriander leaves or spring onion shreds

°          sesame seeds and chilli flakes or shichimi (optional)

Method

1.       Combine all the ingredients into an electric rice cooker, mix well and turn it on.

2.       When done, leave the cooked rice to rest, covered, for 5-10 minutes. Fluff with a fork and garnish with coriander leaves or spring onion, sesame seeds and chilli flake or shichimi and serve hot.

A Cup of Simple Crispy Shallot Rice

For Little Girl ...

For Little Boy ...

Super simple and delicious …

When I was a little gal, my late mother whipped up this Rice with Raw Egg for us. What she did was when the rice was cooked, threw in the eggs (raw), shallot oil, spring onion, crispy shallot, and season with salt, light soy sauce and then mix well.

Yesterday, I was making some shallot oil by deep-frying some freshly cut shallot in oil. It was aromatic and I decided to mix the shallot oil, crispy shallot and some chopped spring onion to the cooked white rice. Season to taste with light sauce and mix well.  Spring onion and shallot lends its unique flavour to the plain rice, making it real fragrant.

Then, to make it interesting for kid, I serve it in a round Tea Cup with cute little cartoon on it (freebie). It looks good and delicious, my boy finished up all the tasty rice very fast.

Visual impact is important to kid too! It helps to make the food look more appetizing. Try this, if you have a fussy eater at home. It does not need lots of time to churn out something simple yet delectable.

For a healthier version, use brown rice (those that are light brown in colour). Substitute shallot with ginger, spring oil with Chinese parsley if desired. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds if preferred.

Corn and Broccoli Mixed Rice

This simple recipe is created for fussy little kid or kid who does not eat much veggies, by presenting food in smaller portion and interestingly. The yellow and green veggie might not look that attractive, but feel free to experiment with other types of colourful veggies and create your very own unique mixed rice for your little prince and princess. Get them to name it or create their own rice with favorites tasty ingredients, to make the process more fun.

Is this small amount of veggie enough? Of course not, go with a glass of thirst-quenching frothy veggie/fruity beverage to make it a wholesome, health enhancing meal. Isn’t it perfect! Oh, there is no scientific evidence supporting the claim that fruit should be eaten two hours after a meal for the purpose of maximizing nutritional benefits as published in mindyourbody 10 Oct 2007 by a Nutritionist.. So, no more worries.


Preparation: 10 mins

Ingredients (serves 1)
° 1 bowl hot steam rice
° 25g fresh corn kennel, blanched
° 50g broccoli florets, blanched and separated
° 1-2 slices carrot (optional), blanched
° some deep-fried ginger shreds (optional), for garnish.
° some toasted black/white sesame seeds, for garnish

Method
1. Put the rice, corn and broccoli in a bowl and mix well. Garnish with ginger shred, carrot and sesame seeds.

Simple Rice Soup

This is an easy-to-prepare clear rice soup. Don’t discard the kelp, use it to make a mini side dish – Seasoned Kelp http://crystalbyblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/seaweed-salad.html.

Preparation: 5 mins, Cooking time: 15 mins

Ingredients (serves 1)
° 1 bowl cooked plain white
° 10 kelps in knot
° 5 seedless red dates (optional)
° 1 slice ginger
° 500 ml water or vegetable stock
° salt and pepper to taste
° granulated mushroom bouillon (optional), to taste
° few drops sesame/shallot oil (optional)
° small handful freshly chopped coriander leaves or spring onion, for garnish
° 1-1½ tablespoons vegetarian meat floss
° some nori shreds
° small handful freshly chopped spring onion (optional)

Method
1. Place kelps, ginger, red dates and water in a pot. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the kelps, red dates and ginger. Season to taste with salt, pepper, granulated mushroom bouillon and sesame/shallot oil.
2. Place a bowl of rice on a serving plate, top with vegetarian meat floss and nori shreds. Garnish with coriander leaves or spring onion.
3. Ladle the soup on the bottom of the rice and serve immediately.

Rice Set with Minced Mock Meat and Scramble Tofu

Do you think you would be able to do this? Why not? It is real easy as long as you know how to wash the rice grain and dump into a rice cooker, boil a pot of water and dump in the French beans and removed immediately once the colour start changing and how to fry scramble egg! Only this little skill set required.

The mock meat in mushroom is a ready made Singapore product that I bought (ingredients: soya bean, mushroom, textured vegetable protein, chili, soya bean oil, sugar, hydrolyzed vegetable protein and yeast extract). That saves some time in cooking using fresh ingredients. And the yellow stuff is not egg, it is scramble tofu seasoned using turmeric to give the colour of the egg. You can omit turmeric if you don’t have any in the kitchen. Turmeric helps to prevent the onset of arthritis and offer some protection against breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Preparation: 15mins Cooking time: 15 mins

Ingredients (serves 2)
° 2 bowls cooked rice
° 1 can mock meat in mushroom sauce (brand: cixin vegetarian)
° 8 French beans, sliced and blanched
° 1 (225g) big firm beancurd/tofu, pat dry and scrambled
° ¼- ½ teaspoon turmeric powder
° ½ teaspoon sesame oil
° 1 tablespoon olive oil
° salt and pepper, to taste

Method
1. Marinate the scrambled tofu with turmeric powder, salt, pepper and sesame oil. Set aside for 10 minutes.
2. Heat oil in a non-stick pan over medium heat and fry scrambled tofu until dry. Set aside.
3. Divide the rice into 2 serving plates. Top with mock meat in mushroom sauce, French beans and tofu. Serve immediately.

Fake Fried Rice

Hmm… I am not so creative in naming veg*n recipes. This is not something new, just that playing with 2 old recipes and simplified even further. Many would say to have a plate of nice and fragrant fried rice, you need some techniques to do it. It is simple fried rice but the ability to achieve that is not that easy.

So, what can a newbie or kid can do … maybe try this recipe. What we need is to stir-fly the ginger to make it fragrant. The rest is just mixing the oil and dark soy sauce or maybe together with the ginger. It is simple but tastes good, remember those olden days, where we just add some oil and soy sauce to the rice. Garnish with more lettuce or carrot shreds if you desired.

Preparation: 10 mins, Cooking time: 5 mins

Ingredients (serves 1)
° 250g cooked rice
° 75g ginger shreds
° 2 tablespoons olive oil
° 1 tablespoon sesame oil
° 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
° lettuce shreds and corianders leaves (optional), for garnish

Method
1. Heat oil in a wok. Add the ginger shreds and stir-fry for 3 minutes or until fragrant.
2. Remove the spring roll with a slotted spoon. Drain well on kitchen paper and set aside.
3. Place the cooked rice in a big bowl. Add 1 teaspoon oil from the wok, dark soy sauce and mixed well.
4. Transfer to a serving plate and top with the ginger shred.
5. Garnish with lettuce shreds and coriander leaves and serve.

Sushi Wrap with Lettuce

I happened to read an old article on ‘Office pal-itics’ and surprise to read below:

“… But much like low-fat Vegetarian Food diet which is theoretically good for you, I can’t see much joy or laughter in such an existence. I would probably go mad.”

Well, Vegetarian Food is definitely good theoretically or not, and is getting interesting, fun and yummy as well. Now, the Vegetarian Food scene is going to be different from the past, it can storm the world if more energy has been channeled to explore in this area.

If you don’t believe me…., let take sushi for example! Must Sushi Rice be always wrapped with nori sheet, can’t it be eaten in another way. Now, you may even see more innovative ways in eating sushi – a bowl of sushi rice topped with some veggies, in some Sushi Cookbook.

My way of having sushi –a combination of Japanese Sushi and Korean Lettuce Wrap Rice. Just cook some rice and mix well vinegar, salt, sugar, mirin (optional) or get a pack of powdered sushi mix from the supermarket. Garnish with some toasted sesame seeds and finely chopped carrot (optional). Serve with some lettuce leaves and shredded nori.

To eat, just take a lettuce leaf, scoop some rice on it, top with shredded nori and wrap it up. Next just put it into your mouth! Fun and yummy!

Seaweed Curry Rice Wrap

I saw the picture on the pack of Korean Seaweed. Why didn’t I think of eating sushi in that way? Making sushi can be time consuming with the rolling and so on. If we are not having any guests around, why not just spoon some rice and wrap with a rectangle piece of seaweed and that’s it.

It made me think further, must it be sushi rice, why can’t we have something else too. What I did use was improvised healthy curry flavour rice instead.

By stir-frying a tablespoon of curry powder paste (powder mixed with some water) and then adding to the rice with some of the water replaced with unsweetened soymilk instead of coconut milk and don’t forget the salt. After 15-20 minutes my curry flavour rice is ready in the electric rice cooker.

You can skip the stir-frying of curry powder if you want an even more simplified way of cooking curry flavour rice. Simple, not much work plus its more nutritious!

So going green, going vegetarian, and food need not be boring. There are thousands of innovative ways to add taste and colour to make them yummy and interesting.

Sweet Potatoes Brown Rice

There are so many ways to cook rice. If you are not having enough time and want something simple or maybe you want to be more environmental friendly, this might the thing you are looking for.

Just added some sweet potatoes, a little bit of salt to the brown rice. Sushi vinegar and sugar can be added, if desired for a more robust taste. When it is done, you have a bowl of healthy sweet potatoes brown rice top with some raw vegetables like lettuce and cherry tomatoes.

Ginger Fried Rice

This is a quick and simple recipe. Ginger and sesame oil give this aromatic rice dish its lovely flavour. Vegetarian ham, shiitake mushroom can be added, if desired.

Preparation: 5 mins Cooking time: 8 mins

Ingredients (serves 2)
° 200g rice, cooked
° 3-4 thin slices ginger, finely shredded
° 2-3 tablespoons sesame oil
° salt, to taste
° a small handful of fresh coriander leaves, for garnish

Method
1. Heat sesame oil in a wok over medium heat and fry ginger until lightly brown.
2. Stir in the cooked rice and season with salt. Stir-fry for 2-3 minutes or until rice is heated through. Serve hot.

Tip
1. Rice for frying must be cooked at least 2 hours in advance or the night before.

2. The amount of ginger can be increased, if desired.
3 Garnish with lightly toasted sesame seeds or finely shredded nori.

4. How to toast n roast sesame seeds and How to toaste nori sheet