家常便饭

I can't say this enough. I LOVE cooking. Had fun making a simple dinner last week. My first attempt at "tze char"-ish dishes conprising of Black Pepper Beef, Kang Kong with fermented beancurd and Ma Po Tofu, served with brown rice. For the greater part of my life, we only used white rice but in the past 6 months or so, my mother slowly replaced it with brown rice. I really like it; its more exciting than white rice. The mild nutty flavour and "oaty" texture is interesting. Besides, its really good for you because its got loads of fibre and vitamins that aren't stripped off. Apparently its got similar amount of carbohydrates as white rice, but the high fibre content slows down the carbo absorption so your blood sugar level is controlled. So yes, I only have brown rice and wholemeal bread at home. Of course, I also have chocolates and chips and jelly shots.



I used beef cubes (which I sliced) and it came out pretty tough. I guess it would've been better for stews than stir fry. The ones that were meant for stir fry had streaks of fat in it and I refused to get it. Next time I will use tenderloin instead. I was missing the green peppers for colour so tried to make do with some big red chilli instead. Usually in a Ma Po Tofu dish, minced pork is used but I substituted with chicken instead because The Husband and I had been eating quite a bit of pork lately. The dish came out rather wet because of the tofu and also because I didn't have corn flour to thicken up the juices, but overall, I guess it was okay. Tasted much like the Zha Jiang I made previously though.

The kang kong was the most satisfactory. The flavours were as I expected and the gravy that was left tasted really good with the rice. It was also the easiest to cook since vegetables generally cook quite quickly. And it seemed the least pretentious.