Fragrant rice

Texted Mom in the morning for the recipe to make 'Yau Mei Fan', literally translated as fragrant rice. I was apprehensive when I pressed the Cook button on the rice cooker because I wasn't sure if there was enough water, or if the taste was ok. I gave it 15-20 minutes or so and scurried to the rice cooker to taste once the button popped up to indicate it was cooked. To my surprise and delight it tasted a-ok!

This was taken while it was still in the rice cooker so it looks a lil bit dark but the colour is exactly how I imagined it to be. I added sweet potato instead of taro as I couldn't find any today. The recipe's fairly simple (thought I'd jot it down here so I don't have to keep asking Mom everytime I felt like cooking this!):

Ingredients:

2 cups white rice (wash, drain and set aside)

2 thigh fillets (cut into small cubes) 

Strips of shitake mushrooms

2 cloves garlic (chopped and minced)

Yam (chopped into cubes)

Dried prawns a.k.a 'Har mai' (soak before frying)

3 dried scallops (soak)

3-4 dried oysters (soak)

2 tsp light soy sauce

1 tsp dark soy sauce

1 tbsp abalone sauce

1 tsp caramel sauce / sweet soy sauce

Chinese cooking wine

Sesame oil

Method:

- Put uncooked white rice in rice cooker together with shitake mushrooms strips and taro

- Heat up oil in frying pan

- Brown garlic in hot oil

- Add dried prawns and dried scallops to the garlic and fry together

- Add chicken to the above ingredients and fry till brown and fragrant

- Add sauces, cooking wine and sesame oil into the pan and fry everything together

- Transfer all the ingredients and sauce to the rice cooker

- Add water to the rice cooker (ie. same amount of water needed to cook 2 cups of rice + a bit more to take into account of the other ingredients in the rice cooker)

- Here comes the critical moment: Press COOK!

Thought I'd whip up watercress soup (Sai Yong Choi) too. I added soooooo many things into the soup- goji berries, dates, dried figs, pork bones and dried oysters to give it flavour. Once again, taken in the pot hence looks like it's from the dungeons. From this, you get...

This! The dried figs I added made the soup so deliciously sweet. That's a fig right there in the pic below and you can see some goji berries floating in the soup.

Do your hear my resounding *burp*? :D