Cariso Delicacies Corner

At times I felt like eating something appetizing and sourish, but not too spicy. Therefore I have been thinking …..Hmm….It would be great uh if I could polish myself up with a presentable Tom Yam dish.

How about the Tom Yam soup base? It could be tedious if I were to prepare it from zero. Well, the lazybone here thought of trying the ready-made Tom Yam paste available in the market. What could be easier than just dumping everything into the pot then when you need not worry about the paste?!

There I went with my homecooked Tom Yum, by adding some extra ingredients to enhance the kicks!

I tried two brands of Tom Yum paste.

One is Peace brand Thai Tom-Yum Instant Sour Shrimp Paste. Another one is Thai Boy Thai Tom Yum Soup Paste. The former one is more sourish.

I did not add much spices except :

The kaffir lime leaves (daun limau purut) (available mostly in Malay sundry shops).

Firstly I have to make sure that I can get this, then only I will start to search for other ingredients.  I added one stalk for the fragrance. I simply love its smell!

I added 4 to 5 stalks of lemongrass (serai),  some curry flower (bunga kantan) (optional) and curry leaves (optional).

Raw ingredients in general. Most of the raw meat ingredients, I poached first and set aside, to avoid spoiling the taste of the soup.

Onions , tomatoes, lady fingers, oyster mushrooms, dried mushrooms and cabbages.  The spices and vege ingredients – I dumped in firstly. [...]

I have always wished to steam my fish like restaurant style.

There goes my version.

Fresh fish is a must of course, followed by lots of side ingredients. I don’t want it to be steamed just with ginger, garlic (oil) and soya sauce. I want it to be more appetizing （惹味）but not to the extend of Tom Yam style. I wish to be between ‘plain’ and ‘sour spicy’ by considering the limited ingredients that I could get at the very last minute or ‘korek’ from my fridge.

Ang Sai Fish (around RM15 for this piece) ~half kilo.

Not photogenic at all, isn’t it?! Argh! Who cares?! After all I am the one gonna eat it lah!

Ingredients (ready stock from kitchen) : [...]

I love to eat sweet potato leaves.

I planted this species. This shows part of them.

Zoom in. They grow healthily even in the nutrient-scarce land. This is one of the easiest vegetables to plant and manage to see result.

First time harvest. When I cut, I included part of the stalks (梗).

Have to wash repeatedly to get rid of the soil.

Ready to cook. [...]

How does it taste like huh? 星级靓妈产后修身秘方 (炒米茶)?

I read the article from from Guangming, titled “星级靓妈产后修身秘方” ! This is the recipe so-called used by Kelly Chan. It is believed that this drink promotes metabolism, helps in digestive system and  releases water retention (due to red rice is high-fibre, it helps in bowel movement). Dried tangerine peel  (chan pei) improves stomach health and diuresis. Red dates is good for blood enrichment whereas longan helps moisturizing eyes.

This is also being regarded as 去水健体神茶 ! 炒米茶! 产后代茶！

I tried it out just for the sake of testing the recipe, to see how it tastes like, how easy/difficult it is to prepare and whether it works for me.

Firstly, I need to wash the white rice and red rice then air-dry them.

Then stir fry them, dry in wok,  for about 5 minutes respectively. I am lazy, thus I prepare much more so that I can save them up for subsequent usages.

That’s how they look like.

[...]

Fried potato leaves aka Char Huan Tzu Heok- one of my favourite dishes.

This is considered as one of those vegetables which is the safest to eat.

If lucky enough, I can get those ready-cut ones, which remain only the leafy parts.

But most of the time, I get those palmately lobed leaves (which got 5 distinct lobes) type.  *aiyo, che kang loh*

If not, lazy bone like me, choose this kind of heart-shaped species one, so that I need not peel away the fibrous shoots (which must be done for the palmately lobed type above), save me a lot of time and get rid of dirty nails.

The photos below showing those heart-shaped type. I use scissors to cut,  leaving behind only the young leaves and a bit of shoot.

Fried in basic style. Belacan + garlic.

[...]