Another simple and tasty soup for a simple meal.

Ingredients (Serve 3-4)

1. A handful of anchovies (Ikan billis), about 30
2. 5-6 leaves of Wong Bok cabbage
3. 150-200 grams minced pork
4. 2 tablespoon light soya sauce
5. 1 tablespoon sesame oil
6. ½ teaspoon sugar
7. 1 teaspoon corn flour
8. dash of pepper
9. Optional - fish balls, hock chew fish balls, frozen wonton etc
10. 1.5 liters of water
11. 1/2 teaspoon salt to taste
12. 1 table spoon cooking oil

Method

1. Wash the cabbage and cut into strips of about 3 cm. Set aside.
2. Prepare the minced pork by mixing item 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 thoroughly into the minced pork.
3. Rinse the anchovies and drain dry.
4. Heat up an empty pot using low heat, and while heated up put in the anchovies and toast to dry up.  When the water in the pot has dried up and the anchovies look dry and have a fragrant of toasted anchovies, put in the cooking oil and allow the anchovies to fry till fragrant.  Add in water and allow to boil.   Once boiled, cover and lower heat and allow it to boil gently for 30 mins.
5. You may choose to remove the anchovies from the stock or just leave it inside.  You may skip step 4 if you have ready stock, or you have anchovies powder to make stock.
6. Add in the cabbage and allow to boil till desired softness, about 10-15 mins is usually enough.
7. Put the minced pork from item 2 on a plate for easy manipulating the pork.  Using a table spoon, scoop out a small ball of meat (size if a thumb), and repeatedly roll it around on the empty part of the plate with the spoon until it forms a round ball, and let it drop into the boiling soup.  Repeat till all the minced pork are in the soup.
8. Add in other optional ingredients that you may like, ranging from fish ball, hock chew fish ball, frozen wonton etc. Allow to boil till the added ingredient are cooked. (minced pork takes abt 3 mins to cook in boiling water, fish ball will float when cooked).
9. Add salt to taste.

Technically speaking, this is not Bak Kut Teh, as it do not have the spices.  However, it is a simplified version with very little ingredient, and yet tasty.  Easy method to make a simple meal.

Ingredients (Serves 3-4)

1. 600-800 grams Pork Prime ribs, cut into single bone pieces
2. 10 cloves of garlic
3. 5 tablespoon light soya Sauce
4. 5 tablespoon dark soya sauce
5. ½ tablespoon sugar
6. 1.5 litres water
7. 3 tablespoon cooking oil
8. Some salt to taste.

Method

1. Peel garlic, and leave it whole.
2. Rinse the pork ribs, and cut into pieces so that each piece has a bone in.  (you can ask the butcher to cut it for you)
3. Heat up a metal pot, (big enough to contain the soup).  When heated, add in cooking oil, and swirl around to oil the side of the pot.
4. Add in garlic and allow to fry till fragrant.
5. Add in pork ribs, and stir them around to scald the surface.
6. Add in sugar, light soya sauce and dark soya sauce, stir and fry as it sizzle for 3 mins.
7. Add in water, allow it to boil in high heat.  When boiling, lower heat to small, cover the pot and allow it to simmer for 1.5 hours.
8. Taste the soup, and if not salty enough, add some salt. As a guideline, if it is served with noodles, soup has to be slightly salty as the noodle will absorb some of the saltiness.
9. Serve as a soup, or serve with noodles such as Bee Hoon (rice noodles), mee sua (面线), kway teow, yellow noodle.  Pre-boil the noodles in plain water, drain away the water, and serve in a bowl, and top with the soup and pork ribs.

This makes a simple meal of rice with ingredient, without having to cook dishes separately.  Its all-in-one rice pot and its ready to eat.

Ingredients (Serve 2)

1. 1 cup white rice 
2. 1 tablespoon dry shrimp (虾米)
3. 1 tablespoon silver fish (optional)
4. 5 shallots / small red onions
5. ½  Chinese winter sausage (lap cheong, 腊肠) (optional)
6. 4 dried shitake mushroom
7. ½ teaspoon Salt
8. 2 tablespoon light soya sauce
9. water (cooking rice and soaking ingredients)
10. 4 tablespoon cooking oil
11. handful of long bean/French beans (quantity flexible, roughly about 5-10 stalks of long beans or 10-20 stalks of French beans

Method

1. Rinse the dry shrimp from dirt, and soak with little water just enough to cover in.  Same for silverfish and mushroom.  Soak for 30 mins except mushroom for at least 2 hours to soften it.
2. Peel the shallots and slice or chop it up, set aside.
3. Wash and peel off the skin of the winter sausage (if possible) and cut into thin slice.
4. Remove the dry shrimp from water and squeeze dry, briefly chop it up to smaller chunks. Set aside.  Remove the mushroom from water, gently squeeze dry, remove and discard the stem, and cut into thin slices.  Set aside.  Remove the silver fish from water and squeeze dry, set aside.  Do not pour away the water that was used to soak the ingredients.
5. Wash the long beans/French beans, remove the ends and cut into 1/2 cm pieces.  For French beans, remove the ends by picking with fingers instead of knife and then pulling off any fibers that comes along.
6. Heat up wok, add oil and shallots and fry till fragrant and lightly brown.  Add in dry shrimps, silver fish, mushroom, chinese sausage and stir fry for 2-3 mins till fragrant.  Add in long beans/French beans. Stir fry for 2-3 mins. Add in the water that was used to soak the ingredients, salt and soya sauce.  Stir and allow it to boil, and remove from heat, set aside.
7. Rinse rice, and cook it your favorite way (rice cooker, using a pot, or steaming) (refer to http://www.werynice.com/home/?p=12 on how much water) (refer to http://www.werynice.com/home/?p=13 to cook in a pot). 
8. When the rice is about to cook, (when the water level is no more above the rice, and you can see the rice bloated and white, there is a lot of bubbling oozing out in between the rice) add in the ingredients prepared earlier, and stir to mix well.
9. Cover and leave the rice to cook till done.

Chinese way of stir frying vegetables are usually done with high heat and stir fried in a short time in a wok to retain its crisp.  However, this not only mess up the kitchen with oily walls and cabinets, but also not health as oil are heated up to high temperatures. 

I am currently doing it this way using a stainless steel pot with a thick bottom (which helps to spread and even out heat, and most good steel pots are made with thick bottom, and they are heavy).  The size of the pot cannot be too big, just big enough for the uncook vegetables to fill to the rim when placed loosely into the pot (not pressed in). A shallow pot is preferred.

The method is almost like boiling the vegetables, as we heat the vegetables to boiling point.  But it is better than boiling as all the nutrients in the vegetable is retain in the pot, either in the vegetable or in the water, unlike boiling, the nutrients escape to the boiling water.

Note that depending on your pot and also the heating means, you may need to do some try and error to get it right.

Ingredients

1. Vegetables (Chye Sim, kai lan, spinach, 菜心，芥兰，菠菜，苋菜 , etc)
2. 1 or 2 clove of garlic
3. ½ table spoon olive oil
4. ¼ teaspoon salt.

Method

1. Soak vegetables for 30 mins (better if you have filtered water), to allow the vegetable to get hydrated. It also helps to get rid of some pesticides (but getting organic vegetable is still the best).  Wash and cut the vegetables. Leave it wet.
2. Peel and chop the garlic and set aside.
3. Wash the pot and keep it wet.  Cover it and heat it on stove with very low heat (the smallest burner and smallest setting you can get).  Wait for steam to appear, which means that the pot has reached a temperature slightly above boiling point. (it is important to use low heat, otherwise the pot is already overheated by the time you see the steam and react)
4. Open the cover allow the remaining of the wet surface to dry off, which you will hear sizzling sound of water evaporating.  Add in oil in the middle and add garlic onto the oil puddle.  Allow it to sizzle slightly for the aroma of garlic to be released. 
5. Put the vegetables (wet, if not, sprinkle some water on it), and cover and do not open.
6. Wait till steam started to gush out from the edge of the cover, indicating the inside is at boiling point.  Having very low heat ensures the entire pot inside is at this temperature and not just the bottom is hot.
7. Open the cover, and stir it around.  There should be some water left at the bottom.  Move the vegetables aside, and add the salt into the water and dissolved.  Once dissolved, stir all and mix the water with the vegetables.
8. Serve hot.

This can be made vegetarian by replacing meat with mushrooms, and using vegetarian oyster sauce or mushroom sauce.

Ingredients

1. 1 block soft bean curd
2. 150g-200g minced pork or chicken
3. 2 clove of garlic
4. ½ tablespoon dark soya (optional)
5. 1 ½ tablespoon light soya
6. 1 ½ tablespoon oyster sauce or mushroom sauce
7. ½ tablespoon sugar
8. ½ cup water
9. 2 tablespoon cooking oil
10. ½ cup water
11. 1 teaspoon corn flour

I personally like to use the organic tofu (bean curd) of the brand “Unicurd”.  It is really nice and soft. (see http://www.unicurd.com.sg/product_OrganicTofu.asp).  Mushroom sauce taste like oyster sauce and usually the bottle will call it vegetarian oyster sauce.  There are 3 methods to cook this, and I personally like the 1st, less messy kitchen as frying tofu usually get oil splashing.

Method 1

1. Mix soya sauce and oyster sauce, sugar, water in a cup or bowl with ½ cup water.  Add in corn flour and dissolve.  (The trick to prevent the flour forming lumps is allowing the flour to slowly get wet and sink to the bottom, then start stirring).
2. Peel and chop the garlic.  Cut the soft tofu into smaller cubes of about 1 inch by 1 inch approximately.
3. Heat up frying pan, wok, or a shallow pot.  Add oil.
4. Add garlic and fry till fragrant.  Add in minced meat and keep pressing and stirring till it cooks and breaks into small pieces. Fry till the moisture is dried up and pour in the gravy.  Cooks till thickens.
5. Add in the tofu and allow it to boil for 3 mins. Do not stir too much as it breaks the tofu.  
6. Serve hot.

Method 2

1. Exactly same as Method 1, except between step 3 and step 4, add in the following step.
2. Add oil and heat up till very hot.  Slowly slide in the tofu and allow it to fry the surface.  Don’t need to fry all surface, just get some surface scalded brown to get some fragrant of fried tofu.  Do not to stir it too hard as it breaks the tofu. Push tofu to a side to scoop into a plate. 
3. Method 1 step 4 continues.

Method 3

1. Exactly same as Method 1, except deep fry the tofu till golden brown on the outside, hence leaving a layer of skin (which is fried tofu) wrapping the tofu.  To do this, the oil has to be very hot.