With her around

My mil has been here since last month. With her around the house, I don't have to worry much about cooking during the school days. I only concentrate on driving the kids to and forth to school while she does most of the cooking.

I also learn new recipe and cooking skill from her. For instance, this simple dish. I understand this dish was pretty common in Kapit. 

Stir fried paku with Smiling Fish sardine in chilli oil. Simple recipe, with few ingredients but it was appetizing (put the spiciness of the sardine aside). I actually quite liked it. 

Stir fried garlic and shallot in oil, then add in the paku. Stir fry till withered and then add in the sardine. No seasoning needed since the sardine has seasoning!! 

We only cooked half of the paku that I bought at the market. RM2 for a big bunch of paku! The rest, I cooked the next day. Simple stir fried paku with garlic. 

My mil made her ngoh hiang for lunch too. She used mackerel meat and pork mince to make ngoh hiang. 2 methods of cooking the ngoh hiang, namely steam first and then, deep fried. You can keep the steamed ngoh hiang once cooled in a container and freeze for future consumption. 

I penned down her recipe for ngoh hiang so I could refer in the future. No measurement, all is up to your taste and preference.  The kids gave their grandma's ngoh hiang a thumb up!!

MIL's ngoh hiang 

Ingredients:

Minced pork

Minced mackerel meat

Carrot, thinly minced

1 big onion, minced

5 spices powder

Chicken stock granule

Salt

Pepper

Beancurd skin

Methods:

1. Mix all the ingredients together. Pound on the mince till they combine well. 

2. Cut the beancurd skin accordingly. 

3. Arrange the meat in the beancurd skin, fold the sides first, the roll till the end. (You can brush egg white at end to bind the skin, but we omit that).

4. In a steamer, arrange the ngoh hiang. Steam for about 10 minutes under high heat. After off the heat, you can keep the steamed ngoh hiang in container and store in freezer for future consumption. Either reheat in steamer or deep fried after thawed)

5. In a pan, heat up enough oil to deep fry the spring rolls. Once oil is hot, slowly fry the ngoh hiang till brown.

6. Drain and once cool, cut into desired size.