Cooking your own lunch in office

“Oh! It is so hot outside. How to go out for lunch?”

“So boring-lah, eating the same food everyday around this area.”  

“Any new food outlet we can go today?”.

“Don’t know what to eat for lunch-lah”.

These are common statements uttered in the office everyday..

              Recently, I discovered a new appliance in the household section of a hypermarket. This multi cooker cum kettle which has a litre capacity is ideal for cooking 1-2 servings. I can even eat directly from it. “Cool, isn't it?”  See the picture of my multi-cooker.

Most people hate washing up after cooking. So, use this appliance to overcome the problem. If you think this is not presentable, then pour out into a bowl. Then, you have one extra bowl to wash.

Why not cook your own food in the office pantry?  Unless your boss prohibits, it is so convenient to cook your own lunch. The food is so much more healthier and tastier too!

Here, I like to share a few simple but wholesome meal recipes for lunch in the office.

Prepare the ingredients at home. Pack them in small containers and keep them in the refrigerator in the pantry. If there is no fridge in the pantry, use an ice-packed container.

The simple to cook recipe for lunch is the “Dried scallop, dried mussel, peanut and century egg” porridge.

Ingredients:-

1.     One cup of rice, rinsed with water first.

2.     25 gram of dried mussels (pre-soaked)

3.     25 gram of dried scallop (pre-soaked)

4.     80 gram of shelled peanut (pre-soaked)

Do the pre-soaking in the morning upon reaching the office.

5.     one century egg (shell removed) cut into small pieces

6.     ¼ teaspoon of salt.

7.     ¼ teaspoon of ikan bilis (anchorvy) powder.

8.     One liter of water.

9.     Pepper and Sesame oil to taste.

Boil rice in the multi cooker together with the dried mussel, scallop and peanut at high temperature. Once boiled, turn the temperature setting to medium and boil for another one and a half hour. Stir the porridge every  5 -7 minutes to prevent the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Add in the salt, ikan bilis powder and the century egg.  Continue stirring and bring the porridge to boiling point before serving.

Sprinkle some pepper and a few drops of sesame oil to enhance the flavour.

See the yummy yummy porridge cooked in my office.  

Mee Suah” Thread noodle ( 面线)

Mee suah(面线) literally means thread noodle, is a very fine strand noodle made from buck wheat. This noodle originates from the Fujian province of China and is highly regarded by the Fujian people as a heavenly food. Mee suah is a must for the Fujian people’s birthday celebration. It is also widely presented as a gift for special occasions.

Traditionally, the mee suah is cooked with meat and served with two hard-boiled chicken eggs as a special meal for the birthday boy/girl.

When offering prayers to the Fujian deities or the God of Heaven, the mee suah is a must.

There are two well-known manufacturers of mee suah in Fujian, namely Sim Soon Huat and Fujian Foodstuff, Oil & Cereal Corporation. The mee suah are exported in neatly packed boxes of either 8 ounces or 12 ounces.

Recently, I discovered a hidden treasure in Malaysia. The Foozhou people from the Fujian province brought their mee suah making skills to a small little town in Malaysia.
They continue to make mee suah in a very traditional way - hand-made and sun dried. This place is Kampong Koh, Sitiawan. There are also a few mee suah specialty shops in Kampung Koh. In fact, the mee suah from Kampong Koh tastes so much better than the imported ones from China. Here, we have two varieties of mee suah. The thinner mee suah is sold at RM10.00 (USD2.75) per kg whilst the coarser type costs RM8.00 (USD2.20) per kg.

The Foozhou people usually cook mee suah with chicken meat and home-made red rice wine. This is the standard fare for Foozhou women during confinement after giving birth. It is a must-try dish for any visitor to a Foozhou family.

You can get good red rice wine mee suah from selected restaurants in Sitiawan and Sri Manjung in the state of Perak.

Cooking mee suah is easy but delicate. The noodle strand is very fragile and breaks easily. Cooking time and the temperature control is very important to prevent the mee suah from turning soggy.




Ingredients for five persons








1 box of mee suah (10 pieces)
100 gm minced pork
100 gm pork , sliced thinly
1 long strip of pork ball, cut to bite size
5 eggs
2 stalks spring onions, finely sliced
100 gm lettuce
2 liter water
1 tsp toong choy (preserved Chinese cabbage)
2 tsp tapioca flour
2cm ginger, smashed
salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper

Cooking Method

1. Marinate the minced pork and pork slices separately with salt, soya sauce, pepper and sesame oil.
2. Boil toong choy, ginger and water in a pot.
3. Blanch the lettuce lightly and dish out.
4. Toss pork slices in tapioca flour and stir into stock.
5. Mix the minced pork in the remaining flour. Make small meatballs and stir into the soup.
6. Add salt to taste.
7. Scoop a single serving portion of the boiling soup into a separate saucepan.
8. Break one egg into the soup.
9. Lightly blanch the dry mee suah in a wok
10. Drain and add into the boiling soup with egg.


Serve the mee suah hot with lettuce and spring onion.

Saturday is to go light and easy. My family members will laze around the house to relax. We cook our meals at home and do gardening in the evening.

Most Saturdays after completing the weekly morning marketing trip, my wife would cook a simple lunch for the family. Many a time, she would cook a one pot meal using fresh ingredients just purchased from the wet market. She would normally cook all kinds of noodles, be it mee, meehoon, meesuah, lou shi fun, pan mee, tau chjim(soy bean noodle), yee mee or kuey teow. It can be either soup or pan-fried.

Some of the ingredients are shown here.

Yee Mee Recipe
1 packet yee mee (5 pieces)
200 gm pork, sliced
1 small carrot, shredded
100 gm black fungus, soaked and shredded
3 black mushrooms, soaked and sliced
10 small prawns
2 fish cake, sliced
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon toong choy(salted cabbage), washed and squeezed
1 thumb sized ginger, smashed
200 gm sawi, washed and plucked into 2 inch length
2 sprig spring onions, chopped
2 litre water
1 teaspoon tapioca flour
sesame oil, soya sauce, salt, pepper


Marinate pork(or Chicken) with some sesame oil, soya sauce, salt and pepper.
Boil toong choy(Salted cabbage) and ginger as a soup base.
Blanch sawi and dish out.
Add shredded carrot, black fungus and mushroom and bring to boil.
Toss pork in tapioca flour and stir into soup.
Add prawns and fish cake.
Add in the loosened yee mee and bring to boil.
Stir in egg.

The entire preparation and cooking time is about 45 minutes.

Add salt and pepper to taste.
Garnish with spring onions.
Serve with the sawi and cut chillies.

Yee mee should be eaten hot.

Scallop, Mussel and Peanut Porridge

Having porridge for lunch is a common meal for my farmer grandparents during my growing up years. I had porridge for lunch practically everyday. It was not the fancy or luxurious porridge but plain porridge or sweet potato porridge served with fried salted vegetable, fried salted raddish (Chai Por), boiled salted duck egg or fried salted fish. Occasionally, I had ikan bilis (anchovies) fried with sugar to go with the porridge. I loved this fried ikan bilis. I still craved for this.

I hated the porridge during my growing up years but soon I love this acquired taste for the porridge. I still love to eat porridge for either lunch or dinner. Occasionally, I demanded my wife to cook Teochew porridge for dinner. She will cook four to five dishes to accompany the porridge. Teochew porridge is no longer a poor man’s food. It is being served in five-star hotels and specialty restaurants.

Today, I am sharing with you the one-pot porridge. This one-pot porridge also called the “Cantonese porridge” that goes with different types of ingredient. This most common one is known as the “mussel/peanut porridge”. But I have improvised the recipe by adding dried scallops.

The Recipe for Scallop/Mussel/Peanut porridge (for five persons)

Ingredients:

100 gm of Dried mussel (“tam choy” in Cantonese)
50 gm of dried scallop
50 gm of dried and shelled peanuts
50 gm of ginger cut into slides
one stalk of spring onion cut in fine pieces
50 gm of shredded gingers
one and half cup of rice, washed and drained
six cup of water.
Half a teaspoon of salt.
One teaspoon of white pepper powder.

Soak the dried scallop, dried mussel and peanut in a bowl of hot water for about an hour. Drain away the water and put the ingredients into the pot together with the sliced ginger, pepper powder, rice and water.

I used a pressure cooker. So, the cooking time is about twenty five minutes. For normal pot, the cooking time is about three hours.

After cooking, shake the pressure cooker and let it rest until the pressure knob is returned to normal pressure position. Release the pressure cooker cover lock and stir the porridge. IF the viscosity of the porridge is too thick, add more hot and boiled water to dilute to the desired viscosity.

Sprinkle some sesame oil, white pepper powder and add some shredded ginger and cut spring onion to suit your taste. And here you have this luxurious home cooked porridge for the whole family.

It is very easy to cook. Try this yourselves. If you have problem finding the dried mussel and dried scallop, go to the shops in the Pasar Road market areas in Kuala Lumpur. Alternatively, go to a shop opposite the Central Market (Kwang Yau Heng) that sell all kind of dried seafood.

Potato Rice

My grandma's one-pot meal recipes were not created by design. They were spontaneously decided based on the ingredients available at the particular moment. Some of those recipes were probably handed down by the earlier generations of our ancestor. The good thing is that those recipes were perpectuated. I am glad to have inherited those recipes to share with my next generation. My children disliked those one-pot meal in the early stages. But now they are accustomed to them and loved to eat them. I cook one-pot meal for lunch practically three to four times a week. I also packed the one-pot meal for the children to school and for myself to office. They said it is nice and "easy" to eat. This is because the lunch break in school is very short. Only twenty five minutes break.


My wife and I continue to improvise other one-pot meals. One of my wife's creation is the potato rice. The method of cooking is the same as the other one-pot rice.



Recipe for the Potato Rice.



Ingredients:-


400 - 500 gms of Potato cut into small cubes

350 gms of Onion, sliced them

200 gms of meat (Chicken or pork) cut into cubes

6 cloves of garlic, sliced them

3 pieces of shallots, sliced them

50 gms of ginger, cut into thin stripes.

2 teaspoon of Oyster sauce

1 teaspoon of sesame oil.

1 teaspoon of light soy sauce.

Half teaspoon of salt.

2 tablespoon of cooking oil.

3 cups of rice

3 cups of water.

Sprinkes of white pepper powder


Firstly, heat up the wok. Pour in two table spoon of cooking oil to fry the ginger, shallot and garlic until they turn golden brown and emitting strong aroma. Add in the meat and the potato and stir fry until the meal is cooked. Finally, add the oyster sauce, sesame oil and the salt and fry further for about thirty seconds. Sprinkle some white pepper powder onto the potato. Turn off the fire and transfer the whole lot into the rice cooker with the rice and water added in.

The cooking time is about 30 minutes. The potato rice will be ready for eating. If you prefer more pepperish taste, sprinkle more white pepper powder on to the potato rice.

After some time, my children complained that the potato rice was dry. My wife improvised the recipe further, by cooking the potato and the rice separately.

Instead of transferring all the fried ingredients into the rice cooker, she transfer the stuff into a pot. Water is then added into the pot until it covers all the potatoes and simmer for about fifteen minutes, or maybe longer, depending on the quality of the potato. Taste the potato before switching off the fire. The potato must be soft. The rice is cooked separately as normal plain rice.

The cooked potato is then mix with the rice for eating. And here, you have a plate of moist, aromatic potato rice that I really enjoyed eating. So are my children.

Give yourselves a try. You would not regret this.

Kai Choy (Mustard Cabbage) Rice.

Kai Choy(Mustard Cabbage) is not a popular vegetable due to its bitter taste and fibrous texture. This is typically used by the Chinese to cook with the left over meats after the Chinese New Year re-union feast.

During my growing up years, I ate lots of Kai Choy. My grandparents do not grow or buy Kai Choy. They got them free of charge from the wholesaler by baskets. Whenever there was over supply of Kai Choy in the market, the wholesaler would asked my grandparents to help to get rid of them.

We would have consecutive days of meals with Kai Choy. We would have Kai Choy fried with Ikan Bilis (Anchorvies), garlic and shallot, Salted Kai Choy (home-made salted vegetable = harm choy) and Kai Choy rice.

Occasionally, I like to eat Kai Choy rice. Nowadays, it is not easy to find Kai Choy in the market. Only during the Chinese New Year season, this vegetable is available in abundant in the market.

If you wish to buy Kai Choy rice, I know of only one restaurant that sell this, that is "Sek Mie Choy" in Salak South town.

Kai Choy rice is an economical and easy to cook one-pot meal. Traditionally, this Kai Choy rice has no meat, but I have modified the recipe by adding either cubes of chicken meat or or pork.

The Recipe for Kai Choy Rice (for five persons)

300 gms of Kai Choy, cut into small pieces

one teaspoon of dried shrimps ( small size shrimp)

200 gms of chicken meat(optional)

three pieces of dried Shitake Mushromm cut into small slices

two teaspoons of white pepper powder.

one table spoon of cooking oil

three pieces of shallot (medium size)

five cloves of garlic

one and a half teaspoon of salt

two teaspoons of sesame oil,

two teaspoons of soy sauce.

three cup of rice, washed and drained

three cup of water.

First, fry the sliced shallot and chopped garlic in a wok with one tablespoon of cooking oil until they turn golden brown and emiting strong aroma. Then, add in the chicken meat, mushroom and dried shrimps and stir fry until the meat is cooked. Then, transfer them into the rice cooker with all the rest of the ingredients dumped in.

Cooking time is about 30 minutes and the yummy pepperish Kai Choy rice is ready for eating.

If you like more spicy stuff, sprinkle more white pepper powder and add sambal to the rice. It has that Ooooomph... factor and drive you for more helpings.

Believe it or not. I can eat up to three Chinese rice bowls of Kai Choy rice at a time. Big "Farn Thung" uuh..

Pumpkin Rice - An "Accidental" Crop

Pumpkin was grown behind the kitchen as an "Accidental" crop. My grandparents did not grow pumpkin for commercial reason. Occassionally, they bought pumpkin for cooking and threw the seeds behind the kitchen.

The pumpkin grew among the weeds and creeped up to 30 feet away from the seed. The lucky rats and the jungle fowls had the first harvest. That was the indication that the pumpkin were ripe for harvest. As an "accidental" crop that did not required much effort, the harvest wasn't bountiful. Each creeper bore four to five pumpkin fruits only. And the size of the pumpkin depends on the soil condition and rainfall, ranging from one kilogram to four kilogram.

The picture is one of the local variety of pumpkin available at the market.


The golden colour one on the right is an American variety. This is usually available locally during the Chinese New Year festive season as an ornament, as well as an offering.




During the harvest season, we ate lots of pumpkin. We ate steamed pumpkin, pumpkin fried with dried shrimps and pumpkin rice.

The pumpkin has rich nutritional values, based on research done in USA. It contains Zinc 1 mg, Selenium .50 mg,Vitamin C 12 mg, Niacin 1 mg, Folate 21 mcg, Vitamin A 2650 IU, Vitamin E 3 mg, Protein 2 grams, Carbohydrate 12 grams, Dietary Fiber 3 grams, Calcium 37 mg, Iron 1.4 mg, Magnesium 22 mg and Potassium 564 mg



Pumpkin rice is one of the easiest to cook one-pot meal.

Ingredients for pumpkin rice (for five persons)

500 gms of pumpkin, with skin peeled off and cut into 1 cm by 1 cm cube

one table spoon of dried shrimps.

two table spoons of soy sauce.

one tea spoon of salt.

three cups of rice

three cups of water.

200 gms of chicken meat cut into small strips (optional)


Put all the ingredients into the rice cooker and cook for approximately half an hour.

The sweety yummy pumpkin rice is now ready to eat. Sprinkle some white pepper onto the rice to enhance the flavour.