Cereal Prawns 麦片虾

Cereal prawns is one of a favorite dish among prawn lovers, this dish is available at most Cze Char stall in Singapore or Malaysia and a plate of it and cost up to $25SGD (maybe around 10 prawns only)!! Yeap, it is not a cheap dish and for me, I only ordered it when there is a big group of us eating or for a specific celebration or when there is someone is the group who loves eating prawns!!

Personally, I think that the dish is overpriced and that is why I decided to give this dish a run for its money! It is the second time I am cooking this dish and the first was a failure and that is why I didn't post it. I shall share with u my learning's and the end of this post.

You will be amaze that the ingredients for this dish is really simple but it is the cooking that requires some skills.

The main ingredients

Ingredients: (Serves 2~3)
12 medium prawns
A handful of curry leaves (around 2 stalks)
3 packets of 3in1 cereal
2 gloves of garlic
1 knob of Butter (40~50gram)
Oil for frying the prawns

Seasoning of prawns:
Salt and black pepper
Tapioca flour

Directions:
Devien the prawns and leaving the shell in-tact
Cut away the front portion of the head of the prawns
Clean the prawns with water
Marinate the prawns and a pinch of salt and black pepper
Coat a light layer of tapioca flour on the prawns
Set aside for 5 to 10 mins

Heat up wok and pour in oil
Deep fry the prawns for roughly 1 min or when you see that the prawns turn pink and crisp
Scoop up the prawns and drain the oil from it

Drain the oil from the fried prawns

Remove the excess oil from the frying of the prawns
Heat up the wok and put in the butter and the garlic
Fry the garlic till light brown and add in the curry leaves
Add in prawns and continue to fry for around 2 to 3 mins until you are able to smell the fragrance of the curry leaves
Turn off heat and pour in the cereal mix and continue to fry until all the prawns are coated with cereals
Dish out and serve!

Tasty!

Overall, my cereal prawns is pretty good but it find that it was rather sweet and that is probably due to the sugar inside the 3in1 cereal packets. So my advice is try to use maybe only 2 packets of the 3in1 and top up more plain cereal or just filter away the creamer and sugar of the 3rd packet of 3in1. And lastly, I will not use tapioca flour to coat my prawns cause it gave the prawns a sticky feeling. I will use corn flour or normal flour on my next try.

I hope you will give this a try cause it is pretty easy and you will feel satisfy knowing that you are able to cook 麦片虾 at home!! And the best thing is, the cost for this dish is less than $10SGD!!

*Note: If you want to add some crisp on your cereal, try pan frying your cereal mix (without oil) before adding it to the prawns.

Sweet and Sour Chicken

I've never really tried cooking chicken before and being one of the more common poultry eaten, I decided that I should give it a try! I've always been a fan of sweet and sour and I think it is only right that I should start my first try chicken dish with it!!
I will be using Korean miso paste which my sister in law got it from a Korean Supermarket for my sweet and sour sauce. If you don't plan to use this miso paste often, you can try getting one of those individual mini sized packaging miso paste from NTUC supermarket at the Japanese food section. Miso is actually a term use by the Japanese and Korean for fermented soyabean paste. So, if you have those traditional chinese bean paste, you can use those as well!

Ingredients: (serves 2)
2 chicken thighs (cut into small pieces
2 tomatoes
A few slices of ginger (preferably older ginger, tastier)
2 gloves of garlic (chopped into tiny pieces)
Coriander Leaves
1 tbsp of oyster sauce
1/4 cube of chicken stock / salt & pepper
1 tbsp of corn flour

Korean Miso Paste

Oil for frying

Seasoning for sauce:

4 tbsp of ketchup
11/2 tbsp of chili sauce
1 tbsp of sugar
1 tbsp of lime juice
1 tsp of Korean Miso paste
Half bowl of water (approx 300ml)
1 chili padi (cut into small pieces) optional

Directions:
Wash the chicken thigh
Marinate the chicken with oyster sauce and corn flour
Add in chicken stock or salt and pepper
Mix well and set aside for 15 minutes

Put all seasoning in a bowl
Mix well and set aside

Heat up wok with oil over medium fire
Once oil is hot, put in garlic and fry till golden brown (beware not to over fry the garlic, as it will taste bitter)
Add in ginger and continue to stir fry
Pour in the chicken and fry chicken till it turn golden brown (probably a good 8~10 minutes)
Add the combined seasoning, tomatoes and let it simmer for another 8~10 minutes (add water if gravy starts to thicken)
Increase the heat and stir well for one last time
Dish out and garnish with coriander leaves (if you don't like the smell of coriander, you can leave it out)
Serve with rice!!

The end product!!

Hmm... It turn out that my first try on cooking chicken was not successful and I was pretty disappointed with the dish. The sauce was good but the taste of the chicken was disappointing. I didn't do a good job is making sure the chicken was well cooked cause the meat was still too soft and there was still traces of blood when I bit off the meat from the bone. I should have use more oil to fry the chicken until it is really golden brown and then drain off the oil before adding in the seasoning. 

Besides that, I would not use chicken stock to marinate the chicken next time because the taste of the chicken stock didn't go well with the sweet and sour sauce. Salt and pepper would be good enough. And lastly, put more GINGER!! It will taste better! 

I hope my sharing on the outcome of my recipe will stop you from doing the same mistake as me. Aaron still can cook, just that he had a bad day... Will do better next time!! =)