Quick Home-cooked Dishes & Healthy Breakfast

The mil has been away in New Zealand for a month and I've finally gained my cooking momentum. Practice makes perfect and this applies to everything including cooking.  Every time the mil goes away for several months, I always have a hard time to condition my mind and body to like cooking in the first few days that she's away. And when I finally get a handle on the spatula after a month or two, she's due to come home again. And then I lose the momentum  and get lazy again when she's around and the whole process repeats when she leaves again 😐

Here are some very quick, simple and wholesome dishes that I whipped out this week.

Braised pork shoulder with hard boiled eggs in the Philips Pressure Cooker (PPC)


Ingredients: Pork (preferably with some fats so that the cooked pork will not be dry), unpeeled garlic (1 bulb), 1 star anise, 1 cinnamon bark, Lakanto calorie-free sugar (keto compliant), pepper corn, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sesame seed oil, dash of Chinese cooking wine.

Instructions: Sear pork in PPC with star anise, cinnamon bark and add all the sauces, sugar, water, garlic and seal vent (choose beef).  Turn off switch and manual release vent.  Add in hard boiled eggs.  Press warm and flip the eggs until all sides are browned.











While the pork is cooking in the PPC, I did a quick stir fry of vegetables with shallots, garlic and homemade fish balls in the wok.




Yesterday, I dished out lemon rosemary and herbs grilled chicken. My first time cooking this dish. I watched a few recipes on You Tube, tweaked the recipes and techniques and came up with my own grilled chicken. The chicken was so juicy, tender and yummmmsssss!



Chicken thighs (5 huge boneless ones) are marinated for at least 3 hours with coriander powder, few sprigs of chopped fresh rosemary, black pepper, salt, sprinkles of cajun and turmeric, mixed dried herbs, garlic powder, 1 tablespoon Lakanto sugar and olive oil.

Instructions:
Sear chicken thighs in 2 batches in the PPC with butter and some olive oil - 3 minutes on each side or until slightly browned.
Thickly slice one whole lemon and add on top of the thighs.
Transfer to lined baking tray, drizzle olive oil over chicken thighs and bake at 180C for 15 minutes on each side.
10 minutes before removing the chicken from the oven, drizzle palm sugar syrup (gula Melaka) on the chicken.

The juice from the zesty lemon makes the chicken thighs super juicy!  And the intensely flavorful fresh rosemary gives a phenomenal flavor punch to the chicken. Dried rosemary doesn't have that intense flavor.

With the remaining chicken juice, oil and butter in the PPC, I made an easy sauce with a little soy sauce, Lea & Perrin sauce, water and fresh button mushrooms. Thicken the sauce with a little corn starch (optional).  Actually the chicken is so juicy I don't even need the sauce.







Two thighs kept for the fussy king and for Cass' lunch the next day.



Can you see just how juicy the chicken is? Searing the chicken briefly in the PPC and the juice from the lemon do wonders to the chicken meat. The kids sometimes comment that grilled chicken thighs are dry without sauce but this method of searing and adding a whole lemon into the baking tray make such a great difference.!  Plus the zesty lemony tang gives the chicken that extra little za-za-zoom!

This healthy yogurt bowl was prepped by Sherilyn for breakfast. It's composed of sugar-free skinny yogurt, one large sugar plum, Amazin' Graze kaya granola and Amazin' Graze 100% pure almond nut butter.



This health freak Dancing Queen sure knows how to use all my expensive stuff to whomp up a luxurious breakfast for herself.   Her breakfast are usually very appetizing and not to mention, over budget!

Today she made herself a luxurious pork burger using organic minced pork, onions and garlic. She also added an egg, cheese and avocado to the pan-fried multi-seed bun to curate a delish gourmet pork burger without letting me know while I was out shopping for groceries 😐



We love this almond nut butter from Amazin' Graze. It's stone-ground from 100% almonds without any added sugar, salt, oil or additive.  It's so good that my health freak Dancing Queen and I finished the entire bottle in a week! Time to get more nut butter from my favorite store again soon!