Sunday, March 01, 2009

Nasi Cap Jay - Stir fry 10 veggies with rice

cap jay with rice
Nasi=rice (in indonesian), Cap=ten (in hokkien), Jay=veggies (in both chinese and hokkien?), but anyway, it's basically stir frying a bunch of vegetables with a little bit of meat and seafood, add salt and pepper to taste and it's served with rice.
I'm not sure if it's an original chinese food, but it's very common in indo (well at least in java, as far as I know).

Start with the ingredients, I don't think you need exactly 10 type of vegetables, but basically put in whatever you like and however much you want it.
veggies for cap jay
I used celery, bok-choy, cauliflower, tomatoes, brocolli, carrots, yellow pepper, and the usual stir fry always start with combination of onions, garlic, shallots and ginger.


I actually end up making so much food this time, enough to feed a jail full of people, so the amount of food here are a bit much. But you know, leftover can be for lunch the next day.

Let's start chopping all the veggies first. Meat, seafood and garlic etc are later.
chopped carrot
carrots are cut about yay big

chopped cauliflower
cauliflower chopped

chopped brocolli n yellow pepper
brocolli, and yellow pepper

chopped bok choy
bok choy and some mystery chinese veggie I saw on the alhambra farmer's market, forgot to ask what is the name of it.
Separate the leaves and the thicker stalk part, cos the thicker stalk part takes longer to cook, therefore will go in first in the stir fry.

and after all the veggies cut, start peeling and chopping off the onions, gingers, garlic and shallots.
peeled onion garlic shallots ginger
we are always overdosed on these, cos we used an extreme amount of em when cookin hehe

onions are sliced, and I want all the garlic, gingers and shallots to be finely chopped, so I just toss em to the food processor, so the machine can do all the fine chop for me.
sliced onion

after that, peel the shrimp, and rinsed them with salt water. why? I dono, it kinda make sense to me cos shrimp lives in salt water?

so here's all the ingredients are ready before start stir frying.
ready to stir
start from the top left:
-cauliflower
-tomatoes
-brocolli
-carrots
-celery
-meatball (optional, I just toss it in cos I like meatball, and it's premade from supermarket)
-bok choy (and the chinese veggies I dono the name of)
-yellow pepper (I just pick a pepper that has different color from the rest of the veggies to make it more colorful)
-ground chicken (can be substituted with sliced chicken breast, but I'm too lazy to cut the meat, so I bought a pre-grounded meat from supermarket)
-chopped onions, garlic, gingers, shallots
-a bit of shrimp (or scallop)

at this point, prepare to make the rice, so it's going to be warm and ready to go when the stir fry are done.

since all the ingredients are ready to toss
heat up the oil, about 3-4 tbs of corn or veggie oil mixed with a bit of sesame oil.
I dont usually measure them, just however much enough oil so the food wont stick, cook on about medium high heat
heat up oil

toss in a tiny bit of garlic, if it's bubbled then the oil is hot enough
so toss in all the onions, garlic, gingers, and shallots and stir well so they wont stick
stir fry onions n friend

when it's half done, toss in the chicken, add a bit of salt and pepper and stir fry well
put chicken in
close the lid to cook a bit faster

then chicken is like half done, toss in the shrimp, and add a bit more of salt and pepper.
toss shrimp in
btw, the shrimp usually very fast too cook, so tossing them pretty early like this makes them a bit overcooked later, but I don't mind that hehe, so if you want your shrimp soft, maybe it needs to go in a bit later.

also add the carrots, cos they took a while to cook too
toss carrot in
add a bit of water
mix well and closed the lid to cook a bit

open the lid, it seems that they're pretty well cooked, mixed well
cookin together
add a bit more salt and pepper
then toss in the celery stalk, cauliflower,and brocolli
add celery n friends
mixed well
mixed em all
closed the lid to cook

after a bit while, toss in the tomatoes, cooked meatball, and yellow pepper
add very bit salt and pepper, mixed well
add tomat etc
close lid to cook

after that, the leaves of the bok choy and the mystery chinese veggie goes last, mixed well and close lid to cook.
add bokchoy etc

when it's opened, they all seemed to be all well cooked and theres a little bit watery in the pot.
cooked and done
since this meal supposed to be a bit goopy and thick, I added a mixture of 3-4 tbs of tapioca flour with some water and toss it in the pot.
can also use corn starch to thicken the liquid.
But if you dont like goopy stuff, can just leave it as it is.
salt and pepper is always added to taste.

ta daa! served with rice
nasi cap jay
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Saturday, January 24, 2009

Stir-fry Potato Bok-Choy Beef



I learned cooking this meal from my mommy, I've made it many times and my hubby loves it.
So in the practice of writing my foodblog, I decided to put this as my first recipe.
It's kind of a lot of work compared to the other recipes I planned to put on this blog, but we happened to have pictures ready for this, so here we go.

When I cook something, I'm not set on the idea that you have to put exactly this much of this and that to make the meal, I think everybody have different taste and preference on how much garlic, salt or sugar they want to put in their cooking.
So I'm pretty loose on describing the amount of ingredients. The recipe on this blog is aimed toward people who knows how to stir fry, and just like to experiment with the ingredients themselves.
I put pictures below showing how much ingredients I use, so you can get the idea.

Ok, let's get started

Ingredients:
garlics
shallots
gingers
meat (beef, chicken or pork, whichever you like)
bok-choy
potatoes
vegetable or corn oil (for deep frying)
sesame oil (minor contribution, not always necessary)
Oyster sauce (key sauce ingredient)
soya sauce (also necessary)
salt
sugar
black pepper

Start with pre-marinating the meat. I used beef for this one because beef is the meat my mom originally used on this meal.
meat
cut the beef into small cubes, mix well with oyster sauce, salt and pepper (add a wee bit of sugar, soya sauce and sesame oil if you'd like), and let it marinate for at least 15 min.

Prepare the potatoes for deep frying.
foodblog photo
I think I used about 3 or 4 medium sized potatoes and sliced them thin using food processor

Heat up the oil in the frying pan, and when it's ready, fry the potato.
We used about medium-hi heat usually, and potato takes a little while to cook
foodblog photo
It's important to not dump all the sliced potato at once, unless you have big enough of a pan to cook 'em all at once.

Also, we're not frying crispy potato chips here. The potato is fried long enough only so that it's no longer raw. It should be a little bit mushy when it's done.

Put it in a strainer, so the oil drips down. Unless you like your food to be super oily hehe. But even I, the oilytasty, would rather strain my deep fried potato for this.

Ok, now that the potato is cooked and out of the way, prepare the rest of the ingredients.
We love garlics, so these are how much garlics, shallots and gingers we used.
foodblog photo

Peel all the skins
foodblog photo

and cut them all into tiny pieces, unless you like big chunk of garlic and shallots.
foodblog photo
I used food processor to cut them all up, it makes things easier.

Move on to prepare the bok-choy
foodblog photo

Slice the bok choy into 4, and separate the leaves and the stalks, since they are going to go into the frying pan at separate times.
foodblog photo
The leaves will go in at later times, since the stalk will take longer to cook.
foodblog photo

Since all the ingredients are ready to go, heat up the oil on medium-hi heat for final stir-fry.
foodblog photo
I used about 5 tbs of leftover frying oil from the potato, and the brown streak you see in the pictures is a pinch of sesame oil.

When the heat is ready, toss in the garlic, shallots and gingers.
foodblog photo

Keep stir frying so it doesn't stick and burned
foodblog photo

when the garlic seems to have a little bit brown on the side, toss in the marinated meat
foodblog photo

mix it well with the garlics and friends, and cover the pot so it cooks faster
foodblog photo

Make sure its thoroughly cooked (you don't want raw meat in chinese food) and then toss in the bok-choy stalks
foodblog photo
add a little bit of oyster sauce, soya sauce, a pinch of salt, pepper and sugar and mix well.
Qyster sauce have a little bit of that fishy taste, so you dont want to put too much of that.
Also, putting too much soy sauce here also will salten your food, so just a little bit is usually good enough.
cover it again, only for a little bit, to cook and soften the stalks

after the stalks is almost done, mix in the rest of the bok-choy leaves
foodblog photo
cover it until they're done

and last, toss in the cooked potatoes, and mix well with the rest of them
foodblog photo

It's quite a lot of food for two people.
I'm used to cook these much of ingredients, cos when I learned cooking this from my mom, she cooks this much for a whole family.

Also, this meal is always served with rice.
I personally think it's a bit too much to just eat it by itself.
The thing about chinese-indo food is that the meat or veggie meals is always treated as sides to be consumed with rice.
foodblog photo
This picture doesn't show a correct proportion of how much rice is eaten compared to how much of the stir-fry meal is usually eaten as sides.
We usually get plenty of leftovers to take for lunch.
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