紅棗杞子蒸滑雞

Since the man has no time to cook these few months, I'll sort out dinners and trot out food that aren't very difficult to assemble. The only cooking skills needed are to conjure it from raw meats to something edible. But the man already knows that my style cooking veers towards a mish-mash of Cantonese and Japanese dishes, little meat except fish, and in my kitchen, deep-fried food is out of the equation. He's cool with that. 😏 If the man takes charge of the stove, he can do the Northern Indian food and basic Italian items well enough. If he eats out, it's mainly food from these two cuisines, so he won't be missing much of these in my cooking.

It was a crazy busy work day for me too. But I had the luxury of two hours to buy ingredients and get dinner ready at 8pm. Decided to poach a chicken to go with an easy salad of roasted vegetables. Plated an appetizer of goma tofu (ごま豆腐) as well. I didn't make the tofu lah; I bought it. Made a little bit of dashi for it to sit in, and served it cold topped with wakame. #ImpieCooks2018

Since there was sufficient time, I also did a yasai itame (野菜炒め) for the man's lunchbox so that he wouldn't have to actually eat 'leftovers' that are the same as the previous night's dinner. The immediate next meal should at least include an egg or something different. Yes, he packs a daily lunchbox to the office. For some strange reason, he doesn't mind totting a lunchbox around.

If I have to poach a chicken, it might as well be a pricey organic chicken, or at least one that's free-range and not injected with too many hormones or antibiotics. At least it will be delicious. Trust me, there is a marked difference to the taste if it's poached. If you're roasting it with the usual marinade of honey, butter and such, then I suppose you can be less fussy about where the chicken is from. I won't be eating much of it. This Empress chicken (Carogold or Sakura works too) is small enough for the man to finish most of it himself.

This poached chicken was done with ginseng, wolfberries and dried red dates. The dried scallops were first soaked in a small bowl of water to soften, and that would be the part of the steaming liquid along with a wee bit of light soy sauce and sesame oil. Just one tablespoon of each is enough. Please also use a good grade of soy and sesame oil. No Chinese wine. No additional salt flakes needed. I do use a wee bit of white pepper. Plonk the plate into the fridge to sit for about 40 - 45 minutes, then place it in the steamer. Voilà.