Yuanjia's Cuisine

It is said that corns can help one lose weight. Women especially like corns because they can also help maintain breast health. Corn seeds - the white little stuff inside each corn - is an amazing antioxidant. Surprised? haha EAT MORE CORNS!

Today I mainly just wanted to intake some starch, so I decided to use corn, potato and cream / milk / butter to help me with my goal. This side dish turned out very tasty and I believe I will do this again.

All you need is:
1 can cream style corns
3 red potatoes
1/2 cup of milk (doesn't matter what kind)
1/8 cup of butter
some salt

Peel and chop potatoes into little cubes. Boil them in small amount of water with some salt until it tendered. Remove all the water, add corns, milk and butter. Heat and mix until it boil gently. Add salt to adjust to your taste.

This is another traditional Shanghai Cuisine besides Braised Pomfret. I almost failed today because I added too much water and did not realize that I need to boil off all water in the end. As a result, I ended up boiling a whole pot of water and waited for half an hour ( I was starving to death an hour ago, so while waiting, I ate two loaves of bread.. :( )

Here's how I cooked...

Beat an egg and prepare in a small bowl.
Prepare some cornstarch in a small plate.
Use the back side of the blade of a knife, tap two sides of the pork rib vertically and then horizontally. This way, connective tissues in the muscles will be broken and this will result in a better texture of the meat.
Immerse the pork rib in the beaten egg, then lay the pork rib on cornstarch to add the cornstarch to two sides of the pork rib.
Fry two sides of the pork rib till they turn white.
Take the pork ribs out.
Fry green onions and gingers.
Add cooking wine, heavy soy sauce, pork ribs, and water (cover the pork ribs)
NOTE: Do not add too much water even though it cannot cover all the pork ribs. Otherwise, you will end up waiting for all the water to be boiled off for half an hour as I did tonight..
Cover the pot, wait till water starts to boil.
Flip the pork ribs and wait for another 5 minutes.
Then add some sugar, use high temperature to boil off the water.
If you see the sauce becomes viscous, then you can turn off the gas and enjoy the Shanghai Braised Pork Ribs!!

This is amazing! You know what? For the very first time, my dish tasted exactly like my mom's cooking! The brased pomfret I did tonight, totally reminded me the wonderful days 2 years ago when I was living with my parents and enjoying various kinds of brased food I like...

Mom, Dad, I miss you..

The cooking experience today was actually a little bit scary. I literally "dissected" the pomfret and I was scared a whole crap out of myself when I touched the soft internal organs.. IT WAS DISGUSTING! I can't image 10 years later when I will be in the medicine field, I will have to touch fresh meat and organs almost everyday! That makes me excited though. Not everyone has the opportunity to do that, right? Teehee.

I found liver, intestine, and whatever stuff. I also found the heart hided right below the gill. I remembered my mom has told me one day that if one breaks the gallbladder, the pomfret would taste bitter. So I was very careful pulling the stuff out and tried to find the gallbladder, but I failed. Whatevers, I did not see the green fluid oozing out, so it was all good.

So first, you wanna pick a fresh pomfret. If the eyes of the pomfret are clear, then yes this pomfret is fresh. Then you wanna remove all the internal organs and the gills. Fry the pomfret till it turns golden. Then take the fried pomfret out. Make sure that it is well cooked already. What I mean well cooked here is that you can even go ahead the eat it after frying the pomfret. Then put in ginger, green onion, cooking wine, 2 table spoon of heavy soy sauce, and 5 tea spoon of sugar (you can even put more!!), briefly heat for 10 seconds and then put the pomfret in. Cover the pot. Use low temperature. After 5 minutes, flip the pomfret over and cover the pot and cook for 5 more minutes. After 10 minutes in total, remove the cover and use high temperature to remove water until the sauce gets very viscous or thick. At that time, if you have not freaked out, you win!

This is another dish I did several days ago. I liked the color so I uploaded here. :)

Today, I repeated the chilli fried rice, and here's the picture! Yea I told ya it looked appealing right?


So while I was chopping the pork, I actually saw two kinds of meat, or in a more scientific way, two kinds of muscles (forgive my nerdiness) - red and white muscles. I'm sure you all have heard of that, but what exactly are they?

Well, essentially, red muslces are red is because that they contain the oxygen binding protein - myoglobin. They use oxidative metabolism to generate ATP (an energy source). And they are very resistant to fatigue. White muscles are white is because of the absence of myoglobin and a reliance on glycolytic enzymes. They use both oxidative metabolism and anearobic metabolism to generate short bursts of speed and power.


Though most people believe that eating white meat (or white muscles... eerr sounds wierd) is healthier, those who have anemia and especially women should actually eat more red meat because red meat has myoglobin which contains ion. This is what you need when you are suffering anemia.

Well, the only thing that I'm not sure about was the white thing between white and red muscles when I had a hard time breaking it. It is very elastic and strong. I assume it is bundle collagen fibers.. Anyone knows?