Blueberries Dollar Pancakes (蓝莓迷你煎饼)

Bite-sized breakfast goodies, studded with juicy, fresh blueberries

These miniature pancakes are also known as Silver Dollar Pancakes.

Silver Dollar Pancakes are a stack of small pancakes, originally targeted at children.

Fresh blueberries are in season, toss some blueberries into these traditional pancakes for a fresh and tangy taste.

These pancakes are tender, light and eggy. They may be small in size but big in taste.

Serve them with any toppings: butter, golden or maple syrup, fruits, bacons, sausages, ham etc.

They can also be used as a base for savoury appetizers or sweet desserts.

Tau Kwa Pau – Stuffed Beancurd (豆干包)

Tau Kwa Pau – Fried Beancurd stuffed with a variety of chopped ingredients and served with a dollop of braised duck gravy.

This traditional hawker snack are normally sold in Teochew Braised Duck stalls. However, this is a food item that you don’t find readily in modern Singapore. Hence, not many people know of or have eaten it before.

Needless to say, the chopped ingredients used to stuff the Tau Kwa Pau are food items sold at these stalls.

Golden Purse stuffed with delicious ingredients

I have tried this dish several times over the years. Based on my memories, I try to recreate the nolstagic flavours of this dish at home.

Recreating a hawker dish can be daunting because most of these dishes are labourious and time consuming to prepare. Sometimes these dishes are not just difficult to cook, there are also limited informations about them.

Soft beancurds are lightly fried till golden in colour. Ingredients such as braised duck, braised eggs, fish cake and vegetables are chopped into small chunks and stuffed generously into the beancurd. I served them with a splash of braised sauce and freshly made chilli sauce on the side.

The crunchy vegetables, soft beancurd, eggs, duck meat provide a contrast in taste and texture and bursting of flavours in every bite.

Although these Tau Kwa Pau don’t taste exactly like the one I tried, but they are seriously delicious.

Char Kway Teow (炒粿条)

One of the most popular local hawker delicacies – Char Kway Teow

This homemade version is less sinful and has a cleaner flavour.

Fried rice noodles with assorted ingredients

Not using pork or lard in the cooking and adding a large portion of Chye Sim made this dish healthier and not too heavy.

The sweet sauce provides a good balance of sweet and savoury taste while the generous portions of ingredients added to the flavour of the dish.

This homemade Fried Kway Teow is good enough to satisfy my craving without feeling guilty.

Sweet N Sour Seafood Pot (酸甜海鲜煲)

Sweet and Sour Sauce is a very classic sauce in Chinese cuisine. This sauce can be incorporated into many Chinese dishes, such as sweet and sour pork, chicken, fish, prawns etc.

Sweet & sour pork/chicken is one of the top Chinese dish among foreigners.

Loaded with assorted veggies for a more balanced meal

Sweet and sour, acidity balanced by sweetness. This dish features a perfect balance in flavour; sweet, savoury and sour, without one overpowering the other.

Although the key to making a good sweet and sour dish is to have the tangy, syrupy sauce just lightly coating the ingredients. I normallty prefer to prepare little more sauce as we love to scope the sauce over plain rice.

The bright colours make this dish visually appealing while the hint of sourness adds dimension to the taste.

Chinese Spinach Soup with Tri-colour eggs (三色蛋苋菜汤)

This is definitely one of the favourite soup in Chinese restaurants or Zi Char stalls.

This is a simple boil soup (滚汤) that uses humble ingredients, but the combination of these ingredients make this simple vegetables soup so delicious.

It is important to prepare a good broth as a base for this soup. The three types of eggs make the taste distinctive and also add more flavours.

To ensure that the soup absorbs the flavours of the eggs and the spinach is still green but soft and tender, timing is crucial in the cooking process.

Cantonese Soy Sauce Chicken Noodles (广式豉油鸡面)

Soy sauce chicken is a classic Cantonese dish. The key to making a good soy sauce chicken lies in making a good braising sauce with the right amount of spices, aromatics and soy sauce.

You can serve the chicken with rice or egg noodles.

The well marinated chicken is tender and succulent. A light fragrant from the soy sauce, spices and rose wine permeates the chicken meat.

The chicken absorbs the aroma and flavours of the sauce, giving it a perfect balance of flavours that is so satisfying.

The springy and firm noodles are drenched generously with fragrant oil, sauce and dried shrimps chilli.

For a more authentic Cantonese dish, served along with a ginger scallion dip.

Combination Soup (杂锦汤)

One of the easiest meal to put together, all you need is some good broth.

This soup is amazingly simple and quick to make. It uses the basic boiling approach to cook everything in one pot. Just rummage through the fridge for any meat and vegetables, anything that suit your fancy.

The wonderful amalgamation of flavours from the different combinations of ingredients make the soup tasty.

This soup dish is perfect for busy days or when you need a fridge clean outs. No matter how bare the fridge is, there are always something suitable to toss into this soup.

Chocolate Banana Cake (巧克力香蕉蛋糕)

Need to use up all the over riped bananas on your kitchen counter? Making a banana cake is a great way to put them to good use.

Chocolate and banana make an unbeatable classic combination, a harmonious match. The slight bitterness of the chocolate helps neutralise the very riped and sweet banana.

This banana cake is fluffy, moist and filled with mashed bananas. Great for breakfast or an afternoon pick-me-up.

Unlike regular chocolate banana cake, which are layered sponge filled with chocolate cream, sliced bananas and frosted with chocolate ganache; this is a simple cake made with mashed bananas in the batter.

Chocolate ganache are drizzled over the top and I jazzed up the cake with some simple decorations.

This lovely, moist cake is so good, it really doesn’t need any icing.

Curry Chicken with Potatoes Two Versions (咖喱鸡马铃薯二式)

Made two types of curry chicken for our family meal, a spicy version for the adults and a milder kids friendly version.

Chicken curry is a regular in our daily meal rotation. The juicy chicken pieces, tender potatoes and spiced gravy; this is a dish my whole family love.

Sometimes, I even add in ingredients such as eggplants, ladyfinger and cabbage etc.

I like to pair this with different accompaniment each time; rice, crusty baguette, roti prata or even mantou. They are all perfect pairing to this fabulous curry dish.

Spoon the spicy rich curry sauce over the rice, dip the bread or mantou into the gravy to soak up all the flavours. I just have to make sure there are extra rice or bread each time.

Home-made Wonton Soup (鲜虾云吞汤)

Classic Cantonese style wantons filled with pork and prawns and a light dash of seasoning.

Wontons that we eat outside are made mostly of wonton wrappers and very little fillings.

For this home-made version, every bite is bursting with juicy and sweet shrimps and pork fillings.

I am serving this as a soup, to include more veggies in our diet, I toss in a bunch of lettuce.