Chinese Vegetarian Clear Tofu Celery with Tomato Soup Recipe

Celery (Scientific name, Apium graveolens) is the most common vegetable that is used as a base for soup or stock. The leafy stalk and taproot of celery can be eaten. Celery is a great source of Calcium. In this recipe I used Pascal celery from North America, which has a ‘U’ shaped stem.

Ingredients
Celery, 3 stalks, cut into slices
Tomato, 3 pcs, cut into four
Carrot, 2 pcs
Pepper, a dash
Soya sauce, 3 table spoons
Onions, 2 pcs, cut into four
Thyme, 3 sprigs
Hard tofu, 2pcs, cut into four
Salt, to taste
Vegetarian Oyster sauce, 1 tablespoon
Olive oil, 1 teaspoon

Pour 4 bowls of water in to pot and bring to a boil. Add carrot and onions. Boil for 15 minutes. Put in the rest of the ingredient and boil for another 15 minutes. Add salt to taste. Serve with steamed rice.

Clear Vegetarian Chinese Cabbage Soup Recipe

Clear soup is one of the essential dishes whenever my family ate steamed rice. Chinese style soup is normally clear and watery.
The nice sweet cabbage soup compliment many other dishes and it also helps smoothen the rice grains so that they are easier to be swallowed.

Ingredients
Water, 4 bowls
Carrot, 1 pc, cut into cubes
Shallots, 3 pcs, cut into slices and fried until crispy
Cabbage, 1 small, tear out the leaves and cut into 3”x3”x3” size
Corn, 1pc, to make sweet soup stock

Boil water in pot and add in the corn. Boil for half and hour. Add carrot and cabbage. Boil for another 20 minutes. Add in dash pepper and the fried shallots. Add salt to taste.

Authentic Nyonya Onde-Onde Recipe

Everyone in my family, being a Penang Baba and Nyonya descendents loves to eat onde onde.
Onde –onde is one of the local Malaysian foods that the Baba and Nyonya descendents adopted. These gluey and chewy balls coated with grated coconut make a very nice dessert. There is another shortcut method of making onde onde, which all the flour are mixed together but the kuih will be springy!

Ingredients
Skin
Glutinous Rice Flour, 350 gms
Corn Flour or Tapioca Flour, 100 gms
Sugar, 30gms
Salt, ½ teaspoon
Pandan (screwpine) Juice Concentrate, ½ cup
Oil, 1 teaspoon
Water, enough for the dough, to be added slowly

Coating
Coconut, grated, 1 coconut, add a litte salt

Fillings
Gula Melaka (or palm sugar), 150gms
Brown Sugar, 50 gms
Mix both fillings together.

Mix tapioca flour, oil, sugar and salt in 250ml of water. Bring to a boil to make a gluey mixture. Stir this often so that clumps will not form. Pour this over the glutinous rice flour and stir the mixture quickly. Add pandan juice. Make sure the dough is well mix. If it is to sticky to work on; add some more glutinous rice flour. Make the dough into ball around 3cm in diameter and then put in the fillings. Roll the ball until it is round and smooth. Put the onde onde ball in boiling water for around 1 minute. When the ball floats up, remove it and coat with the grated coconut. The onde onde is ready.

Vegetarian Avocado with Sweetened Condensed Milk Dessert

The Avocado (Scientific name, Persea Americana) is a native of South and Central America. It was also originally found in the Carribean. Sometimes avocado is also known as Aligator or butter pear. Some of avocado extract can be used as antibacterial chemical.
Apart from being a little creamy, the avocado is rather tasteless. I made this easy and simple avocado with sweetened condensed milk dessert. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients
Avocado, 1 pc
Sweetened Condensed milk. 2 table spoons
A little brown sugar

Cut avocado into halves and remove the hard seed. Use a spoon to scrape the flesh out. Put the thin avocado strips into a mixing bowl, add the sweetened condensed milk and brown sugar. Mix well and serve chilled.

Vegetarian Nyonya Pulut Inti (Glutinous rice with Grated Coconut in Palm Sugar)

Ever since my daughter watched The Little Nyonya serial drama in Astro, she has been bugging me to make Nyonya delicacies for her to eat. She is even more excited when I told her that she is a fifth generation Straits Born and her Great Grandmother is a Nyonya.
Well, here is one of the popular evergreen Nyonya kuih (dessert) recipe that was adopted by the Straits Born Chinese in Malaysia from the original Malay Pulut Inti kuih.

Ingredients
Glutinous Rice, 200 gms, soaked for 5 hours to soften
Pandan leaves, 3 pcs
Coconut Milk (Santan), from ½ coconut
Grated coconut, from ½ coconut
Palm Sugar (Gula Melaka), 2”x2”x2”, melted with a little hot water
Sugar, ½ cup
Banana leaves, cut into 6”x6”x6” to be used as wrapper (I could not find banana leaves in my neighborhood, so I just used clear plastic)
A little salt

Add salt and pandan leaves to glutinous rice and steam for 15 minutes or until the rice are cooked. Add coconut milk to the rice and steam for another 10 minutes. To make the Inti (toppings), mix the grated coconut with palm sugar and sugar. Stir until they are well mixed. Put around one small hand grip of glutinous rice on the banana leaves and then put a spoonful of Inti (toppings) on it. Wrap the banana leave into a pyramid shape and fold both ends of the leaves below it to hold the wrapping together.

Vegetarian Dragon Fruit Agar-Agar (Gelatinous Seaweed Jelly)

Agar-agar is a product of gelatinous seaweed and it is available in dried form. For health reason, instead of using artificial colouring, I used the juice from a red dragon fruit (pitaya). The final colour of my agar-agar jelly is deep pink. Actually it looks quite nice and tasty!

Ingredients
Dried Agar-agar strips, 1 packet, 1.5 oz
Water, 1400ml
Sugar to taste
Dragon fruit juice, sieved, ½ cup

Bring water to a boil. Add agar-agar strips and keep on stirring the mixture until all agar-agar strips are dissolved. Add sugar and dragon fruit juice. When the sugar dissolves, pour the mixture into a mould. Let it cool down to room temperature and then put it in the fridge. Serve this wonderful dessert chilled!