#nourishMYmedics

Healthy Lunchbox for Healthcare Workers during the Coronavirus Pandemic

My family and friends came together to cook and delivered homemade, healthy lunchboxes to our hospital. For 35 days, everyday, we cook 15 boxes of lunch to send to friends who are healthcare workers. Our aim was to keep our frontliners healthy and happy to fight Coronavirus.

We encourage you to cook and share homemade lunch for a healthcare worker who you personally know. One box makes a positive difference. Here is a collection of the lunches we made for your inspiration:

DAY 7

• Sardine Paretel
• Cauliflower with Turmeric
• Rice with Sesame Seeds
• Coconut Water

DAY 8

• Steamed Chicken with With Black Fungus, Ginger, and Red Dates
• Stir-Fry Cabbage with Carrots
• Brown rice with sesame seeds
• Coconut Water
• Mango and red apples

DAY 9

• Tuna potato pasta with vegetables: celery, carrots, cherry tomato, sesame seeds
• Hard-boiled egg
• Coconut Water

DAY 10

• Kung Pao Chicken with Capsicum & Onions
• Brown rice
• Bok choy
• Pear

DAY 11

• Tuna Egg Cakes
• Baked beans
• Long beans
• Brown rice
• Orange

DAY 12

• Chicken Pongteh
• Stir-fry Lettuce with Garlic
• Brown rice with Black Sesame
• Coconut Water

DAY 13

• Otak-otak with herbs & spices
• Coral lettuce & Wild Betel Leaves
• Rice with black sesame
• Homemade black sesame-peanut bun
• Red grapes

DAY 14

• Chicken Briyani Rice made with Coconut Oil, Spices, and Raisins
• Stir-fry Cabbage with Carrots
• Pear
• Coconut Water

DAY 15

• Chicken Braised in Black Vinegar, Ginger & Black Bean
• Lettuce
• Rice
• Tea: Soymilk & Wholegrain Banana Pao

DAY 16

• Salmon Teriyaki with Sesame Seeds
• Mixed Vegetables with Garlic
• Rice
• Apple & Orange

DAY 17

• Tuna Aglio Olio with Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Lettuce, Cherry Tomato, Grapes
• Black Bean Brownie with Peanut Butter
• Coconut Water

DAY 18

• Soya Sauce Braised Chicken
• Eggs
• Bok Choy
• Apple

DAY 19

• Butter salmon with lemon wedge
• Salad in Sesame Sauce
• Brown rice with sesame seeds
• Soymilk

DAY 20

• Asam/ tamarind fish
• Stir-fry french beans with garlic
• Brown rice with sesame seeds
• Grapes & Apple

DAY 21

• Shrimp Paste Chicken with Tomato & Cili Padi
• Pumpkin with Thai Basil
• Brown rice with sesame seeds
• Apple

DAY 22

• Tuna Curry Spaghetti with Coconut & Kaffir Lime Leaves
• Lettuce & Celery Leaves
• Apple

DAY 23

• Sweet & Sour Chicken with capsicum, cucumber, tomato, onions and pineapple
• Brown Rice with Sunflower & Sesame Seeds
• Coconut Water

DAY 24

• Three Cups Chicken with Sesame Oil & Thai Basil
• Brown Rice
• Peas
• Homemade banana cake
• Coconut water

DAY 25

• Chicken with Ginger, Spring Onions, and Sesame Sauce
• Brown Rice
• Stir-fry Bok Choy with Carrots
• Coconut water

DAY 26

• Tuna Begedil with Coriander & Spring Onions
• Stir-fry Capsicum with Cauliflower
• Brown Rice
• Coconut water

DAY 27

• Kimchi Stew with Enoki Mushroom, Chicken, and Tofu
• Brown Rice
• Coconut Water

DAY 28

• Sardine Turmeric & Coconut Curry
• Broccoli
• Rice
• Coconut water

DAY 29

• Black Pepper Chicken with Capsicum
• Brown Rice
• Apple

DAY 30

• Tuna Tom Yum Soup with Tomatoes, Mushroom, and Onions
• Spaghetti
• Coconut Water

DAY 31

• Crispy Salmon with Garlic Yoghurt Dip
• Lettuce & Cherry Tomatoes with Tarragon Vinaigrette
• Rice

DAY 32

• Honey Chicken with Sesame Seeds
• Stir-fry Lettuce with Garlic
• Rice
• Soymilk

DAY 33

• Kam Hiong Chicken with Curry Leaves
• Buddha’s Delight Mixed Vege with Fermented Beancurd
• Rice
• Coconut water

DAY 34

• Thai Green Curry with Brinjal & French Beans
• Brown Rice
• Apple

DAY 35

• Chicken Stew with Mushroom, Radish, and Carrots
• Broccoli
• Brown Rice
• Coconut Water

The post #nourishMYmedics appeared first on New Malaysian Kitchen.

NO-COOK RECIPES

You can make food even without using the stove.

• Yoghurt with Nangka & Gula Melaka (Yoghurt with Jackfruit & Palm Sugar)
• Pittaya Pink Smoothie Bowl
• Blueberry Cheesecake

EASY

These recipes don't require a lot of ingredients, time, or skills.

• Chinese Chive Pancake
• Claypot Chicken Rice In Rice Cooker
• Sardine Paretal

 

VEGETABLES

For those who are trying to sneak in more vegetables and fruits into their diet.

• Rainbow Roasted Vegetable Soup
• Instant Green Smoothie In Freezer Bags
• Fried Cauliflower (Vegetarian Fried Prawns

FREEZER-FRIENDLY

Cook on your off day, portion and freeze, and eat on busy working days.

• Easy Punjabi Chicken Curry
• Bubur Pulut Hitam In Slow Cooker
• Quick & Easy Dhal Curry

 

5 INGREDIENTS OR LESS

You don't need a lot of ingredients to cook. These recipes can be made easily using 5 ingredients or less.

• Marmite Chicken Wings
• Easy Maggi Mee Goreng
• Steamed Tofu With Fish Paste & Oyster Sauce

 

SARA'S FAVOURITE DISHES

If you're an avid cook and wouldn't mind to work for good food, here are some of my absolute favourite dishes.

• Penang Asam Laksa
• Malaysian Hokkien Noodles

SOMETHING SWEET

Desserts can be healthy. I like using minimally process produce such as sweet potato and soymilk to make mine instead of just sugar and flour.

• Soya Milk Longan Pudding
• Gula Melaka Agar-agar 
• Malaysian Sweet Potato Doughnuts (Kuih Keria)

 

NOURISHING/ MEDICINAL

If you eat out all the time, at least make some highly nutritious food for yourself during the weekend or even once a month. These herbal concoctions are good to revitalise your tired body.

• Red Dates Tonic - 3 Ingredients
• Jamu Drink 
• Eight Treasure Tonic

The post New? Start Here appeared first on New Malaysian Kitchen.

How to use in cooking

While it is primarily used in Indian cooking, this fragrant leaves is also used in certain Malay and Chinese dishes. My favourite Chinese dishes using this herb includes salted egg prawns and kam hiong crab.

Curry leaves are used fresh. Fried in oil to extract it’s flavour, curry leaves give fragrance to a dish. It is normally the first ingredient used in Indian cooking. Curry leaves is fried in oil until fragrant or about 30 seconds, then cooked with ingredients like onions, dried chilli, spices, or curry paste.

It is so fragrant that if you leave it out, even the least picky eater could taste the difference.

How to save curry leaves? Freezing or drying curry leaves?

When I lived in an apartment with no access to freshly plucked curry leaves, I buy the from the supermarket. I normally have more than I need in a recipe and left with extra curry leaves that I don’t need anytime soon. There’s a few method to save them:

1. Dip the bottom stalk in a bottle of water. This will keep the plant alive, hence the leaves fresh.
2. Keep it in the fridge. You can also keep it in the fridge for a few days. I used to just chuck the curry leaves wrapped in plastic in the fridge.
3. Freeze You can wrap them in plastic bag tightly and freeze. However, I find that it’s not as fragrant as before and may turn black from oxidation if not kept properly. If you’re not particular and have a lot of curry leaves that you wouldn’t be able to use for a long time, this method is acceptable.
4. Dry and blend the leaves into powder. Though I have not tried it, you can process fresh curry leaves into dried herbs.

“I do wash and dry them thoroughly though before I lay the leaves out to air dry on a cookie cooling rack (So that the air circulates better around the leaves). This process takes up to a weeks time. Ideally, the leaves should not blacken but become a dry-herb green. The black ones usually have no flavor. Then, I simply crush the leaves before using or just powder them in my blender before storing them in an air-tight box in the freezer. The flavour remains great. In fact, I feel, it intensifies (as with any dried herb).”  Desicook

Other names of Curry Leaves

• English name: Curry leaves
• Malay name: Daun kari
• Chinese name: Gālí yè (Mandarin)/ Ka lei yip (Cantonese) 咖喱叶
• Indian name:  Murraya koenigii

How to choose curry leaves

Just like how fruits from one tree can be sweeter than another, some curry leaves are more fragrant than others.

From curry trees

When have a choice between a few trees, pluck the leaves, tear them, smell and judge which imparts greater fragrance. Once you identify a better flavour one, go back to the same plant.

Supermarket

Unfortunately, curry leaves are normally place in a plastic packet. Just choose one that look fresh and without much black spots. Curry tree is easily infested by insects.

Recipes

• Easy Malaysian Rasam 
• Punjabi Chicken Curry
• Dhal Curry
• Sardine Peratel 
• Salted Egg Prawns

The post Curry Leaves appeared first on New Malaysian Kitchen.

Do you know the sour, spicy, and rather pungent soup served in small metal bowl when you have banana leaf rice? It’s called rasam. It wasn’t love at first taste. I didn’t learn to like it until a few years back. The spice can be a little too much to handle.

But then, what we taste at restaurants is normally very different from what’s at home. I didn’t know dhal curry is not supposed to be watery and bare, but thick, flavourful, and filled with vegetables. So is rasam. Homemade rasam is thicker and so much more pleasant with a more rounded flavour.

Aunty Clara who grew up drinking rasam taught me a simple recipe. She called it ‘Indian soup’ and explained to me many Indians drink it everyday. She had a colleague who bring a bottle of rasam to work everyday.

I was so intrigued when she started plucking curry leaves from her garden, squeezing juice out of tamarind, chopping onions, and taking out spices like cumin and mixed fenugreek from her spice drawer. She said “You don’t need to peel the garlic. We blend it with the peel”.

When asked why, she said it’s the way that she had been taught. She also said that her grandmother make her stand by the pot of rasam when it cooks. “Make sure not to boil the rasam. Otherwise it’ll be bitter” she advised.

The homemade rasam was sublime. When she served homemade rasam with chicken curry, I ate more than expected. Aunty Clara said “Yes, rasam is an appetiser!”. She poured it over ponni rice and drank it throughout the meal. She said that Indian family makes a big pot of rasam and keep it in the earthen pot for days. “It won’t go bad!” she assured me

BENEFITS OF RASAM

I begin to form a theory in my mind: rasam is the secret to Indian youthful look. Indians rarely have wrinkles! Spices are rich with antioxidant and cumin is the top 20 spices with the highest ORAC value (a measure of antioxidant capacity in food). Antioxidant does have preservation properties. I wonder if that’s why it wouldn’t spoil (for up to a few days) even if it’s not kept in the fridge?

I came home and make some for myself I’ve been drinking so much rasam. Especially since it’s kept in a pot, I just scoop into a small bowl and drink whenever I like. So I told Aunty Clara and she warned me “Don’t drink too much or you’ll always need to go the toilet!”.

Then I realise that my bowel movement had been rather smooth for the past days that I’ve been drinking rasam. When I went to Nepal, and was eating food with spices, there was no constipation problem. Well, looks like I found a delicious and natural laxative

TOOLS

• Pot
• Blender/pestle and mortar
• Mixing bowl x 2
• Sieve

The post Easy Malaysian Rasam (Indian Soup) – 10 Ingredients appeared first on New Malaysian Kitchen.

This is an incredibly easy dish when you’re in a rush. It’s delicious, filling, and can be made in under 10 minutes. I found that many Indian family in Malaysia make this often and have it with rice. My family who is used to ‘blander’ Chinese cuisine for dinner however prefer to have it with bread instead.

TOOLS

• Wok + spatula

ACTIVE TIME

10 minutes

RECIPE CARD

SHORT RECIPE

Fry 2 sliced onions, 2 sliced chili, and 2 stalks of curry leaves in 2 tbsp of oil. Add sardine and sauce. Mash. Cook until sauce boils. Add 1 tsp chili powder. Cook until dry.

COOKING TIPS

1. Control the heat As I like this food spicy, I like to add 2 – 3 tsp of chili powder. If you don’t, 1 tsp is enough. You can omit it entirely too if you can’t take spice at all.
2. Fillings for sandwich You could also use if for sandwich fillings
3. Leftover for breakfast If you make this dish for dinner and can’t finish, use it to make sandwich for breakfast.
4. Party food If you’re asked to bring sandwich to a potluck party, consider making this.

Enjoy this simple yet delicious dish!

The post Sardine Peratal – 5 ingredients, 10 min appeared first on New Malaysian Kitchen.

The post Authentic Penang Asam Laksa appeared first on New Malaysian Kitchen.