Milo Slice

I came across a collection of milo recipes on iVillage the other day and thought the kids might like them. The milo slice recipe on The Organised Housewife site looked so easy I even suggested to my 7 year old that she might like to make it and she did. I cut and melted the butter and got all the ingredients out for her but she was able to do the rest of it herself. She was so proud of herself she wanted to do another batch the next day so there would be enough to take when visiting her grandparents on the weekend. The result was a delicious moist slice that she loved and that has lasted for well over in a week in the fridge (only because the house is full of baked goods at the moment - gingerbread men, crumble, so many temptations). I have written the recipe out below with a 7 year old audience in mind.

The cake and biscuit recipes look good too...

Milo Slice
recipe from The Organised Housewife adapted only slightly

½ C self-raising flour

½ C plain flour

½ C Milo

½ C dark choc chips

3/4 C rolled oats

½ C shredded coconut or 1/4 C dessicated coconut

⅔ C brown sugar

1 egg

125g butter, melted
Milk, if too dry

Turn the oven on to 180 C. Grease and line a slice tin.

Sift the flours into a large bowl. Add the milo, choc chips, oats, coconut and sugar and mix.

Crack the egg into a bowl and mix with a fork. Pour the egg and the melted butter into the large bowl and mix well.

Scrape the mixture into the tin and spread and flatten.

Bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Reindeer Biscuits

I helped the kids to make these reindeer biscuits as presents for the friends at preschool and daycare, as mentioned in my last post. I used the recipe from Planning with Kids but substituted pretzels for their mint leaf antlers.

I set the kids up with all the ingredients, melted chocolate and a paint brush and both my 5 and 3 year olds were able to make these by themselves with just a little help needed attaching the pretzels securely.

I wrapped them up individually in a square of clear cellophane tied with a ribbon and a Christmas gift tag. They looked very cute even if I do say so myself!

I tried to get my kids involved in gift giving this year, as they are somehow naturally good at receiving! This was a good way to get them to spend time and effort on something for others without just going to the shops and spending money.

Reindeer Biscuits

mint slice biscuits
jaffas
cashous (silver or coloured balls)
mini pretzels
cooking chocolate, melted
small clean paint brush

Use the paint brush to apply melted chocolate on the biscuit in the location of the nose, eyes and antlers. You need quite a big blob of chocolate for the antlers.

Stick on the jaffas, cashous and pretzels. The kids should be able to do this themselves then Mum can just push everything on a little more firmly afterwards.

Leave to set then wrap up to give away!

Left-over Cereal Chocolate Slice and Triple Chocolate Cookies

I haven't had much energy for blogging lately. Only 5 weeks to go til the baby is due and I am definitely nesting - the inside of my fridge has never looked so clean. So that and organising a bathroom renovations seems to zap all my time.

I have also been trying to have a clean up of my recipe collection. I have accumulated 3 years worth of Good Livings (from the Sydney Morning Herald) so have had a lovely time going through them cutting out recipes - of course I can't just throw them out. I need to do the same with 3 years worth of Gourmet Traveller Magazines!

I have been browsing blogs lately for baking ideas. I like having something home-baked to send in lunchboxes (and for me to snack on!). It has to be nut-free to send to preschool of course, but sometimes I make a nutty item later in the week or just for me!

I found the slice recipe on Cate Can Cook and it was perfect for this week when we finished the packet of weetbix. There was exactly 1 C of crumbs in the bottom of the pack. Usually these go to the chickens but this is a better use!

This recipe has been around for years. I found a few variations on my search. I added an egg to Cate's recipe as my mix was dry. The result was a yummy soft chewy cakey slice with a thick layer of chocolate icing - whats not to like? I sprinkled mine with Hundreds and Thousands which the kids liked!

I also baked a batch of triple chocolate cookies for my husband to take skiing. These were chosen with his chocolatey tastes in mind but I must admit I enjoyed them a lot!

The camera cord is missing so photos will come later!

Here are a few other recipes I have in mind to bake:

Puffed-Rice Slice with Peanut Butter and Chocolate @ Mathilda's Market Blog
Oaty Chocolate Caramel Rice Bubble Bars @ Cate Can Cook
Chocolate Chip Shortbread @ Cate Can Cook
Brown Sugar Shortbread @ Not Quite Nigella
Afghan Cookies @ Not Quite Nigella
Jelly Slice @ Pod and Three Peas
Banana Sour Cream Cake @ Pod and Three Peas (bananas are supposed to get cheaper soon!)
Chocolate Crackle Top Biscuits @ Taste
Fresh Strawberry Cake @ All Recipes
Pear, Date and Hazelnut Cake @ Bill Granger in the SMH

Left-over Cereal Chocolate Weetbix or Cornflake Slice
1 cup self raising flour
1 cup crushed weetbix or corn flakes
1 dessertspoon cocoa powder
1 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
3/4 coconut (dessicated or shredded)
125g butter, melted
1 egg

Preheat oven to 180 C.

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Press mixture into a slice/lamington tin. Bake in oven (180C) for 10 minutes.

Remove from oven - allow to cool slightly. Smooth the chocolate icing onto slice. Sprinkle with hundreds and thousands or coconut and leave to set.

Chocolate Icing
1 C icing sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
20g butter, melted
1 tbsp milk (plus extra if needed), warmed
Hundreds and Thousands or Coconut, to sprinkle

Place the icing sugar, cocoa, vanilla, and butter in a bowl. Mix together, then add 1 tablespoon of milk, adding more if necessary to form a smooth paste.

Triple Chocolate Cookies
makes 30 - 40
This is a large batch of cookies, you can halve it or you can freeze uncooked dough in balls or logs to bake later.

250g unsalted butter, softened
350g soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs, lightly beaten
310g (2½C) cups plain flour
60g (½) C cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
250 - 350g dark and white chocolate, chopped or chocolate bits (The original recipe had 350g, I thought this was a lot so reduced to 250g. I used 100g chopped white chocolate and 150g dark chocolate.

Preheat the oven to 180 C.

Place the butter and sugar in a bowl, and beat until light and creamy. Add the vanilla and eggs and stir together well.

Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt and mix until just combined. Fold in the chocolate.

Place large spoonfuls of cookie mixture on a greased and lined baking tray, allowing room for spreading. Cook in batches for 15-20 minutes, until the bases are cooked. Allow to cool on the tray.

Playschool Salad

After Monday's episode of Playschool on which they made a salad, Molly (my 5 year old) announced she wanted to make salad. She has never eaten salad! She then asked everyday if we were having her salad. So on Wednesday we had Playschool Salad and Chicken Schnitzel. And Molly ate a whole bowl of salad! With dressing! And she helped make it.

Thankyou Playschool! If only they could also give a lesson in how to eat your dinner in under an hour...

Playschool Salad
Prepare amounts to suit your family. Remember to cut ingredients small/thin enough that your little ones can eat them with a fork.

Get the kids involved - my 5 year old was able to wash and chop the lettuce, peel the carrot, string the snow peas and pull off the grapes.

lettuce, shredded
carrot, grated or finely chopped
celery stick, finely chopped
snowpeas, ends and strings removed, chopped in half
red grapes, halved
apple, chopped into small pieces

Dressing - combine in a jar and shake
olive oil
lemon juice
salt
sugar

Butternut Macaroni Cheese with Rosemary, Bacon and Parmesan

This yummy recipe comes from a Delicious magazine back in 2005. I have been making it since then and the kids now like it too! I have found normal macaroni and cheese too rich so this has the advantage of being moist from the pumpkin and still cheesy, but the best bit is the crunchy bread crumb and bacon topping!

Butternut Macaroni Cheese with Rosemary, Bacon and Parmesan

serves 4-6
Olive oil
3 garlic cloves, sliced
1 dried chilli, crushed or 1 large pinch dried chilli flakes (optional)
½ cinnamon stick
1 large butternut pumpkin, peeled, flesh chopped into 2 cm cubes
400g macaroni
300ml milk
1 cup thickened cream
150g parmesan, grated
8 slices pancetta or streaky bacon
1 sprig fresh rosemary, leaves picked (dried works well here too)
3-4 slices day-old bread, crusts removed, torn into chunks (150g)

Heat a splash of olive oil over medium heat and gently fry garlic till golden. Add chilli, cinnamon, pumpkin and small glass of water. Cover with a lid and cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes till pumpkin is soft. Uncover and boil the liquid around the pumpkin until reduced to almost nothing. Remove from heat and remove cinnamon. Mash the pumpkin and season.

Cook macaroni until al dente, then drain well. Quickly toss in a bowl with the pumpkin, milk and cream. Add three quarters of the parmesan and season, then place in large baking dish (2L).

Preheat oven to 200 C.

Cook pancetta or bacon in a large frypan over mediom heat till light brown. Add rosemary and bread, fry gently for 1-2 mins, then pulse in a food processor till chopped. Sprinkle remaining parmesan over pasta, then with bacon and rosemary. Bake for 30mins till crisp and bubbly on top.

Fairy 5th Birthday Party

My eldest daughter Molly just turned 5! We had a party for her on the weekend, she chose a fairy theme as she is very into Tinkerbell at the moment. I tried to resist having an entirely Tinkerbell party but there was a lot of her :) The 9 little girls in attendance, in their gorgeous fairy outfits, all seemed to have a good time.

I made a fairy cake with little Tinkerbell figurines on it. Molly started out wanting a carousel/merry-go-round cake with horses but we changed it to a fairy merry-go-round to fit in the theme better. It turned out really well, but I may have stayed up very late finishing it off the night before!

The base cake was a 24cm Nigella Lawson vanilla buttermilk birthday cake (1 1/2 batches) covered in pale green buttercream. The top was a Nigella Lawson sour cream chocolate cake (1/2 batch) baked in a bowl, covered in ready-to-roll fondant dyed pale pink. I piped bright pink buttercream flowers all over the cakes, which I quite enjoyed! These are the kids favourite bit of course! It was assembled with 6 ribbon covered cake dowels and a ribbon covered cardboard tube which were just poked into the cake with the top cake (on a cardboard cake board) resting on top. Some of the figurines were dangling from the top cake by fishing line so the fairies were flying.

For the rest of the food I made:

• butterfly and flower shaped cheese pastries (puff pastry with grated cheese) - these were Molly's favourite and were the easiest to make
• sausage rolls  - I like this recipe, I used beef sausage mince from the butcher and skipped the herbs - make plenty as the parents always like them too!
• fairy bread
• pink fruit skewers with strawberries, red grapes and watermelon
• pink meringues
• coconut ice

We decorated the room with silk flowers and balloons. The lolly bags had wizz fizz, strawberries and cream, musk sticks, and candy-bracelets. For prizes I found Tinkerbell glitter glues in a wand shape and mini fairy notebooks.

I find it best to keep the kids busy for the whole party, so we played lots of games:

• musical flowers (like musical chairs but with cardboard flower shapes)
• fairy treasure hunt in the garden - they looked for chocolate coins, the Tinkerbell glitter glues, and shiny cut out stars and flowers
• Pin the wand on the fairy - we used the star cutouts they had found on the hunt
• Pass the parcel - with a candy bracelet in every layer, as Molly said "it was fair because we all got an eating bracelet"
• and we finished by turning on the Tinkerbell Movie.

I couldn't resist having a cooking activity at the party, I love cooking with kids and seem to find a whole extra patience reserve. We made marshmallow fairy wands that I saw on Juicy Bits.

Marshmallow Fairy Wands
wooden sticks or skewers
marshmallows
white chocolate melts
pink and purple food dye (the liquid pink dye worked much better than the purple paste)
lots of sprinkles
piece of polystyrene foam

Melt the white chocolate and add food colouring to get desired colours. Place in small bowls to allow for easy marshmallow dipping. Put the sprinkles in little bowls.

Place a marshmallow on the blunt end of the stick. Dip into chocolate and into sprinkles.

Stick skewer into piece of polystyrene to allow to dry.

Our fairies made 3 each and when they were dry I put a cellophane bag over them and tied with curling ribbon to send home.

Rice with Egg and Japanese Seasoning - Quick and Easy Dinner

This is a favourite standby meal in this house. The kids love theirs with a soft boiled egg, I prefer mine fried with a runny yolk and crispy bits. I love the yolk running over the rice mixed with soy sauce and the salty and sweet seasoning.

I serve the kids with frozen peas or corn or vegie sticks.

Japanese Rice Seasoning are available at asian supermarkets - I buy the simple one with sesame seeds, seaweed, salt and sugar, but there are lots of other more exotic versions. I also like the Japanese chilli seasoning.

Rice with Egg and Japanese Seasoning

More a list of ingredients than a recipe

Medium grain rice, cooked (I use this for all my Japanese recipes)

Eggs - soft boiled for 3-4 minutes or fried sunny side up

Japanese Rice Seasoning (or make up a mixture of sesame seeds, crushed sushi seaweed/nori, salt and sugar)

Soy Sauce

 

Scones cooked by my 4 year old

This morning we had a delicious morning tea of scones with jam and cream, cooked almost entirely by Molly, my 4 year old. I created a pictorial recipe which she was able to understand (she can read numbers too) - you can find images for anything using google images! She did very well getting out all the ingredients and equipment (or asking for them) and measuring out. I carried the melted butter from the microwave (she put it in) and I put the tray in the oven but she was able to do pretty much everything else and was so proud of herself! I have given the simple recipe below but am happy to email you a copy of the kids pictorial version.

This is my Mum's scone recipe from a little paper book that came with her stove almost 30 years ago. They use melted butter so you don't have to rub it in which I hate! I have also had success with lemonade scones but these are my favourite. A nice variation is date and orange scones - with chopped dates and orange zest, these only need butter.

Scones

makes 8

2 cups self-raising flour

¼ tsp salt

30 g butter

200 ml milk

Preheat oven to 260 C for gas, 230 C for electric.

Melt butter with a little of the milk.

Sift flour and salt into a large bowl. Mix all ingredients together quickly and lightly, using enough milk to make a soft dough. You want to mix and handle as little of possible to ensure your scones stay light!

Turn out onto a lightly floured board and pat to a smooth shape. Roll/pat out to 2 - 3cm thickness and cut into rounds using a floured cutter.

Place on the centre of a greased scone tray allowing only 1 cm between each one. Brush tops with milk.

Lower oven temp to 230 C. Bake for 8-10 minutes until sides of all scones are set and tops golden.

Serve with butter or jam and cream.

New Addition and No-bake Slices

This little one is the reason my lack of blogging, cooking and all things not sleep related for the past 2+ months. My baby is due in late September and will be eagerly awaited by Molly and Ava who have made stipulations that it must be a girl as there are "no boys allowed in our house except Daddy".

Nausea has been my constant companion and I have eaten an awful lot of salt and vinegar chips and plain noodles with soy sauce. Everything smells bad; please don't ask me to go anywhere near red meat cooking especially mince - yuk! My freezer is full of red meat that I bought to make easy slow cooker meals while I was sick, so hopefully it starts appealing soon.

I am generally off sweet things but I made this Mars Bar Slice on our trip to the South Coast recently and I could quite happily eat lots of that (although not the dark chocolate on top which is normally my favourite)! This is a no bake slice with rice bubbles and lots of mars bars. When I got home I made a healthier version with dates and rice bubbles (drizzled with chocolate) that was also good.

I have joined the Daring Bakers, an online group which you sign up to and agree to make the monthly challenge recipe. Not long til the end of the month so I had better find some energy and get baking so I can blog about it soon.

Mars Bar Slice
Most recipes for this slice coat it in 200g of milk chocolate. I find this overpowers the Mars Bar flavour so I have halved the amount of chocolate and recommend just drizzling it over.

240g  Mars Bars, chopped (4 x 60g bars or equivalent)
100g unsalted butter, chopped
3 C Rice Bubbles
100g milk or dark chocolate, chopped

Line an 18 x 28cm slice pan or 20cm square pan (for a thicker slice) with baking paper.

In a medium saucepan, stir Mars Bars and butter together over a low heat for 4-5 minutes until melted, it will eventually come together.

In a large bowl, add the rice bubbles to the melted mars bars one cup at a time and mix until combine. Press firmly into prepared pan. Chill until firm.

Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water or in the microwave. Drizzle over slice. Chill until set.

Let the slice sit at room temperature for awhile to make it easier to slice. Then use a large knife to cut into small squares. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

No-Bake Date and Rice Bubble Slice
The recipe for this slice is found all over the internet. The drizzle of chocolate to finish it is my idea!

250 g dried dates, chopped
1/2 C sugar
125 g butter
4 C Rice Bubbles
1/2 tsp vanilla
50 - 100g milk, dark or white chocolate

Line a 20cm square pan (or similar) with baking paper.

Add everything except the rice bubbles to a saucepan and bring to the boil for 2 mins. Remove from heat and beat well.

Add mixture to rice bubbles and stir until combined. Press into a lined tray and cool.

Melt the chocolate and drizzle over the slice. Refridgerate until set.

Meatballs with Pancetta and Parmesan in the Slow Cooker or on the Stove

This is one of our favourite and most regular family meals. The meatball recipe comes from a Rick Stein recipe in Delicious 2008 - the pancetta and parmesan in the balls give them a great texture and taste. My good friend Georgia originally made this for us when my daughter Ava was born, and we have never made meatballs any other way since.

This is a work night dinner in our house. I make up a huge batch of meatballs and freeze them uncooked, then defrost them in the fridge the night before I need them. I lightly fry them up before work, or at lunch time (I only work up the road) and leave them to cook in the slow cooker. I usually cheat for the sauce and just use a jar of passata poured straight into the slow cooker. I want to try not frying them first, just cooking in the sauce, but am sure they won't be as good so have never tried it - maybe next week!

My addition to the recipe has been to include vegetables in the sauce - I try and sneak them in everywhere, as my kids don't eat salad and I don't want to make one after work anyway.

No photo for this one, we forgot and ate it all!

Meatballs with Parmesan and Pancetta in Tomato Sauce
serves 4

¼ C olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
100g sliced pancetta, finely choppd
750 g pork and veal or beef mince
½ lemon, zested
1C (80g) parmesan, grated
2/3 C (50g) fresh white breadcrumbs
2 tbsp flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 tbsp oregano, chopped
1 egg, beaten
Tomato Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
20g butter
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
400g can chopped tomatoes
150g tomato passata
Cheat's Tomato Vegetable Sauce

zucchini, eggplant, sweet potato (or whatever you have), diced
1 jar tomato passata
To Serve
½ C basil, shredded
pasta or polenta
parmesan, grated

Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a small frypan over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic, cook stirring for 5 minutes until softened but not coloured. Set aside to cool.

Place pancetta, mince, zest, parmesan, breadcrumbs, parsley, oregano and onion mixture in a large bowl. Use your hands to combine well. Add egg, ½ tsp salt and pepper to taste, mix through.

With damp hands, shape mixture into walnut sized balls. Chill for 30 minutes to firm up. At this point you can refridgerate for a day or two, or freeze for a couple of months.

Heat the remaining oil in a non-stick frypan. In batches, lightly brown the meatballs on all sides but don’t cook through. Set meatballs aside while you make the sauce. If cooking in a slow cooker, put the meatballs in the slow cooker now.

Tomato Sauce
In the same frypan, add the oil and butter and cook the onion and garlic, stirring, for 5 minutes. For the slow cooker, transfer the onions to the slow cooker and continue to cook in there. Add tomatoes, passata, salt and pepper, bring to the boil. Return the meatballs to the pan, then partially cover and simmer over medium-low for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens and meatballs are cooked through. Or cook in the slow cooker on low for 2 – 4 hours, you can leave it all day but the meatballs will be tougher.
Cheat's Tomato and Vegetable Sauce
After removing the meatballs from the frypan, add a bit more oil and fry the diced zucchini and eggplant (sweet potato doesn't need it). Put vegetables in the slow cooker with the meatballs and pour the passata over. Cook in the slow cooker on low for 2 – 4 hours, you can leave it all day but the meatballs will be tougher.

Before you eat, gently take the meatballs out of the sauce and use a stick blender to puree the sauce so it is smooth with no vegetable lumps.

Serve on pasta or polenta with parmesan and basil, sprinkled over.

Chicken Donburi (Japanese Chicken with Egg) and Udon Noodle Soup

We are having a bit of a Japanese week. Tonight I cooked another great Japanese recipe from my Mum. It has similar ingredients to the Teriyaki Chicken but is quite a different dish. The chicken is cooked in a broth and beaten egg is poured over the top to top and allowed to set, it is served with rice. The egg takes on the flavour of the sauce and is my favourite bit. My kids love this meal too.

Earlier this week we had this Udon Noodle Soup with Crumbed Prawn Cutlets from cuisine.com.au. Molly, my 4 year old, loved this so much we had it for lunch for the next 3 days (without the prawns). The recipe for the quick lunch version is below. I have been including whatever vegies I have and they gobble it up in the yummy broth.

For this recipe you will need dashi stock powder which is Japanese powdered bonito fish stock. I always get this at an asian supermarket (I do a big stock up a couple of times a year - they tend to have Chinese and Japanese ingredients). You can probably get it from your local health food shop.

My friend Skye just lent me the recipe book Thrifty Kitchen by Suzanne and Kate Gibbs. It also has a recipe for chicken donburi, the first I have seen elsewhere. Their broth is based on dashi stock with soy, rice wine and vinegar which is different to my recipe. I will have to try it and compare.

For notes on substitutions on mirin and sake, see the Teriyaki Chicken recipe.

Chicken Donburi
serves 4-6 (Tonight I halved this recipe for our family)
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 - 2 carrots, thinly sliced
800g chicken thigh fillets, in bite size pieces (or breasts if you prefer but thighs will be much more moist)
1 C mirin
1/2 C soy sauce
1/4 C sake
6 shiitake mushrooms, fresh or dried (soak in hot water for 10 min)
5 eggs, beaten
medium grain rice to serve

In a small frypan, the right size to hold the chicken in one packed layer, heat the oil and gently fry the onion to soften. Add the chicken and stir around to just brown. Add the sauce ingredients and mushrooms and simmer for 5 minutes. Turn the heat down to low and pour the egg over, cover and cook until just set.

Serve with rice and vegetables

Vegetables side dishes to serve with Japanese
Here are some suggestions on what to serve along side Japanese meals. If I am just cooking for the family we often have plain steamed vegies but if I am entertaining it is nice to have something a bit more interesting.

• Tomato and cucumber salad with a dressing of soy, mirin and sesame oil
• Carrots julienne stir fried with sesame seeds
• Broccoli (or any greens), steamed, topped with soy sauce and katsuobushi flakes (katsuobushi are dried bonito fish flakes, a yummy salty flavouring for vegies)
• Beans, blanched, with peanut sauce (peanut butter, soy sauce, dashi powder, water)

Quick Udon Noodle Soup
This recipe is a base recipe, you could really add anything. For the kids this week I have been chopping up broccoli or adding frozen peas and corn (again). For me I add baby spinach leaves, chopped beans, spring onions... One of my girls likes silken tofu, the other doesn't so give it a go.

dried udon noodles (hakubaku brand from supermarkets is good)
500ml water
10g dashi powder (1 tsp)
1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp mirin
vegetables
100g silken tofu

Cook noodles according to packet directions.

Bring the water to the boil in a saucepan. Add dashi, soy and mirin, stir to dissolve. Add vegetables and cook as desired. Add tofu and heat through.

Place noodles in bowls and pour soup over.

Fried Rice, Kids Fried Rice and Stir-fried Bok Choy

"It's better than the fried rice in Beijing" said by the man who just spent three weeks in China.

I always cook too much rice so that we have left overs which make great fried rice, a popular dinner in our house. I cooked it up quickly tonight after we got home late, I served it with stir-fried bok choy. Great fried rice has to have a high ratio of yummy bits to rice. Use whatever leftovers you have in the fridge. Tonight I remembered to sprinkle those crunchy asian fried onions on top and they are great, adding a crunchy texture, even the kids liked them!

I often make a quick version of fried rice for the kids dinner, I have also given this recipe below. When cooking just for the kids I pour the beaten egg over the rice and it sort of scrambles and holds the rice together, making it easier for the kids to eat. My kids love hoisin sauce, or the spoon sauce as they call it because it comes in a jar and they serve it with a spoon, so we serve it with that.

Fried Rice
vegetable oil
3 eggs, beaten
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp ginger, finely chopped or grated
4 rashers bacon, chopped
other meat - leftovers, chinese sausage...
1 tsp sugar
handful dried chinese mushrooms, soaked in boiling water then chopped
4 spring onions, chopped
1/2 C frozen peas
1/2 C corn kernals - fresh of frozen
other vegetables - anything else that needs using up in your fridge
2 tbsp shaosing wine (chinese cooking wine)
3 - 4 C cooked rice (or enough to feed your family)
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
To Serve
fried onions
coriander leaves

Heat a little bit of oil in a wok over medium to high heat. Pour in egg and mix around as it cooks. Remove from the wok, chop and set aside.

Heat a bit more oil in the wok. Add onion and garlic and cook for a minute. Add bacon and cook for another minute. Add sugar and stir around to caramelise. Add mushrooms, spring onions, peas, corn and cook until peas are defrosted. Pour in shaosing wine and let bubble. Add rice and break apart with a spoon. Keep stirring until rice is hot. Add soy and oyster sauces and cooked egg and stir through.

Serve sprinkled with fried onions and coriander.

Quick Kids Version
bacon, ham, cooked sausage or other leftover meat
frozen peas and corn (or whatever vegies your kids will eat)
egg, beaten
hoisin sauce or soy sauce
cooked rice

Heat a small frypan with a little oil. Fry up meat and vegies. Add rice and cook until hot. Pour over the egg and mix around until cooked. Add sauce and stir through.
Serve with more hoisin sauce, which my kids insisting on putting on themselves.

Stir-fried Bok Choy
vegetable oil
1 bunch bok choy, leaves off the base
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
pinch salt
1 tbsp shaosing wine
oyster sauce - optional, it depends what you are serving this with to if you want more flavour

Heat a bit of oil in the wok until very hot. Add bok choy, garlic and salt and keep stirring to stop the garlic from burning. Once starting to cook add shaosing and stir until cooked to your liking, I like the leaves wilted but the stems still crunchy.