Have you ever wonder why you bought something for your cooking but never use it and leave it to expire? Sometimes is due to curiosity because it is unique or something new to you. Sometimes you never plan what you wanna cook properly or change your mind at the very last min. Yes... all these happen to me and recently I realize that I am wasting lots of money on unused food items. So now... I'm on the bandwagon of reducing food wastage. I can't imagine being a miser, I still waste money this way. TOTALLY BAD EXAMPLE! Spare a thought for those who don't get to eat. Sin. I sinned.
Inside my fridge, I found a pack of spring roll skins which my mum gave me weeks ago just because she bought the wrong type. Superb lame. And a pack of frozen lean pork which I bought few weeks back. So the thoughts of making spring rolls with what I have hits me immediately. With my husband suggested to add onions and dry shrimps, that will be one of the dish for dinner.
Spring Rolls
Filling:
- 250 g lean pork
- a handful of dry shrimps (about a tablespoon), washed
- a quarter of a big onion, diced
Marinade:
- Pepper, Abalone Sauce, Superior Light Soya Sauce, Sesame Oil (your own preference for the amount to use)
Instruction:
- Blend the lean pork and dry shrimps.
- In a bowl, mix and marinate the blended pork with diced onions.
- Leave it in the fridge overnight.
- Thaw the spring roll skins.
- Mix a bowl of corn starch and water for sealing the spring roll.
- On the spring roll skin, put a tablespoon of pork mixture and wrap seal properly.
- Heat up the oil in the small frying pan enough to cover the entire spring roll.
- Sprinkle some salt to prevent it from sticking on the pan.
- Fry till golden brown.
I manage to make 27 pieces with the pork mixture, which means half a pack of the spring roll skins are utilized. How wonderful can that be right? So happy. At first the skins are kind of dry and dampens my mood. But then I just use all my might to do it. Finally! And zero dollar spent on new ingredients. No. Nothing at all. Seriously, we really learn how not to waste food which literally is wasting money too.
So the next one is also part of using our existing food items in the kitchen. I have a range of condiments and spices from the brand, Masterfoods. At first, we go ga-ga over their Garlic Salt. Then, we advance to more. Turmeric Powder is one of them. We watch Asian Food Channel like everyday and Turmeric Rice is inspired from one of the many shows we watch. So my husband suggested why not we try Turmeric Flavoured Fried Rice. So we do it.
Actually we attempted to yellow our fried rice previously using 3-4 egg yolks. Now with Turmeric powder, we got ourselves an alternative.
Turmeric Flavoured Fried Rice
Flavoured Rice:
- A cup of rice grains
- Turmeric, Onion and Garlic powder (your own preference for the amount to use)
Instruction:
- Wash and pour 1 1/2 cup of water into the rice cooker pot.
- Pour and mix all 3 powders well.
- Cook and set aside after that.
So on how to cook fried rice, you can refer to my previous post here. The ingredients used mainly 3 Valley Chef sausages and 6 frozen IKEA meatballs. You can see how much of frozen food I have at home. Convenience but too much is not good too. But I try to cook in a healthier way by air-frying the meatballs for 10 mins at 180deg. As for the sausages, I did a quick fry over the pan with some oil which can be used for cooking the fried rice.
The turmeric taste is mild, which is good because I don't fancy overwhelming taste and smell. And because it is already flavoured, I didn't do what I usually do (mix the rice with pepper and sesame oil) if you read my previous post on Homecooked Recipe: Eggy Fried Rice.
Hope to generate more ideas with whatever I have in the kitchen. Share with you peeps soon, again. Home-cooking is love!