Let's eat: Soya sauce this and that

At 37 deg celsius, it's been scorching hot, even in the evenings! In the absence of outdoor shots (my favourite kind to blog about), here are some taken indoors instead, of the food on our dinner table recently, done in the spirit of blogging!

And just to give this post a theme, all the dishes have soya sauce in them! When my dad visited us last month, between him and my boys, there were quite a lot of things they didn't eat -- nothing too cheesy or creamy, and no spaghetti sauce please, so soya sauce was pretty much what I used a lot!

A marinade as basic as sugar, rice wine, and oyster sauce can produce a nice roast pork or chicken (just leave it to cook at 375 deg or 400 deg, for 40 min, or longer if the meat is thicker), but I always like to also add soya sauce, salt, and pepper. Some honey too, or these days a lite inexpensive maple syrup works for us just as well, will give it a nice glazing:


Boring as it sounds, soya sauce is really quite versatile! And I still enjoy mixing this very basic seasoning ingredient with whatever I can easily lay my hands on (read: what we already have in our kitchen), to come up with some marinade on the fly.

Try this, if you haven't: substitute white/black pepper with five spice powder. A friend gave us a bottle and I tried it together with soya sauce, salt, sesame oil, and oyster sauce, and it works for both chicken and pork, but I've yet to try it on beef.


And here's one marinade I came across in a Chinese cookbook for another variation of roast pork, using just soya sauce, salt, sugar, and garlic:


Now and then, too, I like to add soya sauce with or without oyster sauce, to some western herb/spices out of a bottle (especially when I'm strapped for time), and I've been able to pass such dishes off as 'fusion'... haha!

Here's one, with soya sauce added to a pepper and herb marinade:


Unless we're expecting company, I don't plan our meals in a big way, but I try not to cook the same meat for dinner two days in a row, and to vary the way I cook it so that today's is slightly different from yesterday's, and how it was cooked the previous time which could have been just two days ago.

But no, cooking doesn't have to be complicated at all. And like all mothers, whether we stay home or work, the dishes that work for me are always the kind I just need to marinade, and then afterwards, leave to cook -- preferably in one step -- on the stovetop or in the oven.

Everything on this plate is cooked in the oven, and I wonder if something like this might work for Ben to have as his lunch in school, since he's not into sandwiches but like bread only if it's toasted (but still easier to eat than noodles or rice):


So while I'm no Rachel Ray, nor aspiring to be one, I think too that 30 min is how long we probably should take to cook a simple meal. Except that with little ones who cry or scream for mommy a lot, 45 min is more realistic, and 1 hour (or when the husband is home) gives me more time to do a simple third thing other than our usual one meat and one vegetable.

Soya sauce works well with just about anything, and besides meat, seafood, too. I've given up on fresh fish here though, so we always just have the frozen kind and I don't steam it because it's too fishy, and I rather leave it to cook in the oven or do a quick stir-fry, than try and deep-fry it in the wok.


Cod above, and tilapia below. I find that rice vinegar can do a pretty good job of taking away the fishiness, the way sometimes ginger or lemon juice doesn't work as well. For the prawns, I marinaded them with soya sauce, salt, and pepper, and for a sweet-sour flavour, threw in some tomatoes, and also crushed pineapple out of a can we'd used some for a cake.


For dinner, our carbo is rice nearly all the time, noodles sometimes, and occasionally, bread, and very rarely, potatoes on their own (for even when we have them in our stews, there's rice, because it's a staple).

I like to boil pasta and vegetables together to save the trouble of cooking the greens separately. They go well with stews, like this soya sauce pork (marinade: dark and light soya sauce, pepper, salt, and sugar), and I like the same marinade for chicken even better. Simply stir-fry meat with whole garlic, then add enough water and leave to stew till the meat is tender.


From stir-fry to soup, and everything else in-between, soya sauce is very much an ingredient I can't do without. What's yours?

Our boys don't like carrots or tomatoes. For carrots, I sometimes shred them so they 'disappear' into the food but the little one will stick pick them out. With tomatoes (and there are a lot of them in season right now, and cheap, too, as you can see I've been adding them to everything!), I stir-fry them with vegetables, and oyster sauce and rice wine are normally the 'secret' ingredients other than the basic marinade of soya sauce, salt, pepper, and sesame oil.


Chicken stock (sometimes we make our own, or use the store-bought low-sodium kind) makes for a good soup base. I normally also add some soya sauce, pepper, and sesame oil for extra flavour. Below, winter melon soup with fishballs and other seafood our kids love, does double duty as the soup for the noodles at lunchtime:


How about some healthy steamed chicken? Marinade: soya sauce, salt, pepper, sugar, oyster sauce, and minced ginger, and add sliced chilli if you like. Great with dried mushrooms and/or black fungus over the chicken, steamed at the same time, too. Alternatively, subsitute oyster sauce with rice wine and sesame oil, for some variation.