Food experiments from my little kitchen

I prepared this dish because my dear husband is a meat lover. If I don't cook enough meat for dinner, he would ask me why I cooked so little. It happens that I had one chunk of pumpkin sitting in my fridge so I decided to combine it with minced meat. It turned out to be quite a nice combination. Ingredients approx 80g minced meat 1 small chunk of pumpkin 1 dried shiitake mushroom chopped garlic chopped shallots white pepper soy sauce sesame oil Sauce 1 tbsp oyster sauce 1 tbsp normal dark soy sauce 1 tsp sugar  Recipe 1. Soak the dried mushroom in a bowl of water and set it aside to soften before cutting it into small cubes. Do not throw away the water.  2. Cut the pumpkin into cubes but not too small else it will disintegrate during cooking. Marinate the minced meat with soy sauce, white pepper and sesame oil. 3. In the wok, heat up the oil and put in the chopped shallots. Let it cook for a little while and turning translucent, then add in the garlic fo...

I have never really eaten pumpkin as a child. Somehow I do not recall my mum cooking pumpkin at all. I only remembered the sinful stuffs like chicken wings and curry etc. Yet when my son started taking solids, I was told that pumpkin is good. We gave him pumpkin porridge then slowly I incorporated pumpkin into our weekly soup menu. Here is one really simple yet tasty soup to share. Ingredients 300g Pumpkin 4 Dried Shiitake mushrooms 250g Pork ribs Salt Recipe 1. Soak the dried mushrooms in water till softened. Discard the water. 2. Cut the pumpkin into big chucks and remove the skin. (You can leave the skin on if you wash it really clean)  Don't cut it too small as it will soften and disintegrate easily after cooking. 3. Wash the pork ribs and blanch it in boiling water for a few minutes till the scum is floating. Remove the scum and rinse the pork ribs again. This is to produce a clear soup. 4. Place the mushrooms, pumpkin and pork ribs into slow cooker and add hot...