Cold Dish and Millet 涼拌花生與小米粥

Chinese recipes 中西食譜

I often think about finding ways to make cooking simpler, easier and healthier. The following cold dish is one of them.
 






The ingredients are:
3 TBSP white wine/rice vinegar (or lemon juice), 2 TBSP dark brown sugar, sprinkle some salt, 2 TBSP sesame oil (or virgin olive oil), 2TBSP cooking or rice wine, garlic or hot pepper (add each to your own taste),

Cut a cucumber (and a red/orange sweet pepper, half Walla Walla Onion, some radishes) into halves, take out seeds and cut halves to small square pieces. Smash garlic. Mix these with ingredients above. It will taste better if you leave the dish in the refrigerator overnight.

Peanuts can be added to this cold dish. The way to prepare peanuts is:





 


Soak two cups of raw peanuts with skin overnight, pour out water, put them in a big bowl, steam peanuts in rice cooker (no water in the bowl and add one cup of water in the cooker). Leave cooked peanuts in the cooker (don't open the cover) for another 20 minutes after the cooker shuts off. The peanuts will be just right, not too hard or too soft. You can also use a sauce pan to boil the peanuts if you don't have a rice cooker.









Add cooked peanuts to the cold dish above.

(Friends ask about the rice cooker I use. It is made in Taiwan and has two colors: green or red. The brand name is "Da Tong". This is so far the only multi function rice cooker which can be used to cook rice, boil, steam, stew, fry meat/vegetable and even make bread/cake. It is not made in HK, China, Japan or Korean although they all are called rice cooker. The picture is as follows).














This cold dish can be served with millet. I used to call millet "bird rice" since I fed my birds with it in childhood. Millet is a nutritious food and can be grown on poor soil.

Use double the amount of water than what you use to cook regular rice. Millet can be eaten hot or cold. It is also a good companion dish with green onion flat bread or Chinese dumplings.










自從來美求學，由於經濟窘迫，兼打三個工，於是千方百計在兼顧口味和營養之餘，儘量簡化做飯時間和方式，涼拌花生與小米粥即是其二。

做法十分簡單: 小黃瓜 (保留綠皮)/甜椒去子切段，2 湯匙麻油與米酒、3 湯匙醋 (或檸檬汁) 與黑糖、少許鹽、大蒜、辣椒 (隨自己口味酌量) 拌勻即可，也可以加花生，營養更高。

兩杯的帶皮花生泡一夜 (皮上營養豐富不要搓掉)，濾乾，裝在大碗內放電鍋蒸，碗內不放水，外鍋放一杯水，跳鍋後不要開蓋，讓它悶 20 分鐘左右，軟硬度應該就會剛好，若喜歡吃軟的，就再加一杯水，同法再蒸一次，和剛才拌好的小黃瓜加在一起即可。(電鍋是用台灣製的大同電鍋，可煮飯，蒸，炒，燉肉/蔬菜，甚至做蛋糕麵包，其他電鍋皆無此多功能)

這道菜可以和小米粥搭配，小米粥煮法同米飯，只是因為是粥，內鍋的水要比米飯多一倍，小米粥可以吃熱的，也可以吃涼的，與蔥油餅、餃子搭配都很爽口。