Chayote (Chokos) with prawns (佛手瓜炒虾仁)

Posted on July 18, 2010 by Angeline
The lighting when I took the photos was really bad, so you’ve really gotta pardon these photos with a blueish tinge…
To make up for the bad photos, I can tell you that this dish was truly a delightfully crunchy and savoury one, so if you do see chayotes in the market or supermarket, do give it a try!

Alicia didn’t like the chayote cooked as a soup the other time – I guess she doesn’t like the texture after it’s cooked in the soup but she enjoyed the crunchy bites of the chayote yesterday during dinner.
Hubby and I enjoyed the dish too! I can’t wait to cook this again soon!
Chayote (Chokos) with prawns (佛手瓜炒虾仁)


Ingredients:
  • 1 chayote (chokos)
  • 6 small prawns (washed, shelled and deveined)
  • 2 cloves garlic (minced)
  • oil
  • a pinch of salt
  • water
  • fish sauce to taste

Marinate prepared prawns with:
  • a dash of hua diao jiu
  • ground white pepper
  • a bit of light soy sauce
  • a dash of sesame oil

Method:
  1. Remove skin and seed of the chayote. Cut it into quarters and slice as thinly as possible – the thickest slice I had was not more than 0.1cm.
  2. Marinate the prepared prawns accordingly.
  3. Parboil the sliced chayote in water with a pinch of salt and a bit of oil for no more than 1 min.
  4. Remove the chayote slices and run room temp water/ cold water through them. Drain and set aside.
  5. Heat oil in wok then fry garlic till fragrant.
  6. Add in the prawns and stir-fry for a short while till prawns turn slightly pink on both sides.
  7. Add some water and the chayote (the water should cover about a third of the ingredients in the wok).
  8. Stir-fry for about 2-5 min (depending on how cooked you’d like the chayote – chayote can be eaten raw so there’s no worry about eating raw veg).
  9. Add fish sauce to taste.
  10. Dish and serve.

For toddler’s consumption:
  • Cut chayote slices into small pieces for easier chewing.
Posted in Chinese Food, Food for kids, Recipes, Vegetables, Vegetables (suitable for tots) | Leave a comment

Her favourite pastime (for now…) and her newest achievement :)

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Angeline
Alicia really loves drawing and colouring these days and ‘draw’ and the different colours of her crayons are among the most used words of her vocab… Her current favourite colour is ‘white’ – I don’t really know why since the colour isn’t obvious on white paper – and she’d look for the white crayon purposefully and start colouring with it.
Recently, she also discovered the pens and markers in the drawer of the coffee table and insists that she must doodle with them too… and since she’s so into doodling, I gave her a book specially for her newest hobby – it’s an old unused planner which I’ve been keeping for her use 🙂





Watch her doodle (her grip’s getting better!):

Her newest achievement is grasping the concept of colouring specific parts instead of just doodling across the whole page. Though she isn’t able to colour nicely within boundaries yet, you can see that she has grasped that concept from these pictures:




Posted in Art, Fine Motor Skills | Tagged | Leave a comment