How important eggs in our home

Even though it is simple yet is the main ingredient in many dishes.

What is this main ingredient?

The answer is an egg.

Eggs are a versatile food and many people enjoy them fried, boiled, scrambled or baked. They are easy to incorporate into a diet.

Eggs fulfil a lot of cooking requirements. It is cost saving protein. Easy to prepare and you can find it in almost every grocery store.

It is a must-have ingredient in my kitchen. Eggs can turn to emergency prepared meals.

I always have egg stock in the kitchen. Once finished, I always restocked. Eggs as back up to the main side dish either boil or fry .

Way of cooking eggs

Boiled egg

Boiled or poached eggs are simple to make and contain no added fat. Sprinkle pepper, chilli powder, or sumac on the eggs for added flavour.

Plain boiled eggs can be a good snack or a meal for a person with digestive problems or someone who is recovering from an illness.

Hard-boiled eggs are a convenient picnic food and they go well in a salad. The texture of hard-boiled is soft and a good combination for Malaysian dishes.

Meals such as nasi lemak, laksa and mee curry are good to put hard-boiled egg for added taste and extra nutrition.

How to get a different taste  of boil eggs 

Firstly, wash the eggs. It looks fresh from the farm and clean outside. Actually, it is not so cleaned for me. 

Kindly bear in mind, there are thousands of eggs in the farm and the farmers can not afford to wash it. They just wipe the outer shell. That’s the reason I always wash before using the egg.

After the eggs is washed , then place the egg in water to boil for 15 minutes to get a hard-boiled egg.

If I want the yolk like jelly texture, boil for 10 minutes. 

Sometimes, I love to eat half-cooked eggs. To get things done, I boil for seven minutes with the lid half-open. 

Recipe 1

Egg Pancake

The quick way to cook pancake eggs that are delicious and nutritious. The pancake egg can be eaten with rice, bread and noodle to enhance the taste of food.

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon oil

How to do it: Break the egg in the bowl. Add salt in the egg and beat for 60 second by using a fork. Warm the pan with oil and pour the egg mixture and cook for 3 minutes with moderate heat. Flip the egg and cook for another 3 minutes. The pancake ready to eat.

Recipe 2

Prawn egg

Another way to fry an egg with prawn filling is fast and easy cooking. This is another of my family favourite foods.

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 5 prawn
• 3 bird’s eye chillies
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoon cooking oil

How to do it:  Beat the eggs with peel and cut prawn. Add sliced chillies. Heat the pan and fry the egg until both sides cook. The fried egg is ready.

Recipe 3 

Egg Mixed With Anchovies

This is a simple side dish that I created when I was in high school. Now, it become one of family recipes. I normally cook this as a quick dish if I in hurry either come back from doing an errand or have to go out urgently.

The ingredients to make egg mix with anchovies

• 2 eggs
• 1 onion
• 1 chilli
• 1 cup anchovies

How to do it: Deep fry the anchovies and put aside. Stir fry the onion.  Add egg and chilly. Mix well until cooked. Put fried anchovies in it and mix. The egg anchovies are ready.

Recipe 4

Egg Sambal

The simple sunny side up egg can be turned as a tasty dish when cooked with sambal.  It doesn’t cost much to cook these dishes despite being nutritious.

Ingredients

• 5 egg 
• 25gm of dried chillies 
• 4 shallots
• 2 garlic
• 10gm shrimp paste
• 10gm of tamarind juice
• 20ml of cooking oil
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar

How to do it:  Fry the egg sunny side up. Blend together dried chillies, garlic, shallots and shrimp paste. Heat the oil and saute the mixture on low heat. Add tamarind juice, salt and sugar. Cook for 3 minutes. Add the fried egg, stir and mix for 3 minutes. Sambal Telur is ready to eat with rice.

Recipe 5

Nasi Goreng Ikan Bilis

Nasi goreng is a staple food for Malaysian. It is an all-time favourite for everyone. There are many types of fried rice and below is one of them. Ikan Bilis is a common name for anchovies in Malay.

Ingredients

• 20g anchovies
• 1 onion
• 2 garlic
• 5 dried chillies
• 1 bowl of  rice
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• Cucumber

How to do it: Pound onion, garlic, dried chillies and anchovies. Heat the oil and saute the pounded mixture. Put in rice and mix well. Add in salt and cook for five minutes. Anchovies fried rice is ready and served with fried egg sunny side up and sliced cucumber.

The last  two recipes that I make are using hard-boiled eggs. I am using noodles and soup as the main ingredients. The hard-boiled eggs add as a complement to the taste. 

Recipe 6

Curry Noodles

Ingredients for curry soup

• 5 shallot 
• 3 garlic 
• 3cm ginger
• ½  cup of curry powder
• 2 tofu
• ½  packet fish ball
• ½  packet fish cake
• ½  cup cooking oil
• 300ml coconut milk
• 1.5-litre water 
• Salt to taste

How to do it: Make the curry paste by mixing curry powder, chopped shallots, garlic and water. Heat the oil and saute sliced shallot and garlic until fragrance. Put in curry paste and slice ginger. Saute for 2 minutes. 

Put in the sliced fish balls and fish cakes. Add water and cook for 10 minutes. Add in coconut milk, tofu and salt to taste. Stir and cook for 10 minutes. Your curry soup is ready.

Ingredients for noodles garnishing

• ½  packet yellow noodles
• 100gm kangkung
• 3 boiled eggs

How to do it: Boil the kangkung and noodles one by one. Put the noodles in a bowl and add in the curry mixture. Place kangkung and an egg on top. Curry Mee ready to be served.

Recipe 7

Laksa Soup

The final recipe is using fish as the main ingredients for the soup. There are a variety of laksa that available in our local grocery store that can be used as the noodles. 

In addition,  there are different ways of making the soup. This recipe is the simple version of making the laksa soup. 

Ingredients for Laksa Soup

• 2 Ikan kembung (mackerel  fish) 
• 7 dried chillies 
• 4 shallots
• 5 tamarind slice
• daun kesum (Vietnamese mint)
• 2 bunga kantan (Torch Ginger Flower)
• 1½  teaspoon salt
• 1.5-litre water

How to do it: Boil together fish, dried chillies and shallots for 10 minutes. Take out the fish, dried chillies and shallots from the boiling water. Put aside the fish boiling water to be used later.

Blend the fish fillet, chillies and shallots together. Pour in the blended mixture into fish boiling water. Add tamarind slice, daun kesum, bunga kantan, salt and 1 litre of water.  Boil with medium-slow heat for 15 minutes.

Ingredients for garnishing

• 1 piece laksa (alternatively rice noodle, flat noodle or vermicelli) 
• 1 cucumber
• 1 onion
• 3 boiled egg

How to do it:  Boil the laksa as per packet instruction. Put laksa in a bowl and pour in the gravy. Put on top an egg, cucumber and onion. Laksa is ready

Conclusion

Eggs are a great contribution to my cooking. I can make quick and easy cooking with it. As simple as it may seem but nutritious for a meal. I can cook many more dishes with egg and the one above is an idea of how you may create your own way of cooking side dish eggs.