Perfect Char Siu

I've made 'Char Siu' so so many times but this time was the best I've ever made. All by sheer luck and a great piece of pork belly from the butcher. Ask for a half fat half lean piece from the butcher. Only three ingredients needed:-

1.5 kg of pork belly
1 bottle of Char Siu sauce
4 tbsp of thick dark soy sauce
3 tbsp of sugar

Marinade overnight. Preheat oven (fan grill) to 180C. Constantly baste meat with the marinade and turn over the meat till all sides gets caramelised. Leave to cool before cutting into bite size pieces. Enjoy!!

Supreme Pork Chop

This is a recipe I've gotten from 'Hawkers' Fair Simplified' that I've bought from Malaysia. I have to say this dish is very very nice indeed, well deserved title.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredient:

600gm pork chops (I've used pork Scotch with marbles of fats on it)

Marinade:

1 tbsp oyster sauce (I substituted with 1 tbsp of chicken granules)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sesame oil

1 egg

2 tbsp plain flour

1 tbsp custard powder

1 tsp bicarbonate soda

200 ml water

200 gm corn flour, add in prior to deep frying

Sauce:

2 tbsp tomato sauce

1 tbsp chilli sauce

1 tsp worcestershire sauce

1 tsp curry powder

1/2 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp light soya sauce

3 tbsp water

Method:

Cut pork chop into 1 cm thick and pound with the back of knife till tender. Add in marinade, mix well and season for 30 minutes. Pour away excess marinade and add in corn flour prior to deep frying. Look at the golden hue on the meat after frying, it was just so nice to be eaten just like this.

Leave 1 tbsp of oil in wok, pour in sauce and cook till thick. Add in fried pork chops and mix well. Dish and drain.

My two cents worth, this original recipe sauce was a tad too sour for my liking, so i added in more sugar and i liked the subtle fragrance of the curry powder so i upped that too and the salt. Make the sauce to your liking and enjoy. Caution: it causes you to eat more rice!

I'm back!!

OK I've been away from blogging for many months now, due to some personal reasons. But I'm back now! I've been a SAHM now for 4 months and I'm thoroughly enjoying it! I'm enjoying my little girl who's growing up so quickly, I'm enjoying cooking more now that I don't have to rush like a madwomen everyday and most importantly I'm happy to care for the family!

So being a SAHM influences my cooking in what way? We use to have a lot of takeaways while i was working Full Time and that's no good for everyone especially the child. Now i try to do the Hong Kong TVB series standard of 'sam sung, yat tung' literally means three dishes and one soup! That's crazy by many people's standard even mine, so when i occasionally manages it, I'm thrilled to bits!

This was one of those days yay! Soup was eel with black beans, steamed chicken cubes with ginger and 'lap cheong', teriyaki salmon and stir fried lettuce. I'm very into soups lately cause for some strange reasons the little one loves it to bits. So I'll be jotting down recipes for soups mainly just so when i run out of ideas, I could always come back here to see what I've made before.

Conger Eel with Black Beans Soup:

1 huge piece of eel, mine was almost 1kg.

1 rice bowl of organic black beans

a handful of red dates

few slices of ginger, depending on how hot the ginger is (Kiwi ginger is super hot!)

2 litres of water (it should reduce to half when its done)

Put all ingredients into a big pot and bring it to boil on high heat, then turn it down to a simmering point and leave for another 3 hours. Salt to taste at end.

Supposedly, or I've been told by my mum black beans are great for blood nourishing effect. I love it anyway!

Stir fried beef with spring onions and ginger

This is one of my favourite dish to order when we're out at the Chinese Restaurant. Its simply satisfying with a bowl of white rice. Though its a simple dish to make, it has its challenges. For this dish to turn out great, it has to have lots of 'wok hei' (breath of the wok?) aka having a damn huge flame and you'd have to have lightning quick hands to add in all the ingredients to prevent the thin slices of beef from overcooking. OK most of us at home will not have those huge flames, what you could do is cook this in very small batches and have your wok flaming hot before starting. To overcome the shortcoming in the lighting quick hands department, mix all your sauces together first before starting.

Ingredients:

-Beef schnitzel or any other nice cuts suitable for stir frying

-1.5 inch of ginger, finely sliced

-As much spring onions as you like cut into long strips

-Corn starch mixture for thickening (mixture of corn starch/flour with water)

Sauces:-

-4 tbsp of soy sauce

-1 tbsp of sesame sauce

-dashes of pepper

-1 tbsp of chicken granules

-1 tsp of sugar

-3 tbsp of shiaoxing Chinese cooking wine (do not mix this with the rest of the sauces)

Note: You could add in oyster sauce if you like and decrease the rest of the sauces proportion to balance out the saltiness. I do not use oyster sauce in my household out of choice and have substituted that mostly with chicken granules which has worked perfectly.

Heat up your wok (preferably, cause it can take very high temperature without damage unlike a non-stick one) still its sizzling hot and add in your cooking oil. Then add in the ginger slices and brown it on both sides and add in the beef and give it a few good toss continuously before adding in the sauces and the spring onion. It should come to a simmer in no time, at this point all the beef slices should have changed colour and that denotes that its cooked. Stir in some corn starch mixture till you get the sauce to the consistency you like. Serve immediately.

p/s: If you're not serving this dish immediately, might be a good idea to slightly under cook the beef as it'd continue to cook even after you've dished it up due to the heat.

Chicken Sambal

This recipe came from the recipe book 'Malaysian Favourites'. Got this book before I left Malaysia, was sure that food is definitely one of the thing that I'd miss from Malaysia. But I'm not sure if I've ever came across any dish called 'Chicken Sambal' or maybe they just call it something else at the Nasi Lemak stall?But anyway I was curious when i saw this recipe, I've tempered with the proportion of everything in the original recipe though, I just used all the ingredients that they listed but to my liking. So if you do try this, feel free to tamper with my proportions as well, after all we all like our food very differently.

This is a 4S yummy, SWEET, SOUR, SPICY, SALTY! How this dish turns out tasting is totally at your mercy and I promise this is worth all the effort.
Ingredients:-

Whole chicken or chicken piece, I have 19 drumsticks here
Turmeric powder
Salt
8 dried chili soaked
2 tbsp of chili powder
2 large onions
8 cloves of garlic
1 inch of ginger
1 inch of galangal
6 tbsp of tomato sauce
7 tbsp of chili with garlic sauce
3 tbsp of plum sauce
1 cup water
4 tsp of sugar
3 tsp of salt

Method
Mix together some turmeric powder with salt, enough to coat all your chicken pieces. How much salt you add in here is entirely up to you. Rub all the chicken pieces and leave aside to marinate for at least 1 hour.


After the marinating process, you could opt to deep fry the chicken or grill them in your oven. I went with the oven, less mess and healthier and I promise the result is just as good as having deep fried them. I used 'fan grill' at 180C and they took roughly 30-35 minutes. For good practise purposes, you should always use your grilling rack when grilling as it would prevent your chicken having to sit in any of its fats or liquid hence crispier. I always go for easy options, line the trays with tin foil. After all the chicken will be cooked in gravy later on, so it won't make much of a difference. Now that's just me being lazy :)

Looks just as good as deep fried.

Put all the spices into a blender and blend it to a fine paste i.e., dried chill, chili powder, onions, garlic, ginger and galangal. Heat up your wok, add in about 2 tbsp of oil and saute the spices till fragrant. You'll find that the spices absorbs the oil pretty quickly, just add on more oil if necessary and sparingly. Do saute the spices for at least 5 minutes, you don't want to taste the spices too raw.
In a separate bowl, mix the chili and garlic sauce, tomato sauce and plum sauce together. The portion that I've listed above is just a mere guide (take note of my large portion too), you should mix up the sauces and then taste it and adjust it to your liking. Once you're satisfied, add it into the sauteed spices together with some water (as much as it takes to achieve the sauce consistency that you prefer. Let it come to a simmer before adding in the chicken.


Thank god for my huge wok here "hehe". Let the chicken simmer on low flame, you'd want to give the chicken an opportunity to absorb all that sauces. Salt and sugar to taste and VOILA!


Enjoy this with white rice, I was actually wishing that I had some fried "mantao" to go with this.

Using healthier alternatives ingredients

As a society progresses, so does the nation's food consumption. We're all into indulgence nowadays that a lot of us especially the younger ones takes no worry about what their food actually does to their health. The wealthier a nation is, the more rich man diseases there is such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol level, heart diseases and so on. I've read the book "Japanese Women Don't Get Old Or fat" by Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle. I was very inspired by the way Japanese eat and I have to a very small degree try to practise some of their good practices into our lives.
What really strucked a chord in this book is that the author mentioned that with the Western infiltration into their society, the younger generations are getting unhealthier as they tend to go for the various Fast Food Chains that has popped up their Country.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking asking anyway to totally snub those Fast Food Chains, I still go for them whenever I'm out of time to cook or too tired from work. Yes I'll be a SAHM mum in a few weeks time, that's when I'll be truly tested if I could stick to eating just good eats but not compromising too much on flavors. Well who could I really kid that the healthier ingredients alternatives does not compromise on the taste or texture of a dish?
Here's a list of the substitute ingredients that I use in my kitchen in hope that my family and I will be able to enjoy food for a longer time while still having good health during our finite time on earth. Life's too precious to live too precariously indulging.

Peanut Oil - Olive oil, Canola Oil or other vegetable oil
Butter - Olive spread, margarine spread
Full Fat Cream - Fat free evaporate milk/trim milk/yogurt
Cream Cheese - Fat free/low fat cream cheese
Ice-cream - low fat options
Coconut Cream - Coconut flavored evaporated milk (fat free option) or just normal fat free evaporated milk (taste just as good in curries)
Oyster sauce - Chicken granules
Puff pastry - go for the low fat option/filo pastry
Will add to the list whenever I come across any new substitute. Good eats everyone and ohh by the way I still go for fats once in a while (but its got to be really worth it), let's just say I'm trying to go mid-way it not sideways:)

Claypot rojak chicken

This to me is truly in the spirit of experiment or rather use up everything that's lying around in the fridge. I have no recipe for this dish as i was just mucking around with all the ingredients and sauces. I thought it came out pretty weird as in it tasted a little like Chinese and also Japanese. Only my hubby truly appreciated it with his very accomplished taste bud. Naturally my little one snubbed this. But it was rather nice served with rice as the gravy was full of flavor.

Here's a list of things that I've put into the Claypot, that's even if i recall them correctly:-

-boneless chicken thighs
-pureed spinach and carrots (these were actually meant for the tofu nuggets but i omitted it as my daughter didn't want dinner that day)
-toasted sesame seeds

Sauces:-

-Tomato sauce
-Chili sauce
-soy sauce
-mirin
-sake
-chicken granules

Just slightly brown the chicken pieces before adding in the rest of the ingredients, cook with the lid open as there is quite some gravy in this, so let it simmer down. Hey if you're up for some quirky dishes, why not experiment with your leftovers too? Groceries bill are really climbing high lately, so waste not.

Here's something to share on not wasting, the other day when I was queuing at the hyper mall to pay for my groceries, I stumbled upon this magazine Healthy Food, they have a website too. The July issue was great as it totally enlightened me on what to do with leftovers that's not appealing even to my human food disposer. It also gives advice on how to store your produce to lengthen its shelf life too and many more interesting articles that every homebody should take a peek at for some pointers. They also have lots of yummy and healthy recipes *wink wink*.

Tofu Nuggets

This is another recipe that I've adapted from 'Deceptively Delicious'. I've omitted certain items from the original recipe and came up with my version of Tofu Nuggets. This is a gorgeous dish, the downside of this dish is that it can take some time and patience in having to turn the tofu around so that all four sides browns nicely, but nevertheless its worth it. This could pass off as chicken nuggets to kids.

Ingredients:-

1 block of extra firm tofu cut into cubes
1 egg beaten
Bread crumbs
Salt and Pepper to season the crumbs
Grated Parmesan cheese (Optional)

Method:-

Place the beaten egg in a separate dish. In another dish, mix the bread crumbs, cheese, salt & pepper together. Dip the tofu cubes into the egg first and then into the crumbs mix. Lightly pan fry on a non-stick skillet.

Tip: Bread crumbs tends to absorb lots of oil, to minimise oil absorption, use an oil spray to coat the pan and go on medium heat. This way the tofu nuggets have an opportunity to get crispier without taking in too much oil.

Braised Pork in Soy Sauce

This is a classic dish that my mum always makes perfectly with the gravy being lusciously smooth and gooey...This is a replica but it came no where near to my mum's, will have to have a live demo on this one but nevertheless, better than none :)

Ingredients:-
Pork Belly
Hard Boiled eggs
1 whole garlic
2 star anise
3-4 cloves

Seasoning:-
Dark soy sauce
light soy sauce
Chinese cooking wine
Chicken granules
sugar
water

Add in everything except the eggs into a pan, water level should be just slightly covering all ingredients, bring it to a simmer and leave it to braise for about 35minutes. Add in the eggs in the last 15 minutes of the cooking process. Season to your liking.
A little tip-the fattier the pork is, the more luscious the gravy will be.

Chinese Roast Chicken

Marinate:-

2 tbsp of Chinese 5 spice powder
2 tbsp salt
dashed of pepper

Leave it to marinate for about 2 hours of leave overnight and grill in the oven at 180C, takes about 30-35minutes. Serve with chicken stock flavoured rice and veges or just chop some cucumbers. If you have the convection roaster, you'll be able to achieve the results pretty close to those of the chicken rice sellers, but i didn't find worth the effort to bring out the roaster and having to wash it after use. You see, using the oven needs no washing up nothing, just line the tray with some aluminium foil and tuhhh-daaa...life's much easier :)

Banana Loaf

I got this recipe from a recipe book by Jessica Seinfeld tittled "Deceptively Delicious". When my sister-in-law told me about it,I was all puzzled by the book name but when I did some research on it, I realised its a book that every parent with a toddler would want to have. You see I have a fussy little eater who like most other children refuses vegetables or anything bordering on the nutritious side. It gives some great recipes and ideas on how to include vegetables to their food without them realising it. Have tried a few and they're awesome, will post them when i have time.

This recipe was intended as a tea time snack for my little girl, found it to be simply too sweet for my taste as a snack, I however love this for dessert, warm the loaf in a microwave for about 20 seconds and add some vanilla ice-cream to it, totally ROCKS!

The next time I makethis, I'd half the amount of sugar as I have a sneaking suspicion that this would be really nice when toasted and spread with maybe jam or peanut butter.

Here's the original recipe:-

3/4cup wheat flour

1/2cup all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/4 cup canola oil or any vegetable oil

2 large egg whites

1 1/2 cups banana puree

1/2 cup cauliflower puree (cooked cauliflower)

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Mix the flours with the baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon if using. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, mix the sugar and oil with a wooden spoon until well combined. Mix in the egg whites, banana, and cauliflower purees and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and mix just till combined.

Pour the batter into the load pan and bake at 160C for 55-60 minutes or till a toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

p/s: I should have mentioned that if you're not intending for this recipe to be a kid's treat, you could omit the cauliflower puree, just add another 1/2 cup of mashed banana and further reduce the sugar as the banana's are sweet itself.

What feeds the stomach

Japanese Cotton Cheese Cake


Macoroni & Cheese


"Pan Mee"



Scrambled eggs with cauliflower and cheese with toast

Pork Shoulder Roast

Following on from the meat marinate post, here's the piece of pork having been roasted. Verdict is: Those parts that has fats were to die for but otherwise because the piece of meat is so big, certain parts that didn't get the marinades didn't have much taste. If its something that I'd want to go with rice, Roasted Crispy Pork ("Siu Yuk") will still be my no.1 choice. But this is how i like this shoulder roast best that the roasted crispy pork won't come close!

Light pan fry the pork pieces and sprinkle on some Salt&Pepper to give it a smokey flavor before assembling your own mega sandwich. Ooooo so yummmmm........

Meat Marinates

Ok I'm officially sick of takeaways! But what's a FT working mum to do? Definitely have no energy to cook elaborate dinners after a long day at the office and coming home to a loving toddler who demands my full attention. Time to be best friends with my oven, microwave and crock pot then.

I've got a nice big fat juicy piece of pork shoulder from the Mad Butcher. Look at the size of that, mad eh!

Had no idea what i wanted to do with it till i opened my pantry door and ask the man if he likes it western/Chinese style. Of course the banana goes for western. OK just grabbed whatever that's on hand that seems western and hopefully it'll logically work out to taste good. Sorry no measurements here, free handedly threw in lots of oregano's, mustard powder, salt, crushed black pepper, paprika and then the wet stuff were Lea & Perrins & Red wine vinegar. Left it in the fridge unwrapped and will let it sit for at least 3-4 days before roasting it, this way the meat dries up enough to give a very crispy roast as well as a very well marinated piece of slab. Will let you know how it taste when we roast it then :)

Loh Mai Kai's

Found a recipe for Loh Mai Kai at Lily's blog and tried it but my attempt at recipes are never exact, more of a free hand cook. But anyway Lily's recipe was really marvelous! I made extras to keep frozen so that i could indulge as and when i want to. Just wrap it with foil and then with another layer of cling wrap outside, this has sat in my freezer for 3 months. Needs no thawing, just take off the wrappers and steam it for 35 minutes. Came back to life as good as it were just made! I've once tried to microwave if but found that the rice turned really hard and it wasn't an enjoyable experience at all!

Happy snack-ng

I'm honestly not a huge fan of Chinese snacks, more of a potato chip junky when my waist allows me a little indulgence. But there's just something about these snacks that makes me feel more at home, not that they're from Malaysia but still...They didn't taste as fab as those in Malaysia obviously, but having them placed there on the kitchen counter was good enough to make up for the rest :)

Nourishing apple drink

Sore throat, dry itchy cough and what not, what's a girl to do when she thinks of all her mum's concoctions from home? Well DIY and DIY the simplest and the nicest one to down. I love this drink and often makes it in a big batch so that i could store in my Tupperware tumblers and let it cool in the fridge. This is one of the reason i bought my big 8.5litres crock pot. Here's an easy peasy one to nourish that throat:-

-8-1o apples cleaned and cut into any wedges size
-A handful of red dates
-3-4 honey dates
-2 strips of cane sugar or rock sugar if you like

Just fill the crock pot with boiling water (to lessen the cooking time) till its 3/4 full, leave it on low if you're making this overnight or on high if you intend to finish cooking it within the next 3-4 hours.

Variations:- you could add in any of these ingredients; white fungus, sea coconut, dried longan, gingko hmmm ahh why not? In fact anything that you fancy to it.

Rendang puff

We've always been a big fan of curry puff and I've always made them with a simple version of chicken curry. This time round, the smart Alec suggested that I made it with the beef rendang that we have frozen from our last Nasi Lemak rendezvous. I gotta admit I was sceptical at first and gave him a dirty look at his suggestion. But then the idea can't be bad since it saves me the work of having to cook the filling. All I had to do was to buy some puff pastry (we got Edmond's reduced fat and its really good with less fat) and dice some hard boiled eggs and wrap up those little babies. Follow the baking instructions that comes with the pastry and that's it.
The result was FANTABULOUS!!! I'd go for this anytime as opposed to our firm favourite of chicken curry puff, sorry Chicky, this round goes to Beef Rendang Puff!

Stir Fry Asparagus with scallops

Finally, I have some greens to post in my blog! After all veges are the most uninteresting food to write about for me that is. This is a simple quick stir fry dish which is quite yummy for those who loves asparagus and/or scallops.

Some scallops-Lightly pan fried with some oil

Asparagus

Minced garlic-1 tsp

Chicken granules-1tsp

A dash of soya sauce

A dash of chinese cooking wine

1 tsp of sugar

Heat some oil and saute garlic till browned and add in the asparagus and all the seasonings. Add about 1/4 cup of water and cover wok and leave to simmer. Depending on the asparagus age, the older it is, the longer you'd have to cook it. When its almost done, add in the scallops and give it a good toss and yup its ready! For a good stir fry vege dish, i think the most important is 'wok hei' meaning lots of heat from the wok, so if you have a cooking hob that gives big flames, I'd say 80% of the battle has been won :)

Cockels in tauchu sauce

This isn't exactly the same type of cockles we get in Malaysia, but i miss cockles so anything named cockles is good enough for me to try.

Ingredients:

1 kg of live cockles

1 inch ginger

6 garlic cloves minced

spring onions

Big red chilli's

2 tbsp of taucu

2 tbsp of sugar

2 tbsp of sugar

2 tbsp of Chinese cooking wine

Corn flour water

Heat up some oil in the wok till smoking, add in ginger and garlic and saute till fragrant. Add in the cockles and seasoning and some water enough to simmer the cockles, cover wok and let it cook till all the cockles have opened up. These took me about 8 minutes, stubborn cockles. Dish up the cockle without the sauce first so that it doesn't overcook, thicken the sauce with corn flour water and add in the chopped spring onions and chills and dish up together with the cockles. X'cuse me presentation, should have cleaned the sides of the plate hehe..

Sweet & sour crab

I've never cooked crabs in my life, let alone thought that I'd ever cook it. I promised to make my parents dinner for their 32nd anniversary so i had to make something nice, it was going to be crab meat in tauhu at first but i couldn't find any ready crab meat and there were some mud crabs for sale, so i got some and decided to make this dish.

Quick flip through the Hawkers fare cook book to check on the ingredients for this dish, turned out simple enough. Most recipes calls for deep frying of the crabs before cooking, but i flagged that cause its too messy and unhealthy since we're so upping the cholesterol factor in this dinner.

Ingredients:-

Crabs-800gm

Ginger julienned - about 1 inch

6 cloves garlic

2 big red chilli's

4 chili padi-flag this if you're not into hot food

4 tbsp of diced spring onions

4tbsp of tomato sauce

3 tbsp of chili sauce

2 tbsp vinegar

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp sugar or to taste

1 tsp salt

1 egg

corn flour water

water to simmer

Heat some oil till smoking hot in the wok and then add in ginger, garlic, chilli's, spring onions and saute till fragrant. Add in crabs and all the seasonings and some water enough to simmer the crabs in, cover wok and let it cook for 4 minutes. Give it a taste and adjust to your liking, if you desire it to be more sour, add in more tomato sauce/vinegar. Thicken with corn flour water and turn off flames before adding in the beaten egg, give it a good stir. By turning off the flame before adding in the egg, this will ensure that the egg's not overcooked and it'll provide the sauce with a smooth silky finish. Enjoy my steaming hot Sweet Sour crabs!

Pork Chop

Here's a quick dinner idea! Pork chop that's pre-marinated during the weekends and chucked onto a grill/pan fried on a weekday. I normally have this with packed salads that requires no washing or cutting, but since mum was here to help with the preparatory work, we had stir-fried cabbage with carrots as our sides. Carb was omitted since everyone's been complaining that they're packing on weight!

Here's what i marinated my chops with(about 6 pieces):

-Sesame oil enough to coat ever piece of chop

-Salt rubbed onto every piece

-A big dash of Chinese cooking wine

-Ginger juice - about 2-3 tbsp

-Some cracked black pepper

I normally don't make sauces to go with my chops but my dad is strictly on to sauces when it comes to meat, so i made a quickie sauce with an onion, flour, chicken granules, sugar and soy sauce. Just heat up some oil and add in the onions and fry for 2-3 minutes before adding in plain flour, just enough to lightly coat all the onions, give it a good toss before adding in water. Leave it to simmer and add in the chicken granules to taste. Sugar gives a little balance to the savouriness of the dish, but i usually go sparingly like 2 tsp and a dash of soy sauce. Soy sauce is more for the color here though :)

Hokkien fried noddles

Aside from achieving a near black color and having lard in my noodles, this is as authentic as I could get towards this Malaysian fare of ours. I thought it tasted really authentic and it was a great quick and easy meal to have.
Here's what you need:-
A packet of yellow noodles
Some 'choy sum'
Prawns
Pork slices - marinated with soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, oyster sauce and some corn starch
Pork liver

For the sauce:
Sufficient dark soy sauce to achieve the desired color that you want for your noodles
Chicken granules/chicken stock -to taste
A dose of sugar
A dash of light soy sauce
A dash of sesame oil
Some chinese cooking wine-nothing more than 2-3 tbsp

Method:
Heat up some oil and fragrant some chopped garlic till it turns brown and then add water/chicken stock to the wok (if you use water, then add in chicken granules). Once it comes to a simmer, add in the noodles and let it cook till its soft to your liking, when almost done, add in the pork & veges, leave it to simmer for about 3minutes before adding in the liver and lastly the prawns. Once prawns been added, don't cook for more than 3 minutes otherwise the liver and prawns will be overcooked. Serve HOT and best with Sambal! Yummmmm

Cotton Spongecake

The baking bug bit me again, so i had to make something! I chance upon Baking mum's blog and was thrilled to find this recipe. I've never baked a sponge cake before but i've always loved good sponge cake, so I decided to try it out. It turned out FAB!!! Best texture i've ever had from a sponge cake, was so so cottony soft it feels dreamy when you eat it.

Just to share my experience on this cake, the cake comes out from the oven looking absolutely fabulous but sinks a little once it cools down, here's a picture for comparison. Had some cream in the fridge which is about to expire so i had it whipped up with some frozen raspberries and sugar to sandwiched my cake. I covered the whole cake with cream in a rustic manner (no effort home food for me)

The downside to creaming this cake is the cream gets too heavy for the cake once its cut and it wouldn't keep especially if you had frozen fruits in it cause it tends to get watery. Best consumed within the day!

Beef Stew/Casserole

This is a totally wholesome meal with all the nutrients and flavor, best thing is its suitable and great for babies.

Ingredients:

800gm of diced beef

2 big onions

3 large potatoes

3 carrots

1 brocolli

1 can of tomato sauce/puree

2 tbsp of plain flour

Water to stew

Oregano to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

Chicken granules to taste

Heat oil in the wok and saute the diced beef for a minute or two before adding in the flour. Make sure the beef has been well coated before adding in the onions, carrots, potatoes, brocolli, give it a good toss and then add in the can of tomato puree. Add water sufficient to cover all ingredients and cover the wok and leave to stew till tender. Normally takes anything within 30-40 minutes. If you desire your veges to be less mushy, then reduce cooking time and vice versa. Add the seasonings half way through cooking and adjust to taste when the dish is almost ready. This can be made the casserole way, simply put the sauteed beef and all the other ingredients including the seasoning into a large casserole, sufficient water to cover all ingredients as well and put into a 180C oven to bake for 1-1.5 hour.Love this on its own or served with rice/bread/pasta even.

Taking her first steps

Little Alyssa's got a new obsession lately, ie standing up and waiting for an ovation from her audiences! She's just a few steps shy from being declared that she can walk, today's the first time she took 1.5 steps unaided, BRAVO!!! Silly parents tsk tsk tsk...if you haven't got a bub yet, you probably wouldn't understand yet hehe...look at her trying to balance herself up, soooo cute. Sorry this is a proud mum's self indulgence hehe...She's very active for a girl, maybe cause she's been playing with too many boys at day care, funny that her age group has a majority of boys. I'm quite excited about her being able to walk on her own but on the other hand, she'll be even more demanding on our time where we'd have to watch her every second then. That would mean no more cooking once my parents have gone home :(

Nasi Lemak

I think Malaysians can never stay away from Nasi Lemak for too long, and so i decided to once again indulge!

Here's a picture for the Sambal, for the recipe click here http://foodtravelandbubs.blogspot.com/2008/04/sambal.html don't know how to just show the title and not the whole link, if anyone has any idea, please share. Scary isn't it seeing the amount of oil bubbling away.

Here's my mum's Beef rendang, recipe to come soon. Better learn up on my mum's good eats before she goes home to KL.