Tuesday, August 31, 2010

These are edible

They are my baby nieces. I feel like squeezing them now. Haha





Friday, August 27, 2010

Tuna pizza

It's national day coming anyway I don't feel very patriotic these days all caused by games and lies that gomen created.

Forgetting about the stupid issues in the country, I know I have been talking about pizzas for the past few entries but I can't help it. I made dough enough for 3 pan pizzas last week, so there is one more coming.. ;)

Today, what came into my mind is tuna pizza. Toppings included tuna mayonese chunks, tomato pieces, sausages, mozarella and parmesan cheese. I forgot to put some basil flakes on top so pizza today is like missing something important in it's flavour. I have no idea what pizza topping should I adapt next. Throw me some ideas, please.

Pizza dough is cooked in pre heat oven at 220 degree celcius for 8 minutes, rubbed a lot olive oil on both sides to prevent it to be too dry. Add toppings and cook for another 8 minutes.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

ABC soup and blanced chye sim

Today is one of the busy and getting back home late day. Luckily I had the soup boiling at home for almost 10 hours since morning when I left for work. The soup is called ABC soup because it contains many types of vegetables and is kind of nutricious. In 20 minutes I want food to be ready on table so I picked some chye sim (sawi) and blanched in boiling water for a quick 1 minute, keeping the leaves fresh and almost raw. I like it this way. :) Dinner is ready in 20 minutes after I reached home. This is what I called quick preparation and a perfect wonderful meal.

ABC soup
---------
2 medium potatoes, cubed
1 big tomatoe, wedged
3 medium onions, wedged
3 baby carrots, cut
600g pork ribs

All goes into slow cooker and cook for > 8 hours at mix temperature level. Add salt and grounded pepper before serving


Blanched chye sim
------------------
Cut the vege into smaller lengths. Separate the leaves and stems.
Boil water in pot. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt in the water
Put in stem first and after 10 seconds, add the leaves in.
Blanch them for another 20 seconds and scoop out , place on plate
Add soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, pepper, fried onions and mix well. Serve with rice.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Hawaian pizza

I was devastated by the dead and tiny dough this morning. Luckily I found my super beloved friend online and told her my failure and see if she can help. She is a great baker and cook, who right now bake everyday! She asked every step in detail and rootcaused where the problem was. Salt and fridge! I put the salt too early in the stage and it killed the yeast and also yeast only works in room temperature. I threw the dough into the fridge after kneading completed so the dough never rise. I was using two different recipes from internet for last week and today's pizzas but somehow I don't know why I put into the fridge although today's receipe didn't call for it. So I failed terribly. Anyway no mourning, I springed to the kitchen right away after lunch again and re-made a new dough using very simple recipe given by her. The yeast was happily growing! and the dough rose into 1.5 the actual size. I was thrilled looking at the growth and happily informed her about this.

I cut the dough into 3 equal size and kept the other two in freezer for future use. Use my fist and punched the dough to get rid of the air bubbles, then let it sit for 10 minutes before roll the dough into a flat round shape.

I wanted to make Hawaiian pizza. So I bought a pineapple yesterday and this morning I carefully de-skinned and cut away all the "eyes", sliced them to tiny pieces. The toppings for this pizza are, crab sticks, sausage, pineapple, onion, mozarella and parmesan cheese, tomato sauce with sprinkle of salt and parsley flakes and a lot of basil flakes.

I don't have a roller to roll the dough so I use an old wine bottle I kept for this purpose :P

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Sausage, mushroom, capcisum and onion pizza

This is my first attempt of making pizza. The pizza edge is a bit tough but inner is crispy and nice. I dressed the pizza with lots of toppings; onion, capcisum, sausage and mushroom. It was a very generous amount of toppings, trust me.

The dough recipe was copied from somewhere and it's easily obtainable.



I am going to try again next time, see if the dough turns out better.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Mushroom and shrimp spaghetti

All because of the expensive button mushroom on sale in Jusco last weekend, I grabbed a box at RM6.99. Maybe the easiest way to use it in cooking is to associate the mushroom with pasta because cream is so expensive so an absolute no-no to mushroom soup as I had wasted a whole packet of cream worth RM20+ the last time I purchased one. Thinking that my "essential pasta cookbook" had dissolved in the air after searching all corners and drawers in the house for it, I found the green colour cover book after 40 minutes. While gasping for air, I looked through the pages and found nothing I fancy with mushroom because they like to cook mushroom with cream and that's what I want to avoid. So I opted for spaghetti marinara only that I don't have any other seafood except shrimps. The shrimps were bought an hour earlier on my way back home from work when I stopped for groceries in one of the supermarket nearby. I love marinara because WeeL made it for me on Valentine's Day 2 years back. It looks and taste almost like marinara but it is not. I made some modifications to many of the ingredients.




For the tomato sauce:
3 tablespoon cooking oil
1 onion medium size diced
1 baby carrot, diced
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 can of tomato puree (the smallest size)
2 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon chinese rice wine
1/2 cup chicken stock

4 button mushrooms, sliced
6 large shrimps, cleaned and removed skin

1. Heat the oil in pan, add onion, carrot and garlic and stir over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add in mushroom and stir for 5 more minutes
2. Add tomato puree, sugar, wine and chicken stock. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Stir occasionally
3. Add shrimps and cook for 5 more minutes
4. Cook pasta in large pan of boiling salted/greased water until al dente. Drain and set aside.
5. Combine the sauce with pasta and serve


I served the pasta with boiled corn and mashed potato because I worry the big boy doesn't have enough.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Feast on roasted pork

Disclaimer: This is a non-halal post. Read at your own risk and judgement.

I can't wait to go home since 9am when I walked into the office. The main driving factor is tonight's dinner because I am going to make roasted pork!!! One of the most sinful food around because of the amount of fat.

Last night I spent 10 minutes of my before sleep time marinating pork belly which I carefully chop into 3 pieces of 10cm's length. I never google or search for any recipe but I feel so much like eating roast pork. So I used my imagination and simply threw about 1 teaspoon of five spice powder, a few drops of sesame oil, salt, pepper, shao xing wine, a few drops of soy sauce and oyster sauce. I rub the ingredients on all side of the belly. I know it must look like a hell lot ingredients here. Keep in fridge overnight.

I took the sinful belly out from fridge today and patted dry using kitchen paper towel. This is an important step that one must not miss to make sure to get crispy skin after roasting. I sprinkled some fine salt on the pork pieces and roasted them in oven for about 30 minutes at 240 degrees.


Fresh out of oven. Can't wait!!!




Fat ready for the feast. Beware of the cholestrol ;)

Sunday, August 08, 2010

Lion's head meatballs

This weekend I am a happy girl again because I tried out new stuff today. Lion head meatballs!!! I adapted the recipes and steps from userealbutter and changed some of the ingredients because I don't have them at home. lol


The ingredients laid out on kitchen top, ready to be massaged and treated ;) I did not measure the ingredients, just simply pick and mix. Luckily the meatballs turned out superb!




For the meatball, I mixed minced pork, shitake mushrooms, button mushrooms, ginger, onions, rice wine, dash of salt and pepper. I added button mushrooms to replace the bamboo shoot from the recipe, so the meatball would not be to dry. I added some corn starch into the mixture to hold the ingredients together. Make 2 lion heads! for 2 human heads. :)

Wrap the lion heads in plastic wrapping sheet, keep them in freezer for about 20 minutes. I probably did that longer because I was watching Rain being tortured in Ninja Assassin throughout the whole making process. It was so kind of WeeL to pause everytime I was away working on the lunch.


Coat the meatballs with flour and fry them to get the nice browing to their outer layer. I fried them carefully to make sure the meatballs don't break, or else I will be getting a kitty head (according to Jen's dady) instead of lion head.


Place the meatballs in the container on top of the layered napa cabbage and add in the sauce. Prepare the sauce by saute-ing big onions, ginger in cooking oil until fragrant, then add in soy sauce, rice wine, salt, sesame oil, pepper and oyster sauce.



Slowly steam the lion head meatballs for about an hour.


Serve hot with rice. WeeL said the name of this dishes should be lion king, because you have the meatball as the head and the cabbage as it's body. I love this absolutely..

Friday, August 06, 2010

Nothing more than plain

It's too pathetic that I have nothing to update in these 2 weeks. My life is all about three things: working and working and working. Spending weekend on the big day preparation is fun but it turns out to be frustating sometimes. I had not explored any new special recipe recently, only managed to modify a few everyday dishes. Nothing much special to brag about, you know just reducing some sourness and adding some sweetness to soup or using a slightly different texture of pork by mixing corn flour instead or starch. My kitchen is feeling bored of the owner for not bringing any excitment to it. I grade myself as boring. I am living in a rather plain life, neither a roller coaster ride nor new found of the land of lollipops. Most of the times, my only entertainment is to find someone to chat to from my live messenger contact list. I don't chat to everybody in the list. The active chatting contact pityful has less than five and most of the time, only one is kind enough to entertain me.

Today surprisingly we came home pretty early and by eight o'clock I am ready to explore the internet world again in our comfortable dim lighted hall. The sound of siren heard from our window is from the main road far at the foot of hill. It should be the ambulance, pretty loud and clear from here maybe because we are near to the hill and sound is trapped in this area. Everything returns to serene and quiet environment once the siren dissapeared. At this month of the year, the air is cooling at night. There is breeze compared to March to May period of hot and high humidity; read sweaty. I feel rather thankful for the breeze because everyone can live without air condition now. Ha-ha. That will not save the world though. It is so strange that I spend almost 2 hours to write until this line. I guess I am taking my own sweet time, sure nice.

The hot chicks are having yumcha session tomorrow and I am going to miss another gathering because I won't be home (or for the past times, I was not invited because noone knew I was home) . I don't go home so often that everytime I go back, I will be busy running errands and visiting family members or relatives. It is bad to not having spare time for friends I know. Watching movie.. Bye