Another great year ahead

When I need to use the potato..

Today is another day that I need to finish up one specific ingredients in the kitchen whether it's almost EOL or for the reason if I still keeping it, will lost the freshness. This time it is the potato. I bought like 4 potatoes back then to boil ABC soup and only used 2 of them. The left over 2 laid comfortably in the dry ingredient's basket for quite a few weeks until yesterday I saw roots began to grown from their heads. Coming back from work I was thinking how am I going to cook it when I wanted to finish up the left over baked BBQ chicken? and there was only 1 leg! So I came up with this set of dinner for him. BBQ chicken, mashed potato and coleslaw while I cooked my favourite spicy nissin noodle. By the way, that's the only instant noodle I eat. Before liking this, I used to hate all instant noodle because their texture is like made of some powder.



I think dinner went all fine.

BBQ pork

I came back from work feeling a few kg heavier. So I went running but stopped half way as because I can't breathe. Terrible. My menu for tonight is bbq pork (char siu) and stir fried cabbage. I marinated the pork last night using this recipe

Here is the close up picture I took of the pork. I didn't grill it, because I feel too tired, just roasted the marinated pork in oven



I am going to rest for the night

ABC rice vermicelli soup

There was once when I was in primary school that I saw my mom squatting down in front of the fridge looking into it at very early in the morning. About 6.30am, I was getting ready to go to school, I asked what was she doing there. She told me being a fulltime housewife is not an easy job. Other than the normal house chores and cooking skill, a woman must be smart and creative. She looks into fridge every morning and creates a menu for the day. A healthy menu to feed all the girls at home, with consideration who doesn't eat what and who likes to eat what. Sometimes she will say she is cooking x's favourite food today and I will pull my face. But she will make my favourite the next day!

I am a working grown up lady. I only go to market once a week. Sometimes I stop by to grab additional vegetables on my way home if they were gone before the week end, either rotten or I cooked extra the day before. I buy all the meat and poultry from supermarket or wet market on weekend. This means I create menu for a week when I buy raw material. I need to pamper the big boy, he has his prefered diet I have to follow so normally I need draft out what I am going to make for everyday when I stood in the middle of market.

There will be normally leftover if I make soup and the leftover will be brought to the next day as soup, or as BROTH for a noodle dish!


This time I have ABC soup . I made mihun soup (rice vermicelli soup) using the broth.



Blanch vermicelli in boiling water, drain and set aside in bowl.
Heat up ABC soup, add water if needed. Add salt, pepper, soy sauce ;)to taste and greenies if you want. I normally add small bai chye. Bring to boil.
Pour the soup into the bowl and serve hot

Pork rendang

I have been having this very bad internet connection at home. We subsribe the 1M package, but streamyx sucks to the worst than you can think of. The speed cannot even go up to the 384 package. Someone really need to sing about this issue seriously.

Last week I cooked my legendery chicken rendang. The photo in my previous post doesn't look very tempting, maybe because of the post processing I did. I don't make this dish often because the time required to prepare the chicken rendang is normally up to 3 hours, due to the preparation work cooking like, peeling a full bowl of shallots, processing the herbs, pan roast the coconut grates and grained them. I didn't feel like wasting the leftover rendang cooked-paste because this time it wasn't that hot for Weeliem, in another word, it's perfect. I kept the paste in sealed container in fridge and used it today for this dish I called pork rendang.

Very simple, just pan fry the pork small slices in 2 tablespoon of oil and add in the paste. I added 1/4 bowl of water so I have enough liquid to simmer the pork. Simmer for 10 minutes and serve hot. Great for a weekday cooking because it's quick and appetizing

Lemon ice-cream recipe

I made lemon ice-cream to welcome weeliem back the last time he went on a business trip. This time, I rushed to buy ingredients on Monday after the teambuilding because the lady was going to reach that night. I prepared this dessert to serve my friends because they were coming over after dinner the next day.



Recipe from userealbutter, my favourite site



Apart from that, on another story, these are the gifts I received from the warm hearted people for my incoming wedding day.

This one was given to me by our department lovely admin whose last day was yesterday.



and this is the silverware set from the new parents, Ai Chee and Chun.



Thank you beautiful!

Stew pork rib with braised peanuts

Basically I don't know what is the name of this dish therefore I am giving this name merely based on the main ingredient that contributes to the flavour of the stew. It is introduced to me by Weeliem's mom.



Ingredients:
~10 peeled chestnuts
2 cans 170g braised peanuts
4 medium size chinese mushrooms
300g pork rib
4 cloves garlic

Steps:
Add 1/4 teaspoon of sugar into a bowl of water and soak chestnuts overnight.
Clean the leftover skin and half the chestnut
Clean pork rib and cut into smaller pieces
Soften mushrooms by putting them in warm water for about 15 minutes. Slice
Heat oil in a wok and saute garlic
Stir in the mushroom and chestnut. Then add in the pork ribs.
Cook them for about 3 minutes and pour in the braised peanuts
Add roughly 1/2 cup of water, 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1/2 tablespoon dark soy sauce, salt to taste and pepper.
Bring mixture to boil for about 1 minute and cover work with lid.
Simmer the stew mixture in low heat for about 2 hours. Add water when neccesary.



We came home pretty late after work so I only managed to stew it for 80 minutes. Anyway it tasted good as well. It can be better if we can cook for another 20 minutes.

Fish curry

I have a bag full of okras (ladies fingers) from my dad from the home trips. For the past days and weeks, I have been eating a lot sambal stir fried okras and it doesn't stay long this way. I am bored of tasting the same thing. At first I was thinking of making fish head curry but Weeliem did not favor that because there is not much to scrap out of a head. So I changed the recipe a little , fish curry. The other day we celebrated Malaysia Day by going to Tesco and bought ray fish. This is it, the hot lunch on a super hot day, with a lot of okras



Steps:
Process onions, shallots, garlic, dried chillies and cumin powder. (*1)
Cut fish into pieces and sprinkle salt onto them and let sit for about 10 minutes.
Heat oil and saute *1 until fragrant.
Put in fish curry powder and tamarind juice from soaking pulp in water for about 10 minutes.
Let the mixture boil
Add in fish, coconut milk and vegetables (okra cleaned and halved, tomatoes wedged) and salt to taste

Chinese pattern cuting- Double happiness with twin birdies

I know I said I only want to make 2 of these but I can't resist another one. My hands are itchy tonight so I cut another. This time it's smaller but cuter.



I received a lovely wedding gift from my buddy today, couriered from Korea by her favourite person in the world. It's a laneige face powder which the casing looks really cool, something like a cellphone with mirror at the top. There is a very pretty card with the gift.



Not forgetting an ex-coursemate who purposely dropped by Penang! with his wife last month and passed me this. His wife will be giving birth sometime close to my wedding day and it is impossible for him to make it here

Of life, like it or not

Work has been slowing down and I am happy to enjoy life, example writting, cooking and making my DIY things.

I received a few responses about how good that I did the DIY stuff and save money in my wedding. Honestly, I did the DIY stuff for my wedding is merely just for my interest of doing so. There are no cost saving here or what I mean is the saving is negligible. The saving of few ringgits doesn't impact the whole wedding expenses at all. I am extremely happy of doing one or two but absolutely not happy if I am to make 50 or 100 of those, because it is not fun anymore.

The same reason goes for cooking. I cook everyday because I feel happy when I made yummy food. If the food doesn't turn out good like what I expected, the rest of the day will be a sad day for me. If I were to ask to cook for a party, it will be different. It will be tiring and much more effort required. At this point, there is no fun of doing what I like. You know, volunteer to do something and being assigned to do something are totally two different things. But when you were assigned the task, it is not of your own will or probably you are just too shy to reject for not liking. Most importantly is your will. You do what you like to do.

We do things because we love doing them. That's how I sustain living in this cruel world, by doing something that makes my heart grows fonder of staying home keeping safe. It is similar to some people, example for liking to shop, sing karaoke, outings, yumcha sessions, sport activities, playing computer games, facebooking. I am perfectly fine if my friends like to sing-k and I don't think it is a waste of time because that's what you choose to do during your free time. I am very serious when I said I don't like K because I don't sing. It is not of any other reasons like I don't like joining the clique or too pricey or someone is a thorn in the gang. But I really do appreciate the invitation because it is making me feel that I am still wanted in the group. That's why I love my lunch gang and colleagues. They still invite me although 98% of the times, I rejected. Thank you very much people.

Once I encountered a somehow similar experience during some pretty old days. I like making cards. Birthday cards. So I made for friend, and another next because I like making them during my free time. Eventually people started to expect the same thing happening for the other friends. It is not that I don't like the friends, but it is of my interest. I don't like to do it when it became a task. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's me.

I believe everyone has their own opinion. I don't go againts people. You can like anything and don't like anything, freely.

Chinese pattern cutting - Double happiness featuring mandarin ducks

Not going to waste time during this long holiday, I to cut another patttern using the remaining red paper I have. That's all ;) This time it's fast, I completed within half a day.



Note: Future MIL took it because it's too pretty lol

Flower ball deco

This is another DIY thing I made for our wedding. The flower ball deco made of red fabric. I bought some few metres of red lining which cost less than RM10.

I saw some shops selling the flower ball for RM39.90, RM49.90 which is a ripped off.

It will be used to hang at our home entrance.



I hope it will look nice when being hung up. We'll see..

Chinese pattern cutting -double happiness

I had done some DIY stuffs for our wedding for the past few months. The latest that I am working and had completed one is the chinese pattern cutting work. I had this problem to search the double happiness "xi" word in google because I can't write the word. I pinged Yi Chong because he is indeed very good in chinese, I guess. Haha. I wrote "si" in messenger to him and asked if he can type the word in chinese for me.He was all puzzled and quicky rang me wanted to hear me pronounce the word. He was relieved. He thought I am going to write suicide note in chinese.

After thanking him, I tried googling the image of "xi" and it returned me numerous results, some suitable for pattern cutting and some not. At last I picked this.

I had painful finger for 2 nights because of "manuevering" the small size scissors to cut small edges. I am glad it was worth the pain.

Our wedding electronic invitation

As some of you might have known, we are getting married this year. Here posted is the electronic invitation that we sent out to colleagues and some friends. To Ailene, Peili, Kim and other Klang buddies, we have both mutual and virtual invitations in facebook Hot Chicks group so there is no need to have multiple invitation right? So I am sharing this to you all who are willing to share happiness in our coming special day.

If you already gotten this invitation and not yet RVSP, please do so love.

These are edible

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.