Cilantro baked fish

This is another express cooking day type of dish. I normally use the oven or steam food when I need food to be cooked in parallel with rice so I can get food ready on table in less than 40 minutes.

This the baked fish which is so easy to make. I don't think I need to list the ingredients. You can see everything in the picture. Basically just lay your fillet on aluminium foil. 

Rub sea salt on both sides of the fish. Sprinkle black pepper, drizzle some extra virgin olive oil. Be generous with the oil. Squeeze half a lemon, or 4 small limes juice. Then cut the cilantro and just throw on top.

Pre-heat oven and bake at  200 celcius for 20 minutes

Cilantro stew pork with potato

I am trying to stew pork using western herbs and not the usual chinese stew ingredients. So here we go, I named it cilantro stew pork with potato.

It was a day which I took off to vaccinate my baby. After sending her to nanny place I returned home and did the usual house chores. Since I have longer time to cook dinner, I prepared this stew.

For the pork, I spent a little more time to brown it in oil before stewing. The result is rosemary fragrant stew which the meat is also tender because of the long slow cooking. I can settle other chores also while it cooked.

Ingredients:
300g soft bone pork , cut into 1x1 cube
2 potatoes,  cubed
1 tomato, wedged
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium red onion, wedges
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
5 stalks fresh cilantro , break them into shorter parts
salt and black pepper
Flour
Cooking oil
1 cup water


1. First, dip the pork in flour and salt and brown in a little oil then set aside
2. Heat up 2 tablespoon oil in a stewing pot and saute garlic.
3. Brown potatoes and add in tomato and pork.
4. Add in the cilantro, dried rosemary, black pepper.
5. Add 1 cup of water and let the mixture slowly cook for about 2 hours.
6. Add salt to taste before serving hot with rice

Braised sea cucumber and pork rib

Hello all. I have been away from blogging for a very long time as my last post was 6 months ago. I am still cooking but nothing really fancy. Just the usual stuff that I had written before and the daily quick meal. Maybe one day I shall blog about how to prepare meal in 40 minutes. That's the time I have to get stuff ready and clean up before tending to my very demanding children. I love them to bits and the love me so much that they like me to be around all the times. So I need to be super efficient in everything that I do at home.

This dish is out of the ordinary food that I cook everyday. I made this in the past long weekend which inclusive of weekend, Labor Day and replacement Wesak Day. Why it's out of ordinary is that I was using sea cucumber and I never cook with this sea creature before. My mother in law came 2 weeks ago and brought along some sea cucumber with her. She was an awesome lady, she cleaned them up and cooked for us and left a few more in freezer for me to use later. So I took them out and cooked for our dinner on Saturday.

I used claypot to cook this. Ingredients required:

A
300g pork ribs
3 pieces of sea cucumbers (post clean up) cut into smaller strips
4 dried shitake mushrooms soaked and cut into thick slices
2 hard boiled eggs (peeled)
2 shallots, minced
2 bowls water
3  tablespoon cooking oil

B
2 star anise
1 teaspoon of five spice powder
5 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1/2 teaspoon of salt

First heat up 3 tablespoon of cooking oil. Saute shallots till fragrant.  Then stir in the pork and brown them a bit. Put the mushroom in and stir a while more. Before the pork burnt up, pour 1 bowl of water. Add in ingredients B and turn up the heat and let the mixture simmer.

After they simmer for about 5 minutes, add in remaining water, sea cucumber and eggs. Cover up the pot and slowly cook it for about 2 hours. Before serving taste and see if you need extra salt. Some soy sauce are salty enough that you do no need to top up.

Serve hot with rice. Enjoy!

Sour and chilli crab

The big boss always ask me why I never cook anything with lobster or crab before..so in one of the groceries pick up, I bought 2XL size "ketam bunga". It cost around rm11. Alright this was my first time handling crabs. Good thing is that they are not alive. I believe these are frozen crabs. I looked upon YouTube for the way to clean crabs and followed exactly fearing the  crabs will suddenly wake up.

I settled down with a recipe that calls for sour and spicy flavor because this is not a live crab so steam is totally not a good choice.

Sauce ingredients
Small bowl of water
5Tbs ketchup
1 Tbs oyster sauce
2tbs chilli sauce
Fresh yogurts 4Tbs
1 tbs shaoxing wine

Other ingredients
Salt
Cleaned crabs
Cooking oil
Minced garlic
Minced ginger
1 egg beaten

Steps
1. Heat up 3 tbs oil in wok.
2. Saute garlic and ginger for about 10 seconds
3. Add in crabs
4. Simply stir for about 3 minutes
5. Mix the sauce ingredients except yogurts and pour  in the mixture into wok.
6. Close the lid and simmer for about 10 minutes
7. Add in yogurts and simmer for another 5 min
8. Add some salt as needed and egg
9. Stir for another 2 minutes and serve immediately with hot steaming rice

There you go.....!!

Easy banana muffin

I have some over ripe banana at home from last week. I used up 2 to make flourless banana pancake for breakfast yesterday and there  are 4 more. So here a quick fix for tomorrow breakfast.

I found a recipe which I have all the ingredients ready. So in about 20 minutes I prepared all the ingredients and pop into the oven to bake.

Here's the recipe if you are interested

1 2/3 cup organic unbleached flour
2/3 cup sugar. I reduced this a bit
1 cup corn &canola
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp baking soda
4 mashed bananas

Steps
Heat up 190c oven
In a bowl, beat oil, sugar and eggs using metal whisk
Stir in the vanilla extract and mashed bananas
Add in the rest of ingredients
Divide into 10 muffin cups. I used cup cakes cups
Bake in oven for 20 minutes

Hope the boys love the muffins tomorrow

Healthy chicken nuggets for toddler

I have left this blog too long unmaintained due to busy work schedule and dealing with demanding toddler while carrying our new baby.yes, we are expecting a new member of our family this year! Basically my everyday life is like rushing to everything and everywhere.I squeezed in a week of business trip in May to Ireland. It was a bonus as I got to run away from hectic home life for a week however is not a real bonus a well..this business trip was as hectic a well. I lazy to recall how our flight was canceled due to plane function error when we were already seated I'm the plane and how I  threw up in the bus that reroute to take us to our destination and everyday meeting full day and only manage to shop in airport on the last day.

Okay back to original purpose of writing this entry.I am currently in a vendor tool workshop. Since the tool that is being discussed is not of my interest,I took my phone out and start blogging again.

This is the chicken nuggets that I made for my kid.he is a typical picky kid who doesn't eat meat and there was once when we were in ikea, we gave him nuggets and he took without fuss. So I am really determined to make a healthy version for him, baked not fried.

I roughly list down the ingredients.

2 slabs of chicken breast, deboned
Garlic powder
Parsley
Black peppers
Salt
Bread ( white or wholemeal, whichever)

Steps
1.minced chicken meat, I used knife and just chopped them for 15 min
2. Mix  salt, parsley, garlic powder and black pepper, marinate for about 10 min.
3. Tear the bread into 1x1 inch pieces and toast in preheat oven for about 20 min until crunchy. I turned them around at half the time so I don't get burnt bread on a side only
4. Processed the bread in food processor or blender into fine bread crumbs and put them into a dry plate. Mix grated parmesan with breadcrumbs if you like
5. Clean your hands and wet your palm
6.Take a some minced chicken meat and roll into into a ball then press it. You can make out into any shape you like
7. Place the meat piece in the plate containing breadcrumbs and cover all sides with breadcrumbs.
8. When you are done doing this for all the minced chicken, you can either bake them directly in oven for 30 min or keep them in freezer for future use.

I made about 20 pieces from this batch and bake a few every weekend for the little toddler.its healthy and yummy!

J moments #3

Today at dinner drinking soup
J:  nice soup

He saw onion in the soup, one hand holding spoon , the other one waving
J: bye bye onion

J: aaammmm. Nice soup

Lucky onion, someone bid it goodbye before being eaten

Steamed pork in bean paste

I can't remember if I ever posted this but if I did, it must be on pork rib. Nowadays I don't purchase pork rib anymore. I will buy "ruan gu" ( soft bone) from the butcher. The reason is that both types fetch same price but one is with lots of bone which can't be eat and another can be consumed wholly. So I opt for "ruan gu" for soups, stew or steamed dish like this one.

1. Marinate pork overnight with shao xing wine, bean paste, chopped garlic and soy sauce. Be careful not to overmix the bean paste because it is kind of salty.
2. At the time when you wanted to cook, just add bit of water and a handful of wolfberries and steam for 20 minutes. I usually use rice cooker to steam when cooking rice. I always promote parallel tasks especially during weekdays when after work time is limited.
3. Before serve garnish with spring onions.

This is one of my favorite food since childhood and I will definitely continue loving it.

J moments #2

J: mummy see see saw.
Mummy: what
J: seesaw. Seesaw!  (pointing to the big ikea clip that wee use to seal up opened plastic bag. He opened it so it lies flat )
Mummy:oooooo (kids are so imaginative)

Mummy: baby eat bread (giving him the potato bun)
J: no!! No! Too big
Mummy: J eat bread, it's not bread
(after trying for a while, I gave up and break into smaller pieces and shoved into his little mouth)
J: yummmmmm (satisfied face)

Note: same case happened last weekend when I gave him grapes..all these while he took within fussing. I took the grape and bite half of it then passed back to him and he ate it.

J moments #1

There are a lot of things that I would like to record down about how baby J doing things, talk, or progressing. I am creating a new series of logs on this. I will try to recall and write down a few that I remembered from past weeks

Moment 1-1
Mummy: J, says dinasour
J: sai-no-no
Mummy: nono, dinasour!
J: sai-no-noooooo!
Mummy: okay... (thinking that he can only usually only catch the last syllabus "sor" but he made it into "sai" as the first syllabus sound "ai". to complete the whole word, he needs 3 syllabus, so he just put dino to sino (sounds sai-no) and repeast "no" to make it 3 syllabus making sai-no-no)

Moment 1-2
J: Mummy, knock knock bloon. bloon where? (bloon is how he pronounced balloon, hand knocking his tummy then quickly hold the balloon behind him)
Mummy: huh? (
J: Mummy, knock knock bloon where? (repeated this a few times until I finally caught what he was trying to say)
Mummy: Oohh. knock knock balloon (my hand knocking his tummy)
Mummy: baby, where is the balloon?
J: Here!! (grinning and pull out his balloon, so repeated this cute actions dozen of times)

Moment 1-3
J: Mummy, kipendor
Mummy: ???? (puzzled)
J: Mummy, kipendor (looking impatient already after 3rd time saying this)
Mummy: Oooo!! Key - open- door. Say properly baby, it's "take the key to open the door".

Moment 1-4
Going to our car park at our condo, we have to go down a flight of stairs. Quite many stairs for a toddler that picked up walking steadily just less than a year.
J: Mummy, down! down! walk! (gushing down my body when I was carrying him and pushed me away)
Mummy & daddy: Wait baby, wait... (going after this monster that's trying to walk down the stairs by himself)
J: Mummy, go ! go! (told me to go away, and not to hold him)
Mummy & daddy: Careful baby (stiff body and still a stair away from him, heart beating like crazy)
J: Mummy , go! go! (pointing away)

For that, we have to let him walk down the ~15 stairs by himself with the hope he doesn't fall off and if he did, we can catch him in time.

Moment 1-5
Every once in a while at home wanting to drink juice
J: Mummy, no more make juice.
Mummy: Ya, daddy not making juice now. You already had it in the morning
J: Daddy, no more make juice
Daddy: yaya.. no more make juice

Loh eggs

One day I received 4 boiled eggs from full moon package. I am not the particular person who loves boiled egg so I need to find a way to make them more interesting to consume. Quickly I went to prepare the mixture in a pot. Star anise, cinnamon powder, 5 spices powder, sugar, soy sauce, dark soy sauce and water all went in. Heat the pot and stir till all mixture dissolved. Let place the peeled boiled eggs in and let simmer for 15 minutes in very low heat. Later just let them sit in the pot for overnight. There you have the eggs ready. Eat with rice or put into the noodle soup

Milan: Eat

Most of the people I know told me to shop in Milan. But I didn't at all. I waited until I am in Paris to shop. Main reason is that I still have another flight to take to Paris and we were using EasyJet. This Easyjet is somehow annoying because you are not allow to bring a carry-on and an extra handbag/laptop bag/etc. Meaning that I need to squeeze my sling bag into my carry-on luggage. My carry-on luggage is already quite full and if I squeeze the sling bag in, it's almost impossible to zip it alone. We only have a checked in baggage which is almost 20kg too. On the last flight we measure was 19.9kg. So what i can buy must be real light and have to be hand carry. That suits me because my plan is to buy bags and I have to hand carry them no matter what as they are too expensive to be checked in and face the consequence that someone in KLIA might open up my bag and take them, and I need to do VAT return and might need to show the immigration the stuff I purchased if being asked. I am serious about the part where someone in Malaysia might open the bag while in transit or before the bag comes being placed on the conveyor belt. 

Another part that I would like to talk about is why we have only 1 checked in baggage. Yes, MAS allow us to check in one each, meaning that we have 2 for both of us. The problem is not that. We experienced it already so I can really say that I am glad we only bring 1 checked in baggage. We had to pull and carry all our bags through bus, train, subway or metropolitan and face the danger to be pickpocket.  The subway/metropolitan in Europe, almost all of them don't have lifts. Some may have elevator which still hard to walk around when we have to take our on transportation to reach hotel to check-in and to go to the airport after check-out. For us, I hold had a sling bag on my shoulder and carry the 14" trolley bag. For my hubby, he had a camera bag sling on across his body, a back pack and a checked in baggage worth of ~20kg. Imagine if I need to carry a 20kg up all the stairs, not only 1 stairs in subway. Sometimes you need to change a few trains and go below few levels of underground to reach the station of your destination train. 

So I only manage to get few bags for myself and family and those are mostly long champ which can easily be folded to put into my bags. I only bought the later 2 long champs when we were about to leave Paris on plane because I realized I can squeeze another 2. 

Alright back to the original posting. Milan!!!

We took flight from Rome to Milan because it's more convenient for our friends who stay in Varese to pick us up from airport. We were staying close to the border of Switzerland and if the weather is clear, we can catch a glimpse of the Alps. However we only had 2 days in Milan, in exact 1.5 days as by the time we arrived, it was already 11am.

We went for some local food. This is the bruschetta which we usually see on small piece of grilled bread. We had this one a size of meal bread. One of this is served for one person as meal. Mine is with the bacon and mushroom.

Then we went back to rest for a while before making our way to Milan city. We took the metro there as it's hard to find car park and going around in city in car. This is the famous Milan duomo. 

Then we walked around the place and this picture was taken in front of the Italy castle for the past Kings. 

For dinner we had the crepes. Crepe is actually pronounced as "crap". We had one of this for everyone. I had mine with sangria, the cocktail drink with lots of fruits in red wine.

The next morning, we had the Italian breakfast in local bakery. Croissant and cappuccino. 

Without wasting time, we drove to our wishlist, Lake Como. The wedding scene in Star Wars was filmed  in one of the villa at Lake Como.

We had a full 4 course meal for lunch.

At night, we went for local pizza. They were really yummy!!! 

We finished it up by sharing a tiramisu between my hubby and I. 

Our Milan trip is more like experiencing the life of Italian, something different in our Europe trip. Love it.

Pesto and salami spaghetti

Here's are the some kitchen ingredients that I bought from Milan during our trip there. Forget about the bottle in the middle, the other 2 at the sides are pasta sauces. There are 2 types of salami, one is the normal type, the other is spicy version. 

On Thursday I made pasta for dinner although we had pasta on Tuesday by our dear friend Fang Fang. I used the pesto sauce I got from Milan and some left over cream from Tuesday.

For the salami, I used up all that left from Tuesday. I cut them into strips using scissors. Some of the strips are a little larger than the rest as I lost my concentration after a while because I need to prepare dinner and struggled with my toddler pulling my legs and clothes asking me to go out to play with him in the living room.

The ingredients are very simply as pesto sauce already made up much of them.

So what I did was only to cook the salami and mushroom slices in olive oil. My friend told me she started to move to fresh shitake mushroom as it gives better flavor. I agree with her that's why I did the same too now and better still, it's cheaper than the white button mushroom or the grey ones.  After the 2 ingredients are cooked, and sucked up all the juices, scoop half of the pesto sauce into the pan and add a little water and 2 tablespoon of cream. By the way, the pesto sauce came in the bottle that said it's ready for 5 pax. So I guess 2 of us make roughly half of the bottle. :p I made a mistake by adding in salt and the outcome was a little salty. I forgot the salami and pesto sauce were already flavored. When the pasta sauce is ready, off the fire and mix the pasta which I already cooked al dente earlier. Just mix them up and there you are.

Rome: The ancient and modern

On the day we were going to depart from Santorini, I was quite sad because we are going to need to walk a lot again. We had a quick lunch in McD when we stopover in Athens. I pulled some attentions when I uploaded this picture to facebook of me eating the Greek wrap. People were asking why am I eating McD in Europe trip? We had not much choice, we wanted a quick lunch and wifi so McD is a pretty good option available that time. I have not been eating fastfood for long and I had never tasted the wrap in Malaysia before so I can't comment if it tasted better or worse. 

When we arrived in Rome, it was already pretty late at about 4pm. Late in terms of going out to do visiting. But I already planned to go to Castel St Angelo for night photo shooting of the city and the weather seems pretty good so we checked in to hotel, dropped our bags and hopped on to a bus to go to our destination. We purchased Rome pass and it's a very good deal as we used the public transport and the 2 free tickets to any museums for 2days. The pass actually can last for 3 days. Lucky that we went because the scenery from the top of the building was really beautiful.

After having a good rest, the next day we went to some attractions. Throw coins into trevi fountain and you will be back to Rome soon.

Pantheon is a great architecture considering when it was build the technology was not present yet. There is a hole at the dome and rain can drop into the hall but there are some tiny holes to let the water flow out on the ground where the rain falls. In Pantheon also resides the first 2 of Italian kings remain.

The churches/basilica in Rome has this nice paintings and cravings on it's wall or ceiling.  The 2 pictures below was taken in Basilica of St. John Lateran.

Who goes to Rome without going to Colosseum? No one. We went there pretty late. It's a combo ticket which allow you to enter the Palatine Hill, Roman Forum and Colosseum all together. We used our Roma pass on this.

We waited till the night and the place was lighted up. There were a lot Indian illegal immigrants that sells things like umbrella, souvenirs, scarves and accessories. They are really versatile. When it rained, they will sell umbrella and poncho butwhen the sun came out, they will sell scarves and others. We saw some of them running when the police came and raid.

When we went to Vatican museums, we saw a lot of naked statues. There are some which has leaf covering the guys private parts. 

Look at that! They have a statue of a lady  breastfeeding her child!

All the roof are decorated with paintings and cravings.

We are not allowed to photograph in Sistine Chapel but my itchy hands took this. Micheal Angelo painted this on the ceiling!

After the walk in museums, we came out and went to St Peter Square and just sat, lazying around. We didn't go into St Peter Basilica just because we were not interested and the queue was damn long.

Here's the picture of the basilica. No, Pope didn't stand at the balcony on that day.

We had gelato and my hubby didn't know what is gelato until he sees it.

This is the lift that goes up to our hotel. Super small, it only fit 2 of us, 1 carry on and 1 checked in baggage. Imagine that!

OK that's all about Rome. I didn't have any photos on the food we ate. We always go for pasta and once pizza in a pizzaria.

Our first stop of Europe vacation: London

London is our first stop in Europe vacation plan. We arrived at quite late around 8pm in the hotel. Both of us were so tired to walk to find food. We settled in a shabby Chinese restaurant nearby not because we miss our local food but that's the only restaurant that still open at 9.30pm and is not a pub. The food was so bad that both of us can't finish half the plate. I have no intention to describe the menu or what we ordered here. Later we grabbed 5 litre water from the 24 hours convenient store and headed back to rest. 

The next morning we went to see Big Ben and the took this picture with the famous red double decker bus passing by. We walked around the area and short path along river Thames and took many pictures. The eye of London is also around there. Too bad I didn't capture anything using my phone. The weather was great in the morning, sun was great and picture looked great too. However later half of the morning the sun went into shades behind the cloud. After that the pictures that we took were more dull than earlier version. 

We went around to Westminster Abbey, St James Park and the Buckingham palace too. After fish and chips lunch at Bag O' Nails, we went over to the British National Museum. Before that, I want to say I hate London's food because I don't like fish and chips as they are fried food although the review of the restaurant looks pretty astonishing. We had great time in British Museum. The place has very wide range of artifacts ranging from Egypt, Assyria, Greek and many more. The mummies that are in this museums are more than what we see later in other museums. History is beautiful. We walked and sat when we saw bench. We did this a lot, which helps in keeping our legs and body last long for the whole day visit. 

There is a long wall which some parts of it missing and the title of the craving is Lion Hunt. I can't remember in which category did we see this, Assyria maybe. I took this particular picture because it is interesting seeing the lion which was shot by many arrows vomiting. I suspected it was meant to show the tiger vomiting blood after severely injured but does this really happen in real life? Maybe no.

I tried to capture a panorama shot of the British museum but the stupid stitching in my phone repeated the banner twice.

Later at night we went back to the Big Ben area but a different angle for night shots. It drizzled a little so I had to help holding umbrella to cover the camera and photographer when he was at work.

The next day, we went for stadium tour at Arsenal Emirates stadium, took us half of the day.

After lunch we went around to St Paul Cathedral and then to the Tower Bridge and stayed there until WL completed his night shot.

On our last day here, we spend the whole morning in British National museum. It was WL's favorite museum. It has a super huge dinosaurs remains (bones), whale, mammoth ..........

After lunch we just wanted to lazy around, so we took the subway to Harrods to have a look and go back hotel later on.  .

Both of us just wanted to rest because of the walking we did for the past few days and we were glad that our plan was going to Santorini next because there was where we rested and regained our energy before going to Rome. Rest early for the next morning flight.