Friday, October 31, 2008

Best Ever Pumpkin Cake



Like many others, I don't really like my pumpkin cake with a lot of spices. But I do like the fragrant of cinnamon powder but not too much. So, I created this recipe to suit my personal taste. This pumpkin cake is moist and soft and totally delicious. My keeper pumpkin cake recipe thus far. Bonus is very easy to make and absolutely divine.


Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Seafood Veggies Curry



On lazy day, I love to cook easy, throw everything in one pot meal. I love to add a lot of vegetable in my seafood curry because I love veggies. With Claypot curry mix, I don't even have to worry about preparing coconut powder or coconut milk because it has been included in the packet. However, I don't really like this Claypot fish curry mix as compared to it's rendang beef. I preferred Delimas vegetable curry paste better. That's solely my own opinion okay. This big pot lasted us for three meals!

Ingredients:


1 packet of Claypot Nyonya Fish Curry Mix (also available at mytasteofasia.com)
3 fish fillets, cut

1 bowl of shrimps

8 fish balls, cut into half

1 bowl of fried beancurds (taufu pok), cut into half

2 carrots, sliced

1 cup of frozen green beans

1/4 of head cabbage, cut


Method:

In a big pot, add in oil in medium heat, fry the spice mix until fragrant. Add in the recommended coconut milk and all the vegetable. Simmer until the cabbage has soften, add in the seafood and fish balls, simmer for 10 minutes. Serve with white rice.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Cheap Sushi Lunch



Want to eat some sushi but too lazy to make your own? Want to save some money instead of going to the restaurant? Well, you can buy this at Cosco for $5.65 each at my area. It is definitely double the amount that we found at other supermarket. Furthermore, it is very fresh. If you look closely at the picture, my hubby already stole a piece of the sushi before I could take a picture. LOL! Beachlover, told you you made me want to eat some sushi the cheap and lazy way. :P

Instead of eating out, sometimes we just buy this prepared meal at Cosco, like sushi, pizza or rotisserie chicken. It is way cheaper than dining out in a restaurant these days.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Healthy Cookies


Twin towers



A glimpse of the healthy cookies I submitted for the Home Food and Garden magazine March, 2009 contest.
I can't publish the recipe now but will share this wonderful cookies recipe with you all next year. One of my best cookie recipes yet, bonus is very healthy and crispy and delicious! Can't wait to share this recipe with my readers.

I will be off this weekend to spend a night at my friend's house. She organized a little get-together "makan" (eating) session with my fellow friends living up north since we haven't met for quite some time. I was thrilled and really looking forward to meet all my friends again. I baked her some of this cookies to show my gratitude, hope she and her husband like it. (^.^)

The recipe of this cookies is posted here!  Enjoy!

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Stir-fried Bay Scallops in Thai Green Curry Paste



I bought some bay scallops when it was on sales for buy one gets one free. I loved to buy it to substitute for chicken breasts. I was thinking hard on how to cook the bay scallops and came out with this dish. The deep-fried tofu was a great addition in this dish as it soaked up the flavor and sauce of green curry and went very well with rice. Now I am curious, how do you normally prepare the bay scallops since it's so small?

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Green Tea Flavored Baked Donuts


Adding green tea powder for a change. You can add cocoa powder for a chocolate flavored donuts as well (recipe won't be the same as you will need more cocoa powder to bring out the flavor).


I split it open to share the texture of this donuts. It's still soft the second day.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Butterfly Award




I would love to thanks Family First for awarding me this Butterfly award. I am happy to know that you think my blog is one of the coolest blogs out there. *smile* Congrats on your blog as well.

As per the rules of accepting this award, I wish to now award my fellow bloggers which I think have one of the coolest blogs!

More than Words
Soy and Pepper

I sincerely hope you will accept this award from me, so, please :-

1. Put the logo on your blog;

2. Add a link to the person who awarded you;

3. Nominate 10 other blogs;
(or only to those deserving ones???)
4. Add links to those blogs on yours;

5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.


Congratulations!

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Curry Chicken



Curry chicken, a very common dish in Malaysia. In Malaysia, every where you go, coffee house, night market, street food, restaurant, you will see curry chicken, weather it's Indian, Malay or Chinese, we hardly go without curry. As you see my curry chicken has no potatoes in it because none of my family members like it. And since potatoes are mostly starch, I prefer not to buy it as well. My lazy way of preparing curry these days is to use the drumsticks. I hate to chop chicken into smaller pieces, drumstick is cheaper than breast meat and I don't have to cut it. So, why not? A delicious curry chicken is super easy to cook with a premix.

Ingredients:


8 chicken drumsticks
1 ChanHong instant rendang mix. (available at mytasteofasia.com)

1 packet of dried coconut powder (
available at mytasteofasia.com)
Cooking oil


Method:

In a big pot, add in oil. Turn to medium heat, when heated, stir-fry the rendang mix until fragrant, add in drumsticks. Stir to coat well and add in the coconut milk. How diluted the coconut milk is depended on you. More coconut milk used like me, you will end out with a curry chicken (we love the gravy for rice), less coconut milk used, you will have your rendang (dried chicken curry). Simmer for 2 hours.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Stir-fried Whole Wheat Spaghetti



Friday night is noodle night for us. I will cook rice with two dishes sometimes plus soup on Monday-Thursday. On weekends, we eat out or takeaway/to go. What meal I cook depends on what grocery I buy, so sometimes we will have something different, most time we will have something familiar. One can't be creative all the times right? What happen if I ran out of creative idea to prepare dishes and I have nothing interesting to post in my blog? I saw a Chinese cooking show before where he was asked the same question and he said a cook will never run out of ideas to cook, if you give him the ingredients, he will cook the dish for you. If you are a cook, when you step into someone else kitchen, you will still be able to come out with a delicious dish with the ingredients at hands. Right or not? Anyway, above is my Friday noodle dish: Stir-fry whole wheat spaghetti with asparagus and chicken.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Asparagus with Chicken



Oh mine, how lazy I am getting these days! I didn't even bother to place it on a plate before taking picture. After this picture then I realized that it will definitely looks better if I serve it on a plate first before taking picture instead of taking it straight from a wok.

Another of my home cook dish: Stir-fry asparagus with chicken in shrimp paste sauce. You can add chili sauce (sambal) and season with fish sauce and a little sugar. I didn't bother to add chili sauce here because of my kids, even though they can eat spicy food but still not too spicy.

I started watching Korean drama recently. Just finished Full House and Goong, they were nice and very cute. Next K-drama would be Coffee Prince (lots of recommendation), but before that I want to watch the Taiwan drama first, so that I don't have to concentrate real hard to read the subtitle. LOL! Sometimes I missed it because I didn't read the subtitle fast enough. Adoi!

I started on Ying Ye 3 + 1, I found this drama very funny and with the exaggerated Kung Fu scene, very funny indeed (of course I like Ming Dao too)! Gigi, if you haven't watched this, this is another of my recommendation. (^.*)

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Green Tea Yogurt Cupcakes/Muffins



Looks like I am addicted in baking yogurt cake right? Actually it is also I bought a big tub of plain yogurt so I have to finish it. This time I tried adding green tea powder into the yogurt cake. This cake has a slight fragrant of green tea and not too sweet.

Monday, October 06, 2008

Orange Cookies



Actually I wanted to make my favorite Crisp Lemon Cookies but I didn't have enough lemon extract so I changed it to Orange cookies instead. We were given a packet of Lemon cookies by a friend and it was coated with powder sugar and tasted really yummy. Thus, it had given me an idea for my next cookies.



I made this orange cookies using my Crisp Lemon Cookies recipe with one modification. These cookies were really crispy and all of us loved them and it tasted great with the added powder sugar.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Eggs Zucchini



Another of my newly created eggs dish with zucchini. I never cooked this dish before because this version of the eggs were more soggy and soft. But I wanted to try something different again. I think I really converted my hubby from not eating zucchini to eat zucchini because he never liked it before. Now I used it to stir-fry and even in cooking curry and he ate it all. This simple dish turned out to be surprisingly delicious. I will sure to cook it again.

Dark Chocolate Yogurt Cake



Because I liked this healthier version of yogurt cake so I decided to play with the recipe. So, I created this chocolate yogurt cake. Mine turned out to be black in color like a black cake, hahaha.... Reason being I was using the Special Dark cocoa powder and thus created this specially dark cake. :)



The texture of this cake looked different than my Pandan yogurt cake. It looked spongy but in reality it was soft and moist and packed with chocolate flavor. My daughters loved it and asked me to make it again.