Dinner June 27, 2007

Simple dinner tonight. Was meant to stir-fry Chinese green, "chai sin" with oyster sauce but decided against it at the last minute. When hubby walked in and saw the dinner, his comment was, "Why so pityful?"

The yam rice has chicken, dried shrimps and yam pieces. I cooked the soup with my homemade chicken stock, enoki mushroom, fresh winter melon strips and sliced tofu. Pityful meh?

My 1st Pair of Crocs!

Crocs was marketed by three men from Boulder, Colorado. So you can imagine crocs selling every where here. Not only that, people of all ages are wearing it every where. My first thought of this shining, bright color funny looking shoe was, "oh, are they ugly!" Then, we started to hear people bragging about how light and comfortable this shoe is and once they have this on, they don't want any other shoes. The list goes on.

Well, while shopping at REI few days ago, I saw this crocs again. Then I spotted this Mary Janes crocs and thought to myself, "This is actually not bad looking, very lady like, perhaps I should try it on." Once I tried it on, I was sold and I got to have it. I guess it's the same with every crocs owners. I picked this color because I don't want people to know I'm wearing crocs. Just want a shoe that is comfortable enough that I can bring my girls scrolling in the neighborhood and won't hurt my feet. My old slipper did that, ouch!

Go to crocs.com to see more designs and flip-flops.

BBQ Ribs

My experiment with oven BBQ ribs:

Cut the slab into half and rub it with spice rub. Put it in the disposable aluminum tin and let it marinate for at least 2 hours in the refrigerator, covered.

Then, bake in 300'F oven covered with foil for 3 hours. After that, take it out and spread it with your favorite BBQ sauce and bake uncovered for an additional 1 hour. When done, broil in 500'F oven for 5 minutes. Spread the top of the ribs with additional BBQ sauce or dripping from the pan before serving.

Verdict: Surprisingly tender and moist, but not fall off the bone soft.

Butter Cream Crab Legs

We used to eat Butter Cream Lobster at a Chinese restaurant here and it was delicious. However, because of lack of customers the owner moved to California and away with the only authentic Chinese restaurant here. Now, we have to drive to Denver in order to eat dim sum or any authentic Chinese dishes. It's an hour drive away and thus can't have authentic Chinese dishes as frequent as we like. :(

Okay, back to my butter cream crab legs. Since butter cream went so well with lobster, I was thinking why not try it with crab legs? Away from the norm such as Chili Crabs, Black Pepper Crabs or even Ginger Scallion Crabs, why not try something different for a change? And tada....this dish was created.
The verdict: Yummy! It's definitely more fattening than the other version, but hey it's okay once in a while. :)

Orange Cream Cheese Pound Cake

As you can tell, I am loving cream cheese pound cake! I adapted this recipe from lemon pound cake. I don't have any orange at home and thus the use of extract. But it would certainly fragrant packed with added orange zest. Not that this is not fragrant, but I like the burst of flavor when I bite into the zest. ;)



Another look of the cake.

Nyonya Changs for Dumpling Festival

My first Nyonya Chang, recipe courtesy of LeeLee.


So greedy with my filling that I think I overstuffed every one of them. :P

This is my changs for the Dumpling Festival this year. :) Instead of my usual Hokkein bak chang, I decided to try LeeLee's Nyonya chang. I love Nyonya chang but I always thought it called for coconut milk. But when LeeLee posted her recipe, I saw that there was no coconut milk involved and I have all the ingredients at home. So, why not give this a try. I ended out with too much filling, greedy as always and afraid that it won't be enough. Thus, I still have some leftover filling in my freezer ready for the next batch (I'm out of the bamboo leaves at the moment).

Even though this was my first attempt, I am very happy with the result. The sweetness and saltiness are just nice and I am glad that I get to eat rice dumpling this year! Thanks LeeLee for sharing! :D

One thing about this chang though is a lot of cutting work since every ingredient needs to be cut into small pieces. I think I stood in my kitchen for more than an hour just cutting the ingredients.

Tang Hoon Soup

I was making a pot of chicken stock with my leftover roasted chicken bone cavity and what better way to use this stock than to serve it with tang hoon and fish balls (besides making soup)? Just soaked some tang hoon in warm water to soften it, thaw out some DoDo fish balls and washed some green. Then, cooked the fish balls in the stock and quickly blanched the veggie as well. Dished out and set aside. Prepare a bowl with some soften tang hoon, top with some green (I used baby bok choy) and fish balls and pour the hot chicken stock on top and garnished with crispy fried shallots and chili padi. This was a very easy dinner to prepare and delicious to the last drop.

Chinese Tea Eggs

I always wanted to try the tea eggs ever since I had it at Lily's house last year. It definitely took me awhile but better late than never. Since I am a sucker for easy or recipe that uses less ingredients , I decided to try making it with a recipe I found online that uses tea bag and five spice powder. Well, I guess if you want a good fragrant tea eggs, don't look for short-cut and use Lily's recipe instead. These tea eggs of mine have no fragrant at all and way too salty! Anyway, I took this as an experience and a practice run.

I really like the marbling effect on my eggs. "Swee bor?" (Pretty or not?) Sorry for the yellow lighting since I have to take this at night.

New Product Testing

I decided to give this ChanHong Penang Assam Laksa Instant Sauce a test run when I couldn't find Hup Loong brand assam laksa in the Denver Asian store that used to sell it. So, desperate need calls for desperate measure and I was glad that I saw this at mytasteofasia.com.



I was quite skeptical at first because looked at the picture at the packet, it looked more like a curry laksa instead of assam laksa. And there was no review written on it. But my love for Penang assam laksa prompted me to buy one packet and try it. Desperate need mah!



I am so glad that I gave this a try. This is simply delicious and way better than the Hup Loong brand spices. For the Hup Loong brand, we need to add a lot of extra ingredients to make it good. Whereas, with this brand, the flavor and taste are there, all we need just some lime juice and lots of shrimp paste. So good! I strongly recommended this! :)



What I add, yields 3 bowls:

900ml water
1 packet of the paste
1 999 brand 15oz (425 gm) tomato sardine with half canned of tomato sauce
lime juice to taste
shrimp paste to taste (Hae Kor)

You don't have to add chili padi for this because it's spicy enough. As for the garnishes, it's the norm, shredded cucumber, red onion and pineapple. If you grow your own mint leaves in the house, use that as well. As for me, see no mint leaves because I was unwilling to pay $2.95 for a small packet of mint!!

If you can find this in the store where you live, grab it! If not, you can also order from Ray like me. Hehe...

Edda Update

I asked her to smiles for the camera and this is the best she came out with.


Snacking on her fingers food. No pincer grab yet!

Look at her two teeth at the bottom! Finally smiling for mama.

She is still not crawling yet, but it will be soon. She can sit up by herself from a laying position. I just found her sitting at the end of her crib playing with her toys this morning. And I thought she fell back to sleep because she was so quiet, later I learned that she was actually eating on toilet paper that I put in a basket! Adoi....she loves chewing and eating paper. Yeah, I forgot to look at the end of the crib and totally missed her sitting there happily chewing on the toilet paper. *Duh Mommy!*

She can also scoop from one place to the other. Mostly going backward because she still hasn't move forward yet. She will be on all four, even hands moving forward, but her legs just stay there, and then she just scoop back to a sitting position again. And somehow by doing that, she can shift herself from one place to another.

Update: She crawls today! (June 16th, 2007)

Fish Paste Roll

This is my version of fish paste roll in beancurd sheet. I marinated the fish paste (ready-made) with chopped scallion, carrot and sesame oil. Then, spread it on a square beancurd sheet, roll it up swiss roll style and deep-fry until golden brown and crispy.


Cut and serve with Thai sweet chilli sauce. Delicious!

Whole Wheat Hokkaido Milk Loaf

Just out from the Breadmaker. I set it to medium dark crust color. Should have set it to light.


Soft and fluffy!


Spread with my brown sugar kaya.

Yum!

I wanted to try this Hokkaido milk loaf because everyone who tried it gave it a thumb up. Little did I know I didn't have bread flour in my pantry when I set everything out on the counter. Thus, the whole wheat flour was used and this whole wheat Hokkaido milk loaf was created.

I baked mine in a breadmaker using Sweet function just like Peony. I also brought it out during proving to punch it, knead a little and shape it before putting it back to the breadmaker and let it did the rest. I really satisfied with this whole wheat version and will definitely make it again. What's great about this recipe is it doesn't require bread improver and butter and can bake with a breadmaker.

Almond Cream Scones

Cream scones has been a buzz in the forums and blogs for quite some time and today I finally did my own version of it. This version is without butter, all it needed is heavy cream. The result, it's pretty good if you asked me. Even Evy grabbed two pieces and said it's delicious. Edda enjoyed one piece without the raisins. It's so easy to make too, just dump everything together and bake and you get cream scones in 12 minutes.

Yong Tau Foo Soup

Yong Tau Foo in Ikan Bilis Soup. For the filling, it's the frozen tub fish meat emulsion, thaw it overnight in the refrigerator and marinate it with chopped scallion, carrot and sesame oil. Mix well and stuff your veggie and taufu pok.

My short-cut ikan bilis broth recipe:

1/4 cup of ikan bilis (dried anchovies)

4 cups of water

1 or 2 tsp. of chicken stock granules

Dash of fish sauce, to taste

Crispy fried shallots

Method:

1. Add a little oil in a saucepan. Pan-fry the ikan bilis until brown and crispy. Add in water. Let it boil.

2. When boiled, add in the yong tau foo, seasonings and crispy shallots. Turn the heat to low and let it simmer until the yong tau foo are cooked.

3. Serve in a bowl and sprinkle more fried shallots on top. Serve warm.

Also the repeat, Yong Tau Foo with Sweet Bean Paste Sauce. The bean paste sauce recipe is courtesy of Rasa Malaysia. I simply love it!

Banana Cake

Since I have some leftover ripen banana in the freezer, I decided to try Yochana's Banana Cake recipe. This recipe has been tried by many and had received great reviews. However, can someone please tells me why my arranged sliced banana ended out like that? It shifted places while baking in the oven and ended out looking so ugly. I saw others who have nice banana slices laying on top unlike mine. Any tips/trick in achieving that?


No idea how it shifted from the top of the cake to right in the middle? Looks good though, LOL!



This is the part without the banana slices. Taste wise, I like this cake because it is really soft and moist. Definitely a keeper like the others said. Thanks Lucy! :)

Oh, I used Hugbear's link because it's very hard to locate Lucy's recipe in her blog. See how Hugbear banana slices are in placed after being baked? I wonder what's wrong with mine? *sigh*

Brown Sugar Kaya

I decided to experiment with my food again. Instead of the Pandan Kaya that I normally made, I tried my hand on the brown sugar kaya. The color of this kaya is quite yucky isn't it? LOL!

I used the same recipe just omitted the pandan extract and substituted the sugar with brown sugar and put everything in my breadmaker. It turned out in clumps and liquid separated, unlike the nice texture I got from my pandan kaya. Don't ask me why because I have no clue, thus I have to blend everything in a blender and turned out like the above.

Tastewise, it was like kaya with the fragrant of brown sugar (I did cut down on the sugar), not too bad at all. But I just dislike the color of this kaya, not appertizing looking at all. Guess next time I better stick with my pandan kaya. :P Or if I brave enough, I might experiment it with white sugar without the pandan extract and see what color it would produce. Hehe...

Green Tea Powder (Baking)

Since a few of you asked me about green tea powder, I thought I just post up a picture for you to see. So that whenever you are back in M'sia/S'pore you can go buy it yourself or ask someone to buy and ship it to you. :) This is the one I have been using and I really like the green tea fragrant it has.