Banana Fritters/ Kuih Kodok

I finally found a quick and easy way to get rid of my ripen banana instead of use it for banana cake. That is to make banana fritters, it's easier, less thing for me to wash, and can use as little as one banana! I don't know about you, but I hardly left with 3 ripen bananas that nobody wants to eat. It will either be one or two and that was not enough to make banana cake or muffin. So, I adapted my recipe from Isha's kuih kodok. And since I only have two black banana looking at me instead of three, this is what I did,

BBQ Pork Noodle/ Char Siew Mee

Another one of my lazy dinner. Decided to make char siew because I saw this and also pork was on sale. So, I marinated my pork a day before with LKK char siew sauce, hoisin sauce, honey and dark soy sauce. Then, I baked in preheated 400'F oven for 20 minutes on one side, and then flip it over, brush with more marinade and baked 15 minutes more. After that broil for 3-5 minutes.



I added fish balls and cabbage. I can't eat a meal without a veggie and since I didn't go grocery shopping at the Asian store, I was left with green cabbage. I just blanched it in hot water (since cabbage can be eaten raw), but what a mistake! It didn't go well together at all because the cabbage was still kinda hard. As figure, my hubby didn't eat much of the cabbage. I myself couldn't finish all the cabbage too! :P What a mismatch!

Pad Thai/Phad Thai My Way

I bought a thin Thai rice stick noodle recently just because it caught my eyes. Was thinking to probably fry mee siam with it since it's very thin. Then, not sure what happen it became Pad Thai. I guess I needed to use the lime that I bought last week. I have the tendency to buy limes and then I have no idea what to do with it. Normally it just sat in my refrigerator and turned bad!

All I know was Pad Thai needed to have fish sauce, tamarind juice and sugar and I have all of those so I was all set for my Pad Thai experiment.
So here sharing with you my imprompto version. If you like your pad thai really sweet, just add more sugar. Drizzle more fresh lime juice for a more sour taste.

Golden Bread Shrimp Rolls

This recipe has been with me for 19 years. I was asked to prepare a dish in the final day of my secondary school cooking class. At that young age, I knew nothing about cooking, let alone came out with a recipe. Thus, this recipe was courtesy of my mom. I recalled I really enjoyed the cooking class but have completely no idea how I ended out in that class (Maybe we have an option of cooking or sewing?). Anyway, Janet, if you are reading this, do you still remember? I remembered we made yam ring together because you were my partner. I think you helped me cooked this dish too because I remembered you mixing the shrimps with curry powder? Correct me if I'm wrong! It is ages ago!

Recipe is posted at Allrecipes.com. I posted this recipe in 1999 when allrecipe.com was just launched. I received a very negative review in 2003 and I was telling myself, I can't believe she ruined this for me. Come on, who is going to try a recipe with a one star rating, at least I won't. Then, recently I found out I got another review and it was 5 stars!! How happy that made me and kudo to him to give this one star recipe a try and loved it! So, calling all readers, if you tried this recipe of mine and loved it and is a member of allrecipe.com, PLEASEEEE go and give me a good review okay? Preferably 4 stars and above lah....hahaha....show a little love or support for me leh. *so thick face*

Okay, I took the trouble to snap step-by-step pictures here. This recipe is very easy and you should have all the ingredients at home. I made this again because I want to post a picture at Allrecipe with the intention to entice or seduce more people to give this a try. :P Please do go to allrecipes for the complete recipe.

Click next for step-by-step pictures guide:

Har Mee / Prawn Noodle/ Hokkien Mee

Looks good or not? Want to eat or not? What if I tell you, you can make this too! Want to learn the secret or you already know?



I made my har mee with thinly sliced pork slices, tofu pok, shrimps of course, fish balls, kangkong, hard boiled egg and spaghetti noodle (if you look closer enough, you might spot it). Then top with crispy shallots and can I say it was super delicious!! The secret is the Delimas Prawn Noodle Paste! You got to try it to believe it! If you like the curry laksa, this is even better, very authentic, just like having a bowl at the hawker store, might even taste better than some. I made a mistake by adding a little of my super spicy chili because the broth is spicy in itself, so I was sweating while eating it, but so shiok man. This paste got the thumb up from me and even my high expectation hubby!

Note: If you try making the prawn mee before, you know it's pretty time consuming. But with this, your can have a delicious bowl of prawn mee in less than 30 minutes. One package yields about 4 bowls.

Dinner Aug 1, 2007

Featuring my home cook everyday dishes again. Usually it is just a meat and a veggie dish sometimes plus soup. But today I misunderstood the amount of pork I had, I thought it was only a bit of pork left so I took out another veggie. Hence, we ended out with three dishes. So, a lunchbox for each of us for the next day. :)


Simple stir-fry baby bok choy with garlic and oyster sauce. Then top with crispy shallots.


Stir-fry pork slices with scallion, ginger and dried red peppers in dark soy sauce.


Stir-fry Kang Kong in shrimp paste and chili sambal. Recipe is here. Same cooking style.

Stir-fried Tom Yam Chicken

Did you ever run out of brain juice as to what to cook for dinner? Every weekdays I have to think of something to cook so that I can prep them while Edda is taking her naps and ready to cook when hubby return from work.
Today when I opened my refrigerator, I saw a packet of sliced chicken breast. I have totally no clue of how to cook it but I needed to marinate my chicken first. So, I just simply marinated it with some soy sauce, shao xing cooking wine, white pepper, garlic powder and cornstarch, then in the fridge it went.
Then when Edda was taking her nap, I went to look at my fridge again. Saw some cilantro that was about to go bad, so I have to use this. Normally I would cook them in curry powder, but I wanted something different. Saw a bottle of Tom Yam paste sitting there and "light bulb", it should go well together. Saw some yellow bell pepper, used that as well and came out with my stir-fry tom yam chicken.



Thai basil will go very well with this dish too. This is a very simple dish to prepare and cook.

Goodies from Ipoh, Malaysia

My friend, M just got back from Malaysia and look what she brought me! The famous Ipoh biscuits, chicken biscuits and more. Needless to say I am in biscuit heaven right now, enjoying these delicious biscuits with my morning cup of coffee and later afternoon tea. Ahhh...bliss!

M, if you read this, thank you very much! It's really appreciated.

P/s: These are all so yummy! I'm such a glutton that I might finish all in a few days! *gulp*

Introducing: Uncle Ho Bak Kut Teh Instant Noodle

When I first saw this, my thought was, "Whao! Instant noodle also got bak kut teh flavor now!?" Then, "Hmm...not sure it's good or not since I never eaten or serve my bak kut teh with maggi mee before, a bit weird leh. How would it tasted like?" *Very curious & unsure* (BTW, we called all instant noodle, maggi mee here)

If you asked me, I probably wouldn't have gotten it because my taste bud is still very traditional or I love to stick to my familiar ground. Some how I received this from Ray and glad that I was given a chance to try it.



Verdict: I liked it! Evy loved it too and kept saying, "Mmm..hao zhi" (yummy) She even drank the soup and finished all the Goji/wolberries I put in there. So Ray, thanks for given me (a skeptic!) a chance to try this! :)

Note: Next time use less water than the amount called for since I found the flavor a bit diluted. Use 400ml instead or suit yourself. Then again, I love very strong BKT flavor.

For those who wants to give it a try, you can buy it here.

Edda Update

Little Edda is now crawling every where in the house. She loves to explore every thing by touching and tasting. Her current obsession is standing with the help of an object. Ever since she discovered that she could stand on her own with help, she has been standing up in her crib calling me to wake up. It is a sight to be seen every time I open my eyes to see her standing there with her head pop out looking at me. I caught her climbing up the stairs the other day, she was on the third stairs before I realized it and she just gave me a big wide smiles, like telling me, look mommy, look at what I have accomplished!

She now has three teeth on top and two teeth at the bottom, making it five. With the new found teeth, now she is eating cookie like a pro. She realized that she could actually bite the cookie into pieces as well as chocolate. I gave her some spaghetti with meat sauce the other day and she loved it. She just slurping the noodle away. She loves to eat by using her fingers, and yes she finally achieved pincher grasp and can pick up thing as little as a rice grain. What a mommy nightmare! She is drinking through her sippy cup, mommy glass and even surprised mommy the other day by drinking through a straw cup! *only happen once though*

She claps her hands when she is happy. She would lean on our shoulder when we asked her to. She also loves to sing along with mommy whenever she hears the alphabet song "ABC". It is too cute to hear her sing along with her baby voice because I never realize baby can sing too! Now I am teaching her how to wave bye-bye and can't wait to hear her utter her first word preferably "mama". ^0*

Look at her trying to play with her sister's notebook. LOL!

Dak Gochujang Bulgogi (Korean Spicy Chicken Dish)

Gochujang is a spicy Korean hot chili paste that used widely in Korean cooking. While paying for the smallest tub I could find, I saw the lady behind me with her two giant size Gochujang tubs, I mean GIANT tubs, man. I was wondering whether she open a Korean restaurant?

After seeing Cooking Ninja's Gochujang Bulgogi, I told her I need to buy myself Gochujang so that I can try this dish of hers. I made a little twist and made mine into dak gochujang bulgogi ~ Korean spicy chicken dish. This was the first time I cooked a dish using this method. Frying without oil and with all the marinade until the chicken was cooked. This dish was sweet and spicy and tasted pretty good. However, my hubby took a tiny bite and won't touch the dish again. I wonder whether the color put him off or what? I asked him why he didn't like this dish and I received a silent respond. So, until now I am still clueless. Well, nevermind, more for me! ;)

My Simple Rojak

Rojak is a Malaysian salad. The sauce is mainly made of shrimp paste, chili and belacan. I named it my simple rojak because of the limited ingredients, I only had jicama and seedless cucumber. I used the ready-made rojak sauce from CKC and it was delicious as it tasted very authentic and a wee bit spicy. I topped mine with extra ground peanuts and toasted sesame seeds.

Want a bite of my jicama?

P/s It definitely need "grilled you char kway", fried tofu, mango, pineapple and green papaya to make it more "shiok"! But I have none yet very tham jiak (glutton) and thus this "bor liao" (simple) version. :P

Bean Threads Noodle

I would love to introduce my readers to this bean threads noodle. It was made with mung bean starch, potato starch and water. It tasted a lot like the Korean Jap Chai noodle (made with sweet potato starch) with the chewy texture and transparent look. This noodle was introduced to me by my Chinese neighbor and I have since hooked. This is good serving it cold, in soup or stir-fry. I haven't tried it in soup yet because I like to serve it cold with fresh vegetable.



Method:

1) You need to boil the noodle until cooked. Set aside.

2) Then, stir-fry the chicken or pork (marinated with soy sauce, pepper, sesame oil) with garlic & carrots until cooked, dish out and set aside.

3) Thinly sliced the seedless cucumber, lettuce and prepared the cilantro.

4) In a big bowl, add in noodle, fresh veggies (3) and (2), mix well. Then seasoned to taste with soy sauce, Chinese black vinegar, salt, sugar and sesame oil. Toast well.

5) Garnished with toasted sesame seeds. Serve as is.


This is how the package looks like. Of course other brand works fine too.

Sundubu Jjgae (Korean Spicy Bean Curd Stew)

Sundubu Jjgae is a Korean thick and spicy bean curd stew. Traditionally people crack an egg on top of the stew before serving, many still do it now. Some serve this stew with clams, clam juice, seafood, onion, enoki mushroom and other vegetable. This stew is normally served boiling on the table over a hot fire in a Korean pot.

I came to love this soup while dining in a Korean restaurant. I just love the spiciness of this soup and the flavor of Gochujang. The silken soft tofu with the Gochujang made me want to drink this stew non-stop. This stew is especially good while eaten during the cold winter days because it will just warm up your body instantly. Therefore, it will be my favorite soup to cook during winter. What a surprise, my hubby loves this soup too!

Product Review: Delimas Stir Fry Sauce

I have been invited by Ray, the founder of mytasteofasia.com to do product review on Delimas brand. I gladly accepted his offer because as a Malaysian, I love to help out a fellow Malaysian and to introduce delicious and easy to prepare Malaysian food to other Asians around the world. This paste is handy for a busy mother who just doesn't have time to do it from scratch. Or for working parents who just dead tired from a day work. Even for a novice cook who wants to impress her friends.



I was cooking for a friend who is moving to Boston and she requested a spicy Malaysian dish. What a better way to try my Delimas stir-fry sauce on the shrimps that I was intended to cook.



This is how the package looks like. It tasted like the authentic Malaysian Sambal Prawns and quite spicy.

Below is what I did:
Ingredients:

16 extra large prawns
6 cuttlefish balls, cut each into 3 slices (or you can use cuttlefish or squids)
A handful of green peas
1/2 small yellow onion, sliced
1/4 yellow bell pepper, sliced
1/4 orange bell pepper, sliced (or red/green bell pepper for colors contrast)
1 package of Delimas Stir Fry Sauce

Method:

Heat oil in a wok. When heated, add in prawns and cuttlefish balls, stir well. Then, add in the stir-fry sauce and the rest of the ingredients except peas. Stir to mix well, add a little water if need to. Lastly add in the green peas, give it a quick stir and serve hot.


Another way of cooking it:



One packet of sauce is a lot and thus I saved some to make this Sambal Green Beans. I added dried shrimps, sliced shallots and a wee bit of fish sauce. This sauce will be good for shrimps and petai too! Kind of a all-purpose stir fry sauce.

Chai Tau Kuih My Way

Blur_mommy, you got it right! :) Great guess!

Even though I called this dish Chai Tau Kuih but there is no Chai Tau (radish) in this. I used my leftover rice pudding from the wah kuih, cut it into cubes, added some scallion, bean sprouts, chai por, shrimps, garlic, eggs and some of the leftover topping for the wah kuih to come out with this. The sauce for this dish is simple, just dark soy sauce, soy sauce, sugar, chili paste and white pepper.

Haven't had this for a long time, so this dish was very satisfying. As you can see, I made it quite spicy too! Next time I can probably just make the rice cake to make this dish. Since it has wheat starch in it, the shape holds up really well during stir-frying, it won't turn mushy and soft. One thing though, I need to do better with my eggs, should have stir-fry the eggs first, take it out and add in later since my eggs seem to be missing from all the stir-frying (and I want to see big pieces of fried eggs!).

Chinese Rice Bowl Pudding

A good friend of ours came by on Saturday and I decided to make him a treat. I made this Chinese rice bowl pudding that looks like chwee kuih but actually it's a wah kuih. First time trying this and glad that it turned out well and my guest said it's very good. :)



I used Gina's Wah Kuih recipe. The differences I noticed between wah kuih and chwee kuih are for the pudding, wah kuih has wheat starch in it and thus making it more chewy/bouncy in texture as opposed to soft. Also, wah kuih has more ingredients in filling as opposed to just chai por. Before this, I have not heard of wah kuih.



As for my filling, I added dark soy sauce and sugar when stir-frying. Also drizzled some Sriracha hot sauce for extra spiciness. I didn't bother to steam the filling with the rice pudding together (lazy me as you know!), therefore it might look more like a chwee kuih.

Stay tuned for what I did with the extra rice cake. ;) Or you would love a guess?

Thai Green Chicken Curry the Short-cut Way

I love Thai green curry because I find it to be more versatile. I can use it to make seafood curry, meat curry or simply a vegetarian curry and all will turn out delicious. I also used it to fry rice or stir-fry my chicken.

I called it short-cut because I used the ready made paste by Mae Ploy. You can find it in any Asian supermarket these days, this brand is quite popular. Once opened, you can keep the paste in the freezer. What's great about this is you don't even have to defrost it, just take it out and use it straight from the freezer, very convenient.

All you need to make a good Thai green curry is a little Thai palm sugar (1tsp.), fish sauce and coconut milk (or milk) and above 2-3 Tbsp. of green curry paste. For the above curry, I used skinless and boneless chicken thighs, sliced yellow onion, sliced kinda thick carrots and frozen green beans. This curry is spicy as it is but if you really can take the heat, you can add Thai bird eye chili as well.

A Day at the Zoo

Look how I crammed two of them in one stroller. LOL!


This is Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, the only mountain zoo in the United States at an elevation of 6,800 feet. It has herd of Giraffes and now total at 19, and the fun part for kids are they get to hand-feed the giraffes "giraffe crackers".


Look at this Orangutan and the amount of carrots he can stuff inside his mouth!



This is the baby orangutan that has been abandoned by his mother. Thus the caretaker has been taking care of him and we can view him from 12-4pm each day. This caretaker even sleep with the baby orangutan in that viewing window!!

Edda zoned out at the end of the day and fell asleep in the stroller.

Potstickers/ Guotie

I made Guotie last week, which is a pan-fried version of Jiaozi. In U.S., we called this potstickers. I have been deciding on whether to deep-fry it, boil it or pan-fry this little dumplings and ended out with pan-frying them. I think it's healthier than deep-fry and so much quicker too (since I can do a bunch of them in a non-stick pan). I love the crispy skin at the bottom and soft top skin with moist and juicy filling. Normally we serve Guotie with vinegar soy sauce and chili.

I made two dipping sauces for my potstickers. The top one is sweet vinegar soy sauce with chili oil and chopped scallion. The bottom one is salty vinegar soy sauce with sliced gingers. Of course I also have Sriracha hot chili sauce as an additional dipping sauce (not shown). Got to have my chili right? :)

Dried Lotus Seed Soup

My mom used to cook this soup for us because it's a cooling soup for warm weather. She actually spotted this while shopping at the Asian grocery store in Denver (she was here during my confinement) and recommended me to get it. Now I look for it whenever I go shopping in Denver.

You can also buy each individual ingredient and make this soup yourself, which I did also. This soup consisted of dried pearl barley, dried lotus seed, dried lily bulbs, dried dioscoreae (wai san), dried foxnut and dried polygonatum (yuk chuk).

I boiled it with chicken drumsticks. For sweeter taste, you can use pork ribs or pork bones. I only used half packet of the barley because too much of it makes the soup muddy.

For those who lives in Denver area, you can buy it at VietHoa Supermarket for 50 cents each, cheap right?

Common Chinese Herbs Translation:
Rhozoma Dioscoreae (wai san)
Astragalus Root (pak kay)
Angelicae Radix (tong kwai)
Codonopsis Pilosula (tong sum)
Polygonatum (yuk chuk)
Panacis Ginseng Radix (ginseng, ren shen)
Fructus Lycii (kei chi)

Chicken Curry Rice Dinner

Another one of my super lazy dinner. Can't you tell, I'm lazy all the times? :P This curry is made with Malaysia Traditional Specialties Chilliz - Meat Curry Paste. I added fish balls for Evy.

As for the rice, it's also my lazy version. I just threw cumin seeds, coriander seeds, dried curry leaves and turmeric powder with the rice and cooked in a rice cooker. After I tasted it, I knew this was not the way to do it, should have fried the spices in butter until fragrant then add in the rice and turmeric powder and not forgetting adding some salt, then transfer it to the rice cooker and let it cook. The rice will taste better this way as oppose to my lazy version. Lesson learned eh! Nevertheless, it tasted great with lots of curry gravy mixed in (everything in curry tastes good lah ;P).

P/s: June, I'm trying to meet your demand of posting more spicy food. LOL!

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Decided to make something fresh and refreshing for snack this afternoon. Going with the roll here as I have seen all sort of wraps/rolls popping out in the food blogs to beat the heat of Summer. Also, I had this at V's house recently, so decided to make my own as well.

My hubby loves Vietnamese spring roll. He has to order this every time we go to eat Pho (Vietnamese beef noodle) in a Viet. restaurant. We like the dipping sauce there too, as you can see I was trying to reinvent the sauce for my spring rolls here. Haven't made this for years and learned that to wrap the roll really tight with filling was not easy. Mine was still kinda loose unlike the one we used to in the restaurant, this was also my hubby complain. Luckily, he liked my dipping sauce. :) Guess next time I would have to practise wrapping the roll tightly without breaking the skin!




The fillings for my spring roll as seen above are:
Sliced romaine lettuce, cilantro, tanghoon (vermicelli) and cooked shrimps (or you can use thinly sliced 
cooked pork) .

Click below for my dipping sauce recipe:

Tagged: My Favorite Food ...

I got lucky and got tagged by East Meets West Kitchen for this tag. As a Malaysian it was really hard for me to come out with my favorite food. Come on...there are so many delicious food in M'sia thus how to pick just one? I managed to pick two as my favorite though because these are the two dishes I got to have whenever I go back to M'sia.

1) Nasi Lemak - They called it a Malaysia National Dish and I couldn't agree more. I don't think there is any one Malaysian who don't know what is nasi lemak. We basically see it selling every where in M'sia, be it in a fancy restaurant or mamak stall (hawker stall), either comes wrapped in a fragrant banana leaf with a minimal ingredients or serves in a plate with extra ingredients such as curry chicken, beef rendang, sambal cuttlefish, fried egg, etc, I love it all. :) For those who don't know, it is rice cooked in coconut milk and screwpine leave.

2) My second love is Penang Assam Laksa. I just love the sourness and spiciness from this gravy along with freshly sliced pineapple, red onion, cucumber, lettuce and fresh mint. Of course lots of fish as I made my own, I can afford to add lots of fish with the fat fat noodle top with shrimp paste, who could resist? At least I couldn't! Oh man, now I need a bowl of Penang assam laksa!

OK, now I have to pass the tag to __. Who's the lucky one?


The Cooking Ninja

Fresh from the Oven

Teczcape

I Sha

Stream in the Hip Desert


BTW ladies, no obligation okay? ;)


**Start Copy**

Proposition: What is your favorite food in your state or country?

Requirements: Find some info about the food and show delicious pictures of it?

Quantity: FIVE PEOPLE.

Tag Mode: You leave their blog and post link and add to the list below.


Mybabybay loves Asam Laksa from Penang, Malaysia

JustMyThoughts loves Penang Char Koay Teow

My Lil Venture loves Laksa Sarawak

Monterssorimum loves Teluk Intan Chee Cheong Fun

Chinnee loves Melaka Wan Tan Mee

PeimunLeah loves Hakka Lei Cha

Hui Sia loves Crispy duck skin from China

Karen loves Pan Mee

Simple American loves Cheese Enchiladas

Nicole Tan loves Char Tau Kueh

velverse loves Otak-Otak

Giddy Tiger loves Dim Sum

may loves Roti Bakar

Selba loves Gado-gado

Chen loves Satay*

eastcoastlife loves Shanghai Buns

Kev loves 蕃薯旦

Bokjae loves Ipoh Sar Hor Fun

Cooking Momster loves Penang Heah Koh & Chee Cheong Fun

Blur Mommy loves Clam Chowder

Granmother Stories loves everything

East Meets West Kitchen loves Good Dim Sum

Little Corner of Mine loves Nasi Lemak & Penang Assam Laksa