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!

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?

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.

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

Noob Cook

Kedai Hamburg
The Adventure of my cooking diary

Beachlover's Kitchen

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!

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.

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.

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. (^.*)

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.

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.

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.

Deep-fried Chicken and Drama

Here sharing with you a picture of my deep-fried chicken drumsticks using the Seah's Spicy Fried Chicken Spices that I bought in Singapore. The packaging looked so good that I just had to buy one and try. I coated the drumsticks with cornstarch before deep-frying, thus provided extra crunch to the drumsticks. Then again I would say we don't really have to waste money on fried chicken spices because it is easy to make one at home.

And for the Anon who recommended me to watch 命中注定我愛你, I would love to say Thank you very much because it was really good! 谢谢你哦, 真的很好看哦！Any other good recommendation? I am watching "Tokyo Juliet" now. Also, I would love to try the Korean drama since you all said it's better than Taiwan Idols drama, any good recommendation that is completely downloaded? The list is so long that I don't know where to start! Thanks in advance ya! :) Oh preferably not those sad ones, I hate to cry like crazy.

Stir-fried Green Beans with Bell Pepper & Carrot

I created this dish because I was tired of eating the green beans cooked in my usual way. I wanted to slice it differently and cook it differently for a change. A fresh dish to serve on my dining table instead of the familiar dish that we used to. So, I thought cutting the green beans into smaller pieces would be a start. Then followed by carrot and red bell peppers. I added minced garlics and minced sweet salted turnip (chai por) for extra flavor. I kept the seasoning easy because I wanted it to be light. So, I seasoned it to taste with salt, chicken granules and sesame oil. The green bean was crunchy and infused with the fragrant of sesame oil. I like it and will be cooking this dish in future for variation.

What is your favorite way of stir-frying the green beans?

Pandan Yogurt Cakes

I was inspired by Peony to make yogurt cake. Using yogurt and oil instead of butter to make cake do sounds healthier. Also I can use the leftover yogurt to make baked donuts so it is a win win situation.


It actually turned out pretty good. The sweetness was just nice for me and the texture was soft and moist.


I slice it open to let you see the texture of this cake.

Recipe adapted from Epicurious. Yield 10 large papercups (a dozen for the normal one) as shown above. Of course you can play with different flavor of your choice.

Deep Fried Imitation Crab Legs with Dessicated Coconuts

This dish was created because a reader asked me to come out with a dish which had imitation crab meat, coconut and preferably deep fried for her party. This was what I suggested for her and thought I would share it with everybody as well. Did you know that imitation crab legs can be deep-fried into such a great looking appetizer before? Now I know deep-fried imitation crab legs actually tasted divine especially with the added dessicated coconuts. My recipe is super easy too as I don't like complicated recipes. So, everyone can make this!

Blog LOVE Award

Thank you Beachlover's Kitchen for giving me this award. I will help you spread the LOVE! :)

(Pls. don’t remove)Credits: Elements/Paper by Dani Mogstad/ Layout by JennyL
Rules:

1. Don’t remove the credits when you post the image
2. Please link back to the person who tagged you and pass this tag to many of your friends
3. If you have more than one blog, please post this to all of your blogs so your other blogs can be listed to the master list too.

4. Remember to come back here at A SLICE OF LIFE (pls. don’t change this link and leave the exact post url so I can add you to the master list to help increase our rankings and improve our Technorati Authority. 6. Spread the BLOG LOVE FEVER!!

BLOGGERS:
1.Jenny Said So2.Simply Jen3.This and That4.Bargain.Sales.Deals.5.A Slice of Life6.Aussie Talks7. When Mom Talks8. Me and Mine<9. Creative in Me10. For the LOVE of Food11. Little Peanut12. Pea in a Pod13. It’s Where the HEART Is14. Around the World15.SugarMagnolias16.kathycot17. buhay misis 18. when mom speaks19. walk on red20. kathycot cooks21quicker822. Eds Mommy Life23. My Precious Niche24. Just Me.. Eds25. Can of Thoughts26. Designs By Vhiel27. Vhiel's Corner28. Anything and Everything in Between29. Good things in life...30. Precious Moments..31.Beachlover 32.beachloverkitchen. 33. Little Corner of Mine. Your blog is next.

Now I'm going to spread the Blog Love to these wonderful bloggers from all over the world:

Rainbows
Kedai Hamburg
More than Words
Noobcook
Teczcape - Escape to Food -recipes, cooking, reviews
Smell and Taste are My Memory

Saucing Around, Jo's Deli
KookyCulinary

Ling's Passion

Spaghetti with Chicken and Shrimps

I love this easy one dish meal. I usually cooked this dish when I was tired of eating rice or when I ran out of idea of what to prepare for dinner or just plain lazy. I always keep bottled spaghetti sauce, canned mushroom and whole wheat or whole grain spaghetti in my pantry for a day like this. However, instead of the usual ground beef or ground pork, I love to use chicken and shrimps. I actually got this idea from a friend who gave us some of her spaghetti to try. I love this combination and have been cooking my spaghetti this way most of the times.

Sweet and Sour Pork Meat Balls

I love to make my own meat balls. Is it just not for soup, sometimes I make it to cook dinner like in this case sweet and sour meat balls. Baked meat balls are good as afternoon snack. But for dinner, I wanted to add some vegetables to go with it to make it more balance and colorful.

Making Pork Meat Balls:
1 lb. ground/minced pork
Season with salt, white pepper, sesame oil and Worcestershire sauce.

Method:

Mixed the above together and stir with a spoon until the mixture turned gluey and sticked together. Either use your hands or a melon scoop to create pork balls. Place on alum. foil lined baking sheet and bake in preheated 350'F oven for 15 minutes or until cooked. Set aside to cool.

Sweet and Sour Sauce:
2 Tbsp. honey
2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar (or any type of vinegar)
2 Tbsp. tomato ketcup
1/4 tsp. salt

*Mix the above in a bowl, stir well and set aside*

2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/4 red onion, cut
1/2 carrot, sliced
1/2 zucchini, cut

Method:

1. Heat wok with oil. When heated, add in garlic and zucchini, fry until zucchini is almost half cooked, add in carrot and onion. Fry for a while. Add in pork balls. Stir-fry until pork balls are heated.

2. Add in the sauce mixture. Stir to coat well with the pork balls. Stir for a second and dish out to serve.

Kick Ass Blogger Award

Thank you Rainbows again for sharing her Kick Ass Blogger award with me! :) I would love to share this award with fellow blogging pals who deserved it too.

Noobcook
Mochachocolata-Rita
Teczcape - Escape to Food -recipes, cooking, reviews
Dhanggit's Kitchen
My Kitchen Snippets

Saucing Around, Jo's Deli

Do you know any bloggers that kick ass?

Maybe they've got incredible, original content. Or they're overflowing with creativity. Is it someone that helps you become a better blogger? Or a bloggy friend you know you can count on? Or maybe it's someone who simply inspires you to be a better person... or someone else who sends you to the floor, laughing your ass off.

Whatever the reason may be, I'm sure you know at least a couple of bloggers that kick ass. Well... why not tell 'em so?

LOVE ON 'EM

• Choose 5 bloggers that you feel are "Kick Ass Bloggers"
• Let 'em know in your post or via email, twitter or blog comments that they've received an award
• Share the love and link back to both the person who awarded you and back to www.mammadawg.com
• Hop on back to the Kick Ass Blogger Club HQ to sign Mr. Linky then pass it on!

Tofu with Corns

My cooking is getting easier and easier these days BECAUSE I am addicted to Taiwan Idols Drama Series!! I have no idea I can watch Taiwan series on You Tube until my hubby recommended one for me to watch. And since that one, I was hooked!! HELP!! I have been watching Chinese series from China on T.V. all these while and have no idea that the Taiwan actors and actresses are so handsome and pretty compared to the China one. I saw a clip while in Malaysia and remembered mentioned it to my older sister, wow the actors are getting very good looking. And now I know that was actually a Taiwan idols drama series. So, my cooking has been majorly affected by my addiction and not to mention baking because what baking, I want to watch my series!! I am so afraid to start on a new series, or else everyone will suffer in my household!

Okay, okay, enough rambling. Here sharing with you my lazy and easy tofu with corns dish.

Tom Yam Chicken with Green Apple

This dish was created spontaneously. Never thought of using apple in this dish at all. Not until I finished marinating the chicken meat and slicing the onion. I saw a few small green apples sitting on my counter top that I would really love to finish. We were invited to a friend's house for lunch and later he showed us around the campus that he was teaching. It was a private campus and it has a few grown apple trees there for you to help yourself. It must be the human instinct or what because I couldn't stop myself from picking my own organic apples from the trees! Of course the apples were small and sour, just like eating green apple. Since Tom Yam was sour and this apple was sour, I thought they would be a good match, thus I sliced some up for use in my cooking.

The result? Definitely a good combination because the sourness from the apple compliment the Tom Yam paste very well.

Rice Wrapper with Nori and Stir-fried Jicama

Experiment with wrapping my stir-fry jicama (Mung Kuan Char) with Vietnamese rice roll and nori sheet.


Resulted a delicious wrapped rice rolls! I served this kind of rice roll with Thai sweet chili sauce. What a good match and we couldn't get enough of this rice rolls. The nori sheet acts as a barrier so that the rice roll won't be too wet from the stir-fry jicama filling. In addition to that, it also acts as a bonus favor to the rice roll. Got my thumb up!

This is definitely a great appertizer to serve in a party since it is served as a cold wraps and great eaten cold.

Click here for my estimated "mung kuan char" recipe.

Lettuce Cups

Mung Kuan Char (Stir-fry Jicama) on lettuce = Lettuce Wrap Malaysian Chinese way!


This is what I enjoyed tremendously during Chinese New Year Eve reunion dinner. Top with some homemade sweet and sour chili and I'm in heaven! The crunchiness and juices from the jicama pair with the fresh and crunchy lettuce (I used iceberg lettuce here), how can it not be delicious? Of course during Chinese New Year, I top mine with slices of baked chicken too, oh man, I'm salivating just thinking about it.



I used minced shrimps, carrot, Chinese mushroom, jicama and garlic for this stir-fry jicama (mung kuan char). Seasoned with salt, sugar and chicken granules.

Black Pepper Pork

Another one of my easy home cook dishes: Black pepper pork with onion and red bell pepper.

Ingredients:

1 boneless pork chop, sliced thinly
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced thinly
1/2 yellow onion, sliced thinly
2 tsp. LKK black pepper sauce
1/2 tsp. black soy sauce
1/2 tsp. sugar
A little water

Method:

1. First, marinate the pork with a little salt, chinese cooking wine, white pepper and cornstarch.

2. Heat up wok with oil. When smoking, add in pork slices, stir-fry until pork is no longer pink. Add in onion and bell pepper. Stir-fry for 2 mins. Add in sauces and sugar and a little water. Stir to blend well and serve hot.

Note:
Of course you can substitute red bell pepper with other colors bell pepper. I like red because it's sweeter.


I am sharing this dish with Culinarty's Original Recipe blog event. Check it out every month on the week of 15th for the round up.

Beautiful Site Award

Oh wow, I was given this Beautiful Site Award by Noob Cook. I would love to say thank you Noobcook for awarding me this. Now I would love to pass it to the fellow blogging friends below:

My Kitchen Snippets
Kedai Hamburg
More than Words
Rainbows
Beachlover's Kitchen

Barley Drink

While blog visiting, noobcook's Lemon Barley Drink post reminded me to make some barley drink for my family. She made her version of barley drink and photographed it beautifully with the added lemon slice. Usually barley drink is fairly easy to make, you can make one with just water, barley and rock sugar. However since I have the sweet dates and sweet winter melons, I decided to add it into my barley drink.


I used slow cooker to make this. I added all the ingredients with the amount of water I like and turned it on High. Should be ready in 4-6 hours. I used 2 Chinese sweet dried dates, about 1 cup dried sweet winter melons, 3/4 cup barley and 3 quarts water. At 5 hours, before turning off the electric, I added yellow rock sugar to taste. If too sweet, add more water until it reaches your desired sweetness. Actually the resulted barley drink is quite sweet, so only little bit of rock sugar is required.

Stir-fried Zucchini with Minced Shrimps/Prawns

Is stir-fry zucchini a popular dish in China? As I only had this dish at my Chinese friends house. At first I was not used to it but I grow to like them cooked in this way. They usually cook it plain but I added minced shrimps into my variation. I tried to recreate this dish at home as in slicing the zucchini in the similar way. Slicing it thinly really makes it nicer to eat.



This dish is easy as well, only three main ingredients needed, minced shrimps (made from 6 jumbo shrimps), 2 zucchinis and 2 cloves of garlic, chopped. As for the sauces for this, I used LKK hot bean paste, dash of salt and chicken stock granules (optional). This dish would be as good without the hot bean paste too, keep it simple. My stir-fry dishes tend to be fairly easy, only the slicing and preparing part took a while.

Here, I presented you with a new dish to cook for your family (if you never have zucchini cook in this way before) and I hope you enjoy this dish just like we did.

Easy Focaccia Bread

Why easy? Because it is a no knead Focaccia. Just mix the ingredient together and let it proves in the refrigerator overnight and the next day you will be rewarded with Focaccia bread.



Mine turned out looking like bread sticks aren't they? I sprinkled my Focaccia with dried oregano and rosemary. This bread smells heavenly while baking as my house was infused with the fragrant of herbs and olive oil.

Merdeka Open House 2008: Mee and My Malaysia: Stir-fried Silver Needle Noodle (銀針粉) or (老鼠粉)

This noodle is known as silver needle noodle in Hong Kong but "Rat Noodle" (老鼠粉) in Malaysia and Singapore. These noodles are named this way because it is shaped like a needle or rat's tail. It is made of a mixture of rice flour and wheat starch or cornstarch. I have known this noodle as 老鼠粉 and it is usually served in clear soup or stir-fry in Malaysia. I used to eat this as a kid so it brings back memory of home. When I saw Florence making her own silver needle noodle, I wanted to make it too. I have all the ingredients and the recipe seem easy enough. Little did I know that making this noodle actually was quite a tedious process. The process of shaping this noodle each and every single one took me a while. I even enlisted Evy as my helper, but this helper hardly help at all. After she done with a few, she said, "Mommy, I don't want to do it anymore, my hands are tired." Oh man, my only kitchen helper, who normally loved to play with dough quit on me. So, I had to make the rest on my own. Then, I got a mishap when boiling the noodle. The instruction said boil until the noodle turned transparent. But no matter how long I boiled, it never turned transparent. At the end, I just drained it under the cold water, and after I did that, it turned transparent. But the damage was already done, my noodle was soggy and sort of stuck together even after I applied some oil on it. However, I was not going to throw all my hard work in the trash, so in the refrigerator it went (like the instruction said).


The next day when I took it out from the refrigerator, the 老鼠粉 was stuck together in a big lump. So, I had to separate each noodle by hands. I ended out with a lot of broken pieces but I went ahead and stir-fry my 老鼠粉 and the above was the result. Not too bad I would say and actually quite delicious. Not sure I would make it again soon though but will definitely make it when I have the craving again.

Ingredients:

老鼠粉/ rat noodle
Shredded carrots
Thinly cut Chinese green, or bok choy
Chopped garlics
Sliced yellow onion
Pork or chicken of your choice
Oil for cooking
(A)
Soy sauce
Dark soy sauce
Oyster sauce
White pepper

Method:

1. Heat up oil in a wok. When heated add in meat of your choice, garlic and stir-fry until meat is 80% cooked. Add in onion, carrot and green and stir-fry until cooked. Add in rat noodle and sauces (A), stir-fry until well mixed. Serve hot!


I am serving this dish to Merdeka Open House 2008: Mee and My Malaysia hosted by Babe in the city_KL. Do visit her on Aug. 31st for the round up to celebrate the Malaysians' Independent Day. Hereby I also want to wish all Malaysians a Happy Merdeka Day!

Dong Quai Chicken Herbal Soup (當歸汤)

This Angelica soup (當歸汤) or "female ginseng" is widely used in Chinese traditional medicine to treat gynecological ailments, mild anemia, fatigue and high blood pressure. This soup is also cooked for new mom in the last two weeks of confinement. It is also one of my favorite soups and I cook this soup 2-3 times per month. It is best for women to drink this after each menstrual cycle to revitalize. Bonus is this soup is very sweet and delicious.

Arte-y-Pico Award

I received this lovely award from Sweet Jasmine at Rainbows. Thank you Sweet Jasmine! :*

Before passing this on, here are a few set rules to follow.....

1) You have to pick FIVE blogs that you consider deserve this award for creativity, design, interesting material and also contribute to the blogger community regardless of language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and a link to his/her blog to be visited.

3) Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given him/her the award itself.

4) Award winners and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of the "Arte-y-Pico" blog so everyone will know the origin of the award

5) In compliance with said RULES, the award winner must show the RULES.

Now, I would love to share this award with these five lovely blogs:

My Kitchen Snippets
Kedai Hamburg
Mochachocolata-Rita
More than Words
The Adventure of my cooking diary

Love Letters Using a Pizzelle Press

Love letters or Kuih Kapit, one of my favorite Chinese Lunar New Year snacks. I was using the Cuisinart Pizzelle Press that I just bought and it only made 4" pizzelle. The size was a bit too small to fold it into a triangle or fan shape. If I rolled them into egg roll shape then it would take up a lot of storage space. So, keeping it just the way it is was the way to go for me. As you can see, it was tinted green, that was because I added Pandan extract. I simply love the smell of Pandan (screwpine leaves) so I couldn't help myself from adding some.



Pretty thin right? Of course it was not as thin as the traditionally kuih kapit but this was easier to do. You can get the kuih kapit recipe from Amy Beh (Kuali) if you are interested. I shall try the Pizzelle recipe provided by Cuisinart in my next attempt to see the difference. Oh I learned this tips of using the Pizzelle Press to make Love Letter through J from Singapore. Kuih Kapit is one of my favorite CNY cookies so I was thrilled to learn of this tips. Now owning my own Pizzelle press, I can make this thicker, non-traditional kuih kapit version anytime I feel like eating them. Great! ^.^

Note:  it turned soft after it's cooled down.  I had to toast it in the toaster oven to make it crisp again.

Easy Stir-fried Shrimps

Sharing an easy home cook shrimps recipe here. It's so easy to make anyone can make it. You can add yellow onion, scallion, color bell pepper and red chili into this recipe as well. Just season to taste with more salt or soy sauce.