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...