INA Oriental Seafood Pan Mee

Usually Sat & Sun are my days off from cooking. We combine dining out and Chinese take out for these two days and I just glad that I don't have to think of what to cook. But sometimes in order to save money, I would cook for Sunday dinner. The above is an example of those days. I wanted to try this new product that is offered at Mytasteofasia.com. INA Oriental Seafood Pan Mee that is flavored with abalone and scallop definitely sounded attractive. So, I grabbed the noodle and told my hubby let's try this noodle tonight. I took out some prawns, assorted fish balls, tofu and baby spinach and I was all set.

This INA pan mee is the thin version as you can see from the picture above and I totally loved it!! I actually much prefer this thinner version than the original wide version. It really smooth to the throat and the soup was tasty too. It came with dried seaweed, dried corns, etc and thus when you eat the noodle, you can taste the flavor of seaweed too.

A cheap dinner for us. If we dine out, it would be $40-$50. Order Chinese take out would be $20. So, this $5 dinner is considered cheap. Satisfying nevertheless.





This is the picture of the noodle which I grabbed from Mytasteofasia website. For those who already ordered from that website, please give this noodle a try next time. For those who are living in the U.S. and misses M'sian food, this website really is a one stop shopping heaven for you, provided you couldn't find these products at your local Asian markets. Please go support my friend R online store, okay? :) As you can see, I love to help my friend promote his online store. :P

Vermont Curry (House's Curry Sauce Mix)

The other day I asked my hubby to buy me 2 boxes of Korean instant noodle bowls (12 bowls per box), one shrimp flavor and one Kimchi flavor and you know what he came home with? He came home with 2 boxes of shrimp flavor and 3 boxes of Kimchi flavor and two packets of House sauce mix. That's a lot of noodle bowls I tell you! As for the curry mix, I think he couldn't resist the pretty girl that gave him the sample of the curry and thus bought the sauce mix. He said it's really good so he buy (but who knows! LOL!). He paid $2 each and it's on promotion I think.

This Vermont Curry (it's Japanese curry basically) tasted pretty good and healthier because no coconut milk needed and everything cooked in 30 minutes. For $2 it's actually pretty cheap considering it has two packets inside and one packet alone can serve a big pot of curry.

My lunch today.

Closer look of the curry.

I added mixed vegetable instead of potatoes since we are not really a fan of potato. I really like this House brand and next time would probably seek out other flavor curry to try. Cheap, healthy and so convenient, that's my way of cooking.

Golden Prosperity Soup

This soup has:

Dried bean curd sheet
Dried bamboo Fungus
Dried lily buds
Tofu
Tang hoon (Bean Thread Vermicelli)
Egg drops

I cooked them in Swanson chicken broth for ease. You can use homemade chicken stock of course.



One bowl of this can serve as lunch already, as it is quite substantial. I love this soup so want to share it with my readers, now you have one new soup to cook for your family. I think this soup is great to serve during Chinese New Year. You can substitute dried bamboo fungus with dried fish maw or simply put both. Hmmm...would be good with crab meats, imitation crab sticks too huh?

Steamed Siew Mai (Pork Dumplings)

Decided to use the leftover filling from the Wontan Rolls with Nori Sheets to make Siew Mai. Serve with my homemade Chili in Oil. Everyone loved it! Guess next time I would have to make more.



Siew Mai is an item commonly served in Dim Sum restaurant. Some more expensive one added one whole shrimp in the siew mai. Homemade siew mai is healthier because the restaurant added lard in the siew mai to make it tastier. Not sure whether they still use lard in preparing their siew mai these days? Because of this we always order the Har Gow (Shrimp dumpling) instead of siew mai.

Wontan Rolls with Nori Sheets

I got this inspiration from Tigerfish. She used nori sheet in this recipe and at that time I thought what a great idea. Never realized I can wrap a sheet of nori seaweed in the usual spring roll wrapper, wontan wrapper, egg roll wrapper or like her, beancurd sheet before deep-frying before, what an excellent idea don't you agree? I promised Evy to make her some egg rolls because her daddy was quite reluctant to order it from outside because of the unknown oil used in deep-frying the egg rolls. He is scared of trans fat.


Cut the nori sheet into the appropriate size for the wontan wrapper. Place filling like above and roll it. Seal with water.


How the rolls look like when done. Remember to pinch and seal the edges with water too.


Deep-fry in low-medium heat canola oil until golden brown.


Ready to serve with Thai sweet chili sauce!

Verdict: Absolutely delicious! Love the extra bite the nori sheet provided.

Thai Pineapple Rice

I received a packet of Asian Home Gourmet's Thai Pineapple Rice ready made paste from a friend who returned from Singapore. She gave me a few other ready-made pastes too. Last week the pineapple was on-sales for $1 each, down from the usual $5 and thus I bought three of them. Thinking of just eating it fresh but then I remember I have a packet of pineapple rice paste that I needed to use, and therefore this dish was created.

This pineapple rice is selling for $9.99 at the M'sian restaurant here. Now I can just buy the paste and make it myself for less, the paste is selling for $1.69 in Denver and actually tasted very good. Furthermore, I can serve a family of four.



I wanted to present my pineapple rice in the pineapple shell because it is how it was presented in the restaurant. Little did I know, cutting out the pineapple fresh was not an easy task at all. Now I am wondering whether the restaurant charges more because of this extra work of preparing the pineapple shell for presentation?