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