Red Bean Roti Canai

While shopping at the Asian market one day, I saw this frozen red bean roti canai.  It reminded of the Chinese red bean pancake dessert that I had when I was in Malaysia, so I bought this on impulse.  I just pan-fried this oil free in a non-stick pan and it came out looking like roti canai instead of the Chinese dessert that I thought it was.  It just tasted like roti canai with red bean filling so I was kind of disappointed.  Edda said she didn't like it at all.  Oh well, guess we wouldn't be buying this in the future.

I think the one that I made here long time ago tasted better than this!

Roti Canai with red bean filling.

Chili Crab Claws!

While I was shopping at Sprouts one day with my elder daughter, I saw these gorgeous crab claws on sales for $5.99/lb.  The cheapest I have seen for sales was $3.99/lb.  But these claws looked big and tempting and it was Chinese New Year.  So, I asked my Evy, do you want to eat some crab claws and she said sure.  Hence, crab claws it is!

I had Chili Crabs in mind when I bought this and since I wanted a really easy recipe so I looked online and adapted the recipe from Food.com.  Of course I made some changes to suit what I had at home and viola, a chili crab claws was created.  We had it with bread as the gravy was so great to mix with bread (I was too lazy to drive 25 minutes away to an Asian market to buy mantau/steamed buns and deep-fried it, thus the alternative.).  Surprisingly my little Edda who was not so keen about the idea of Chili Crab, enjoyed it a lot.  I was quite surprised actually but looking at them enjoying their crab claws really made me happy.  They even requested me to buy more crab next time!  Hahaha...

Swirl Green Tea Vanilla Pound Cake

I have a block of cream cheese sitting in the refrigerator so I had to find a recipe for it.  I remembered I once made a orange cream cheese pound cake that was really good.  I should have follow that recipe with I adapted instead of trying this new recipe at allrecipes.com.  It is still good but it was not as good as it could be as I have tasted better.  I was kind of disappointed.  Next time I will use the recipe in my blog for cream cheese pound cake instead of trying another recipe.

I added green tea powder for the middle layer.  Next time I probably make it all green tea flavor as this high quality matcha powder is really fragrant.  I took half to my work place and they all loved it. It felt great to share your food to someones who appreciated it.  :)

Chinese New Year Feast 2017

I am blessed to be invited to the Chinese New Year Feast of 2017.  Blessed with so much delicious and luxurious food to celebrate with co-workers and friends.  When you were faced with so much great food, what would you do but to dig in!  :)  Thank you boss for this divine and scrumptious meal.

This crab was super delicious!  Finger licking good!

Steamed fish for nian nian you yu.

Lobsters! 

Deep-fried Quails, my love!

Steamed Chicken, tradition.

Stir-fried Leek with squids, so that every day you get to count money.  Haha...

Girls' Lunch Boxes

I am back to making my girls' lunch boxes.  Organic bread, organic spring salad, organic Ranch dressing, all natural uncured turkey, all natural pepper jack cheese and non-GMO popcorns.  I can't stress that enough, homemade is the best food that you can give your body.  I tried to cook more often as eating out can be costly and packed with GMO ingredients.  It is hard to avoid GMO ingredients but I am trying to feed less of it to my kids.  For the process food, I mostly buy the non-GMO and organic ones these days, but my girls still have access to the GMO chips at school.  My girls are well informed believe me because I talk to them all the times but they don't have a choice when they are in school and were given the GMO snack.  Unless they have the will power to say NO to snack that was given which is hard.  Even I had a hard time to say NO to free food.  We all have a choice and sometimes I do like to cheat.  Cheat in moderation??  :P

Golden Shrimps to Welcome the Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year and Gong Xi Fa Cai to those who celebrated!!  May this new year brings all of us much joy, peace of mind, great health, good luck and fortune!  I had experience a lot over the past three years.  Hell in 2014 and 2015 and basically had my world turned upside down.  Things that I have never thought could happen to me, happened to me and I had to wake up and be strong for myself and both of my girls.  Emotional roller coasters that I had to overcome and the responsibilities that I had to bear to ease the transition for my girls.  Glad to say that everything worked up well in God's hands.  Everything flown into place with the help of the invisible hands and the universe and I am very blessed.  We settled ourselves and move on in 2016.  That was the reason for the lack of postings all these years, I didn't have the luxury of staying at home and inventing and experimenting with new recipes anymore.  My time was limited to sending my girls to school and back, taking care of them and work, work, and more work.  My day off I just want to rest and/or bring my girls out to eat and do stuff.  I finally got more half day off for myself and spending more time with my girls and get to cook more home-cooked meal which was great!  I needed a break and learned to truly appreciate those working and full-time moms. It was not easy.

Okay, back to this recipe.  I made this super-easy deep-fried Golden Shrimps recently for a CNY party.  One bag of 2 lb extra large shrimps, shelled but with the tail on.  Made some cuts on the side of the shrimps to make it straight.  Then season the shrimps with sea salt, black pepper, organic no-salt seasonings from Kirkland, sesame oil and a little sweet potato starch.  Mix well.  And then wrap each in the wanton wrapper, seal with flour/water glue, set aside and finish the rest.  Lastly, deep-fry until golden brown and cooked through.  Serve with Thai sweet chili sauce.  Enjoy!

Baked Cheesy Rotini

I hardly cooked a proper Chinese meal these days.  Hmmm...not sure why!  Perhaps when I have an off day, I wanted to bring my girls out.  It might be also it will be too hot to cook at home during the Summer when my house doesn't have an air-conditional.  I didn't want to warm up my house and sweat myself when wok frying on the stove.  If I do cook, simple one dish meal would surface. Maybe one dish rice dish finished in a rice cooker is another idea.  Or just a simple noodle soup with frozen dumplings, green veggie and an egg throw in.  Something simple like that or just a bowl of fresh salad with dressing.

This pasta dish was actually not quite simple to make as I have to precook the pasta first and then set it aside and then cook the ground chicken (with chicken breast that I have to cut and ground myself) with tomato sauce and then set it aside.  Before I assemble the poultry tomato sauce and pasta with cheese in layers before finishing it off with a cheese layer on top and then baked it in a preheated 350'F oven for 20 minutes and then broiled it for 3 minutes to brown the cheese to finish it off.  I probably won't be making this anytime soon as it was quite tedious.  Ha!

Butter Parmesan Linguine

This is one simple one dish meal to prepare for your family.  I like the simplicity of it and yet so delicious.  All you need is some leftover chicken breast meat, frozen veggie, linguine or any kind of dried pasta, butter and shredded Parmesan cheese.

I like the frozen broccoli and cauliflower mixed as it matched well with the pasta but you can certainly used any kind of veggie you have at home, frozen peas and carrots work well too.

Marmalade No-churn Ice-cream

After I learned about this easy self-made no-churn ice-cream, I just loved to play around with new flavors!  This is one flavor that I tried after the green tea flavor.  I had some marmalade that I made in the refrigerator, so I thought why not I tried putting preserves into the mix and hence here it is!  Next time I would love to try the mocha flavor that I loved.  Creativity is endless and so does the flavors, just play with it as you will create your own kind of flavor that none in this world!  Enjoy and have fun experimenting!

Coconut Mochi Cake

I have some sweeten coconut flakes in the refrigerator and making a coconut mochi cake just strike me as an excellent idea.  It couldn't be yummier and the crust was crispy in the day it was baked and turned soft the next day.  Nevertheless it was still delicious!  If you like all things coconut, you might want to give this recipe a try!  Least to say it was super duper easy to make as well.  Enjoy!

No Bake Chocolate Oat Bars

No Bake Chocolate Oat Bars to go!  I made this bar before back in 2013!!  I think it's about time that I made another version of this bar again.  Any healthy nuts, dried fruit, seeds you have, just add it into this bar and you are good to go!

Packed and ready to grab and go bar.  My girls loved it!

Citrus Poppy Seed Short-bread Cookies

I was just in the mood for some short-bread cookies.  I had freeze some orange zest for use in baking in the future and this recipe definitely called for it.  This cookie is fragrant with butter and citrus and very crunchy.  I hope you would like this short-bread cookies.  It is not hard to make but the dough is crumbly so it can be hard to shape into a log.  Good luck!

No-churn Green Tea/ Matcha Ice-cream

Yay!  I don't have to pay more for green tea ice-cream anymore!  Creamy and delicious green tea ice-cream can be easily made at home.  Since I learned the method for no-churn ice-cream, I have been making my own ice-cream with the flavor that I loved!  With the basic no-churn ice-cream recipe, you can create any flavor ice-cream that you could think of! If you can think it, you can make it!  I would definitely experiment more flavors in the future.

My Pullman tin finally came into good use!  The ice-cream fit nicely in this tin plus it came with a cover.  So convenient and so lovely!

Green Bean Starch Banchan

I had this in a Korean restaurant before and I remembered wondering what was it, what was this jelly texture thing actually is.  And now I know, it is actually a green bean jelly that was made of green bean starch and water and then cook until thicken.

I remembered my mom used to make homemade glue for me.  Whenever I wanted glue for my school project, I would run to my mom and she would use hot water and this white flour to make glue.  I told my girls perhaps I should keep one packet in my pantry so that whenever you girls need glue, I can make some for you.  Haha...  Why not, it's edible glue and it's all natural!

I served mine with some sweeten soy sauce plus chili oil.  Added some chopped green onion as well. I think I could add more water to make this jelly a bit softer as I found it a bit hard.  Would be nice if the texture is softer I think.