How to Make Ground Meat from Scratch

I decided to make this post so that my daughters will know it is actually very easy to make your own ground meat at home. I figure if I don't show them, they will not know when they grow up. I noticed a lot of people only know how to purchase ground meat at the supermarket and really have no idea how to make it at home. So, if you haven't gotten a clue before, after reading my post, you will know! :D Of course I learned it from my mother when I was little, used to help her made ground meat in her kitchen.


First you will need a sharp Chinese cleaver. And then of course ground meat of your choice, pork, beef, chicken, etc. You will have to cut the meat into small pieces and then use your cleaver to chop on it. Just chop through the meat, flip it and chop again, flip the meat again and chop again until you have worked all your muscles. In the olden days, the butcher used two big cleavers to chop ground meat for his customers. This is really a good hand exercise for anyone who wants to try. Haha...


My ground pork is done after multiple times of flipping the meat and chopping. Now it's ready for seasoning for my pork balls noodle soup later.


Serving up my homemade pork balls with glass noodle (tang hoon) soup!


Who wants to try my pork ball with Thai chili? :P

I cooked my broth with 2 chicken drumsticks, 1 baked chicken cavity, 1/4 cup of yellow beans, shrimp shells that I saved, dried Chinese mushroom stems (I saved this for making broth too), 1 whole large yellow onion and 3 carrots hence my broth turned out very sweet and flavorful.

Black Glutinous Rice Dessert (Bubur Pulut Hitam)

This is my black glutinous rice takes three! Yes believe it, my third time making this dessert only. Can you tell how lazy I am? I tried the rice cooker and stove method, I tried straight from the stove method (takes very long to make the rice soft) and my third time was a charm. I used my lazy slow cooker method!

Brilliant Weblog Award

Yes another award! I would love to thanks My Household Capers for giving me this award. It came as a surprise and I am glad that you think my blog is worthy of this award.

Brilliant Weblog is a prize given to sites and blogs that are smart and brilliant both in their content and their design. The purpose of the prize is to promote as many blogs as possible in the blogsphere.

Here are the rules to follow: When you receive the prize you must write a post showing it, together with the name of who has given it to you, and link them back. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs (or even more) that you find brilliant in their content or design. Show their names and links and leave them a comment informing they were prized with ‘Brilliant Weblog’. Show a picture of those who awarded you and those you give the prize (optional).All the bloggers have wonderful work and content in their blog and all deserve to get this. As per the rules I would like to pass this award to my fellow bloggers mentioned below:

Dhanggit's Kitchen

Soy and Pepper

Teczcape - Escape to Food -recipes, cooking, reviews

Kedai Hamburg

More than Words

Beachlover's Kitchen

Mochachocolata-Rita

Noobcook

Enjoy ladies and do pass it along! ^.^

Use of Leftovers 4: Stir-fry Steamed Rice Rolls

Leftovers: one piece of salt & pepper pork and XO fried steamed rice rolls from a Chinese restaurant.


Turned into: Yummy plate of stir-fried steamed rice rolls with shrimp paste sauce.


I cut the steamed rice rolls into smaller pieces, added 1/4 yellow onion, 3 stalks of scallions and sliced the salt & pepper pork into smaller pieces. Heated up my wok with some oil, added in some garlic, onion and the pork, steamed rice rolls and stir-fried until warm. Added in shrimp paste in chili oil, my homemade chili in oil and dark soy sauce. Lastly added in the scallions, gave a few good stirs and dished out and served hot.

Party Food: Toothpick Fruit Mix

Dhanggit is hosting her first blog event in celebration to her precious girl's 1st birthday party and her event theme is "Perfect Party Dishes". I wanted to create a dish that is easy to prepare, stress free and easy to eat. So, I thought of this toothpick fruit mix on a melon, in this case a cantaloupe. Any melon can be used as a base and any fruit in season that won't turn brown like apple can be used as fruit on a stick. You can use decorative toothpick (like me in this case) or bamboo sticks.



What do you think? Easy party food (fruit) that guests would love right? You can use more fruit variety (play with different colors combination) if you are using a bamboo stick. In my case, I cut the cantaloupe in half, scoop the filling out with a melon scoop (I don't know how to scoop the melon out in round shape at all, *sad*) and use the red grape as contrast. I used decorative toothpicks and alternate the fruit in the toothpick and just stuck them onto the cantaloupe. Sorry for my ugly attempt, I tried.



I would love to submit my toothpick fruit to Dhanggit "Perfect Party Dishes" event as an idea to her (I bet anyone would make a prettier one than me). Do check out her round-up during the week of Aug. 15th.

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Cute Toasted Breads

Don't we moms want to make eating breakfast fun for the kids? I got the inspiration from Peony as she loves to make bentos and lovely toast for her grandson. Of course she used the cute Hello Kitty print for toast bread which I don't own. Then, I was thinking, wait a minute, I did buy some ice-cream sandwich molds last year at WalMart. It was on clearance for $4/pair and I just couldn't let it pass because I saw the possibility in it. Hence, I took them out from my drawer and gave it a try. It made a really nice clear print on the bread and came out great. The bonus was of course both my girls finished their toasts!



Now I know I can use this print to make pig or cow face cookies too! At first, I saw that it was great for making mini mooncakes and now I have more uses for it. I know it can be used to make cute pig and cow boiled eggs too, just need to tie it with rubber band. So, for $2 each, not too bad a toy to own right? :)

Steamed Banana Muffins

The main purpose of this post is I want to share this tips with you. See the picture above? For those that own the oval shape silicon cups, you can actually use the round paper cups in your oval silicon cups. When you pour in the batter, it actually spread into the oval shape like mine above. I love to use paper cups because I am too lazy to clean the silicon cups, if you are like me, you will love this tips.


For some reason my steamed banana muffins actually smiling at me. It's probably because I poured in more batter and steamed at rapidly boiling water. ;)


I just love this steamed banana muffins! Hmmm...should I called this a muffin or cupcake? I like to call all my cake baked or steamed in paper cups cupcakes because they are basically cake in a cup right or cup size cake? But I read that the frosted cupcake is called a cupcake and all the unfrosted cupcake is supposed to be called a muffin? Don't know why I always associate muffin to have denser texture compared to cupcake. :P

Use of Leftovers 3: Stir-fried Soba Noodle

Haha, my hubby was real funny the other night when he saw the leftovers from picture on the left, he asked what are you going to do with this? I made noodle soup the other night and I have a plate of extra ingredients sitting on the table just in case he wanted more (he can always add in with his noodle you see). I told him, I could make something out of it. Now, see how I turned these leftovers from a Chinese take-out and ingredients for noodle soup into a yummy plate of soba noodle.


I just boiled some soba noodle, drained and rinsed with cold water and set aside. Then, I stir-fry all the leftover ingredients in a wok with a little soy sauce and pour them on top of the soba noodle. Mix well together and season to taste with Chinese vinegar, more soy sauce, a little salt and sesame oil. This noodle can be enjoyed cold or warm.


Now, I have a plate of yummy soba noodle that didn't look one bit like eating from leftovers! Serve this up with cut chili padi (bird eye chili) or my chili in oil. Delicious!

I'm also serving this dish to Pesto Pasta Night. This week host is Michelle, from the Greedy Gourmet, do check out her blog on Friday for the round up.

Strawberry Cranberries Cookies

I was invited to participate in this July Key Ingredient's Cooks Kitchen contest and the key ingredient for this month is berry. Since I just bought a packet of dried cranberries, I thought that would be perfect. I wanted to make a cookie recipe and since the key ingredient is berry, I thought a strawberry flavor cookie would be great. So, I came out with this crispy Strawberry Cranberries Cookies. Well, my daughters both loved it and walloped half of the cookies before it even had a chance to cool down. My hubby later finished the rest. I hope you will like it too!

Dry Roasted Edamame

Look what I found while browsing through Cosco. A lightly salted dry roasted Edamame!! For those who don't know Edamame is the green soybeans in a pod commonly eaten in China and Japan. Actually my Chinese friend introduced me to this Edamame. She boils them in lightly salted water and then open the pod and eat it just like that. Edameme is healthy for us as it is high in protein, fiber, vitamin A, B and calcium. She is a vegetarian and thus she eats this for the protein. She also used it in stir-fry.


I only seen frozen Edamame here. But I was too lazy to boil them in water and then open each and everyone of them to eat so I never buy it before. Not until I saw this dry roasted Edamame. All cooked and peeled and even salted for me. Such convenience and I just had to buy it. This indeed turned out to be a good and healthy snack for me! Edda loves it too but not my picky Evy.

Edda Update

Edda is 22 months old and she is still hardly speak. All she is good at is mama (妈妈) and baba (爸爸). Since she is bilingual, I do expect her to be a little late. But she should start saying more words after she turns two. She loves to mimic her sister, almost in every move. Her sister laugh, she laugh, her sister dance, she dance, her sister climb stairs, she also climb stairs, basically everything her sister does, she wanted to do it too. So, we have been asking her sister to teach her words. So far the only incentive to make her speak in word is a bribe of sweet dessert/candy/ potato chips (basically any junk food that kids like). We will ask “你要不要吃?” Say “要”. And then she will say “要”. We will of course take the opportunity to ask her to say more words, like “我爱你”, “ABC”, “1-10” these sort of things. With the bribe in sight, she is willing to say anything. If not, she prefers not to say any word. Most of the time she will use sound and action to let me know what she wants. A little strange right?

Whole Wheat Spaghetti

Non-spicy one for the kids.


With chillies in oil added, extra spicy for the parents.

Ingredients:
1 (13.25 oz) box whole wheat spaghetti
1 cup imitation crab meats
1 skinless & boneless chicken breasts, cut
10 asparagus, cut into 1-inch
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 carrot, sliced
6 sun-ripened tomatoes, sliced
Olive oil
2 tsp. chicken stock granules
Salt & black peppers

Method:

1. Cook spaghetti as directed by package, drain and set aside.

2. In a saucepan, heat up olive oil. Add garlic and chicken breasts, fry until chicken is almost cooked. Add in asparagus and carrot and fry until the veggies are cooked. Lastly add in the sun-ripened tomatoes and imitation crab meats, stir-fry for a minute and add in the cooked spaghetti. Season to taste with salt, chicken stock granules and black pepper. Mix well to combine. Taste test and season to your liking. Serve warm!

3. Optional: Top with chillies in oil, chili oil or dried chili flakes for the extra kick.

I'm serving this up at Presto Pasta Night. This week the host will be Ruth at Once Upon A Feast.

Chinese Scallion Pancakes

Actually I was embarrassed to say I never eaten a scallion pancake before. Not until I made it myself recently using the recipe provided by My Kitchen Snippets. Not sure how the texture is supposed to be like because mine was not fluffy like roti canai, but crispy and savory. Guess will have to buy a packet at the store to truly know the answer.


Hmmm...mine turned out to be the mini size pancakes! :P So no slicing required!


I made 15 small scallion pancakes and it was not bad. We ended out having it for dinner. I also noticed that there is another type of scallion pancake (while browsing through U-tube) which was made with flour & eggs batter (softer version) which I would love to try in the future.

Chee Cheong Fun with Sweet Sauce (Steamed Rice Rolls)

When I saw Lily's chee cheong fun made using a skillet, I decided to try it because it looked so easy. Oh yeah, look can be deceiving because something that she made so easily turned out to be a disaster in my kitchen. I couldn't get mine to cook before I burnt the bottom. Frustrated I tried steaming them and the same thing happen, it felt raw on top. Ended out in the trash it went. I was convinced that I would have chee cheong fun for tea time that I already made the sauce. So, I was left with my delicious sweet sauce that I wouldn't want to waste. So, I went on the web again and found another recipe to try. Making chee cheong fun definitely needs skill since we wouldn't want it to be too thick nor too thin. My first few batches were too thick but I got the hang of it in the end. I definitely need to practice more. But I do love the sweet sauce I came out with, perhaps it has shrimp paste ( hae kor) in it, it's just like the one I remembered. :)

Crisp Lemon Cookies 2

Still not quite satisfied with my last attempt, I played around with the previous recipe and came out with Crisp Lemon Cookies 2. I like this recipe better because this cookies turned out to be real crispy. It would be great with some added lemon zest to kick up the flavor even more. Since the previous cookies I made it really kids friendly (bear shape with color sugar and sprinkles), I decided to try another pattern on this. Great with a cup of coffee!

Mee Rebus

I had my mee rebus with pan-fried firm tofu, shrimps, boiled egg, chinese green (choy sum), chopped scallions and lots of fried shallots.


Glad to say I finally tried the well talk about Prima Taste Mee Rebus! Excellent recommendation as I certainly enjoyed it. The gravy for this was fairly thick (can dilute slightly more) and I liked that the flavor tasted great.


Update on the Prima Taste products at Viet Hoa Supermarket in Denver: I went there few weekends ago and they no longer sell the wide range of Prima Taste products. I only found few packets of Prima Taste Bak Kut Teh (must be the leftover) and that was it. Hmmm...could it be possible that it was priced at the higher end and thus the demand was not great and the store decided to stop ordering it? Definitely a possibility!! Anyway, let see whether they restock again. I go there probably once in two or three months so I might be a bit updated.

Whole Roast Chicken

Just want to show a picture of my roast chicken on the vertical chicken roaster. Another of my cost saving and easy to prepare dinner. I always buy the whole chicken when it is on sales and one of this chicken can last us for two meals. I will stir-fry the other half in soy sauce for dinner the next day. For the above chicken, again I marinated it with the A1 Emperor Chicken Spices and baked it in my convection oven.

Roast chicken is very easy to prepare. All you needed to do is to clean and trim off the fat of the chicken and then marinate the chicken with your desired sauce or spices. Preheat the oven at 350'F and bake it for 1.5 hours or 325'F convection oven for 1 hour 22 minutes. Before baking, I spray my chicken all over with canola oil spray to ensure crispy skin result.

Roast chicken is so versatile, you can eat it with rice, sandwich it with burger buns, or eat it with salad and mashed potatoes or etc. I love to buy rotisserie chicken at the grocery store too, that's when I'm too lazy to make dinner, or when I have guests and don't have time to cook lots of dishes.

Crisp Lemon Cookies 1

When we were at our friend's house, her little girl arranged a little tea party for my girls. Oh yeah, a real tea and lemon cookies that she made herself, even served in a real tea set. Luckily my girls didn't knock over the tea or break the tea cup! The most memorable thing about this tea party for Evy was of course the lemon cookies. She couldn't stop telling me how tasty the lemon cookies were. So since she loved it so much, I went online and made her some lemon cookies. I would say the first batch that I tried, I didn't like it because the cookie was soft. I preferred my cookie crispy. Nevertheless, both my girls finished all the lemon cookies in a day. Since I was dissatisfied with the online recipe, I tried to create my own crispy lemon cookies. So, I came out with this recipe that I thought was pretty good. And I hope you will like it too!

Use of Leftovers 2: Stir-fried Rice Cubes

Remember my leftovers from the satay dinner? I cut the compressed rice into cubes. Added 3 stalks of scallions (cut into 1.5 inch), an egg, 5 extra large shrimps, half a carrot (sliced), plus the leftover shallots and turned it into a bowl of yummy fried rice cubes with shrimps.


This bowl was for my hubby's snack after he came home from work.



This was my lunch box for the next day. This rice cubes fried rice turned out to be delicious. As for the seasonings, I used sweet dark soy sauce, black bean in chili oil, dark soy sauce, a little salt, white pepper and sugar. I got the inspiration from fried radish cake, since they look almost similar when cut into cubes.

So next time, when you have some leftover compressed rice from your satay party, you know what to do with it. To me, it tastes better this way then making more satay sauce to eat it with. Another option is to make some Rendang chicken or beef to have with the rice.

Mooncake Mold for Sales

Mooncake Festival is approaching and for those who want to try their hands in making their own mooncake but without the mold, here's your chance of getting one.

The size of the mold is 3.5" x 1.5", made of hard plastic material. This is suitable for making snowskin mooncake. The open cover ensures the easy release of the mooncake. Quantity is extremely limited, so first come first serve. Ship any where in the U.S.A.

If interested, please e-mail me (littlecornerofmine@gmail.com) for pricing and shipping information. Thank You!

Update @ 6pm: Thank You for your business, it's all sold.

Edda's Dinner Plate

Stir-fry Chinese green with carrot, Pork Rendang (pork dry curry), and Japanese rice ball with filling (onigiri).



Got this idea from Peony and coincidently I have the pork floss and furikake and the Japanese rice mold from D. So, wait no further, I made this for my daughters. Evy didn't want hers with furikake so I omitted that for her. They loved it so much that they wanted this for lunch tomorrow as well. Thanks Peony & D! :)

Method:

Press some warm rice into the mold, add a layer of pork floss, top with more warm rice, use the cover provided by the mold to close it, press slightly. Turn it over and push the rice out from the hole. Decorate the top of the rice ball with some Furikake. Alternately, you can shape the rice ball by hands and use less filling.

Use of Leftovers 1: Cucumber Rojak

This is the leftovers from the satay dinner the other day. Some homemade compressed rice, tiny bit of shallots and a small bowl of cut cucumbers. For the cucumber, it was fairly easy to turn it into another dish of it's own. Scroll down to see what I did with it.



I turned it into a cold and refreshing cucumber rojak with the ready made CKC satay sauce. I always have some toasted ground peanuts and sesame seeds in my freezer. So making this dish is as easy as 123. I do love to store some ready made rojak sauce in my pantry just in case I have a craving or some leftover cucumbers. Of course you can now order this sauce at the convenience of your home, in front of your computer at MyTasteOfAsia.com.

Stay tuned to see how I transform the compressed rice and shallots into! Part 2 coming up!

The Triangle Number Under Your Water Bottle

Are you guys aware that the triangle number under your water bottle actually means something? It tells us what type of material the plastic bottle was made of. And the recent studies suggested that the most popular hard, clear and durable plastic bottle that we used was made of Polycarbonate and one of the key components of this is the endocrine-disrupting bisphenol-A (BPA). BPA can leach into the liquid and making the water toxic and can cause breast cancer in women or prostate cancer in men and some other illnesses. This bottle has numbered (3), (6) or (7) in the triangle. So, I would advice all my friends and family members to stop using any water bottle that has a number (3,6,7) under the bottle. The most common plastic bottle that we have seen everywhere has a number (7) in the triangle. I just threw away mine, all six of them. I know this bottle looks nice but it can kill also!

I guess the best re-usable water bottle would be one made from stainless steel as they don't leach any chemicals. But it can be expensive. The other is aluminum as it is BPA free and very reasonably priced. Other alternative is to look for water bottles that contained number (2) (high-density polyethylene), (4) (low-density polyethylene) and (5) (polypropylene) if it is plastic made.

If not, just drink from the glass or coffee cup. Use glasses while at home and only use the plastic water bottles with number (2), (4) and (5) in the triangle while going out. Number (1) water plastic bottle is safe to use but it was not meant to be re-used.

For updated information, click here. Looks like water bottle number (1) is safe for one time and repeated use, as long as you wash it with soap and dry it nicely each time after use.

Pandan Kuih Bahulu (or Kuih Bahlu)

I bought a light non-stick kuih bahlu pan at my recent trip back in Malaysia. This was not the traditional heavy kuih bahlu pan because I certainly wouldn't want to carry those. Since I got the pan, I wanted to test out the pan and I found the kuih bahlu recipe at Rainbows. I added pandan paste into mine because I was curious of how it would taste like. In my first batch, I sprayed the pan with some butter spray and all the pattern disappeared. So, I learned a lesson there. I didn't spray on my second batch and above was what I got. The pattern was not as clear cut because the indentation in the pan was not deep compared the the traditional mold.

Since I have not eaten any store-bought kuih bahlu or any kuih bahlu made with the mold for ages, I couldn't tell how this was. Thus I purposely made this to bring to my friend's house and let them be the judges. According to the hubby, it's better than store-bought and it was pretty good, he said the store-bought one was really dry. According to the wife, it's still a bit dry compared to the one her MIL made. I thought it was kind of chewy. How is it supposed to taste like huh?

Update: I did some research on the web and the texture of kuih bahulu is supposed to be dry, crispy outside and slightly spongy inside and best eaten with coffee/tea because of it's dry texture.

YUM - YUM Blog Award

I would love to thanks My Kitchen Snippets for giving me this YUM - YUM blog award. It was so sweet of her and I really appreciated it. I would love to pass it to the YUM-YUM blogs below:

Soy and Pepper
Kedai Hamburg
The Adventure of my cooking diary
Rainbows

Satay Dinner Again!

While replying to Cooking Ninja regarding my satay sauce and compressed rice, Evy walked by and saw the satay chicken. She loved satay chicken and of course requested that I make it for her. I was salivating looking at the pictures and reminiscing how good the satay sauce taste, so I told her I will make satay for dinner the next day.


Yummy and moist satay chicken! Help yourself ya!


My homemade compressed rice, seedless cucumber and shallot.


Peanut satay sauce. Dipping sauce for the satay chicken and accompaniment.



And guess what I ended out using? The Rasaku satay marinade & sauce mix!! I was pleasantly surprised with this brand because I was quite skeptical when I saw the satay sauce that came in the packet. It was in powder form and all I needed to add was water and oil. I was contemplating of making my own sauce or using this powder and decided to give it a try. The sauce looked okay when thicken, so I did a taste test and it was not too bad. But I wanted more flavor out of it and creamier in texture, so I added some creamy peanut butter and toasted ground peanuts into the sauce. Now it looked really good and tasted superb. I won't be hesitating in buying this brand again, just for convenience and it's authenticity in taste. If you want to try it too, you can buy it online at MyTasteOfAsia.com. I just checked the website and now this paste is on sales for $1.95! Grab it before it's gone!