Happy New Year 2008!

Wish you all have a wonderful New Year.

Treasure Hunt from Malaysia

I started my Malaysia shopping list right after we bought the air ticket.. so finally here they are all goodies from home..

I must say the most exciting shopping I had was at the bakery specialty store at Taman Megah,PJ. I was able to purchase all items from my shopping list plus additional. Call me crazy or not, besides the bread improver, cake stabilizer, panda paste etc.. I even brought the cup cake liner, aluminum tart mold and to fu fa paddle all the way from home. Glad that hubby was ok to let me shop like a crazy women. Now is the time to get my hand dirty with all these baking goodies. Hopefully I can start to play with them soon.

Next stop was my pre-package spices hunt. I don’t know about you, for me this is a must in my shopping list. We usually don’t get these much is spices from home.. but since we know our next trip home won’t happen in the near future.. I better stock up with no regrets. I went to look around some recommended brand of spices from LCOM and Lily’s website, but have no luck finding them in Malaysia.. I guess.. now that I know I still can get it online.. it won’t be so bad huh.

Then my snack station consist of some local roasted coffee powder( main for hubby), sambal shrimp roll, meat floss roll, Thai peanut, dry guava ( this is my favorite snack of all time), Nestum whole family cereal, Japanese rice crackers for my little one and some Twisties for my friends.. ( no in the picture)

Last and not least, Chinese herbs for my up coming confinement preparation. Chinese herbal soup premix package, homemade ang chiu (Chinese red wine), red dates, goji, dried logan, dong kwai etc..Yes, we are expecting baby #2 this coming April sorry for hiding the news for so long.. . Since my mom will not be to come and help out, she wanted to make sure I get everything I need to take good care of myself during the confinement.

Besides we also brought home some early childhood education books in Chinese for my little one cause we want to teach him Chinese as much as we can before he become americanized by his school and friends :)

I was a bit worry that our luggages will get rejected due to the weight limit but when we checked in at the airport, total weight for a 3 luggages was only 75 lb… still have maybe 20 lb to go.. I wish I can squeeze more stuff in it.. but it’s too late. Anyway, I am pretty happy with what we got right now and felt lucky that we able to pass the US custom without any problem hee..

Home Sweet Home

Do you feel that time flies like the speed of light when you are on vacation. Still remember 2 months back when we bought the air ticket and I was starting to count down my days for the trip. And now we were back from Malaysia and busy unpacking, catching up some rest, cleaning and decorating the house for Christmas and new year celebration.

We have been home since the 12^th of Dec but were so busy adjusting our sleep routine especially the little one , then working and shopping. Just thought I have a 4 days break last weekend where I can took some nice snapshot of all the goodies I bought from Malaysia, I accidentally drop my camera on the table and broke it. DUH.. so still don't have pictures to show off and yet I need to mail my camera for repair. What a bummer!

Anyway, the trip was great but too short as usual. I wish we can spend more time enjoying the food, the hot weather and just stay relax. This is the first long trip for Aidan. To our surprise, he was doing pretty good. He was able to sleep on the bassinet and play with other kid who sit next to us. He has no problem adjusting the sleep schedule when we reached Malaysia but he was having jet lag when we returned from Asia. Overall, I think it was pleasant experience travel with a toddler as my friend always told us.. prepare the worst and hope for the best.

The main purpose of the trip is to bring my son home to meet my family and relatives. So we did not get to travel to any places besides spending couple days shopping in KL,few days in Ipoh, a half day trip to Pangkor Island and the remaining time mostly stay home with my family.

Can't resist to share with you one of my favorite picture we took from the trip. Enjoy!

No Food but Flu

Flu season is here.. sometime you definitely not looking forward especially with kids at home.
I started not feeling well last Friday evening and have been sick since then and hubby started to pick up my stomach flu yesterday.. so no cooking, no eating for the whole weekend but depends on milk and oatmeal to survive in the last couple days.

Thanksgiving is almost here, some of you might be start preparing the family feast to celebrate the holidays, for us who don't celebrate, usually looking forward the holiday break to catch up some rest and sleep and shopping especially the day after thanksgiving.

This year.. we are heading home for the holidays.. home I mean Malaysia.. leaving on 21st, mean not much cooking and baking for this coming week but shopping, packing and house cleaning before we leave.

I am so looking forward to this trip especially all the comfort food. First time traveling with toddler, hope I pack enough food and toys to entertain him and at the same time i could some rest.

So see ya in 3 week with more food and trip info.

Bubur Cha Cha

My friend's son was celebrating his Big One this Sunday, so I helped prepare one of the Malaysia specialty sweet soup Bubur Cha Cha. In Hong Kong they usually cook it with Taro and sago, but Malaysia version we put sweet potatoes, taro and sago. It's has been a while since I had this yummy soup kinda miss it.

To make the dish looks more colorful, I used Japenese sweet potatoes ( yellow), American sweet potatoes or yam ( orange), taro and sago. There are many way to cook this dish. my family use to steam all the roots until they become tender before they add everything in the sweet soup base. Some people put everything in the pot and cook until the roots get tender. I find that American sweet potatoes we get from regular groceries store tend to get soft and mushy quicker then the sweet potatoes we get from Asian. So to prepare this, I cook the Japaneses sweet potatoes and taro over night with my slow cooker and finish up the reminding ingredients on stove the next morning before the event.

Here are the ingredients I used:

• Japanese sweet potaoes ( yellow)
• American sweet potatoe or yam ( orange)
• Taro
• Sago
• Sugar to taste
• Thick coconut milk
• Water

One Saturday Morning

This past Saturday was our 4th wedding anniversary and hubby prepared this wonderful stuff scallop, croissants and scrambled egg breakfast to start the day. It was delicious and healthy breakfast. Love it and thanks hon for the wonderful meal. Wish I can have it every week :)

According to the anniversary gift suggestion, the traditional gift for 4th anniversary is Fruit or Flowers. So in returned, I "prepared" this fruit basket for hubby. Oh wait.. actually I order it from Edible Arrangement. It is called the Perfect Pear. The fruit basket consist of strawberries, pineapple daisy, grapes and my favorite chocolate dipper pear. The basket looks kinda different from the picture showed on their website but overall I am happy with the this order. I wish I can spend some time to make my own though.. maybe one day..

Chosun Koren BBQ

Last week, a friend of us paid us a visit from Singapore just for a day trip drive all the way from Iowa to KS. It was so nice of him to squeeze out his busy schedule to visit us. Since he has been in KC for so many time, we didn't bring him to all usual visitor location but just spent some time relax and chat at home and of course to play the little one. For dinner, since I have been craving for hot and spicy food lately, we decided to try one of new Korean BBQ Chugon close to out house. This place serve main the the BBQ dish but they do have some soup and appetizer like dumpling etc. Besides bulgugi, we don't really have any korean BBQ dish in the past.. so after check out the fancy menu with pictuce.. we order the BBQ COMBO which consist of Rib and sirloin steak and a bow of soup with share.
As usually the order come many side dishes which include salad, daikon kimchi, nappa cabbage kimchi, soy sauce beanspout and bean cake, cucumber Kimchi and fried chillies anchovies.
Everyone was served with a bowl of rice with a coleslaw salad.



For the BBQ plater, we were served 2 marinated rib and some thinly slice sirloin, mushroom and some onion. This combo was for 2 people serving, within an additional bowl of soup I think it's perfect for 3, not to mention the refill for the sides are free.

Overall, I like enjoy the meal. The food served were not too spicy and the service were great.

Calling all baking expert!

Hubby has been requesting me to bake egg tart since I started this blog. After N months finally I manage to get the tart mold and put myself together to work on this egg tart recipes I collected long long time ago.
So here are my first egg tarts..
what a total failure and disaster.

The pastry sink after baking and leave no room for the custard. I think I should make is as thin as possible but was wonder why it shrink :( As for the custard, do you think I over bake them. The egg mixture wasn't whisk well as you still can still the egg while in the custard.. What a disappointed egg tart!

Pumpkin Patch visits

Have been in the state for almost 11 years now and this is my visit to Pumpkin Patch. Well... or I should say our first visit because it was the first for me, hubby and Aidan. After checking out the pumpkin patch available near our area, we decided to go to Powell Pumpkin Patch located at Louisburg, KS for a few reasons:

• Where original where the pumpkin grow, not those vendor selling pumpkin by the street and call themselves pumpkin patch
• Somewhere not too far from where we live
• FREE admission because we are cheap? oh well we just don't why they charge admission fee to enter the pumpkin patch.

Besides approximately 35 acres of pumpkin field you can pick you own pumpkin, they also have some mini pumpkins and squashes available to purchase. They also have some stacking hays for picture, straw men display and maze for the kid.
Too bad that Aidan is too young for the fun.. all he really enjoy was playing with those tiny little pumpkin and people watching. The price for the you pick pumpkin ranges from $1 to $7. For the mini pumpkin and squashed is 3 for a dollar. I think they are pretty reasonable but to me, the most if important of the trip is to joy of picking the pumpkin together and take some nice family pictures.
We never celebrate Halloween in the past, but for this year, we decided to get a medium size pumpkin as the a souvenir from the trip and display it on our porch. Looks kinda weird with just 1 pumpkin on the porch but hey what the heck :)Maybe I make more time to play for my next halloween.

It was a great experience and would definitely return again next year for more fun.

Yogurt Cake with Lemon

While I was browsing to find out what to bring to my friend's potluck lunch last week, I came across this yogurt cake in a few blogs with different flavor and modified recipes. After reading the comments on the blog on how easy it is to back this cake, I decided this will be my cake of week for my party. The first cake I baked, come out flat, actually the cake sink in the middle when it get cold. I get very disappointment, wonder why and what causes it and whether i should try another one or is it ok to bring the cake to potluck? I spend the whole afternoon thinking about it and decided to bake cake number 2. I once read that the cake sink in the middle might due to the over temperature is too low. I am pretty sure I have the temperature set correctly however, the oven that I had is not convection oven. I suspect the temperature in my oven are not uniform. So this time in stead of placing the batter in the middle of the over, I place it on the 2nd top level. The 2nd cake come out so much better, well at least not sink in the middle. The cake is rather dense as oppose to soft :( I think it's time to get a new oven for myself. I wonder if that the reason why all my cake come out quite dense while i am expecting a soft moist cake??

Here's the 2nd cake I made:

The recipe is from Orangette.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 tsp. grated lemon zest
• 1/2 cup canola oil

For the glaze:

• Juice from 2 lemons
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
• In a large bowl, combine the yogurt, sugar, and eggs, stirring until well blended. Add the flour, baking powder, and zest, mixing to just combine. Add the oil and stir to incorporate. At first, it will look like a horrible, oily mess, but keep stirring, and it will come together into a smooth batter. Pour and scrape the batter into a buttered 9-inch round cake pan (after buttering, I sometimes line the bottom with a round of wax or parchment paper, and then I butter that too).
• Bake for 30-35 minutes, until the cake feels springy to the touch and a toothpick or cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Do not overbake.
• Cool cake on a rack for about 20 minutes; then turn it out of the pan to cool completely.
• When the cake is thoroughly cooled, combine the lemon juice and powdered sugar in a small bowl and spoon it gently over the cake. The glaze will be thin and will soak in like a syrup.
• Serve.

Cellophane Noodle Soup Hong Kong Style (豌仔翅)

This is one of famous hawker food you can find in Hong Kong. I am not sure whether they use the actual shark fin (I hope they do) in the soup but for homemade I am able to find a recipe that uses cellophane noodle (tung hoon) as replacement. The end result of this is more like a cellophane noodle soup Hong Kong style , so I call it Cellophane Noodle Soup Hong Kong Style.

Ingredients:

• 2oz pork cut into thin strip
• 1 slice if ginger thinly sliced
• 3 shitake mushroom soak, drained and cut into strip
• 1 individual package of cellophane noodle ( I used 2 packages for mine)
• Hand full of black fungus, soak, drained and cut into strip
• 5 to 6 cup soup based
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1/2 tsp salt
• White pepper to taste
• 3 1/2 tbsp corn starch
• 4 tbsp water
• 1 tbsp oil

Method:

• Mix corn starch with water and set aside
• Heat oil in a pot, add in ginger and mushroom stir fry for about 5 min.
• Add in soup base and bring to boil
• Add black fungus and pork strip, bring to boil
• Add in Soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt.
• add cellophane noodle and bring to boil
• lastly add in corn starch mixture and bring to boil.
• Server with some white pepper, scramble egg and red vinegar

You can serve the soup with or without vinegar, but I like it with vinegar because it give some sourness flavor. I think it's probably go well with some chilies too.

Banana Nut Muffin from Tyler Florence

I love banana but I am not crazy about it. In fact I prefer banana bread, banana muffin, banana fritter and fried banana over just the plain banana fruit. Aidan loves banana, so we usually bought some banana home from our Costco shopping. One thing that I hate about banana is they tend to get ripe all together at the same time unless I brought it from the regular store where I can choose to have different ripeness for each smaller bunch of banana. So this is another day where I have some left over banana in my fridge turning black. Saw the beautiful muffin pictures from rasa Malaysia, I decided to wipe up the banana muffin again, YES again but this time I am trying the recipe from one of my favorite food network star Tyler Florence except I used replace pecan with walnut.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 overripe bananas
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup walnut, chopped
  

Method:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and lightly butter 2 muffin tins.
• In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
• Mash 2 of the bananas with a fork in a small bowl so they still have a bit of texture.
• With an electric mixer fitted with a wire whisk, whip the remaining bananas and sugar together like you mean it, for a good 3 minutes.
• Add the melted butter, eggs, and vanilla and beat well, scraping down the sides of the bowl once or twice.
• Mix in the dry ingredients just until incorporated.
• Fold in the nuts and the mashed bananas with a rubber spatula. \Spoon the batter into the muffin tins to fill them about halfway. Give them a rap on the counter to get any air bubbles out.
• Bake until a toothpick stuck in the muffins comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes.
• Let cool for a few minutes before turning the muffins out.
• Serve warm or at room temperature.

Malaysian Sweet and Sour Eggs

While I was recipe hunting last week, I saw the sweet and sour egg recipe from RasaMalaysia Check against the ingredients list and looks like I have all them and the cooking is fairly easy. I had never try this egg recipe before but anything that taste sweet, sour and spicy does appeal to me, so I decided to give it a try...... here’s the results…

ok, picture don’t do the justice, check out the recipes and beautiful picture from Rasa Malaysia.

Verdict: yummylicious…

Vermicilli in Pickled Cabbage Soup (雪菜汤米粉)

A simple vermicelli I prepared for our Saturday lunch. I had never heard about 雪菜 before I came to the State and learn to cook this from my hubby. The noodle soup is very tasty with some sourly flavor. It is very easy and quick meal for a busy day. Here's my simplified version.

Ingredients:

• 1 package of ready to serve pickled cabbage (雪菜)
• 1 slice of ginger julienne
  
• Some pork ( can be slice thinking or minced)
• Soy sauce
• Corn starch
• about 2 cup of any soup base
• about 100g of vermicelli
  

Method:

• Soak vermicelli until soft, drained and set aside
  
• Marinate pork with soy sauce and corn starch
• Heat soup base with high heat, add in pork and cook until boiling.
• Add in pickled cabbage and ginger and cook for another 2 minutes or until boiling again
  
• Add in vermicelli and cook until the noodle is ready
  
• Served it on bowl with a dash of white pepper and chilli's( optional)
  

Stir Fry Chinese Spinach with Dried Shrimp

Chinese Spinach also known as Red Amaranth is one of my favorite vegetable I like to buy every time I saw this available in the Asian store. This veggie not only taste good but also good source of vitamins and minerals to your body.Click here to learn more about Amaranth.

Usually there are only couple way that my family love to cook this veggie. One is to cook this with Anchovies soup based with some fish ball and fish cake. Another is to stir fry it with dried or fresh shrimps. Here's the stir fry version and it's very simple.. all you need are some chopped garlic, dried shrimp, Chinese Spinach, a little mixture of corn starch and water as the thickening agent and some salt to taste. I like the veggie to be soft..so i usually let the dish simmer for a minute or 2 before adding the cornstarch mixture.

Sardine Fried Mee Hoon

This is one of my family favorite way of stir fry vermicelli(mee hoon) when you don't have much ingredient in hand but just a canned of sardine fish in tomato sauce. I honestly not sure where this dish come from or whether this is pretty common dish in Malaysia but it seems all my family members even my cousin sister who doesn't know anything about cooking knows how to prepare this dish. When I introduce this to my husband few years ago, he love it and also love the fact how easy it is to prepare this. So these days, we always make sure we have some canned sardine at home just in case if we run out of food.
My family always uses a very fine vermicelli when they prepared this dish. In the state, i am able to find all sort of vermicelli available in the Asian market but after try with all different kind of vermicelli, i think i found my favorite brand and have been using it since then.

Ingredients:

• 200g vermicelli
• 1 canned regular Sardine fish in tomato sauce
• Bean Spout or chinese mustard green
• Salt and pepper to taste
• soy source
• 1/2 red onion thinly sliced
  

Method:

• Soak vermicelli in water until soft and remove from the soaking water.
  Heat oil in the pan, add in onion and stir fry until soft
• Add in sardine fish and stir fry for a minute
• Add vermicelli and mix well for about 5 minutes. ( if you use the thinner type of vermicelli, the tend get cook very fast)
• Add in bean spout, soy sauce, salt and pepper to taste
• garnish with some scramble egg

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Getting lazy these days as you can tell i have not update my blog for decade. Not sure because of the hot weather or what, I have not had any appetite to eat therefore wasn't really into cooking for the past couple weeks.

Since we have not had any Vietnamese food for a while, we decide to make some Vietnamese spring roll for weekend lunch/snack. It is very easy to prepare and they are delicious. Have to admit that this is the 2nd times I make the spring roll, so roll wasn't really look as good.

The filling I prepared for my spring roll are:

• Cooked Shrimps
• Romaine lettuce
• Thai Basil
• Mint
• Vietnamese Rice noodle for spring roll

Ingredient for Dipping Sauce

• Fish sauce
• Water
• Lime juice
• Fresh chopped chillies
• Sugar
• Ground peanut

Add all the ingredient together and adjust according to your own taste. Just be careful with the fish sauce, it maybe very salty depends on the brand you used.

Love this color shot from my hubby and just want to share with you. Aren't the looks color and yummy?

Malaysia Chicken Curry - Chinese Style

I found this chicken curry recipe from Kuali long time ago and this is my favorite recipe so far when comes to chicken curry. Before this recipe, my chicken curry tend to be very dry and oily, not much sauce for rice, noodle or even for bread. I get so frustrated because I love those dry chicken curry noodle I used to have at home and I love to eat curry with bread too. This recipe is just perfect for me, more sauce for my rice and it's great for dry curry noodle. yum yum!

Ingredients

• 750g chicken, cut into bite-size pieces
• 200g potatoes cut into wedges
• 1 sprig curry leaves
• 100ml thick coconut milk
• 400ml thin coconut milk
• 3 tbsp oil
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1/2 tsp sugar

Ground Ingredients:

• 5 fresh red chillies
• 1 stalk lemon grass, sliced finely
• 6 shallots
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 tsp belachan
• 1 candle nut

Additional Spice

• 2cm piece cinnamon sticks
• 2 tbsp curry powder
• 1 star anise
• 2 cloves

Method

• Heat oil in a saucepan, fry lemon grass, curry leaves, additional spices and ground spices until fragrant and the oil separates and the mixture start drying out a nit..
• Add chicken and fry for 8 to 10 minutes. Stir in thin coconut milk. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes.
  
• Put in potatoes and cover. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes or until chicken and potatoes are just tender.
• Lastly, add the thick coconut milk and bring to a simmering boil for 3 to 4 minutes.( this is very important, add this thick coconut at the end but don’t let it boiled for too long, otherwise the coconut will turn into oil and you won’t get that much sauce you like.)
  
• Add salt/sugar to taste.
  

Kuih Ubi Kayu ( Cassava Cake)

Never know how easy is to make Kuih Ubi Kayu until I saw this recipe from Lily's blog. I love this snack and I remember my cousin used to make this from scratch. Scratch mean buying fresh Ubi kayu, remove the skin and grate the ubi with hand. I was surprise that I am able to get the frozen grated cassava from Asian store in state and still made this delightful snack in less an hour.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb grated cassava
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup coconut cream
• 1 stick (4 ozs) butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 tsp salt

Method:

• Preheat oven at 375 F
• Mix all the ingredients in a large glass bowl and microwave on high for 1 minute at a time for about 3 minutes.
• Pour into greased tin and bake for 30 minutes.
• Cool before cutting into pieces.

Abalone Chicken Noodle Soup

Does Abalone Chicken Noodle Soup sound luxurious huh? Believe it or not, this noodle soup is delicious and yet easy to prepare. All you need are:

A package of uncle Sun Sup Abalone dengan Ayam, some Chinese Shitake mushroom, some dried scallop and dried wheat noodle ( mee sua).
The package instruction said cook this soup on stove for 2.5 hours. For me, I prefer a no fuss cooking method --- Crockpot. Put everything except noodle in the crockpot in the morning before I leave for work set the to 10 hours cooking time. When I return in the evening.. voila.. dinner is almost ready. All i have to do is to cook the noodle and add them to the soup.

Hup Loong Fish Curry

This dish reminded me one of the Ipoh Famous Curry Fish Head I used to had when I was young. In the hi-tech world today, instead of cooking the curry from scratch, I used the Hup Loong Kari Tumis (Premix curry powder for this dish). All you have to do is follow the cooking instruction from the package. Minutes later.. ta da.. yummy delicious fish curry.
In this dish I used Tilapia Fillet to replace with whole fish. The fillet were easy to breakup, so I have to be very careful when stirring and scooping them to the serving place. To enhanced the flavor, I added some Okra, homegrown tomatoes and some curry leafs. It is delicious. Hubby give it a thumps up.

Aidan's 1st Birthday Party

After patiently waiting for weeks.. finally the pictures are here! It's Aidan BIG One party. The party was held at our house 3 weeks ago. Our original plan was to invite couple neighbors and friends to have an afternoon tea snack time party but we ended up with around 40 guests including kids and adults.

This was my first time planning for a birthday party, so the planning started long long time ago, maybe a few months back. Kids birthday party is so different between here in the State and Malaysia. Besides the food, we also need to prepare some games, some goodies bag for the guest to take home as a thanks you gift.

Simple Animal Decoration: I chose Zoo Animal as the party theme. I made some animal from the poster board and place them in Aidan's play room.



For the Food:
Since it's afternoon tea party, all the food served were finger friendly food and kids friendly. Even though some people said that usually the first birthday party are more for adults but you will be surprise your 1 year old child may enjoy the food as mush as you do. At least for aidan, he love the tuna sandwich and the fruit.

melting momemt cookie with lemon icing filling

Tuna Sandwiches with sweet radish and mayonnaise

Store bought popcorn chicken

Mixed Fruit Skewer

Hotdog wrap

The Birthday Cake:

Simple chocolate and Yellow cupcakes with animal print.

The cake turn out quite alright. I wish I can spend more time on decorating the cake.

The goodies Bag filled with books, crafts and animal crackers. I don't have a picture for the the bag but i must say this is the most headache process because i have to think what to put in the bag based on their age and gender.

Overall, the party went really well. Aidan was very enjoy meeting with all the friends and was having fun playing with his friend.
Besides, he decided to break the traditions where rather digging in the birthday by himself, he decided the share the joy with mommy and daddy but sharing his cake icing with us. Check out how he thanks me on preparing this wonderful below.