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.

I have been Lazy..

Have been abandoned for 2 weeks now. I am still patiently waiting on hubby to convert the all pictures from his camera we took from Aidan's birthday party and food we prepared for the party.
Lately, I have been very lazy to cook. Even though we have long labor day weekend, but i didn't actually prepared any food besides porridge for my son who prefer jar food over my cooking and we just bought Chipotle Fajitas for dinner. I guess i should call it a nice relax weekend as I spent most of my time catching up the Chinese drama series I have been missing and catching up my sleeping.