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