Tagged:Before I was a Mom

Another MEME from LCOM. Here it goes.

The rule to the e-mail was that, once you have been hit, you have to hit 5 pretty Moms, including the one who thought of you today & sent it to you. The idea is that if you get hit again, You will know you are really pretty!

So I thought lets just turn this into a tag instead. But that “hit” part won’t work very well in a tag. So instead of giving a “hit” to the one who tag you, you add your name at the bottom of the tagged persons list, and without bumping the person at the top or bumping anyone off and let the list grow. Hit 5 pretty moms on your list to let them know they are pretty!


Before I was a mum;
I used have at least 8 hours or more sleep a day.

Before I was a mum;
I enjoyed watching TV shows like survivor, Apprentice,Amazing Race, FoodNetwork, HGTV. Now we don't even subscribe to any TV network

Before I was a mum;
Hubby and I traveled quite bit when we get the chance

Before I was a mum;
I used to shop for myself and never thought how much I am saving by getting the kids cloths few seasons ahead

Before I was a mum;
I didn't know Target has 75% clearance on toys twice a year! Now I stocked up toys for presents and for my kid whenever there are sales and clearance.

Before I was a mum;
Hubby and I eat at any place we want, when we return to malaysia we enjoyed hawker food by the street and now we always looks for kids friendly restaurant or places with air conditioned especially in Malaysia when eating out.


The first chain of tag:

1. Lovelymummy
2. Pek Imm
3. Momisodes
4. Ling that’s me
5. Janicepa
6. AnnieQ
7. Allthingspurple
8. Montessorimum
9. clumsy mommy
10. Sandra
11. KittyCat
12. VivianZ
13. Sweetpea
14. Sasha
15. Giddy Tiger
16. Wen
17. Jo-N
18. Janice Ng
19. ViEmwk
20. Little Corner of Mine
21. Masakan Istimewa

I would like to tag the following pretty moms :

• Happy Home Baking
• Stream in Hip Desert
• Home Sweet Home

Peace Award

I totally agree with her 'peace above love', but then again you have to love in order to find peace. If everyone can 'love thy neighbor as thyself' ( Leviticus 19:18) as the scripture says, there will not be wars in the world.

Got another award from LCOM . Thanks my friend!
Now I would like to pass it on to

• Stream in the Hip Desert
• Happy Home Baking
• Teczcape
• Home Sweet Home
  

Nam Yee Char Siu

It's char siu time again but this time I found a recipe to prepare char siu using Nam Yee, one of my favorite ingredient. The recipe does not call for any usual ingredient such as garlic, ginger or hoisin sauce, in stead it uses nam yee, ketchup and oyster sauce.

Since it was snowing out site, this time I decide to baked char siu it in my oven. It was a long process but the outcome was rather delicious. The char siu was juicy and the taste was wonderful.

Here's my adapted version.

Ingredients (click here link to the original recipe)

• 3lb country style BBQ Pork ribs

Marinade

• 4 tbsp oyster sauce
• 4 tbsp ketchup
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1 piece red fermented beancurd
• 1 tbsp Chinese wine
• 1 tbsp five spice powder

Glaze :

• 1 tbsp honey
  
• 1 tbsp water
• Remaining Marinate
  

Method:

• Whisk together all the marinade ingredients in a bowl.
  
• Pierce the pork with a fork and place pork in the marinate in the fridge for overnight.
• Mix all the glaze ingredient together and cook over medium heat until it’s syrupy, about 2 – 4 minutes.
• Preheat the oven to 300ºF. Line a tray with foil and set the wire rack over the tray.
  
• Place the pork on the wire rack. Pour hot water into ray until enough to cover the bottom of the tray and cover the tray tightly with foil. Roast on the middle rack for 20 minutes.
  
• Remove the foil and roast for another 40 to 45 minutes, until the edges of the meat start to brown.
  
• Turn on the broiler (keeping the rack on the middle rack), brush the pork with glaze and broil the pork for about 3 minutes. Flip the pork over then brush the pork with glaze and broil for another 3 minutes, until the pork is a dark brownish red and evenly caramelized.
  

5 Facts About Me...

I have been tagged by Happy Home Baking to do this MEME.

Here are the MeMe rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

Man.. this is the tough one.. need to come up with 5 facts about myself, this really got me thinking....

Fact #1: I only shop for clothing when they are on sales or clearance.

Fact #2: My hubby and I got married at Las Vegas. ( ok, not those drive thru kind of wedding)

Fact #3: We have a guinea pig as pet since hubby and I were out of college and move to KC to start out working life together

Fact #4: I love all type of desserts and sweets except American's Pie

Fact #5: I am summer person. I don't like cold weather therefore I don't really enjoy winter season. Winter make me feel depress.

Now here are my tags:

• mrshbt @ Stream in the Hip Desert
• tigerfish @ Teczcape - an escape to Food
• Joanne @ Home Sweet Home

Another Success?

8 more weeks to go before baby #2 arrive, I guess it's time for me reduce my cooking and baking but stay relax, eat more and get more sleep. I was suppose to gain 1lb each week in my 3rd trimester but I have been loosing weight due to my illness in the past 2 weeks. Not a good sign :( Before I quit I want give my egg tart one more try.
So what do you think of the outcome? A success? well.. Hubby thinks that I still need to work on the crust a little more. I agreed with him but I still call this a success for a second trial. Not bad at all. To be frank, I was so surprise how this turn out as you know my first egg tart was a disaster.
The custard filling was very soft and moist just like the store bought, don't you think? This recipe is certainly a keeper. I am thinking for my next trial, I might swap the water and fresh milk amount to get a creamier custard filling.

Amelia, Just want to Thank You for your wonderful recipe and instruction. You are me hero haa..

Pastry Ingredients:

• 360 g flour
• 188 g butter
  
• cold water 3 tbsp
• 1 1/2 egg yolk
• 6 tbsp icing sugar
• 2 tbsp custard powder

Method:

• Sieve the flour,custard powder, icing sugar together.
• Cut the butter into small cube and use your finger tips to mix till resemble bread crumbs.
• Beat the yolk lightly and mix into the flour mixture and add cold water.
• Knead lightly till the dough is from and pliable. Do not over knead the dough.
• Roll out the dough press lightly into the egg tart mold.
• Prick lightly with a fork and bake 320F for 8-10 minutes and remove from the oven.
  

Custard filling Ingredients :

• 4 eggs
• 16 tbsp water
• 8 tbsp fresh milk
• 150 g sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 3 tsp custard powder.

Method:

• Mix the water,milk, sugar and boil lightly till sugar melt.
• Beat the egg lightly with a fork, add custard powder and mix well.
• Pour 1/3 of the milk into the egg mixture and stir well to temper the egg.
• Then pour the entire milk mixture into the egg and mix well.
• Sieve the egg mixture to remove any lumps before used.
• Fill the pastry with custard and baked for 25 to 30 minutes at 320F until the custard is set. ( Adjust temp according to oven)

*** about 15 egg tarts

Black Sesame Filling 2 Ways

Have been looking for ways to finish my left over black sesame powder before it expire and finally found a recipe online. All I need are black sesame powder, icing sugar, some sesame oil and enough canola oil for smoothness. Mix everything in bowl until a smooth paste is form and chill it in the fridge before use.

Now that I have the filling, what's next?
Green tea black sesame mochi. The mochi recipe and instruction can be found from LCOM. I really like this green tea version, very soft and refreshing especially if you eat it right away. Or you can chill in the fridge. I especially like the chilled version.

Black sesame steam bun. This is one of my favorite steam bun besides the egg custard bun. Not many dim sum place has it but you can certainly get the frozen from Asian Groceries store. I prepared the bun with the store bought pre-package pau flour. The sesame filling was rather dry not sure whether because I over steam the bun? Nevertheless, it still taste ok.

Tagged: 10 Things about Masakan Istimewa

First tagged from LCOM : 10 Things about Me.

1. Masakan Istimewa loves to: travel around the world

2. Masakan Istimewa hates to: go to work everyday, 5 days a week

3. Masakan Istimewa loves to: try all type of different cuisine

4. Masakan Istimewa hates to: clean especially bathroom

5. Masakan Istimewa loves to: bake and cook especially dessert

6. Masakan Istimewa hates to: prepare everyday meal

7. Masakan Istimewa loves to: cuddle with my little one

8. Masakan Istimewa hates to: take longs hours flight.

9. Masakan Istimewa loves to: watch comedy series or movie

10. Masakan Istimewa hates to: attend all day meetings

Whole Wheat Yogurt Bread

This is one of my favorite recipe I found from KC forum that I would like to share with you. The original recipe use bread flour to product a white yogurt bread, Since I have some whole wheat flour left just enough for this recipe, I decided to finish up the wheat flour with this Whole Wheat Yogurt Bread.
This recipe produce a very soft loaf of bread and the bread remain soft after 3 days without any bread improver. Due to the yogurt content, I must said that this bread is actually quite sweet compare to milk loaf, therefore it's actually taste pretty good eating it plain or with minimum spread.

This is my adapted version. I reduce the recipe into half due to my bread machine capacity. Instead of using vanilla sugar and plain yogurt, I replaces it vanilla yogurt.

Ingredients: ( click here to view original recipe in French language)

• 1 beaten egg ( room temperature)
• 62.5g vanilla yogurt
• 160ml the whole milk
• ~32.5g sugar
• 250g whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp yeast dry
• 2 tsp butter ( room temperature)
  

Method

• Put everything in the order listed above or according to your bread machine manual.
• Set to dough function for the first 20 minutes.
• Then set to auto program for whole wheat bread 1.5lb with light crust to finish the rest of the baking process.

A simple meal I prepare to pair with this wonderful bread. Ham sandwich with swiss cheese, lettuce tomatoes, mayonnaise and some slice avocados. Yum yum..What a healthy meal for the whole family.

Bacon Fried Rice

Do you have any special fried rice story to share? I remember in one of my team meeting, we were chatting about food. One of my American co-worker mentioned that his Chinese friend add hot dog in his fried rice then the rest of the team was laughing and think that funny. Maybe to American, this is something new or odd, who would have though of hot dog fried rice combination?? To be frank, I have been adding hot dog in my fried rice since I was in college.

Last week, we have some left over rice, no hot dog or any meat left in the fridge but some left over bacon. So this is my new creation as suggested from my hubby - Bacon Fried Rice with eggs and mix veggie.

Keen to share your unusual ingredients to prepare a simple fried rice?

Mung Bean Cookies

This is my second CNY creation - Mung Bean/ Green Bean Cookies. Another recipe copy from LCOM. The cookies melt in your mouth and have a very similar taste as the peanut cookie minus the peanut. I used mung bean powder instead of green bean flour. I always thought they are the same, can anyone confirm if they indeed mean the same thing? Because mine turn out to be green in color.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter (2 sticks)
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 Tbsp. cornflour
• 3/4 cup mung bean powder
  
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 egg yolk, for glazing

Method:

• Cream butter, powdered sugar and salt until creamy.
• Mix in sifted flours and hand knead until a dough is formed.
• Scoop the dough with a teaspoon and roll into a ball.
  
• Brush the top of each cookie with the yolk glaze.
• Bake in preheated 300F oven for 20 minutes.

Another Award

Another award from LCOM ! Thanks Ching for giving me award!

Chinese New Year Nian Gao

This is my first CNY creation of the year. How could you complete a chinese new year celebration without a nian gao? So I decided to get some steaming going with this quick and easy nian gao recipe from fellow blogger on Tuesday night and get ready for CNY celebration.
This recipe was adopted from Florence . Never imagine I will make my own nian gao as I heard that there are many pantang larang when steaming a nian gao. I guess due to the culture differences, Hong Kong style nian gao seems to be easier to prepare as compare to malaysia version when people spend all day long just to steam the kuih.

Ingredients:

• 300g glutinous rice flour
• 75g wheat starch (tang mien fun)
• 250g black/brown sugar
• 250ml water
• 250ml thick coconut milk

Method:

• Boil sugar with water till sugar dissolved. Strain and leave to cool. Stir in coconut milk and ginger juice.
• Pour sugar solution into sieved glutinous rice flour and wheat starch. Stir the mixture until well blended. Strain mixture if necessary so that it will be smoother.
• Pour nian gao mixture into a greased pan, cover it with aluminum foil and steam for about 45 - 60 minutes.
• Stick a red date in the middle of the cake immediately after it is cooked.

Rat's Way to Say Happy Lunar Year

Enjoy the slice show!!

春节愉快,万事如意!

GONG XI FA CAI!!

My First Award!!

It was a hectic weekend which I got nothing accomplished by went to ER on Sunday, admitted to the hospital and spend my weekend and monday in the hospital. Anyway, I felt so much better now and return to work this morning checking my email and found out I got an award from LCOM!!


Yay.. my first award ever! Thanks LCOM for giving this award to me. You truly brighten my week!

I would like to pass this to my friend Home Sweet Home