Hubby play with the food

It was a tiring Saturday evening after all the grocery shopping, house cleaning cleaning and food preparation for the up coming week. Hubby found a tuna rice recipe from one my chinese cookbook collection. He suggested that maybe we just cook something easy for dinner that night. I wasn't in mood for cooking and eating, anything can keep my stomach satisfy, I am happy. So hubby was tasked to cook Tuna Rice for dinner.

About 45 minutes later... Dinner is ready!

My comment: Thanks for the dinner Honey. But this is not really my favorite dish. I think the rice and tuna are quite plain and flavorless. Sorry :(

My ID4 Snack

Saw this Loh Mei Chi from chowtimes. It is so simple. All you need to do is just mix everything together and microwave for a few minutes. During the ID4 holiday, we have a pool gathering for my son and his friends, so I decide to make some mochi for snack. Since I don't have red bean paste with me, I used roasted peanut and sugar for the filling. The recipe provided enough make around 8 mochi balls. This is just about the right quantity for me since they don't taste as good if left overnight.

My husband certainly not a mochi eater like me except ice cream mochi.

Laksa Lemak

When you are in Malaysia, sometime it is very confusing it come to laksa because there are many versions and depends on which part of Malaysia you at, the have a different name and different taste.

Basically, there are 3 type of laksa: Asam Laksa (Penang Laksa), Curry Laksa and Laksa Lemak.

Asam Laksa or Penang Laksa is the one without coconut milk. The soup base was mainly cook from Mackerel and has the spicy and sourly flavor. This is one of the Penang Specialty. If you get a chance to visit Penang, don't miss it.

Curry Laksa and Laska Lemak contain coconut milk. I didn't know Curry Laksa until I went to KL for my college because back in my home town, we always call it Curry Noodle without the word Laksa. So in short Curry Laksa is actually mean Noodle in Curry soup based.

Laksa Lemak is another version I think is from Melaka Nyonya. This is not as common as Asam Laksa or Curry Laksa you can find in Malaysia. If I remember it right, the first time I had Laksa Lemak were from my cousin sister in law. (She is a great cook) She cooked this from scratch and delicious is the only word I can think off.

I bought this Hup Loong Laksa Lemak from Malaysia, and it has been sitting in my pantry for a while. So I decided to treat myself some nice Malaysia noodle soup last weekend. Since we can hardly get Mackerel from here, I substitute the fish with canned Sardine. It taste great and I love premix spice. I actually prefer Hup Loong Laksa Lemak than the Hup Loong Asam Laksa. I think the Asam laksa they have are too spicy for me and lack of flavor. But for this, all you need are some fish, onion and a canned of coconut milk.Yummy!

Sometime, I think it is weird to ask my hubby how's the food taste? Especially Malaysia food that he had never eaten before like this one. He will response with good or OK. Without knowing what to expect and what's the actual flavor of the food, it is very hard for him to give me comment besides great and ok. But I just can't stop myself from asking this question, because I want to know what's his thought about my cooking :)

Crisp Fried Anchovies

Another alternative way to cook anchovies besides Nasi Lemak but this dish can be serve as the side dish for Nasi Lemak as well. When cousin sister-in-law cooked this at home, I thought it was a very simple dish; all you need is some peanut, anchovies and sugar. It turns out I was wrong. It takes more than that. The moment I saw this recipes from Green Mangoes and Lemon Grass and I know I must try this. I love eat this especially with plain porridge.

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup Oil
• 2 cups dried cleaned anchovies
• 1/2 cup peanut
• 6 shallots, processed until coasty ground
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp chilies powder
• 1/4 tsp turmeric powder

Method:

• Head 2 tbsp oil in a pan
• Add anchovies and stir fry over medium heat until crisp and brown.Remove from pan, drain on paper towel.
• Discard cooking oil, clean the pan.
• Heat the pan and add peanut. Stir fry over low-medium heat until peanut cooked. Remove from pan
• Heat remaining oil in a pan.
• Add shallot, stir fry over low heat for 2 minutes.
• Add sugar, chilies powder and turmeric powder then cook for another minute or two.
• Return anchovies and peanut to the pan and mix thoroughly.
• Allow to cool before serving.

Spicy Water Spinach (balancan Kangkung)

I believe that Balancan Kangkung is one Malaysia specialty. There are so many way to cook balancan kangkung. Some people will make the balance mixture from scratch where they pound all the garlic, shallot, chilies and etc with a mortar. Other simple versions include chopping the garlic and chillies with knife, and mix the cube balancan with water and stir fry all ingredient together. For me, I always use the Hup Loong pre-mix balancan powder for the heat and add more some dried shrimp and balance powder.

Last week, I wanted to try something new. I saw this recipe from a cookbook call The Food of Asia and decided to give it a try. The only I omitted from the original recipe is the sesame oil. I don't recall my family adds sesame oil when they cook this dish in so many versions and I think this dish will taste great without it.

Ingredients:

• 2 lb Kangkung (water spinach)
• 3 tbsp dried shrimp, soak soften
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 6 shallots
• 2 tsp sambal olek
• 1 inch ginger
• 2 tsp dried shrimp paste powder (Balancan)
• 3 tbsp oil
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• Salt to taste

Method:

• Blend dried shrimp until fine.
• Blend garlic, ginger and shallot until fine.
• Heat oil in a pan, add garlic mixture and dried shrimp. Cook over low heat. Stir frequently for 5 minutes until fragrant.
• Add sugar, soy sauce and mix well.
• Add kangkung and stir well.
• Turn up the heat to high and cover pan with lid until kangkung is tender.
• Seasoned with salt to taste.

The dish does taste great but I prefer the my shotcut version.

Stir Fry Chicken with Potatoes

Lately I am the mood of blogging my everyday dish. Since I won't able to try something special during the weekend as much as I would like to, I think maybe i just start from my everyday simple cooking. This dish is my husband favorite dish. Not that he love to eat this but the fact that it is so easy to made. I remember every time when I run out of idea what to cook for dinner, I will asked him for suggestion. He will response with what do we have in the fridge. If chicken is one of the ingredient, his response will be "what about Stir Fry Chicken with Potatoes or Stir Fry Chicken with Cream Corn?" so here you go. Ingredients:

• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 1 scallion, julienne
• 4 chicken thigh, de-boned and cut into bite size
• 2 medium size potatoes cut into cube
• 1 tsp shao xing wine
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1½ tbsp oil
• 1/3 tsp salt to taste
• ½ tsp sweet dark soy sauce
• ¾ cups water

Method:

• Marinate chicken with soy sauce and wine.
• Heat oil in a pan and add garlic and scallion, stir fry until soft
• Add in chicken and stir fry for 2-3 minutes until chicken turn brown.
• Add in potatoes and stir fry for another 2 minutes
• Add in water and dark soy sauce. Cover the pan with lid and bring to boil.
• Turn the heat to medium and continue simmers for 15 – 20 until the potatoes are soft and sauce are thickened.

Fig

Co-worker A brought some Figs to the office yesterday for us to try. I had never tried a fig before and was not originally plan to try.

After a few emails floating around within team with these comments,

Co-worker B, C, D and E all gave them a resounding "hey! ... they're not awful".

E said “I rather liked them personally - better than 'not awful' :-)”

Response from my manager “Ugh” and in return from co-worker A for my boss response “Says the guy that likes a glass of grapefruit juice with chocolate cake :)”

I couldn’t resist myself to try it out.

My response: “ No too bad, quite sweet”

So the next question is would I buy it for snack?

Answer: Maybe not, but when I come across a better way to enjoy this fruit in some dessert form, I will surely it.

Out of my curiosity, so I google the nutrition fact for this fruit and found that Fig is high in dietary Fiber, good source of calcium, sodium free, cholesterol free and fat free fruit. This is a prefect fruit for those who are trying to loose weight. More information can be found in World Healthiest Food website. Maybe I should include Fig as one of my fruit shopping list.

Pork and Taro Root in Fermented Bean Sauce

When I ran out of idea what to cook, I will ask my mother in law for suggestion. This is one of the recipes she provided via a phone call to HK long time back. She doesn’t provide the exact quantity she uses but just a rough idea on the ingredients and method. I try to recreate this dish from my memory and these are the ingredient and quantity I used. You may adjust the quantity to suit your taste.

Ingredients:

• 8oz minced pork
• ½ tsp corn starch
• 1 tbsp of soy sauce
• 1lb of taro root quartered and slice into 1/4inch thick
• 2 tbsp fermented black bean
• 3 clove of garlic
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 cup water

Method:

• Marinate pork with soy sauce and corn starch. set aside.
• Clean the fermented black bean water and discard the water.
• Remove the skin of garlic. Minced the garlic together with black bean. You can use mortar to mash them into paste consistency.
• Heat 2 tbsp oil in a pan, add the garlic and black bean paste in the pan and sauté until fragrant.
• Then add in pork and stir fry until the pork turn brown.
• Add in taro root and stir fry for another minute.
• Add in water and cover the pan with lid. Turn the heat to medium and let it simmer for 10 minutes or until the sauce is thicken. Depends on the thickness and the taro root, you may add more water if needed.

Steam Bun

In my previous post, I mentioned that I am going to cook something simple this weekend and look this is what I come up with - Chinese steam bun. I have a Vietnamese steam bun flour in my pantry and there are some left over BBQ pork in my fridge. so I decide to come up with char shiu pao for my Sunday breakfast.
I made the dough according to the instruction listed in the package. Overall, it took me about 2 hours from start to finish. The bun taste ok. A little dry and not soft as those you get from the restaurant. I am always curious how people made the bun so soft and tasty... if you have some tips, please let me know..

Misc Cupcakes

Another Friday afternoon, spending most of my time researching and planning for Aidan's birthday party, i just don't see myself can have any break this weekend. Still no clue what food project this weekend but I am sure it's not going to be something complex. Want to take a break from food recipes but just want to share with you some left over cupcakes photo taken from my hubby last week.