Alesia, the home cook

Chinese Sponge Cake

2011-10-01T17:27:00.001+08:00

While growing up I would always snack on this cake whenever my mom goes to the wet market. I would always remind her to get a bag home and I just wouldn’t stopped munching on the cake. It’s super light with a just a hint of sweetness. In Chinese it’s called Ji Dan Gao (Chicken Egg Cake – hehe sounds funny in English doesn’t it) I didn’t know it was that easy to make as it only has 4 ingredients (yeap as you may guessed it one of the main ingredients is eggs!) and the best part it’s steamed instead of baked. And this recipe doesn’t call for any raising agent BUT you would need some elbow grease and a secret ingredient.

You Need
6 eggs
260 grams or 1 1/2 cup of caster sugar
300 grams or 2 1/2 cup of all purpose flour, sifted twice
125 ml aerated drink (7 UP, Sprite or ice cream soda) – This is THE secret ingredients. The fizziness in the drink that makes the cake so light and fluffy plus it adds a hint of nice aroma to the cake as well

How To
1. Prepare the steamer or wok while you work on the batter.
2. Beat the eggs and sugar using a hand beater or mixer or a wire whisk until the mixture turns pale and fluffy or double in volume.
3. Divide flour into three portions and fold in the flour alternating with the soda drink, ending with the flour.
4. Pour the batter into a baking tin lined with greaseproof paper. You may use a bamboo steamer if you have any.
5. Steam on high for 25-30 minutes.
6. Leave the cake to cool AND resist the temptations to cut it while it is still warm otherwise it would crumble. Trust me it’s very tempting to have a slice!

A Hearty Bowl of Broccoli Soup

2011-09-20T21:26:00.000+08:00

That’s Ashley’s old bib in case you’re wondering. Spent the entire of last night washing Ashley’s old baby clothing to be handed down to her little sister. So this morning instead of tiring myself out with heavy cooking I decided to make broccoli soup, I read that broccoli is a good source of calcium, vitamin C, folate, and vitamin B6. It’s a fairly simple dish to make and it’s low fat but at the same time it fills you up. Which is something I need at the moment because I’ve gained my allocated amount of weight gain (10kilos) for this pregnancy and I’m only 33 weeks along. Pffttt!

You Need
1 small head broccoli, about 500g, including stems, chopped (separate the florets and stems)
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 medium potato, grated or diced
3 cups of chicken stock or water
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and white pepper to taste

How To
1. Heat oil on a medium pot. Gently sauté onion until translucent or softened. Add in the chopped stems and continue sautéing for 5-6 minutes.
2. Add in the stock or water and bring to a boil before reducing the heat and add in the potato.
3. Leave to simmer for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are softened.
4. Allow the soup to cool slightly, then transfer to a blender and blend until smooth. Return soup to the pot and over low heat, add in the florets. I only add the florets in the end so that it remains slightly crunchy which gives the soup a nice texture. Heat gently and season.
5. Serve with generous servings of grated Parmesan.

It was so hearty and comforting to have a bowl during a rainy morning that I had two servings!

Orange Yogurt Cake

2011-08-19T10:02:00.000+08:00

I’m glad that my girl loves baked goodies because all her ‘mommy I want to eat cake’ requests once a week has helped in improving my baking skills. After all the burnt or undercooked cakes I finally have a nice looking, moist no-longer-dense-at-the-bottom cakes. Yay!! There’s another recipe for orange yogurt cake which I’ve shared before but this recipe is tweaked from a butter cake recipe which I have been using for all my yellow/butter cakes. Orange moist cake, chocolate cake to name a few.

You Need
2 cups of self raising flour
1 cup of caster sugar
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of soda bicarbonate
125 grams of butter, softened at room temperature
3 large or 4 medium eggs
1/2 cup of plain yogurt
2 tablespoons of milk
zest and juice from 1 orange

How To
1. Preheat your oven to 180 °C. Line 8 inch square baking pan with parchment papers. Remember to brush some butter on the bottom and the sides of the pan before you line the pan with paper.
2. Sift the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder and soda bicarbonate) leave aside.
3. Using your electric mixer, cream butter together with the sugar and orange zest on medium speed until fluffy and turns pale yellow.
4. Add in the eggs, one by one and beat well after each addition of egg until creamy. Make sure you scrape down the sides for even mixing.
5. With the mixer on low speed, add in the orange juice and yogurt before adding in the dry ingredients in 3 additions
6. Finally add in the milk and make sure the batter is all well mixed.
7. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
8. Remove from the oven and let the cake cool in the pan for 5 minutes before inverting the cake to continue to cool on a wire rack.

Notes: Here are some of the tips I’ve picked up or learned on my own in making sure the cakes turns out right which I’d love to share with you.

1. Always make sure the butter and eggs are at room temperature. Like most people if you keep your eggs in the fridge, take them out along with the butter and let them to sit out at room temperature for 30 minutes before you start baking.
2. Prepare the pans, preheat the oven and get all the ingredients ready before you turn on the mixer. It’s easier to focus on the mixing of the batter when you have all the ingredients ready rather than you scramble around the kitchen looking for the milk, or even vanilla essence.
3. Remember to scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl every now and then.
4. Different oven may have different temperature hence it’s advisable to get an oven thermometer to determine what’s the actual temperature because sometimes even though it’s stated 180C on the oven display it may not be the actual temperature.
5. If the top of your cake starts to brown before the cake is halfway cooked, use an aluminium sheet to cover the top to prevent from burning. Never lower the oven’s temperature because in my case, the change of temperature often resulted dense cakes.
6. Make sure you mix well after each addition of dry ingredients before adding the next batch.

These are some of the tips I can think of right now, will continue adding them once I have new ones. But the one thing I’ve learned despite all the tips given is never give up even though your cake may not turn out the way it should be even after a few times of baking. Just continue baking and if the cake doesn’t turn out right, go through the recipe again and try to tweak the steps the next time. In my case, it’s always the beating and I get very ~~excited~~ anxious in getting everything done before it’s even ready.

Hope you’d enjoy this recipe! And thanks to all the 902 likes on my Facebook page. It’s really nice to know that I’ve inspired you in some ways or that you enjoy my blog. Have a great weekend folks!

xoxo

Pandan Sponge Cake with Kaya Filling

2011-07-28T21:23:00.002+08:00

I’ve been baking awfully alot lately, since my girl simply loves baked goodies and she’s been asking for at least one cake a week! It’s definitely cheaper and not to mention healthier to bake your own instead of buying at the bakery not knowing what ingredients they use. And ever since I got pregnant, I haven’t been taking photos of the stuffs I’ve made well iphone photos doesn’t really count eh, so do forgive my rusty skills. I actually forgotten how to work around a SLR camera!Ish.

This is quite a simple recipe hence why I’m blogging about it right now, because being nearly 7 months along sitting is quite a chore these days ; with the big protruding stomach and a baby that kicks you hard each time you sit down for more than 10 minutes and since I’m no expert in blogging - I usually spent at least an hour on a post! I need to write something quick before my blog goes completely dead by the time the baby arrives. Yeap it’s that easy, the recipe I mean

You Need
6 large eggs
1/2 cup of caster sugar (original recipe calls for 1 cup but I figured since I’m using kaya as the filling, I’d make the cake less sweet)11/2 cups of all purpose flour (sifted)
8 pandan leaves + 4 tablespoons of water blended together and strained to get the juice OR you can use
1/2 teaspoon of green coloring
1 teaspoon of pandan essence (if you can’t get fresh pandan leaves)
kaya spread (coconut jam) for the filling

How To

1. Heat oven to 180 °C. Line 2 8x8 inch square baking pans. (You can use 1 9x9 inch baking pan and slicing the cake into two layers but I’m terrible when it comes to slicing cakes into halves, it always ends up being uneven layers!)
2.Whisk the eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add in the pandan juice or essence and coloring. Mix well.
3. Stir in 1/3 portion of the flour over the egg mixture and fold in gently. Repeat until all the flour has been used.
4. Pour cake mixture into the pans dividing the batter evenly between the two pans.
5.Bake for about 10-20 minutes depending on the size of the pan or until golden brown. Mine took approximately less than 15 minutes for each pan.
6. Let it cool before spreading the kaya on one layer of the cake and sandwich with the other layer. Cut into pieces and serve. Yums!

A delicious and simple cake ready in less than 40 minutes! And this got to be my fastest blog post ever written! In record breaking 15 minutes including editing! How awesome is that? Baby’s kicking me now signaling me to go lie down, so till the next time enjoy cooking and eating folks! xoxo

(The two layers of cake left to cool before sandwiching them together with kaya!)

(Simply yummy! Soft cake with sweet kaya oozing out)

On a break

2011-07-06T06:57:00.002+08:00

You must have noticed the ultra long void since my last post and I feel really bad for not being able to update my foodie blog as often as I can. And it’s not because I’ve stopped cooking or no longer interested in blogging, if anything it’s for a good reason, yours truly is currently 22 weeks pregnant!

Hence why things are little quiet over here. I’m lucky that I don’t have to combat morning sickness during the first trimester and that I’m still able to cook till now without having to don on a safety suit (no feeling of nausea over food) still by the time I finished doing my chores I’m totally knackered. Evenings when I usually do my posts are now meant for resting aching my back and going to bed early.

And we have been kept busy over a new project aside from being pregnant. If you haven’t guessed it, we are going to move into our new place before the baby arrives! So that’s another reason why things are little, ok very quiet over here. We’ve been kept really busy shopping for the house, having discussions after discussions on renovations etc. Phew no wonder I’m feeling tired when the day ends. Cant wait for ~~my kitchen~~ our house to be ready! Staying with my in-laws have been great but it’s really time for us to have a place of our own eh. And I can’t wait to start using my dream tool in the kitchen.

Hopefully I can squeeze in a post or two soon, if not do check out my tweets @ alesiahomecook, or my Facebook Page, I usually try to twit some pictures of the food I’ve made. Till then take care my fellow readers and do come back every now and then to help me take down the cobwebs from the corners of my blog eh

xoxo
Alesia, the pregnant home cook.

Thank you 2010 and hello 2011!

2010-12-31T16:25:00.001+08:00

Loving 2010 and looking forward to 2011!

Some hits and some misses

2010-12-24T01:06:00.003+08:00

As you may know, I’m terrible at baking. There would be good days and there would be bad days. Good days my cakes turns out nice and yummy, bad days well ~~expensive~~ good ingredients and precious time are wasted. But still being the stubborn person that I am, I kept on ~~wasting~~ baking. The other day I bought some lemons from the market and I have a tub of yogurt sitting in the fridge, so I thought why not make a cake out of these ingredients before they go bad.So I googled for an easy to follow recipes and found this, and I followed the recipe to the T not tweaking even a slight, not even the sugar. Well ok I frosted the cake with whipped cream and marmalade glaze only because the cake top looked hideous (still trying to figure out whhhyy!) And the cake turns out YUMMY! Even my friends think so too

{No more dense bottom layer, only moist cake!}

Feeling victorious and lucky I decided to try another version of yogurt cake but this time in the form of muffins and used some left over dried apricots. I almost ALMOST throw my oven away or at least shake it while screaming ‘whyy oh whyyy, why are you so temperamental! ‘ The muffins turns out inedible in the end even the dogs refused to eat them and I know that’s bad because Leo and Puppy eats anything and everything (except chocolates)

{Looks so promising until}

See how dense the muffin is? Trying to figure out what’s wrong; is it the temperature, the cold eggs, the beating, like what’s exactly wrong.

Anyway this post was supposed to be up this morning but Ashley decided to watch her cartoons on my notebook and after that we met with one of our potential contractors. Thinking I can finish off the rest of the post when we came back I got a call from my mother in law saying that one of hubby’s aunt wants me to bake 4 trays of brownies for her café’s Christmas dinner menu, after sampling some the day before. So I was busy scrambling to look for ingredients (luckily there are three baking supplies store near my place) and looking after a sick kid, trying to get everything done. After 3 hours of baking and 4 trays of brownies later, I finally have the time to finish this post although I’ve lost track of what I was supposed to be writing. Heh.

Oh ya these are the brownies I made yesterday for hubs’ aunt to sample. Got the recipe from one of my baking books and it’s very sweet, for the 4 batches of brownies I’ve cut down on the sugar and going to frost the brownies with white chocolate ganache instead of chocolate icing, so that the brownies looks more christmassy .

Speaking of Christmas, to all my family, friends and readers of my blog wishing each and everyone of you a Blessed Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Claypot Chicken Rice

2010-12-14T17:48:00.000+08:00

Ok even though the title says Claypot Chicken Rice, I cheated because I didn’t use a claypot instead I use a rice cooker. Why? Well I once tried cooking using a claypot and that lovely pot spilt into two when I heat it up! Thank goodness there wasn’t anything in the pot yet otherwise I’ll have a very nice scar right now. Needless to say I’ve stayed away from using claypot as a cooking utensil ever since.

So anyway about this dish, it’s quite a popular one pot dish readily found here in Malaysia, Singapore and China and some places even offer many variations of this dish such as tom yam claypot chicken rice, black pepper claypot chicken rice and I’ve seen some cooked using crabs! But I personally prefer the ‘original’ flavour consists of just chicken pieces marinated in soy and oyster sauce marinade along with shiitake mushrooms and Chinese sausages which is the recipe I’m going to share in today’s post.

If you have a claypot and not afraid to use them like I do, go ahead as cooking with claypot will give you the lovely crust at the bottom and flavourful pieces of meat and mushroom penetrating each grain of rice but cooking with rice cooker will still give you the same flavourful taste just without the crust at the bottom. Just make sure you keep watch otherwise you’ll get a burnt meal.

Serves 4

You Need

2 cups of rice, washed and drained

3 cups of water or chicken stock * add a cube of chicken bouillon to the water if you don't have chicken stock

2 chicken thighs or half a chicken cut into bite size pieces

6-7 dried shiitake mushroom, soaked and cut into slices or half (retain the water used to soak the mushrooms)

1 Chinese sausage, sliced

2 tablespoons of oyster sauce

1 tablespoon of dark soya sauce

Fried shallots

Chopped spring onions and cilantro for garnishing

1 – 2 tablespoons of oil, peanut oil preferably

Marinade

2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce

3 tablespoons of oyster sauce

2 tablespoons of soy sauce

1 tablespoon of sesame seed oil *omit this if you don’t like sesame seed oil

1 cm ginger, grated

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 teaspoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of cornflour
1/2 teaspoon of ground white pepper

How To

1. Pat dry the pieces of chicken with kitchen paper towel and mix with the marinade ingredients. Set aside and leave to marinate for at least 30 minutes.

2. In a heated wok, saute the rice grains for a few minutes before adding in the chicken and mushroom. You can also add in the sausage but I prefer to fry them and just scatter the fried bits over the rice.

3. Mix well before adding the dark soya sauce and oyster sauce. Transfer the rice and chicken mixture into a rice cooker. Add in the chicken stock and the water used to soak the mushrooms and turn on the rice cooker. I try not to waste and it gives extra flavouring to the rice, so why not.

4. Once the rice is cooked, give it a quick stir using a wooden spatula to fluff the rice.

5. Serve warm with generous servings of fried shallots, Chinese sausages and chopped spring onions and cilantro. And don’t forget your cili padi (bird’s eye chillies) with soy sauce!

Isn’t that easy? Maybe when I’m adventurous enough I might use a claypot next time! By the way I know some like to serve Claypot Chicken Rice with fried salted fish so go ahead, just mix them in once the rice’s cooked. I don’t quite fancy salted fish unless it’s cooked ala Nyonya style ‘ Masak Lemak ‘ Spicy Coconut Sauce. Hmmm maybe I’ll try cooking that dish one of these days, my mom makes the best Ikan Masin Masak Lemak ever!

Testing out the oven

2010-11-24T04:16:00.002+08:00

Nope, I didn’t get a new oven just finally went to get an oven thermometer after a couple of my friends telling me I should. And I wished I’ve listened to them earlier, because now I know why my cakes always doesn’t turned out right; they would be either burnt or undercooked. To my horror I thought all this while (ok it’s pretty much a guesswork when it comes to my oven) I’m baking at the ‘right’ temperature but turns out it’s not! 170 degrees Celsius supposedly turns out to be 200 degrees Celsius!

before having an oven thermometer and relying on guesswork

after having an oven thermometer no more guessing!

No wonder I always had a pretty rough time with the baking but not anymore (I hope!) Anyway it’s been a while since I last baked and even though I kept on buying more baking stuffs I finally did some real baking yesterday first roasted some new potatoes and decided to make apple sauce cake after finding out I still have a jar each of home made apple sauce and pumpkin puree made sitting at the back of the fridge. Still deciding if I should make Spiced Pumpkin Pound Cake or maybe I should start learning how to make tarts and pies. Oh well that is for another (baking) day.

So back to the recipe for today’s post basically it’s a simple, tried and tested out recipes of Apple Sauce Cake I got from Martha Stewart’s recipe collection and of course roasted potatoes, again a pretty simple and straight forward recipe with just 3 ingredients. I started first with roast potatoes after getting the temperature right and while I was preparing the cake.

Roasted Potatoes

You Need

3-4 new potatoes or red potatoes, scrubbed and cut into chunks

2-3 teaspoons of dried rosemary

salt and pepper to taste

How To

1. Preheat oven to 165 degrees Celsius or 325 degrees Fahrenheit .

2. Mix olive oil, rosemary, salt and pepper with potatoes and place them on a baking pan.

3. Bake for 45 minutes or until potatoes are brown and tender when pierced. Serve with freshly ground black peppers.

Apple Sauce Cake

I once used apple sauce for a fat free and oil free cake replacing the butter and I thought this cake will be taste something like that cake but to my surprise it tasted like a local cake which I absolutely love; honeycomb cake. But definitely not in texture, it’s moist like a butter cake. I initially wanted to add in chopped apricots but like always I forgotten about it until I already mixed the cake and ended up sprinkling the chopped apricots over the cake before putting it into the oven.And doesn’t the cake look oh so Christmassy with the bits of apricot peeking through the sheet of white snow of icing sugar? I omitted some of the ingredients, I used muscovado sugar instead of brown sugar and I replaced ground cardamom with nutmeg and I cut down on the butter.

You Need

3 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
180grams unsalted butter, room temperature plus extra for greasing
2 cups packed light muscovado sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 large eggs
2 cups apple sauce
Confectioners'/ Icing sugar, optional
1/2 cup of chopped apricots, optional

How To
1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit . In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Set aside.
2. In another bowl, with a hand whisk or if you wish, electric mixer, beat butter, brown sugar, and honey until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until combined. With mixer on low speed, gradually add flour mixture; beat just until combined. Beat in applesauce and chopped apricots
3. Generously coat a nonstick 9-inch loaf pan with butter and dust with flour. Spoon batter into pan; smooth top. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean (but slightly wet), 50 to 60 minutes.
4.Cool on a wire rack 10 minutes. Turn out of pan onto a cutting board or baking sheet; invert cake onto rack, top side up. Cool completely. Dust with confectioners' sugar before serving, if desired.

Almond Crusted Chicken Wings

2010-11-06T17:47:00.002+08:00

I love chicken wings, especially grilled or fried ones. Yummy, succulent wings. Mmmmmm. So the other day while cleaning up my pantry I found some chopped almonds, I bought it a while back thinking I might use it for baking but never got around to it. So before they turned bad, I thought of making almond crusted chicken wings instead of just the usual baked ones, not sure if it’s going to taste nice. But now I have another recipe added to my chicken wings collection.

You Need
12 pieces of chicken wings
1/2 teaspoon of chili flakes
1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon of mixed dried herbs
3 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon of sugar
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 cup of chopped almonds
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 egg white beaten
oil for frying

How To
1. Clean the wings and pat dry.
2. Mix all the ingredients except for beaten egg white in a bowl.
3. Marinate the chicken wings and refrigerate them for at least an hour or overnight preferably.
4. Heat up oil in a wok or a deep frying pot.
5. Prepare a coating station, first with the beaten egg white and chopped almonds in a shallow dish.
6. Submerge the chicken wings in the beaten egg white before coating them with the almonds. Repeat until the wings are all coated.
7. Drop the chicken wings gently into the hot oil and fry until golden brown on both side.
8. Alternatively you can also bake the wings in the oven, at 180 degree Celsius for 30 minutes.

Cooking Pictorial

How To

Lovely Sunday Morning

2010-11-03T20:03:00.001+08:00

It has been so hot for the past few weeks that when it was breezy and cloudy last Sunday, we decided to stay indoors instead of hitting the malls. And of course, eating out is getting costlier these days as well especially for meals like these when you can easily make them yourself at home at home.

And of course, what’s breakfast without fluffy,yummy pancakes eh?
Oh and not forgetting the lil chef

All these while I have been searching high and low on how to make pancakes light and fluffy, I’d would follow the recipe to the T, tweaked it but still the pancakes will always turn out flat and slightly hard. Unlike the fluffy ones you eat at cafes or restaurants until I was beginning to think it’s a secret that everyone but me knows of. So one day by chance, I finally found the secret!And it’s thanks to the months of whisking my eggs whites/yolks/whole into pale, creamy and fluffy texture, I out of habit did the same when I was making pancakes, I beat the egg until it’s pale and light, sifted the flour over the wet ingredients and left the mixture to sit while I clean up and voila I got myself fluffy pancakes! Erm, I better start using other adjectives aside from fluffy. Anyway here’s the recipe for the pancakes and since it’s a lovely Sunday morning, I made garlic butter too. So double recipes in today’s post.Yaay!

Buttermilk Pancakes

(Adapted from Joy of Baking)
You don’t have to use buttermilk but I stumbled upon it the other day while grocery shopping and got it to see what’s the hoo-haa using buttermilk in cooking and so far I’m impressed

You Need
1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons (28 grams) granulated white sugar. I omit this and used 4 tablespoons of honey
1 large egg
1 cup (240 ml) buttermilk, you can use fresh milk if you can’t find buttermilk
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
3 tablespoons (40 grams) butter, melted
Plus extra melted butter for greasing the pan

How To

1. In a large bowl, whisk the egg like how you usually do for sponge cakes until light and fluffy. Next beat in the honey along with the vanilla essence.

2. Sift the flour, salt, baking powder and soda over the egg and honey mixture. Mix well before beating in the butter and buttermilk.

3. I know some recipes said you shouldn’t over-mix the batter but in my case, I did and the batter will form a slow ribbon when I raised my whisk.

4. Let the batter sit for for 10-20 minutes for the chemistry to work (Baking soda reacts to honey and also buttermilk causing the batter to have bubbles, and this of course makes the pancakes light and fluffy*again!* )

5. While waiting for the batter to sit, heat a frying pan over medium heat and oil the pan using the extra melted butter.

6. Using a small ladle, pour about 3/4 full ladleful of batter onto the pan. When you see bubbles start to appear on the surface, by this stage the bottoms of the pancakes are already brown, you can flip the pancake over and cook until lightly browned.

7. Repeat until you used up the remaining batter.

8. Best serve HOT with sticky sweet honey (or if you can find maple syrup) and butter or jam.

9. Depending on your ladle, but this recipe makes about 6-8 pancakes.

Cooking Pictorial

Ingredients

How To

And now for the garlic butter, once you start making your own garlic butter you will never buy them anymore. It’s so simple to make and hassle free (well unless you count mincing garlic as troublesome, you can always grate them instead) and home made ones are 100 times so much nicer than store-bought version. I have been snacking on garlic toast nearly every day (that explains why the scales have been tipping over at the wrong side) because it’s so delish!

Garlic Butter
250 gram butter at room temperature (I use SCS butter as I find them creamier and more suitable to use to make garlic/herbed butter compared to other brands)
2 bulbs of garlic, minced or grated ( if you find 2 bulbs of garlic is overwhelming you can use 1 bulb instead)
1 tablespoons of dried mixed herbs
1/2 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
salt to taste

Just mix everything together and there you go. Freshly made garlic butter. Told you it’s easy

p.s I’m trying out another image sharing site, so do let me know if it’s any different or still the same yea while you go through my blog
p.p.s And guys I didn’t go through to Round 3 of Project Food Blog but thank you so much for voting for me yea!

Such a long cooking time

2010-10-28T12:05:00.001+08:00

Hey everyone, quite a few of you have mentioned to me that some of the pictures here in my blog is taking such a long cooking time for them to load and I think it’s high time for me to consider other (free) image sharing sites even though it’s loading just fine over at my side. Currently I’m using imageshack.us and contemplating whether I should use tinypic.com (but tinypic.com has a trial period?!) so if anyone of you knows any good, reliable, FREE! image sharing sites do let me know will ya? Photobucket, I tried before but there’s limited bandwidth. Thank you!

M&Ms and Pasta

2010-10-14T15:23:00.000+08:00

If you're wondering why things are a little quiet here and also on my Twitter, it's because my notebook is once again sent in for repair. First it was the cracks on the casing and next my windows decided to die on me (well actually more like I killed it trying to reformat the notebook on my own bleh). So anyway I'm notebook-less *again!* but it's nice to have nothing to distract me or take up most of my waking time (aside from Ashley). I spent the past few days cleaning up my room, clearing all the backlogged tasks; writing down those recipes I've collected from newspapers and magazine over the year, amongst other things. But the one thing I missed most is reading all the Project Food Blog entries.

So anyway the hubs went to work today and I finally can use the PC without having to fight with him over it plus a few friends asked for the recipe of Ashley's lunch today after I shared the picture on my Facebook Page I decided to post it up before ~~people start forgetting the existence of my blog~~ I forget. Today I made something really special for the lil picky eater , meatballs with mash hence M&Ms and hubs told me at the last minute that he wants to have his lunch at home before heading out for work so luckily I had some leftover pasta with newly bought tomatoes and I found a can of tomato puree in the pantry. So I whipped something up real quick for him.

Meatballs and Mash

Meatballs and Pasta with Tomato Sauce

M&Ms (Meatballs and Mash)

Meatballs

(Serves 2-3)

You Need

2 pieces of chicken breasts, fats trimmed,boneless and minced ( you can use your choice of ground meat aside from chicken)

1 small onion, minced

5-6 shiitake mushrooms, soaked, drained and minced

half a carrot, minced

1 teaspoon, dried mixed herbs(or you can use 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh oregano or basil)

1 egg lightly beaten

4 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce

salt & pepper to season

olive oil

2 cups of breadcrumbs

How To

1. Heat oven to 190 degree Celsius, drizzle the baking pan with some olive oil.

2. Combine ground meat, egg, herbs, carrots, mushrooms, onions, Worcestershire sauce,olive oil, salt and pepper. Mix well. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour.
3. Shape into small meatballs, about 3/4 ounce each. Roll the meatballs in the find dry bread crumbs to lightly coat, then arrange the meatballs on the baking pan and drizzle olive oil over the meatballs. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until browned and cooked through. If you make larger meatballs, allow more time.
4. Serve.

Potato and Broccoli Mash

You Need

6-7 broccoli florets

2 medium potatoes, cubed

2 tablespoons of butter

1/2 cup of milk
1 teaspoon of dried herbs
salt & pepper to season.

How To
1. Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan, add in the potatoes.
2. Once the potatoes have cooked for about 10 minutes, or soft when pierced with a fork, add the broccoli to the pot. Simmer for another 7-10 minutes or so, or until the broccoli is tender but not crumbly.
3. Drain the potatoes and broccoli using a colander and return to the saucepan/pot. Add in the butter, milk, seasonings.
4. If you have a potato masher use it to mash and mix everything ortherwise a fork would do just fine.
5. I used these to shape the mash into shape of flowers and the food pick for the meatballs. Simply place the molds/cutters on the plate and spoon just enough amount of mash into the molds. Press lightly and remove the molds.

For the pasta, it's a pretty simple recipe

(Serves 1)
You Need
2 cups of cooked pasta (I used Penne)
1 can of tomato puree
4 small or 2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 small onion, minced
1 cup of water
olive oil
salt & pepper to taste
meatballs *refer to the recipe above*

How To
1. In a large saucepan, heat up the olive oil over medium heat.
2. Add in the onions and saute until the onions turns translucent.
3. Next add in the tomatoes, tomato puree and water. Bring to a simmer before adding in the meatballs and cook for 30-45 minutes.
4. Season with salt and pepper and dish up over a plate of pasta.

More pictures would be up after I get my notebook back. I am so not used to blogging using Julian's PC, everything is not right even my editing software. Oh how I miss my notebook.

Pictorial Tutorial in making Kourabiethes

2010-09-27T22:29:00.002+08:00

As promised, since some of you have voted for me , Efxaristo! here is the pictorial tutorial for the Kourabiethes. You can get the recipe here
The ingredients How To

Mommy dearest!

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Celebrating my little win with Kourabiethes

2010-09-27T03:03:00.000+08:00

Yes I’ve made it to the second round of Project Food Blog! And it’s all thanks to you, yes you who voted for me. No words can described how happy (and surprised) I was when I saw the tiny trophy on my profile, especially when I woke up at 3.30 in the morning to use the toilet and as always a habit to check for any new updates on my laptop, to see that I’m still in the run to be the next Food Blog Star! It took all my willpower not to go wooooottttt since both of my darlings were still in slumber land. So once again thank you so so much for voting for me! Also special thanks to the judges who actually took their time to read my post! Golly imagine having Dana Cowin ( Editor-in-Chief of FOOD & WINE Magazine ) Nancy Silverton (Founder La Brea Bakery, Co-owner Mozza ) and Pim Techamuanvivit (Author of ChezPim.com and The Foodie Handbook) reading your blog!

Then after all the excitement starts to die a bit I started to feel nervous because, 1) I was going back to my parents place which is 2 hours drive from my house for the weekend and 2) I’m supposed to prepare for the second challenge: The Classics , to pick an ethnic classic that is outside my comfort zone or are not as familiar with and submit over the weekend! Somehow I had the impression we would only need to work on the next challenge when the week starts and not over the weekend. I did think of a few dishes for this challenge but it would need me to be at my own workplace with my own cooking equipments, so with a few hours to spare I started to look around for an exotic dish I can do at my parents place and also using ingredients that are readily accessible as well because Malacca is pretty limited when it comes to exotic ingredients. So in the end I settled for a dessert, a Greek dessert to be precise called Kourabiethes (sugared almond shortbread cookies). Why Greek you ask? Well I think it’s a sign because for the past few weeks we (read Ashley) have been watching Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief non-stop everyday and also I’ve always been fascinated by the Greek mythology and of course the all famous blue domes against white background. Having never been to the country or eaten any Greek cuisine before I have no idea how this dessert taste like but from what I’ve read and seen on the internet is enough to convince myself to try making it.

So after looking at the recipes, I packed the ingredients I have here to bring back to my parent’s place and during the journey I kept thinking how I should go about on this challenge, should I go all documentary or should I just go with the flow while injecting myself in the post. Especially when we are required to write a compelling post on how we came about to choosing the dish we are making. Well continue reading and see which I’ve decided on yea (evil I know tempting you to read on).

From what I read, Kourabiethes pronounced koo-rah-bee-YEH-thess are usually found during celebrations in Greek and of course it fits right, me advancing to the next round is indeed a celebration and I always feel extra good whenever we go back to my parents place and with all my uncles being back as well it’s definitely a call for celebrations! As I read further, I find interesting enough it’s one of the few desserts usually served during The Great Lent, like how dates are associated with Puasa. How they come about to creating this dish, I’m not sure but to me it looks like snow-peaked mountains, don’t you think? So anyway I was just having loads of fun catching up with my family that I only started making this on the day we were to drive back! How typical of me, leaving things to the last minute (I’m actually writing this with less than 4 hours left!). But I didn’t feel panicky at all, to my great surprise because I’m always over the edge whenever time is running short, instead I had fun making this with my mom, sis and of course my lil sous chef.

Although I did feel slightly out of place because I almost never cook whenever I’m back at their place, my mom would always make our favourite dishes so I supposed it’s fulfils the criteria of are not as familiar with and the fact that I’m a baking goddess in baking, yeap till today I’m still trying to figure out why my cake is always dense at the bottom or the fact that this is my first cookie-making in years!

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My daddy and granny giving their approvals (my granny is pretty fussy when it comes to food!)

Anyway, lets go back to the recipe (THE recipe that will determine if I could be one of the lucky 200 bloggers left to stand a chance in being the next Food Blog Star ), ladies and gentlemen, I present you the recipe for this wonderful melt-in-your-mouth cookies which is now one of my favourite things to make.

(Yields about 3 dozen)

You Need

(Adapted from About.com)

1 cup (2 sticks butter/250g) unsalted butter
2 eggs
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup toasted, ground almonds
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract (I substituted the brandy usually called for in most recipes)
Confectioners' sugar

How To
1. Using an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light (pale yellow in color) and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract. Mix the flour and ground almond together.
2. Add flour mixture a little at a time, and then work well wit your hands.
3. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).
4. Shape the cookies into small rounded balls and flatten lightly or you can also roll out pieces of dough to the thickness you want and use a cookie cutter

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5. Bake on ungreased lined with parchment paper trays at 350°F (175°C) for 20-30 minutes but do check at the 20 minute because the cookies is cooked when the bottoms turn light golden.

6. Remove from oven, while still hot, and sift confectioner's sugar over them. Don’t skimp on the sugar, it’s meant to cover the cookies in glorious mounds of powdered sugar.

By the way, I’m holding each and everyone of you hostage if you wish to check out the pictorial tutorials until you vote for me. No I’m serious, like dead serious . Oh just watch out for the next post.

Voting opens 6AM Pacific Time September 27th through 6PM Pacific Time September 30th.

The Voting Is Now Open

2010-09-20T21:22:00.001+08:00

Hey everyone, the voting is finally open! And I'm so excited about it, because I'm also revealing a brand new look for the blog! Hope you guys love it, it was an impromptu decision as I want to create a more friendly site for everyone to enjoy my blog even more :)So remember to click here to vote for me. Voting ends 6PM Pacific Time September 23rd.You would need to sign up with FoodBuzz only for the voting purpose but I promise it won't be a hassle. Only 400 out of 652 food bloggers will advance so remember to vote vote vote for me ya! Much love!

How To Vote for Me
Click on the link here http://www.foodbuzz.com/project_food_blog/challenges/1/view/473 and you’ll come to this page shown in the picture below. Click on the heart shape. You would be prompted to join FoodBuzz, it’s a simple procedure and fret not, they won’t spam your inbox. That's it, you cast your vote, I'd be in the running to be the next food blog star and a step closer to my dream; my own catering business! And all you need to do is just click and vote!

Project Food Blog : Challenge # 1 (Ready, Set, Blog!)

2010-09-18T23:40:00.006+08:00

When I first received an email from FoodBuzz that they are going to have a contest Project Food Blog for their Featured Publishers I signed up immediately without much hesitation even though I didn’t have the slightest clue of what we are supposed to do. But the idea of being featured on their site, one of the largest food lovers community ever plus the moolah would have made anyone sign up faster than they can say ‘Salmon Quiche!’. So when they finally posted the list of challenges that awaits us, I was feeling extremely worried and I was even thinking of not joining after all. But life’s short and I should try everything in life right, so for the past few weeks I have been thinking of what to write and as always with just two days left to the end of the first challenge of the contest I start to feel panicky because I still have no idea what to write urm blog about. Especially when it’s something simple like creating a blog post that defines me as a food blogger and makes it clear why I think I have what it takes to be the next food blog star. But I guess as always when in doubt just be myself and write whatever that comes through my mind.

So here it goes when I quit my job as a recruitment consultant to be a full time stay at home mommy, it never crossed my mind that I’ll take up blogging but after Ashley turned 1 and well during the time I was doing some soul searching, to find the old Alesia and not just Alesia, the mommy ,I found again my long lost love; cooking while surfing the TV channels absentmindedly and came upon a cooking show. I gingerly picked up the spatula and work my long forgotten magic touch with the wok, first it was just the dishes my mom would make and the ones I’m most comfortable cooking (Read:poison free, edible dishes) like these

(From the top : stir-fried French beans, Lotus Root and Peanut Soup, Chicken in Oyster Sauce)

ah yes, the days before I learned more about food photography or even the art of taking pictures and of course the days before the birth the almighty tool; a DSLR camera. Then the creative Aquarian in me starts to show herself by creating dishes such as these

(From the top : Cod Fish with Mushroom Cream Sauce, Fried Pasta Chow Mein Style and Chickpeas Salad)

Yea I know the cod fish looks preeeettty appetizing alright. Anyway then I was beginning to figure out the functions of a point n shoot camera and was again trying to be artistic and featured Ashley for the very first time.

Aww see how cute she was, and that reminds me how time flies! She has more hair now. :D I soon remember how therapeutic it is to prepare the ingredients, cooking the dishes and of course seeing how my loved ones enjoys the food I’ve made. Sometimes they even ate the ones that made me go ‘hmm I hope it taste ok’. So it was no surprise I started showcasing the food pictures on my Facebook profile, and when the hubs bought the SLR camera it just fueled my curiosity with food photography. No surprise the pictures turned out way nicer and I was hooked!

From not so appetizing pictures to drool-worthy pictures like these

(From the top :Nasi Briyani, Lamb Patty with Cheddar Mash and Honey Mustard Sauce, Rocket Salad, Pan Fried Fish Pasta with Sun dried Tomatoes and Coriander )

Of course it was nice to receive praises and compliments and gradually the praises turned into requests for recipes which was quite difficult for me because I’m a all-throw-inside-the-pot person and I sure don’t measure my ingredients but it’s a challenge which I won’t back away! After much persuasion, I decided to come up with a blog to share all my recipes in one place with my friends and family. It was one of many achievements to come later because for one I was a business student who knows nothing about CSS, HTML, Javascript and yet here I am creating a blog (okaaay, I used a template free design but hey at least I did some tinkering to the original CSS sheet) and two, I didn’t know I had it in me, blogging and certainly I didn’t expect to last this long.

And naturally, once I start to have the hang of all this, I even had this wildest dream that I’ll be like Bree Van de Kamp of Desperate Housewives owning my own catering business. Of course it was a struggle initially because I don’t see myself as a good writer, or a food critic, or even a good food stylist. I find it extremely hard to even write a proper blog post. How am I supposed to put what I’ve cooked into words that people would understand or even make it sounds interesting and able to reach out to others. But I guess I must be doing something right after all, with 60 posts later, 752 fans and counting! a spot at the well known food porn sites (opps!) (foodgawker and Tastespotting) here I am drafting my first ever challenge in the world of culinary.

As I looked back the past year, I would never thought I can come this far as a food blogger, heck even as a blogger itself seeing that it was never my choice of life’s career :D. So do I think I have what it takes to be the next food blog star, yes reasons being I am willing to learn, I can take whatever challenges life throws at me (remember when I took part in a beauty pagent like contest for mommies a couple months back?It was hmm challenging indeed to strut on the runaway and get everyone to vote for me), I’ve done so much in the span of one year for someone who had no clue whatsoever about blogging, but the most important reason it’s that I would go all out especially when it comes to cooking for my loved ones even though it means having to stay up more than 2 nights just so I can give the best birthday party a toddler could ever asked for. Come on, the first thing people look for when they attend a party isn’t the decorations or if there’s a clown it’s always the FOOD!

So to each and everyone who has been encouraging me to keep on doing what I love most, remember to vote for me yea! I so want to win the prize money so that I can start my own catering service :)

Love,

Lamb Patty with Cheddar Mash and Honey Mustard Sauce

2010-09-14T09:05:00.004+08:00

Inspired by the rare occasion of fine dining we had for our anniversary celebrations I decided to replicate the experience but using only the everyday ingredients well except for the lamb patties. And would you believe me if I were to tell you this was just my lunch? With Ashley happily having her afternoon nap and all the chores done, I wanted to give myself a nice treat, nice food treat. So while rummaging through the fridge and pantry I found lamb patties, some Cheddar and potatoes voila! I got myself a delish dish that looks oh so gourmet but simple to make. And I suppose if you want to make your lamb/pork/chicken/turkey/tofu patties, you can hmmm maybe I should make this again soon.

(Serves 1)
You Need
1 lamb patty (or any patties of your choice)
3 white button mushrooms, brushed and sliced thinly
1 russet potato, skin peeled and cubed
3-4 tablespoons of milk
2 cubes of butter
1/2 cup of grated Cheddar
2 teaspoons honey
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
olive oil
salt & black pepper to taste.

How To
1. Cook the potatoes until tender, add in the milk, butter. Mash well before adding in the Cheddar, season with salt and pepper. (Cheddar has a sharp taste so go lightly with the salt ya). Set aside.
2. If you have a griddle, grill the patty and set aside, but if you are like me who use a non-stick pan, pan fry the patty. Using the same pan sauté the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper.
3. To make the sauce, simply mix well the honey, Dijon mustard along with the olive oil.

To Assemble
Place the patty on the plate, follow by the mash and top it off with the mushrooms. Drizzle the honey mustard sauce over and serve.

Now you can have fine dining like food from the comfort of your home.

Curry Chicken (Kari Ayam)

2010-09-08T23:36:00.000+08:00

I used to feel intimidated to cook curries only because I’ve seen how my mom used to make them. You need to slave over the stove cooking the rempah (chilli & spice paste) till it’s fragrant before adding in the chicken and coconut milk. Then you need to keep a close watch ,stirring the curry making sure it doesn’t burn at the bottom. And I honestly think a good curry is hard to master let alone a yummy great one! So it took me years before I have the courage to make some on my own, well and also when you miss your mom’s curry and the ones sold outside just doesn’t cut it.

So one day over the phone, I asked her for the recipe and typically it goes like this tumbuk(pound) all the ingredients, masak (cook) the rempah until wangi (fragrant) and then add in the chicken and curry powder, and santan (coconut milk) along with the potatoes. Cook until the potatoes are soft when pierced with a fork. She make it sounds so easy!But truthfully it actually is, once you have the hang out of it. I’m beginning to enjoy cooking curries these days, it’s very therapeutic; the smell the aroma of the spices wafting from the stove and filling up the kitchen. This recipe has been tweaked from another curry dish I have on my blog and to my readers in Melbourne who asked for the recipe, here you go!

(Serves 4-6)
You Need
1.5 kg of chicken, cut into bite sized pieces
3–4 potatoes, cut into medium size cubes
3–4 tablespoons of oil
2 cups of santan (thick coconut milk or you may substitute with full cream milk)
1 litre of water

Spices (A) – ground :
5 shallots
5 onions
4 candlenuts (you may substitute this with macadamia nuts)
3 tablespoons chilli paste (you may omit with 5 tablespoons of meat curry powder this if you can’t get chilli paste)
2½ tablespoons meat curry powder

Spices (B):
4cm piece cinnamon stick
3 star anise
8 cloves
1 stalk of curry leaves
12-15 cardamom pods
* for the spices you don’t have to get exactly the amount stated here, it’s merely an estimation
salt and sugar to season

Chilli Paste
200 grams dried chillies, soaked in hot water for an hour
100gram red chillies seeded

How To
1. Heat cooking oil in wok or heavy based pot.
2. Add in spices (B), stir fry constantly at low heat till fragrant
3. Add in Spices (A) and continue frying until the oil rises.
4. Add in the chicken along with the potatoes and mix well until meat is coated with spices.
5. Stir in thin coconut milk and let it simmer until the meat’s tender and potatoes are soft. It would take about an hour and remember to stir occasionally
6. Pour in thick coconut milk, bring to a boil.
7. Serve and enjoy!

Cooking Tutorials
Ingredients

Santan (Coconut Milk) How To

Pounded/Blended onions

Candlenut should be added in when you sauté the rempah but like always I forgotten about it until I realized something is missing!

To make chilli paste.
Blend the chillies until smooth, and this would make about a jar. The chilli paste can be used for dishes like Sambal Ikan Bilis, Kangkung Belacan or any dishes that calls for chilli paste. Now you don’t have to get those store brought ones, I never thought making my own chilli paste would be this easy!

Nasi Lemak (Steamed Coconut Rice)

2010-09-06T18:51:00.001+08:00

Finally, the long awaited recipe!After the lunch yesterday, I come to realize that it’s definitely worth the effort in making this national dish of Malaysia. Having to finally try out the most-talked about Nasi Lemak in town, I was left with disappointment. Not only it’s over-priced, it’s also over-hyped! Like what my hubs said the rice is not fragrant enough.

And being such a Nasi Lemak lover, the most important part of what makes a great Nasi Lemak is definitely the rice followed by the sambal. So don’t sting with the pandan leaves, it’s the key ingredient along with the coconut milk in making this yummy rice dish.

(Serves 4)
You Need
4 cups rice (preferably Basmati rice), washed and drained in a colander
5 cups coconut milk (2 grated coconut milk mixed with about 3 cups of water) or if you couldn’t find fresh coconut milk you may use 1 canned or packet of coconut milk.
3-4 screwpine leaves (pandan leaves) washed and tied into a knot
1 onion, quartered
salt to taste
1 cinnamon stick, optional
4 cloves, optional

Condiments
6 hardboiled eggs, halved ( I know this recipe serves 4 but because I love to eat my Nasi Lemak with hardboiled eggs, so I cooked extra)
1 cup ikan bilis (dried anchovies) washed

How To

1. Like how you usually would cook rice using a rice cooker, just pour in the coconut milk and mix with the rice well along with the other ingredients. There is an old wives tales that you should never lift the lid to check when the rice is cooking otherwise the rice won’t come out right but if you are a daredevil go ahead just to make sure there’s enough liquid. Once it’s cooked, just fluff the rice slightly and set aside.

2. Fry the ikan bilis until crisp and serve with the steaming hot Nasi Lemak along with Sambal Ikan Bilis, Kangkung Belacan, Ayam Goreng Berempah, and hardboiled eggs.

The vegetable dish here is not kangkung belacan but stir-fry pea sprouts because I didn’t have kangkung in the fridge.

Clockwise from the top ; Kangkung Belacan, Ikan Bilis, Sambal, Hardboiled Eggs

Cooking tutorials Note
If the rice is undercooked or wet, you can steam the rice.

Coming up tomorrow, a recipe requested by a reader from Melbourne

Pasta Bolognese

2010-08-26T10:17:00.001+08:00

Feeling hungry already? Here’s the recipe, have a go at it!

Alesia’s Pasta Bolognese

2010-08-26T07:43:00.001+08:00

Initially I was supposed to post the recipe yesterday but I realized I have a few picture folders for this recipe so I spent the day editing the pictures. I have tons of photos of this pasta recipe that I just have to dedicate one post only for the pictures. A first yummy pictorial blog post here at Alesia The Home Cook! Just so you know a true Bolognese sauce actually has very little tomato but since my husband loves tomato and he likes his pasta to be drenched with a lot of tomato sauce, I made a slight tweak to the good ole Bolognese recipe. I like my Bolognese to have lots of carrots, celery and onions as they bring a nice hint of sweetness to the sauce plus Ashley loves pasta so I want her to have her vegetables without realizing it. The post of me being sneaky with her pasta sauce based on this recipe would be up soon.
Because I’m such a lazy cook I usually make a huge batch and freeze the sauce in individual portions for days I don’t feel like cooking but want a hearty meal. And this is one of the best make-ahead-freeze meals because you don’t have to spend so much time cooking over the stove, just sauté the ingredients and leave the sauce to simmer for hours. And you’ll have a delicious sauce which is great for any kind of pasta and if you like, over a plate of hot steaming white rice.

(Serves 6)

You Need

Olive oil

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, minced*

8 tomatoes, chopped

1 small carrot, diced

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 celery ribs, chopped

1 can (227grams) tomato puree

3 bay leaves

salt and pepper to season

3 cups of water or chicken stock

250g of spaghetti

3 litres of water

Freshly grated cheese or cheese powder

How To

1. Cook the pasta in a pot, according to the packet instructions. Drain and set aside.
2. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and sauté the onion with garlic until they turn translucent and soft.
3. Now add in the meat and crumble into the onions and fry until it turns white (no more red bits)
4. Add in the carrot and celery, give it a quick stir before adding in the chopped tomatoes and the tomato puree (Half way cooking I realized I ran out of tomato puree in my pantry so I substitute using a bottled pasta sauce which is why I didn’t use dried herbs – basil and oregano – because it’s already added into the bottled pasta sauce. But if you are using tomato puree , remember to add in 1 tsp of dried basil and oregano)
5. Pour in the water/chicken stock. Throw in the bay leaves. Mix well and let it to simmer for at least an hour without the lid on. Once the liquid has reduced to about 1/3 put a lid on and continue to let it simmer for a further 1 hour. Remove the bay leaves.
6. Season with salt and pepper.
7. Serve over pasta with freshly grated cheese and enjoy!

Cooking Tutorials
Ingredients
How To

Note:

* You can use minced beef, pork or have a mixture of both (pork + chicken)

Kangkung Belacan (Stir-fried Water Spinach with Shrimp Paste)

2010-08-19T07:51:00.000+08:00

You may have noticed that I hardly well more like never posted any seafood recipes (aside from fish) and it’s only because I used to have a severe allergy towards shellfish. Ahhh I can already hear the sympathetic comments ‘ Aww you miss out on the best dishes ever; butter prawns, sweet & sour crabs, fried calamari’ or ‘tsk tsk you don’t know what you’re missing girl’ . Actually I’ve been having this since young and I tried a few dishes mostly by accidents so I think I can live by and not have seafood for the rest of my life unless I get super ‘wai sek’ (gluttonous in Cantonese) and decided to risk my life by having a bite or two. It used to be quite bad that I can’t even have the dishes even when seafood’s not the main ingredient, like stir-fried vegetables with prawns. I’ll get severe allergy reaction from just eating the vegetables. Only recent years I’m able to have belacan without breaking in hives or suffocating. Yeap it’s that serious! So enough of my allergy and more on this wonderful signature dish of Malaysia.

My granma used to tell me this is a poor man dish because these vegetables it doesn’t grow on lands but in water usually found at swamps back in the olden days. And in order to cover the bitter taste of the vegetables the wives would stir fry with belacan and chilli paste. And belacan as you may know it’s made from preserving small shrimps with salt and then later dried under the sun for days. Fishermen created this acquired tasting ingredient because back in the days the fishmonger would usually not buy the small shrimps from the fishermen’s catch so in order not to throw them away, they decided to preserve the shrimps and eventually the women has found many delicious ways in using this. My granma used to make her own belacan when they were still staying in a kampung, I used to wrinkle my nose to the horrid smell (I told you it’s an acquired taste!) only to slowly discover this wonderful piece of fermented shrimps when I started learning how to cook.

(Serves 4)

You Need

800grams kangkung (about 2 bunches)

about a cup of dried shrimp

1 onion, sliced

4-5 tablespoons of chilli paste

Oil for frying

salt and sugar to taste

How To

1. Wash the kangkung and cut into 5cm lengths.

2. Soak the shrimps and pound coarsely or mince using a knife.

3. Heat up the wok and stir fry the shrimps without oil until it’s lightly toasted. Dish and set aside.

4. Using the same wok, heat the oil, saute the onions and add in the chilli paste. Stir fry for a few minutes before adding in the toasted shrimps and fry until fragrant.

5. Add in the kangkung, cover the wok with a lid for 1-2 minutes (the kangkung will wilt slightly) and mix well.

6. Season with salt and sugar. Careful with the salt though because the dried shrimps are quite salty.

7. Serve and enjoy!

Cooking tutorials

How To

Note

You can substitute the kangkung with other types of vegetables like okras, brinjals, yam bean leaves, long beans.

Friendship Cake

2010-08-06T22:47:00.001+08:00

A yummy cake that you couldn't have enough of it!

You need
1 cup greetings
1/2 cup smiles
3 large hugs
2/3 cup love
1 teaspoon sympathy
2 cups hospitality

How to
1. Cream greeting and smiles thoroughly.
2. Add hugs separately.
3. Slowly stir in love.
4. Stir sympathy and hospitality and fold in carefully.
5. Bake in warm heart.
6. Serve often
Note : Picture taken from http://www.supercoloring.com/pages/hapilly-ever-after/

Kuih Keria (Sweet Potato Doughnuts)

2010-07-27T17:11:00.000+08:00

It’s so hard to get really good kuih-muih (local desserts) these days. Gone are the days where you can just walk out from your house and to the makcik’s stall across the road for some delicious kuih. Sure you can easily get them at the shopping malls but honestly they are so awful tasting and not to mention EXPENSIVE! Imagine paying close to RM1 for a tiny piece when last time you could easily get 3 pieces for the same amount. Although making kuih is quite a tedious work, but better than buying for something that make you go “arggh doesn’t taste nice at all and what a waste of money!'”

And since Ashley’s going for her enrichment classes on weekdays I try to make a dessert or baked goodies during that 2.5 hours of free time so that we could have it for tea or she could bring to school as her snacks. And seeing that I have some sweet potatoes and gula melaka (palm sugar) at home I decided to make my all time favourite, Kuih Keria. It’s like your regular doughnuts only difference it’s made from sweet potatoes minus the yeast and it’s deep fried then coated with sugar syrup. I prefer the ones coated with gula melaka rather than the usual, white sugar but you can always use the former if you don’t have gula melaka at home.

You Need

300grams of sweet potatoes (about two medium sized)

1/2 cup of all purpose flour (plus extra for dusting)

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of cinnamon *optional

a pinch of salt enough

oil for frying

For sugar coating

1 tube of gula melaka or 1/3 cups of white sugar

3 tablespoons of water

How To

1. Peel, wash and cut the sweet potatoes into cubes. Steam and once cooked, mash them.

2. Sift flour and baking powder together and combine all the ingredients. Knead to form a smooth dough.

3. You can either roll the dough out to 1 inch and use a doughnut cutter or you can shape a ping pong size dough into a ball, flatten it and make a hole in the middle using your finger like a ring

4. Heat oil in a wok, deep fry the doughnuts over medium flame till golden brown. Dish out and drain.

To prepare the sugar coating

1.Place the sugar or gula melaka and water in a small heavy-based saucepan and heat gently until sugar melts. Careful not to caramelize the white sugar, you only need a thick sugar syrup not caramel syrup.
2. Add in the fried kuih keria, coat well. I tried to cool the sugar coated doughnuts on parchment paper, HUGE MISTAKE as the doughnuts sticks to it luckily I managed to get the doughnuts onto a plate.

Cooking Tutorials
Ingredients
How To

P.S Do forgive my ugly looking doughnuts, had a pretty hard time trying to shape them.

Sambal Ikan Bilis (Anchovies in Chilli Sauce)

2010-07-26T23:06:00.002+08:00

The other day I asked on my Facebook Fan Page “What makes a great Nasi Lemak” and almost everyone who commented agrees that it’s definitely the sambal and rice that made you lick your plate or in my case my fingers clean. It’s very common to have many versions of sambal, some may like it slightly sweeter or spicier, some like it with lots of oil or some prefers their sambal on the drier side just like how my wonderful mommy makes hers. And now that I'm staying on my own I try to replicate her great sambal but sad to say I failed miserably only because I was impatient while cooking the sambal. Yes you have to be real patient when cooking sambal because you have to stand over the stove stirring the chilli paste over slow fire for hours until ~~you sweat buckets~~ the paste is properly cooked and you’ll get the best sambal ever. The kind that make you drink glasses of iced water but at the same time you just couldn’t stop eating it. And another reason why her sambal is so yummy is because she do the whole works ; boil dried chillies, cut and de-seed fresh chillies, pounds the chillies shallots using mortar and pestle and she’s very patient.

Anyway during my earlier attempts, I cheated by using chilli paste which is readily available at most supermarkets and wet markets and even though the sambal turns out nice but it’s not as nice as mom’s. It’s only recently I decided to take the plunge and make sambal from scratch so when my mother in law said this to me “Your sambal is as good as your mom’s” only I realized that all the effort made is worth it especially when your in-laws praises your cooking eh. Although there’s nothing wrong in using chilli paste like in the recipe I shall share with you all after this, do try to make the chilli paste from scratch which the recipe I’ll post up soon.

You Need
2 cups ikan bilis (anchovies) , soaked and washed
1 large onion, sliced
5 tablespoon chilli paste
8-10 shallots, pounded
oil for frying the anchovies (leave about 5 tablespoons of oil for the chilli paste)

Seasoning
1 inch of belacan (those in blocks) or you can use 2 teaspoon of belacan granules ( toasted in a pan for 5 minutes over medium heat )
1/2 tablespoon of sugar or more to taste
1 pingpong size tamarind paste (mix with 1 cup of water, strain and keep aside the mixture liquid and discard the seeds)

How To
1. Heat oil in a wok, stir-fry the anchovies until crispy and golden brown. Drain the anchovies on kitchen paper towel and set aside.
2. Saute pounded ingredients, chilli paste and belacan until fragrant. Add in big onions and tamarind juice and stir-fry well.
3. Keep on stirring over low heat until oil starts to ooze out and at this point you have to be careful, don’t overcook otherwise your sambal would start to burn. Add in the sugar and tweak according to your tastebuds. Stir in the anchovies.
4. Dish out and serve with your favourite dish or Nasi Lemak with Ayam Goreng Berempah.

Enjoy!
Cooking Tutorials
Ingredients

How To

French Toast

2010-07-15T11:40:00.000+08:00

When we were young my mom would always make this for us to bring to school or for breakfast. Back then I didn’t know it’s French Toast, I thought it’s my mom’s special creation of sweetened condensed milk with egg and bread, with a slight saltiness from the butter. And it has such a wonderful aroma and nowadays when I make this for my little girl which happens to be her favourite snack it brings back fond memories of me and my mom during my early childhood days. It’s a pretty simple recipe and you can have many variations of French Toast which I’ll share one of them with you in this same post.

You Need
1 egg
2 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk
a pinch of salt
butter
3-4 slices of white bread

How To
1. Break egg into a wide,shallow plate and beat lightly with a fork. Add in the remaining ingredients except for the bread.
2. Over medium-low heat, heat non stick pan with a thin layer of butter or margarine.
3. Place the bread slices, one piece at a time in the plate and let the bread soak up the egg mixture and turn to the other side. Make sure both sides are well coated but don’t let it soak too long otherwise the bread would turn out soggy. You want the French Toast to be light and eggy not soggy*.
4. Transfer bread slices to pan.heating slowly until bottom is golden brown. Turn and brown the other side.
5. Serve and enjoy on its own or you can have them with maple syrup.

Cooking Tutorials

Sweetened Condensed Milk

Cinnamon & Vanilla French Toast

You Need
1 egg
2 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup milk
a pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
butter
3-4 slices of white bread**
powdered/icing sugar

How To
1. Break egg into a wide,shallow plate and beat lightly with a fork. Add in the remaining ingredients except for the bread.
2. Over medium-low heat, heat non stick pan with a thin layer of butter or margarine.
3. Place the bread slices, one piece at a time in the plate and let the bread soak up the egg mixture and turn to the other side. Make sure both sides are well coated but don’t let it soak too long otherwise the bread would turn out soggy. You want the French Toast to be light and eggy not soggy*.
4. Transfer bread slices to pan.heating slowly until bottom is golden brown. Turn and brown the other side.
5. Serve and enjoy on its own or sprinkle some powdered sugar on top.

Cooking Tutorials

Note
* To prevent from soaking the bread too long, what I usually do is when I turn over the slice of bread cooking on the pan, brown already on one side then I’ll place the white bread slice into the egg mixture. So when I dish out the cooked French Toast, I’ll transfer the soaked bread to the pan.
** You can substitute the white bread with slices of baguette/French Bread

Ayam Goreng Berempah / Spicy Fried Chicken

2010-07-14T15:47:00.004+08:00

This post shall kick-start a mini series of recipes in making the well-known national dish, Nasi Lemak (Steamed Coconut Rice with condiments). I’ve been putting on hold in posting up the recipes for the Nasi Lemak, Sambal, KangKung Belacan (Stir-fry Spicy Water Spinach/Convolvulus) and of course Ayam Goreng Berempah/Spicy Fried Chicken only because that I didn’t know where to start or how to post them, whether to squeeze everything in a long blog post or to separate them in parts plus it doesn’t help when I have about 200 recipes YET to be posted.

So today having some free time and of course taking a short break from Project D-Clutter, I decided it’s time to get this long overdue recipes up on my blog. And since I have a few requests for this recipe, I shall start with the Spicy Fried Chicken before moving on to another equally popular dish, Sambal.

You Need

4 chicken drumsticks/pieces
2 cloves garlic (finely crushed)
5 shallots, pounded
1 inch ginger, grated
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, pounded
1/2 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon coriander seed, pounded
1 tablespoon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons cornstarch/all purpose flour
Oil for deep frying

How To
1. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients including the chicken pieces.
2. Mix well and leave to stand for at least an hour or overnight if you can. I prefer to leave my marinated meat overnight so that the meat can absorb more of the wonderful flavours from the marinate.
3. Heat oil and deep fry for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Make sure you turn them from time to time.
4. Drain the chicken on kitchen paper towels. Serve and enjoy!

Cooking Tutorials

Note

You don’t have to use both the spices’ seed and powder , you can use either one whichever available for you. I prefer to use both powder and pounded seeds because I love to bite on the bits of pounded spices and also the crispy parts of the shallots with flour and egg mixture whenever I have my fried chicken.

If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, you can use a blender for the shallots, ginger and grinder for the dry spices.

Next up, recipe for Sambal Ikan Bilis

Marble Loaf Cake

2010-07-12T16:39:00.000+08:00

Last week I promised my little girl that I’ll bake something for her and I did but the Banana Chocolate cake failed miserably that I gave it to the dog, and he didn’t even take a bite! So today, after I sent her to school I went home and looked for an easy recipe from one of my favourite book 'Everything You Need to Know to Cook Today' by Betty Crocker. I usually stock up my pantry with the must-haves or basic ingredients (in this case – flour, butter, caster sugar, vanilla essence, baking powder, cocoa powder) just if I feel like baking or cooking something, I don’t have to drive out just to get the things for a particular dish. Although the baking time is longer than I’ve expected it wasn’t much of a problem as I was also preparing lunch hence I could keep an eye on the cake while cooking.

The cake turned out be really nice and this time, following tips and advices from friends, I placed aluminium foil on top of the cake to prevent it from burning and my cake didn’t crack much so YAY!!

Adapted from Pound Cake recipe
(Everything You Need to Know to Cook Today)

You Need
3 cups all purpose flour *
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt 2 cups caster sugar**
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
5 large eggs
1 cup milk or evaporated milk

How To
1. Heat oven to 170 °C. Grease 9 x 5 inch loaf pans with butter, lightly flour.
2. In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt; set aside. In a large bowl, beat sugar, butter, vanilla and eggs with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl occasionally. Beat flour mixture into sugar mixture alternately with milk on low speed, beating just until smooth after each addition. Add cocoa powder to into one bowl of plain mixture, mix well and pour the remaining batter into pan.
3. Spoon alternate spoonfuls of the plain and chocolate mixtures into the lined loaf tin. Use a skewer to swirl through the mixture in the tin to marble it lightly, but don't over-mix it or the marbled effect will be lost. (I was busy making sure my porridge doesn’t boil over the stove that I forgot to swirl the mixture before putting the pan into the oven).
4. Bake for 1 hour, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool for 20 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely for 2 hours.

Note
* Don’t use self-rising flour

** I cut down on the sugar, instead of 21/2 cups of granulated sugar.

Nando’s Delivery

2010-06-26T00:00:00.000+08:00

There are days where I’ll order fast food for lunch only if I’m busy with chores and I was too lazy to cook. But when you have a toddler, you have to consider getting a healthier option for them and meals that comes with a free toy aren’t exactly one of them. So after much ding dong whether to order or buy back I decided to give Nando’s Peri Medic a try although I much prefer KR because they have my favourite; Mac n Cheese!

When I posted on my Facebook profile that I wanted to order Nando’s almost immediately I received not so positive feedbacks from my friends like they took a very long time to deliver and the food is below satisfactory. So obviously I got slightly worried especially when it’s not that cheap (the bill came up close to RM30). But since I was given a heads up so I didn’t really expect much. So I called them before the lunch peak hour and they told me delivery time would be from 30-45 mins which was fine by me because I usually have my lunch around 1pm. I ordered 1/4 Chicken with 2 sidelines ( Mediterranean rice & coleslaw) for myself and grilled sausages for the little missy. After finished doing my chores, 30 minutes after I made the order, my lunch arrived! And to my surprise it wasn’t that bad looking, although they could make some improvements to the packaging, but overall it was alright. The chicken was still warm, not hot but still quite warm and if you want you can heat them up in the microwave. The rice and coleslaw were delicious and like I said if they use a container it would be better, but I think they are practicing an environment-friendly approach hence they use paper packaging and no plastic.

I’ve always prefer paper bags over plastic bags and I’m mighty glad they use these for their packaging. (no that's not bottle of liquor wrapped up it's my bottle of Coca Cola)

I like their slogan ‘ Take me home’ it’s very ambiguous :P

My two sidelines

Ok I’m not so brave. Laugh all you want

It may look tiny to you but it’s just the right portion for me since I’m not really a meat eater.

Ashley enjoying her grilled sausages

So if you want a much healthier option when it comes to home/food delivery do check out their menu

Cekodok (Cucur) Ikan Bilis / Savoury Fritters

2010-06-23T09:18:00.000+08:00

While the English love their scones with jam and butter, we Malaysian definitely love this yummy fritters for tea time. Almost everyone knows how to make this yummy tea time snacks, it’s that easy! I made this during my schooling days and even sold some to my friends at school for some extra pocket money. And I remember I had to wake up at 4 am each time I made this because of the frying process plus I had to make minimum 30 pieces. But it’s all worth it! Who wouldn't like deep fried yummy-ness filled with wonderful fillings. I can even have it as my main meal! I wonder if any of them still remember this hmmmm. Anyway back to the recipe, like I said it’s pretty easy almost fool proof if you ask me. You can jazz it up with any type of fillings ; sweet (bananas) or savoury (ikan bilis/dried anchovies).

You Need

Basic Batter

250grams of flour

salt & pepper to taste

2 eggs

3 tablespoons of oil and some for frying,

1/2 cup of warm water

Fillings

2 onions halved and sliced thinly

half a cup of green peas

1 cup of dried anchovies, cleaned and soaked in water for 10 mins

2 teaspoons of cumin seeds,

1 teaspoon of curry or chilli powder

How To

1. Mix all the ingredients for the basic batter until you have a thick batter but if it’s too gooey, just add in some water.

2. Add in the remaining ingredients and mix well.

3. Spoon into hot oil and fry till brown.

4.Drain on paper kitchen towel and serve with chilli sauce. Best eaten while it’s still hot and with a cup of kopi o or teh tarik :)

Cooking Tutorials

Note : You can add bean sprouts, julienned carrots, diced potatoes, shrimps, chopped spring onions, sliced red chillies, or chives.

My favourite for tea time

2010-06-22T18:31:00.001+08:00

When I was younger, my maternal Granma would make a pot of black coffee (kopi O) for tea time and we would dip cream crackers into our small mugs of kopi O :)

Baking woes

2010-06-18T17:30:00.000+08:00

I’m pretty sure by now everyone knows that my cakes usually doesn’t turn out right during the first try. It’s either the cakes/muffins

Sinks ,

browns unevenly,

has cracked top,

or has a heavy layer at the bottom of the cake

And more often than not I’m left puzzled wondering what went wrong since I followed the recipe to the T. Luckily a friend told me of a wonderful site called Baking 911. Ah how appropriate the name for the site, an emergency site for all your baking problems ! Although sometimes I’m just as confused as before for some of the possible explanations for why my cake turned out that way. For example,

Heavy layer on bottom

Not enough mixing
Too much liquid
Too many eggs

how is it that I have too much liquid or eggs when I followed what the recipe asks for or for uneven browning, the heat in the oven isn’t being circulated evenly but I only have an oven like this with limited functionality (but I reckon it’s good enough especially when I bought it only at RM30!)

I can only fit two 6's muffin trays and I have to rotate them otherwise one side usually the one at the back of the oven browns faster than the side nearer to the door

The oven's heating element

I have the option of turning off either of the up or bottom heating element

When a recipe states ‘bake at 170 Celsius’. I usually just turn the knob slightly after the 160C mark not sure if that’s right at all.

So really, I'd appreciate a lot if someone especially those who uses this kind of oven could shed some light and rescue me from my baking woes. :D

When you’re sick

2010-06-16T22:36:00.002+08:00

I honestly think that the best meal to have when you're feeling under the weather is rice porridge with condiments!

Stir Fry French Beans with Anchovies and Vegetarian Goose (Chai Siew Ngor)

Preserved Radish Omelette

Pickled Lettuce and Preserved Olive Leaves

Preserved Radish Omelette

You Need
A handful of sweet preserved chopped radish (soaked in water for 30 minutes, drained, washed and pat dry on kitchen towel)
2 eggs
1 onion, chopped
salt and pepper to season

How To
1. Beat eggs with salt and pepper until light and fluffy. Set aside.
2. Heat oil in wok. Stir fry the radish and onion.
3. Once the radish starts jumping around the wok or make popping sound pour in the beaten eggs.
4. As the omelette starts to set, lift an edge of the omelette with your spatula and tilt the wok so that the runny unset egg mixture can run underneath and once it’s set flip over.
5. When the omelette sets, slide onto a plate.
6. Serve and enjoy!

*******************************************************************

Stir Fry French Beans with Anchovies
You Need
200gm French beans, sliced diagonally
50gm carrot, julienned
A handful of dried anchovies cleaned and washed
1 teaspoon minced garlic
3 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 teaspoon cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon of water

How To
1. Heat a little cooking oil in a wok.
2. Fry the anchovies until crispy and set aside.
3. In the same wok, stir fry garlic until fragrant. Add in carrots and stir fry for a minute before adding in the French beans.
4. Once the French beans looks a little translucent, add the remaining ingredients except for the anchovies and cornstarch mixture.
5. Simmer for a few minutes and just before you turn off the stove, add in the cornstarch mixture give a quick stir and add in the anchovies.
6. Serve and enjoy!

I’d be posting the recipe for the porridge/congee in a different blog post only because it would be a mighty long post :) So it’s not that bad to be sick when you get to enjoy great meal like this eh ;)

Vanilla Sponge Cake

2010-06-15T15:23:00.001+08:00

I joined this baking club on Facebook honestly out of fun and surprised to know their challenges aren’t exactly that complicated at all. And for June their challenge was Vanilla Sponge Cake for daddy’s (Father’s day) and I decided why not. Below is the recipe by the founder of the club and my first attempt didn’t turn out how I thought it to be and even though I’m quite sick, I decided to try making it for the second time seeing that Ashley wants them so badly and this time she helped me out a bit :)

(Makes a 8 inches Round tin / 7 inches Square tin)
Ingredients
130gm Self Raising Flour
¼ tsp Baking powder
4 Eggs (separated)
¼ tsp Cream of Tartar
Salt A pinch
180gm Castor sugar
60gm Butter, melted
60ml Water
1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Method
1. Preheat oven to 170~C .
2. Sift flour, baking powder and salt 2 -3 times. Set aside.
3. Whisk egg whites with cream of tartar and salt until stiff peaks are formed. Add sugar and continue whisking until stiff peaks form again.
4. In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks with melted butter, water and vanilla essence. Fold into the egg whites and combine well.
5. Finally fold in the sifted dry ingredients and pour batter immediately into a cake tin lined with greaseproof paper. Bake the cake for approximately 30 – 40 minutes. The cake is done when the top springs back when lightly pressed.
6. Remove cake from oven and let it cool completely before decorating it.

Check out my album for behind the scenes in making this yummy cake.

What’s in her lunchbox.

2010-06-04T12:01:00.001+08:00

Now that Ashley is starting school, I have to make snacks for her to bring to school and I simply love doing so! I feel so much like a mother now that I am preparing her lunch box. I know it’s silly but it’s just what I’ve always wanted to do. :D

Usually I’ll just make a simple French toast or PB & J or sometimes some sausages or hash. So today I made Banana & Chocolate Toasties. I first made this during her 3rd birthday bash and it was a hit! But this time I didn’t have a sandwich maker so I used the usual toaster oven.

Anyway it’s very simple to make, all you need is two slices of bread, one banana, sliced and 2 tablespoon of chocolate spread (Nutella). Spread one side of the bread with Nutella , place slices of banana on the other slice of bread. Top the chocolate side up and toast. Let it cool before cutting it into quarters.

A sneak peek of what’s to come

2010-06-02T07:26:00.001+08:00

Chicken Nuggets

2010-05-31T04:30:00.003+08:00

Home cooked meals are very easy to make and honestly nothing beats the satisfaction of knowing your loved ones are having the best there is in terms of nutrition and at the same time enjoys the meals as much you enjoy making them. And these days although fast food is very convenient for a busy family, sometimes having them too often can be quite harmful to one’s health. Ashley loves those meals that comes with a toy and I decided to cut down on her intake and make my own nuggets instead. At least I know what’s goes into her tummy and she wouldn’t even know the difference. So here’s one of the many ‘fast food’ you can make at home.

You Need
2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts, cleaned and fat trimmed
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup *breadcrumbs (or you can get it from supermarket)
freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste
1 tablespoon of dried Italian herbs (you may use chopped fresh basil or parsley or dried mixed herbs)
4 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup of plain flour
oil for frying

Breadcrumbs
1.You need half a loaf of stale bread (you may also use any kind of bread, white, brown, baguette, whatever you have on hand)
2. Break it up into pieces and place it in food processor. Process until fine crumbs form.
3. Transfer and use according to recipe
4. Generally half a loaf (8-9 slices) will make about 3 cups so you may keep the remaining of the breadcrumbs in sealed bag or container in the freezer until the next time you need to use breadcrumbs.

How To
1. After cleaning the chicken, pat dry and cut into chunks. Place them in the food processor and pulse the chicken until roughly chopped.
2. Add in half of the dried herbs, black pepper and salt and blend with the chicken. At this point the chicken should be well mixed with the herbs and seasoning.
3. Rub your hand with some flour to avoid having a sticky hand when you roll and shape the chicken mixture. Take some chicken mixture and roll it on your palm to form a ball shape about the size of a ping pong ball.
4. Once the chicken mixture has been all rolled and shaped up, prepare the coating. Mix the breadcrumbs with the Parmesan cheese, seasoning set aside. Line flour, egg and lastly breadcrumbs. Take the nuggets and roll it in the flour, shake excessive flour and next roll it in the egg and then in the breadcrumbs.
5. Gently press down the nuggets with your thumb or with the back of a knife.
6. Heat up oil in a non stick frying pan. Make sure the oil is hot and not smoking, otherwise your nuggets will burn. Place the nuggets onto the pan and cook about 5-6 minutes on both side.
7. Drain the nuggets on kitchen paper towel.
8. Serve and enjoy!

Variations
You may add in some chopped vegetables such as carrot, celery into the chicken mixture for the added crunch and plus that way your kid if a picky eater like Ashley gets their vegetables as well

Cooking Tutorials

I Blog About Food – Pick Me!

2010-05-20T17:42:00.000+08:00

Blog Name / URL
Alesia, The Home Cook [http://alesiathehomecook.blogspot.com]

When do you start blogging?
On an auspicious date , September 9, 2009. [09.09.09]

Introduce yourself and your blog

I’m Alesia, a stay at home mommy to a 3 year old picky eater and a homemaker to a hard working husband whom is trying to provide everything for us. I’ve always loved cooking since young thanks to my mom and grannies who are excellent cook themselves and only picked up photography after my husband bought himself a SLR camera. After much persuasion and encouragement from friends ( after a few months of sharing the pictures of the food I cooked on my Facebook profile) I decided to come up with a cooking blog. Aside from sharing the recipes with others, it’s also serves as an outlet for me to do something else aside from parenting.

Why do you blog about food?

Why not? :) Food is always the best topic, everyone has to eat somehow plus it’s also my interest which I’m very passionate about.

Do you make money with your food blog?

Not really although I have received a couple of offers to bring this hobby of mine to the next level; food styling and photography for a magazine. At the moment I’m with Foodbuzz.com , a food blog community, the money is there but very minimal.

Why should we pick your food blog?

Because it would be a great boost of confidence for me to continue what I’m currently doing and maybe just maybe I would be able to earn a living through my blog even though I’m a stay at home mommy.

I would to express my gratitude and also a big thank you to MBP (Mom Bloggers Planet) for coming up with a great contest for all the inspiring food bloggers such as myself.

Cheers!

My 27th Birthday Dinner at Sage

2010-05-20T14:44:00.008+08:00

On my 27th birthday 3 months ago (yes I’m sorry it took me that long to finally write about it) hubs decided to treat me to nice dinner at Sage. I’ve always prefer dinners at nice restaurants over gifts because I’m a foodie :D Plus we’ve been looking forward to this dinner after reading so many raving reviews about this place as it’s the sister restaurant of Cilantro, one of the well known fine dining place in Klang Valley.

Initially I was kind of nervous in bringing Ashley along because I’ve read somewhere that it’s not really a child friendly place since noisy toddlers doesn’t go along with the classy and quiet ambiance that fine dining restaurants usually have. And I got even more anxious when the hostess who greeted us with a jovial welcome gave a funny look (but managed to recover with a bigger smile) as I carried Ashley in.

I had a foreboding feeling that they would throw us out the moment Ashley lets out shrieks of joy for being in such a nice place. But thank goodness Ashley was well behaved throughout the dinner and she managed not to break or spill anything. Although I think the waitress was a tiny bit annoyed when Ashley played with the cutlery that she forgot to bring our palette cleanser.

The simple but pretty table arrangement

So anyway after we were seated along with our complimentary breads, we took time to read our menu. And decided to go with the Sage dinner set at RM150nett that includes entree, main course, and dessert with coffee or tea. Of course they do have ala carte menu as well but it would be more expensive (entree at RM60nett, main course at RM95nett and dessert at RM30nett)

Warm crusty herbed bread with Pesto dipping. A nice change to the usual balsamic vinegar with olive oil. I nearly asked for a second helping but decided to keep the stomach space for the mains and dessert.

The complimentary appetizer, chicken with caviar in cream sauce

Luckily the smart moi, already knew what to order thanks for the reviews of other foodie bloggers and even gave recommendations to the hubs plus our guest, K.

I went for Feuillete of Anago with Foie Gras and Duxelles for my entree, don’t attempt to pronounce this unless you’re fluent in French. I simply smiled and said to my hostess I want the Foie Gras with Unagi and Filo Pastry please. Because that is what is roughly called in English. As always I was not disappointed whenever I ordered foie gras especially with this dish. The crispy pastry topped with fatty foie gras layered with creamy mushroom spread drizzled lightly with sweet and herby shallot sauce that melts so deliciously in my mouth. Fat has never tasted this yummy before!

K had Carpaccio of Wagyu with Plum Infused Konbu Sauce and since I don’t take beef I can’t tell you how it taste like although K said it’s very good. Thin slices of Wagyu beef with sweet and sour plum sauce. A great pair up!

Sea Scallop with Mesclun Salad and Provençal Vinaigrette for the Mr Hubs.

Perfectly pan seared scallops with light tomato and herbs vinaigrette = Delicious!!
And my birthday dinner won’t be a birthday dinner at all if I don’t have my annual quota of alcoholic drinks (ok just one glass of bubbly) while Mr Hubs with his white wine to accompany the missus.

After wiping clean our entrees, the must-haves photos taking session as we await patiently for the mains.

The birthday girl with Ashley darling If you think she’s sleeping well then I guess she’s a pretty good actress because she’s not.

After the customary photo taking session, our mains arrived and boy I was already salivating at the sight of them! Angus Beef with Mashed Potato and Natural Jus .

Angus beef cooked medium well just the way K likes his beef. Couldn’t get further reviews from him because he’s at loss for words to describe it although he was slightly displeased at the portion size. Slow Cooked Wagyu Cheek with Flat Beans.

Mr Hubs loves the wagyu to bits in every sense of the word. I had to stop him from licking the plate clean. According to him, every bite is a gastronomic explosion in his mouth. I nearly wanted to have a tiny bite seeing the look of ecstasy etched on his face but of course I didn’t for religious reason.

Now I was torn between having lamb or duck for my main. Usually I’d go for the lamb but I gave in to Smoked Duck Breast with Foie Gras and Red Wine Sauce only because of the foie gras. How often can I have foie gras la if it’s not for a special occasion. Even the hostess raised her eyebrow in question, foie gras again m’am? Yeah why not, I replied in delight

The duck was perfect although I don’t really fancy duck meat. The skin’s crispy while the meat’s juicy and not too leathery but the main highlight of the dish is definitely the foie gras. Velvety texture that leaves a nice lingering taste in your mouth. Yums! The red wine sauce with the duck’s natural juice certainly did wonders to the dish. Even thinking about it now makes me lick my lips in delight! I didn’t finish the duck meat and gave it to K who was still moaning about the portion size of his main course. At this point, we should be getting our palette cleanser but it didn’t come so we decided to kill time by taking more photos

Birthday kiss from my baby girl.

After a few clicks of the camera, the desserts came and boy if there’s a gastronomic heaven I would have died and gone there after I had my first bite of the souffle. It’s very light, fluffy and airy just like the clouds scented with hazelnut essence with the slightly bitter yet sweet homemade chocolate ice cream

Hazelnut Nougat Soufflé with Valrhona Chocolate Ice Cream.

The two men chose Molten Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream. To be honest, I was slightly disappointed when I tried this, it’s a bit on the flat side and not much chocolate sauce oozing out.

Father and daughter enjoying the dessert

Of course to end the dinner, the usual coffee or tea with macaroons and chocolate chips but no pictures because Ashley popped the macaroons and chocolate into her mouth the moment the waitress placed them on the table.

Ashley : Daddy, I think you’re supposed to get mommy a birthday cake. This is where we sing Happy Birthday and blow the candles remember?

Daddy : uh oh *forced laugh* smile the camera baby, I think your mommy wouldn’t mind the lack of a birthday cake on her birthday.

Well clearly he thought wrong because the mommy was upset that there’s no birthday cake (oh look a picture of the macaroons!) But still sayang the hubs la, for spending on a great dinner.

Ashley: are we done taking pictures?

Overall I really enjoyed the dinner very much and definitely would go back again to try their degustation menu. But sorry ya hubs, it would be on you again since I’m not working :P

Lunch (Mon-Fri): 12pm-2pm
Dinner (Mon-Sat): 6pm-10.30pm
Closed on Sunday

The Gardens Residences Level 6,
The Gardens, Mid Valley City,
Lingkaran Syed Putra,
59200 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Tel: 603 2268 1328
Fax: 603 2287 2189
Email: sagekul@gardenshtlres.com

Baked Rosemary & Garlic Fries

2010-05-13T21:20:00.001+08:00

One of the days where I’m too lazy to cook but want something filling and well healthier compared to ordering fast food or having instant noodles. And this is one yummy snack as well not to mention easy to make. You only need six items; potatoes, salt, black pepper, rosemary, garlic and olive oil.

How To:
1. Wash the potatoes (I’m using Russet potatoes but you may use any variety) thoroughly with a vegetable brush. Don’t peel. Cut lengthwise about 1/2 inch thick
2. Drizzle olive oil over the potatoes and season with salt, pepper, grated garlic and rosemary (I use dried but if you can get fresh rosemary it would be better).
3. Gently toss to coat and set aside.
4.Preheat oven at 180 Celsius degree and arrange the potatoes on a baking sheet/tray.
5. Bake for 30 minutes until potatoes are tender and evenly browned, turning occasionally.
6. Serve and enjoy!

Divalicious Pork Curry

2010-04-22T02:26:00.001+08:00

Well not so much on the pork curry being a diva but in case you haven’t heard, yours truly is currently one of the contestants for a contest in conjunction of Mother’s Day. It’s called My Mum, My Diva and I’m really excited about it! I really do hope I can be one of the Top 5 Diva Mums, and if I don’t get to be well it’s all for good fun yea :D But still vote for me will ya?

So back to this recipe, I count myself lucky because great cooks are aplenty in my family even my uncle makes this mean wild boar curry. I still remember that he would always cook his curry with a clay pot not to be mistaken with the clay pots used by the Chinese. It looks like this which is more commonly used by the Indians and somehow it just make the curry even more delicious . The whole house and maybe the whole neighbourhood would be filled with the wonderful aroma of the curry. I can even smell it right now! But then again it’s nearly 3 in the morning and I’m hungry :D

There are many ways to make curry thanks to the different kind of cuisines we have so the world of curries are endless! I won’t categorize this dish because it’s kinda like a family recipe and being Malaysian it’s definitely a fusion mix of all the races in Malaysia :)

You Need
1.5 kg pork tenderloin, cut into sizeable pieces
2–3 potatoes, cut into wedges
3–4 tablespoons of oil
1 cup of santan (thick coconut milk or you may substitute with full cream milk)
1½ cups of thin coconut milk

Spices (A) – combined and ground:
15 shallots
4 cloves garlic
2.5cm piece ginger
4 candlenuts
3 tablespoons chilli paste (you may omit with 5 tablespoons of meat curry powder this if you can’t get chilli paste)
2½ tablespoons meat curry powder

Spices (B):
4cm piece cinnamon stick
3 star anise
8 cloves
salt and sugar to season

How To
1. Heat cooking oil in wok or heavy based pot.
2. Add in spices (B), stir fry constantly at low heat till fragrant
3. Add in Spices (A) and continue frying until the oil rises.
4. Add in the pork along with the potatoes and mix well until meat is coated with spices.
5. Stir in thin coconut milk and let it simmer until the meat’s tender and potatoes are soft. It would take about an hour and remember to stir occasionally
6. Pour in thick coconut milk, bring to a boil.
7. Best serve with a piece of toast just like how I like it and enjoy!

Rocket Salad

2010-04-14T14:49:00.002+08:00

No it’s not the rocket rocket, I’m talking about rocket leaves or to some you may know it as arugula leaves. A strong flavoured (peppery) salad leaves that is usually used in salad but you can have it with your pasta or meat. Heck the Italians even have it as their pizza toppings! This recipe is pretty simple and easy to make, you don’t have to be a scientist to make a rocket salad (rocket = scientist… get it? LOL, ahem ok excuse me with my lame joke).

Serves 2
You Need
A packet of rocket leaves (washed and spin dry with a salad spinner)
2 hardboiled eggs, quartered
1 cup of crouton
1 onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 tomato, deseeded and chopped (or you can also use cherry tomatoes)

Croutons
1 slice of bread, cubed and drizzle with some olive oil, season with salt & freshly cracked black pepper Arrange the cubes on a baking sheet in a single layer, cook in a preheated oven at 180 Celsius for 20 minutes or until it turns crispy and golden .
Remember to toss the cubes every 10 minutes for even cooking

Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing
3 tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard
1 teaspoon sugar
4 shallots, finely chopped
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
1 teaspoon dried mixed herbs
salt and freshly cracked black pepper to season

How To
1.To make the vinaigrette, whisk all the ingredients in a bowl or add all the ingredients in a jar, cover with a lid and shake to mix. You can leave it to chill in the fridge if you like.
2. To make the salad, toss all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl except the vinaigrette. Drizzle the vinaigrette over the salad and lightly toss with your fingers.
3. Serve and enjoy!

Her favourite snack

2010-04-03T08:17:00.001+08:00

Balsamic Chicken with Rosemary and Baked Potato Fries

2010-03-30T18:33:00.007+08:00

I was going through my blog and I just realized that I forgot to post up two recipes and they were like a couple months back. Sorry!! *sheepish smile*

Ok for a couple of weeks I was into balsamic vinegar, almost all the dishes I made has to have balsamic vinegar be it as a dressing, sauce or marinade. I had my first taste of this wonderful liquid at Italiannies where they serve freshly baked bread with herbed olive oil and balsamic vinegar, so being the curious me I quickly went to the supermarket and got myself a bottle of balsamic vinegar not knowing what to do with it.

But as always I attended a brief stint at the University of Google and found out that a true balsamic vinegar is sweet and not at all acidic, and a friend who is currently staying in Italy mentioned that balsamic vinegar are usually quite syrupy and very expensive, as they are dark, sweet vinegar aged for many years in wooden barrels in Italy. The longer it is aged, the sweeter, thicker and more expensive it becomes. So the ones available here are those that hasn’t been aged for long but they are still good to use in cooking even though I feel kinda ripped off . Read more about it here.

Well now that we have learned more about balsamic vinegar, it’s time to use it in our cooking as shown in the recipe below

Serves 2
You Need
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cleaned and pat dry
1-1/2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, minced, or 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
4 shallots, minced
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar,
2 tablespoons of brown sugar,
2-3 medium sized Russet potatoes, unpeeled and scrubbed then cut lengthwise into 1/2-inch-thick

How To
1. Combine rosemary, garlic, sugar, balsamic vinegar, oil, pepper and salt in small bowl; mix well.
2. Place chicken in large bowl, drizzle chicken with marinade mixture and rub over.
3.Cover and refrigerate several hours.
4.Preheat oven to 180 degree Celcius. Spray heavy roasting pan or cast iron skillet with nonstick cooking spray or you may drizzle olive oil all over.
5.Layer potatoes around chicken in pan; bake 10 minutes. Turn chicken over, stirring in 3 to 4 tablespoons water if drippings begin to stick to pan.
6.Bake about 10 minutes or until chicken is golden brown and no longer pink in center and the potatoes are soft when you pierce using a fork.
7.Transfer chicken and potatoes to plates. Stir liquid in pan; drizzle over chicken.
8. Serve with salad greens and enjoy!

It’s been a while

2010-03-24T22:33:00.003+08:00

…since I last posted, gosh time sure flies a lot quicker than I thought. Being at home makes one lost sense of time and date, really. Anyway I hardly do much cooking these days because well, it’s not that I have lost interest in cooking and blogging, no never but I hardly find time to do so now that Ashley is much bigger and she wants all the attention. The moment I leave her alone with her toys, she would start to look for me so now am trying to adjust her routine and my routine as well so that I can go back to cooking and blogging about it.

Ok back to the recipe, this is something inspired by my favourite dish at one of my must-go dining place during the weekend, Delicious. Each time we go there I am for sure to order this pasta dish, Duck Confit Spaghettini with Sundried Tomatoes and Coriander. Now to be honest I was never a fan of coriander AND tomatoes but when I first tried out this dish, I actually love it a lot, so much that I kept ordering it each time I dine at Delicious. I used to love pasta with loads of sauces but these days I prefer a lighter version , Aglio Olio and this is just perfect; the yummy and tender Duck Confit with a slight tartness of the tomatoes and the fresh taste of coriander comes together in a lightly tossed pasta with olive oil, salt and freshly cracked black pepper.

And even though I would love to go there every week for the dish, we can’t afford to do so on weekly basis, so I tried to come out with my own adaptation of the dish by using seabass instead of duck confit. And to my surprise it’s quite similar with Delicious’ version although I can’t 100% say for sure I’d nailed it :) So here’s the recipe for Pan Fried Fish Pasta with Sun dried Tomatoes and Coriander

Serves 2
You Need
250g of spaghetti, cooked until al dente
300g sea bass fillet
1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes ( you can easily get them from the supermarket, they usually comes in a bottle filled with oil and herbs)
2 to 3 cloves of garlic, minced,
3 tablespoons of olive oil ,
1/2 cup of chopped coriander,
salt and freshly cracked pepper to season

How To
1. Clean and pat dry the fish with kitchen towel and season with salt and pepper.
2. Heat oil in a skillet or pan. Fry sea bass, turning once halfway through cooking time. Cook until opaque and moist on the inside, 4 to 8 minutes. Set aside.
3. In the same pan saute the garlic and sundried tomatoes briefly and turn off the heat.
4. Toss hot pasta with the tomatoes and coriander. Season with salt and pepper.
5. Top with the pan fried seabass and garnish with coriander. Serve hot.

Stay tuned

2010-02-23T17:31:00.002+08:00

For what’s to come in the next entry :)

Cooking & Blogging Mojo

2010-01-26T23:16:00.008+08:00

I’ve been lacking of these two for the past few days if not weeks, that I’m starting to forget how it feels to cook and write about it. To be honest, I was having some personal issues and I wasn’t in the right state of mind to do anything.

But it warms my heart to know despite the lack of activities in both of my blogs, there are still readers visiting them. Thanks everyone :) So here I am, back from a short and unintended hiatus. The long overdue recipes .

5 Spices Chicken Wings

You need
10 chicken wing pieces
1 tablespoon of Chinese five-spice powder
1 tablespoon of sugar or 2 tablespoons of honey
1/4 cup of soy sauce
2 tablespoons of oyster sauce
3 cloves of garlic minced
1 inch of ginger grated salt and freshly cracked black pepper

How To
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Prepare the chicken wings and pat dry.
3. Mix all the ingredients except the chicken wing in a bowl. Place the chicken wings in the bowl, cover, and marinate in the refrigerator 8 hours or overnight.
4. Line the wing pieces up on a baking sheet so the side of the wing that has the most skin is facing up. Roast until cooked through, browned and crispy, or until the juice runs clear about 30 minutes.
5. Or if you’re using a griller, oil the grill grate. Grill the chicken wings on one side for 20 minutes, then turn and brush with honey. Continue grilling 20 minutes, or until juices run clear.

***************************************************************

Pasta with Sweet Pumpkin Sauce

You Need
250g of Spaghetti, cooked until al dente
1 cup of pumpkin, cubed
1 small onion, minced
1 cup of milk
1/2 tablespoon of sugar *
salt and freshly cracked pepper to season
olive oil

How To
1. Heat up oil in a saucepan, add in the onion and sauté until it turns transparent.
2. Add in the pumpkin and milk. Let it simmer until the pumpkin turns soft/mushy. At this point, the sauce would start to thicken.
3. Transfer the cooked spaghetti into the pan and coat it with the sauce. Season with salt, sugar and pepper.
4. Serve and enjoy

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

2009-12-25T05:43:00.002+08:00

Wishing everyone a Jolly Christmas and Happy Holidays. May this Christmas be bright and cheerful and may the New Year begin on a prosperous note!

I am off for a three day family gathering with my in laws and extended families. It’s going to be a fun holiday. :P
Anyway I promise to update on the blog once I’m back. It’s been a while!

Banana Walnut Cake & missing my dear old laptop

2009-11-26T16:55:00.010+08:00

Honestly I’ve never thought I’ll feel so attached to a device as I’m not really a gadget person. I try not to because devices tend to wear out or spoiled or even stolen and I don’t want to feel all that bad when it does. I don’t even have the latest phone model! But ever since I left work to be stay home to be a mommy, my laptop has been my trusted companion. It connects me to the outside world, help me meet new friends via forums, enlighten me about parenting from the world wide web. And it’s even my very own DJ console as I have more than 6000 songs stored in it. After I started blogging it’s becomes even more valuable to me.

Sadly, after nearly 3 years of heavy usage, it begins to break down, starting with a crack on the casing and eventually the monitor cease to function. It’s been a week since I sent it for repair and no news yet. I just hope the hard disk can be salvaged so that I can transfer all my stuffs to a new laptop ( that is if I’m getting one! aiihhh) So at the moment I've to make do with my hubby’s super high end PC. Honestly I prefer my own laptop even though his much faster and has more storage, but beggars can’t be choosers right.

Oh well back to food, I still cook just that I couldn’t upload and write recipes as often as I want so at the moment it’s mostly just photos until I get the laptop only I’ll update with recipes. So do bear with me till then ya! This afternoon I dreamed a funny dream, about me helping Santa Claus to save the fairy and magical kingdom by baking a tray of sugar cookies! And all these was in a Harry Potter inspired background. How weird! So feeling slightly disoriented after a weird and not to mention exhausting dream, I decided to bake banana walnut cake, only because I had a few left and they are about to go bad. Recipes would be up real soon! :)

You Need
1 cup (115 grams) walnuts or pecans,
1 3/4 cups (230 grams) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (150 grams) brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 ground nutmeg
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter melted and cooled plus extra for greasing
3 ripe large bananas , peeled
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

How To
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degree Celsius / 350 degree Fahrenheit. Lightly grease and line a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf tin / bread pan or in my case two small loaf tins. Set aside.
2. Place the nuts on a baking tray/sheet and bake for 8 minutes or until lightly toasted. Let cool and chop coarsely
3. Sift the flour, sugar, salt and the spices into a large bowl. In a separate bowl mash the bananas, stir in the eggs ,melted butter and vanilla essence. Pour into the dry ingredients and mix well.
4. Spoon into the prepared tin and bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour. Test to see if the loaf is cooked by inserting a skewer into the centre. If it comes out clean, the loaf is done. If not, bake for a further 10 minutes and test again.
5 Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin. Turn out the loaf, slice and serve

Enjoy!!

A.W.E.D An almost perfect Sago Gula Melaka

2009-11-10T15:35:00.003+08:00

Why I said almost perfect? Because the pictures doesn’t do any justice to this yummy delectable sweet dessert! It’s been raining nearly everyday and gloomy weather makes ugly pictures and plus I’m not very good with external flash. But while I’m writing this and eating these sweet goodies, it made up for the not so nice pictures heh!

If you’re wondering why am I reposting this again just when I posted this not too long ago, well a foodie couple whom I’ve always admired way before I started this blog suggested that I should submit this recipe for a food event called A.W.E.D (A Worldly Epicurean Delight) hosted by another wonderful foodie, Annarasa.

This event was first created by DK of Chef In You (what a small world!; you’d remember him as I used one of his recipes to make pumpkin puree for my Pumpkin Pound Cake) and what this event is that every month, a different kind of cuisine would be chosen as the main theme and anyone even if you don’t have a blog can cook up a dish from that cuisine and showcase it to others. And this time A.W.E.D has arrived in Malaysia! A chance to showcase our country’s best dishes :)

I think it’s a very good effort in introducing different kind of gastronomical delights around the world and the best part of this event, you don’t have to step out from your house to enjoy the yummy food. Kitchen travel at its best! :)

You can get the recipe here along with step by step how to

Edit: Decided to take another shot at my Sago Gula Melaka since the weather’s sunny today and the pictures turned out great! Now my Sago Gula Melaka’s perfect :D

Fried Bean Curd with Sweet Chilli Sauce

2009-10-29T01:34:00.007+08:00

I made this way before I got inspired to be a food blogger and it’s possibly one of my early attempts at photographing food with a SLR camera. So do forgive me for the not so nice pictures.

Before this when I cook the thing that matters most would be the taste of the food, but after sitting at home thinking what to do aside from looking after a baby, slowly I learned about the art of food styling and photography. And I have my husband to thank for letting me play with his SLR :D

Anyway back to the dish, it’s quite easy to make and it’s great as a starter or appetizer even as light bites when you’re entertaining . It mainly consists of tofu, seasonings, flour and egg to bind everything together. You can put in minced meat, prawn, fish or diced water chestnut for crunchiness, chilli for heat, anything at all. Be creative :)

You need
1 piece soft bean curd(I usually use organic soy bean curd, will update with picture the next time I go for my grocery shopping)
1 stalk of spring onion, chopped
1/2 small carrot, julienned
1 small egg
2 tbsps of corn flour
flour for coating

Seasoning
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp of oyster sauce (omit this if you are on a vegetarian diet)
½ tsp pepper

Sweet Chilli sauce
4 red chillies, minced
1 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Water
1/2 cup Rice vinegar
2 tablespoons garlic, finely minced
1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
1 tablespoon fresh lime or lemon juice

How to
1. Mash soft bean curd in a mixing bowl and strain using a strainer to remove excess liquid. Add spring onion, carrot, egg, and seasoning. Mix and stir until well combined and lastly add in the corn flour. Mix well
2.Pour the ingredients into a lightly greased square tray. Steam for 15-16 minutes or until set and cooked. Set aside to cool completely.
3.Cut into squares or rectangular pieces then coat with flour. Deep-fry in hot oil until crispy and golden.
4.Dish out onto several layers of paper towels. Serve immediately with the chilli dipping sauce.

Sweet Chilli Sauce*
1.In a small, heavy saucepan, combine the chillies, sugar, water, vinegar, and garlic. Bring to a boil over medium heat.
2.Stir to dissolve the sugar and reduce the heat to low. Simmer until the liquid reduces slightly and thickens to a light syrup.
3.Remove from the heat and stir in the fish sauce and lime or lemon juice. If you want a thicker sauce you can stir in a 1/2 teaspoon of corn flour mixed in with some water towards the end of the simmer.
4. Cool to room temperature before serving. Keep the cooled sauce in a tightly sealed jar.

Note
* I’ve made the sauce a few days ahead to keep, hence there is no step by step tutorial for the sauce

Cooking tutorials
Ingredients

How to

Sago Gula Melaka

2009-10-28T18:35:00.005+08:00

Being a Malaysian, I find myself very lucky because there are so many types of food especially desserts thanks to it’s multi-ethnic population of Malay, Chinese Indian,Eurasian, Nyonya etc. And having a sweet tooth, this means I’m in heaven, heaven of yummy delectable desserts. And did I mention that I simply love anything that has santan (coconut milk) and gula melaka (palm sugar) so this dessert is the perfect one.

You need
200 sago, you can also use pearl sago
250 gram coconut milk (I used packet coconut milk which is available at supermarkets and hypermarkets, even grocery stores)
1/2 cup of hot water
4 pandan leaves, knotted
150 gram of gula melaka, crushed (but as you can see, I didn’t crush the gula melaka but it would take longer time to dissolve)
a pinch of salt

Yields 4

How to

1.Soak pearl sago in water for 5 minutes.
2.Bring 5 cups of water to boil in a large pot along with the pandan leaves*. Once the water boils, remove the pandan leaves then add sago and keep stirring till sago turns transparent. (Initially I only use 150g of sago and midway I realized it’s not enough and added the remaining sago. That’s why you see white dots amongst the transparent sago. Bad move)
3.Pour into a strainer and rinse under a running tap till cool.
4.Drain excess water and pour into a bowl. Mix well to prevent the sago from curdling and scoop into individual moulds to set. Chill in refrigerator.
5.Dissolve palm sugar with 1/2 cup of hot water in a saucepan together with pandan leaves*. Bring to boil and stirring in between to prevent the syrup from burning.Remove the pandan leaves, remove from heat and chill in refrigerator.
6. Mix the coconut milk with a pinch of salt and chill in the refrigerator.
7.To serve, spoon the palm sugar syrup and coconut milk over the chilled sago.

Enjoy!

Note
*I recycled the pandan leaves after scenting the pot of boiling water for the sago.

Cooking Tutorials

Ingredients

How To

Pumpkin Pound Cake with Icing Glaze

2009-10-23T13:43:00.001+08:00

I wrote earlier that I would be sharing the recipes of these delicious food for my next post but this recipe clearly takes the cake (no pun intended) and therefore should have the honours of being my latest post after a short break :D

Adapted from this recipe.

You need
Cake
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
250 grams of butter at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
5 large eggs
1 3/4 cups of pumpkin puree*
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Icing Glaze
2 tablespoons milk
cups of icing / powdered sugar sifted
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence

How to
1. Heat oven to 160°. Grease and flour a 8 inch cake pan*.
2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, soda, salt, and spices; set aside. In mixing bowl with an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in pumpkin and vanilla. Slowly beat in dry ingredients. Continue beating on medium speed until smooth and well blended. Spoon into the prepared cake pan and bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick or cake tester comes out clean when inserted in center.
3. Cool for 15 minutes in the pan on a rack; invert onto a serving plate to cool completely.
4. For the glaze, just mix the sugar with essence with milk poured in bit by bit until it’s well mixed and thickened slightly. Drizzle the glaze over cooled cake and set aside for 1-2 hours before serving or you can also dust the cake with powdered sugar instead

*To make pumpkin puree
I had a medium sized pumpkin sitting in my kitchen for sometime not knowing what to do with it as I’m not really a fan of pumpkin. After seeing a few friends’ pumpkin dishes, I googled for a recipe and I decided on making Pumpkin Pound Cake, which is something different as I’ve never tasted Pumpkin Cake before. So back to the puree making, I read many recipes that requires baking for at least 90 minutes! and I don’t want to overwork my oven and was on the verge on switching to another recipe when I stumbled upon this wonderful site. To summarize, simply clean then half your pumpkin, scrap the seeds (they make really healthy and yummy snacks s don’t throw them away) and fibre. Next cut the halves in two and place the pieces (flesh facing down) on the roasting pan along with 1 cup of water. Bake them in a preheated 225° oven for 30 minutes or until it’s tender. Once it’s cool enough to handle, scoop up the flesh into a bowl or food processor/blender to make a smooth puree. I skipped the straining steps though as the puree looks pretty smooth to me. I used all the puree about 21/2 cups in this recipe but it still turned out delish!

Taste                       :   5/5 I love it because it’s very fragrant due to the spices of course pumpkin
Preparation              : 4/5 the recipe’s pretty easy to follow, although I got confused on the butter stick part
Ingredients               : 5/5 available at hypermarkets, supermarkets & baking supplies stores
Availability
Cooking time           : 3/5 due to the puree making and a long baking time, longer than 40 minutes.

Cooking Tutorials
Pumpkin Puree

Cake

Still alive and cooking :D

2009-10-15T14:17:00.002+08:00

Just in case you’re wondering where have I been, I’m still around and cooking up new dishes :). Been really busy for the past few days working on my new banner . And been using my oven a lot, as I hardly had time to stand over the stone to cook but still want a tummy filling food.

Promise to share new recipes soon. Here’s a preview of what’s to come,

Balsamic Chicken with Rosemary and Baked Potato Fries for sides
5 Spices Baked Chicken Wings
A famous Hokkien dish, Braised Pork Belly in Soy Sauce (Tau Yew Bak)
For the lil picky eater, Pasta with Sweet Potato Sauce
My favourite dessert of all time, Sago Gula Melaka

And perhaps the debut of a new banner? :)

Happy cooking!

Officially 1 month old

2009-10-10T16:59:00.001+08:00

Can't believe I've been blogging for a month. Usually my enthusiasm on anything new especially in this case blogging, doesn't last past 2 weeks, and here I am writing about my food blog being a month old :)

My achievements so far

410 fans and still counting at my fan page at Facebook
being a FoodBuzz Featured Publisher
posted up about 16 recipes (need to work harder on this)
gotten to know new foodies friends from all over the world
received a business proposal from a friend (still in shock)

It's not much, but at least it's something right :)

So thanks to all my friends and to those who has visited me at my blog, leaving wonderful comments, trying out my recipes and for the support.

Pasta in Vegetable Broth

2009-10-08T17:21:00.002+08:00

I initially wanted to post it much later on but since a friend asked if I have any recipes for a fussy toddler (which I do have since Ashley’s one)so I'll post it today instead.

Honestly, I think children are the hardest to please food critics ever. Not only you need to prepare a healthy meal for them, you must ensure it’s appealing to them, and sometimes you thought you finally have something they love, the next day it would end up in the thrash bin instead in their tummy. Sigh

And even though I have friends saying that Ashley’s one lucky girl cos her mommy cooks well (thanks girls for the compliments), she doesn’t seem to appreciate the variety of food I tried to introduce in her menu. Everyday I have to crack my head thinking what to cook for her. And getting her to eat is sometimes even harder than giving birth. Oh yes she’s that fussy and difficult. But of course, this lil princess of mine does give her mommy a break once in a while and reward her mommy’s hard work by finishing her meal without any kitchen drama. She must have really liked this seeing that she had 3 helpings and about to take 4 if I didn’t stop her from overeating.Maybe it’s the cute pasta shapes. Hmm

So anyways here's the recipe

You need
1 rib of celery, diced
1 small carrot, diced
1 medium potato, diced
3 cloves of garlic, leave whole
some chicken skin*
olive oil
a cup of dried small shape pasta *
500ml of water
salt & pepper to taste

How to

1. Heat up oil in a saucepan; add in the chicken fat and garlic. Leave it to cook for about 8-10minutes stirring occasionally so that the chicken skin doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

2. Add in the celery and sauté for 5 minutes or until it turns slightly soft. Next add in the carrot and potato, mix well and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes before adding in the water. Remember to stir occasionally so that the vegetables cooks evenly

3. Once the broth starts to boil, remove the skin fat, skim the top for excessive oil/fat then add in the pasta and reduce the heat to low. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until the pasta is cooked.

4. Salt and pepper to taste

Enjoy!

Note

*If you don’t like chicken fat, you can just substitute it with butter. Or you can just skip this, if prefer a healthier dish. Somehow I like the aroma of rendered fat in my soup

*If you can’t find any of those shaped pasta, you can use smaller pasta like macaroni or angel – hair pasta broken into smaller pieces before adding into the broth.

Variations

You may add in more variety of vegetables and maybe diced chicken. Also instead of serving with pasta, you can serve it with cooked rice.Just pour the broth in a bowl of rice, making it soupy

Cooking tutorials

Spicy Aglio Olio Fettuccine with Pan Fried Oregano Chicken

2009-10-07T14:13:00.001+08:00

Made this for lunch and I must say after sipping a big cup of iced green tea does make me feel less guilty indulging such a sinful yet delicious dish :D Why sinful? Because I'm supposed to cut down on my carbs, been gaining weight for the past few months plus my third anniversary is 2 weeks away.

The recipe is pretty straight forward and I cooked by taste, not so much on measuring the ingredients, so when you make this, just play by taste ya

You need:
For the Spicy Aglio Olio Fettuccine
About a handful of dried fettuccine, cooked till al dente,
5 cloves of garlic, sliced
3 tbsps of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
2 tbsps of dried chilli flakes or red pepper flakes, you may add more flakes if you like it even spicier
A splash of balsamic vinegar*
Salt to taste

For the Pan Fried Oregano Chicken
1 chicken thigh, boneless, skin on
1 tsp of ground oregano
salt & pepper to season
Olive oil to pan fry (about 2-3 tbsps would do)

How to:
1. Pat dry the chicken, and season with salt, pepper and ground oregano. Leave aside to marinate for at least 10 mins. (I marinated it since morning while preparing for Ashley's lunch)
2. Heat up olive oil in a frying pan/skillet and place the chicken, skin side on. Cook until the skin turns golden brown and flip the other side. Cook for another 5 minutes. Drain on a paper towel, while preparing the pasta.
3. Use a paper towel to wipe clean the pan and heat up the EVOO, stir in the garlic slices, give it a quick stir or if you want until it turns slightly golden brown.
4. Sprinkle half of the chilli flakes and stir for less than a minute before putting in the already cooked pasta. Add in the remaining chilli flakes, mix well. Season with salt
5. Serve with the Pan Fried Oregano Chicken.

Enjoy!

Note
* You don't have to add in balsamic vinegar if you don't have it in your pantry. I just thought of adding a splash for tartness or you can squeeze in half a lemon

Now for another cup or maybe a huge tumbler of iced green tea

Lemon Baked Fish with Mediterranean Couscous

2009-10-06T14:46:00.002+08:00

Having a toddler around usually means I don’t have the luxury to prepare a nice meal on time for lunch or I have to munch on a piece of toast to curb my hunger while waiting for her to take her afternoon naps and then prepare the meal.

So today, I planned to do some work while she’s napping away and I don’t want to eat another packet of instant mee / maggi mee. So I made this fuss free and quick meal for lunch. The best part about this dish, is that I can leave the fish baking in the oven while doing my chores and by the time I’m done with the chores, it’s time for reward myself with a steaming hot lemon infused fish and couscous with a light Mediterranean touch. :)

And did I mention that Ashley loves it :D

You need
For the Lemon Baked Fish
250gm of dory fish fillet or you can use any type of white fish, cut into three portions
2 lemons sliced
4 tsps of lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
Aluminium foil for wrapping

For the Mediterranean Couscous

1 cup of instant couscous (I used organic instant couscous)

21/2 cups of vegetable broth (Or you can use water and add in some chicken granules)

1 medium onion diced

1 medium carrot diced

3 tbsps of ghee or butter

1 tsp of cumin powder

How to:

To make the fish

1. Thaw fish if frozen and drain off any liquid.
2. Place the fillets on the aluminum foil.
3. Squeeze the lemon juice on the fish, sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.
4. Place the fish fillets on the aluminum foil and arrange the lemon slices on the fillets.
5. Wrap the fillet with the aluminum foil and bake in 280 degree oven for 30 minutes.
6. It is done when you poke it with a fork and it flakes like fish is supposed to. If it is tough or rubbery then it isn't done yet. Put it back into the oven and cook it some more

To make the couscous
1. Heat butter, add in the diced onion, stir for 1 minute and add in the carrot along with the cumin powder.
2. Stir for 3 minutes or until the carrot turns slightly cooked.
3. Add couscous and stir to coat, add stock, bring to a boil, reduce heat to lowest setting, cover and cook (no peeking!) until liquid is absorbed.
4. Fluff to separate.
5. Serve with the Lemon Baked Fish

Enjoy!

Steamed Caramel Cake / Apam Gula Hangus

2009-10-05T16:23:00.012+08:00

All packed along with mooncakes to give to family & friends during Mid-Autumn Festival

I've mentioned this a million times, I’m not very good in baking and I still love to bake. Must be my over demanding sweet tooth. And before this I didn’t have an oven so I had to settle for steamed ones. And being in Malaysia, I’m lucky because we have many types of cakes and most of the cakes are made by steaming.And I bought this cookbook from Periplus Mini Cookbooks Collections, I’m an avid fan of this collection, mainly because it’s affordable at only RM11.90 per book and it’s good because the recipes are pretty easy to understand and follow.

I made this for the first time for my lil girl’s 1^st birthday tea party and have since become my must-haves desserts each time I throw a party or for gatherings. And since a couple of my friends has requested for the recipe, this post is dedicated for them :)

You need
150 g sugar
100 ml hot water
70 g butter
75 ml evaporated milk
1 egg, beaten

150 g self raising flour

pinch of salt

Yields 7 small cakes

How to

Place the 150g of sugar in a small heavy-based saucepan and heat gently until sugar melts and caramelizes to golden brown colour. Take care to keep pan on very low heat to avoid burning the caramel and remove pan from heat once it reaches a golden brown colour.
Pour the hot water into the caramel. And please be extra cautious at this point because the moment you pour the hot water, the caramel and hot water would splutter. So don’t be alarmed if that happens. Boil caramel for a few minutes until completely melted and syrup is obtained. Allow syrup to cool and pour it out into a measuring cup (you need 160 to 170 ml)
Add the melted butter, milk and beaten egg to the cooled caramel syrup and stir well to combined.
Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle and pour in the liquid. Gradually incorporate the dry ingredients into the liquid, stirring gently with a wooden spoon or balloon whisk for a smooth batter.
Fill small lightly buttered cups three-quarters full of batter and steam for 15 to 20 minutes.

Taste : 5/5 I love it because it’s very fragrant and it’s not too sweet

Preparation : 4/5 the recipe’s pretty easy to follow,

Ingredients : 5/5 available at hypermarkets, supermarkets & baking supplies stores Availability

Cooking time : 4.5/5 aside from waiting for the caramel syrup to cool down, it won’t take much of your time.

Variation

You may also bake the cakes, just pour the mixture into a greased and lined baking pan and bake in a preheated oven at 170Celcius for about 25-30 minutes. The surface might crack a bit but that’s okay.

Note
If you wish to make this for parties, you may double the recipe or in my case I tripled the amount.

Cooking tutorial
Ingredients

How To

Happy Mid Autumn Festival

2009-10-03T10:34:00.005+08:00

Wishing all my blog readers a Happy Mid Autumn Festival. Have fun playing lanterns and eating mooncakes :)

From left

Apam Gula Hangus/Steamed Caramel Cake, Dragon Fruit with Peach Jelly Mooncake, Gula Melaka with Lotus Paste Jelly Mooncake

Torta de Cielo / Almond Sponge Cake

2009-09-30T15:55:00.010+08:00

Ashley was down with stomach flu yesterday and even though the fever and vomiting has gone away, she’s still having some mild diarrhea. And I have to say she’s quite a champion, she isn’t fussy or cranky except when she had vomiting spells but she’s still pretty active for a toddler that needs to go to the toilet every 15 minutes or so. So this morning, she woke up and said to me groggily ‘Mommy, Ashley make cake’ and even though I told her she’s still sick and she can’t eat cake, she insists that we make (bake) cake today, so since I was interested in making the cake after coming across it on one of my many cookbooks the other day plus I have the ingredients in my pantry, why not

Now during the process of baking the cake, I’ve broken a few baking rules and pretty much landed myself in a baking jail (if there’s such thing) because, while waiting for the cake to bake, I googled for Torta de Cielo recipes and to my surprise (and horror) I need to soak the almonds for at least 6 hours and instead of 40minutes as stated on the book, I need to bake for at least an hour. So many discrepancies between the online recipes and the book! And you would be wondering what are the rules that I’ve broken, well I tried to adjust the oven’s temperature to 160 Celsius instead of 180 Celsius and 25 minutes instead of 40. At first it looked alright, even though the cake didn’t rise, I tested the cake doness after 10 minutes, it was still soggy wet! So I increased to 190 and because I was so afraid the cake would burn and I lowered it to 170 after 5 minutes. I kept on increasing and lowering the temperature so often I was beginning to anticipate the arrival of the baking police. So in the end it took me close to an hour just to make this cake. And I suspect that I didn’t use an 8 inch pan as instructed, I used 6 inch pan perhaps that’s why the cake didn’t cook according to the time and raised pretty high.

And since I have never eaten this cake before I can’t compare with mine. It has the texture of a banana cake and the crust’s a little chewy but still very nice although I might reduce the amount of sugar next time because it’s too sweet for my liking.

But overall, the cake does smell and taste oh so heavenly; no wonder it’s called Heaven Cake in Spanish

And I’ve decided to rate the food I’ve made so you can have a clearer picture of it. I promise I won’t be biased!

Taste : 3/5 because of the sweetness

Preparation : 4/5 the recipe’s pretty easy to follow

Ingredients : 5/5 you can get the ingredients at hypermarkets, supermarkets

Availability & baking supplies stores

Cooking time : 2/5 taking too much of my time supervising the cake

(adapted from Perfect Mexican)

You need:

225 gm of unsalted butter, at room temperature plus extra for greasing *

175 gm of whole almonds, in their skins

225 gm of caster sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp of almond essence

1 tsp of vanilla essence

9 tbsps of flour

pinch of salt

to decorate:

icing sugar for dusting

slivered almonds, toasted

How to:

Lightly grease a 20cm/8inch round pan or square cake pan and line the pan with baking parchment
Place the almonds in a food processor and process to form a ‘mealy’ mixture. Set aside *view picture*
Beat the butter and sugar together with a mixer at medium speed until smooth and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, almonds and both the almond and vanilla essences with low speed until well blended
Stir in the flour and salt and mix briefly, until the flour is just incorporated.
Pour or spoon the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the surface. Bake in a preaheated oven at 180 Celsius, for 40-50 minutes, or until the cake feels spongy when gently pressed.
Remove from the oven and let stand on a wire rack to cool. To serve, dust with icing sugar and decorate with toasted slivered almonds.

Enjoy!

Cooking Tutorials
Ingredients

How to

*Mealy mixture*

My lil sous chef blowing a kiss for luck

For behind the scenes, do hop over to my personal blog

Almond Marble Cake

2009-09-24T16:49:00.010+08:00

I have a confession to make, I’m not very good in baking, In fact the last time I baked a cake when I was like 13/14 years old, and I’m 26 this year so you can guess how rusty I am when it comes to baking. I much prefers cooking to baking because I feel cooking is an art, if you screw up you can still amend the food but baking is science, you miss a step or one ingredient or even didn’t set the temperature right there goes your baked goodies.

But I do miss baking though and I tried a few steamed varieties before I started this blog. And I think it’s fated (hehe I know it’s corny) that I should go back to baking when I saw a super cheap small oven for sale from a friend. You would think the moment I bring the oven back I’d bake millions of cakes or muffins but no I was still waiting for the right moment to bring back the baking talent (or lack of) in me. I tried the simplest cake recipe; butter cake and I failed miserably, the top was burned to crisp even though I followed the recipe to the T. And after asking my friends and referring to some cookbooks, I concluded since my oven is the smaller model I should lower the temperature and shorten the baking time.

So today I braved myself to make another version of butter cake ; Almond Marble Cake and this time with the help from my little girl. I even asked her to blow a kiss to the cake and wish us luck before popping the batter in the cake. Luck must be on our side, the cake turns out GREAT!

So here’s the recipe
(adapted from Agnes Chang's Baking Made Easy)

You need:
250gm of butter
200gm of castor sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
250gm of self raising flour or 250gm of plain flour and add 2 tablespoons of baking powder
4 tablespoons of milk
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder mix with 3 tablespoons of hot water to make a chocolate paste
A handful of sliced almonds for decorations

How to:
1. Get ready all the ingredients
2. Put butter and castor sugar into a mixing bowl
3. Use a low speed to mix until even. Change to medium speed and beat until light. Add in the first egg
4. Beat well after each addition of egg until creamy
5. Scrape down the sides for even mixing
6. Add in the vanilla essence and mix well
7. Divide flour into three portions, use lowest speed to mix in the flour. Remember to scrape the sides for even mixing
8. Finally, add milk
9. Mix until well combined
10. Keep ¼ portion of cake mixture and mix in cocoa paste.
11. Pour into a 22cm lined and greased baking tin or any baking tins you may have. Shake lightly to distribute cake mixture evenly.
12. Use a spoon to spoon cocoa mixture on top of the plain butter mixture.
13. Use a small knife to draw lines vertically to get marble effect and draw more line horizontally to get stronger marble effect.
14. Sprinkle the almonds on top mixture before putting into a pre heated oven at 160C. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Remove from oven and leave to cool. *

Note
*If you have the usual sized oven you need to set your temperature at 180C and bake for 45 minutes. I’m currently using the oven below for all my baking and cooking

picture curtesy of Mudah.Com.My

For breakfast

2009-09-18T15:51:00.007+08:00

Lil missy would have her usual, yoghurt while the mommy enjoys a cup of freshly brewed chrysanthemum & ginseng tea

Nasi Briyani

2009-09-15T15:45:00.008+08:00

I have a pretty weird preference when it comes to rice, I don’t quite fancy plain white rice even with other dishes (vegetables, meat, fish etc) but I love savoury ones especially Nasi Briyani. I love the wonderful aroma of the spices, the fragrant taste of the ghee and onions; each rice grain is bursting with flavours. And it’s such a perfect one pot dish

I first fell in love with Nasi Briyani when I was staying in a kampong many years ago, when I attended a Malay wedding feast or commonly known as kenduri with my mother. During events like these, the host would usually serve Nasi Briyani / Nasi Minyak with dishes like Ayam Masak Merah, Acar, Sambal Udang, Rendang Ayam etc. It was a real treat back then, to have to many things to eat and to have so many friends to play with and another thing to look forward during kenduri was the bottomless glass of Sirap (a type of drink made from water, screwpine leaves, sugar and red coloring)

Even then I was fascinated by the sights of pots of delectable dishes, men cooking and serving the dishes, the colourful decorations, and a group of teenagers beating the kompangs (hand drums), the beautifully decorated platforms for the happily married groom & bride to be seated on their throne like chairs to receive well wishes from guests or guests reciting poems for the newly weds.

Now whenever I have Nasi Briyani, it brings back fond memories of my childhood growing up in the kampong. The simplicity of life, the beautiful nature, and wonderful meals during kenduris

You need:
200gm/1 cup of Basmati rice
1 tablespoon of turmeric powder
3 tablespoon of ghee or 2 tablespoon of vegetable oil with 1 tablespoon of butter
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
2 star anise
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon of poppy seeds or mustard seeds if you can't get hold of poppy seeds (thanks to Christine for sharing this with me (: )
130 g of green peas (canned/frozen)
1 small onion (chopped)
50ml of condensed milk
400ml/2 cups of water
salt to season

For garnishing:
Fried shallots

Serves: 2-3 persons

How to:
1. Rinse the rice in several changes of water, until the water runs clear. Put the rice in a bowl, cover with plenty of water and mix in the turmeric powder. Leave to soak for about an hour and drain thoroughly.
2. Heat the ghee or oil and butter, in a pot. Stir in the poppy seeds, star anise and cloves. Add in the onion and fry until golden and fragrant
3. Add in the rice, followed by cinnamon stick and bay leaf and stir for 1 minute to coat the grains in ghee.
4. Pour in the water with the salt and condensed milk, stir once and bring the liquid to a boil.
5. Reduce the heat, stir in the peas and allow to simmer gently for 15-20 minutes, until all the liquid has been absorbed. Stir the rice occasionally so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.
6. Turn off the heat and sprinkle the fried shallot on top. Replace the lid and leave to steam for a further 10 minutes. Spoon the rice on to a serving dish

Variations:
You may also stir in a handful of sultanas/raisins along with the peas.

Enjoy!

Cooking Tutorials
Ingredients

How To

Sardine Bolognese Sauce Pizza Toast

2009-09-10T14:02:00.002+08:00

Pizza toasts are so easy to make and I can’t help but to make them today using the Sardine Bolognese Sauce I made earlier on.

The ingredients and methods are similar to the Smoked Salmon Pizza Toast but instead of spreading tomato sauce and then place smoked salmon on top, you only need to spread the Bolognese sauce and sprinkle grated cheese on top. And I used Cheddar cheese this time

And it's my lunch today :D

Enjoy!

Pasta with Sardine Bolognese Sauce

2009-09-10T14:00:00.001+08:00

When I woke up this morning, the first thing that came to my mind was ‘What am I going to cook for Ashley today?’. Having a fussy 2 1/2 year old toddler can be daunting when it comes to making her meals. If possible this girl of mine would just eat plain white rice with any kind of gravy/sauce preferably brown sauces. And in order for her to have her rice with sauce I have to make stews which can be time consuming and by the time the stew’s ready, she no longer interested in eating. And as we all know, just white rice for all her meals while growing up isn’t a good thing at all; I want her to have her veggies and meat. So this morning I thought of making pasta with tomato sauce since she likes it (on her good days) and after rummaging through my pantry I found 2 cans of sardine in tomato sauce. And I thought to myself why not? A delicious twist on a chicken/ beef Bolognese sauce.

You need:
250g of any kind of pasta (Spaghetti, Fettuccine, Linguine or even Fusilli)
4 tbsps of olive oil or sunflower oil
1 small onion (finely chopped)
1 small tomato (chopped)
1 small can of Sardine in Tomato Sauce
5 tbsps of tomato sauce (ketchup)
Water
Parmesan cheese to serve
Salt & Pepper to taste

How To:
1. Cook the pasta in a pot, according to the packet instructions. Drain and set aside.
2. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and sauté the onion until they turn translucent and soft.
3. Pour in the can of sardine along with the sauce, flak the sardine using your spatula. Add in some water otherwise the sauce would be too thick.
4. Next, add in the tomatoes and tomato sauce, put on the lid and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Salt and pepper to season.
5. Add the sauce to the pasta, toss and serve with Parmesan on top.

Voila a quick meal in less than 30mins and your children would love it :)

Variations:
Instead of using Sardines you can substitute with Tuna or Salmon. And add in 1 can of tomato puree instead of 5 tbsp of tomato sauce

Enjoy!

Finger Licking Good

2009-09-10T11:18:00.002+08:00

Want to know what made this fussy 2 1/2 year old toddler lick her fingers?

Look out for the next post :)

Contact Me

2009-09-09T19:39:00.003+08:00

Thank you for visiting my blog. If you like what you see here, or have any comments, suggestions or even corrections, feel free to E-mail me , alesiasim [at] gmail dot com, about it.

I'd love to hear from you :) and happy cooking!

About

2009-09-09T15:22:00.003+08:00

Taught to cook by her own mother when she was younger, this stay at home wife/mommy rekindles her passion for cooking after watching some cooking shows while she was doing her confinement after the birth of her baby girl. And now she truly enjoys creating new dishes or simply prepare home cooked meals for her loved ones and friends.

She hopes, with this online recipe keeper she would be able to pass on her culinary experiences to her own children and of course share her joy of cooking with others.

Smoked Salmon Pizza Toast

2009-09-09T09:09:00.006+08:00

Whenever I’m in need of a quick brunch, and yet I don’t want a meal that isn’t satisfying to my tummy I’ll make this. Just a bottle of pasta sauce, cheese and voila you have a quick but satisfying meal

You Need:
2 Slices of bread (I normally use BreadTalk's butter loaf as it has a nice buttery aroma and crust after toasting)
3 tbsp of Pasta Sauce/Tomato Puree
100g Smoked Salmon
100g Mozzarella Cheese
Pizza Toppers or you can also use any dried mixed herbs you like

How To:
1. Spread the pasta sauce on the bread.
2. Sprinkle the herbs over the sauce.
3. Place smoked salmon on the bread and top it with Mozzarella cheese
4. Grill the toast in a toaster oven or an oven at 180°C for 10 minutes or until the cheese has turned golden brown

Variations:
Instead of Smoked Salmon, you can have ham, sausages*, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and the list’s endless

Cooking tips:
To prevent your pizza toast from being too soggy, just lightly toast the bread before spreading the pasta sauce.

Note:
* Make sure the sausages has been cooked before placing it on the bread.

Cooking Tutorials
Ingredients

How To: