Ichigo Daifuku (Strawberry Mochi)

What's for dessert? Yea... daifuku. I made it for the first time and it was good. Daifuku or mochi is a traditional Japanese cake with different kind of filling - red bean, peanut butter, nutella, etc. Putting a whole strawberry inside a daifuku with some red bean is new to me and find it quite interesting. I got the recipe from here and video clip.

My daifuku didn't turn out to be perfect like the video clip but they were chewy and nice. It will be much better with smaller strawberries. The strawberries that I bought were kind of big so I had big daifuku. The recipe can make 6 pieces but I can only make 4 pieces. Another problem that I had was the wrapping skill. I need more practice on that.

Berry Smoothies

I had a packet of tofu that had been sitting in the fridge for sometimes. It will expire in one or two days time. So I went online to surf for a nice tofu recipe. I came across a recipe for smoothies that uses silken tofu. I found it interesting and at the same time feeling weird using tofu as one of the ingredients. But I still eagered to try it out. To my suprise, it turned out to be a very yummy glass of smoothies. I found the recipe from here.

Ingredients:

6 oz of silken tofu (drain it to remove excess water)

1 medium banana (peel, slice and freeze it before use)

2/3 cup of soy milk (I used instant soy mix)

1 cup fresh/frozen blueberries (I used frozen mixed berries)

1 tbsp of honey (to taste)

2-3 ice cubes, optional (I added more)

Method:

Blend the banana, tofu and soy milk for 30 seconds. Add 1/2 cup of the frozen blueberries and process until smooth. Add the remaining blueberries, honey and ice cubes if using and process again until smooth. (I blended everything together)

Enjoying a glass of smoothie with a plate of spaghetti.

Bibimpap

I came across this website, maangchi which introduced lots of nice korean dishes. The bibimbap recipe caught my eyes. I was so eager to try it out. So yesterday I went to shop for the ingredients and tried it out today. It turned out quite nice. I guess the main ingredient is the sauce - Gochujang (hot pepper sauce). Without the hot stone bowl, I can still enjoy a nice bowl of bibimpap.



You can refer to the website above for the recipe or the following (with slight changes)
Part 1:
Marinate 200g minced beef with some minced garlic, soy sauce, sugar, black pepper, big onion and sesame oil for at least 30 mins. Heat the wok, add some oil and cook the meat. Add some roasted sesame seeds.

Part 2:
Cook the sushi rice in the rice cooker.

Part 3:
(A) Bean sprouts - Rinse them with water for 3 times. After that, put some water and boiled them for 5 minutes. Drain the water and mix with some minced garlic, sesame oil and a pinch of salt. Set aside.
(B) Spinach - Put spinach in boiling water and stir for a minutes. Then, rinse it with cold water and squeezed lightly to remove excess water. Mix it with a pinch of salt, some soy sauce, minced garlic and sesame oil. Set aside.
(C) Shiitake Mushrooms - Soaked and slice the mushrooms. Saute mushrooms with soy sauce and sugar. Set aside.
(D) Cucumbers - Julienne and season cucumbers with some salt, rice vinegar and sugar. Set aside.
(E) Carrots - Julienne and saute carrots for a minute and add a pinch of salt. Set aside.
(F) Egg - Prepare the egg with sunny-side up (telur mata kerbau).

Arrange them and serve it with sesame oil and Gochujang sauce. Lastly, mix it up and enjoy a nice bowl of bibimpap.

For the sauce, you can also mix gochujang with some rice vinegar, a bit of soy sauce, sugar, minced garlic and sesame oil.


After dinner, we had a glass of red bean milkshake topped with some cream and cocoa powder. Just add red bean puree with some semi-skimmed milk. Slurp...

Bien Nuk Mien (Kampua)

I still have some dried kampua noodles that I brought all the way from my hometown. Kampua is one of my hometown's signature dishes. Kind of missing it last night so here came the kampua with some bien nuk (foochow dumplings) that mimicked the delicious flavour found in Sibu :p. I used the wonton wrappers that I bought from the chinese shop to make some bien nuk. They are just dumplings wrapped with some seasoned pork. The right combination satisfied our craving.. yumm...

(Note: Fresh kampua noodles taste much nicer)

Dian Bien Ngu and Char Siew Rice

I made this dian bian ngu last week from the recipe I found from A Daily Obsessions. I used shredded chicken instead of minced/sliced pork. I had a problem of preventing the rice flour batter from getting into the soup. It made the soup looked cloudy. I need more practice on how to get good rice crepes.



We had char siew rice for dinner on Sunday. I obtained this char siew recipe from Lily. It was a great try. For the rice, I used a packet of hainanese chicken rice paste and mixed them together. There was no sauce to pour on top of the char siew because the sauce was burnt to charcoal when I baked it. Maybe the temperature was set too high. Anyway, I need more practice on both dishes. Practice makes perfect ;)

Dining out

We went for a dinner at one of the top indian restaurants called Kayal Restaurant. It was our first visit there. This restaurants has won many awards. You can search their website to find out more: here. We had:

Our starters: huge masala dosa and yummy lamb Adipoli Aadu/Kozhi (do you think the plate looks like a paint palette?!!)

Breads: Appam (I like this!)

Main course: Mixed vegetables stew (err... not too bad but I prefer Gourmet Raj Chilli vegetable labra) and lastly, Kayal fish curry (couldn't see any fish from the pic - i ate 2.5 pieces and he ate another 2.5). Overall, it is a great place with quality food and friendly staff.

What's for dinner...

I wanted to try something new. So, instead of usual yong chow fried rice, I tried to cook this nasi pattaya (omelette fried rice). I was trying to impress him with some deco on the egg but he said it looked 'scary'... !%^&*@~*^

Recipe adapted from here.

Last night we had this lo mai kai for dinner. It was really nice especially with lots of pepper on it. I got the recipe from here. I just used chicken without the char siew and chinese sausage. Give it a try!!