Serimuka/ Steamed egg custard with glutinous rice

I made this two days ago as I was craving for kuih-muih. I miss kuih-muih back home. I tried to make this before but I couldn't get the top to set but this time I managed to get it done although the top still looked wrinkly. I obtained the recipe from mykitchen. It is nice and not too eggy like some other recipes.

Not-so-authentic kompia (bagel) with braised pork

My not-so-authentic kompia (foochow bagel)

The original kompia (picture taken from www.thelex.com/sibu/food.html).

Can u see the difference between my so-called kompia and the original??

Braised pork with kompia

I made this yesterday out of the blue. I obtained the recipe of braised pork from My Wok Life. I didn't use the pork belly as it is fatty. Pork fillet was used instead. The braised pork turned out to be quite nice. You can give it a try. And for the kompia, I used the bagel recipe and shaped them like kompia (tho they still didn't look alike.. hehe..). Overall, it was a good try.

All about food...

Home-cooked food... The first two dishes were cooked by my DH - lor mee and tang hoon soup. Tempting?? ;) I attempted to recreate the bien nuk soup so that it tastes similar to what we have back home. But there is still something missing from the soup. It was yellowish in the picture due to the lighting. I tried out the lemon chicken recipe from sunflower the other day. It turned out very nice. My DH asking for more.. ;)

Beggar's Chicken

This is called beggar's chicken. I tried it once when i was in KL but forgot how it tasted like. I found this recipe from baking mum and was very keen to try it out. The end result was quite nice and the meat was tender and fell apart from the bones itself. Me and my dh finished the whole chicken. The most important thing was to wrap the chicken properly to keep the lovely juice. The juice was very nice and sweet.

Radish cake (Lo Bak Gao)

I made this two days ago and the recipe was obtained from sunflower. Thanks her for nice recipes There are two ways to eat this savoury cake. You can either pan-fried it or fried it like char kueh tiaw. This is a keeper.. yummy.

Korean vs Malaysian Food

I never thought that I would find this type of rice cake here, at the place where I stay at the moment. It was kind of suprise when I saw it in one of the oriental supermarkets. Without much hesitation, I just grabbed a packet. But, alas, I found out that it was made in china when i reached home. I thought it was supposed to be made in Korea. Anyway, I still go ahead to cook TteokBokki. It turned out quite nice. The rice cake was chewy and yummy. A bit like chinese rice cake. But to tell you the truth I haven't really try the real TteokBokki before so I can't really comment much.

I cooked this nasi lemak sometimes ago. I forgot where I got the recipes from. The tedious parts were cooking the rendang and the sambal. I omitted the belacan for the sambal because I didn't have any and at the same time I didn't want my whole flat to smell like 'belacan in the air'. It was a good try.

Bread and buns

I'm really satisfied with these bread and buns. They were really soft and fluffy. They stay soft the next day without any artificial ingredients to make them stay soft and also without the need of reheating them. This method of making the bread is called 65 degree tang zhong bread @ water roux bread. Recipes adapted from here and here. Try it and you will know. :)

Jjajangmyun - Korean black bean noodles

Jjajangmyun in making. I adapted it from maangchi. I used udon instead because I couldn't find the special noodles for jjjajangmyun. Anyway, it tasted great. I read from somewhere that we can also use spaghetti or even rice to go with this yummy sauce.

Yam Cake

This was my first attempt of making yam cake and it turned out really yammy... We finished the whole cake in one day. It is an all-time favourite kuih for breakfast and tea time. I made a slight changes from the original recipe. I added minced chicken and dried shrimps into the yam cake with no garnishing.

Ingredients:

(A)

250g yam, diced and coat with 1 tsp of five spice powder

240ml water

40g dried shrimps, minced

100g minced chicken

(B) Mix together and sieve:

125g rice flour

20g tapioca flour

240ml water

150g yam, sliced thinly, steam and mashed

(C) Seasoning:

1 tbsp chicken stock

2 tsp soya sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tsp sugar

salt and pepper to taste

Method:

(1) Heat 2 tbsp oil and stir fry the dried shrimps and minced chicken. Remove and set aside.

(2) Add 2 tbsp oil to the remaining oil in the wok, add diced yam and stir fry well. Mix in water and bring to a boil.

(3) Add in (B) and seasoning and cook till batter is fairly thick. Then add in (1) and mix well.

(4) Pour thick batter into a well-greased 25cm round tray.

(5) Steam till kuih is set and cooked through (about 45 mins). Leave aside to cool. Serve yam cake with chilli sauce.

Beef Noodle (Niu Rou Mien)

I made this beef noodles for dinner last night. I obtained the recipe here. There was no chinese chilli bean paste in my pantry so I omitted it. In order to make the soup spicy, I added some sambal oelek and chilli powder. Besides that, I also added some homemade chicken meatballs which were made a day before. I got the recipe from here. I added some spring onions and carrot to the paste. The chicken balls didn't really look round in shape (need more practice) but they were really nice. Should give it a try.

There was still some ummph... missing in the beef broth but the meat tasted nice. Overall, it satisfied my grumbling tummy. Maybe I will try to use some chinese chilli bean paste next time and see if it will turn out to be nicer. And also, the beef will taste nicer and tastier if we cook it a day before.

It's a bun.. It's a roll.. It's...

...a loaf of bread.. This was my first attempt of making bread. I didn't use bread flour so I think that was one of the reasons why it turned out to be like this. Although the top looked very brownish but it was not hard. I brushed it with some butter. I read from a website that if we brush the top with egg then it will yield hard crust. I prefer it to be soft so I brushed it with butter instead. Here is some tips of making bread. The bread texture was quite good altho I used plain flour. It was soft and fluffy. I got the recipe from happy home baking. I added some pandan essence and pandan kaya to make it looked and tasted like pandan bread. I don't have a bread machine so this was made with my bare hands. It was a good try. More to go :)

Cakes and buns

All these while... what have I been doing? Just to share some photos of them.


Haw Flakes (San Cha) Layer cake and Horlick Layer Cake for chinese new year


Clockwise: cinnamon pretzel, oreo cheesecake, steamed caramel cake, hoddeok-korean pancake


cinnamon rolls


sausage cheese rolls

Chap Goh Mei

It was my first time celebrating Chap Goh Mei here. We usually have a gathering among family and relatives on this special night while enjoying nice dinner at a restaurant back at home. Since I'm away from home, following my DH, we just had a simple dinner together - fried noodles (wet chao mein) and dak bulgogi (Korean BBQ chicken). He was working yesterday so we only managed to celebrate it at around 9pm. It is actually not really healthy having dinner late at night but yesterday was exceptional for us ;)



Chicken bulgogi is adapted from Closet Cooking. I just pan fried the marinated chicken with a bit of oil and some of the marinade. You have to make sure that the pan is not too hot as the meat will get burn easily. The meat cooks very quickly cause it is sliced thinly and the sugar content will cause some browning. You may also adjust the soy sauce and red pepper sauce (gochujang) to your liking. If you don't like it to be too salty then reduce the soy sauce. If you don't like to be too spicy then reduce the gochujang sauce. Garnish the chicken with some toasted sesame, spring onion and some chopped chilli and voila...

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...

Easy Chocolate Biscuits

This recipe is very easy. U just need a few ingredients to make them into a very nice and lovely biscuilt.

Ingredients:

150g malted biscuits (blended)
80-100g butter (melted)
250g cooking chocolate (melted)
some chopped nuts

Method:

1. Mix the blended biscuits with melted butter evenly. Make them into small ball and put them in the small cupcake cases. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour till the biscuits are firm.
2. Melt the cooking chocolate and pour it on top of the biscuits till it covers the whole biscuilts.
3. Sprinkle some chopped nuts on top of the biscuits.
4. Chill the biscuits again for at least an hour till they are set.

Roasted Cashew Nuts

Crazy about nuts? Try this simple and easy recipe.

Ingredients:

Raw cashew nuts

Butter

Icing sugar

Some salt

and of cos you need an oven.. ;)

Method:

1. Soak the raw cashew nuts for about 10 mins.

2. Preheat the oven 175 degree.

3. Spread the cashew nuts on the baking tray and roast them till golden brown.

4. While still hot, add in some butter and salt and mix well.

5. Let them cool. Then dust the cashew nuts with some icing sugar.