Oh Gosh! About a Month since I blogged!!

Dear Me,

I didn't realise my blog was dying... It has been about a month since my last entry.. Was busy churning out assignments and doing tuitions (All right... these are all lame excuses..) Actually, I have been doing some stuff... Just never got around to taking photos and worse still uploading them...

Anyway, again a photographic journey of what I have been up to...

Finally Got Myself an Oven... Hubby brought me to Mustafa.. and about $260 poorer... but happier.. I have got myself a 'Big Moma Oven' 42L Tecno Oven.. the biggest there was... But, it sure does take up alot of counter space... sadly!

Since, I got my hands on this monstrous baby.. I wish I could say that I have been industriously baking... but alas.. not quite.. I am using but not as much as I would like.... 

Well... This is the first cake I made with the oven...A Vegan Orange Cake!

I wish I could say that this cake was a big success... but alas, it was not quite what I wanted it to be... Somehow... Most vegan cakes just don't scratch up to normal cakes with the sinful butter and richness of the eggs and depth of the milk... No offense to any vegans.... This cake had very nice flavour because there was the zest of the orange in it, so it smelt great... but I found that the soy milk sort of overwhelmed the taste and it was sticky in the mouth.. Too bad we don't have Earth balance here.. I would really love to give it a go.... 

What I've been up to the past week or two...PART 2

Haha! I thought that's what I had done... but while looking thru the camera... realised that I actually had forgotten a few things..

Potato pancakes... Hand grated! Didn't turn out that great cos' I was stingy with the oil and I made a mistake of making it into patties... shud have flattened them out.. was a little undercook on the inside.

 

Also, made Hokkien Mee the other week... I think last Sunday.... Yummy with a lot of fresh prawns...

And a vegan Chocolate Cake.... 

What I've been up to the past week or two...

I haven't been able to blog much as I had been bogged down with an assignment... Finally that is over and I'm relaxing a little.... but I will be back at assignments soon....

I've actually cooked a few things but just didn't get a chance to upload them.... basically, I've tried baking my own fries... with moderate success and made my own fish patties for a fish burger which turned out pretty good :)

The ingredients for this dish is pretty simple... Just get some potatoes... preferably russet potatoes... skin and julienne them (fancy word for cutting into strips) and toss it in olive oil, herbs, salt and pepper... then bake 'em in the oven... I used about 200 degree Celsius until they are brown enough for you...(abt 20 mins) Toss them about if you can in between so that they cook evenly. Can't say it is as crispy as deep frying but it sure was much healthier.

I also made some fish burgers sometime back... using frozen fish fillet.. i think its called sutchi fillet... it turned out great... there's something refreshing about having fresh patties then those processed ones... I surfed online and used a few recipes to create this... of course now... I can't quite remember how i did it... hahah!

And the final product.....

Wonton Mee...

I'm quite famous for buying things on a whim and then leaving them in the fridge until I decide what to do with it... Of cos' due to my impulsiveness, many vegetables have perished... but luckily frozen products have managed to escape this horrible fate by having longer shelf lives.. So last night, while in bed, I remembered that I had bought a chicken carcass from Giant and it had been sitting in my freezer for over a month... It was time to make stock.....

So, today morning, I dumped the chicken, onion, celery, garlic, ginger and coriander in a huge copper pot and let it simmer for hours. And since I had some wilting chye sim in the fridge, it seemed like a good idea to make wonton mee... And that's what we had for lunch!

The pictures aren't great cos' I just piled all the stuff on... was too tired to dress it up.. So, this is how it will look like on most days :P

This is my own recipe... I'm sure it is not authentic and might not be for everyone's taste... But what the heck... Food is creativity right?

Recipe for Dry Wonton Mee

1 packet of wonton mee noodles

1 packet of cooked dumplings (I got mine from Seng Siong... these are not the fried ones)

Chye sim (to preference)

Prawns (happen to be going for a song at Seng Siong (no pun intended))

Chicken stock (enough to boil the above ingredients)

For the dark sauce base: (This was conjured by me)

2 red chilli - deseeded and finely chopped

1/2 thumb of minced ginger 

Oyster sauce

Dark soya sauce

Light soya sauce 

Sesame oil

1/4 C water

Method:

1) I made the dark sauce base by heating up a small pan with a mixture of sesame and canola  oil. Saute the chili and ginger over low heat until brown.

2) Add water, oyster, dark soya and light soya sauces to taste. If you like it sweeter more oyster sauce and if you like it smokey and more dark soya sauce. 

3) Once it starts boiling, turn off the fire and set the mixture aside.

4) In another pan, add some chicken stock and let it come to a boil. 

5) Add the shelled prawns and chye sim and let it cook quickly. Remove

6) Add the dumplings and let them boil in the chicken stock. Remove

7) Wash the wonton mee to remove the flour on it and add it to the stock (I tried it before without washing it and the stock started to thicken because of the flour). Let it come to a boil, test for doneness and remove it.

8) Place the cooked wonton mee in a bowl, stir in the dark sauce and assemble the wonton noodles, prawns and chye sim. Serve with sambal belachan.

Good old choc cake n a juice...

I hadn't baked for a very long time and that is cos' (like I said before) I don't have a convectional oven even though my MW is suppose to double as one. This is cos' the heat comes from the side and not the top and bottom so the cake does not bake well. 

So, I came across this wonderful recipe for steamed choc cake that had been getting rave reviews at kitchen capers (you definitely need to check it out), and so I decided to try it out. I used my wok to do it and through out the entire steaming process I was so worried that the cake is not gonna turn out great cos I don't have a full fledged proper steamer. Fortunately, the recipe seems quite idiot-proof and it turned out to be a pretty yummy cake. Especially so after I kept it in the fridge.. it tasted like sara lee pound cake... yum! The recipe can be found here

The next day was Friday and I didn't cook anything cos' G is vegetarian on Fridays and mum will usually cater for the whole family.. So instead, I made a orange-pineapple juice using canned pineapple and oranges (left over from CNY)... both which had been lying around for a bit. It's pretty easy, I just deseeded some mandarin oranges (left the white bits on for morefibre), added some chunked pineapples (draining away the syrup) and pureed it the mixture with my handheld blender. It was a little sweet even after adding ice cubes. Could have been better if I blended the ice together.. For that I would have to lug my big blender out which I was not interested in.....It was quite tasty... but G founded a tad too thick for him. I think he would have preferred it strained.. but I'm not gonna get rid of the fibre!

Noodle mania...

Ever since we came back from our trip from Malacca, I have not posted the stuff that I had cooked. Of course, it is mainly one dish meals and not a 5 course meal. On Monday I made spaghetti  with tomato base. It was really simple and tasty. I started off with a can of campbell's pasta sauce and I added some chopped chicken breast to it to make it like a Bolognese. Since I am a sucker for vegetables, I added celery,onions, garlic and bell peppers. Usually, I would have added tomatoes but I didn't have any on hand so I omitted it and I also didn't feel like using canned mushrooms since I was just cooking for two. My hubby loved it so much that he ate the remaining sauce on its own... Something he has never done before. :) For me, I piled on the Parmesan cheese... I just love strong flavours!

On Monday night while waiting to be picked up by G, I wandered into NTUC and bought some fish cakes and udon noodles. I have never tried udon before but always been so fascinated by it, so it was a really good opportunity to do so. So on Tuesday I made my own version of udon noodles with fishcake, cabbage, green vegetable, onions, garlic and straw mushroom. For seasoning I added a Knorr cube (I think ikan billis), pepper and soya sauce. It turned out pretty good I must say!

    

Recipe for Spaghetti with chicken tomato sauce

Spaghetti for two.

1 can of Campbell's tomato pasta sauce (I have tried with Prego and other brands..)

1 onion, diced

3-4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 stick of celery, chopped

1/2 a bell pepper, chopped

1 can of mushrooms (optional)

1 tomato, diced (I didn't use it here, though normally I would)

a handful of pitted olives, diced

Salt and pepper to taste

some dried rosemary, oregano and basil, according to ind. preference

Method:

1) Saute onion in olive oil. When it is softening, add the chopped celery, bell pepper and garlic.(You can add tomatoes at this instance too) Cook until the vegetables are soft. I also added some of rosemary, oregano and basil for it to cook with the vegetables.

2) Add diced chicken and olives. Let it cook through until the chicken starts to turn white. Add in the pasta sauce and simmer for about 10 mins. Adjust the seasoning and herbs according to taste.

3) In another big pot, boil enough water to submerge pasta. When the water is boiling, add some salt and oil. Add spaghetti and cook until al-dente. 

4) Serve cooked spaghetti with some pasta sauce and top it with some Parmesan cheese.

Udon With Vegetables

1 packet of Udon noodles (enough for two)

A few cabbage leaves, finely sliced

One packet of enoki mushrooms (chopped into three)

A few leaves of kai lan

One onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

3 chilli padi

Fishcake, sliced

1 cube of Knorr ikan bilis stock

Some pepper 

Soya sauce

Method:

1. Saute onions, garlic and chilli in some oil.

2. Add enough water to make soup for two. Let it come to a boil. Add ikan bilis stock cube and fishcake.

3. Add udon and vegetables at the same time (so that the vegetables don't cook for too long and lose nutrients). 

4. Add seasoning to taste. Top off with some spring onion and serve. 

 

A foodie trip to Malacca

Finally, my hubby G had an opportunity to review a hotel. So, after a quick packing of the bags, we headed down to Malacca on Saturday - not exactly the smartest thing to do considering that it was only the third day of CNY. 

 N-S highway up to Malacca was very smooth except for a huge jam in Malacca town itself which took us about an hour to clear. The hotel we stayed in is called Majestic Malacca (www.majesticmalacca.com) It is a really nice and beautiful hotel and at USD 200++ a night, it better be. Of course, for us it was sponsored. So that's great. The room we stayed in was so beautiful with an open concept bathroom and a huge bathtub. I'm hoping for something like this when we buy our new house! Sadly, we didn't have time to try the tub but it looked really pretty. 

After unpacking we had dinner with the Manager of the hotel, Mr Robert Hunter. He recommended the Nonya food but to both G and me it was quite so-so except for the chicken cincaluk which was made with fermented shrimps... not belachan but the other type that you can get from bottles. I guess we like our food a little bit more fiery. The dishes were quite mild in flavour. 

 

We also shared a bubor cha cha dessert that was made from gula melaka instead of the normal white 

sugar. It had bits of sweet potato in it and was fresh and delicious. It also had a very nice smoky flavour but the only downside was that it was a bit too sweet for my liking. But it was nice...

Next day we finally had a lovely meal with what they call the cascading breakfast. This is

not your normal buffet but they have a list of items you can choose from. This is good because there is no wastage and at the same time you receive a fresh batch of piping hot food. Hubby had egg omelette while I had scrambled eggs. It came with freshly made hashbrown topped with grilled tomatoes, chicken sausage and baked beans. The hashbrowns were very good as it was made in the hotel and not the frozen type that you get normally. They also serve really fresh watermelon and orange juice. Really yummy!

The picture on the left was a beautiful display of homemade jams they had - bitter orange marmalade, strawberry jam and pineapple jam. I just thought that the containers looked so elegant! 

I also had a chance to go for their one of a kind spa.. the only one in the world that uses Pernakan healing properties for treatments. Normally it costs 600RM per person but since I was reviewing the place it was free! 

After an invigorating time at the spa it was 

time for lunch! Since we were rushing back to Sg I ordered a club sandwich and G ordered a chicken burger. It was a very tasty meal topped off with chocolate mousse for dessert. G absolutely enjoyed his burger as he never had a chicken patty so huge! 

We were so excited about the chocolate mousse that we even forgot to take pics! Absolutely rich, chocolatey and divine! So you get to see the empty cups after we licked it clean! hahaha

In all, we had a very satisfying trip and if it is all paid for... We will definitely do it again! hehehe!

H