As i step into.......

Gosh! As i step nearer to half a decade, look back and it seems like i have not achieve anything. Except lots of regrets..........

No birthday bash, lunch at koufu foodcourt, dinner at a nearby coffee shop. Played bejewelled blitz on facebook the whole day thru'.

But i do appreciate some great friends for making my day less boring thou. Got lots of smses of birthday wishes, birthday wishes from baking/cooking group, birthday wishes from some commercial advertisement and that's about all except great appreciation to STsn for her surprise birthday gift via post. Buddy! you really make my day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MYSELF

Thursday eveing - went to sifu house to pick up this.

From the box, you could clearly tell that it's a cake inside, but what type of cake is it?



It's actually dark chocolate mousse cake. This is specially hand made by sifu for my birthday.
The top layer is super yummy creme brulee, with a outer layer of super soft sponge cake, the base is also sponge cake. The center is dark chocolate mousse. Look at how well made this cake is - from outside, you could see that there's 3 layers, yellow -creme brulee, center dark brown color - dark chocolate mousse, and the lighter brown color is the sponge cake outer layer.

The interior.

Although i'm not much a fan of mousse, but this cake is super yummy.

After assembling the candle,

5.....4.....3......2......1

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MYSELF

New Family member

Yesterday, my other nephew arrived. Weighing 3.2 kg and 49 cm in length. Yipee! Another new member is added to the family line. Visited my sister today at noon. She looks good and well. So happy. With my brother-in-law support, a domestic helper and a confinement lady, i'm sure she would recuperate well.

I nearly forgot

What did i nearly forgot? Haha.....i nearly forgot my log-in name and password for this blog. When you don't have much interesting things to update, you tend not to blog. Or should i say the lazy bug is in me and so i didn't bother to blog. Plus, when you have so many passwords to remember - from bank accounts password, personal email password, company's email password, company's server's password, etc, etc.......... the list can go on and on. Probably some would suggest using the same password - which i did formerly - i realise that i began to forget where am i logging into. Oh dear, that just me. Mmm.......... am i suffering from early Alzheimer?
My friend did crack a joke saying that and that's why i'm recording what have i done thru' blogging. Am i or am i not?

Now, back to my event recording again. Kekeke..........


Make this yesterday - FRENCH BROWNIES. Super yummy - even hubby couldn't help but requested that i make it again some other day.

Pretty, isn't it?

This is sarawak kek lapis . A lot of work is involve in making this. A lazy bum like me would probably not attempt to do this unless if i really have so much time to spare. This was given to me by one of my friend's relative from Indonesia. Another super yummy delicacies.

What is this?

Have i gone to the beach?

Under this super hot and humid weather?

Definitely not unless if i want to get some skin problem.

So what is this actually?

Well, this is one of the very old and traditional hokkien dessert call MEE TAY

It's make from flour, shallot and pork lard.

Nowaday it's hard to come by outside, and i believe not many people have heard or eaten this before. Infact, some hokkien dialect group have not heard of this before too. It i'm not wrong, this was originated from China - Xiamen Hokkien. When i was a little child, i remember my mum used to make this for my brother. I heard that it works like a tonic that build up the inner strength of the body.

Since it's so hard to come by, of course i'm not able to purchase it. This was specially make by my sifu 2 weeks ago when i visit her. She have given me 2 container full which i pass one to my brother. I believe my brother must be enjoying it since this was once his "tonic food".






This is how it looks like after mixing with hot water.

I prefer mine this way. If you add more water, it would be more dilute and you could actually drink it like a beverage.

After a long break

It had been a long time since my last posting. Some times i'm in that sort of mood whereby i don't feel like doing anything at all. I just laze around, blog hopping around, browsing aimlessly on the internet and doing nothing fruitful at all. Or if some (or is there any) may have noticed, i changed my blog layout.

Well, i play silly games on facebook too. Well, i don't understand myself too, why do i still play when i find it silly. Recently, i have been hooked on this bejewelled blitz (i can't even remember the spelling correctly, i think that's how it's spelled), i guessed that's why i call it silly.

It would had been really quite a disjudgement to myself if i had stop baking/cooking altogether since this have been my greatest hobby. Thanks to childhood friend STgt for giving me a reason to pick up from where i left out. My recent meeting up with her for our usual feast (oh, it's seoul garden korean BBQ buffet again. I hope we could be more "innovative" the next time we meet up again and hopefully not too long) had given me a reason to bake my signature chocolate chips cookies again. It has been quite some time since i last bake these cookies. These cookies are well liked by my colleagues and friends. Since i don't meet up with STgt very often, usually i try to make some thing for her. Since the arrangement to meet was a very last minute thing, i couldn't find time to do anything more except this as it's the easiest to make and keeps well too, so there's no worry that it would turn bad. But for i believed, this must have been "wallop up" in no time. **wink wink**




Making these cookies also given me an opportunity to revamp my recipe picture. This is one of the oldest recipe that i have put up for sharing. The last picture was badly taken, you could hardly see the chips and nuts in the cookies. Well, i wouldn't say this is well taken (given very little time to snap my pictures before packing my cookies for STgt), but at least you could see the chips and nuts.

Yesterday, i pull myself together to give my cooking hobby another boost. I think the lazy bug is still in me and i'm fighting hard with it.

TRADITIONAL GLUTINUOUS RICE

This is a little different from my recipe in my bon appetite blog. For this, i use every thing fresh - from chinese sausage, i switched to fresh pork strips, from chinese dried mushroom, i switched to fresh shiitake mushroom. The only thing that remained unchanged is the dried shrimp. i also added braised peanuts, spring onion and chillies as garnish and it just add more flavour to the glutinuous rice. For such yummy food, preparing just a little will not be enough for my weekly gathering at my brother's place.

As such, this is what i had make - a full 22cm tray.

Of course, this is not the only thing that i have make, i also make a all time favourite of my family - steamed pumpkin kueh. Whenever i make the above glutinuous rice, i always would make this pumpkin kueh because the ingredients that goes into the kueh is almost the same as that of glutinuous rice and it's easy for me to prepare them all at one go. My mum use to prepare the best pumpkin kueh which neighbours loves so much that they would place their order with her for their family occassions. I'm glad that i'm able to produce just equally good pumpkin kueh (my brothers and sisters said so).

Yep, it's another 20cm tray.




The "interior" of the kueh.

Learning how to make dumplings

Last Saturday, i make a trip down to Sifu's house without notifying her. Haha.....actually, she did hint that she will be making new type of dumplings. Since i could find the time to go down, i thought, it would be a good experience. I have never done any dumpling wrapping myself before except back during school days, i did help my mum with the preparation for making hokkien bak chang (dumpling) and nonya dumlings.

Wow, making the nonya dumpling is really a lot of work as my mum used to fry her own coriander seeds, pound it, sieve for the powder form, pound again and sieve again. Besides that, have to dice the pork, dice the pre-soaked chinese mushrooms, dice the 冬瓜糖 (dong gua tang) which is actually the sugar preserved melon strips, then fry them all togther to make the fillings for the nonya dumplings. Till this day, i still couldn't find any nonya dumplings as good as what my mum make. Perhaps because my mum makes everything the very traditional way and it just taste fantastic. Nowsday, a lot of things are being simplified for convenience, and as such it just losses it's traditional flavour. I really missed mum.

Making the hokkien bak chang will have lesser work because there's less cutting needed. Usually the pork is cutted into large chunk, mushroom is leaves as whole, dried chestnut is soaked, washed and peel off the skin and leaves as whole too. Besides that, there's also dried shrimp which is also leaves as whole. Sometimes my dad loves to add dried oyster too which is an optional item. All these will be pre-fried with five spice powder before wrapping into the glutinuous rice. I also missed my dad, some food (example is the China style mooncake and chinese tea although i didn't like dried oyster) was only shared between the two of us as other family members couldn't appreciate them like dad and me.

If i'm not wrong, for the cantonese style, the fillings ingredient are more or less the same as hokkiedn bak chang except minus the five spice powder but a salted egg yolk will be added into the fillings.

Oh so much of my dumplings talk, now back to my learning trip in sifu's house.

This was what i got from sifu's house after my learning experience

The above were wrapped by me. I specially make a marking so that i could retrieve it after the steaming. Normally the traditional "chang" were all boiled in water. I shall explain why i say steam instead of boil here later. What do you think? Sifu said for a beginner, i have done a good job. Heehee...... Oh, probably you would be wondering why am i a beginner since my mum is such a good dumpling maker. Well, those days, my mum use to make so many hundreds of "chang" for all my uncles, aunties, grandmother and even neighbours too. So she would always say, "Don't disturb me, you are slowing my process" Haha.......... so normally we would be kick out of the kitchen after all the preparations work is done. lolz...

This is done by sifu single handedly the day before my trip. It's make of glutinuous rice still, but it's not the usual fillings like the one that i describe above. This is actually the nonya kueh - rempah udang. The traditional rempah udang is actually in the form of a cyclinder shape. Over here, sifu make it into the shape of a dumpling. The fillings is actually make of shredded coconut and dried shrimp fried with chillies and many other spices.

Now, back to the new flavour of dumplings that sifu taught. Look at the blueish and pinkish little dumplings. The skin actually make from glutinuous rice flour. It tasted some what like the "Ang Ku Kueh" - QQ and smooth. Because the skin is make of glutinuous rice flour, so there's no need to boil it. Just steaming will do. Unlike the traditional one, the outer part is half cooked glutinous rice which will take a longer period to cook. As such, the traditional one are usually boiled to speed up the process. They say these glutinous rice flour tranluscent type are the taiwanese style of dumplings. For these, we make 3 different type of fillings - the blueish one is rempah udang fillings, the pinkish one is peanut fillings. There's one more shredded coconut filling which is not inside my picture because it was mixed up in the packet that i brought back so i was not able to snap a photograph. haha.... for this, i tell a little white lie saying that i didn't snap a photo because i'm saving it for consumption at a later date. But, those who were in the picture of my trip knew what's happening. Oops! i think i have let the cat out of the bag already. lolz...

Beside bring back the taiwanese style dumpling, i also brought back the traditional hokkien bak chang which is a compliment from another baking friend from Malaysia who was also there last saturday. I called these the "smuggle bak chang" because she really run the risk of not being able to bring it over if she's being stopped at the custom. She had single handedly make these bak chang herself in the early wee hour before setting off here.

Look at the generousity of the fillings.

Every time i goes down to sifu's house, it's always a fruitful and abundance one. Not only for the food but also the laughter shared among us. LAUGHTER IS ALWAYS THE BEST THERAPY.

Make recently

CRISPY BACON PRAWN ROLL

I make this crispy bacon prawn roll with the recipe from here.

I didn't use baby french bean thou as i have some aparagus in the fridge, so i decided to use aparagus instead. Ohterwise, i'm afraid my aparagus may go to waste.

As usual, for a quick meal, i top it off with some angel hair sphagetti again. Yummy!

I make a quick cake using optimal flour. As this is the 1st time i'm trying, the quantity seems too little for a 18cm cake tin. Next round, i shall test out with an increase quantity to check the result. Although the cake seems too thin, i still want to try out my skill in slicing the cake, putting fillings into it and decorating the cake to make it like a birthday cake.

Viola! my decorated cake.



The inside

Not very well done, but at least i get it started. Next time, i shall try my hand on more other topping and slicing the cake to more layer.

Steam tiapoca cake - hubby's favourite.