Cook and Share a pot of Curry

Well, well, well... my friends are away having a super duper time (I hope!) in OZ.... tsk tsk... poor me....sad sad... But... since they are away.... I should document this for their reading material when they get home! Ya, ya... as if!

Gangs - read THIS and THIS.

Now, eventhough I'm not in Singapore and I didn't cook my pot of curry between 11 - 11.30am, I still feel strongly about this. One's gotta tolarate each other if one wants to live in a multicultural country (even like us Malaysia!!) I remember those days staying in Kajang, we had so many "interesting" neighbours; sights, sounds, smell... you get my drift... but we all still tolerated one another. I am sure, we ourselves were not that easy to tolerate as well. I recall our neighbour staying in our Rumah Kota in Kajang Utama even was rearing chicken!!

So yes, I cooked a pot of curry - though not one I'd normally (or ever) cook before. Dhal Curry. I am a fan of this - I'd normally ask for lots and lots and lots of this whenever I come across at Mamaks. There was an eating place in Uni which we frequented for breakfast daily and I'd laddle HEAPS on top of my choice of carb. SLURP!!! And if I have Nasi Briyani.... I'd just ask for a whole bowl to save the waiter numerous trips to refill my plate! :)

As I said - I never cook this before - so why do I choose to do it? Well, coincidently I was doing Creative Ministry with my youth and had them bake bread from a handful of flour + oil. So at the end of the lesson, they had their own bread with this Curry.
And so I did cook and shared my pot of Curry. Here's to a peaceful Malaysia (and Singapore)!

Potfull of love

Do you have a pot that reminds you of childhood? I've got one... it's a slow cooker pot. Mom claims that it's over 30 yrs old. Why do I say it reminds me of childhood? Simply because, in her struggling busy days as a teacher + young wife + mother of two, this is the pot that she would use to ensure that we all had a good warm meal in the evenings.


She would put the pot on (with all the ingredients in of course) early in the morning before she leave for school and when she came home, hearty meals would be readily serve. Magic cooker? To some extend... but more importantly, it's a pot full of love.

We have not used the pot too often these days. When dad came home last weekend, I wanted to cook ribs so tender that it will literally melt in your mouth so I asked Mom permission to use The Pot. I mixed the pork with some Teriyaki sauce, ketchup, garlic, ginger and bombay onions and let it stew in the pot for some 5 hours.

The result? This picture doesn't do justice to the moist juicy flesh that drops readily from the bones. Sprinkled generously with toasted sesame seed. (picture taken in a haste as everyone was already at the table!)

What kitchen utensil spells L.O.V.E. to you?

Chicken Nugget - Homemade

Which mother and child is not in favor of processed food? Mother - for the simplicity of preparation; Child for the fast yummy snack. Sausages and nuggets being main hero. It's hard to run away from these. Yes, though mothers knows well that these are not the healthiest food to give to a child, it is still one of the easiest. I am no different than the thousands out there.

This is after steaming / cooling down. Cut into standard nugget size.

I came across this a couple of weeks ago and since nuggets is one of the fav food, I thought I'll try to make my own... So last Friday night, I blended the chicken, the carrot, mix mix and steamed. Then coated and left to freeze overnight.

This is after coating with breadcrumbs and ready to be frozen for at least 30 minutes. I left mine for almost 24 hours.

Noel as usual kept asking if there were ready so I fried a batch for Saturday afternoon tea snack. Verdict: "Just like the real nugget Mummy!!" Hmmm... which is real and which is fake I wonder :) This made about 55 pcs and that's good for a quick and easy school snack for Mom to prepare for Noel. What made me feel good about this is that I can be sure that I used 100% breast meat without any skin / fat on it + there's heaps of carotene from the carrots in here.

"Fast food" ain't that bad when it's prepared from home, I'd say ;)

Mango Fish

Just simply because I have not posted anything... gastronomical for ages, and also because I've took photos of these with a possible blog post in mind, I just have to do this entry :)

This is Mango Fish from our fav seafood place at TopSpot (I think the name of the stall is ABC?) - yes, fav but I don't know the actual name of the stall because we just call it as Ah Seng (the boss's name)

One sweet day, Noel (as usual, he's the culprit of me trying new things!) requested for me to cook this at home. Cracking my head (as usual), an image of a well known thai sauce appeared in my head (scary huh?). So I went hunting for the sauce and got it (albeit the bottle way too big for 1st trial!). Then got the fish and the mango. I just had to deep fry the fish (I used red talapia here). For the sauce, super easy. Slice thinly shallots and mango, fry 1/2 of the shallot, pour in the thai chilli sauce till boil, dump in mango and remainder shallots. Voila!

Despite the lack of green (as deco), the fish came almost near the benchmark of our fav spot! And it got Noel's seal of approval too :) Pay attention to the bottle of Thai Sauce - that's the secret to this dish!

Since there's still quite a lot of sauce, I decided to cook this for our CNY eve dinner as well. And though CNY has long gone, here's our CNY reunion dinner spread, just as a feast to our eyes at this point of time! :) And oh yes... all these were for 5 adults and 2 children only! Pigs! Haha! (don't worry, we still had leftovers, which we happily ate on the next few meals)

See the mango fish at bottom left? :) Yes, yes, we had 2 fishes for the dinner! One steamed, one mango. And we had steamboat and kangkung belacan (I had to wash the kangkung over and over and over, due to my phobia of this yummy vege!)

Our dining table is too small!... So we had to put the food at the side counter! Hahah... Grilled lamb, lamb shank stew (this was given by a church member to my dad), prawn and honeydew salad, grilled 3-layer pork, beef curry, sambal sotong, satay (and the condiments).

Give that mango fish dish a try... it's really worth yummy!

Easy, Simple & Healhty (trying hard)

The past week has been a crazy motion of trying to get all the Raya orders done. Mixing dough, rolling into tiny morsels, watching the oven for the temperature, steaming for hours, etc., etc... Between all that, we still needed to eat. But we can't afford the luxury of cooking elaborated meals (not even the usual ones - meat, soup, veg kind of thing). So on one of those days, I quickly soaked some glass noodles, shredded from poached chicken breast meat, cut up some carrot into matchstick and slice up golden fried egg. Quickly toss around in a pan and our brunch was ready... Fried Glass noodles (Tang Hoon).

Dinner was also impossible to cook up, so, thankfully, on the rare occasion, my brother and SIL took over the stove. They churned up Chicken in Soy Sauce, Spam fried with Onions and Enoki Mushroom soup (sorry, I didn't manage to take any photos of these). Since we didn't have much veg, plus the fact that my Iceberg & Butterhead Lettuce were fast turning bad, I decided to quickly assemble a salad - nope, I don't have a name for it, as I basically used what I had in the fridge - what name will you give this salad?
What you'll need: Hard boiled egg, Roma / Cherry Tomatoes, Greens - any kind (I used Iceberg and Butterhead Lettuce)
What you'll need to do: Assemble in this sequence (just to make it pretty)
Icebery Lettuce
Butterhead Lettuce
Baby Tomatoes
Hard boiled egg (simply chopped up)
Use any dressing you like - we used Thousand Island

I guess, even in the midst of busy-ness, we managed to eat well - easy, simple and healthy :)

For the love of Yogurt

Year: 1989
Place: Melbourne, Australia
Situation: An innocent 11 yr old girl was tricked by her father into thinking that this was yummy-licious!


No.... it's NOT vanilla ice cream!! It's plain yogurt on a cone. My dad was so convincing, saying that I'd love it. And it does look very good, doesn't it? On the first taste - YUCKS!!! Needless to say, my dad was a happy man that day since he had 2 cones of that plain yogurt (as he had to finish mine as well).

Ever since then, I have never ever ever wanted to even touch yogurt. Then came those fruity yogurt in uni days. A coursemate was really crazy about them and told me (more like pester me) to give it a try. So I gingerly tried a spoonful. And to my surprised, they were not only acceptable, they were lovely! So I began my love relationship with yogurt.
One of my recent bakes requires buttermilk, which I substitute with plain yogurt. Being greedy, and knowing that it will be hard for me to get the supply in the near future, I grabbed 2 tubs recently and now I am left with half a tub. Though I have been having those fruity yogurt with no issues for the past 10 yrs or so, I have never dared to taste plain yogurt on it's own.
After so much "good" food, which contains lots of coconut milk (santan) recently, I told myself that I need to pull the brake for a while and give my body (and my waistline) a break. With this, came the idea of... low carb week (hopefull rolls into month). So my first low carb lunch will be Coleslaw and Poached Chicken Breast Meat.
The basic of Coleslaw in our household is cabbage + carrot + blackcurrent (or raisin) + mayonaise. Me, tyring to be smart (and "healthy") decided to trade the mayo with my leftover plain yogurt. The verdict? YUCKS!!! NO NO NO NO and NO!!! Gosh!! What a terrible combination, I almost cried when I took a bite! Thankfully, I only mixed a handful and I regret to inform that I have indeed wasted food :(
So, though I breaks my heart (not really, hehe) to use mayo, I went back to the basic. And I will be chomping on this for lunch with a smile on my face :) [though I'll be missing my rice very much for the next few days :( ]

Note: Sorry for the blurly picture... taken with my mobile phone camera :)

Towards Transformation

Merdeka day Jelly - red, white, blue, yellow = Jalur Gemilang

When we were kids, it was a thrill to wake up early on 31st August day to watch the parade on TV. To oohhh and ahhhh along with the crowd in the comfort of our own living room. We'd all be sprawled infront of the TV in our PJs till it was all over. Of course the highlight will be when the Malaysian Airlines team march by - we'll be ecstatic, as Dad was in service with them for almost 28 years.

I do not think I've instilled enough patriotism in Noel (or rather, I don't think the kids these days are very much patriotic!). Or is it because Noel goed to a Chinese school and they don't really sing patriotic songs? I don't know. But for whatever reason, I think there's more to be done to instill the independence spirit in them.

With this in mind, last weekend, I told Noel that for Merdeka, we are going to make Merdeka Jelly - i.e. colour of the National Flag (Jalur Gemilang). He woke up early yesterday and dragged me along with him (it should be the other way round eh? hehe). After a few minutes infront of the TV, we proceeded with our "big" project. Layer by painstaking layer... red, white, blue and yellow. Then came the moment of truth... Cutting it up... Noel asked me - mummy, the flag for green meh? Haha!!! Blue + Yellow = green!! Should have put coconut milk in the yellow layer!! Though that didn't turn out too well, it was still a cool refreshing desert on a super hot day :) It also kindda hit the spot to say that though we Malaysians are of different races and religion, we are assimilated with each other, well enough that we take on each other's colour. That is the beauty of our country isn't it not?

Being all Malaysian at heart, we decided to make Nasi Lemak for dinner. Well, it was supposed to be for breakfast, then postponed to lunch and finally for dinner. And it was a battle between Laksa Sarawak and Nasi Lemak. A tough battle, but considering that not everyone was at home, nasi lemak won (don't ask me why - to me, both needs so much effort!)

Again, one by one of the accompaniments were painstakingly prepared. Roasted peanut (which got a tad burnt! haha), sambal, hard boiled egg, cucumber slices, salted fish and chicken curry, fried chicken along with the rice. Took most of our afternoon away. We were just on time for Dad's breaking of fast.

Our Nasi Lemak spread - Rice in Coconut milk, Roasted (burnt) peanut, cucumber slices, hard boiled egg, fried egg (Noel likes his egg this way), soup (NOT one of nasi lemak list but with 2 kids eating, soup is essential for our family! haha), fried chicken, chicken curry and the star of the show - the sambal.

I will not say this is an easy feat. It was HARD work! Phew! But then, it was a satisfying effort too. I must say after eating so much food with coconut milk, I felt really guilty to my body (and my heart) that I decided that the next meal with coconut milk will have to wait for Sept 16th. But then, who can resist packing some along for lunch when there's still left overs? Like what Noel will say - it's not good to waste food you know :) (which explains our sideways expansion).

Note: 1Malaysia, Towards Transformation is 2010 Malaysia Day Theme