TO INDULGE ONESELF.................

Beer and Cocacola Trotter

2012-01-22T05:44:00.000-08:00

Its Chinese New Year again. Time really flies, day after day and year after year. I remember the last time I wrote about Chinese New Year was 2 years ago and now is already 2012. This year we are not going out for our reunion because only 4 of us, my 2 sons and Alfred. I have planned to prepare 4 dishes and 1 soup for 4 of us. I will cook a special trotter, that is beer and coca cola trotter. My friend Evelyn, came back from U.S.A. cook this dish for me and other friends 2 weeks ago, all of us like it very much and it was very easy and simple to prepare.

The ingredients just 1 port trotter about 1 1/2 to 2 kg, 1 can of Carlsberg beer and 1 can of coca cola, 1/2 cup of good soy sauce and 2 inches slice of brown sugar.

Get the butcher to cut the trotter into bite size when you buy from the market. Clean and par-boil the trotter for about 5 minutes. Rinse and drain.
In a wok or deep sauce pan ,put in all the ingredients. Bring to boil then use low fire to simmer the trotter until the liquid reduced and the trotter is tender. You may add in sea cucumber, dried mushrooms or even dried chilies if you like it a bit hot.

This is the result of the cooked trotter. Look nice? Taste good too.

The other dishes I prepared were fried soy sauce prawns,

abalones stir fry dried mushrooms and broccoli,

fried fish fillets,

and stew dried scallops, fish maws, American ginseng with chicken soup.

Though only 4 of us taking reunion dinner without my daughter,(in Melbourne, miss her very much every year without her), we are happy with our home cook foods then eating out in the restaurant.

Jackfruit cake

2012-01-05T20:19:00.000-08:00

My nneighbour gave me a jack fruit which was a cross breed of jack fruit and artocarpus integer. Artocarpus integer in fact has more fragrant smell then jack fruit. When both mix together the fruit become so fragrant and has better taste. I have not bake any jack fruit cake before and I would like to try to bake one it. So, got a recipe from the Internet and follow the steps to start baking jack fruit cake.

The ingredients are,
for the cake(chiffon)
4 egg yolks,
70g sugar
120 g super fine flour
80ml water
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
100 g jack fruit(pureed)
1/2 cup corn oil

4egg whites
70g sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar

for the filling
350ml whipping cream
150g jack fruit (pureed)
1/2tsp gelatin(dissolved in 50ml of water)
another 250g jack fruit flesh(pureed)
for the topping
60ml milk/soy milk/coconut milk
1 tbsp corn starch/custard powder
1 tsp gelatin(dissolved in 1 tbsp water)
100g jack fruit flesh (pureed)

Crossed breed of both jack fruit and artocarpus integer looks just as a normal artocarpus integer.

and the fruits just look exactly like artocarpus integer.

Remove the seeds and add 2 tbsp of sugar , cook the flesh until soft. About 15 minutes. Let cool.

Puree the flesh by the blender. Leave aside for later use.

Meanwhile prepare the chiffon cake. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees cecious. In a bowl, hand whisk the egg yolks and sugar until the egg turn pale in colour. Add in the water, 100g pureed fruit flesh, oil and mix well. Finally add in the salt, baking powder and the flour. Mix until the batter become smooth. Leave aside.

Use electric mixer to whisk the egg whites ,sugar and cream of tartar until thick peak. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the egg whites. Fold in the egg yolk until well mix. Pour into a 9'' baking tine and bake for 35 minutes or until done.

Turn the cake upside down to cool. Slice the cake into 3 horizontally.

Now, prepare the filling. Whisk the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Stir in jack fruit puree and the dissolved gelatin . Mix well.

To assemble the cake, place a layer of the cake on the board, spread a layer of whipped cream then a layer of pure fruit puree and repeat the next layer. Cover the whole cake with the rest of the whipped cream. Put in the freeze to set about 3 hours.

AS for the topping, combing the milk,custard powder in a sauce pan. Stir over low heat until mixture boils and has thicken. Add in gelatin mixture and fruit puree. Mix well. Let cool.

Spread the topping on the cake and I decorated with sliced fruit flesh.

The whole freeze was smell of the fruit, so pleasant and nice. Well, my first jack fruit cake is done. Lets taste it. Wow! Good....mm mm, the taste of the real fruit taste. I like it.

Happy New Year 2012

2012-01-04T23:08:00.000-08:00

My hair dresser, Lee Ching invited me and Alfred to join her family for the 2011 countdown in Ipoh Country Club. All were given a party set on our sitting place at the dinner table. The set has a pair of green mask, whistle and balloon.

All put on the masks.

My hairdresser, Lee ching and family.

Japanese friend ,Mr and Mrs Koro

Lee Ching with her friends.

Me and Alfred.

The dinner was served at 8pm. The four seasons was the first dish, with salad prawns, fried sotong balls and other fried stuffs.

The second dish was the fish lips soup. Quite tasty.

Followed by the fried chicken served with Thai sauce.

Sweet sour prawns. The other dishes were deep fried fish with Chinese sauce, vegetarian mixed fried vegetables, fried rice and the last was desserts.

After all the dishes we have our group photo for our album.

The nights programmes started with various dances performed by dancers from Kuala Lumpur.

They were very good dancers and dance very well.

The organiser invited (guys) dancers from Kuala lumpur. They made funs and dance to all the audience. They really entertained all of us in the ballroom.

When the clock clicked at 11.50pm, all guests were to be on the floor, keep dancing and enjoying the music.

Get ready for countdown.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.....Happy New Year!!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012

Kelowna, British Columbia

2011-12-28T04:06:00.000-08:00

After 3 wonderful days in Vancouver, we travel by Grey Hound bus from Vancouver to Kelowna. Kelowna is a city about 400km away from Vancouver. We planned to put up 3 nights here because it is situated between Vancouver and Banff National park. We just do not want to be too tired on our journey and we need a break before we travel further. The bus took about 7 hours to reach Kelowna. This is because the speed limit for the bus is only 70 to 80 km/h and moreover the bus has to put up a few stop at few towns to drop and pick up passengers. We were just relax and enjoyed the scenery's outside the Windows.

The beautiful mountain before reaching Kelowna

We stayed in the Econo Lodge for 3 nights, very clean and suitable with breakfast included.

We started our journey at 9.30am and reached Kelowna at about 4pm. Check into hotel . We had a good rest before we walked to downtown, which took us about 20 minutes slow walk for our dinner. As Kelowna is a small town, there is nothing much to do in downtown during night falls. We walked back to the hotel and a good rest after a long journey drive.

After breakfast, Emilly and me walked to downtown while Ong and wife decided to rest in the hotel for the day. The first place we visited is the museum,(free of charge).

The next place we visited is the local library. We were allowed to use the Internet free for 1 hour.

From the library, we walked to a casino. It is a small casino. We just had a quick walk in the casino and came out.

We found very beautiful scenery behind the casino, so excited. We spent almost an hour around the lake(lake Okanagan).

It is lunch time. We walked into an Italian . It was so cool and relax in the restaurant after half day walking in the sun.

We ordered pasta, tomato soup and toast scallops. The food were not to our expectation, or may be not to our Malaysian 's taste.

We walked to the other part of the town and found this clock tower. From the clock tower we walked to Japanese garden.

Japanese garden in Kelowna.

We walked back to the hotel after our whole day tour in downtown. We had a real good rest and prepare for the next day tour in Kelowna.
We were so lucky to meet the lady boss of the hotel(Maria) , a Filipino who married the boss , Canadian. She offered to drive us to Summerhill winery which was located on a hill.

The grape farm just beside the winery.

The beautiful views from the winery of Lake Shore.

We spent about half an hour at the winery before Maria drove to a local fruit market.

The fruits here were very cheap compared to those same fruits that we bought in the supermarket.

Our half day ended after our shopping at the fruit market. We have to pack to get ready to travel again the next morning to Banff National Park. It will be another long journey.

Mango Chiffon cake

2011-12-22T23:31:00.000-08:00

Its Nov again and it will be my father-in-law's and husband's birthday. We will celebrate father's birthday in Kuala Lumpur in my sister-in-law's house. I bake a butter cake with basket weaving decoration, for my husband I decided to bake a mango cake which I never done it before. I searched for mango cake recipe a few days before hand. Finally I found 1 recipe from my old recipe book. The mangoes the recipe recommended was just the normal mangoes. I wanted to try with some mangoes with strong fragrant e.i (kunning). I managed to buy 5 such mangoes from the morning market, really strong smell. I like it.

The ingredients is as follow:

for the cake
6 egg yolks
1/2cup caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup corn oil
175g super fine flour
2 tsps baking powder
6 egg whites
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 cup of caster sugar
for the filling
2 mangoes (cubed)
1 cup plain yogurt(150g)
100g caster sugar
29g gelatin(dissolved in 1/4 cup water)
350ml whipping cream
for decoration
2 mangoes
some whipping cream(whipped)

Washed and peel the mangoes. 2 cubed while the other 2 sliced and keep aside.

Hand mix the egg yolks,sugar, water, corn oil, flour and baking powder until well-combined. Leave aside.
In another mixing bowl, use electric mixer to beat up the egg whites, sugar and the cream of tartar until foamy. Combine with well-mixed egg yolks mixture and bake in preheat oven for 40 -45 minutes.
Invert the cake to cool before slicing into 3 layers.
Next prepare the filling. Mix cubed mangoes, yogurt and sugar in a bowl. Dissolve gelatin in water by double boiling over simmering water until it turns clear. Mix with mangoes mixture. Meanwhile whip up the whipping cream and add into the mango mixture. Divide into 2 portions.

Place a layer of cake into loose cake tin. Spread a layer of mango mixture onto it. Repeat the next layer until finish . Keep the cake chilled.
For Decoration, whip the cream. Spread on the top and side of the cake. Decorate with sliced mangoes.

My first mango cake is a success. Every body like it very much. Taste like mango ice-cream.

Butchat Garden

2011-12-22T22:51:00.000-08:00

On the 3rd day which is also our last day in Vancouver, we booked a day tour in China Town to Butchat Gardens. This 55 acer of stunning floral show gardens and a National Historic Site of Canada is located near Victoria We boarded the tour bus from China Town at 7.30 am and headed to the port . The ferry left the port at 9am and reached the island at 10.30am. By the time we reached China Town of Victoria(capital of Vancouver) is already our lunch time. We had our own simple lunch.

The oldest railway station in Canada

The port in Victoria

The Parliament house in Victoria

O mile from Victoria to the main road of Vancouver

We reached The Butchart Gardens at about 1pm after going round Victoria.

Outside Butchart Gardens.

The first garden that we visited was The Sunken Garden.

We were so amazed on the first look of the garden. The landscaping is so fantastic, the plants, the flowers and so on, so.....beautiful!! Lets go on to the other parts of the gardens.

The Italian Garden, another type of beauty in the landscaping.

The Japanese garden.

Ocean in a hole. We can see the ocean from this hole among the plants in the garden. We walk to the jetty of the Ocean in the hole.

Garden in a window.

AS we had only 2 hours for such a big garden, we actually missed out a lot of the gardens. We were short of time because we have to catch the 5pm ferry back to main land (Vancouver). We left the gardens with some disappointment because we did not see enough of the gardens. It was 6pm when we reached our hotel. That ends our tour in Vancouver.

Vancouver

2011-12-22T14:29:00.000-08:00

From the jetty we hired a taxi to our prebooked Hotel Moda in Vancouver city. As it was only 10am , not time to check-in yet, hotel attendants handle our languages, we get hold of the city map and started our city tour by walking to China town . It took us about 30 minutes walk . Once at the town,the first thing we did was to look for Chinese food. We missed Chinese food as we were tired of western food for the last 8 days in the cruise. We were so satisfied with just fried rice and fried noodles.

Parts of China Town

Beautiful scenes of Dr. SunYat Sen garden.

From the garden we took a bus direct to The Stanley Park.

Lets move around in Stanley park

Wild squarer every where

Greedy sea gull

Raccoon family

Sky line of Vancouver view from Stanley Park

Tontom in Stanley Park

We spent about 3 hours in Stanley park. AS we were quite tired and it was getting dark too, we got hold of the next bus to return to the city for our dinner. That's ended our 1st day in Vancouver.

The next morning we bought day ticket which allow us to travel around the city by bus, train or tram. It cost us CAD 9.00. Our first stop was Granville Island which is a market as Victoria market in Melbourne.

Peaches season

Different types of guards

We had a simple lunch before we proceed to our next destination, Queen Elizabeth Park.

So beautiful in the garden, the landscaping woh...

We enjoyed ourselves in the garden almost 2 hours. The garden really gave me a very deep impression.
From the garden we took another bus to The Gas town which was popular for its old buildings.

Gas Town

We had our slow walked in this area for 1/2 hour. That ended our second day in Vancouver.

Alaska Cruise

2011-12-13T05:40:00.000-08:00

Its been a long time since I last write in this blog because I was busy preparing my long vacation with my friends to Alsaka Cruise , Canada and New York. We decided to have this vacation in the month of July. Once the decision is made, we applied our US visa through the web for interview. We were lucky that we could easily get our visa. The next we have to apply our Canadian visa. That took us only 1 week . We spent the total of Rm720.00 for both the visas. Once our visas are done, we get hold of a travel agent to book for us the most economy air fare to Anchorage(Alaska) and fly back from New York. We left the air tickets part to the agents while Emily and me have to start searching for lodging for our long holiday. We booked all the hotels, inns, and lodge through hot wire.com and hotel.com, all the lodgings we booked were clean and pleasant, the most important is that most of the lodging we booked either in or near the city centre,esp the China towns. We had 2 nights in Anchorage, 3 nights in Vancouver, 3 nights in Kelowna, 3 nights in Banff, 2 nights in Toronto, 2 nights in Niagara Falls,( 2 nights in Atlantic City and 1 night in Washington City, tour included) 8 nights in New York in friends house.

We flew on the 7th of Sept by Eve airline of Taiwan, we have to do our transit at Taipei airport. By the time we reached Anchorage it was 11.45pm the same day(7th) we gain 1 day. We were fortunate that The America Best Value Inn that we booked provide free transport to and from the airport.

This is the America Best Value Inn where we stayed for 2 nights in Anchorage with the spacious airport van. Though it is a small inn, but very comfortable with breakfast included and very convenient because it is situated midway between the city and the airport.

We took a cab to downtown the next morning, we wondered around the small town. Visited the visitor centre to gather information of Anchorage but unfortunately most of the places of interest were either close for the falls season or too far reach for us. Thus we just hang around in the town for the day.

This is one of the corner of Anchorage, quite with only few cars. Since there is nothing much we can do in Anchorage, we had our good rest before we board the cruise the nest day.

We booked a coach that took us about 3 hours from Anchorage to Seward where we board our cruise.

Check in at the port to board the cruise

This is the cruise Radiance of the Sea(one of the Caribbean Cruise) before board into the ship at the dock.

The swimming pools of the cruise

The handcrafts of fruits at the entrance of the restaurant

The lobby of the cruise

The casino in the cruise

After 1 whole night of sailing, our ship reached The Hubbard Glacier. We were given 1/2 hour to take as many pictures as possible.

The colours of the glacier is due to the different kind of sediments in the ice.

We have the chance to see the falling of blocks of ice from the glacier and floating and melting in the cold sea.

Dued to the global warming, the glacier has becoming smaller, see the big junk of ice melting in this ocean and flow to the other parts of world.

Outside the main dining hall(Cascades)

Prawns and scallops

Baked salmon.

The foods were so delicious that made me forget to take pictures of the soup and the desserts.

We sailed for another night. Our first of call is Juneau. We joined a 1/2 day offshore excursion to Mendenhall Glacier.

It is just another glacier as Hubbard Glacier. Here we can walk around to see the different angles and different views of the glacier.'.from flat land and go up hill to look down at the glacier.

Views from the hill.

We saw a wild bear by the stream looking for food.

Some salmons in the clear water stream.

We were drop off in Juneau town after the 1/2 day tour.

Our ship by the dock at Juneau.

Skagway is our second port of call. It is a small cowboy mining town, and is now a tourist centre. Its just about 15 minutes walk from the dock.

Skagway, view from our ship.

From Skagway, we sail for another night and reached our 3rd port of call, Icy Strait Point. Here our ship have to dock quite a distance from the port because the water was too shallow for her. Some motor boats send us to and fro from the ship to the port.

Full view of our cruise ship from the port.

The jetty.

From the jetty, we boarded a bus , about 5 minutes ride to this Red Indian town, Hoonah.

This is the smallest city hall I ever seen.

A small cafe with sign boards of different languages.

This is part of the view of Hoonah.

After half day wondering around in Hoonah and the port, we left for Ketchikan, our last port of call for our Alaska cruise. This is a rainy town, it rains almost everyday, according to the locals here, is a wet town.

A view of a part of Kitchikan.

Back to our cabin saw a monkey hang at the celling , so cute!! Towel folding animals are very popular in most of the cruises now aday. The house maid will fold an animal a day when make up the cabins.

A dog with my sunglasses on

A pair of swan

During towel folding demonstration, the house maid show us the folding of teddy bear and bull dog.

and the elephant too.

A picture of our group at our main dinning table , our last dinner in this cruise.

Turkey breast

Prawns and fish fingers

Chocolate moist cake

As an appreciation to us all the guests in the cruise, the management held a full chocolate buffet supper for our last night in the cruise.

All the chocolate desserts were so beautifully crafted and arranged, most of all they taste so good and delicious. We really enjoyed the beauty and the taste of all these chocolates...so......marvelous.

We had a very late night sleep because of our heavy food and moreover it was our last night in the cruise. It was a very enjoyable cruise with good foods, good entertainments, good companies and good and friendly staffs in the cruise. We reached Vancouver at about 7am the next morning. That's ended our 8 days 7 nights wonderful and memorable Alaska Cruise. I will continue my blog with the rest of my whole month vacation from Vancouver to New York.

Banana Muffin

2011-08-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

Too much banana and is overripe now, banana cake again? No...this time bake some banana muffins. Fumble from my recipes, finally settle with this simple recipe.

ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour
11/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
4 to 5 overripe bananas(mashed)
1 cup sugar
3/4cup oil
2 eggs
walnut(optional)

Preheat the over to 180 degrees cecious. Mash the bananas with a fork. In a large mixing bowl combine the flour and all other ingredients together. Mix well . Finally add in chopped walnuts, stir well.

Mix all the ingredients in a mixing bowl.

Well-mixed batter for the muffin

Line muffin pan with muffin papers, scoop the batter 3/4 full and bake for 20 minutes

After 20 minutes, the mouth watering banana muffins are ready to be served. These muffins taste better with black tea or coffee.

It is really simple and quick way to prepare, these muffins also great for bread fast as well. Try it out.

Durian layered cake

2011-07-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

It's durian season again. We can see the durian stalls displaying the king of fruits along the road sides, morning and night markets , supermarkets and the wet markets too. Alfred bought some kampong durians from Jalan Gopeng on the way home from Teluk Intan. They were so tasty .....he bought too much, so the left over I decided to bake durian cake. This time I will try to bake durian layered sponge cake.

The recipe is as follow that I got from a recipe book.

for chiffon cake
A: 4 egg yolks
      80 ml water
      70g caster sugar
      1/2 tsp salt
      120g super fine flower
      11/2 tsp baking powder
     1/2 cup corn oil
B:   4 egg whites
      1/2 tsp cream of tartar
      70g caster sugar
for the filling
1.   350ml whipping cream
2.   150g durian flesh(pureed)
3.   1/2 tsp gelatin(dissolved in 50ml water over low heat)
4.   250g durian flesh(pureed)
topping
60ml milk/santan
1/4 tbsp caster sugar
1 tbsp custard powder(optional)
1 tsp gelatin(dissolves in 1 tbsp water over low heat)
70g pureed durian flesh
9 inches loose-base round cake tin

Preheat oven at 170 degrees cecious. Separate the egg whites from the yolks. In a mixing bowl whip the egg whites and 70g of sugar and cream of tartar till stiff, leave aside.

In another bowl, beat the egg yolk by hand with the sugar, add in the remaining ingredients of A, mix well.

Pour the whipped egg whites into the mixture of egg yolks, mix well then pour into the lined baking tin to bake for 35 to 40 minutes.
Remove from oven when is baked. Leave to cool for 10 minutes, invert to cool further. Slice the cake into 3 layers horizontally.

To prepare filling, first whisk the whipping cream on medium speed until soft peaks form. Stir in ingredients 2 and 3, mix well.

To prepare the topping: combine milk/santan,custard powder and sugar in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until mixture boils and has thickened. Add in gelatin mixture and lastly add in durian flesh.

Durian flesh before puree

Next is to assamble the cake. Place a layer of the sliced cake on the cake board, spread some of the filling and the topping on the cake, sandwich with another layer of the cake and repeat for the next layer.

Sandwiching the layers of cake

Spread the top and sides with remaining cream. Leave to set before piping topping over top of cake. Chill well before serving.

Decorate as you like.

Yum ,yum..so delicious and is full of durian taste, just like eating durian ice cream

Inle Lake, Myanmar

2011-06-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

After spending 2 days in Bagan visiting the pagodas, our tour guard picked us from our hotel to the airport to continue our tour to Lake Inle the next morning. It took us about an hour from Bagan airport to Heho airport . From the airport we have to travel by van(1 hour drive) to the jetty before we can board the passenger boat into Lake Inle.

Heho Airport

We board the passenger boat at the jetty, a boat can only seated with 6 people including the captain of the boat.

This is one of the passenger boat going round the Inle Lake.

On the way to our hotel , we can see fishermen doing their catch in the lake. To our knowledge, the fishermen in Inle Lake are the only fishermen who use their ankles to row their boats while doing their fishing. This is the unique feature in Inle Lake.

Farmers scooping weeds from the lake for their farming. The weed as fertilizer for the farms.

Floating farms. Another unique feature here. According to our tour guard, the local here will cut a big piece of land from the side of the lake and drag it to the lake and do floating farming. They have to use long bamboo sticks to stuck the piece of land into the shallow lake to prevent the land being float away.

Tomatoes are the most common vegetables planted in the floating farm, followed by cucumber, chili and local vegetables.

Floating houses and farms.

Our tour to Inle Lake include visit to some of the local cottage industries. This is the traditional silk weaving.

Have anyone ever see tread make from lotus stem? WE are really amazed to see this happening in front of our eyes. This lady use a knife to cut the stem of a lotus, twist a little and lightly pull, we can see the tiny silk like string being pull out. She will roll a few pull together to form tread. They will mix with silk to make their local costume.

The lotus tread

After the silk and lotus , we proceed to see the boat making. At the same time we were able to see the traditional way of sawing wood.

On the road , we can see taxi station, bus station and railway station, but here we can see only boat station.

The next visit was the iron smith. They still using the olden way to make knifes and cutters.

Long necked women in Lake Inle. There are only 5 such ladies left here. They are the same as those we found in Nothern Chiangmei in Thailand.

After saying goodbye to the long necked women, we proceed to see the primitive way of melting silver and made into various silver wares and jewelery.

Finally, we were able to check into the hotel,Golden Island Cottage after completing our tour in Inle Lake. It was almost 5pm when we landed in the floating hotel. There are 13 such hotels in this lake,according to our tour guard. All these hotels are very special because they are built in the lake but not on an in of land.

The environment is so...so clean and the air is so fresh....so natural.....so quite.. so peaceful.

This is one of the twin sharing cottage. The beds were attached with mosquito net because there are many insects at night. The place is so natural that the hotel do not install any fans or conditionals. The electricity will cut off at 12 midnight.

The beautiful sunset at the hotel.

We spent a night in Lake Inle and really enjoyed the real quietness of this place. We found that the people here are so humble and contented with what they have and their daily routines. People here are mostly farmers and fishermen and some of the local cottage industries.

After a quite and good night rest, we were pick up by the boat at 7.30am after breakfast to proceed to the jetty(1 hour ride) to catch the van to the airport(1 hour drive) to fly back to Yangon. Upon arriver , we were pick up by my brother;s driver to check into City Golf Resort for our last night stay here. After our rest, the driver came and send us to a restaurant to have dinner with my brother and family.

After our final packing the next morning, the driver came with my sister-in-law to send us to the airport to catch our flight home. Finally we touch Malaysian ground at about 4,30pm.

It was a very interesting tour, from the busy city to a poor country side,the people in the country sides are very innocent and pure and poor,and the gap between the very rich and the poor is very big, just like many other countries in the world.

A trip to Myanmar(burma)

2011-06-12T19:55:00.000-07:00

Its been a long time since I am in this blog after Chinese New year. Was busy and travelling. This time make a trip to visit my brother and sis-in-law in Yangon. My son and 2 other friends came along with me.
We flew from Klia direct to Yangon, the flight took about 2 and 1/2 to reach our destination. The time different in Yangon and back home is 11/2 hr behind time. This is the end of winter and we can fill the heat once we were out of the airport. Myanmar has 3 seasons, winter(Oct to Feb),summer(mar to jun) and raining season(July to Sept). The temperature can go as high as 38 or even 40 degree F . During our stay for 6 days we experience the temp between 19 to 38 degree F. Morning is very cool will its hot like oven in the afternoon, the air con in the bus or car can't even cool down the temperature in the vehicles.
We were welcome by my sis-in-law's sister (winsome) at the airport as my sis_in-law(Judith) was busy with her meeting. Once were at Judith's house, she got to photostat our passport to report to the police station, this the procedure if any visiting relatives are stay with the locals. Unfortunately, the police station called and said we were not allow to stay with them! So we have to move to hotel. Judith manages to book us into City Golf Resort near the airport for only US28 per night under cooperate rate.
After settling down , Judith arrange with her driver to take us for gems stone shopping in Scott market, May & Mark and Gem museum.

My friends, Evelyn and Emily bought the most of the gems, but I don't fancy all these, finally they bought Sapphire, ruby and some jades too. real shopping. We brought not enough cash(all in USD), we have to loan from my brother. The business man in Myanmar don't accept credit cards.
The next day, we went to visit the famous Shwedagon Pagoda, it seem they placed the biggest diamond on top of the highest point of the pagoda. I can't see it even watch by the telescope provided, but other said they can see the sparkle sometimes depend on the sunlight shine from which directions.

From Yangon , we joined a local to Bagan and Lake Inle. We flew to Bagan airport by focus airplane. This is my first flight in my life in this type of plane.

A simple and small airport of Bagan

The first pagoda that we visit in Bagan, there are more then 2000 various sizes of pagodas in Bagan. There is a saying if any tourist do not visit Bagan just like he/she never been to Myanmar.

some of the smaller pagodas.

A visit to the local market. Can see all the organic vegetables.

Palm sugar

Local grown onions

Organic carrots

Unbleached cooking oil

Ladies making fermented tea, one of the appetizer before meals

Lots of river fishes from the river

All the big fishes

Using traditional weighing machine

Smallest egg plants i have ever seen

Dried fresh fishes(not salted fish)

Some more pagodas that go back to as early as 11th century, some of the pagodas were so strong that they can survive during the last 2 earthquakes.

Watching sun set on top of one of the pagodas.

We had 2 nights stay in this chalet, very comfortable and beautiful

Sun set by the riverside at our chalet. Our next destination will be Lake Inle. I will continue in the next blog.

White Carrot or Loh pak koa

2011-02-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

Chinese New Year is just around the corner. As usual I will bake some of my popular cookies like pineapple rolls, cashew nuts cookies, green peas cookies and fry arrow head chips . This year I wanted to add another goodies , that is white carrot cake (loh pak koa). In fact I wanted to steam this cake for the last CNY but the carrot was overpriced as the supply was limited. Fortunately, the carrot is very cheap this year, is only RM 4.00 per kilogram.

I got the recipe from my close friend, Agnes. She steam carrot cake every year as this is the tradition and a must for her family. She will usually steam the cake 2 days before CNY and I did as her.
I got all the necessary ingredients as follow

ingredients
360 g carrots

40   g (tang mee fun)
40   g corn flour
525 g rice flour
750 g water

220 g oil of fried onion(5) and garlic(5pips) oil
80   g Chinese sausage
80   g dried prawns
1/2 tbs fried garlic

2 tsp salt
3tsp chicken granules
60 g sugar
1125 g water

Wash and shredded the carrot and boil in hot water for 5 minutes. Drain and squeeze out the excess water. Set aside.

Mix all the flours in the measured water and set aside for later use.
Wash the onions and garlics, slightly crush and pat dry. Heat up the oil and fry the onions and garlics until fragrant, drain and let the oil cool.
Next, prepare the Chinese sausage and dried prawns. Par boil the sausage and peel off the covering the it, chopped into small sizes. Presoak the dried prawns and chopped as the size of Chinese sausage.
In another bowl, mix the seasoning of salt, sugar and chicken granule into the water and set aside for later use.
In a sauce pan, pour in all the prepared ingredients and cook on slow fire for about10 to 15 minutes or until the mixture thicken.

Remove from fire and pour into prepared tin with grease prove paper and steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until is cooked.

When is cook, remove from steaming and let cool. Cut into small sizes so that can be kept in container to place in the refrigerator for anytime when you feel like to eat the cake.
I fried some for 1st day of Chinese New Year for breakfast, really taste good with some Kampong Koh chili sauce. Yum..yum I love it and it is a success fro my first try.

Cheryl and Nicole

2011-01-08T02:58:00.000-08:00

My brother flew back from Myanmar with his wife and 2 lovely daughters for holidays. It was Cheryl birthday on the 6th of Jan while Nicole's fall on the 14th. From the mother, I know all of them like cheesecake, I decided to bake oleo cheesecake(recipe from the label cheesecake) for both of the beautiful and lovely girls.

After baking, cool the cake completely, I prepared chocolate garnache to cover the whole cake. Let set. I decorated with butter cream borders and some fondant flowers, teddy bears and lady buds. My writing were no good because my hand was shivering, I have to improve in this a lot.

The were so happy to cut their favorite cheesecake. They love the cake so much that they ate up both the fondant teddy bears and lady buds.

Welcome 2011

2011-01-02T02:54:00.000-08:00

We were invited for a new year countdown party in Sungai Siput, about 40 minutes drive away from Ipoh. I decided to bake a butter cake with some decorations.;(butter cake recipe from my earlier post)
This is result of my 2011 party cake.

There were many other home cook food prepared by out host and visitors.

We had fried chicken, fish fillet salad, assam curry fish head, blended fish paste stuff in bitter guards, jelly, fried beehoon, curry chicken, deserts too and so many more. We all enjoyed our food and fellowship until midnight when the minute has come for countdown. Well, another year has pass and we have to welcome the new year no matter how or where, the days has to go on. I hope everyone will have a healthy and happy new year.

Light Fruit Cake

2011-01-02T02:33:00.000-08:00

Christmas is coming, i wanted to bake a fruit cake for this festive season. Finally found a recipe from the Internet and I was very happy that it was a success and I like it very much. Here are the ingredients needed:

the ingredients
120g butter
120 g sugar
sift together
140g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
combine together
250g raisins
250g sultanas
75g mic peels
120 g glazed cherries,chopped
100g walnuts, chopped
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 cup rum.(to soak raisins overnight)

First is to preheat the over to 170 degrees C. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and beating well after each adding. Stir in vanilla essence. Gently fold in sifted dry ingredients. Mix until the flour is well in cooperated.
In a separate bowl, mix together the dry fruits and nuts with a dash of flour. Fold in the mixture into the butter mixture.
Pour into lines cake tin and bake for about 1 and a half hour or until its done.
Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool in pan for 30 minutes, then turn cake onto wire rack and remove greaseproof paper, turn the cake back to top side.
Completely cool the cake, brush a little rum on the cake and store it wrapped in foil in airtight container. Let cake ripen for 1 to 2 weeks before serving.

Pickled Chillies Stuffed with Shredded Papaya

2010-12-22T20:02:00.000-08:00

My house has 6 papaya trees and they yield a lot of fruits. I have to give away to my friends and they are really happy that they got the chance to enjoy organic papayas.

One day my mom suggested me to make some papaya pickles. I never do this before, anyway i will give it a try. Finally i found a recipe from a Nyonya Baba cuisine book.

here are the ingredients
2 medium sized green papaya
15 large green chillies
100 g shallots ,slice
100 g garlics, slice
20 g ginger, shredded
20 g turmeric, shredded
50 g dried prawns, soaked and pounded
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
seasoning
2 tbsp vinegar
15g sugar
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp salt
pickling solution
150g sugar
250 ml vinegar
250 ml water
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp salt or taste

Peel and shred papaya. Dry in the sun for 1 day.
Wash and drain the chillies. Make a slit in the chillies and scrape away the seeds and set aside.

Heat up half of the oil and fry the dried prawns, ginger and turmeric until fragrant. Add in papaya and stir in seasoning. Stir fry for about 2 minutes. Remove and let cool. While waiting for the papaya to be cooled, prepare the pickle solution by heating up the remaining of the oil, add pickling solution and bring to just a simmering boil.

Stuff the papaya mixture into the slit chillies. Arrange stuffed chillies, shallots and garlics in a suitable glass ware. Pour over with pickling solution. Make sure that the chillies are completely covered by the solution. Allow to pickle for 2 days before consuming. It keeps well for about 3 days at room temperature and can be kept in the refrigerator for about 1 week.

Stuffed chillies in glass container

Pickle chillies stuffed papaya after 2 days. Serve with a sprinkle of some toasted sesame seed.

Its a very appetizing dish.

Stew Wild Boar Ribs

2010-12-22T19:36:00.000-08:00

This morning saw a group of women surrounded a man and can see them rushing for something. Out of curiosity I joined the group. The men was selling wild boar meat and teaching them how to cook the meat. Wow, quite interesting. I never cook wild boar before and I think can give it a try. After consulting him, he recommended me to try to stew the ribs. I follow his instructions and buy all the necessary ingredients from the market.
the ingredients are
600 g wild boar ribs
6        shallots
6        garlics
6        chili padi
1 medium tomato (cut into 4)
2 cm PC of galangal
1 tbs bean paste
1 tsp black soy sauce
1 tsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
dash of pepper
2 tbs cooking oil
Wash the bite size pieces of pork ribs, drain. Season the cleaned ribs with the salt and pepper for about 1/2 hour. Meanwhile pound or blend the shallots, garlic, chili and galangal. I prefer to use traditional way by pounding so that it will not be too watery.

I cook with my Lagostina pressure cooker because it takes only 15 minutes to cook the ribs. It will take about 30 to 40 minutes when cook with normal utensils. First I heat up the cooking oil and fry the pounded ingredients and the bean paste until fragrant. Then add in the remaining ingredients, give a good stir then cover up. I got to turn the fire to low once the pressure cooker signal me that it is boiling. I took up the cooker to shake in between the cooking time a few times so that the meat will not stick at the bottom of the cooker.
After 15 minutes, the stew pork is ready to be served.

I like the sauce very much because of the addition of galangal, it has a special fragrant taste.

Cake decorating

2010-12-22T13:40:00.000-08:00

Its been a long time and its more then 2 months since i last posted my last post. Well, we went for a holiday to Kunming, Lichiang and Shangalila in Yunnan Province in China, in late oct. The weather was cool and very fresh and the scenaries were really beautiful especially in Lichiang.
After the holiday, I enroled the Wilton Course 1 for cake decorating. After the lesson, at least my cake decorating has improved. I would like to share some of the cakes and cup cakes that I have decorated.

These cup cakes were my last order for this year.

Yam layer cake

2010-10-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

As I promised myself to bake a yam cake. I found a recipe by Amy Heng.

The ingredients are as below,
for the cake , ingredients A
4 egg yolks
80ml water
70g caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
120g super fine flour
11/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup corn oil
ingredients B
4 egg whites
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
70g caster sugar

for the yam filling
350g yam (cut and steamed and mashed whilst hot)
70g caster sugar
1/8 tsp salt
11/2 tbsp agar-agar powder
85g Hoen Kwe flour
2 coconut to make enough coconut milk(add water)

for decoration
300g whipping cream (whipped)
Some fondant flowers and leaves

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees C. Prepare a 8" round cake tin. In a mixing bowl whisk on high speed the egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar until stiff. Leave aside.
In another mixing bowl, whisk all the ingredients A until well mix. Combine beaten ed ingredients A and B. Pour the batter into prepared tin and bake for 35-40 minutes. Invert immediately and set aside to cool. Slice cake into 3 layers horizontally.

To prepare the yam filling, place all ingredients in a saucepan and cook until slightly thickened, of the fire. Divide the yam paste into 3 portions. Let cool.

To assemble the cake. Place a layer of the cake in a 8" loose-base cake tin and spread a thin layer of yam paste on the cake. Repeat process to the end, finishing with the paste on the top. Leave to set in the refrigerator.

Remove cake from cake tin. Spread sides and top of cake with whipped cream( i add a drop of purple colouring) I decorated with some of the fondant flowers that I made and do some piping . I bake this cake for my own wedding anniversary. I should have change the colour of the wording instead as the purple colour is not so clear. Well, learn from my own mistake.

I am quite satisfy with this cake especially the orange colour roses, so lovely. My piping were not good yet, I have to practice more on this.

The lovely and tasty yam paste in the cake

So nice and tasty yam layer cake. My whole family love it. Good!!

Thank you Amy Heng for the recipe.

Yam Pork Ribs

2010-10-06T03:06:00.000-07:00

I like yam very much in what ever way or how its cook. I use to buy yam for cooking as well as baking or made desserts. Today I bought a big yam and intended to cook pork ribs and the remainder to bake yam cake. For cooking the port ribs I need ingredients like

300g of pork ribs
200g of yam
1 tsp chopped garlic
1 tsp bean paste
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp of oyster sauce
1tsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp of light soy sauce
1 cup of water
dash of pepper
1/2 tsp of corn flour
1tbs cooking oil
oil for frying
a stalk of parsley

Washed and scalded the pork ribs , rinsed and season with the corn flour, light soy sauce and the pepper and leave aside. Cut the yam into 2 cm cubes. Heat up enough oil to light deep fry the yam cubes, drained.

In a wok, heat up the tablespoon cooking oil, fry the chopped till fragrant, add in the bean paste and mix well. Stir in the seasoned pork ribs , pour in the water, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce and sugar. Bring to a boil. Turn to low fire and simmer for about half an hour or until the meat is soft. Add more water when necessary. Finally add in the fried yam cubes and cook for another 5 minutes. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve hot with rice.

The yummy yam pork ribs is served.

Kong Poa Squid

2010-09-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

This morning went to the wet market and saw the squids were very fresh and big . I bought 1/2 a kg home to cook Kong Poa Squid. Its been quite a long time since I last cook this dish. To cook this dish, I have to prepare the following ingredients,

500g squids
1 tsp ginger juice
dash of pepper
1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp chopped garlic
1 tsp bean paste
1 red chili
6 dried chili
2 stalk spring onions
Handful of toasted cashew nuts(optional)

Sauce   1 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
             1 tsp thick soy sauce
             1 tsp oyster sauce
             1 tsp wine
             1 tsp sugar
             dash of pepper
             1 tsp corn flour

Peel the skins off the squids, remove the intestines and the eyes as well. Wash with some salt and drained and cut into 3 cm in lenghts. Marinate with salt, ginger juice and pepper for at least 15 minutes.

Cut the spring onions into 3cm lenghts, half the dried chili and soak in water, slice the red chili and set aside. Combine all the sauce in a bowl and leave a side for later use.

Heat oil and add in garlic and bean paste fry till fragrant. Add in dried chili. Stir in squid and red chili. Pour in combined sauce. When mixture boils and thickens, stir in spring onions and cashew nuts . dish out and serve. Squids cannot cook for too long as it will turn rubberise and will be very tough to bite .

Banana cake

2010-09-22T18:47:00.000-07:00

What to do with the over ripe banana cake? I bought a big bunch of banana from Pasar Tani because it was very fresh and beautiful last Saturday. We could not finish it and moreover banana can not keep in the freeze as it will turn black. So, I have to turn the banana to kuih, pancake or cake. Finally decided to bake a banana cake.

I get my old recipe book and found a very old banana cake recipe which was given to me when I bought my first Sharp microwave oven in 1988. It was imported from Japan and it was real hardy and I really make full use of it until it was so tired and broke down in 2009. I sent for repair but most of the mechanics can not find the suitable parts of it. I have to give it up but to get a new one.

Here are the ingredients needed

1 cup mashed banana
170g butter

170g sugar
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
a pinch of salt
5 eggs (separated)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 cup fresh milk
100g chopped walnuts(optional)

Peel and mashed the banana and leave aside. Sift all the dry ingredients together. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

Whisk the egg whites till stiff. Set aside. In another mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until creamy. Add in egg yolks and vanilla, continue to mix. Fold in mashed banana and blend well. Add in sifted flour and fresh milk alternately. Start with the flour and end with the flour. Lastly fold in whisked egg whites and blend well. Pour the batter into a prepared cake tin and bake for 40 minutes.
Remove from oven and let cool.

Over ripe bananas has been baked into delicious banana cake.

Tibicos Mushroom

2010-09-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

I went to visit Joan one morning. She was busy culturing or brewing Tibicos mushroom. I was wondering what was that. She was so excited over it and told me the miracles of Tibicos. She wanted me to try some of it . I was reluctant but finally drank it after her persuasions. Oh, I can accept the taste, a little like wine but not too sweet, I will give it a try to brew it for my family, after all there is no harm as Tibicos mushroom will produce good bacterias for our body. Joan gave me 3 spoonful to start off my brewing.

What is Tibicos? The Tibicos,also known as tibi and many other names, are a culture of bacteria and yeast held in a polysaccharides matrix created by bacteria. The Tibicos originated from Tibet, in the Himalayas. It was Mother of Theresa of Calcutta who obtained some for the poor and needy. In fact, anyone can drink the tibicos in order that one may get the maximum benefits of the tibicos(the gift of nature).

To start off my brewing, I need

3 spoonful of tibicos
11/2 spoonful of brown sugar
3/4 bowl of clean water
1 glass container
1 plastic sieve
1 plastic/ceramic bowl
1 plastic/ceramic spoon
1 PCs of clean cloth
1 rubber band

Clean the glass container but never use soap because it has contents that may kill the needed probiotics in the process of brewing. Use alcohol or distilled white vinegar instead(as instructed from the massage I got from the net). I washed all my utensils with hot water and rinsed with R.O water .

Put the tibicos, sugar and water in the container. Cover with the pieces of cloth and faster it with the rubber band.

Leave the container in an undisturbed place for 24 to 48 hours.

I strained it after 24 hours and drank it first thing in the morning with an empty stomach.

It taste like wine but not too sweet. I repeat the process for 3 days, manage to brew another unit for my husband. I was able to brew for my mother, my sister, my father-in-law and my maid too. I gave away to my friends as well. I have extra in my freeze, you are welcome to have it because it is distributed free.

Tibicos is good for arthritis, migraines, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, digestive system, liver, muscles, nerves, eyes, skin, lungs kidneys and blood. Treat it as a supplement drink. It will help you get well and better health in no time.

Masak Titeh

2010-09-18T01:27:00.000-07:00

My mother and my eldest sister came to my house for a few days. My mother brought along some wild pepper leaves (daun kaduk) from her back yard and wanted to cook her favourite soup, masak titeh. We have been eating this for many years but never cook this before. This time I am going to note down the ingredients and ways of preparing it. I went to the wet market to get all the necessary ingredients this morning.

the ingredients

300 g wild pepper leaves
50 g red chili
few chili padi(optional)
50 g dried prawns ,soak well.
50 g shallots
1 cm piece of belachan,dried shrimp paste
200g thick coconut milk
6 bowls of water
300 g sweet potatoes
salt to taste

Peel the sweet potatoes and cut into 2cm cubes, soak in salt water for 10 minutes. Drained. Steam the sweet potatoes for 10 minutes. Leave aside for later use.

Wash and peel the wild pepper leaves, leave a side. Wash and discard the seeds from the red chilies. Wash and peel the shallots. Pound the chilies, shallots, dried prawns and belachan until fine using the hand pounder.

In a soup pot, boil the water. Put in the pound ingredients. Boil for 15 minutes in low fire. Turn the fire to medium after 15 minutes, put in the wild pepper leaves, give it a boil. Pour in the coconut milk and sweet potatoes salt to taste. Off the fire when the soil is boiled again. Serve hot. This soup can eat at itself or serve with rice.

So happy that I was able to note down all the ingredients and the method for cooking this soup. Its very simple. This is a lemak soup because of the coconut milk. The sweetness taste come from the boiled dried prawns. Oh.....very nice, I manage to eat 2 bowls of it without any rice.

Boiled Brinjal

2010-09-11T05:56:00.000-07:00

Brinjal also known as eggplant, is one of the most easily available and affordable vegetables. Today I manages to buy at only RM 1.00 for 1/2 of Kg, very cheap. Brinjal can be cooked in many different ways and provides many essential nutrients that are needed for overall wee-being of the body. It is a very good sauce of potassium and contains a high content of water and fibre.

I had eaten and had also cooked a few ways of cooking brinjal like roasting, boiling, fry with sambal chili and even in curry. Today I would like to share how I do the boiling method.

the ingredients

300 g brinjals
100 g shallots (sliced)
1/2 cup oil
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
dash of pepper
1 red chili(sliced)
1 stalk spring onion(chopped)
1 stalk parsley(chopped)
1 tsp salt
water

As usual, I would wash the brinjals then soak in Diy enzyme with water for about 1/2 hour. Remove from the enzyme water then soak in clean water for another 15 minutes.

Heat the oil and fry the sliced shallots until light brown, remove and set aside.

In a sauce pot, boil enough water with the salt for boiling the brinjals. Meanwhile, cut the heads and tails of the brinjal, and peel some strips of the skins. Boil the brinjals for about 15 minutes or until soft. Scoop out and drained. Cut into serving sizes and place on a plate.

In a bowl, put in the light soy sauce, oyster sauce, pepper and 4 table spoons of onion oil mix well and pour over the cut brinjals. Garnish with crispy shallots and parsley and spring onions. Serve hot with rice.

A plate of soft and tasty boiled brinjals is served.

Sugar free carrot cake

2010-09-06T04:56:00.000-07:00

My friend Bee, is coming for a meeting in Ipoh, she called and informed me that she will visit me after the meeting. Bee, is a diabetic for more then 30 years, inherited from her mother since her teenage time. Pity her. She really missed out a lot of food like deserts and cakes. Fortunately, there are sugar free cakes and deserts for the diabetics. I have been serving the Internet for the last few days for sugar-free recipe so to bake cakes for her. Finally I settled down by mix and match from a few recipes for a sugar-free carrot cake.

the ingredients

1 1/2 cups grated carrots
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 cup sunflower oil
1/2 tsp lemon rind
2/3 cup juice and pulp of lemon
3/4 cups raisins(soaked, retain 1/4 cup soak water)
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/3 cup chopped walnuts.

Soak raisins in water for at least 30 minutes before stating to work. Save 1/4 cup soaking water. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Use electric blender to blend the soaked raisins with the 1/4 of retained water to form a paste.

Combine carrots, vanilla essence, oil, lemon juice and rind in a mixing bowl and stir well. Add in all the dry ingredients, mix well. Lastly fold in the chopped walnuts.

Pour the batter into oiled muffin tins or cake pan. Bake at 180 degree C for 25 minutes for muffins or 45 minutes for cake. Test with a cake tester or toothpick - it will come out clean when the cake is done.

Bee came in just in time for tea at 5pm. She had 2 in 1 coffee with this sugar-free carrot muffin. She suggested to reduce the raisins but add more walnuts. The raisins are quite or too sweet for her. I will improve on that for the future baking of this carrot cake.

Bitter guard soup

2010-09-05T03:58:00.000-07:00

I was in the wet market this morning. Overheard 2 ladies sharing their ingredients and methods of cooking soups. I was curious when they were mentioning about cooking bitter guard soup. I was wondering how to cook soup with such a bitter melon. I joined them to know more about this soup and wanted to try cooking it. They were so generous that they shared with me the ingredients for boiling the soup. There are 2 main types of bitter guard in our market, the normal and the small very bitter bitter guards.

Many has turned bitter guard into capsules and tea bags dueto the medicinal use. In fact, many Chinese has been using this melons as remedy for reducing high blood pressure and diabetic.

The ingredients for the soup

300 g bitter guard
4 medium tomatoes
150 g char choi(sichuan pickle)
300 g port or chicken
4 pieces of to fu
8 bowls of water.

Soak the char choi for at least for 1 hour. Wash and sliced. Wash and scald the meat for 5 minuted. Rinse and drained. Cut the tomatoes into quarters. Remove the seeds of the bitter guard. Cut into 4 cm slices.

Boil the water in a soup pot. Put in all the ingredients except the to fu. Simmer for about 1 hour in low fire. Need not add any salt because the soup get the taste of salt from the char choi. Off the fire then put in the to fu. Serve hot with rice.

Bitter guard soup garnish with chopped spring onion and parsley

Surprisingly there is no taste of bitterness in the soup but sweet from the meat, a little of sour taste from the tomatoes, and a special taste of (kam kam). My husband like this new soup very much and me too.

Spaghetti

2010-09-05T03:04:00.000-07:00

It has been more then ten years since I last cook spaghetti. I can't recall when did I last cook this dish for my family. When I went for shopping yesterday, walked pass the noodle and spaghetti section, picked up a packet of angle hair spaghetti. According to my friend, this type of spaghetti cook very fast like cooking normal noodles. Picked up a can of tomato paste and some fresh tomatoes and was ready to cook the spaghetti sauce. Here are the ingredients that I used for my spaghetti.

the ingredients

3 cups diced tomatoes
1/2 packet of the spaghetti
1 can 250 g tomato paste
2 tbsp of cooking oil
basil
oregano
1 chopped onion
3 pips of chopped garlic
300 g chicken breast
salt to taste
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp corn flour
1 tbsp light soy sauce
shredded carrot and cucumber

Wash and clean the tomatoes. In a sauce pot, boil enough water so to boil the tomatoes for about minutes. Remove the tomatoes and put into a basin of ice cold water, this helps to remove the skin of tomatoes easily.

Meanwhile, clean the chicken breast, sliced and minced. Season with the pepper, corn flour and light soy sauce. Set aside.

Peel off all the skins of the tomatoes and diced . In a sauce pot, heat up the oil and fry the onion until fragrant. Add in the diced tomatoes, basil and oregano and stir mix well. Let simmer for about 1 hour in low fire. Keep stirring in between the cooking time. After an hour of cooking, add in the tomato sauce, salt and sugar. Stir well.

In a frying pan, heat up a tbsp of oil, fry the garlic until fragrant, briefly stir in the seasoned chicken breast for about 2 minutes. Remove and pour into the spaghetti sauce. Cook for another 2 minutes.

Chicken breast spaghetti sauce

In another pot , boil enough water with a tsp of salt and oil . Put in the spaghetti when the water is boiled. Cook for about 5 minutes or until is soft enough, drained.

Serve hot with shredded carrots and cucumbers.

Looks good and taste good too. Not bad though it has been a long time.

Salted egg fry prawns

2010-09-02T03:02:00.000-07:00

I remembered the 1 kg of big prawns that I bought from Pantai Remis that have been deep free zed with some sugar water(to keep fresh). Today to steam or what?? Most of the time I like to steam as long as the prawns are still fresh. Anyway I like to try other way of cooking . I will try to stir fry the prawns with salted egg yolks.

the ingredients
500g prawns
2 salted eggs
1/4 tsp pepper
2 tbsp corn flour
30 g butter
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp chopped garlic
1 tsp chopped red chili

seasoning
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp light soy sauce
3 tbsp chicken stock/water

Trim the legs and the sharp parts and clean the intestine of the prawns, drained. Season with the pepper. Meanwhile boil the salted eggs. Lightly smash the egg yolks when the eggs were cooked.

Heat enough oil in a wok. Sprinkle corn flour over the prawns and deep fry for about 30 seconds. Remove from the wok and drain.

The prawns after quick deep frying

Heat butter and oil in a wok. Add in the chopped garlic and chopped chili and fry until fragrant. Blend in the smashed salted egg yolks and prawns. Add in the seasoning and toss briefly until prawns are cooked through. Remove and garnish with chopped spring onion. Serve hot.

Mmmm, look good, and taste good too. I like the salted egg yolks that stick to the shell of the prawns. Its really finger licking good .

Chicken herbal soup

2010-08-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

With the chicken stock, I add in a packet of Chinese herbal, and bought a black chicken to add in the stock.

the ingredients
8 bowls of chicken stock(add water if there is not enough of stock)
1 whole black chicken(chopped into 4 pieces)
1 packet of Chinese herb for soup
salt to taste

All the contents of the packet of the herbal for the soup

Wash the herbs and put into the boiling chicken stock. Turn to low fire to cook for half an hour.

Remove the skin of the chicken and scald in hot water for about 1 minute. Wash and drain. Put into the herbal soup and simmer for an hour. Add in salt to taste.

This is the ginseng herbal soup. It has the taste of ginseng and the sweetness of the chicken stock.

Chicken Rice

2010-08-30T18:26:00.000-07:00

Last weekend my old time classmate, Cheah Ngah Mooi came and visit me from Teluk Intan , she brought me a real kampong chicken. Now aday is quit difficult to buy this type of chicken unless we go into villages to look for them. Those so called kampong chicken in the markets were from chicken farms that were kept in the cages or long chicken house. They were not allow to roam around unlike the kampong chickens, they were free to run and chasing around among their friends. Thus, their meat were really though and sweet compare with those in the farms.

This is the well cleaned kampong male chicken

I will turn this chicken into (pak cham kai) and the chicken stock to cook chicken rice and herbal soup.

ingredients

for the chicken

1 whole chicken

enough water for boiling

1 thumb sized piece of young ginger(crushed)

5 cloves garlic(peeled and crushed)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tsp light soy sauce

for the rice

2 cups of rice,washed and drained

2 tbsp of butter

2 cm piece of young ginger, (crushed)

2 cloves of garlic (crushed)

salt to taste

3 pandan leaves

2 stalk of lemon grass

3 cups of chicken stock

for chili garlic sauce

8 fresh red chili

2 cm piece of young ginger

5 cloves of garlic

dash of salt

juice of 3 calamansi limes

3 tbsp of chicken stock

In a deep pot, boil the water with the ginger, garlic and salt, put in the chicken and cook for about 15 minutes in medium fire without the cover. Change the position of the chicken in between the cooking time . Turn off the fire and put on the cover of the pot and let the chicken cook in the hot water for 20 to 25 minutes.. Remember to change the position of the chicken again.

Use chopsticks to poke into the tight area of the chicken, the chicken is cooked when there is no more blood flow out from it. With the help of the chopsticks, poke under the wings area and put the chicken into a cold basin of water for cold bath for 10 minutes.

The chicken is having a cold spa after the hot water bath

The next step is to hang the chicken dry by the strings under the wings.

Brush the mixture of light soy sauce and sesame oil on the whole of the chicken and let dry.

Next is to prepare the rice. In a wok, heat up the butter, fry the ginger and garlic until fragrant. Put in the rice and stir fry for 2 minutes. Transfer all into electric rice cooker. Pour in the chicken stalk, salt, the pandan leaves and lemon grass and cook the rice.

While waiting for the rice to be cooked and the chicken to be dried, I prepare my chili garlic sauce for dipping.

By using the blender to blend all the ingredients , the chili sauce is ready in just minutes.

The rice is cooked. Once open the rice pot cover, the aroma of both of the pandan leaves and lemon grass was so pleasant.

Chop the chicken into serving sizes, decorate with some cucumber slices and garnish with spring onion and coriander.

Chocolate banana cake

2010-08-26T07:23:00.000-07:00

I was looking at my old photo albums and recalled that my children like to buy chocolate banana cake from the Secrete Recipe for my birthday. Looking at those pictures made me yearn to have the taste of the cake. So, I decided to give it a try to satisfy my taste bud. Finally I found a recipe by Amy Heng and

the ingredients are

for chocolate chiffon cake
A; 30g cocoa powder (mixed with 120ml water)
4 egg yolks
100 caster sugar
130g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sodium bicarbonate
60ml corn oil
1 tsp vanilla essence
B; 4 egg whites
60 g caster sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

for cake filling
500ml chocolate whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla essence
11/2 tbsp instant coffee(mixed with 1 tbsp hot water)
1 tbsp gelatin(dissolved in 40ml water)
6 ripen bananas(sliced)

for chocolate frosting
140ml UHT whipping cream
350g cooking chocolate
1 tbsp butter

I used only half of the ingredients so to bake a smaller cake. Hand whisk and mix well ingredients (A).
Whisk the egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar until stiff. Fold in (A) into (B). Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes at 180 degrees C.

Just baked chocolate chiffon cake

Invert the cake and let cool completely before cutting into 3 layers by cake cutter.

The 3 layers of the chocolate chiffon cake

For the cake filling, whisk the chocolate whipping cream until stiff. Add in vanilla essence, then coffee mixture and finally the gelatin mixture. I was so involved in the making and spreading of the filling that forgotten to snap the pictures of the whole process from the 1st layer to the top of cake. When completed with the filling, leave in the fridge to set.

While waiting for the cake to be set, I then prepare the chocolate frosting. Heat the whipping cream in double-boiler and add in chocolate and butter. Stir until chocolate has melted. Leave to cool slightly before pouring on top of the cake.

Making of the chocolate frosting.

Pour the frosting over the cake. I decorated the cake with some lightly toasted walnut. Refrigerate until set.

Mmm.......I like it but not as good as those from The Secrete Recipe.

Soya and sweet potato

2010-08-24T20:10:00.000-07:00

This morning I want to make use of my multifunction hi-fibre food processor (Sheline) to prepare bread fast for 3 of us, me, husband and father-in-law,(so ya and sweet potato tong sui)
the ingredients
40 g soy bean
40 g red bean
20 g black glutinous rice
100 g sweet potato(yam)
1/4 cup coconut milk
30 g rock sugar
1.5 lt hot water
2 pandan leaves

Wash and soak the soy bean, red bean and the black glutinous rice for 3 hours. Peel and cut the sweet potato into about 5cm cube,(usually I will soak in salt water for about 15 minutes before cooking).

The ingredients

The beans and black rice after steaming

As instructed by the manual of the food processor, Pour in 500 ml of hot water into the plastic cup, let the water turn a few round, add in all the ingredients and let the processor to do the work for 3 minutes. Pour in the rest of the hot water, mix well and pour out into pot. So, the hot and delicious tong sui is ready for our bread fast.

This greenish and brown coloured beverage is the mixture of soy beans red beans black glutinous rice and pandan leaves.

We add in some crackers into the beverage.

So this is our home made healthy bread fast.

Yong Tau Foo

2010-08-24T04:05:00.000-07:00

Yong tau foo (stuff tofu and other vegetables with fish paste) is a very famous and delicious hawker food in Ipoh. Today I am going to make this dish by my home made fish paste that I had prepared a few days ago.

the ingredients

300 g of fish paste(can get from wet market)
1 bitter guard
8 lady fingers
4 white tofu
1 medium egg plant
( can use other veggies that you like red and green chili)
1tsp bean paste
1tsp chopped garlic
1tsp chopped red chili
2 tbs cooking oil
1/2 tsp dark soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
1tsp light soy sauce
1tsp corn flour
1/2 bowl water
1 stalk of spring onion(chopped)

These are the veggies and tofu that I had bought this morning.

As usual, wash the vegetables then soak in home made garbage enzyme for about 40 minutes. Cut the bitter guard and the egg plant in such way that we can stuff in the fish paste . Split open the lady fingers and scrape out the seeds. Halved the tofu and use a spoon to scrape out the internal of the tofu, the residue can be added in to the fish paste, mix well.

These tofu and vegetables are ready for the fish paste stuffing

Use a butter knife to take some of the fish paste and fill up the tofu, lady fingers, bitter guard and the egg plant slices.

Place the stuffed veggies into a plate and steam for 8 minutes. You may also like to deep fry all these, but I prefer the steaming and serve with a bean paste sauce.

Heat up a wok then fry the chopped garlic and the bean paste until fragrant. Pour in half of the water, let it boil. Slowly put in the stuffed veggies into to the wok. Simmer for about 3 minutes. Add in the dark soy sauce and sugar. Mix the corn flour, light soy sauce in the remaining water, pour into the wok slowly and mix well and off the fire. Serve hot with the sprinkle of chopped spring onion and chopped red chili.

This is my home made yong tau foo.

DIY gaebage enzyme

2010-08-22T07:10:00.000-07:00

I received an email regarding garbage enzyme and in fact I had heard of the enzyme for quite a long time. My friend gave me a bottle of the garbage enzyme a few months ago and I found it very useful and also effective for my household chores. So I decided to make my own garbage enzyme. I found the recipe from the book shop then started to gather all the necessary utensils and the ingredients. What I needed are:

1 air-tight plastic container

500 g brown sugar

1 1/2 kg fresh kitchen waste(fruits and vegetables)

5 lt water

I used only fruits waste. I collect my daily fruit skins and keep in the fridge. It took me 1 week to collect 1 and the half kg that I needed. Pour in the water and the brown sugar into the plastic container, mix well. Put in all the kitchen waste. Make sure that there is a little space for the yeast to work (fermentation). Loosen the cap cover to let the gas out everyday until there is no more gas. Tighten the cover and let it ferment for 3 months.

This is the 2nd day of the fermentation of my garbage enzyme

This will be the result after 3 months of fermentation(picture from my friend)

When the fermentation process is completed, the residue has to be filtered. The residue is a very good sauce of plant fertilizer.

The completed garbage enzyme ready for use

There are many useful usage of the garbage enzyme, as natural fertilizer, natural pesticide, laundry, floor mopping, mold removal, oil and stain removal for kitchen utensils, fruits and veggie wash and so many more.

I use the enzyme daily to wash the fruits and vegetables. following the instruction of the book, I wash the fruits and vegetables, add a small cap of enzyme into a basin of water then soak the fruits and veggie for 40 minutes to get rid of the chemicals such as pesticide residue.

Here are some of the example of the ratio to use the garbage enzyme;(enzyme to water)

for fertilizer 1:100/500/1000

for insecticide 1: 1000

for pesticide 1: 100

anti odour/air freshener dilute 200x

as plant growth hormone dilute 500x

I use 1 part of dish wash, 1 part of enzyme and 8 parts of water for my kitchen utensils cleaning. In fact we can also use the same formula for other house hold cleaning. Happy trying and if more people using garbage enzyme there will be less chemical being used.

Mackerel fish paste

2010-08-20T06:08:00.000-07:00

Get up early this morning, with the help of my maid, we started to work out the 2 kg of Spanish mackerel to turn them into fish paste.
First, I had to separate the flesh from the bone by splitting both sides of all the fish. I did the splitting while the maid will scrape off the fresh that stick both on the bones and the skin of the fish by spoon.

The Spanish mackerel before cutting

The flash separated from the bone of the fish

The head and the bone of the fish with some flesh attached on.

ingredients for the fish paste

2 kg fresh Spanish mackerel

300g shrimps or pork(optional)

2 tsp salt

4 tbs corn flour

1/2 bowl of water

1 tsp pepper

In a bowl, put in the salt, corn flour, pepper and the water, mix well and leave aside. I use my food processor to grind the fish flesh by adding the corn flour mixture slowly. (traditional way will use the knife to chop the fish flesh until fine). Pour the well blended fish mixture onto the chopping board. Using both hand to roll up the fish mixture into round ball, then smash hard on the board.,continue doing this until the mixture become sticky and have a bouncing effect. This take about ten times of smashing and rolling.

The smashing of the fish flesh on the chopping board

The final stage of the fish paste

I can have many ways of cooking from my home made fish paste. First of all, the bones and heads can make a very good fish stock, I will share the recipe in the next blog. I cook porridge by the fish stock and add some of the fish paste for my father-in-law.

I keep the rest of the fish paste in food containers for future cooking. I will make some (yong tau foo) ,stuff fish paste in tofu, chili,lady fingers and other vegetables, I will cook fish ball noodle, make fish cake and so on.

Pantai Remis

2010-08-19T20:01:00.000-07:00

Cecilia, Celine and a Japanese couple and me started our journey to Pantai Remis at 11.15am from Ipoh. We had my durian cake in the car on the way to our destination. It took us 1 hour and half to reach the fishing village, we reached there at about 12.45pm. Cecilia took us to her usual station but we were disappointed because the fishermen did not go out to the sea as they were celebrating the Ghost Festival. So turn to other stations but most of them also doing the same thing. Finally we spotted a smaller station and saw the fishermen were busy unloading plastic boxes from a fishing boat, we stop our car and went down to what we can get..

The workers are sorting out the catch of the day. When we went near we got disappointed again, only kembong fish(slimy mackerel) ,a few Spanish mackerel and prawns. Finally I decided to buy 2 kg of slimy mackerel and the only 6 medium sized Spanish mackerel. Cecilia bought 3 kg of Slimy mackerel . We agreed to buy 1 kg of slimy mackerel and 1 kg of prawn for our lunch later in the restaurant.

1 kg of slimy mackerel

1 kg of fresh big prawns

The lady boss of this station saw our disappointment, she was so kind that she advice us to go further in to another few station, we might be lucky that we can get what we wanted. We followed her instruction and direction we finally came to quite a big station, we saw 2 Malay lady sitting at a table, after chatting with them and one of the worker, we were advised to wait for 1/2 an hour for the fishing boat to come back. All of us were alright for the suggestion but all were hungry. We lucky that we had some of my durian cake then.

Finally, the fishing boat has arrived, we were so excited, we got to wait for the workers to unload the catch then to sort them out from the prawns and the fishes ,next they have to separate the bigger fishes from the smaller fishes. All of us including the 2 Malay ladies and other customers were waiting eagerly and excitedly to get the limited catch.

A catch load of fresh fishes and prawns from a fishing boat just arrive from the sea. Finally I bought 1 kg of big prawns, some more Spanish mackerel.

The Spanish mackerel

My friends also bought happily whatever they can get from this boat. Satisfied with our shopping then adjourned to Cecilia's popular village restaurant.We wanted them to deep fry our slimy mackerel and steam the prawns.

deep fried slimy mackerel

Simple steamed prawns

This is the most popular dish of this restaurant, the (fan sa wu) yam with sugar. Really good, the yam ,yummy.....

The second most popular dish is the fry prawn cake, you can see the numbers of shrimp in the cake, deep in chili sauce, soooo good.. All of us were so hungry that we snatched up all in just seconds, don't even have time to snap the picture of it. Anyway I bought some half -cook (none fry) prawn cakes back home.

None-cook or none fry prawn cakes

When these are deep fried, they will be very crispy and crunchy with the shrimps on them, deep in chili sauce and go into the mouth, oh...so nice, never have these type of food for so long since our childhood days.

The fried crispy shrimp cake

We also ordered some sea crabs, steamed , but the way of steaming was not so good, anyway the crabs was fresh and sweet.

Simple steamed sea crabs.

We had an enjoyable trip to the fishing village and came home with full loads of fishes and prawns though not of our expectations. It was 7pm when I reached home. My maid and I took almost 1 and half hour to clean up all the fishes and prawns. I will make the Spanish mackerel into fish paste on the next day.

Durian Chiffon cake

2010-08-19T06:03:00.000-07:00

I found a pack of frozen durian while cleaning and clearing the refrigerator this morning because friends and I are going to Pantai Remis, a fishing village to purchase fish and prawns from the fishing boats. I defrost the durian and decided to bake a durian chiffon cake for our travel to Pantai Remis.

the ingredients
6 egg yolks
110 g mashed durian
150 g milk
30 g pumpkin seed
50 g sugar
140 g self raising flour
60 ml corn oil
6 egg whites
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
100 g sugar

Preheat oven at 160 degree C. In a food processor beat the cream of tartar , the egg whites and 100g sugar until stiff.
In another bowl, mix the egg yolks and 50 g sugar well. Add in the mashed durian then the corn oil. Mix in the flour and the milk alternately until all are well mix. Blend in the beaten egg whites into the egg yolks mixture,finally stir in the pumpkin seeds. Pour the batter into a 8 " round tin and bake for 45 minutes or until is done.

This took me 45 minutes with a little smiling face

When the cake is cool, I manged to slice into 14slices. My husband came back just in time to taste my durian cake. He really love it. I packed some into a food container for our trip on the next day.

Vegetable porridge

2010-08-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

My father -in-law is not filling well, no appetite to eat rice. I decided to look into my recipe book to cook something different from the usual teo chew porridge. Finally settled to cook vegetable porridge. Checked the refrigerator and found these green veges and some dried prawns.

the ingredients
1 cup of rice
4 stalks of veges(any type of veges)
4 tbs of dried prawns
8 cups of water
salt and pepper to taste

Wash the rice, add in the water to soak for 20 minutes. Cook the rice and bring to boil, turn the fire to low to cook for half an hour.
Wash the vegetables and cut into 3 cm in length. Wash the dried prawns, soak and cook with the porridge. Add in the vegetables when the porridge is ready. Add salt to taste. Serve hot with dash of pepper.

Mm.... look so appetizing and taste good too. I will and have to cook many other porridge for the next few days.

Birthday cake

2010-08-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow will be Mei Wan's birthday. I promised to bake her chocolate cake but I changed my mind. I bake her a butter cake with butter cream and fondant decoration that I learnt recently. I made some flowers and leaves from the fondant icing in advance.

These are the pink and yellow roses and the green leaves made from the fondant.

I bake a butter cake this morning. Cool it and decorated with the butter cream and the fondant flowers.

This is the first time I do cake decoration. I am not very satisfied because the stars that squeezed out were not even in sizes, but proud of my fondant flowers. I will improve in my technique of cake decoration in the future, practice make perfect.

Completed with the decorations, put in a box and sent it to Mei Wan in her office. She was so happy to receive the cake. I am glad that she like it.

Emperor Chicken

2010-08-11T00:47:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, a friend gave me prepacked herbal soup and emperor chicken ready mixed each to try on and saying is very easy to prepare.

By following the instructions from the back of the package, I bought a free range chicken weighing about 1.5 kg. Wash the whole chicken with salt inside and outside of the chicken. Pat dry with kitchen towel. Rub the herbal mix in and outside of the chicken..Wrap up the chicken with the plastic wrapper and followed by the aluminium foil, place on a deep plate and steam in low fire for 2 hours.

To make sure the chicken is well done, I used a chopstick to poke at the thigh part as this is the though est part. The meat is done when there is no blood oops out from the place i poke. Once i open up the wrapping, the smell was so good herbal,the taste should be too.

I did not chop into pieces, we like to tear by hand while we eat. The liquid that came out from the chicken was really sweet and very tasty. You should try it and it is very easy to prepare as well.

The Emperor Chicken

Cup cakes decoration

2010-08-08T03:31:00.000-07:00

Made appointment with Nurainie 3 days ago on the Internet to learn cake decoration from her. I found her in Malaysian cake decorators' club(MCDC). Found her house then introduced ourselves. Without wasting much time, we started by baking butter cup cakes. While waiting for the cake to be bake, we started mixing our butter cream for decoration. Next, we came to the interesting part. the fondant . We started by making small and big flowers like roses, ribbon roses, small and bigger leaves, making colours; making lady buds and teddy bears too. After making whatever we wanted, put aside and let dry.

The teddy bears and lady buds look real cute and the flowers are really sweet and lovely

and all the green leaves

Before we put on the decoration, we have to lever up the surface of each cup cakes by the butter cream.

We used piping begs with different tips to pipe out different colours and also different patterns. I loved that.

After finishing the piping, we moved to fondant decorating. The teddy bears, my first love.

See the lady bear and the boy bear, so adorable.

The mother and baby lady buds

The garden

The final result of fondant decoration, so lovely.

The mixture of butter cream and fondant decoration

I really learnt a lot for just a few hours. Thank you to Nurainie and it was really fun and I appreciated the time given to me.

White carrot soup

2010-08-06T20:44:00.000-07:00

Ingredients for my carrot soup
300 g white carrots
300 g pork ribs
5 medium dried scallops
7 red dates
1 slice of dried squid
1 tsp of peppercorn
7 bowls of water
salt to taste

Peel the carrots and cut into triangle in shapes. Scald the pork in hot water for about 5 minutes,wash and rinse. Wash the red dates.dried scallops and dried squid. Lightly crash the peppercorn. Boil the water in a soup pot, put in all the ingredients except the salt. Let it boil for 1 and half hour in slow fire. Add salt to taste. Garnish with parsley and serve hot.

My clear and sweet carrot soup

Steamed ginger chicken

2010-08-06T20:31:00.000-07:00

Ask myself what to cook for lunch today? Got half of free range chicken and some pork ribs from the freezer, young gingers, white carrot and a bunch of spinach. So decided to steam chicken, white carrot for soup and oyster sauce spinach.

ingredients for steam chicken

400 g chicken, chopped into bite pieces
200 g young gingers, grated
1 tbs sesame oil
1 tbs chopped garlic
salt to taste
marinate
1tsp soy sauce and pepper
1tbs wine
garnish
chopped spring onion and
chopped red chili

Marinate the chicken for half an hour. Leave aside.
Heat up the sesame oil in a wok, fry the garlic till fragrant. Add in the grated ginger and fry till fragrant. Dish all out and place on top of the seasoned chicken and steam on boiling water for 20 minutes or until the meat is tender. Garnish with chopped spring onion and chopped red chili . Serve hot with rice.

Yam cake

2010-08-05T04:36:00.000-07:00

Last week,my friend miss Tee wanted me to buy a meal voucher that cost me only RM6.00. That voucher can buy me a 5 course dinner and some demonstrations. So I went along with her with some curiosity and to find out what kind of dinner we will be served.
Oh, it was a table served dinner with local tofu with egg sauce, curry chicken, salted egg fried lotus root,oyster sauce vegetable and steamed fish. The dinner was more then the value we paid. Worth it.

After the dinner being served, it was show time. Two young men started their work by explaining the important of fibre in our food and finally came to the main point, the multi function hi-fibre food processor called Shelina. They demonstrated how fine the fibre we can get from the fruits and vegetables when we use this processor, we would not waste any of the fibre like other normal food processor. We were served fruit juices, beverages and even some steamed desserts within half an hour. Really convincing. Finally i bought 1 of the processor.

This is my new food processor

Today tried to make soy milk by my new processor. I follow the method from the manual. I have to soak the soy beans for 3 hours, then steam for half an hour. Pour hot water, rock sugar or palm sugar ,pandan leaves and the beans and press the on button. Grind for 5 minutes, then the hot soy milk is ready to be served. So simple and drink with all the bean fibre, no wastage at all.

This is the soy milk made by my new processor

The next thing i tried today is to make yam cake by following the simple recipe.

the ingredients

300 g rice, washed

300 g yam (cut into small pieces)

4 tbs oil

8 shallots(sliced)

600ml water

100 g dried prawns(chopped)

1tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

pepper, 5 spice powder

garnishing

chopped spring and red chillies,fried onion

In a wok, heat up the oil, fry the onion until light brown, dish some out for later use. Put in the dried prawns and fry till fragrant. Add in the yam, sugar, salt, pepper and five spice powder. Stir fry and mix well. Dish out.

In the food processor, pour in the water and the rice. Blend for 3 minutes until the rice is fine. Mix in the fried ingredients and steam for 30 minutes.

I can enjoyed my yam cake within an hour.

It is so fast and easy and I used my own grind rice but not the rice flour form the shop. I will make full use of this processor so to share with you more.

Vinegar pig trotter

2010-08-05T03:33:00.000-07:00

I was chatting with my mother on phone last night. She has missed vinegar pig trotter. That was one of her popular dish. She is now too old to cook in the kitchen, so i volunteer to cook for her though i am not good in cooking this dish but i will try. She narrated the approximate ingredients so bought all the necessary this morning and started preparing the dish.

the ingredients
pig trotter about 1.5kg (the butcher will know the size to chop)
1 bottle of sweet vinegar
300 g young ginger (scrape off the skin and lightly crush)
1 whole bulb of garlic
6 to 8 dried chillies
60g palm sugar
4 hard boiled eggs(optional)

Washed the trotter, scald in boiling water for about 5 minutes, drain and rinse. Leave aside for later use. heat up a wok, put in the crushed ginger and fry till fragrant, dish out. Next, put in the trotter and fry till it turns a little light brown and fragrant.
In a sauce pot, pour in the whole bottle of the sweet vinegar, put in the ginger, trotter, garlic, dried chillies, palm sugar and the boiled eggs. To see that all are well covered by the vinegar, once can add a little water if the ingredients are not immersed in the vinegar. Slow fire cook for 30 minutes. Off the fire and let the ingredients stand for an hour. Cook for another 15 minutes or until the meats are tender. Serve hot with rice. This is one of the popular dish for Chinese confinement ladies because vinegar is a very good tonic for health for normal as well as for those who were after giving birth.

Vinegar pig trotter

This is a very appetizing and delicious dish because it has the taste of sweet, sour and pungent from both the chillies and the ginger . It will be more tasty if leave the dish over night.

Durian orchard

2010-08-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

Its during season again, we can see every corner of the city were full of durians and other fruits as well. This is in fact a very big season, and very cheap. We need not buy from the stalls because my friends and we planned to go and eat in the durian orchard. After made arrangement with the orchard owner, Ah San,9 of us drove 2 cars to Chenderiang, a small town just near to Tapah. We met Ah San at his sundry shop in Chenderian, he led us to his orchard about 3 km away. The road was good, we could even park over cars just next to the orchard.
Crossed a bridge over a clean,clear water stream, we were met by all the durian trees, old and young, big and small. We were told to wait at the hut, so Ah San and his worker would go and look for dropped durians. They brought back so many durians just within minutes.

These durians can be reached easily and so tempting

Ooh..ooh..open up!!

This is the original wild durian, can be differentiated by all the narrow sharp green torns. This type of durian has a greenly and wine taste. The tree is more then 100 years old.

This is (kucing tidur) one of the latest bud-grafted species. Yum....very good taste.

All of us really enjoyed ourselves with all the species of durian, eat all we can and its was free.

One for the album, we have Japanese lady, sitting on the right, and Singapore lady, standing first row 2nd from the right. We interviewed our Japanese friend Chisan, through her, we understand that durian(the king of the fruit)is the dream fruit of Japanese;esp for her. She has been dreaming of eating durian before she came to Malaysia. Now her dream came through. Malaysia is her second home now. She described that the taste of durian is a mixture of cheese, butter, honey and the smell is the bad smell of petroleum. Anyway she loves durian very, very much. She really enjoyed a lot. We were able to show her some tapioca trees and pull some of the roots for her to take home as well.

When we have enough of the durians, Ah San took us to his small little hut, he showed us the lost little wild piglet that his worker found. So cute and strong but with some body odour. However all of us were so excitedto take picture with it. It has become a star.

The little piglet

The cute little wild piglet

While were eating the durians and paying attention to the little piglets, the orchard workers went looking for more durians among the trees. They brought a lot more durians. We decided to buy some back for our family members. Finally our 2 cars were loaded with durians and some tapioca as well. Ah San reminded us to visit him again during the next durian season. Of-course we will.

Butter Cake

2010-07-16T01:48:00.000-07:00

I went to visit Agnes with Cecilia last week, she bake butter cake for our tea and the cake also her son's favorite cake. I usually do not take butter cake because of the taste of butter. Agnes insisted me to try it out and convinced me that with the added coffee and chocolate will cover off the butter smell. Reluctantly I tried a small piece of it, oh, it taste so delicious and I love it. I requested the recipe from Agnes and she just narrated out the ingredients and method without looking at the recipe book.

the ingredients
300 g butter
250 g self raising flour(sieved twice)
220 g caster sugar
1/3 cup fresh milk/soy milk
4 whole eggs
4 egg yolks
100 g walnuts (chopped)

method
preheat oven at 180 degree Celsius. Use fast speed to cream the butter and sugar for a minute. Slow down the speed until the mixture becomes light and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, mix well. Add in the flour and the milk alternately by 4 times. Lastly add in the chopped walnuts.
Pour the batter to prepared 9x9 square baking tin and bake for 35 minutes.

This is the result of my butter cake

I love it and my sons too.

Vietnamese Roast Chicken

2010-07-07T05:41:00.000-07:00

I bought 3 chicken thighs from the wet market. Wondering how to cook these. Turn on the computer to search for other ways of preparing chicken rather then normal cooking like curry or so on. Finally settled down with a recipe by Amy Beh, Vietnamese roast chicken.

the ingredients

400 g chicken
5 shallots
6 glove garlics
a small piece of ginger
1/2 tsp 5 spice powder
5 red chili
1/2 tsp fish gravy
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Washed and cut the chicken into bite size, drained. Pound all the ingredients until fine. Marinate the chicken with the pounded ingredients for at least 3 hours. I was just in time to prepare this dish for lunch. Roast the seasoned chicken for 10 minutes at preheated oven at 220 degrees Celsius.

Marinate the chicken

The roasted chicken.

Turmeric fry silver catfish

2010-07-05T19:27:00.000-07:00

Today bought two silver cat fishes form the wet market. I used to steam this type of fish but Alfred suggested to fry the fish. So, I was wandering just deep fry or fry with marinate? Finally, got some fresh turmeric from the refrigerator, so decided to fry the fish with turmeric.

the fish about 1kg
150 g fresh turmeric
2 tsp fish chili powder
1 tsp salt
oil for deep frying
some curry leaves

Wash and cut the fish into smaller pieces, pat dry. Cut the fresh turmeric into smaller pieces and pound until fine. Add in the chili powder and salt, mix well. Marinate the fish for at least half an hour.
Heat the wok, pour in the oil . Put in the fish pieces and the curry leaves when the oil is hot enough for frying. Fry till the fish is cook.

The fish before frying

marinated and fried silver fish

Steam Fry Fish

2010-07-04T23:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday bought a white snapper fish and wanted to steam it but due to certain circumstances did not cook it. Today I will steam fry it and prepare a simple sauce to spread on it. Steam fry is to fry the fish by very low fire and cover it with wok cover while frying. One side will be well fried and the other will be steamed.

The ingredients

a fish about 600g
dash of pepper and salt
2 tsp corn flour
oil for frying

the sauce   2tbs fish sauce
                 1 tsp black soy sauce
                 1 tsp oyster sauce
                 3 cloves of garlic(chopped)
                 10g of ginger(finely sliced)
                 1/4 bowl of water
                 1 tbs of oil
                 1tbs corn flour mix in 3tbs water.

garnishing  1 red chilli(sliced)
                 1 stalk spring onion(chopped)

Wash and pat dry the fish. Season the fish with the pepper and salt for about twenty minutes. Heat up the wok, add in the oil ,let the oil come to boil, dash the corn flour on the side of the fish to be fried. Place the floured side of the fish onto the wok to fry. Turn the fire to low and fry for fifteen minutes with the cover lid.
Dish out the fish and place on a plate.

This is the result of the steam fry fish, one side is fried while the other is steamed. Remove the extra oil from the wok and leave about one table spoon of oil for frying the sauce ingredients. Put in the chopped garlics and ginger and fry till fragrant. Pour in the water mixed with fish sauce, oyster sauce and dark soy sauce. Bring to boil. Slowly stir in the cornstarch mixture. Let boil and dish out the sauce and place onto the cooked fish. Garnish with sliced chilli and chopped spring onion.

We can try out with whatever fish we have.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

2010-07-04T02:08:00.000-07:00

My friend gave me a medium-sized pumpkin. What to do with it? While looking through my recipe books, found a pumpkin cheesecake recipe by Amy Heng. So, get all the necessary ingredients and started to prepare for the baking.

The ingredients
for the base , 200g digestive biscuits(finely crashed or chopped)
                      20g brawn sugar
                      100g butter(melted)
the filling,        600g cream cheese
                      100g honey
                      30g cornflour
                      1 tsp ground nutmeg
                       3 eggs (beaten)
                      250ml UHT whipping cream
                      550g pumpkin flush(steam and mashed)
topping           some nutmeg powder for dusting

Mix melted butter with chopped biscuits and the brown sugar until well-combined. Press onto a 9" loose-base cake tin. Refrigerate until set. About an hour.
Preheat oven at 150 degree Celsius. Beat the cheese and honey until creamy. Add in cornflour and ground nutmeg. Add in whipping cream and eggs. Finally, add in mashed pumpkin. Pour into the prepared cake tin. Steam bake for one hour and a half or until firm to touch. Leave the cake in the oven for thirty minutes with door closed but temperature turned off. Remove cake from oven and dust with some nutmeg powder. Cool well and refrigerate for six hours before serving.

Steam bake means put the cake tin on the baking tray fill with some water.

Baked pumpkin cheese cake

I tasted a small slice of the cake, not very sweet but taste good.

Braised soy sauce pork

2010-07-01T23:25:00.000-07:00

The second dish that I cook for the lunch was braised pork in soy sauce. This is a very popular dish that my mother used to prepare for we Hokkian people during festive seasons when we were young.

the ingredients

600g pork belly or thigh meat
2 whole garlic
6 Chinese dried mushroom(pre-soaked)
4 eggs pre-boiled
some sea-cucumber (optional)
1 tbs dark soy sauce
3 tbs light soy sauce(special for cooking this dish)
1 stick 2 inc cinnamon stick
1 pcs of dried mandarin peel
dash of pepper
1 tbs of dark brawn sugar(or gula melaka)
1 tbs oil

Wash and cut the pork into bite sizes, par-boiled and drained. Marinate the meat with the dark and light soy sauces and pepper.
Clean the garlics and make a slight smash on them. Heat up the oil, fry the garlic, cinnamon and mandarin peel, add in the meat and stir fry for 5 minutes.
Add in sugar before transferring to the pot for braising. Add in enough water to cover the meat in the pot. Add in the eggs, mushrooms and sea-cucumber. Braise for an hour or until the meat is soft and tender. Serve hot with rice.

This is the result of my braised pork but where are the mushrooms? I was out of the dried Chinese mushrooms, so I have to cook without them.

Assam fish head curry

2010-07-01T22:31:00.000-07:00

My son came back for the weekend from Kuala Lumpur. I was prepared to cook Assam fish head curry and black soy sauce pork and garlic fry organic sweet potato shoots from my friend back yard. I had a red snapper fish head which I bought from Pantai Remis fishing boat a week ago, and its still very fresh.

The ingredient

red snapper fish head about 600g
300g prawn(optional)
6 fresh chillies(sliced)
3 stalks lemon grass(sliced)
10 dried chillies(soaked)
6 shallots(sliced)
3 gloves garlic(sliced)
2cm piece of dried shrimp paste
2 tbsp fish curry powder
5 pieces of young daun kesom(kaffir lime leaf)

1 stalk bunga kantan(ginger flower) split into 4
2 medium tomatoes
1 bombay onion
10 lady fingers
4 tbsp tamarind paste mix with 250ml of water.
2 tbsp oil
salt and sugar to taste

Wash and steam the fish head for about 8 minutes, discard the liquid from the steamed fish, leave aside. Steam the lady fingers for 3 minutes. Leave aside.
Pound or blend together the fresh chillies, dried chillies, shallots, garlics,curry powder,lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves,shrimp paste until fine.
Heat up oil, fry the blended ingredients until fragrant, add in the cut tomatoes, wild ginger flower and onion, the tamarind paste water and cook on low fire for 5 minutes. Add in the prawns and the steamed fish. Cook for another 3 minutes. Add in sugar and salt to taste. Lastly add in the steamed lady fingers and mix well. The Assam curry fish head is ready to be served. Yum yum... my son love it very much.

Soft Walnut Chocolate Cake

2010-06-30T04:34:00.000-07:00

This morning made appointment with Rosa and Agnes to have lunch at Kenny Roger and then later continue with our tea time. So pick up a recipe book and bake a simple soft walnut chocolate cake for our afternoon tea at the kopitiam.

The ingredients

6 eggs

40 ml cold water

200g sugar

250g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

250g butter

1 tsp vanilla essence

100g chopped walnuts

150g chopped chocolate

Line and grease a 10" square tin. Preheat oven at 170 degree Cecilius.

In a mixing bowl whisk the eggs, cold water, caster sugar and the flour at top speed until the mixture turn thick and fluffy. Leave aside.

In another bowl, beat the butter and the vanilla until light and creamy.

Mix the creamy butter and the egg mixture together until well blended. Lastly add in the chopped walnut and chocolate. Pour into the prepared tin and top with the remaining chopped chocolate.
Bake in preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes or until well done.

Slices of the walnut chocolate cake

Steamed Yam cake

2010-06-22T23:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday had tried the Kuih Talam, today I tried to steam yam cake. I got this recipe from from cousin sister from Bukit Mertajam.

The ingredients

300gms yam(cut into small cubes)

30 g dried prawns(soaked till soft and cut into smaller pieces)
250 g rice flour
25 g wheat flour
500 g water

5 onions

1/2 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

1/4 tsp sesame oil

2 tbs oil for frying

For garnishing
Chopped spring onion, parsley, and red chillies. Crisp shallot slices.

In a bowl mix water into the flour and blend well. Heat kuali with the two tablespoon of oil. Fry dried prawns, onions and yam. Add seasoning and fry till fragrant. Add in the flour mixture and stir well under slow fire until the batter thicken.

Pour the batter into a nine inch cake tin and steam for 35-40 minutes or until when tested with skiver, pull out clear. Let cool. Garnish with the garnishing.

This is result of my steamed yam cake. I like it,cos its full of yam.

Kuih Talam (Steam Pandan Layered Cake)

2010-06-22T01:08:00.000-07:00

Many of my friends including me love to eat Nyonya kuih. In fact, my grandmother was a nyonya from Bukit Mertajam. She was a very good Nyonya cook as well. She helped to support my family daily expenses by making and selling Nyonya kuih during my childhood days. Business were busier during festive seasons like Chinese New Year, dumpling festival, moon cake festival and she even cater for baby full moon celebrations. I used to help her in grating coconuts by using coconut grater(old fashion way), grind rice in to rice flour and other works that needed to be done to make all types of Nyonya kuih. Unfortunately, I did not or never think of jotting down the methods and all the necessary amount of ingredients for those authentic Nyonya kuih and food. All the methods and recipes were buried along with my grandma when she passed away twenty years ago.

Now a day, when I wanted to make Nyonya kuih or prepare Nyonya food,I have to search for recipes from Internet or old recipe books.

Today I tried to make the Kuih Talam, found this recipe from an old paper cutting by Amey Bey. I used only half of the recipe from the ingredients below.

For the syrup
250g sugar
15 screw pine leaves,pound to extract juice
450ml water

Combine sugar, water and screw pine juice in a saucepan. Cook until sugar dissolves. Let cool.

Bottom layer(green)

140g rice flour

40g tapioca flour

30 g green pea flour

330ml water

1 tsp alkaline water

Mix rice flour, tapioca flour, green pea flour and water together. Stir in prepared syrup and alkaline water. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until mixture thickens. Transfer the batter into a greased 22cm square tray and steam for 10-20 minutes.

Top layer(white)
370ml thick coconut milk
40g     rice flour
30g     green pea flour
1 tsp   corn flour
2 tbsp sugar
130ml water

1 tsp salt

Mix all ingredients for the top layer together. Cook over very low heat until sugar dissolves. Pour warm mixture over the bottom layer. Steam for another 20 minutes or until cook.

Cool completely before slicing.

Well, taste good, but not as green as those sell in the market because I did not add any green colouring.

Pumpkin Coconut Buns

2010-06-19T22:04:00.000-07:00

I used to buy coconut buns from cake shop because I love the coconut filling in the buns. Today I decided to bake my own coconut buns. After browsing through the Internet, finally settled with a recipe by mix and match from three recipes.

The Ingredients.

300 grams high protein flour

11/2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp milk powder

1 tbsp butter

100 grams steamed, smashed pumpkin

160 ml cold water

2 tsp instant dry yeast

1 tsp salt

1 egg (for glazing)

2 tbsp black sesame(for decoration)

Ingredients for the filling

180 grams grated white coconut
100 grams dark brown sugar(I got it from Medan,Indonesia)
50 grams UHT milk

25 grams butter

1/4 tsp salt
3 pandan leaves(screw pine),knotted

I put all dough the ingredients into my bread maker to make the dough, it will take one and the half hour the dough to be ready. While waiting for the dough, I prepare the filling.

To make the filling, combine butter, dark brown sugar, salt, pandan leaves and milk in a saucepan over low fire. When butter has melted and the sugar dissolved, stir in grated coconut. Mix well and cook until mixture is almost dry. Cool filling, then refrigerate.

When the dough is ready, turn it out on a lightly floured surface, scale down the dough to fifty grams each. Use the palm of the hand to round up the dough into small ball.

Roll ball of dough out flat. Add a tablespoon of filling. Gather up the sides and pleat up. Turn down the pleated side on a greased tray. Leave the balls to prove for thirty minutes. Brush balls with egg glaze and sprinkle with black sesame.

The buns before baking

Preheat the oven at 180 degree Celsius, bake the buns for twenty minutes or until golden brown.

The texture of the buns were much softer and smoother with the added pumpkin. I like it.

Simple Fruit Cake

2010-06-09T18:07:00.000-07:00

My friend Professor John, was hospitalised, yearning for home bake fruit cake. Celine , the wife did not know where to order or buy the fruit cake because they were new in Ipoh. I could not give her any suggestion as I never like fruit cake and never buy any of it because I found that the cake was too sweet . After thinking twice, and not to let John down, I served the net and found a simple fruit cake recipe by Amy Beh.

The Ingredients.

220 g mixed fruits, sprinkled with some plain flour

50 ml brandy (optional)

300 g butter

275 g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence
6 eggs
250 g plain flour, sifted
50 g self-raising flour
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg powder

I got all the ingredients from my freeze but have to substitute mixed fruits with raisins,mixed spice and nutmeg powder with cinnamon powder. I reduced the amount of sugar as well. I added in some chopped walnuts so to have some crunchy bites.

Line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper.
Combine the raisins with the brandy together, leave aside.
Cream butter, sugar and vanilla essence until mixture is light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift in flour mixture to mix. Add macerated raisins.
Pour batter into prepared tin and bake in preheated over at 170 degrees Celsius for an hour. Reduce temperature to 150 degrees Celsius and bake a further half an hour or until cooked through.

The batter in the lined loaf tin

After one and half baking fruit cake

My first baked fruit cake, yummy, John and Celine like it and I love it too.

Stuffed fried Ikan Cencaru or Torpedo Scad

2010-06-04T04:51:00.000-07:00

Went to Tesco hypermarket this morning for sundry shopping. Bought four of the ikan cencaru or torpedo scad, decided to cook Fried Stuffed Ikan Cencaru . At the same time bought some of the ingredients for cooking the fish as well.

The ingredients.

10 dried chillies, washed and pre-soaked in hot water.

5   red chillies,
6   onions,
5   young kaffir lime leaves,
4   stalks of lemon grass,
10 grams of belacan ( dried shrimp paste),
15 grams of tamarind paste,(soak in 1/4 of water to have the juice)
1/2 teaspoon of salt,
1/2 teaspoon of sugar,
2 tablespoons of oil for frying the ingredients, and
oil for frying the fish.

Cut the dried chillies, red chillies, onions, lemon grass and the kaffir lime leaves into small sizes.Put all the cut ingredients in a blender,pour in the tamarind juice to blend until all the ingredients were fine. Strand the extra liquid from the blended ingredients. In a prying pan, heat up the two tablespoons of oil, fry the ingredients until fragrant. Leave a side and let cool.
Wash the fish and pat dry. Fill in the fried ingredients into the slide open backs and the stomachs of all the fishes.

Heat up enough oil for deep frying the fish. Fry the fish in low fire until golden brown. Serve hot.

Kuih Lepat Pisang

2010-06-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

Bought a banana seedling from Pasar Tani(farmer's market) to plant outside our fence beside the drain. It grew up very healthy and fast. The leaves were big enough for me to make some deserts. So, I bought a bunch of pisang awak (a type of banana for making local deserts) and decided to make kuih pisang lepat(folded banana desert). Cut two of the banana leaves from the plant, cut into 15cm by 15cm sizes, washed, par-boiled and wide dry ready for use.

My only banana tree

The ingredients

10 bananas

30 grams wheat flour

1/2 of coconut (only the white part)

1/4 teaspoon of salt (mix into the coconut white)

Smashed the bananas. In a mixing bowl, put in the smashed bananas, slowly add in the flour, mix well.

Place two tablespoon of the mixture on a piece of the dried banana leave, then put a tablespoon of white coconut on it, fold up carefully into shape. Repeat with the rest of the mixture.

Steam for twenty minutes. Serve hot or cold.