Sun, 30th Sept 2007

Short quick easy dinner for the kids.

Ham and eggs with toast and milk for Mark.

Ham & Egg Sandwich with tomato ketchup with milo for Hazel.

Sun, 30th Sept 2007

Homemade laksa from the church sale.

Here it is in it's plastic container.

Then placed in a bowl and microwaved. Add more sambal and more egg, then hot laksa soup.

And tuck in.

Sat, 29th Sept 2007

Went out with the girls last night for dinner and drinks.

2 plates of Spaghetti Aglio Olio

Half roast chicken with mash potatoes, vegetables and rosemary jus and pepper sauce

Lamb curry chapati foldover

1 portion chicken liver (too well done, so livers were hard tasteless little cubes)

Huge basket of breads with olive oil, balsamic vinegar dip

And cake.....

And champagne and presents from S. (love ya and thank you again!) (S has glowing, fine, unlined skin at 4x and what's one of her secrets? J&J Clean & Clear Daily Pore Cleanser from the supermarkets so she bought one for me too, plus Lip Plumper, face shimmer and soap from The Face Shop).

Overate/drank/laughed again. But worth every second.

Birthday cakes

Here are 3 cakes which I received in the last 2 weeks.... :D

Cake 1 - Sat, 22nd Sept 2007 (from Hazel - thank you Hazel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Cake 2 - Mon, 25th Sept 2007 (from the Sheraton Hotel, sent to me c/o my office thank you Sheraton)

Cake 3 - Sat, 29th Sept 2007 (from S, thank you S!!!!!!!!)

Thurs, 27th Sept 2007

Something nice and sweet and cold and refreshing and delicious for some of you to break your fast with.

Almond Jelly with Longan and icy syrup and papaya. Nice!
Just buy a box of almond jelly powder, mix according to instructions.

Chill and when set (takes about 20 mins only) cut into diamonds or any shape, add to a tin of longans, chill in fridge and add ice before eating. Add cold water to dilute syrup if you wish, otherwise the melting ice will dilute it too.

Selamat Berbuka Puasa to all my Muslim readers!

Salt & Pepper Prawns

Tues, 25th Sept 2007

As part of our mid-Autumn festival dinner, I also cooked these prawns - 'chiu yim' in Cantonese.

Ingredients

1. Shallots, garlic, chillies - diced finely. Fry till light brown and put aside.

2. Devein, wash and dry prawns.

3. Spice salt (bought from HK) or make your own with Szechuan peppercorns and rock salt or just use black pepper and salt.

Method

1. Flavour corn starch with spice salt. Lightly dust prawns with cornstarch and fry till 90% cooked. Remove and keep aside.

2. Repeat till all prawns are done. Here they are - unadorned.

3. Wash wok, and add the lightly fried shallots, garlic & chillies with oil to the wok. Add prawns and sprinkle with spice salt. Fry till fragrant - remove and serve. Here it is - no time to garnish. If you fry the prawns long enough, the shells turn crispy and with the tasty garlic/shallots/chillies clinging to them, you can literally eat the prawn whole, shells and all.

Another pic of the prawns next to the chicken rice.

A nice recipe can be found here.

Chicken Rice

How to make the rice.

Ingredients

Washed rice, drained.

Garlic, shallots & ginger diced finely

Bruised pandan leaves, tied with string

Pure chicken stock (the remains at the bottom of the plate after you have steamed the chicken) - drain through a fine cloth/sieve.

Method

Fry diced ingredients till lightly browned and fragrant, add drained rice and fry till rice is evenly coated with aromatics and rice appear very dry and crackly.

Put into a rice pot, add pandan leaves, drained chicken stock and salt. If you want that extra something, add a teaspoon of chicken stock powder.

Close lid, press cook, and fluff rice up once it's done. Serve. Fluffy, tasty but not oily chicken rice.

Here is a small glimpse of the rice and the plate of chopped chicken.

How to steam chicken

Wash, clean and drain chicken.

Brush with salt, sesame oil and put a little ginger sauce into the cavity.

Put into a deep plate.

Steam over medium heat for approx 45 mins (depending on size of chicken)

Dunk into ice-water after steaming (I missed this part - but supposedly this step tenderises the chicken) and cease cooking further so it's just done.

Drizzle a little oil in the chicken stock over chicken and allow to cool.

Chop and serve.

Drain chicken stock and use it to cook your chicken rice - method described above.

Sat, 22nd Sept 2007

I think this very very naughty pic will make a lot of you hungry - it sure did me!

Overnight Seria kolomee, which I fried with an egg and pickled chillies for my breakfast. It was soooooooo yummy.

Tues, 25th Sept 2007

Home-made chicken rice, anybody?

Carefully & gently steamed, corn-fed hand-reared chicken.
Aromatic Msg-free rice cooked with sauteed garlic, shallots, ginger, pandan leaves and pure real chicken stock - I drizzled a little sweet soy sauce over the rice, thinking one of my kids could have this lovely 'display' portion but hey, they insisted that I ate it, so I did.
Hand grated, home-made ginger sauce,

Sil, I know how much you used to love ginger sauce so here are 2 bowls fresh from the wok for you to look at.

More pics later!

Sun, 23rd Sept 2007

No, no, this had not turned into a 'personal blog' - so back to food. Here is a photo taken at a laden table at a family gathering on Sunday at UJ & AN's house, after my Andaman sungkai buffet.

The homemade Thai fish cakes were lovely - I was given some to take home. Thank you, AN.

Homemade Tom Yum soup.

Sunday, 23rd Sept 2007

My absolute monkey of a fearless child, jumping off the second tier at the National Sports Complex. I went up to have a look and if not for fear of 'embarrassing' my children, I would have asked to be helped down the stairs to terra firma (my legs had turned to jelly).


It looks like she's 'dangling' but she really is not.
p.s For someone with a camera which has no screen (lcd gone wonky), these pics are not bad!

Tues, 25th Sept 2007

Aren't we the coolest family? This was taken in HK at (maternal side) Grandpa's birthday a l.o.n.g time ago. Spot me!

Sat, 22nd Sept 2007

So how did last night's dinner go? Here is yet again another picture of a table heaving with food.
We had Mum's sticky 'new year' pot filled with the ingredients described shown in the last post. By the way, ladies, fish maw is reputed to be full of collagen, which taken in reasonable quantities, is very good for the skin.... fact or fiction? I don't know but I love it anyways.
A 7-star garoupa (bought live), steamed with lots of spring onions and ginger.
Roast Duck (bought).

Butter Chicken (bought).

Oaty butter prawns (cooked by Wm).

Satay (bought)

And an early cake which Hazel organised on the secret for me, last week she got Wm to take her to the Sheraton, chose and paid for the cake with her pocket-money, and got Dom to take her there to collect the cake yesterday and sneaked it into the fridge while I was having a snooze before dinner. *beams* - yes, isn't that the sweetest thing? And she's only 9!



I received cards and presents too! (Face cream from Mark).

And of course, we must have this.

And here are my kids doing a funny dance for me, I used one of the coupons in the card which Hazel bought.

Thank you to Mum and Wm who organised last night's dinner and for a change, I didn't have to lift a finger! All I did was watch Tv with a champagne flute in my hand until dinner was ready.