Browsing through my Facebook can be somewhat extremely stressful. It's food from someone else's kitchen, food from cafes, food from restaurants and food and more food~!!! ....'thou shalt not covet'.... 'thou shalt not covet'.... 'thou shalt not covet'....'thou shalt not covet'.... well, I try to cook better. I aim for the best taste. The 'ooommphhh' must be there.
Actually as long as hubby and mi mama said it's delicious, I'm okay. But sometimes my taste buds have been upgraded a notch higher and I will feel that my cooking was not as good. Today is a Sunday. Hubby is supposed to cook but he's tired because he has been driving me around today. Usually I'm the driver when he's my sleeping passenger. So, he said he would take a nap and helped me in the kitchen a few minutes or an hour later. By the time I'm done cooking, he was still in dreamland. I made this rice meant to be a Chinese New Year meal. Oh, well... Chinese New Year's only for 15 days but I've started mine so much earlier. For example, I've finished a few containers of CNY goodies. Emptied them containers every week. Back to the rice, it's not fried rice. But just to share with you a bit of information if you don't know, if you want to cook rice with a mixture of sorts, saute all the ingredients first. That's the first step to bring out the taste. Then, of course, you will need seasoning before you transfer everything into the rice cooker. It's pumpkin rice with Chinese sausage. I cancelled waxed meat off my list. Don't fancy such item.
While the hubby was still snoring away, I was boiling the potatoes thinking when the hubby would come down and help me. Then the marinated chicken thighs which had sit in the refrigerator came out and went for a spa with lemon juice and rosemary in the oven. While being roasted to perfection, only the hubby came down. Actually, after I was done with everything, I woke him up if not I think he will have all these for tomorrow's breakfast.
I wanted hubby to make that for me because I know he could come out with something nicer. In the end I was the one standing at the stove blanching the Japanese spinach and stuffing the lychees with chicken and prawn paste. You don't buy chicken and prawn paste. You just blend them together and marinate them. This too, went for steaming and has been sitting on the table for a long time. Halfway through dinner, the hubby needed to go clear his bowel. Nothing surprising with such uneventful happening, it runs in 'his' side of the family, both male and female. They carry out the dumping process while digestion takes place.
I played with my konnyaku jelly dessert while the hubby was away. I read that konnyaku originated from plants. That's all I could remember from my reading. I just know I can eat lots and lots of konnyaku all on my own. I have ditched the orange flavoured jelly and adopted the lychee flavoured one.
Mi mama made her best ever pineapple tarts but she made the competitor blueberry tarts as well. I have no love for the blueberry tarts because I no like blueberries. I no like any berries. No like strawberries, raspberries, blackberries... all please stay away from me. I will stay loyal to pineapple tarts.
Mi mama also made Nian Gao (年糕) - Chinese New Year cake, it's sticky and I like it deep fried with yam. It's palm-size so it's really huge. Mi mama said she will make love letters next year.
This is also one of my favourites - Dahfa fish tied together and sacrificed in the oven. It will be gone by tomorrow. How to keep Chinese New Year goodies until Chinese New Year? I think by the time Chinese New Year's day arrives, we will be left with no goodies at all. I'm waiting for mi mama's (rougan 肉干) - Malaysian pork jerky~!!! *saliva dripping all over the floor*... *drip drip drip*
Yesterday, mi mama spoiled my cooking plan. Mi mama said we're going to dine outside so we ended up at Nippon Yataimura, my current favourite haunt for Japanese food. We didn't order anything outside of the menu. The place was quite packed and the chef must be stuck in the kitchen. I made a silent vow to go to the red raccoon once a month but since hubby wasn't with us, I will consider yesterday's visit not a visit for the month.... hehehehe.... *cheater's way of calculating*
Mi mama cooked for yesterday because after our rendezvous to Queensbay, I was going to be late for my class. The recipe was followed almost to the dot. Mi mama kept some for me for supper. The chicken soup was really good. I have made a few different types of chicken soup and this was the best ever~! Of course the soup looks oily, chicken oil ma.... and no, I didn't remove the chicken skin. You remove my chicken skin, I will remove your skin... Hehehe... *tit for tat*
Finally, I realized that 30g of shallots means 5 shallots only. Yesterday, for my curry kapitan, I used 35 shallots while the otak-otak took up 10 shallots. I thought I would not have enough shallots for today as it was written 30g. Calculating the shallots one-by-one and weighing them in grams made no sense to me. I thought 30g would be at least 20 shallots but in the end it was only 5 like that. Then, I have the rest of the dry ingredients as like what you can see in the photo. Oh, if you're not a kitchen person then you wouldn't know that there are star anise, cloves, cardamom seeds, cinnamon stick, candlenuts, garlic, shallots and coriander seeds. You don't blend them all into powder form. It would be so bitter you would curse yourself for blending them because you thought it would be easier that way. Some of these spices are not meant to be turned into powder form. I only grind the shallots, candlenuts and garlic. The rest were thrown in. Before you throw them all into the soup, you saute them for awhile. Don't be lazy. There's no short cut in cooking.
Soto ayam has ayam but no sotong. I always thought that soto ayam means sotong and ayam. Hehehheeh.... I think this is an Indonesian dish. Don't just throw in the chicken without marinating them. Then use the velvet-ing skill before throwing them all into the soup. Seasoning is of utmost importance. Then, you will get your perfect soto ayam. I used the lobster noodles and that's for lunch. Oh, soto ayam goes very well with the begedil.
That's not chicken burger. That's just like potato croquette but with spices and I added a lot more other seasoning because I only want to eat the tastiest food. Just coat it with a layer of egg and in they went into the wok with boiling oil.
Ta da~! Everything in one bowl... and that took me more than an hour to prepare. I wonder what I will be cooking tomorrow... Can't remember what I choose for tomorrow.
This is one of my kitchen crew members. I've known her since she was seven. Yesterday was her seventeenth birthday but we chose today to celebrate as today is a public holiday. A public holiday which I still work as usual but I always have time during lunch hour. This year we planned to do all birthday celebrations differently. Each of them will have their very own lobster and we don't intend to hold any big parties like last year until we got so tired. So, I'm the only one cooking and I can manage.
I asked her a week earlier what she wanted. It's either Western cuisine, Chinese or Nyonya cuisine. She chose Nyonya cuisine which went very well with the neighbour who loves spicy food. All of us love spicy food but my own curry kapitan chicken was too spicy for myself... huhuhuhu but it was perfectly nice for everyone else. I blended my own curry paste. Don't ask me to buy from those stalls selling all sort of paste. I got headache looking at that. Isn't it easier to blend your own paste and cheaper also?
I made jiu hu char as well, something I love very much and hubby helped me with the seasoning. I was really busy until I thought I was gonna break my back standing in the kitchen after rushing back from my morning class. I scheduled our lunch at 1p.m. and everyone has arrived except that the food was ready only at 2 p.m. *sigh* Nyonya cuisine is one tedious cuisine to prepare.
Otak-otak, each person one. Hubby took such a long time cleaning and blanching the banana leaves then making them into boxes. It took just 10 minutes to steam and they turned out perfectly well, too. But it took us less than a minute to scoop everything out and throw away the banana leaf box. Daun kadok was plucked from my garden, same goes for the kaffir lime leaves.
I boiled a pot of fish maw soup with self-made prawn balls and threw in some carrots and a small yam bean to make the soup sweet. A whole cabbage was thrown in as well. I love fish maw. Quality fish maw can be bought from Tesco as it's the Chinese New Year season now.
I prepared all those four nyonya dishes while mi mama made salad. Then Judz brought porky from Klang but I couldn't find the photos. I think I missed out taking the photos.
You know when I look at this photo, I don't know what I'm doing actually. I thought I won't be hosting anymore dinners and lunches and parties but I jumped to the opportunity of having a public holiday and dived straight to host a birthday lunch. I think I like hosting eating events. Hehhehehe... but it's a small scale one for today.
There were not many photos taken as we were very hungry. Our side of the table attacked food the fastest. We even grabbed the plates from the other end of the table and we finished them in no time at all. These people here have steel stomach. We were very full already until we could barely move but then we couldn't wait to start on dessert.
Two of the cheesecakes were hacked. The round chilled chocolate cheesecake was prepared by another kitchen crew. The batik Nutella cheesecake was done by mi mama. So, this year I can retire from baking birthday cakes.
I was thinking of having something simple. But only hubby knows how to make the soft-boiled eggs like how I wanted them to be. Due to the Thaipusam festival, traffic in town would be a stand-still by noon time. I cancelled off my classes to spend my time doing my paperwork at home.But I ended up doing something else.
After we were done with grocery shopping, I became really tired. I just wanted to crawl up to the bedroom which has the night time feel round the clock, turn on the air-cond and cover myself with my comforter. A great thought, eh.... I was thinking of re-heating the soup from yesterday's leftover then maybe eat with vermicelli. Wishful thinking. I re-heated the pot of soup but suddenly I walked upstairs to go to the loo. I saw my comfortable pyjamas and then I changed into my pyjamas. I don't remember the pot of soup at all. The air-cond was turned on and I crawled straight into bed. I put my alarm to an hour later. Hubby called to say he wouldn't be back so early so I changed my alarm to another 45 minutes later on top of the one hour.
*sigh* While sleeping I heard a loud sound like something dropped or was it an explosion but I couldn't care less. Then, I smell something burning. Gosh.... could it be the weather was too hot until the air-cond was on fire? Couldn't care less... continue sleeping. Suddenly I thought of the tomatoes that I bought earlier. I should throw in the tomatoes into the soup before hubby came back. While sleeping, I could even think of how many pieces I wanted to cut out of the tomatoes. I was thinking whether to use one or two tomatoes. Oh, my brain works brilliantly when I'm asleep. I can think of what kinda story line to write for my essays while sleeping. I'm good like that. And suddenly I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen. Hohohohoho~! The whole house was filled with smoke. If there's smoke alarm in the house, the fire brigade would have driven straight into the house. I went straight to the stove and turn it of. I don't know what else to do so I called the hubby and crawled back to sleep.
Hubby came back then and I got what I wanted to eat. I got my soft-boiled eggs with bread. And I got to eat hubby's fried vermicelli. The whole house smell like I just had barbecue in the house for hours without proper ventilation.
So, today I've not done much. Waited to be served for breakfast, worshiped God in the morning, went for corporate prayer for an hour, went out for lunch, then came back to online for awhile looking through photos, went for a walk around the field outside, came back for dinner and now back on the screen. Hubby prepared a sumptuous dinner. That's the clams I bought from Batu Lanchang market. I think next time I'm going to buy and freeze them so I could have some clams or whatever shellfish dish during the weekdays. That's the clam dish steamed with eggs. Hubby did it almost to perfection. Something is terribly wrong with both our egg-steaming skills.
I bought a kilo of clams so the rest was made into kam heong stir-fry clam dish. I saved the best for the last. After I was done with other dishes, I attacked on that. At first I wanted to buy just half a kilo as the seller said it would be enough for three person. But I looked at the amount and I told him I could finish up a kilo all on my own with no problem at all. So, yeah, I got a kilo for self. I like buying from honest seller. He gave me more than a kilo but charged at the price of a kilo. May God bless such honest person in doing business.
Hubby's fried chicken is the best~! He altered the main recipe and made it into his own concoction. The gravy looked like the glue starch that was home-made and brought to school for Art Lessons. I thought I would faint looking at the colour. Was thinking what had hubby done to the main recipe until the whole dish looked so different. But in the end the taste was so good I ate another half of the extra piece of chicken. Both of us shared the extra piece.
All the dishes were dry dishes thus, I ordered a pot of ABC soup from the hubby. Hubby said he can do that easily so there.... there... that's my fantastic ABC soup... I love you hubby~!
Hubby made a dish for himself. That bitter gourd spicy dish will never in a million years appear from my hands. I will never prepare that dish. So bitter... how to eat?
We had really good dinner together. Only on Sundays we get to sit down together to have a meal. On other days, I had lunch all on my own, mi mama had lunch all on her own. Hubby would come back and have very late lunch. Odd hours of working make it difficult to sit down together to have a meal. It's really good that I stop working on Sundays starting this year. I have missed so much. I should have never started working on Sundays in the first place. Should have never even consider working on Saturdays. Maybe should just work five days a week. Or maybe should just sit at home and be a boring housewife, wearing pyjamas all day long doing nothing except cook and eat and cook and eat.
It was just a thought. Then that thought turned into words. Those words became a request. Out of love, it was done. My precious woke up at 7:30a.m. to make breakfast for us before we went to church. It was really early for her because usually I would wake her up 10 minutes before leaving the house, she would change up and then continued with her beauty sleep in the car. The first thing she made was banana pancakes. I have no skills for pancakes. Mi mama can make pancakes but my precious' pancakes were the best. I love banana pancakes... eh, no need to study liao la... go sell banana pancakes.
Then, she made Tamagoyaki, it's a Japanese egg roll. She forced made me to cut the carrots into cubes for her. It's good.... perfect~!
One more was prepared. The Bombay toast. Really good... we had a hearty breakfast with hubby's ice-cream. Now, I'm waiting for dinner to be prepared... while waiting mi mama and I going for a walk outside the house. Hehehehhe....
