Stuffed tau foo

Prepare the tauchu sauce.
1. 3 tablespoon of tauchu sauce
2. 4/5 pips of garlic

Fried the garlic and add in the sauce.
Add water and sugar to taste. Please don't add salt. Tauchu is salty.

Stuffed ladies finger.

Cut a slit in the ladies finger and stuffed the paste in. Get a small bowl of water beside you for you to wet your fingers to smoothen the paste.

Slit the brinjals and stuffed paste in. Be very careful. Brinjals are fragile in the sense that the slit will break the peices into two. Brinjals once cut will very quickly turn colour so once you cut it, put the pieces back into a bowl of salt water. Salt water will prevent a change in colour.

These are the ingredients to make the paste.

1. 1 packet of fish paste.

2. 1 chicken breast piece. Mince the chicken.

3. Some spring onions and corriander leaves (Chinese yin sai).

Method:

1. Add everything in and mix them properly. Add salt, sugar, pepper and light soya sauce.

2. Steam the stuffed ingredients for about 15 min.

3. When it is ready, pour the touchu sauce over them. You may choose not to have the tauchu sauce. The other options are a) eat plain or b) add garlic oil.

Wat Tan Hor with a delicious twist

My attempt of having a slightly different taste for Wat Tan Hor but I didn't use Kuey Teow. I used rice vermicelli (mei fun)

I fry 1 onion and five bibs of garlic.

I added 2 tomatoes to give a sweet and sour taste but basically to give it a sweeter taste.

I then added minced chicken meat (season before hand with salt, sugar, pepper and light soya sauce for a while only) I have used 1 piece of chicken breast meat.

I fried till chicken was cooked then I added three large bowls of water. You can choose to add more water or less. If you add more water than your ingredients should be more. Add less water is fine.

I let it boil for around 10 min before I added corn flour to thicken the sauce. You can add potato flour or wheat flour if you have run out of corn flour. Sometimes adding wheat flour is better because sauce with corn flour eaten the next day tend to be watery. It sort of loses the starcy feel.

I switched off the fire and waited for another 5 to 6 min before I beat in two eggs to give a twirl of egg in the sauce. Test the heat because your egg may end up too cooked and it won't be nice. Well if you keep for next day, of course we will lose some of the original taste but we will still have delicious sauce to eat with our noodles.

And now come this delicious twist - adding vinegar to the sauce. This is a Japanese vinnegar used to make sushi. When I added this, the taste of the dish really changes and if you like chilli, do have a go with it. It is simply mouth watering.

As for me, I added a tablespoon into my bowl just before eating. Fu la Mak!!!

Fish Mango Curry

Ingredients

3 mangoes - sliced

3 sprigs curry leaves

Tamarind - a clump. Add water into the tamarind. 1 large soup bowl.

Fish spice

Vegetables to be added in

1 large fish

Method

1. Heat wok with some oil.

2. Fry fish spice.

3. Add in curry leaves

4. Pour in tamarind juice.

5. Add in two more bowls of water.

6. Put 1 tbsp chilli powder and 2 tbsp fish curry powder. If you want the curry to be hotter, add another 1 tbsp of chilli powder.

7. Boil for a while before you add in the vegetables. Cook till the vegetables are soft.I took out the vegetables and kept them aside so that when I add in my fish, my fish would disintergrate. Too much ingredients will cause difficulty in scooping the fish out and therefore will break the fish into tiny pieces.

8. Put in fish and mangoes. Cook till fish is cooked.

9. Add santan (coconut milk if you want. Don't worry about closterol. Santan won't hurt because we seldom use it. Furthermore if curry is too hot for taste, the santan will cut back a bit of strong taste of chilli.)

10. Add salt to taste.

You can find this recipe in internet but I thought I would just like to share it with you, cooked my style. The curry has a sweetish taste because of the mango. I used ripe mangoes. Perhaps you can try unripe ones and the curry will perhaps be sour. I haven't try unripe mangoes but if you do, please let me know how the curry taste.

HAVE A NICE MEAL!

Mint chicken

Hi dear friends, it has been a long time since I uploaded this blog. Well, I was extremely busy and tired and thus had no time for this blog. Food cooked was very simple. Eating became almost like eating out from tiffin. Luckily no oone complained except once in a while I hear some grumbles about me not baking any nice chocolate cake or making egg custards. I felt very bad but ....... I needed more than a needle to prick me to move and finally after many, many moons, I managed to drag myself to the kitchen and once again put back decent food on the table and one of the first dish I put back is 'Mint chicken' and I want to share it with you.

Originally I wanted the dish to be Mint Chicken Curry but as I cooked, I changed the recipe. Hope that you will enjoy it just like the way my family did. My husband who is in the attempt of the losing weight, is struggling because he said it was finger licking good. Ha Ha Ha. What a nice way to be praised but I worry about his weight. Don't ask, you will faint...........

Well, here is the recipe.

1. 1/2 chicken (I have added another breast piece - for more boneless meat)

2. 1 big onion (don't like small ones as they make my eyes water)

3. 5/6 pips of garlic

4. 5cm ginger

5. 2/3 tomatoes (you can add more if you want a sweeter taste)

6. 2/3 sprigs of curry leaves

7. 1 serai ( I don't know the name in English.

8. spices :

1 cinammon stick

4/5 star annise

1 tsp jintan manis

1 tsp jintan putih

4/5 bunga lawang

9. a big bunch of mint leaves (up to individual to put the amount)

10. 4/5 dry chillies

serai

serai chopped finelly

mint leaves

chicken chopped and marinated with black soya sauce, pepper, sugar and salt

Put ingredients to blend - onion, garlic, dry chillies, tomatoes and serai. Use only oil. Don't use water. You will still get a fine paste.

Add mint leaves to blend. If it is difficult to blend, add a little more oil.

the long stick - cinnamon stick

the flower like spice - star annise

the small stub like flower - bunga lawang

the white grains spice that look like rice - jintan putih

the dark brown grain spice - jintan manis

Method of cooking

1. Heat some oil

2. Fry the spices under low hear. If the heat is too high, the grains will be burned very first

and it will cause a slight bitter taste to the flavour.

3. Once there is a small aroma, add in the curry leaves.

4. Now add in the blended ingredients and fry for a while.

5. Lastly add in the chicken and fry till the chicken is cooked.

6. Add salt to taste.

Fry the blended ingredients and spices.

The mint chicken is cooked.

HOPE YOU TOO WILL HAVE A NICE MEAL

How to Make Creamy Mushroom Soup - Cream of Mushroom Soup Recipe

I was looking for a recipe on how to make mushroom soup and I came across this. My method was slightly different because when I started cooking, I quite forgot the method. Well, it was tasty too. Rich and thick and delicious.

Ingredients:

1 big onion

5 pips garlic

3 different types of mushrooms

1 tsp of butter

3/4 cup or less evaporated milk

a dash or more of parmesan cheese

Method

1. Fry onion till soft and fragrant

2. Add in garlic and fry till fragrant

3. Add in sliced mushrooms and fry for about 10 min.

4. Add in the butter and continue to fry for a while.

5. Add water (the amount is the amount you would like to have) and boil for about 20 to 30 min.

6. Cool down and then I blend it till creamy.

7. Put back the creamy mushroom into the pot.

8. Put in your evaporated milk, stir.

9. Add salt and parmesan cheese.

Voila! your mushroom soup is ready. Now, you can choose either my method or follow the video. Enjoy your mushroom soup.

Chinese Chicken Curry

Chinese Chicken Curry has a slight difference in taste and style from the Indian Chicken Curry. The ingredients are basically the same except that we have (a) serai and (b) tau foo pok (dry bean curd) and we do add some asam jawa to give the curry a slight tinge of sourish taste. Of course we squeeze (c) 1/2 a small lime just before we eat (for extra sour taste) and when we eat this curry with noodles.

(a) serai

(b) tau foo pok

(c) small limes

Spices (clockwise) : star anise, jintan manis, jintan putih, cinnamon and cloves

Ingredients
1. 1 big onion

2. 4 to 5 bibs garlic

3. 4 to 5 cm ginger

4. 4 to 5 dry chillies

5. 2 to 3 big tomatoes

6. 3 to 4 potatoes

7. a small fish ball size asam jawa

Method

Step 1 : Cut your chicken pieces ( I have used 1/2 a chicken and a piece of breast meat)

Step 2 : Put in the potatoes, garlic (some added here while some would be blended) and ginger

Step 3 : Put in your asam jawa

Step 4 : Put everything to boil

Step 5 : Add in 2 tablespoon of chilly powder
( you can just put 1 tablespoon if you don't want your curry to be too hot)

Step 6: Add in 2 tablespoon of meat curry powder (don't use the wrong curry powder. The smell will be different.

Step 7 : Boil till chicken is half cooked.

Step 8 : In a separate wok, fry the blended ingredients ( tomatoes, onions, garlic, dry chillies and if you have not put in your ginger to boil, you can blend the ginger here)

Step 9 : Put in your serai and fry till fragrant.

Step 10 : Put in your curry leaves. Fry till fragrant

Step 11 : Put all the fried ingredients into the boiling pot and allow to boil for another 15 mintues.

*** You can choose to add either coconut milk, evaporated milk or yoghurt or don't add anything after the curry is cooked. We add the following for various reasons:
a) to thicken the curry
b) to give taste
c) to reduce hotness of the curry

Step 12 : When your curry is ready, chop in chinese parsley. (optional as it depends on individual taste)

Step 13 : Add your tau foo pok.

chicken curry

chinese parsley

Homemade Tom Yom Soup

Good evening. It is 8.12pm here in Malaysia and I have just taken my dinner. While waiting to take my bath ( my younger girl is in there and she takes at least 1/2 hour), I thought I would share with you a homemade Tom Yom soup.

On a cold day, it would be so wonderful to have a bowl of warm soup and here in Asia, we love hot and spicy soup and one of it is Tom Yom soup. Tom Yom is actually a Thai dish but we have concocted our own recipe which is also really delicious. This soup can be drank on its own as an appetiser. But here we add noodles to it. We also sometimes have it with rice. Wow! Really delicious.

We can buy the Tom Yom paste in the supermarket but some of us may not like the oil in the paste so here I will share with you a very simple but delicious recipe that is really mouth watering.

Ingredients :

1. 3 stalks serai

2. 3 tomatoes (you can add more)

3. 3 stalks kafir leaves (You can add more)

4. 1 carrot

5. bird eye chillies

6. 5 to 6 asam keping

(They are dry and smell sourish. They give the sour

taste to the soup )

7. 2 onions (You can add more)

8. some fish balls (If you like)

9. 1 chicken breast piece

10. 10 button mushrooms (optional)

Method :
1. Cut the chicken breast piece to small bites

2. Cut the onions into small chunks

3. Cut the carrot into small chunks.

4. Cut the tomatoes into small chunks.

5. Smash the serai and bird eye chillies

6. Put all into the pot of water and add in the kafir leaves.

7. Boil for 1 hour.

8. Add salt to taste.

Tips : You can add in anything that you fancy. And the best part is throwing everything in and allowing it to boil but mind you to keep an eye on the water level. We don't want a burnt pot of Tom Yom!

Here in this recipe I am using chicken. You can do away with chicken but use sea food products : prawns, cuttlefish and crab meat.

Have a nice dinner!