PonyTales

The sweet and sour pork is one of the most common Chinese dish, either served at home or at the restaurant. This dish is a must try if you really have the faintest idea what dish to order for a Chinese dinner. In Cantonese, it is also known as "Ku Loh Yuk".

Out of the blue, I remembered how tasty those "ku lou yuk" my Mom dish out for us (very often) when we were children. This dish always makes us eat more - our plate so squeaky clean, my Mom probably saves on the washing as well…hahaha

I attempted this dish and this is how it looked like…

Sweet Sour Pork, Stir fry baby french beans and ABC soup

Given the time I have, I used the shortest way I know to cook the sweet sour pork.

Ingredients
Pork belly (I used the really lean type with less fat)
1 egg
Cornflour
Oil for frying
Spring onion (for garnishing)
* You can add other fruity veges to make this dish more wholesome such as cubed pineapples, capsicum and cucumber

Seasonings (mixed all in a bowl - you can do this a day earlier if you are busy)
Tomato sauce
Chilli sauce
Apple cider vinegar
Sugar
Salt
Pepper
A dash of Chinese cooking wine

Method

1. Cubed the pork belly and soak them in 1 beaten egg.
2. Heat up a wok with enough oil for frying.
3. Dab the pork belly with egg in corn flour and fry all of them till golden brown. Dish out.
4. Leave a little of the frying oil in the wok and heat up.
5. Pour the seasonings in the wok and let it come to a boil - stirring occasionally.
6. Once you can smell the pungent sourish taste of the seasonings, add in the fried pork and stir fry.
7. Once the pork cubes are all well covered with the sauce - dish out and garnish with some spring onions. Serve with rice.

Hubby commented that he dislike the use of vinegar in the dishes (even healthy apple cider vinegar), so maybe next time I have to use lemon or some other subsitutes for this dish. Anyhow, I am not sure whether the outcome will be the same  - I doubt it!

I love to bake and I got bitten by the baking bug when I was in lower secondary school. I choose to do "Home Science" instead of Commerce. Thou the teachers are really fierce but I never regret it cause I have learned a lot. Our first baking lesson was "Rock Buns" and it rocks cause it smelled heavenly while baking. I had a lot of fun eating it too and even brought back some for my Mom and Dad…hahaha

I got this recipe from Darrius’s Mom cooking website. It is really easy as it uses premix and I do not even need a electronic mixer to make this.

For the love of baking, I am gonna present this in picture steps. Here you go…

Ingredients - blueberry muffin premix, 3 eggs,
135g melted butter or corn oil and 100ml water
Some cream cheese cut into cubes

Blueberry muffin mix - makes 12 muffins

Mix the premix into the butter/oil and gradually add water to mix them all up

Add eggs one at a time and continue whisking

Whisk until you get a soft batter and scoop using spoon into muffin casings.
You can add a piece of cream cheese and add another spoon of batter to cover it.
Make sure that the casings are only half filled.
Casings are also from Bake with Yen (50s for RM2.70 - large size)

Bake in oven at 180 degree for 30 mins.
Taaadaaa! You’ve got yourself a nice batch of homemade blueberry muffins with cream cheese fillings…yummmy!!!

I was thinking of what to eat for Father’s Day - sort of to celebrate that special day. Earlier, Daddy told me that he and his colleagues went for Nasi Kandar and they ordered those huge fried prawns - but he did not get to eat any…poor thing. He is lucky that the regular fishmonger that I go to was selling those huge "XXL" prawns and they were really fresh. So, I bought 1/2Kg for RM24 (about 11 big prawns). Wash, trimmed the head and legs and I cooked them with the only way I know best - sweet and sour. This is how it looked…

Juicy Prawns with stir fry choy sum!

As long as the seafood is fresh, anyway of cooking it will be good - that is for sure.

Ingredients
Big fresh prawns (XXL size)
Old ginger - chopped
Garlic - chopped
Chilli padi - chopped (optional if you prefer a bit spicy)
Tauchu (fermented bean paste)
Spring onions (cut small)
Oil

Seasonings (all mixed)
Tomato sauce
Chilli sauce
Pepper
Apple cider vinegar
Chinese cooking wine

Method

1. Heat a little oil in wok and throw in the chopped garlic, ginger and chilli padi with tauchu. Stir fry until fragrant.
2. Put in the prawns and continue to stir fry - see that the prawns is all smeared with the garlic, ginger and chili padi paste.
3. Pour in the seasonigs and continue to stir.
4. Once the prawn is cooked, garnish with some spring onions and serve.

Daddy was really delighted and keeps telling me it was really yummy cause the prawns are very fresh. The meats are crunchy and juicy, and since the prawns are huge - there is really a lot of meat there. I think he ate 7 prawns that nite…hahaha! This plate of prawns cost us about RM25+….but if we ate outside, it is probably double the price and I doubt we can even get such big prawns. Eating at home is fun as well as we do not get people starring at us while we slowly peel and suck on those juicy prawns…hehehe

One fine Sunday weekend, I returned home from church and brave myself to cook this simple chicken pie recipe. I learned how to cook this from 5xMom on her MalaysiaBest website. Hubby commented that he do not like the ingredients in the pie to be chunky, so I have to deboned the chicken drumstick. I have never known how to debone a chicken drumstick until that fateful afternoon…HaHaHa!

Hubby also wanted me to add mix vegetables into the pie - so I added that as well. When I am cooking, hubby sometimes like to tell me what ingredients he prefer to have. I guess he finds it really nice that he can customise the food since I am cooking.

Look what I came up with!

Freshly baked chicken pie chilling on the rack

Actually, this is an experiment phase as I have planned to cook chicken pie for a small pot luck party soon. It turns out not too bad and not oily at all.

Puff pastry glazed with beaten egg and parmesan cheese

The party is this Saturday, but I am still toying with the idea of changing the chicken fillings to other taste - maybe some stew chicken with chestnuts and vegetables. I really hope that it turns out well again the second time I bake this. Fingers crossed!

This is one of my favourite food, it is called "Mee Hoon Ke" in my native Chinese dialect (Hokkien). It is actually a dough made of wheat flour, eggs and water and cooked in anchovies soup with some vegetables and meat.

My Comfort Food…

Everytime my Mom told us she is cooking this for lunch/dinner, I will be the happiest child in the household! I simply love it till today. It is an easy meal and very nutritious, at least according to me. I tried cooking this a couple of times by myself and it always turn out fine, eventhou I am just a beginner in terms of kitchen experience…hee hee

Ingredients
Wheat Flour
1 egg
Water
Anchovies
Spinach (or any green vege you like)
Meat - sliced (somehow pork taste best with this meal)
Garlic and cili padi - chopped
Shallots - sliced thin and fried in oil

Seasoning
Salt
Pepper
Light soya sauce

Method

1. Pour the wheat flour into a large mixing bowl.
2. Crack an egg into the flour and use your hand to stir it and mix.
3. Add water gradually and keep kneading with your hand till it form a solid dough and not sticky to your hand. Set aside the dough and place a wet clean kitchen towel on top of the mixing bowl - to keep the dough moist.
4. Clean the anchovies and put them into a soup bag - boil it in water to make anchovies broth.
5. Hold the dough and knead it with your fingers till its flatten and pull out pieces by pieces according to the size u want. Throw them into the boiling broth. Alternatively, you could also roll the dough till the desired thickness and use cute cookie cutters to cut it into all sort of shapes - this is a hit among children!
6. Add in the vegetable and boil for a short while.
7. Add in some salt, light soya sauce and pepper accoding to taste.
8. Scoup out into bowls and garnish with some fried shallots.

This dish is also popularly known as flat noodle and sold in most Chinese restaurants - but I prefer the home cooked version with the authentic taste. Those outside are served with belacan chilli paste as a dip for the dough. At home, I prefer to eat the dough by dipping into chopped garlice and cili padi with some soya sauce. Taste simply homely and wholesome!

Any events such as staff leaving or CNY 1st day of work, my company will like to get all the staff to go to "Lala Chong" for seafood. It is in fact the nearest seafood place from our office. A week plus ago, we had another seafood outing at the same place and this time they served the sweet and sour squid (sotong) and it was very yummy. I told hubby about it and he wanted to eat it too.

Sat early morning market in Bandar Puteri, I found the seafood stall selling really fresh squid - its skin is almost transparent and they are huge. It was selling for RM16 per Kg and I bought 4 squids, came up to about 600g (1 kati) at RM9. I remember 5xMom’s fool proof recipe on cooking seafood, using garlic, ginger, spring onion and chilli. I had all the ingredients at home and so I tried it out! This is how it looks like….tadaaa!

Seafood Monday!

Hubby said the squid is very yummy and wallop all of it. The amount I cooked was quite a lot for 2 person, but we finished it!!! It’s been a while since we tasted home cooked seafood, thats the reason for being greedy…tsk tsk tsk….

Since I bought the squid on Sat morning and only cooked on Monday nite, I washed, cut and soak the squid in some salt water, leave it in the meat compartment of my fridge. It stays fresh till Monday nite.

Ingredients
Squid (Sotong) - make sure you get the fresh ones
Garlic, ginger, chilli padi - all minced in the chopper
Tomato - sliced thick
Spring onion - cut small
Oil

Seasoning
Tomato sauce - 3 tbsp
Chilli sauce - 3tbsp
Apple cider vinegar - a few dash
sugar - 1 tbsp
salt - a few dash
pepper

Method

1. Stir fry the minced ingredients with some oil till fragrant.
2. Add in the washed and cut squid - stir fry for a while.
3. Add in the tomato - continue to stir fry.
4. Add in the seasoning and stir.
5. Once the squid is cooked (very fast), dish out and garnish with some spring onions.

I find that the sauce is already thick enough for this dish but if you like it thicker, can add in some cornflour mix with water.

Next time, I will want to try cooking crab with this method, just add in a beaten egg to make the sauce thicker for crab recipe - as recommended by Lilian. Need to find out how to clean and cut a crab first…hahaha….anyone have ideas?

Most of the time, I would try to avoid frying food. The reason is abvious as the kitchen and everywhere else gets oily and smell oily after that - especially when I am living in a small apartment. However, I really love fried chicken and would love it even more if its home cooked. I learned from 5xMom that we can grill tumeric chicken. I tried this recipe twice and both times are successful. The taste is good and my whole house smell so nice while the chicken is grilling in the oven. Really fantastic!

Taste much better than it looks!

I just have to marinade the chicken overnight with tumeric, cumin, fennel powder, pepper and salt. Next day after I returned back from work, pop the marinated chicken in the microwave for 5 mins and transfer to the oven to grill for another 20 mins. In the meantime, I cooked a vege dish and heat up the soup. Dinner is ready!

This way of grilling chicken is much healthier as you can see in the picture that the oil from the chicken is all over the foil, not in the chicken. I also do not need any oil to grill the chicken, unlike frying. The skin of the chicken is crunchy and very fragrant, without the oily effect from frying.

Zoe usually do not like to eat meat, especially those in her porridge. I gave her some of the chicken meat from this grill tumeric chicken and she loves it. I just took the inside part which is juicy and fragrant and she was asking for more. Even getting impatient while I tear the meat out for her…hahaha. I will definitely cook this for her again