Quesadilla

Ah..finally i've got my fav quesadilla up here! My first time takin pic of it. All this while i'd prepare it for the family but never once get down to takin pics of it. Its funny how i can jst have it at any time of the day. I've had it for breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea , dinner and even a supper snack! I guess i can make do with this my whole life. Its been a while since i make this and today's quesadilla was jst so good cuz there's so much for the filling! I've prepared some black pepper and spicy mince for the fillin and also i managed to get basil last night! For the wrap, i got the traditional and the potato tortilla, wanted to get the wholemeal but i doubt my mom n bro's up for it.

These are the one with the meat filling in it. In this pic, i've prepared both the black pepper mince and the spicy mince filling for the photo takin session. Basically you can have your fav fillin in this wrap , you can even have tuna, bacon or roast chicken in it!

For the filling, i've chopped romaine lettuce, sliced tomatoes, black pepper/spicy mince and cheese! You can use parmesan or a mixture of the cheese. I used cheddar cheese for all the quesadillas i made. i jst love the combination of cheddar and tortilla. I'm also a big fan of basil so there you have it i used a lil of the chopped basil as the decorative item.

To make this its really simple, all you need is a non-stick pan, your fav tortilla wrap and fillings. Place the tortilla on the non-stick pan and heat it over a very low fire, while you're at it, arrange your fav fillings on one side of the tortilla. First i arranged the tomato slices then some chopped romaine lettuce then the stir-fried mince and covered it up with cheese. When you can see bubble formin on the tortilla then its time to cover up the side with the ingredients on. Leave for a few seconds then flip to another side and then its ready to be served. Pay attention of the fire for you dont wanna end up gettin ur tortilla burnt.

Next, its my turn to savour my version of the quesadilla. Both my mom n bro love the meat version better. They dont fancy the smell and taste of basil so i've got all the chopped basil for myself. So wht i've got in the wrap are : slices of tomatoes, romaine lettuce, chopped basil and cheese. If you like , u can put a lil butter or marjerin before placin the tortilla on the non-stick pan. For those who loves garlic, you can also get the garlic tortilla to go with any of your fav fillings.

Pai Kut Ong

This dish has got the same name as my previous entry but its not spareribs. Usually people will cook this with spareribs but instead of spareribs i opted for some lean meat. It makes cookin easier and also less the saturated fats!

I chose to slice the meat to a moderate thickness and in the form of a rectangular shape instead of a squarish shape. The thickness of the slices should be moderate and not too thinly sliced.

Before frying the sliced meat, i marinated it with rice wine, light soy sauce, black pepper, sugar and cornflour since i dont have any bakin soda available at home. Leave it to marinate for a few hours. Dip the sliced meat into beaten eggs before fryin it. I used only the yolk instead of the whole egg. Repeat the same process for the rest of the slices.

Once i was done fryin the meat, i fried some sesame seeds in a non-stick pan. Fryin the sesame seeds will give it a more distinctive and aromatic taste when you bite into it. Fry till its golden brown and set it aside. 

For the gravy, i used tomato ketchup, maggie seasoning (no more Worcestershire sauce left), sugar and water. Cornflour can be added to help thicken the sauce but i omitted this for i was preparing the sauce under a very low fire and stirring it occasionally till it thickens. Before serving it, toss it some sesame seeds and add the fried sliced meat and coat it thoroughly. You can sprinkle some sesame and a twig or two of coriander leaves and you're good to go!

Spareribs

Am not sure if this it the right name for it , Bah Kut Sooi (sweet, sour & spicy spare-ribs). In my household , we call it Pai Kut Ong. There's so many names for a particular dish but i suppose what sets them apart are the ingredients used. So, the reason why i name this as Bah Kut Sooi cuz of the plum sauce i've included in this dish.  

When i was stir-fryin the paste ive grounded, i was afraid that it might be too spicy for my family's liking but it turn out to be jst nice for mom and granny but definitely lack the spicyness for both my bro and me. 

Grind and combine garlic, dried chillies, preserved bean paste ( tau cheong) and fry till its fragant before adding the spare-ribs. After that add water and let it simmer over very low-heat till meat is all tender before adding the seasoning - sour plum sauce, tomato sauce, sugar ( its always brown sugar in my case) & light soy sauce. Adjust the seasoning ingredients to your liking and let it simmer until the gravy turns thick and if you like u can garnish a lil with parsley or coriander. For those whole love your food to be on a more spicy note, add more dried chillies when you grind and a lil extra preserved bean paste for that extra oomph to the taste and more plum sauce if you'd like it more sourish of course not forgettin the sugar for the finishin touch.. 

Soft Food

Today i'm feelin a lil under the weather so i decided i should be consumin some soft food and not further jeorpardise my stomach. I've no idea what's goin on with it but am not gonna worsen it with more oily stuff in the system

So i decided to have porridge for both lunch and dinner. Yea, i know, it might be really blunt and all but its good to have it once a while. People often associate porridge with a person being sick. Well even if im not feelin sick, i still love porridge. Its easy to make and at the same time its nutritious.

This is like my fav combination of porridge. Shredded carrot, cabbage and a lil minced meat. For the base, i used chicken broth and a lil soy sauce for the seasoning. All you need is to let the rice soak a lil while, perhaps bout 10-15 mins; rice is brittle then its easier for the cookin process. Under a slow fire, place the crushed rice into the pot and pour in the chicken broth and slowly add in the minced meat .

After a while, place the shredded carrot and cabbage into the pot and let it boil under a slow fire and constantly stir so that the rice will not stick at the bottom of the pot. Some would love to have their porridge with some sauteed garlic but i love it as it is..

Spicy Honey Chicken

I remembered when i was in high school, we had this Kemahiran Hidup (Living Skills) lesson; it had 5 units to it - Cooking, Gardening, Sewing, Woodwork and Electronics. During the cooking week, the students were required to look for a recipe to try out during class on that particular week.

Some actually thought it was a bane to look for a recipe and to get the raw ingriendents to school and place it in the fridge in the morning when we reach school. As for me i find it really fun but i was more concern bout the cleanliness of the utensils available in the school. So usually before the cooking session starts, we were required to choose the utensils from the " utensils store room". After we got what we wanted, i'd wash the utensils squeaky clean before using it for god knows what was running around when it was stored in the store room or if the previous person who used it even cleaned it properly, didnt wanna risk gettin stomache at the end of the day.

We were expected to work in a pair so i was working with this punjabi girl. I couldnt remember exactly the exact ingredients we used but i knew that we split the ingredients on who to bring what and so on. So for that cooking week, we prepared 2 dishes. One was some masala cauliflower and the other honey chicken or so some masala spicy honey chicken or something.

On one particular morning, mom was lazy to think of what to cook so she got me to cook up a dish of chicken for her. And i was thinking, what else can i do with chicken, definitely not the usual curry or fried stuff, so i thought of the stuff i used to cook when i was in high school. I remembered that masala spicy honey chicken thingy me and my cooking partner used to cook, and i pretty much like how it tasted like but i forgot the ingredients used and since i dont have masala at home, so i did my version of the chicken and i called it the spicy honey chicken.

The pieces of chicken were marinated with a lil salt, egg yolk, sesame oil & a lil cornflour. I left the marination in the fridge for an hour or so and deep-fried it first before preparing the gravy/sauce. For the gravy i used grinded dried chillies + shallots+ garlic+ brown sugar+ salt and top it up with honey before i dish it out.

I personally hate the smell of dried chillies, so instead of having it seeded and pound or grind it, i bought the ready made available in a packet. I've tried both, the home made n the ready made avail, they both have a different effect on the food, perhaps the other ingredients also contributed to the taste of it but since i discovered that the ready made ones didnt' have that dried chillies smell, i've been using it since. Also stir-frying the chilli paste longer till the oil breaks also help in gettin rid of that greenish chillish smell to it.

Potstickers

I injured my thumb while i was preparing this but that didnt stop me from completing my mission.

To be honest, I wasnt totally happy to see the end result though, some how i felt that i could do better in terms of appearance wise and also the filling. The filling suppose to be spicy minced meat but it wasnt that spicy, but its ok cuz then my mom can really enjoy it for she's not a big fan of spicy stuff. 

This also known as gyoza but my family members find it hard to pronounce or even remember so i told them its like our version of "wan tan".

For this, i first stir-fried the fillin first before i fill it up. Mayb next time i could jst wrap the raw ingredients in the gyoza and pan-fry it. Previously i deep-fried my gyoza and this is how it looks like. 

This deep-fried version i have over here is rather too "brown", for those who intend to deep-fry it, its best to keep an eye on it n not divert you attention to some other stuff like me! I actually left my gyoza floatin in my freakin hot pan while i was mincing the garlic away, bad idea to kill two birds with one stone when you're cookin! of course if u're a real pro then perhaps one can juggle wth it.

Anyway, since the pan-fried gyoza isnt up to my expectation, im plannin to finish up my gyoza pastry skin tomorrow with a new fillin inside. Mayb i can fill it up wth sweet potatoes.. i jst love sweet potatoes!

Thai Affair

I personally love thai food but the person who sparked my interest to try my hands on thai cuisine is my dad. He's a big fan of thai cuisine so i learnt up a few dishes but now im gonna blog bout a whole different range of what i used to prepare for my dad.

The 3-flavoured seabass was inspired by my bestie's mom. In general i love this as well! i've tasted the authentic thai version as well as the Malay version of this dish but i never got around tryin it out at home until my bestie's mom asked if i know how to prepare this dish. If i've the recipe to it, it'll definitely gimme a better idea on the combination of ingredients but what surprised me was my bestie's mom  actually kept a newpaper cutting with this particular recipe on! which is so cool cuz not only can i learn but also fine tune a lil on the taste as well. I actually tried it out at home before preparing it for my bestie's family and the outcome i got made my day. From then on, i just love preparin this dish. Its so easy and so yummy at the same time. Of course for those who love a more spicy note to this dish , cili padi's ( bird's eye chili pepper) the answer to it.

Mango kerabu is also another of my favourite thai dish. This one is solely on experimental basis. I've no idea on what they (thai restaurants) use as their dressing. So i did some readin and research on thai cuisine and majority of the dishes have nampla (fish sauce) as one of the ingredients in the list besides lime, cilantro and bird's eye chili. That gave me an idea on how i should do my dressing. For the dressing, i used nampla, brown sugar and lime juice. The amount of both the nampla and lime juice are the key to fine tune the taste of the dressing. Sugar would act like a neutraliser when the taste gets too overwhelming. For this dish, i stir-fried (on the non-stick pan) the pounded dried shrimps and a lil shredded cuttle-fish to be sprinkled on the dish when its done  together with some bird's eye chili pepper and sliced fresh shallots.

The dish would be superb if the mango its on the sour note and do avoid from gettin the powderish texture of mangoes, that will so destroy the whole combination. And when u're done arranging the shredded mangoes on the plate and sprinkled it wth the stir-fried pounded dried shrimps & cuttle fish, bird's eye chili and fresh shallots then you can pour the dressing over it n voila! Of course its good to mix it up before u actually eat it to get a more balanced combination of all the ingredients.

I call this dish the Thai Spicy Minced Pork. For those who ran outta ideas on what else they can do with minced pork, they can try this out. This dish isnt as spicy as the others. It might be on a mild note for those who are not a big fan of spicy food. I myself, at times i wonder if my taste buds are all dead! Sometimes my taste buds get too extreme with me. The ingredients you need for this dish are  :-

1) onion, garlic, red fresh chillies, tomato, shrimp paste (place it in the food processor & process until roughly chopped.

2) sesame oil to stir-fry the blended ingredients

3) minced lean pork and seasoning [fish sauce, lime juice & sugar ( i used brown sugar)]

4) add coriander and fresh shallots before serving 

Vegetarian Nyonya Style Pumpkin Cake

I got this idea of making this yummylicious pumpkin cake when i was in Melaka. On the last day before i leave Melaka, my friend took me and a friend to the market area to get some local delicacies for breakfast. So i bought the pumpkin cake cuz over here where i'm from they dont have this and i was curious bout the taste as well. When i tasted it i instantly fell in love with it. Not sure why but i jst did , i guess thats how they explain love at first sight n i suppose this is wht i call love at first mouthful! 

I even asked my Melaka-born friend for the recipe but he didnt have it so all i've left to figure out was my taste buds. To be honest, while i was eatin it i was there tryin to decipher wht's the ingredients for it, so i thought, why not i give it a try on the vague ingredients i have in mind. So a few days has passed and i was craving for this particular cake so i thought, now's the perfect timing to make it.

So i bought an average size of golden pumpkin when i was doin the household's grocery shopping. The first try out was a non-vegetarian pumpkin cake for i've added some dried shrimps into the process to make it more aromatic. The second try out, i did it the vegetarian style, with no dried shrimps  but replaced it with shallots, pepper and 5-spice powder.

Egg Tofu with Hoisin Minced Pork

Omg!~ its been ages since i blog on this site! Not that i forgot that ive got this blog but i kinda lost my password and after discovering my password i can start posting food-related entry here!

This has become one of my fav dish! I was clueless on how people get their tofu to look nice but after discovering the "secret" i cant help it but to experiment on those egg tofu i bought. It came in a pack of 3 tubes, but since ive got a rather big eater bro, i gotta cook all of it and there's no such thing as leavin a tube of two before for the next cookin session. 

So i begin the preparation by cuttin the tofu into cubes of approximately 2cms width or so and lightly coat each and every one of it wth cornflour. Then when the non stick pan's hot enough i pour a the oil and when its ready , i lowered those delicate tofu into the pan n gently turnin each one of it until they turned golden brown and dish it out onto the paper towel i have on the plate to sieve any excess oil.

Next, its time to prepare the gravy. A lil hoisin sauce, carrot, shiitake mushrooms, onions, garlic, mince meat (marinated wth pepper, soy sauce, rice wine & dark soy sauce) are all that i needed to make the gravy.