Dainty Bites

Made Beef Hor Fun and Loh Han Zai for dinner last night. The Hor Fun recipe was taken from Kuali.com and I find that it is quite alot of work and the taste was only average. It is unlike those we would find from any zi-char stalls here, perhaps it is Malaysian style. Or perhaps it is just Amy Beh. We have tried a few of her recipes before and I must say that either she or The Star didn't have very good proof readers/editors. Her recipes are at times unclear or mixed up. Eg. In this Beef Hor Fun recipe, the sauce ingredients (B) was added to fry the noodles (!!) and then you are suppose to have some more sauce ingredients to add to the pan to make the gravy (!!??). Hubby commented that it was little wonder why she never made it to publish as many books as his " girlfriend " (I suppose was her greatest competitor in the local scene). Here is our Beef Hor Fun: We also made Loh Han Zai to make up for the lack of veggies in our Hor Fun. This dish was adapted from a recip

Saw this corn muffin recipe from Evan's page and I knew that I must make roasted chicken again so as to go with this corn muffin. Erm... sounds a bit like the tail waggin the dog, but I just want to create my complete Kenny Rogers experience last Saturday night. Instead of making them into muffins, I baked it in my Pyrex dish and then cut them up. As I only managed to get medium grind corn meal (from Cold Storage), the resultant texture was slightly coarse and, just like Evan had described, it has a crunchy bite to it. But still, it is definitely a keeper!

This is the million dollar question which hubby and I try to dodge when being asked by the other. Going by what we have been eating for the last 2 weeks or so, I would say that we are now in a dinner rut. During our DINK-y days, we eat out quite often. Now, if we are able to dine out once a week, we would consider ourselves blessed. Guess I have ran out of steam for now. =( So, please bear with me while I look for new inspirations of what to cook and share it on this page.

I am currently reading Confessions of a French Baker . If I ever have a chance to visit France (or any part of Europe, for that matter), I would visit all the bakeries I can find and raid the shelves while my money lasts. And then maybe I, too, will have that secret grin on my face like the one of Peter Reinhart's apprentice. But until then, I would have to be contented with drooling at those lovely loaves from pictures and imagine their wonderful aromas. Anyways, back to the book. One of the concepts that the French Baker let on was the princple of 56. What that means is that the temperature of the water, flour and kitchen air must add up to 56 degC. Example given: Water temperature - 14 degC Flour temperature - 20 degC Room temperature- 22 degC Hmm... Now considering Singapore climate with room temperature averaging at 29 degC, doesn't that mean that we have the water and flour must be refrigerated to something like this: Water temperature - 11 degC Flour temperature - 1

We are still quite hooked on roast chicken and decided to venture into something more interesting. Took this recipe from The All New Joy Of Cooking but made some changes to it as the original recipe calls for 3/4 cup jalepeno chillies which I have no idea where to find. The marinate is really yummy and packs a punch if you are as liberal with the chillies as I did. For some carbo, I just made pasta and did a sinful thing. I tossed the roast chicken drippings with the pasta! (Not pictured here.) Yum! Will be keeper for future BBQ sessions. ********************************************** Chilli-Garlic Roast Chicken (adapted from The All New Joy of Cooking) ********************************************** 1 chicken, quartered Spice ingredients: 10 fresh red chillies, de-seed 7 chilli padi (bird's eye chilli) 1/2 cup garlic 1/2 olive oil 2 tbsp black peppercorn, slightly crushed 1 tbsp salt 2 tsp chilli powder zest of 1 lemon 1. Blend/Grind the spice ingredients to

Hubby made this for dinner on Saturday night. This is a no-fuss dish that can be put together in no time. For those of you who are not in the mood to do too many dishes, give this a try. Just dump all the ingredients into a mixing bowl. Mix well and pour it into a baking dish. Cover and off to the oven it goes. The original recipe is from Allrecipes.com and I modified it after reading all the comments about it being too dry. I also added some greens for a more balanced meal. *********************************************** Baked Mushroon Rice (adapted from Allrecipes.com) *********************************************** 1 1/2 cups uncooked rice, washed and drained 1 can (10.75oz) condensed cream of mushroom soup 1 cup veggie broth (or water) 1 cup water 1 medium onion, chopped 250gm fresh button mushrooms ( 1 can of button mushrooms), sliced 200gm fresh baby asparagus, cut into matchstick length 1 tsp dried parsley 1 tsp dried oregano black pepper to taste 1. Preheat ov

Inspired by another recipe from Kuali.com, I decided to give Amy Beh's Braised Fish with Beancurd in Claypot a try. I forgot to ask the fishmonger to fillet the red snapper for me and given that I am sorely lacking of skills in the knife department, I had to pan fry the fish whole (with 3 slits on each side of the fish). Frying fish is really challenging and a messy affair too. Well, cleaning up at 3 a.m. is not fun at all. What was I doing up at that time, you wonder? That's another story. I managed to make a decent frying of the fish and had a crunchy golden brown skin. That was when Hubby decided that it would be such a waste of effort to dump all the crispy fish to braise. So Hubby proceeded to make the sauce with the intention of serving them separately. However, the sauce has so many other ingredients in it that it was practically a tofu dish on its own. That's how we ended up two dishes instead of one. Here's my braised fish with beancurd minus the fish! Pe

I just realised to my horror that you people out there reading my humble page have actually left me messages and comments which I never knew about until a minute ago! My most sincere apologies. I think it has something to do with my settings and I will see to it immediately. Thank you all for dropping by and all your words of support.

I love any stir fried combinations of spring onions and ginger. Be it beef, fish or venison. But I have never had any recipe to prepare them at home until now. Made the stir fried beef and it was really yummy. (^.^) Reminds me of my mom's version but made with pork liver.

I have been scouring Kuali.com's recipe for a while and there are lots of recipes which I haven't seen anywhere. An example would be this pork ribs curry. My mum makes a sure-fire curry of this, but I have never attempted to learn from her cos she cooks with her senses rather than measurements. How to learn? Hmm... Anyway, Amy Beh's rendition of this dish is quite satisfying and is going to be a keeper for me. ***************************************** Pork Ribs Curry (adapted from Amy Beh at Kuali.com) ***************************************** 1.5kg pork ribs, chopped into bite size (ask butcher for meaty parts) 3 medium size potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges 3 tbsp cooking cook 1 can (405 gm) evaporated milk Seasoning (A): 1 tbsp light soy sauce 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp sugar Spices (B): blended 12 shallots 3 cloves garlic 2.5 cm ginger 3 candlenuts 5 chilli padi (bird's eye chilli) 3 long fresh red chilli 2.5 tbsp meat curry powder Spices (C):

Guess what turned up inside my slow cooker today? We had braised chicken feet in soy sauce. Yes! Chicken feet! If you are squeamish about chicken feet, then read no further. Yesterday was grocery shopping day and Hubby as usual dropped by the chicken seller's stall and placed our order. Then he saw some chicken feet and on a whim, the ordered them as well. I thought that maybe I heard him wrongly, but when I saw the seller packing them in, the first thing that came to my mind was "Whoa! It is going to be interesting." (reads: Don't know what will be coming out of the kitchen today). Flipping through his girlfriend's book and studying it intensely, he then busied himself in the kitchen for a good hour. After that when he was done with the cleaning up, a wonderful smell of braising soy sauce wafted from kitchen. According to the recipe, the chicken feet must be deep fried before braising, but since hubby was not in the mood to do major cleaning we skipped this s

For some reason beyond me, I can't get this pic into the last post, so here it is. Don't be put off by the thick layer of oil in the photo if you intend to try the recipe. It is necessary for the ground ingredients to fry properly. Just skim it off before serving.