Cooking Good Time

Most of you who read my blogs know that I like to cook for my family. This past weekend, we cooked a few meals which were so satisfying...

For Saturday lunch, we roasted pre marinated boneless chicken legs on top of lots of vegetable, including bell peppers, carrot, potatoes, onions, japanese cucumbers, brinjals and tomatoes which were added with a little butter, olive oil and salt. Roasted for an hour in the oven, the result was a very satisfying meal indeed. The  chicken was tender and flavourful and the vegetables were delicious too. Wanted to cook mushroom soup and have some bread to go with it but looking at the amount of vegetables we had, we rightfully decided against it.

Before going to the oven.

Cooked and served in bite size pieces on my plate, yummy...

For dinner that night, I tried something for the first time, Tung Po Pork! I have seen my mum done this several times and it seems quite easy. Of course we have to have pork belly, the ones with skin, fat and lean meat together. I bought about RM17 worth of pork belly and used half for this dish. It was quite fatty, i even had to cut off some of the fatty part and used that to make fried crispy lard. Didn't know what to do with the fried crispy lard yet but didn't want to waste the fat! For the Tung Po yoke, I researched a bit and did some modification, I based my recipe on the one in this link but added star anise and cinnamon sticks to it. I also omitted to steam it for 30 mins at the end because I was a bit lazy and I checked the meat was already soft and nice. I cooked it in a slow cooker for more then 2 hours. Next time, I will go easier on the star anise because the smell of the spice was a bit overpowering. After I added more brown sugar, it was ok. This is a nice dish to have with muntou. But for dinner that night, we had rice, fried egg, radish and carrot salad and stir-fried siew pak chow. I also sprinkled the fried crispy lard I made early on the vege and everyone enjoyed dinner, even my little picky-eater daughter.

Lined my slow cooker with spring onion, ginger, star anise and cinnamon stick before placing the pork inside.

After 2 hours of braising in the slow cooker. The sauce is thicken with corn starch in a wok before serving.

My dinner (white rice on the bottom).

My daughter's dinner, she insisted I take a picture of her plate too!

Sunday, we ate out for lunch since we had church and the boys also had Sunday classes. But I already planned ahead that I will be making homemade siew yoke for the other half of the pork belly we bought in Saturday. Made shallow cuts in the meaty part and marinated with 5 spice powder, Chinese Red Fermented Beancurd (Nam Yue), sugar, pepper, chinese wine and salt. The skin part was rubbed with salt. I tried to poke holes into the skin, but the skin was really hard, I only managed to make some lines on it (Later I found out that this caused failure to the skin from becoming crispy and popping, they were hard instead :( ). The meat was left in the fridge uncovered to help in the drying process. When we were back home in the afternoon, I started roasting the pork in the oven at 200 degrees. After 20 minutes, I put some vinegar which was supposed to help make the skin crispy and popping. Continued roasting for another 40 minutes. The result was a bit disappointing, the skin was a failure :( but the meat and the flavour was there. Really fragrant and tasty. I highly suspect that my failure to make deeper holes in the skin caused the failure. Nevermind, I will retry again.

Apart form the hard skin, the meat tasted great! Next try will be better...

But overall, I was still happy with what we made. We had it for dinner, with radish and groundnut soup, stir-fried beans and my hubby's favourite: crispy fried tempe and ikan bilis, stir-fried with onions, dried chillies and caramel. Yummy dinner!

Our dinner on Sunday.

Rice Wine Making - Lee family tradition

We just had a long weekend holidays, on Tuesday, MIL made rice wine at my house in order to show me how it is done. Her MIL taught her how it was done and now it's my turn. This is what is called passing down the family kong fu...


The process looks pretty simple. Glutinous rice (pulut) must be precooked and cooled. Then rice wine yeast pieces and some red stuff (all bought from the chinese herbal shop, quantity also determined by the shop keeper) were crushed into fine powder form. Get a clean and dry container (we use clay or glass) and sprinkle with generous layer of yeast powder then fill it with a layer of fistful lumps of the cooked rice. This is followed by another generous spread of the yeast powder. Continue to do so in layers until the container is 80/90% full. End with more yeast powder on top and make a hole in the middle and put in more yeast powder.

Sprinkle with water, cover the container with plastic sheet and make a few holes on the sheet.

Cover with 2 layers of newspaper and leave in a cool, dry place. After 3 days, open to check that the fermentation process has begun and add generous amount of chinese white rice wine (whole bottle). Close the container back and wait for 20 to 25 days.

For 6 catties of rice, we should get about 6 bottles of clear rice wine free from debris. The wine that my MIL produced when she tried making it a few months back was really sweet and fragrant. I cooked kampung chicken with ginger and the wine a few times and my hubby and I both loved it so much. We will see how this batch, that is still fermenting in my kitchen, turns out in 20 days or so.  We will be saving this for my confinement in April.

As Korean as it gets...

I had little to do with anything korean until some 8 or 9 years ago when they first aired a popular korean drama on TV. The rest is history. I am now a korean drama junkie! Gone are Hong Kong dramas from my routine, now only Korean guys get to fit into my tight schedule. I am even willing to sacrifice my sleep time to watch them online through my (sometimes pathetic) streamyx connection at home. My korean vocabulary has also expanded, e.g. Annyeong Haseyo, Sarang Aeyo, Bianeh, Kencana.... to list a few (ahemm..). I have tried learning to read korean and they have a very unique system. Really interesting but steam ran out...

My hubby never understands my obsession with Korean dramas, I think no men would. But one thing we do share is our liking for the most famous korean food that all korean drama junkies must know from all the episodes of korean dramas... the wonderfully spicy and sourish pickled vegetables, the one and only Kim Chi.... So we have tasted Kim Chi bought from supermarkets and they are extremely expensive. So we have been researching how to make own own kim chi and finally, last week, I rolled up my sleeves to try making it.

I got my recipe from here. Firstly, you need to soak your chinese cabbage (napa cabbage) with water and sea salt (2 table spoon) for 12 hours (overnight) in the fridge. Make sure all leaves are soaked in the salt water, weigh it down if you have to. Then, next morning, rinse the leave and shakes off access water, out them in a large bowl. Add in some minced garlic and ginger, more sea salt, some sugar and as much grounded dried chili powder as you like. To add more colour, I added shredded carrot and a few stalks of spring onions cut into strips. Mix them well in the big bowl, use gloves (I just bagged one hand in clean plastic bag). Pack them all into a glass container/jar, pour in any water from the bowl into the container. Make sure the water covers the vege, leave some space in the jar as there will be some gas being produced during the fermentation. Leave the jar on your kitchen counter (away from direct sunlight) for 2 days. After that you can keep it in your fridge and take portion to consume when you like. I tasted my own kimchi and I didn't have any upset tummy, so I am pretty happy. The taste is also pretty near to the ones we bought from the supermarkets. So I am confident that I can repeat this process with improved results next time too. This is how it looked like.

Pleasures of Home Cooking

Cooking and baking for the family are really great pleasures for me. On Malaysia day, last Thursday, my brother and his family visited us at home. I decided to cook nasi lemak and thai green chicken curry with the green curry paste I bought from Chiang Mai. It was pretty good, a little too spicy because of the paste but still good. My brother and my sister-in-law seemed to have enjoyed it.

Then on the weekend, I cooked more stuff for the kids and hubby. For lunch on Saturday, we had Hot Soup (Hakka style). This is a very simple soup, made with chicken or pork slices or both. The soup based was made from anchovies. Ginger slices, 'tong choi', ground pepper and chinese celery are also important ingredients, none of them can be omitted. The result is a hot but clear soup, wonderful for clearing your nasal blockage (just my personal opinion).




For tea, I made egg tarts. I had made them previously but it had been a while. It was difficult to get the baked tarts out of the tart moulds but we finally managed to. I like the taste of it but I think I need to try a few more times to try making the pastry thinner and also find the correct technique to remove the baked tarts out of the moulds.

In the evening, we went to a close friend's house for a early mid-autumn celebration cum bday party for her daughter. Was a nice nite for gathering of my friends with some hubbies being dragged into the gathering as baby sitters, such as mine.

On Sunday, after church, we had my kids' favourite for lunch. No points for guessing correctly, yes, it was Mc Donalds. I also must admit I like McD too, my all time favourite is double cheese burger. I know they are having a promotion for triple cheese burger but I dare not order it, double is already bad enough! So I had my double cheese burger while the kids had beef burgers, chicken nuggets and fries coupled with large diet cokes (too much sugar is bad for you, hence diet coke. Fat ).

For dinner made pork belly with salted fish in clay pot (ham yu fa lum po) again and also thick taufu soup (taufu kang). Felt good that almost everyone enjoyed their dinner. I said almost because my little girl wouldn't finish her food :(. She is a picky eater but I am determine to change that, slowly :P.














Looking forward to try cooking new stuff when I can again.

Kids' Activities, Cooking and Mooncakes

These few weeks are filled with public holidays. Upcoming is the Raya and then for the 1st time ever in the peninsular, Malaysia Day on 16th Sept. As usual, we have no plans. I think I really need to think of some activities for the kids, it's afterall also school holidays this week. Maybe a kite flying or fresbee playing will get them some exercise and fresh air. Or maybe we should go to Sepang for a half day trip which we planned 2 weeks ago but had to cancel since everyone was sick. I don't know yet but definitely we should do something out of the ordinary shopping in the mall thing.

Last Saturday, I suddenly decided to cook lontong when I saw the 'instant' ketupats are on sale in Tesco. My kids liked it very much and I also made sambal ikan bilis to add some spiciness to it since the lontong kuah is not spicy to accommodate the kids. As usual, I always cook too much. So my hubby took some to my in laws and I still have 3 packets of cooked ketupats in the fridge that will eventually end up in the trash can. My estimation is bad but I hate wasting food. I hope we can do something with the extra ketupats and not throw them away.

For Sunday dinner, as suggested by my hubby, I made 'ham yu fa lum po' (salted fish and pork belly in a pot) which turned out quite good. I even used the claypot and bought the authentic hua tiao wine for the dish. The 'ham yu' or salted fish I used was what I bought from Kuantan which is the really good quality type. I proudly give myself 8.5 out of 10. If I get a thicker soy sauce the dish will be better. So I will make sure I get 9.5 in my next try! We forgot to take picture of the dish before we digged into it, so there will be no pic of it on this post. Cooking or baking for the family is really a great pleasure. When I am in the mood, I really love trying something special and nutritious at the same time.

I was looking at the mooncake recipes but I think it might be a tough one, especially making the fillings and finding a mooncake mould. But in the event that I can get my hands on the mould, I might really try making some simple mooncakes. The prices of the mooncakes are really exorbitant nowadays and there are so many varieties of mooncakes in the market, it's really crazy. I still like the traditional types that are baked with lotus paste fillings and maybe one yolk. Plus it is pretty unhealthy stuff, I am not going to having that many slices.

Upcoming Events

My youngest brother is getting married this weekend. My mum has requested that I cook Rendang Ayam to go with her Nasi Briyani for the guests who visit the night before the wedding. I had to do a test run, :). So off I went to the trusty google for a recipe. Once I had that, I had to plan a weekend when I am able to get the ingredients and test it out.

So finally, 2 weeks ago, I tried it out and it tasted good. But we couldn't finish it as my kids don't take spicy food. My in laws had some, the rest went into the fridge. I had it for 2 lunches that week. Then my mum-in-law came on Saturday and threw it away from my fridge, :(. Oh well, will be trying the recipe again this weekend.

Been also shopping for clothes for the kids and me for the wedding. Managed to get some new stuff, trying not to spend too much. Still need to give big angpow to brother. Never mind, all siblings already married, so no more such events in future.

Cooking & Baking Time

I have always enjoyed cooking, and now with 3 kids, I enjoy it even more. The thought of my little ones eating the wholesome meals I prepare for them is really enough to drive me to cook more often.

On and off, I will try something new that I think my kids will enjoy like the vegetable dahl recipe which I got from the web. Here's a picture of how it turned out. We all liked it that I have cooked this recipe twice. The roti is the frozen ones you get from the supermarket.

I also enjoy baking since I became pregnant with my baby girl in 2007. Some kind of instinct, I guess. And once again, Chinese New Year is near and cookies baking time is here again. Am planning my weekends to enable me to bake a few types of cookies. At the same time, I am planning to bake and decorate my baby girl's 1st birthday cake which is in the end of Feb. So I will be trying my hands at making fondant this weekend. Looks like my weekends will be really busy....