Crispy Fried Popiah

I was doing the weekly grocery shopping with mom in hypermart, deliberately led her to the frozen food department and merely showed her the popiah skin. It was like she was suddenly struck with something long forgotten and replied : I know how to make crispy popiah. Her next inevitable question was "do you wanna eat?" I would be a total idiot if I said no but frankly speaking, I'm a fan of anything fried and crispy too. Umm... seems like I'm a fan for a a variety of food.

Mom stir fry the content to be wrapped in the popiah skin : slices of turnip, cabbage, black fungus and bits and pieces of chicken meat cut in small cubes. She said making this finger food is like snapping her fingers ; easy, fast and hey presto, the food is done.

One can't do without sweet Thai chilli sauce when it comes to fried popiah. We dipped generously into the chilli sauce and savoured the taste and the crispy popiah skin. Well, you just gotta eat it while it's still hot and warm, otherwise it will be soft and soggy.

Sigh...another yummy dish to go with our dinner.

Huh?? What?? Recipe?? Later lah. The weather of late is killing me and the new TNB meter is ticking away like nobody's business.

Braised Pork Belly / Kou Rou Bao(扣肉包)

My lovely mom made some really awesome braised Pork Belly( Kou Rou Bao - 扣肉包)  in which we sandwiched it between the pau, added a little piece of lettuce and drip some drops of the superb sauce in it. Mom made it for dinner tonight. You'd be surprise that at one point, mom actually vowed not to ever attempt any bao related recipes after so many failures (that's according to her standard). Finally one fine day, she got it right after consulting several recipes and from there on, came up with her own recipe.

I cannot tell you how tasty and yummy it is. The pork belly was just at the right tender texture while the bao was super soft. At this rate, I don't think my diet plan is going to materialize at any time sooner but anyway, it's a blessing to come home with yummy dinner waiting for me.

Look at the wobbly combination of fat and lean meat. The top skin was fried on a pan of scarce oil to make it crispy (of course when soaked with gravy, it becomes soft), the mixtures of major spices like cloves, star anise, cinnamon stick, chinese wine and fermented beancurd created the aromatic and tasty gravy as well.

As we munched with satisfaction on bao with the gravy oozing out from the side, the other hand of ours reached for another piece of lettuce to crunch together.

The above has been packed for a friend of mine whom I haven't seen in decades. Tomorrow ...yes ....tomorrow... we will meet for the 1st time in decades and exchange food for the first time as well.

Macrography

Nikon D300s + Tamron SP60 (Manual, F/16, 1/80s, ISO 200)

Nikon D300s + Tamron SP60 (Manual, F/16, 1/80s, ISO 200)

Nikon D300s + Tamron SP60 (Manual, F/16, 1/100s, ISO 200)

Nikon D300s + Tamron SP60 (Manual, F/16, 1/80s, ISO 200)

Nikon D300s + Tamron SP60 (Manual, F18, 1/60s, ISO 200)

Irresistable Pineapple Tart

I've been bogged down with work, busied myself with shopping for Christmas gifts, attending cycling activities and the next thing I knew, Chinese New Year is just round the corner. If I had more time on hand, I would like to bake my chocolate chip cookies but unfortunately, time was what I seriously lacked.  Due to time constraint, I've decided to settle with Pineapple tarts because I just couldn't resist them and once I start to pop one into my mouth, I can't seem to stop. Hubby was saying perhaps I should reconsider my decision because popping the tarts means gaining weight and gaining weight is the last thing I needed. I don't care. I love eating my own tarts and this is a once a year affair. I just gotta bake it for myself and also for a few people whom I've promised to give.

Some like the tart to be hard and crunchy but my recipe is such that it melts in the mouth.

The entire process took a little more of 4 hours inclusive of cleaning and putting everthing back to its original place. I've got another 1kg of  pineapple jam tucking in one far corner of my fridge but I shudder to think of the entire baking process. My back hurts and so's my shoulder. My legs were aching like hell. Umm... a massage wouldn't be a bad idea....

Hokkein Mee

I'm finally done with my vegan pledge. It drag for a good 4 months because of the days I skipped when I went for holidays in Taiwan and Kota Kinabalu. I also skipped vegan when I go cycling with my group of cycling friends. The first thing I went for after completion of the entire 'ordeal' was digging into a juicy fried chicken. The next morning, I bought some pork, fresh noodles, beansprout, mustard greens, beancurd, fishcake etc from the morning market , just before I got into office. I wanted to fry a noodle dish for dinner but I haven't the faintest idea what style of noodles I wanna fried. When I got home, it suddenly hit me that maybe I should just fry Hokkein Mee since the noodles are fresh. It's not often I get to have fresh noodles during weekdays. So hubby came home and had a surprised look on his face. I told him it was while he was sleeping, I was buying groceries in the morning market, thus making this Hokkein Mee dinner possible. He just grinned....then ate the noodles.... then gave me one thumb up :D

Ingredients :
Fish cake
Slice pork (marinate with sesame oil, soy sauce and a little cornflour)
Fresh noodles
Mustard Green
Garlic, chopped

Seasoning:
Dark soy sauce
Sweet soy sauce
Light soy sauce
A little oyster sauce
Chicken powder
Water

Passionfruit Strawberry Muffin

I need to de-stress and one way  to do it is to start doing something I enjoy : baking. However, there's always a danger to that because if my cake did not turn out well, instead of de-stressing, I'll be blowing my top over the failed attempt. I guess the Gods must be watching me, taking pity of my miserable days in office, thus making my baking attempt successful. I'm not a fan of muffin but I like to bake muffins because it's a melt and mix method. The recipe was picked from one of the books I've recently purchased from BBW. Instead of following diligently on the recipe, I replaced the fruits with passionfruit and strawberry.  I'm posting the original recipe while those in bracket were my modification.

Both cousin Soo and I were too caught up in our work today that neither of us remembered that one of us have to do the delivery/collection. I ended up eating 2 muffins today and gave a few to my colleagues. Oh yea...and so much for packing the muffins in a cute lovely box. I don't care; I need to recycle this box.

Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup superfine sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup plain yoghurt (I used 1 standard cup of Anlene yoghurt with berries flavor)
6 tbsp melted butter
finely grated rind of 1 lemon (I used 2 passionfruits)
finely grated rind of 1 lime (I used a few strawberries, cut smaller size)
finely grated rind of 1 orange ( I omit this)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Grease 12 cup muffin pan or line with 12 muffin paper liners. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a large bowl. Stir in the superfine sugar.
2. Lightly beat the eggs in a larger bowl then beat in the yogurt, melted butter and all the citrus rind. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the beaten liquid ingredients. Stir gently until just combined. Do not overmix.
3. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin pan. Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 mins, until well risen, golden brown and firm to the touch.
4. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 mins, then transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely.

Twilight Saga : Breaking Dawn Part 1

It's finally here. The long awaited Breaking Dawn but unfortunately they're breaking it into 2 parts. These people really know how to cash in the money. It has been so long since I finished the book that I could only recall certain details of the storyline. I am waiting with bated breath on how the producer is gonna film the .. uh.. um.. bed scene between the 2 popular good looking stars, making it 'interesting' enough to capture the attention of the audience and yet at the same time, has to take into consideration that this movie will be watched by teens, young teens, very very young teens and kids. I would've dash to the cinema this weekend if only I'm in town. Yes, I am very tempted to take a day off  to watch during the weekday but I guess I gotta remove this insane idea from my head. In the end,  the movie has to wait till next weekend. I have a pretty good hunch that it will stay in cinema for long. Um... I probably will be watching it alone again as with the past Twilight episodes...  No sweat coz I've the whole popcorn and coke drink to myself :)

Salad + tropical fruits = dinner

It's been a long while since we last ate salad. The rain has been wrecking our plans to ride (meaning no calories burn) while our bellies are growing larger with each passing day. So we made a pledge to eat solely fruits and vegetables for dinner for this entire week. The dressing used was mustard grain and I thought it tasted a bit ..... weird. It certainly didnt' taste weird when my neighbour whipped up her fantastic salad with the same dressing, plus some vinegar and crushed garlic. The papaya and rambutans compliment my salad very much by giving a sweet taste to it. Oh.. in case if you're wondering, yea...the 'white flesh' in the remekin is rambutan. I don't eat it straight from the seed but instead, slice the flesh out and eat it with a fork. I thought it's one hell of an enjoyment to eat it this way coz I avoid eating the fine skin that comes off from the seed.