Sweet and sour spare ribs

I have been remiss in posting but I certainly have not been remiss in cooking! I have to admit though our visits to the Chinese takeaway has been quite frequent since the little one started school. I'm definitely not cut out to be a yummy mummy of which there seem to be lots of, who waltz up to the school gates looking fresh and full of energy on the dot at 3pm. Anyway, back to food, inspired somewhat by the chinese takeaways, I decided to give the sweet and sour pork ribs a go. My concern was that the meat could be tough but try I must. The recipe I tried turned out to be really nice, the sauce was fragrant and I really like having the sesame seeds sprinkled on. The meat? Not tough but I think I will cook it just a tad longer next time...just need it slightly more tender!

 

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Mee Jawa

Mee Jawa or Jawa Mee??. whichever way you call it, it's a tomato based noodle dish. The recipe normally calls for a soup base made with sweet potatoes, crush peanuts. My mum learnt to make this dish from a Eurasian lady in the neighbourhood and her soup does not use peanutt and this is my favourite. I have to say that my mum does not cook very much, she's very much a baked beans, spam and fried egg kind of cook. So this is my attempt to replicate the dish, I have asked my mum before for the recipe but because it's been years since she made it and when she did it was not often, the ingredients change each time she answers me!

Anyway, I think I might have cracked it. After making stock from chicken bones, I will try ribs next time, in goes the tomato purée and some spices. I omitted the chilli paste this round as the little one and other kids were having lunch with us. This dish made up of the soup with boiled egg noodles with various accompaniments. One of the must have accompaniment is fritters, the one I like is just plain fritters with no prawns. I remembered seeing a recipe for it in one of my cookbooks so I got to try make another thing new.

Lastly, one other thing I tried new was instead frying the tau kua (firm tofu or bean curd) I baked it in the oven with great success. So bye bye to frying tau kua, no tau kua is going to get the chance to spit hot oil at me ever again!

The must have garnishes

 

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Fresh fruit sour cream cake

This blueberry sour cream cake is somewhere between light sponge and typical local (UK) cakes (rather dense)so I would say medium light...lol. Ok, so it was one of the 'ladies who lunch's birthday and I volunteered to bake the cake. It's a simple to do cake with very few steps, i.e. dump all ingredients into the mixer and mix till it drops off the spoon easily and bake! Of course you still have to measure flour, sugar etc and wait for butter to softened which is forever in this climate other than that, how simple can it be? I decided on a fresh cream/mascarpone icing and fresh fruit theme. As I was only baking it the morning for lunch, I didn't want to mess around with smoothing icing so out came the chocolate fingers to go round the sides. I must learn to make chocolate cigarillos, it's on my to conquer list now.

Cross section, baked blueberries turn sweet and lovely!

 

 

 

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Sausage buns

This is my kind of simple light weekend lunch. Sauage laced with tomato sauce on super soft and fluffy bread. I did say light lunch but one is never enough and it's simple enough to tick all boxes for all in the house. Using the TZ bread method, the buns stay super soft till the next day. And there's something about baked mayonnaise the texture and taste changes to something yummy! I made some round ones topped with cheese and yummy...sinful? Yes, yummy? Double yes!!

The factory line

Stick to the TZ method if you want soft soft bread

 

 

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Iced gem biscuits

It's Friday and today I'm working from home. I normally work from my kitchen table so when the clock strikes the hour to indicate the start of the weekend it took all of one second to go from holding a computer mouse to holding a measuring cup! A friend of mine had recently received a batch of iced gems that her friend had kindly made and sent to her. She shared the recipe and give it good reviews. I've looked at recipes for this before but never got round to deciding which one to try and since this recipe was given and tested I thought I'd give it a go.

So what aWre iced gems? This one brings back memories from the past, these little biscuits not bigger than a 20 sen coin is topped with crunchy icing of the most attractive colours! I used to buy them in handfuls from the local shop where they were carefully weighed and then wrapped in newspaper. What a great treat it was to get home and unwrap the package to see how many different colours I got and if there were many of my favourite ones! As with eating the modern day M&Ms there is of course a sequence by which the various colours were eaten, need I say more?

Anyway, they did indeed turn out great, tasting exactly as I remembered them and best of all I managed to once again share a little of my childhood with my little girl. What a delight it was to see her create her own sequence of preference when eating the iced gems!

Baked and waiting to be iced

 

Took a bit of rummaging in the kitchen to find something that gave the size to cut the dough

 

 

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Pot baked crusty bread

This may change the way I bake bread from now onwards. A friend asked about baking bread in a cast iron pot and in doing so flicked the curiosity switch that is inherent in my nature. A quick google showed Great British Bakeoff finalist James Morton recommending baking bread in pots! I didn't need any further convincing, so together with my friend we embarked on a journey that may change us forever as we both love hand kneading bread! Did I neglect to mentioned that this particular recipe from JM does not require kneading the dough? Even more reason to test it out, right?

One of the comments on the JM blog also said the person was happy to hear cracking after removing the bread from the oven. Cracking ??? When I did mine, it did indeed produce cracking sounds after I removed it from the oven...in fact t it went on cracking for a good while! Just the sound, the bread did not actually crack as you can see from the picture.

I will have to leave you now while I wait for the bread to cool enough to cut into. Yes, I was so excited to see the baked bread in a pot that I started to blog before I even cut the bread! Stay tuned!

I only cut the loaf the next day, it was still soft on the inside and the crust due to the steaming action in the pot is really good!

 

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Soya sauce sea bass

Better known as ikan masak kicap, simply translated as fish cooked in soya sauce. If you ask me it's the garnishes that make this dish. The trio of coriander leaves, spring onions and sliced chillies brings this dish to life. Served with steamed rice it's all I need to make a satisfying dinner and I don't have anything more to say, it's simpliticity at its best!

 

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Kiam chye th'ng (salted vegetable soup)

This is our family's traditional CNY soup which we have throughout the first few days of CNY ! ! Adding whatever left over dishes along the way. When a friend gave me some roasted pork it was an opportunity to make this soup, with the roast pork added to salted mustard green, duck legs, Chinese mushrooms.

And since the same friend didn't manage to get home for CNY this year, I thought it appropriate to make this soup and invite her round for a CNY dinner! Gong xi fa cai take 2!!

 

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Salted caramel chocolate cake

It's other half's 40th birthday, so what cake? A friend was also baking a birthday and she decided on a gooey moist salted caramel chocolate cake. I decided to give it a go too as I've not made salted caramel before.

Oh! It is evil this thing called salted caramel! I'm not the kind who likes to lick spoons when cooking or baking but this salted caramel calls to me and just can't help myself! Consider this a warning for those brave enough to try! And yes, I made some chocolate shards for the first time too but the excitement of the salted caramel overshadows it.

Pure indulgence!

I went for a moist sponge instead of gooey as per my friend

 

 

Chocolate shards and icing

 

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Flooded icing cookies

It's been a struggle getting back into work mode since a great holiday back to Malaysia. So this weekend something to remind me of the whole point of going to work i.e. to pay for the things I enjoy, is much needed. A friend shared a video she came across on uTube ...what else is there than to let myself be suckered in and give it a go. So this is the result of trying out flooded icing and wet on wet techniques. It was fun and not too complicated but as always working with icing sugar, the cleanup is not so fun. And since I'm not a fan of super sweet biscuits, I'm going to need willing volunteers to eat them!

Made some pink ones too

 

 

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Ikan masak asam

I'm not sure what the name of the fish is that we normally make this dish with at home but easiest for me to get here is salmon without having to worry too much about it being fresh. My Vietnamese coriander has been growing on the window ledge and it has got to the point where it normally keels over and starts to wilt. I don't know why but this is probably the 6th plant I have and this one was given to me by a friend so I really want to keep it going. I figured maybe the previous ones died from under pruning so I needed to take the top leaves off. But of course I didn't want to just throw the leaves away, the whole point of having the plant is to eat it! Anyway long story short, one of my favourite dish with this daun kesom is masak asam. So plant pruned, tummy satisfied!

Daun kesom or vietnamese coriander

 

 

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Pop your own corn

It was a typical lazy Saturday afternoon, watching movies on the TV when we were attacked by the need to munch and crunch. I remembered that I picked up a bag of corn some time back and never got round to experimenting with popping my own corn. So a quick scan of the net and finger in the air selection of corn popping method, we were off. Then it was quick decision time, should we go buttered? Salted? Or caramel? In the end it was to be all three!! One thing to note, I used coconut oil to pop the corn which is healthier (pre buttering, salting and caramelising of course) and smells great!

Was it good? Well the saying goes a picture tells a thousand words. Btw I do feed the little one!

 

 

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Koay teow th'ng

There is no easy way to spell this dish and the only way is what makes sense to me phonetically. This is basically flat rice noodles in tasty broth. I can't remember what it was now but something put this noodle soup dish in my mind and won't let me enjoy other food until I have satisfied the craving for this. It's a shame that it was an impromptu dish this time as I would have loved to have some fish balls and fish cakes in it. Instead what I made was rather authentic i.e. the soup base was made from duck stock instead or the 'cheat' chicken stock. It turned out to be quite tasty and more importantly close to the taste in my mind so craving satisfied!

 

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