Nourishing Chicken Soup (Confinement)

During my confinement, my friend, Christine made this delicious and nourishing soup for me. With a slow cooker, I was able to replicate the soup which is made with red dates, black dates, longan, goji berry (kei chi) and ginger. Place everything into the slow cooker and let it simmer happily away for 4 hours or till the chicken meat is tender.



The key ingredients: red dates, black dates, longan, goji berry and ginger.

Nasi Lemak

I was planning to have a yummy lunch of nasi lemak today, however, things went a bit chaotic when I suddenly got a call that the electrician was coming over in an hour's time to fix the wiring on the cooker hood! Problem was most people here have yet to experience the wonderful smell of fried ikan bilis so it was a race to get it all cooked and leave enough time to air out the kitchen before the man arrives! I managed it all in the nick of time but unfortunately, there was not enough time to hard boil the egg so I ended up with a fried egg instead.

The finished dish, complete with banana leaf!

Sweet Buns

I have been wanting to make soft sweet buns for a long time, you know the kind we used to get from KFC? I've finally found a recipe that came really close, while I excitedly tried it out, it almost became a disaster as I halved the recipe which was meant to yield 16 buns, which is too many for me. I carefully halved all the ingredients and then misread the amount of water of 100 ml as 1000ml!! It was lucky that I only poured 150ml of the water into the dough before realising something was not right and rechecked the recipe. I managed to double back the other ingredients and the end result was soft, fluffy and sweet buns!

Nasi Goreng Kampung

The other day, I suddenly had a craving for Nasi Goreng Kampung, so I searched the web for a recipe. Since it was an impromptu decision to cook this dish, I had to raid my store cupboard and fridge, hoping that I will have all the required ingredients. Except for the right type of vegetable, i.e. chai sim, I had some kangkung so it will have to do. I also popped in some left over beef but as long as the main ingredients of ikan bilis and cili padi was present I was happy enough with the result!

You will notice that my nasi goreng kampung is darker then normal, I do like my soya sauce a tad too much!

Ginger Beef and Asparagus stir fry

If you like ginger then this is the dish for you. Slivers of ginger are fried till golden and fragrant then seasoned beef and asparagus is added. Stir-fry for a few minutes till the asparagus cooks to the desired 'crunch', dish up and serve with steamed rice...delicious! I like to eat this dish with chopsticks and rice served in a bowl, a strange quirk but somehow it tastes better this way!

Blueberry Sour Cream cake

This is a very easy cake to do. Step 1, measure all the ingredients, Step 2 mix all the ingredients together, Step 3 stir in the blueberries and lastly pop into the oven and bake! Easy peasy, and 30 minutes later you have a lovely, moist cake to enjoy!

Unfortunately the colour of the blueberry in the photo does not look apertising but that's really the best bit of the cake!

Chicken Tagine with Olives and Preserved Lemon

This is from Jamie Oliver's latest book, Jamie Does. Flavoured with preserved lemon and olives and then stewed till the meat falls off the bone, a very hearty meal served with lightly seasoned couscous.

Kuih Bahulu

I'm not sure if these little eggy sponge cakes are Malay in origin or not. As with many Malaysian cakes and food, all the various different races seem to have their own version so the origin is unknown. Anyway, since I brought the mould back from Penang, I have to try baking this cake though I not really a fan. The recipe was randomly picked from the web, based on how convincing the recipe sounded! The first few rounds were fine then disaster struck, the cakes were stuck in the mould and simply refused to pop out! But still edible!