Orange and Suet Yi Tong Sui

Orange is one of the most favourite fruit in the world. Orange is loaded with vitamins, and the most abundant vitamin in orange is Vitamin C. This powerful vitamin protect our body against harmful elements. Orange is beneficial in the following cases like asthma, bronchitis, tuberculosis, pneumonia, rheumatism, prevent kidney stone, helps lower cholesterol, helps prevent diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure. Moreover, they also contain various important nutrients which make it a healthy and a nutritious fruit. To add on to it, it is usually liked by a majority of people of all age groups.

I was mesmerizing about this orange dessert that Mummy used to make when we were small. Since we had few oranges in the fridge, I thought of using them to make this dessert. Mummy used to make them with oranges plus rock sugar. I decided to add some white fungus (suet yi) to this dessert too. The end result we had sweet and tangy taste dessert. Yummy! I found back the taste that Mummy used to make for us. This brings back my childhood memories. I felt like a kid again.. :)

First, peel off the skin of the oranges and place them in the slow cooker.

Secondly, add some rock sugar in the slow cooker.

Thirdly, place the suet yi in the pot. Pour enough water to the pot.

Lastly, we had sweet and tangy taste dessert. Slurp slurp!

Note: It's best to leave the slow cooker on overnight to bring the orange flavour out.

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Egg and Sausage Tortilla Wraps

As much as you can read from the title, this simple tortilla wrap was my dinner tonight. Thursday night = Hubby's night with his gang for badminton sessions. As I am pretty much exhausted mentally and physically the whole week trying to catch up and reaching my target for my work. Therefore, I am kinda lazy to even think of what to have for dinner. Since the tortilla were pretty much 'crying' out loud asking me to 'eat' them; or shall I say I need to eat them before their expiry date, I had decided to make use of whatever sitting my fridge to prepare a simple and wholesome meal for my dinner.

My usual 'tenant' in my fridge were 'Mr. Sunny Egg' and 'Ms. Hot Sausage' and not forgetting 'Mrs Lettuce' and 'Mdm Red Tomatoes'. So I had used all of them and Voila ------- My wholesome Tortilla Wraps were ready and sitting at the dining table for me to savour them.. OMG, I think I am really going nuts with naming all the raw ingredients in my food by calling them names. What to do rite? We need to chill out and let our imaginations run wild once a while especially after a whole week of stress. I am just so glad that I had managed to pull thru and achieve my goal this month. But now I am beginning to worry about the next month. Just hope things will be running smoothly in August too. Till then, let me go and enjoy my dinner first....

My yummy dinner

The wrap was simple but it's fulfilling enough for me.. :)

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Fresh Fruit Jelly Mooncake Misadventures

This is another of my misadventure story of making mooncakes. So I am not going to post up any recipe for this jelly mooncakes till I figure out what went wrong or shall I mentioned specifically what I did wrong. The jelly mooncakes didn't really set hard. It's still somehow a bit soft and couldn't really stand well. Therefore, my jelly mooncakes looks like bouncy mooncakes. Grrr.. I am kinda disappointed with all the mooncakes recipes that I had tried so far. So sad and frustrated. Just hope I had better experience in my next 'experiment'.

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Cheesy Corned Beef Wraps

What to do with the leftover corned beef? Just wrapped them up with lettuce leaves and tortilla wraps spread with melted sliced cheese and we got ourselves prepared for a fast and simple food prepared for dinner. Pretty simple right? Hehe.. That's how lazy I am for today and topped with the fact that we had lots of leftover corned beef from dinner the other day. It's amazing that the beef still taste great after being in the fridge for almost 2 days.

Delicious tortilla wraps with savoury corned beef

One of my fave fruit: strawberries, it served the purpose of decor in this picture

One pax serving - you can be very full with just one piece of wrap

Fillings inside : corned beef, lettuce leaves wrapped with tortilla spread with melted cheese

Ingredients

2 pcs tortilla wraps

2 slices cheese, shredded

corned beef

lettuce leaves
olive oil

Methods

1. Add olive oil to a non-stick pan and heat up a tortilla wrap.
2. Melt 1 slice of shredded cheese on the wrap.
3. Remove the wrap and transfer to a plate. Add in lettuce leaves and corned beef.
4. Roll up tightly from side with fillings. Cut diagonally in halves or thirds.
5. Repeat for the remaining tortilla.

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Strawberries Muffins

Love the smell of the freshly baked muffins out from the oven..

Hot! Hot! Hot! Pipping hot... Can you see the empty slot next to the muffin?? Ended up in my stomach d..

My volcano lookalike strawberries muffin... :P

I was looking thru one of my frequently visited blog - Baking Mum and her strawberries muffins recipe had attracted my attention. I had bought a packet of strawberries while shopping during the weekend and decided to try on the recipe during night time. During the baking process, every part of our living room filled with the smell of the freshly baked muffins. Even Hubby who was taking a nap in the living room woke up to the smell of the muffins. But look wise of the muffins, I can say one word - eer... UGLY looking muffins. The texture of the muffins were more towards cake like than bread like. Nevertheless, they still taste great, moist and soft. One regret of this muffins- I should have be more generous in putting all the fresh strawberries in the batter instead of half packet only coz I can't really see strawberries inside the muffins.

Ingredients

125 g butter at room temperature

80 g caster sugar

100 gm brown sugar

2 eggs at room temperature

300 g plain flour or cake flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla essence

¾ to 1 cup fresh milk

1 cup of strawberry yoghurt

strawberries cut into small pieces

Methods

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
2. Cream butter and sugar until creamy.
3. Add in eggs one at a time. Add in vanilla essence. Beat until well mixed.
4. Add in yoghurt and mix well.
5. Add in flour and mix well.
6. Add in milk and fresh strawberries and mix well.
7. Spoon mixture into muffin cups and bake for 25 to 27 minutes until golden brown. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

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Corned Beef with Potatoes and Capsicums

I was reading about this dish in Lily's blog and it prompted me to try it out as well. As usual, I'll googled about the dish to get to know more before I start cooking. There's plenty of ways and ingredients to cook the corned beef. A trip to the nearby grocers and this little can of beef really makes my eye balls poked out. It's kinda expensive in my opinion. Maybe it's because it were imported goods. Therefore, it's slightly more expensive. The corned beef costs me RM12 plus. I had paired the dish with the Savoury Couscous. Hubby commented that both of the dishes goes very well together.

Ingredients

1 can corned beef

1 onion, diced

1 tbsp garlic, minced

1 red capsicums, diced

4 small sized potatoes, diced

1/2 cup corns

black pepper to taste

Methods

1. Add oil to a saucepan. Saute onion and garlic until soft. Add in potatoes and cover the saucepan with lid and leave for few minutes to soften the potatoes.
2. Add in capsicums, corns and corned beef. Stir well until heated through.
3. Add in black pepper to taste and mix well.
4. Serve hot.

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Savoury Couscous

Bought the packed couscous from Cold Storage

The couscous - before cooked

The couscous - after cooked

The couscous was very savoury, can be eaten on its own or with meat/vegetables of your choice

Couscous is a coarsely ground semolina pasta. The grain is a staple in many North African countries. Over the last decade, it's cropped up on other parts of the world menu too. So when I saw Couscous in Cold Storage while doing my grocery shopping, I was very excited and decided to buy one pack. The preparation was very easy with all the directions stated at the pack. I had added extra garlic and onion during the preparation to enhance the flavour and aroma.

Ingredients

30 g butter
1 onion, diced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup couscous

2 cups water

Methods

1. Heat butter in sauce pan (which has a lid).
2. Add chopped onions, stir and allow to cook until soft.
3. Stir in minced garlic.
4. Add couscous and stir.
5. Add in water and bring to boil. Remove from the heat.
6. Cover and leave to stand for 5 minutes.
7. Return to the heat for 1-2 minutes. Stirring with a fork to fluff up the grains, until piping hot.

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Peanut Butter Noodles

Peanut butter and noodles? What do you think about this combination? New? Weird? Bizarre? Extraordinary?... Whatever that's in your mind came across my mind before I tried my hands on this recipe. I have only one sentence for this combination in the future:

'IT'S SINFULLY DELECTABLE, IT ROCKS!!!'

Awesome peanut butter noodles

Shrimp with sliced cucumber

Flavourful mushrooms

Shredded ginger marinade chicken

Side look of my noodles platter

Whole noodles platter with stir-fry 'choy sum'

Ingredients

180-200g noodles
1/2 cup water with 1 tbsp chicken stock

1 1/2 tablespoons minced ginger
2 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp chunky peanut butter
1 1/2 tbsp honey
2 tsp chilli paste (optional)

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp roasted sesame seed

sesame oil and black vinegar to taste

chicken breast meat marinate with ginger paste, cooked n shredded (optional)

cucumber, sliced (optional)

'choy sum', sliced mushroom, shrimps, stir-fry with oyster sauce (optional)

Methods

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
2. Add noodles and cook until tender according to package directions. Drain and set aside.
3. Combine chicken broth, ginger, soy sauce, peanut butter, honey, chili paste, and garlic in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat until peanut butter melts and is heated through.
4. Add noodles and mix well with peanut butter sauce.
5. Dash sesame oil and black vinegar to taste. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.
6. Serve hot with vegetables, shredded chicken, mushrooms, cucumber and shrimps.

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Coffee Ice-Cream Mooncake

I am so tempted to try on mooncakes this year. Since there is still plenty of time till the festival, I took the opportunity to venture into mooncakes making earlier in order to create a better looking ones to bring back to my hometown when the date of the day is nearer. Why? Hmm.. nowadays I tend to love home-made stuffs more so trying to be special this year. Instead of buying mooncakes for parents and sis; I hope I can hand-made them. *Keep fingers crossed that my 'ambition' will come true ya*

I had many mistakes while making this ice-cream mooncakes. First mistake, I sort of over whipped my cream.; ended up they sort of becoming lumpy. Second mistake came while making the mooncakes skin, I didn't timed myself properly. Instead of 5 minutes, I totally forgotten about it and started to wander around the house doing other stuffs, ended up they became whole chunk of chocolate in the form of mooncakes. Sigh, what a disappointment! I needed to re-double boiled the chocolate again. Grrrr... More works and more headache! So can you imagine the mess that I created for myself? So frustrated and time consuming. Point for learning - never cook/do anything when you're moody and sleepy. That's exactly what I was before starting my mooncakes project.

So this morning, I woke up and opened my freezer to look at the pathetic ice-cream mooncakes of mine. I had lots of difficulty taking them out of the mould especially one particular mooncake. I think it might be due to reason that the skin were too thick. No wonder mooncakes cost so much outside. So many work to do in order to have a nice looking mooncakes. Now I am having thoughts in my mind "Will I succeed in my goal of making good mooncakes for Mum,Daddy and Sis?" Pray hard for that...

No so bad looking from outside, but the filling inside.. Still need to improve alot..

Ice-cream started to melt already when I cut the mooncake. The skin cracked too while slicing the mooncake. Hmm.. Any better ways to cut it nicely to avoid such crack?

Ingredients

Ice-cream Filling

(A)
150 ml fresh milk

2 tbsp instant coffee granules

(B)

4 egg yolks

60 g caster sugar

(C)

200g non-dairy whipped cream

(D)

2 tbsp of Kahlua

40g chocolate rice

Skin Layer

300g orange flavoured cooking chocolate

200g white cooking chocolate

Methods

1. Bring (A) to a warm boil (60 Celsius).
2. Beat (B) till consistency is slightly thick. Pour (1) from a height into the whisked mixture and mix well. Pour mixture into a pot, double boil till the mixture is thick (resemble runny kaya). Cool the mixture.
3. Combine (2) and (D). Add in (C). Keep them chilled for later use.
4. Double-boil (E) till melting point. Drizzle into chilled mooncake moulds till full. Level surface and leave chocolate to cool slightly. Once the chocolate coated the side of the moulds, invert the mould. Excess chocolate would drain out leaving hollow centres. Keep moulds freezed for 5 minutes. Remove, drizzle in chocolate once more to the brim. Repeat process of cooling and draining out once more. This steps gives the mooncakes a thicker chocolate skin.
5. Put (3) into a pipping bag or spoon the mixture to the center to fill it near to the brim. Knock out excess air. Drizzle some extra cooled (4) on the top and knock out excess air. Use a scrapper to level the top before keeping the mooncakes chilled for a night.

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Restoran Soon Kee

Dinner tonight is around the neighbourhood. We headed to one of our usual 'tai chow' restaurant in Setia Alam - Restoran Soon Kee. Since my god-sister was around, she had the privilege to order the food. Out of the 4 items that we had for dinner, 3 of the dishes were picked by her. First thing she order was fu yong egg followed by butter prawns and lastly sweet sour pork. As usual, teenagers will tend to forget about the vegetables dishes. So, that's our call; we ordered spinach with superior stock so that we will have greens and also can be served as a soup.

Overall, the food was good but the spinach in superior soup for tonight was lacking in terms of the taste. I tasted better version from this place. Maybe due to overwhelming customers coming in for tonight, the quality dropped a bit. The rest of the dishes were okay since there were no complains from my god-sister.

Sweet Sour Pork

Butter Prawns

Spinach in Superior Stock

Fu Yong Egg

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Restoran Yang Kee

After picking my god-sister from her hostel today, we went to Taman OUG for our lunch. Our destination for lunch today was Restoran Yang Kee located in the same row as Steven's Corner. This place was famous for beef noodles and stewed beef with white radish but surprisingly the three of us didn't order any of these food. I was never really a beef lover and god-sister due to religion reason can't consume beef but the surprise came from Hubby. He was a beef lover but he didn't order their specialities beef dishes too. He and I ordered minced pork dry noodle and the the noodle came with a selection of either pork balls or beef balls. Since this restaurant was all about beef, both of us chooses beef balls. Our beloved cheeky god-sister choose minced pork soup noodles with pork balls.

Both types of noodles (dry/soupy version) were good. I love their noodles texture. It was soft but yet chewy enough. The minced pork coated with dark soya sauce was good too! This place is definitely worth a second visit. I hoped to order their speciality dish next round.

Minced pork noodles dry version with beef balls

Minced pork noodles soupy version with pork balls

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Axian Dim Sum

We were in Bandar Puteri Puchong in the morning for the purpose of going to Bakewithyen to do some baking stuffs shopping. At first, I had suggested to Hubby to have Dim Sum in one of the Dim Sum restaurant's branch that we frequently visit but once we parked our car nearby the restaurant, I had spotted another Dim Sum restaurant nearby. The name of the restaurant caught my attention - Axian Dim Sum. At first, I was thinking whether is it coincidence the restaurant owner was named Axian or is it the Axian that hosted the show Taste with Jason. Since we were tempted to find out more, we had diverted our direction to this new Dim Sum restaurant. As soon as we entered the restaurant, it was packed with people and the tv host Axian's picture was display in the restaurant area. So, our guess was correct, it was really Axian - the tv host and now he's the Dim Sum restaurant owner as well.

Overall, the Dim Sum in the restaurant were okay; not bad but not really that great either. The only Dim Sum that I found that was special will be their specialty; Lau Sar Pau - creamy egg custard bun. I loved the hot pipping eggy custard that burst into our mouth once we took a bite on them. Superb! Their Char Siew Bau and Siew Mai were good too. The char siew fillings was sweet and the pau skin was soft, tender and not too thick while the taste of Siew Mai was just perfect; they were generous in their pork fillings too.

The rest of the Dim Sum we tried was just mediocre. Nothing to shout about. I guess I still prefer the other restaurant nearby and of coz the best Dim Sum will still be in Ipoh. I am so craving for Foh San Dim Sum now.....

Lau Sar Pau - one of their speciality Dim Sum

The creamy and hot fillings of custard and egg yolk oozing out when you open up the bun

Shanghai Xiao Long Bao

Char Siew Pau

Sweet savoury char siew filling

Siew Mai

Har Kow

Fried Radish Cake

Hong Kong Chee Cheong Fun

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Baked Seafood Pasta

It's seafood dinner for tonight... Oops.. I should be more specific.. It's baked seafood pasta for dinner. I had used fettucine for this recipe. The sauce in this recipe was actually the bottle of pasta sauce left in my fridge for quite some time. As I had make a promise to myself to avoid any food wastage, therefore I decided to used up the remaining pasta sauce. Hence, it definitely makes my preparation much easier. You don't believe it's that simple? Go thru the steps below and see for yourself.

Add 1-2 tsp salt to water. Bring the fettucine to boil and cooked al dente.

Place the fettucine in the baking dish. Set aside.

Add 1 tbsp olive oil to wok and add in minced onion and garlic. Cooked till fragrant and add in octopus and prawns and some herbs of your choice (I had used Italian seasoning - a combi of few types of herbs). Stir-fry till prawns turn slightly red.

Add in red capsicums and green peas. Stir-fry for a few minutes.

Add in pasta sauce. Stir till all are well mixed.

Transfer the sauce and fillings into the baking dish with pasta.

Topped the fillings with sliced crabsticks.

Sprinkle shredded cheese on top. and bake in oven for 15-20minutes at 200 Celsius.

Garnish with herbs again to enhance the aroma and bake in oven for 15-20 minutes at 200 Celsius.

Final product - baked seafood pasta.

So, what do you think? Pretty simple right... It's so simple that I think I wouldn't be ordering these types of food in restaurant anymore. I can have it in the comfort of own home and choose the ingredients that I love to be in this dish. Yumz yumz...

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