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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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

Read more...