Category: My Kitchen

People that know me knows that I don’t really cook, especially for one complete meal. These days, I have to cook, what to do? I have to clear the fridge and also eating out or tapao everyday is not something that I fancy doing.

Since last Thursday, I’ve been stir frying some vegetables that were left in the fridge, I didn’t take those photos. Just simple stir fried of various green leafy vegetables with garlic and seasoned with some salt and Ajinamoto. As for meat, I just microwaved the pre-marinated chicken that we bought. That one packet of chicken lasted us 3 days.

These were our dinner last Sunday night. Fruits and vegetables salad and spaghetti bolognaise. My bro cooked it actually, I supervised ;p

Left: Monday night, we had tomyam beef wanton soup. I wrapped the wonton with minced beef. Very simple and easy, boil the pot of water, put in tomyam cube, then put in the wanton and mushroom. Lastly, the tomato slices. We experimented this dish, first time had beef wonton, it tasted a bit odd with tomyam soup *LOL*

Right: Tuesday night, stir fried vegetables again. Basically all my garlic stir fried vegetables all look similar to this ;p

Left: Tuesday night, black pepper spaghetti. I tried this dish before somewhere few years back but wasn’t very nice. So I decided to cook my own to see whether I could beat that or not. It was not bad, albeit a bit dry because I didn’t have enough cooking oil. It was quite spicy but tasted so much better than the one I had last time. This is very easy and simple to cook too.

Prepare your spaghetti, heat a little bit of oil in the frying pan, then fried the spaghetti just like you fried noodle. Pour black pepper sauce(up to you on how much you want, the more the spicier) and stir fried it for awhile. Season with a bit of salt and Ajinamoto. As simple as that.

Right: Tuesday night also, microwaved some chicken wings, marinated it with premix sauce. It looked nice don’t you think? However, it was tasteless and overcooked ;p I set the timer a bit too long. Actually the premix sauce was not supposed to be used as marinate, again… Experimenting hehehe…

Left: Today’s lunch, white rice and stir fried sweet peas and yellow capsicum with Chinese sausage in black pepper sauce. Only a bit of black pepper sauce to taste, that explains the slight brownish colour of the dish and I was surprised with how good it tasted 😉

Right: Today’s dinner, light soy sauce fried rice with Chinese sausage, french beans, pineapple, and mushroom. I got no skill hehehe… It’s kind of tasteless, luckily the Chinese sausage gave the rice the taste when you chew them together. Did season with salt, pepper, and Ajinamoto but not enough ;p

That’s all for now. Oneweek plus to go…

P/S: Don’t ask me for measurement, I just followed my instincts.

We don’t really collect or purposely collect cookbooks. Just happened that we have a collection of them by getting them as free gifts and old subscription of monthly cookbooks that my mom used to subscribe more than 20 years ago but we seldom try out the recipes ;p. Usually just see, see, look, look, and drool over it.

This is the latest collection to our collection, Oo… Ha! Favourites of Sarawak by Vincs Huang (bilingual edition).

I got this from joining a contest conducted by Borneoboy by submitting my experience queuing for donuts ;p

You can find many Sarawak signature food in there from some communities in Sarawak but it’s a bit disappointing that there’s no Sarawak Laksa or Kueh Chap or Cha Kueh recipe in there. The recipes featured in there are all from popular eateries in Kuching. Just to name a few, Lok Thian, Chia Heng, and It-Hng.

Besides recipes, there are also articles in there introducing food and places of interest of Sarawak.

My mum does cook most of the recipes in there and those that she doesn’t know how or require a lot of preparations, we would just buy. Makes life easier hahaha…

Nevertheless, it’s one interesting cookbook for our collection as we don’t have any that is dedicated to Sarawak.

Thanks Borneoboy for organizing the contest. 🙂

My friend shared this recipe with me but I haven’t got the chance or time to try it out. Going to post it to share it with you and also as my reference. It’s actually very basic recipe that you can find easily.

Ingredients:
50g honey
50g melted butter
200g cornflake

Optional:
Sesame, sun flower, almond, pumpkin seed, and etc. 25g each

Instructions:
1. Mix honey and melted butter.
2. Pour in cornflakes and other optional ingredients and mix.
3. Scoop the mixture into paper baking cups.
4. Bake in the oven with the heat of 150 degree Celcius for 10-15 minutes.

I’ve been thinking of making steamed cake since a long time ago but always didn’t get into doing it until last December when I was enjoying my long holiday. I found Cream Cracker Steamed Cake from a friend in Facebook. The recipe I’m sharing with you here is the original recipe.

The photo I’m showing is my modified version, my lazy version ;p Also I can never follow a recipe, I always ended up modifying it. I’ll put mine in italics so you can compare.

Ingredients:
250 grams butter

200 grams caster sugar

6 large eggs

21 pieces cream crackers (choose less oily ones, or else cut down on the butter)
I didn’t follow exactly, I just estimated it from the broken cream crackers I had in the container. I accidentally knocked the container and it fell to the floor so I have no idea how many crackers were in there. I could only count 16 complete pieces and the rest were all broken into bits and pieces. I ended up using the whole container hahaha… Roughly around 21 pieces I guess ;p

2 tablespoons Milo powder (or any other flavour you like)
I skipped this, I decided to do a usual cake rather than layer cake.

Instructions:

1. Leave butter at room temperature until soft

2. Cream butter and caster sugar until mixture turns white

3. Add eggs and mix until consistent

4. Blend/smash cream crackers into powder form

5. Stir powdered cream crackers into mixture until consistent

6. Halve the batter
I skipped this, you only need this if you want to make layer steamed cake

7. Add Milo powder into half of the batter
I skipped this, you only need this if you want to make layer steamed cake

8. Line a baking tin with baking paper
I just coat the tin with butter as I didn’t have baking paper

9. Pour plain batter first (thickness depending on how many layers do you want to make) and spread evenly
I poured everything into the tin

10. Steam on medium heat (water boiled on high heat before this) for 10 minutes, check by pricking to see if it’s cooked before pouring the second layer
I skipped this, you only need this if you want to make layer steamed cake

11. Then, pour the Milo batter and steam for 5 minutes (timing up to you, just make sure to check if it’s cooked)
I skipped this, you only need this if you want to make layer steamed cake

12. Repeat until all batter used up
I skipped this, you only need this if you want to make layer steamed cake

I steamed the cake for 45 minutes to one hour using medium heat. I just roughly estimated the time, I don’t remember the actual time. If you are not sure whether the cake is done, just use a skewer to check it. If the skewer can move easily inside the cake, then it’s not done yet. If it’s done, you should not be able to move the skewer easily as the texture of the cake is quite dense. Always make sure there’s enough water in the steamer.

13. Remove the cake from the baking tin, let cool on wire rack and serve.

My verdict
The cake is too sweet for my liking. You can reduce the sugar if you want to. Also you can add in a teaspoon of vanilla essence if you want to get rid of the taste of the eggs. You can also change cream cracker to digestive biscuits, any biscuits without filling will do also. Not only that, replace it with NESTUM®(the original one, not the 3-in-one kind) is great too.

I gave some to my friends to try and they said it’s not too sweet for them. Maybe it’s just me that don’t like very sweet food.

Try it out, very easy and quite fool proof based on my standard. I always ended up with failed cakes but still edible because I can’t follow a recipe exactly, tend to modify it, and skip some steps hehehe…