Yam Cake

This weekend's free and easy for us. I had the chance to try out a few new recipes.

Woo Tau Kou or Steamed Yam Cake is one of my favourites but I can hardly ever find a good place which is generous with their yam servings. Can't blame them as yam is getting very expensive. It was about RM5/kg and the past months it went up to RM9/kg. Tesco had a new fresh batch of yam arriving yesterday at RM5.99/kg, I quickly grabbed a reasonable sized one.

Ingredients :

750gm yam, peeled and washed and cubed (any size from 500m-750gm is okay)
1/2 bowl of dried shrimps, rinsed, fried and pounded
1/2 garlic, minced
5 shallots, sliced
1/2 bowl of oil

Batter :
300gm rice flour
80gm tapioca flour
1.5 tsp salt
1.2 liters of water

Seasoning
1 cube chicken stock, I prefer Knorr No-MSG
1 tsp five spice powder
1 tsp pepper

Method :
Fry dried shrimps in 2 tablespoon oil and remove when it turns crispy, then pound till fine.

Mix batter with hand, ensure it's well mixed and no lumps of flour

Fry shallots with 1/2 bowl oil till golden, drain and set aside. With the remaining oil, fry garlic till fragrant, add dried shrimps, add yam and seasoning, fry till fragrant.

Add batter, cook in medium fire till lumpy.

Transfer to oiled steaming pan. Steam for 45 minutes. Leave to cool and garnish with sliced chilly, spring onion and fried shallots

Serve with sweet bean sauce (theem cheong) and chilly sauce.

Here's some pictures of the cooking process :


Pounded dried shrimps and garlic.


Pour in batter



Cook the batter to this consistency

Smoothen batter with back of knife

Yam cake... Yummzzz (Too excited, can't wait to eat and I forget to take picture of the untouched yam cake, here you see one corner cut up. In fact most of my food photos are partially eaten .. ha ha ha ha)

Serve with theem cheong

Seafood Padprik

I love the nasi goreng with seafood padprik from Restoran Santai at Tesco Ampang. I heard they have an outlet at Taman Tun which is equally as popular too.

I tried to cook the 'padprik' dish and this is what I came out with :


Ingredients

Recipe :

1 bowl of prawns, shelled and deveined, leaving tails intact
1 bowl of white sotong, cut criss cross on the insides
2 garlic pips, chopped
1 large onion, wedged
80gms long bean, cut to 4cm length (blanched)
80gms cauliflower florettes (blanched)
2 tbsp oil
pinch of salt

Sauce:
2tbsp oyster sauce
2tbsp tomato sauce
2tbsp chilli sauce

Heat oil, fry garlic till fragrant, add salt
Add in onions, long beans & cauliflower, stir for 1 minute
add in prawns & sotong
add sauce and stir well till prawns turn pink and sotong curls up.

Goes well with white rice or garlic fried rice.



Seafood, padprik style. Another easy 15 minutes dish

Turns out to be wholesome and easy dish, the quantity I used was enough for 4 pax. We couldn't finish it and the main had the leftovers for her lunch.

Orange cupcakes

I made orange cupcakes for Ching Ming prayers.



ingredients

I used the basic buttercake recipe and baked the batter in cupcake trays lined with size 12 papercups.

Recipe :

250gms butter - 1 block 250gms self raising flour

200gms caster sugar

4 large eggs

30ml fresh milk

60ml Sunquick orange concentrate

Cream butter and sugar till fluffy, add eggs, one at a time, continue creaming and slowly add in milk and orange concentrate.
Fold in flour and pour to cupcake casing.

Preheat oven and bake at 180 celcius for 20-30 minutes. Cakes are done when the top becomes golden or test with cake tester

my little helper and cakes in the bake


golden orange cupcakes ! Yumz !

Easy peasy and tasty baking.. Amber loves it and I packed some for her breakfast. I'd better discipline myself to limit my cake intakes, otherwise fei sei lor..

Tonic soup

After almost a month of coughing, I had dizzy spells therefore I went to see a doctor. He said prolonged coughing can affect our blood circulation make us feel dizzy. He gave me a round of antibiotics and anti-emetic pills and I feel much better now. Hubs been pestering me to see a doctor much earlier and asked me not to be my own doctor by prescribing my own medications and pills.

Now, to rejuvenate, I made this soup in the office : 6 red dates, 1tsp kei jee (chinese wolfberries) and few slices of ginseng. I slow cooked on 'high' for 2 hours and it's ready to drink. A nutritous healthy rejuvenating tonic.

Tonic concoction

Luckily we have a small office of our own, and we have a mini fridge, microwave and toaster, very convenient, almost like our second home. We have our breakfast in the office and sometimes home 'bento' for lunch (actually, leftovers from previous nights dinner)

My first cake - Butter Cake

Since moving to our new home, I’ve been more creative in my cooking and embarked on a baking project. I’ve avoided baking cakes due to bad experiences. The last cake I bake, a banana cake, 12 years ago, turned out more like banana pudding instead. Cake did not rise and I was left with a soggy pudding like cake. Not nice at all.

I’m fine with cookies but baking cakes is something I’m not adept at. Last Tuesday evening, I plucked up the courage and started with the most basic cake – butter cake. So, after picking up Amber from babysitters, we went Giant to get the stuff : flour, eggs, butter and caster sugar. I used Buttercup instead of pure butter to reduce my capital cost, in case my cake ‘tak jadi’. My little girl was very excited and happily helped me collect the ingredients from the shelf.

She also sibuk-menyibuk in the kitchen, bringing along her stool with following me from the island to the sink, back to the island again to get a better height to watch what I’m doing and also to lend a hand.

The recipe was quite simple :

Block of butter 250gms
Caster sugar 240gms
Half cup milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
4 eggs
Self Raising flour 250gms

Cream butter and sugar till fluffy, add eggs one at a time
Add in milk & vanilla essence
Fold in flour

Like cake tin with baking sheet and pour in batter. Bake in oven baking mode (upper and lower heating elements on, fan off) for 1 hour at 180C

Ingredients and what a mess !

Completed batter, ready for the bake

Amber sibuk-menyibuk. She's standing on a stool, following me everywhere around the kitchen

I told her not to stand near the oven coz it's hot. Here, she stands 3 ft away, again on a stool.

Result ? Tadaa......

My first successful cake and I'm darn proud of it

Verdict :

Quite okay but a bit dense and you can see specs of sugar (in small yellow dots) on the cake.I think I did not cream the butter and sugar well enough, sugar can be reduced to 220gm as I prefer less sweet cakes.

I shared the cakes with my colleagues and Amber's playmates at the babysitters. They'll be my guinea pigs for my future bake projects.

Once, the butter cake is successful, I will embark on flavoured cakes : marble cakes, durian cakes and orange cake. Then, hopefully I'll move on to cupcakes. That's my to-do list for 2009.

RM5 - Dinner for 3 ?

Can you believe it ? Here's what we had yesterday :


Siew Pak Choy fried with garlic - Rm1.50 for 2 bundles. The pic above is only half. I've eaten some and gave a big portion to my maid.

Tau Foo Kang : Great comfort food. Hubs favourite dish and mine too. Goes so well with steaming hot rice.

Recipe :

1 block of soft tofu - 80sen

minced pork - RM2 , season with pepper and soya sauce

1 egg - 40sen

spring onion - 20sen

minced garlic

seasoning.

fry garlic till fragrant, add dash of salt

add seasoned pork, fry till pork is fully cooked, dash in a little fish sauce .

add smashed tofu

add a large bowl of water

let it boil for 2 minutes

add little cornflour mixture to thicken

add in beaten egg

turn off fire and stir in chopped spring onions.

Simple, nutritous and easy dinner for abt RM5 for 3 people. You get fiber, meat protein, soy protein and carbs.

My Weekend

This weekend was a quiet weekend we had in a long time. Since moving house, our activities were packed, it was either the contractors or renovators, then came Christmas, New Year and Chinese New Year. I was also down with a sore throat and mild fever. Too lazy to go anywhere or do anything exciting.

We spend a lot of time with Amber and noticed she hardly threw tantrums. She was very well behaved and we spent a lot of quality time together.


I am teaching Amber how to write with the guide of dotted lines. Only 2 rows have examples in dotted lines, the rest, I 'dot' them myself with black crayons. My cheeky fart commented on the dots.. eeee... look like 'da pian.. eee.. orh see!!' meaning look like a trail of shit lah. You see, cheeky or not ?

I'm not sending her to kindie yet but I try teaching her to write at home. I always tell her she has to learn to write before going to kindie (white lie .. a threat actually!)


She monkeys with the crayons here, as if it's jossticks. She actually said :
Pai pai guanyin ma ! give Amber chocolate ah ...
Aiyo, really lol !


She feeds the fishes. Sometimes more than twice a day. I tell her.. fish pau-pau (full) already. If you feed more, the fish will vomit !

It was also a weekend of leftovers. On Sat, I made konlou wantan mee for lunch. A friend gave us a pack of famous Koon Kee wantan mee before the New Year and I kept in the freezer. Was still fresh when defrosted and I made some pork wantan with prawn soup (from leftover peeled shells). For garnishing, I defrosted some (leftover from Chap Goh Mei) braised mushroom chicken feet. I used the gravy for the sauce , along with dark soya and oyster sauce. Yummy and very economical lunch.

On Sunday, I defrosted some Petaling Street Sze Ngan Chye roast duck from our pot luck gym gang gathering. Wanted to copy D'Lish's Duck Confit Pasta and came quite close. Here's how :

Very easy dish, fillet the roast duck (drumstick and breast), season with salt, separate the skin.

Fry skin first still crispy. Fry garlic in olive oil, throw in the meat fillets and some chicken stock and boiled pasta. Give it a good stir and serve. Yummy also

I saved the bones and not so meaty parts for making porridge. Still sitting in my freezer, waiting for another lazy Sunday afternoon.

Leftovers can be interesting too right ?

Peanut cookies, "Fah Sang Peng"

Back in the schooldays, the first cookie I baked was peanut cookie. The recipe is easy and foolproof but it's also the most tedious and time consuming. Back in the schooldays and good old days, mom, sis and me would gather and make peanut cookies. We measured using rice bowls, 1 bowl of this and that (can't remember now).


the peanut dough



My little helper watching me roll the little balls of peanuts

Over the years, I've lost the recipe and stopped baking after mom passed away. A couple of years ago, I tried and tested the recipe again and here's my concoction :

170gm peanuts (the small variety, with skin)
150gm flour
120gm icing sugar
half teaspoon superfine salt
Groundnut oil (Knife is the best)
egg yolk for glazing

Method :Fry the peanuts till crunchy, this is the most delicate part, you must fry in slow fire and keep stirring to ensure no peanuts gets burnt. Test one or two and it's ready when it's fragrant and crunchy without the raw peanut taste.

Leave to cool and remove skin (long and tedious process)

Blend peanuts till very fine, fine means it has turned pasty and can see little hint of oil in the paste. I personally like the peanut blended super pasty and fine to get the 'melt in your mouth' taste. Be careful with the chopper/blender. Please pause after a few seconds, I've heard of many peanut cookie sellers 'overheating' their blenders/choppers

In a mixer, mix all the dry ingredients till crumbly . Slowly pour in cooking oil and mix till in becomes a dough, soft enough to roll into balls. (I personally prefer Knife cooking oil, it used to be the best 'fah sang yau' ie peanut oil but now all our cooking oils are mixed with palm oil).

Glaze with egg yolk

Bake at 160 C for 20 minutes or till light golden brown.

To make it more interesting, you can poke in almond nibs at each cookie. It'll lend a hint of cruchiness and makes the cookie easier to handle. I've omitted it coz almonds are so darn expensive !!!!!




little balls of peanut cookie, fresh from oven, yumz



Ta da ! All packed and ready for the New Year