National Day Feast (With TV Off)

Happy National Day to us all! Just look at the spread Dracoholic prepared for us all! She was already pottering around the kitchen before I woke (which was around 12pm).

What a spread!!!

The salad dresed with honey mustard vinegrette . I don't know what dressing this is. I think Satellite made the salad.

Totmato slices with mozzerella on top & drizzled with home-made basil pesto, typically called caprese.

Blanched french beans, tossed with lemon zest, olive oil and sea salt.


Creamed corn with bits of bacon inside!

OK, I love potatoes. These roasted potatoes, carrots & parsnips were excellent! Roasted together with onions & garlic. The parsnips were sweet & tasty, well worth the exorbitant price you pay for parsnips here. We bought parsnips on sale before. Even at half price, I still found them to be horribly expensive!


The highlight of the evening, Dracoholic's slaved-all-day roast chicken stuffed with lemon & rosemary & her home-smoked ribs with her secret kick-ass sauce. The chicken (even the breast)was tender & juicy. Oh she used sakura chicken. It was tasty, all right! ;) The ribs turned out very well indeed too! I would have never imagined smoking your own meat at home! Jian was kind of put off by the smell when the ribs were smoking & even asked me, 'What's burning????'

You drizzle this herb sauce on the chicken for extra flavour.

We finished the night off with home made sangria that Dracoholic & Satellite were furiously chopping fruits for the night before!

Once again, thank you Dracoholic & Satellite for the splendid feast!

Picnic by the Poolside @ Dracoholic's

We were in the mood for outdoors, so we prepared food & drinks & toted everything downstairs to the poolside. We even used REAL wine glasses & plates, as opposed to plastic & paper. Well, except for our forks. We used plastic forks.

Satellite prepared a smoked salmon pasta salad with sun dried tomatoes & capers. Served cold.

I prepared the platter using what Dracoholic had in the fridge. Anti-clockwise from left: ham (either breakfast or picnic), cherry tomatoes, cornishorns, smoked duck (yes the same one I used for the Orange & Duck Salad), parmesan cheese, comte cheese, shiraz cheese & goat cheese.

This guacamole is quite good... although we did not make it ourselves...

... This is the packaging it came in & it was not cheap. It's $7+ for this, which includes 2 servings. as you can see, one serving is not a lot.


In future, I really MUST take pictures of our accompanying wine/drinks.

Home Made Mee Hoon Kueh

Our first attempt at making Mee Hoon Kueh came out pretty decent, although we still have not perfected the stock... perhaps it is the type of ikan bilis (anchovies) we use, or maybe we just don't use enough of them that the stock doesn't seem rich enough; or maybe we should add in the mushroom stocks which I have been saving for the longest time for our next attempt. Not rich enough but still delicious.

I'm not sure about the entire recipe of the soup, but I will let Satellite handle that. Here's the recipe for making the dough, this dough will get chewier depending on how long you knead it.

250 g plain flour
1 egg
100 ml water
pinch of salt
1 tbsp cooking oil

Make the dough by placing all the ingredients together and knead for about 30 minutes. Create a ball with the dough and place it in a bowl, cover with a wet cloth and let it rest for 1 hour. There after you are ready to peel the little pieces off and throw it in the pot of broth whilst cooking your other ingredients.

After making this, I realized that down South, they have something similar to this but in cream soup. It's called chicken dumplings. Check out some Southern Chicken Dumpling recipes courtesy of About.com

Vietnamese Food

During my time at RIT, I grew to love eating Vietnamese food, especially in the winter time. Having a hot bowl of pho was what we were always looking for when the wind chill was ridiculous. For a person that usually waits for her food to get lukewarm, I used to wallop my pho within minutes of it reaching the table. Oh how I miss those days.

I was at Takashimaya with a colleague looking for things to buy for the destitute that we would visit that week in a home for our corporate responsibility program and we ran out of time to actually catch a good meal, since we started at the Daiso in ION. Further adding to that, having a meal at the ION foodcourt isn't the cheapest thing in the world; we also couldn't find what we were looking for at that Daiso (still prefer the IMM and Plaza Singapura Daiso as they have more variety) so with a hop and a skip we went over to Art Friend in Taka. Having not taken breakfast, after we finished up at Art Friend, I pestered my colleague to grab some food with me at the new food court (maybe not so new... I think about 1/2 year old).


The place is no longer as cluttered as before, but just as difficult to grab a seat. I saw Pho Hoa and I had been craving Vietnamese food for months ... so I went ahead and got me a bowl of Phở Chín, Nạm, Gầu, Gân, Vè Dòn and Chả Giò. The pho came in a big bowl and was nice, although I've had nicer around town, but I can't complain. The accompanying garnishing was on the stingy side. The disappointment that I had was that they did not give the sweet sauce or the proper chilli sauce to go with the Pho, nor was there a selection of it at the stall itself; so I helped myself to some chilli padi. The Chả Giò wasn't as nice as I expected it to be... a bit on the soft side.

For a nice Chả Giò recipe see Rasa Malaysia's Vietnamese Spring Roll recipe. You can also check out this Vietnamese Beef noodle soup recipe.

Chả Giò - A kind of spring roll (sometimes referred to as egg roll) – deep fried flour rolls filled with pork, yam, crab, shrimp, rice vermicelli, mushrooms ("wood ear" variety) and other ingredients. The spring roll goes by many names - as many people actually use (falsely) the word "spring roll" while referring to the fresh transparent rice paper rolls (discussed below as "Summer Rolls"), where the rice paper is dipped into water to soften and then rolled up with various ingredients. Traditionally these rolls are made with a rice paper wrapper but in recent years Vietnamese chefs outside of Vietnam have changed the recipe to use a wheat-flour-based wrapper.

Phở Chín, Nạm, Gầu, Gân, Vè Dòn - Noodle soup with brisket, flank, tendon, fatty, and crunchy flank.

Ah, I just remembered before my experience at Pho Hoa, I did have vietnamese pho in a bowl. I don't exactly remember where I found this instant noodle, but it was a pretty good quick fix. Some may find this a bit on the salty side, but it warmed my tummy up on a cold rainy day in the office!

Yumyums that Satellite makes

Coming home from work starving, Satellite was kind enough to whip up some great grub. We had fun poaching eggs for the first time but it didn't come out as perfect as we wanted.

Shown here, grilled asparagus sprinkled with cheese for a finishing, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes with poached eggs, toasted baguette and smoked salmon.

It was a quick fix for my hunger, much appreciated!

White Truffle Delight!

Dinner at my sister's!! White truffles from some Ang Moh land! I think it was France or Italy. I'm quite sure it's France though. Anyway, my sister bought 2 or 3 white truffles for SGD$300+!!! Between 5 people, we ate tucked into our $60 to $80 (per person) worth of truffles, guzzled various expensive champagne & wines & finished off the meal with lamb chops. Nawhawhawhaw! I do not have the pictures of the lamb, but Jian does.

A truffle & truffle shaver. You can toggle the thinness of the truffle shavings with the little knob on the side. Truffles are ugly looking things, aren't they? White truffles are mostly about the smell. The moment you open the packet, the lovely truffle smell hits you straightaway. The taste is subtle but super delightful!

This was scrambled egg whites with truffle shavings on top & it was the second part of the meal. The first part of the meal was my lotus root salad. That was yum-o too!

A close up of the egg whites with truffles. Mmmm -MM!

Porcini Risotto with (of course) white truffle & parmesan cheese! We all had 2 helpings each! I ate mine very very slowly to savour the truffle taste. It's not everyday one gets to eat white truffles, you know.


Close up picture of Jian's plate of risotto. His had the thinner slices of white truffles! U can almost see the risotto through the truffles! Marvelous!


Roasted lamb! You just dust the top with a bit of sea salt & freshly ground black pepper. BURP!

Home cooked steak!

My sister brought a hunk of tenderloin from some Ang Moh part of the world & cooked me & my auntie steaks. Jian was supposed to come too,but he had something on, so he lucked out, big time. HAHAHAHAHA.


She simply fried it (or maybe she grilled it) on that grill-looking pan (hence the grill lines) & left us to season it with sea salt & black pepper ourselves.

Also accompanying the meal were boiled baby potatoes in butter & garlic (YUM), boiled baby carrots & brocoli & my smoked mackeral salad. Yum-O, I say!

Good Old Home Cooking

Simple meals to warm the heart! Note that these were cooked on separate occasions ... I am not that crazy to eat all these things in one night!


Szechuan Frog Leg Porridge ... I will place the recipe up when and if I remember how I cook this dish! But it's a great mid-night snack! Satellite and I enjoy eating this dish lots! Woops, I forgot to take a picture of the porridge.



Sumdumful, Jian and myself had a simple meal one night when we were all lazing around in the house and didn't want to step out. Steamed Herbal Drunken Prawns, Steamed Cod Fish Cantonese Tyle, and Bak Choy with Garlic.


Sumdumful, Jian and myself eating a simply cooked western styled dinner ... no salad cause Miss Satellite hasn't been around to make our wonderful salads!


This is cod fish with a lemon white wine sauce and red wine tomato pasta with sausages. By the way, they were my guinea pigs, as I'd never done up a lemon white wine sauce before ... there was salmon also that night but I didn't get a good picture of it!


Oh and I definitely cannot forget the weekly soup ... If I don't have soup I feel like I am missing something ... Home made soup is great for the health and good for your complexion ... best of all when you make it at home, you can be assured that there is no msg! Radish and carrot soup with red dates ... great for our kidneys and livers!

KLIA Airport

Of recent, I have been travelling to Kuala Lumpur quite a bit, and usually, I go to the airport early to have their food ... And my preference is to stick with Sbarro's Pizza or Mac D's ... a little reminder of home I guess.

Expect the unexpected! I had been dying to try the Noodle House at KLIA, and one day I finally did...and to my disappointment, the food was not great and wasn't authentic at all! At least not the prawn noodles. I have in all my life, even in the US, never tried a fusion'd version of Penang Prawn Noodles (aka. Prawn Mee, Har Meen, Mee Yoke, Penang Hokkien Mee, 福建虾面). There was cauliflower and baby corn and cabbage in it! And seriously, I saw 2 little pieces of pathetic halved prawns in it. Further adding to my complaint is that they use the same laddle for their chicken herb noodle soup which completely killed the prawn mee taste! Mind you, it's not cause the noodles were halal and the soup base wasn't made with pork, but really ... it tasted like herbal chicken soup with essence of prawns.......................................... The only thing that didn't allow me to starve was the fried wantons... it's kind of difficult to mess up on wantons!

PRAWN MEE RECIPE (learned from staring at my mum and my aunties, and also revisting the recipe from Lynx's mum)

This is my recipe which I refuse to use cause I bought little packets of instant prawn mee paste cause I am lazy now ... You'll see why after you read the recipe!

To create stock do the following:

Pan fry with about 1 tablespoon of vegie oil a Ziploc bag of shrimp shells, inclusive of heads, after the shells become red in colour, add 15 - 20 cups of water, 3 kg of pork ribs (cut into pieces), and 1 bulb of garlic ... boil for 3 hours on low heat

To make the chilli paste, use 20 - 30 dried red chillis deseeded (do not forget to soak to soften and allow the aroma to come out), 10 - 15 peeled shallots, 5 peeled cloves of garlic, 2 - 4 tablespoons of garlic, and about a handful of rinsed preserved dried baby prawns blend until smooth and then stir fry in about 6 - 8 tablespoons of vegie oil until fragrant.

Other ingredients needed to complete your dish: yellow noodles, rice vermicelli, kang kong, bean sprouts, lean pork meat that is boiled and thinly sliced, about 1kg of boiled prawns shelled and deveined (cut in half if you are being stingy), 4 boiled eggs halved, and some fried shallots (you can buy this from the store or make your own, but most people will usually end up burning the fried shallots)

When your stock is done, strain the stock, you can throw everything out ... but if you really want, you can keep the pork ribs (put aside) to add to your prawn noodles later. After you have strained the stock, bring the stock to a boil again and add about 1/3 of your chilli paste. (If people want their prawn noodles spicer, they can add it in later when the prawn noodles are complete).

Serve by placing a portion of yellow noodles, rice vermicelli, water convolvulus and bean sprouts (optional) in a bowl, pour hot stock over, then add your pork ribs, lean pork slices, shrimp, and egg. Final toping will be fried shallots and/or extra chilli paste in the bowl if desired.

I really should have stuck with Sbarro's pizza or McD's!

Economy Rice @ Home

Recently I've been having fun cooking dishes and making it into an economy rice plate.

Just last night I cooked steamed chicken and steamed eggs (of which blur and hungry me forgot to put in some corn flour to make the egg a bit stiff). This meal takes only 45 minutes to make inclusive of cooking the rice. Check out how pathetic the plate looks, I should have placed the other 2 pieces of chicken on the plate!

Dinner in 45 Minutes!

First you: make rice and then start boiling water for whatever you are using to steam your food.

Take a 2 - 4 pieces of chicken, marinate for 10 minutes in 1/2 tbsp brandy, 1 tbsp each of light and dark soya sauce, a drop of seasme oil (optional). During this 10 minutes cut your ginger and spring onions into strips, after you finish cutting the ginger and spring onions (oh, and it's up to you how much you want to put into it). Steaming time is about 15 - 20 minutes.

When you see the water is boiled in your steaming mechanism, place your plate of chicken in the steamer.

For the egg, it's pretty simple, beat 2 eggs into chicken stock add some white pepper and then a tea spoon of corn flour. Put into a container and steam ... Some people like to add spring onions after the egg is steamed ... steaming time is about 8 minutes. You can also add century egg and salted egg to this dish as well.

There was another time I also made steamed herbal prawns, pork with ekoni mushrooms, lap cheong, stewed oyster sauce chicken with chinese mushroom, lap cheong and dao miu. Check out the pics! Oh, I had 2 other people eating with me that's why there was so much more food ... and I had eventually thought that I would dabao to Satellite's work place so she can be fed some real "healthy" home cooked food.

Cook of the Day

After a nice day of mah jong and chilling with my cousin and family friends, they were invited down to try out my cooking ... The only reason why I cooked is because our family friend will never let us pay for a meal when we go out ... so this was probably the only way we can treat back!

Anyway I cooked the typical, roasted chicken, pasta, onion soup with chicken, and pork chops (first time). The meal actually took me about 1 hour to prepare and it took us about 30 minutes to buy all the items we needed.

Recipes ... hahahaha I think you can find them online ... no big deal; Fact is I don't usually remember how I cook my things ... I'm pretty lucky ... usually it just works out pretty decent!

Look Look, The Chicken is Pooping Grass!!!

Oh yah, and I forgot the portobello mushrooms.

And then the whole table full of food ... so much, so much we couldn't finish! I think I remembered daboing it for Jian to eat... HeeHee ... think he had the prawn pasta ... not sure if Satellite ate any though...

The Effort of Three

Sunday night dinner ... we decided to cook up a feast!

Spicy Tomato Soup
Tangy Scallop Salad
Spicy Spaghetti White Wine Clam Sauce
Baked Bread Crumbed Cod with Cheese and Stir fried Zuchinni

Don't remember the recipes ... so please figure it out yourself ... hahahahahah

Spicy Tomato Soup, Tangy Scallop Salad, Spicy Spaghetti White Wine Clam Sauce
Doesn't it look like a set meal from somewhere?

One month ago to date

Late night ah boozing and ah snacking .... heeheehee ... Thanks Satellite for working so hard in the middle of the night to feed us all the time!!!

Boogers (Draco's Way of Spellin Burgas) @ KSC

We were promised boogers many many moons ago. By Draco. Until we fergot abowt it. Den she promised us boogers again. & she deliverd on Sunday!!!! SEE!!!!

I shooda teken a pic of it opened, cos de booger patti is.. er.. was VVV thick & perfectly round!!! The bums were toasted wif cheese on top liao... mmMmmMMm. We assembled awr own boogers; put own lettuce inside, put own avocado, tomato, onions.... sauces, if yew wantd (I put mustard & mustard seeds oni, brudda & sista put almost de werks). Jian put so much dat he coon lift de booger up frem de plate. Satellite had to use utensils... I cood lift mine off my plate, but I had to open my mouf FURRY wide..... Be booger patti got proscuito & foie gras inside lei! SO GEWD!! De coleslaw furry yummi asso.... & dey prepared a HUGE mound of fried tater fings as well! Fries & de ball fings (pomme sumfing). Jian ate alot of fried fings. I din, cos wen I went out wif my fren earlier, we had munchies liao, so I was full... FURRY full.... EHEHEHEHE.... I wan summo booger nites... I wan Sangria + Booger nite.... lei...

Home Made Burgers

I dunno if dis is a gewd fing, or a waste of time fing... I suppose it depends on who's doin d cookin, rite? Anyways, dat day I attemptd to mek burger patties. Din turn out furry well, fer 2 reasons: One, I was tryin to cut down on our salt intake. Two, I went trigga happi wif d lemon.




Lewks ok, rite? Until yew put it in yer mouf la.... Wot to do? I was at Teban Gardens. Whr mum has expired herbs & nowt much else to season wif.... Ok.. I shooda added salt or fish sauce or sumfing...... Added lemon juice to d veges... if nowt, it wooda bin palatable, at least... And asso.. de burgers weren't so tenda cos I bot whole slabs of meat & chop chop choppd dem... So twasn't as tenda as shood be... But I SWEAR dey smelt nice wen I was fryin dem lei..... SOB

Leek & potato soup. D oni saving grace frem dinna dat nite. BIG SIGH...

Las nite at Jian's house:

Lewkit dis!!! So yummi lewkin!!! I fink twas d best burger I've eva eaten! Is tenda & everyfing! De secret is to nowt press d burgers down whilst yer cookin.. Dat squeezes d juices out! Toppd wif tomato, mushrooms, cheese & onions. Ok, Liberty had ALL SORTS of bread except burger buns, so we bot foccacia bread instead.... I shooda teken a pic of Jian tryin to stuff d burger into his mouf, but my hands were aready derty.

De salad dat Jian dressd... No lemons in sight....

Fried potato wif bacon & ham! Seasond wif rosemary. Yum yum! Wot a sumptious feast!

I will try mekin burgers again next time.... I nowt happi..... Sniffles....

A nice cool Caprioska afta a hard nite's werk. Can't see inside?

Narh. Gif yew see.....