Food For My Belly

Pete and I were invited to a friend's place for dinner. They were cooking the main and I had the choice of picking between entrée and dessert. I chose entrée. As most of you already know by now, I am not a keen baker and my baked good are never quite right so dessert was not really an option for me. I wanted to make something easy which did not require much cooking so I browsed through the coles magazines that I had in my room and found this recipe. INGREDIENTS 200g rice vermicelli noodles 2 small carrots 1 lebanese cucumber 1 red capsicum 500g cooked peeled prawns 1/3 cup basil leaves 1/3 cup mint leaves 1/2 cup coriander leaves 1 cup bean shoots, tails trimmed 1/3 unsalted roasted cashews DRESSING 1 1/2 tbsp brown sugar 1 1/2 tbsp fish sauce 1/4 cup lime juice 1 small red chilli, finely chopped 1 small garlic clove, crushed Place noodles in a large heatproof bowl and cover with boiling water. Stand for 5 mins, then drain into a colander...

Century egg is something that I rarely eat not because I don't like it, it's just that I don't really cook with it. The only time that I have it is in porridge or when I am back in Malaysia eating steamboat by the side of the streets. I was looking through one of my cookbooks and came across this dish and thought I would give it a try since I had century eggs in the fridge. This dish is extremely simple and I must say, it has become one of my favourites. The dish calls for lean pork but I used pork belly instead because it was what I had in the fridge. For those of you who would like to try this recipe at home, here is the recipe...

I got a bit carried away over the weekend with cooking so I thought I will try something different, baking. Baking is not my forte, somehow baking and I are not good friends and I don't think we will ever be. Someone once said to me that baking is like science because you need to be precise with measurements while cooking is like art because you can be creative. I definitely prefer cooking coz I can never stick to colouring within the lines. Anyways, I had  too much time on my hands yesterday so I decide to raid the pantry for this...

Something that I said that I needed to conquer and I did...fried noodles! It was nothing spectacular but I am really happy with the end product. All I did was get two pack of hokkien noodles and rummage through the fridge for random ingredients and TA-DA! Surprisingly, it tasted really good. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought my mum cooked it. Next thing to conquer, fried rice.

Whenever mum goes away, I always choose to cook dishes that she never cooks to give the homestay students a taste of what else there is on offer. Tonight, I decided to cook a roast leg of lamb accompanied by a creamy garlic pasta and a simple salad. As much as I look at recipes to cook the dishes that I cook, most of them are done by feel with how much of the ingredients should go in and how long it needs to cook...that's probably why I am so bad at baking. simple salad: red onions, capsicum, cucumber and tomatoes with a french dressing creamy garlic pasta: lots of parmesan cheese and garlic roast leg of lamb: simple marinade of juice of one orange and lemon, olive oil, garlic, pepper and salt And last but not least, there was jelly for dessert which I made while the lamb was roasting away but forgot to take a photo of. If anyone wants any of the recipes of the above dishes, leave me a message :)

Last night, my mum left to go on another holiday...this time, she's off to Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau and Shenzen. Aaahhh, the life of a semi retiree. As usual, when she's off on her adventures, I am left to take care of the homestay students. This time around, she's only gone for two weeks...it gives me time to get creative with my cooking. Two things I am looking to conquer is to cook fried rice and also, fried noodles. I have never cooked fried rice before except once, when I chucked some random stuff together for the dogs. And the last time I tried to fry some tom yum vermicelli, it was a disaster...an utter disaster. Some probably consider the above dishes simple but for me, I never really needed to cook those two dishes as I can whip up at anything from the fridge to serve with rice for dinner. Stay tuned to see how successful or how disastrous it turns out...

I consider myself a bit of a foodie but I have never actually reviewed anything on my blog. I was going to at the start of year but after losing all my photos of the amazing food I ate overseas, I never looked into it again until now. Thanks to Gim, I have had the pleasure of tasting Gartien's Gourmet Pineapple Shortbread. I have to admit, I have never eaten anything like it before. The closest thing to this would be pineapple tarts from Malaysia. Some may ask why would their product be any different? Here is the difference - it comes down to the ingredients that they use. Unlike many other pineapple cakes which use pineapple paste and melon as the fillings, Gartien uses only REAL pineapple. And because they don't add any preservatives to their product, they are air flown in weekly from Penang, Malaysia so you, the consumer always get the freshest. For more information on Gartien's Pineapple Shortbread, please visit their Facebook page (press Ctrl + click on the li...

This post is definitely long overdue but here it comes :)  Whenever my mum goes away on holidays, I am left in charge of taking care of the household. Especially making sure that everyone who lives under our roof gets fed with my cooking. So far, no complaints so I guess I must be doing something right. Though I like collecting cookbooks, 30+ books and counting...as much as I like trying out new recipes, I am someone who likes to just open the fridge and be inspired by what I can find. This also includes going to Springvale and seeing what fresh produce they have on offer. So here are a few photos of the dishes that I have cooked while mum was holidaying in Europe... If anyone wants to know how to cook the above, just leave me a message :)

The boyfriend and I have been watching a lot of Luke Nguyen in the past couple of weeks and after every episode, it made us hungry. It also made me want to cook the dishes he made on his show.  So...two Fridays ago, I made one of his dishes. Surprisingly, it turned out better than I expected, it was very fresh and the green papaya was crisp combined with all the different herbs made it oh so much healthier to eat :) One downside was that we underestimated how spicy my garden chillies were and was suffering for a bit. INGREDIENTS 1 green papaya (180g), peeled & finely julienne 200g cooked pork belly, finely sliced 200g cooked medium tiger prawns, peeled, de-veined and sliced in half lengthways 5 green mint leaves, finely sliced 5 Asian basil leaves, finely sliced 5 perilla leaves, finely sliced 5 coriander leaves, finely sliced 1 tablespoon fried red Asian shallots 1 tablespoon crushed roasted peanuts 1/2 teaspoon fried garlic chips 1 chilli, chopped 3 tables...

One of the many Korean dishes that I thoroughly enjoy :) I have made this dish quite a number of times at home using a Korean cookbook that I have at home. However, this kimchi jjigae is my take on Marc's (norecipe.com) recipe...of course, it comes with a bit of tweaking. I was only suppose to make this dish for myself to satisfy my cravings but mum gave me the excuse of "oh I am only cooking two dishes so make enough to feed the rest". As we have homestay students, I had to make a massive pot of kimchi soup to feed 8 people. Here is Marc's recipe...(this recipe should feed 2-4 people)