Food For My Belly

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...