Food For My Belly

This is one of my favourite dishes to cook; lots of preparation but it's simple, quick, healthy, and tasty...and the best of all, everyone always enjoys it :) It's Vietnamese rice paper rolls!  Since I have home stay students living with me (most of them mainly from China), I always try to make sure they experience things/foods that they don't normally get back in their hometown. And rice paper rolls are always a good way of getting everyone to have a bit of fun in making their rolls :) The bunch that is eagerly waiting to start eating :) The spread; herbs, carrots, cucumber, iceberg lettuce, prawn, beef, and my special homemade dipping sauce :) When we have rice paper rolls for dinner, I stick to the above ingredients as it's simple enough and healthy. Yes, there are a lot of different herbs on either side of the photo but I absolutely love them and they're good for you!  The special sauce that I make consist of mixing shredded pineapple, hoisin sauce...

I needed to make something quick and easy as I was having people over for Halloween. So it was whatever I could find in the fridge and here is what I came up with... Saturday's Dinner From left to right:- Stir-fried minced pork with white peppercorns, pickled cabbage and tomato. Bok Choy with oyster sauce and topped with fried shallots.

This is probably one of my favourite dishes to make coz it's simple, quick and tasty. And it's always good on a cold and rainy night :) Soup Noodles with Beef Balls, Fish Cake and Choy Sum The soup:- Bring a pot of water to boil Add chicken bones (sounds evil saying carcass) and Ikan Bilis stock granules The best is to let the soup slowly boil for a while so you get as much flavour as you can from the chicken bones and the ikan bilis stock granules. During this time, you prepare the other ingredients which are:- Fish cake Beef balls Choy Sum (Asian veggie) Chives Noodles (Vermicelli and Flat Rice Noodles) Chilli Wash the beef balls and set aside. Then slice the fish cake into thin pieces and set aside.  Chop up the choy sum, wash and then drain it.  Wash the chives and then chop it up, set aside as this is to be added as a topping for the dish. For the noodles, you can use whatever noodles that you like...my preference is always a mix of vermicelli a...

Whenever mum goes away on holidays, I become the person in charge of the household. Given that we have 7 rooms; 4 of those rooms are occupied by home stay students. They pay full rent which includes 3 meals a day. Mum is usually the one that does all the cooking, so now I have become the head cook at home :) I enjoy cooking but I'm not the kind that goes out of my way to get specific ingredients to cook special dishes on a daily basis. I'm the kind that just raids the fridge and work with what's in there. So here's last night's dinner... Thursday's Dinner <3 From left to right:- Stir-fried chicken with capsicum, ginger and spring onion. Steamed fish with my special sauce (that's what MT calls it) - the sauce consist of spring onion, ginger, garlic, chinese cooking rice wine, soya sauce, sugar, and sesame oil. Stir-fried Chinese cabbage and carrot with dried shrimp.

Jenny and I are foodie lovers and we've been to three food events this year (only 1 of them, we went to separately). Last month at the Taste of Melbourne, we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly with Melbourne's Ultimate Tasting Menu - sharing 7 of the superb dishes between us from a number of great restaurants :) This is a photo of the two of us with our yummylicious cupcakes that we did not share with anyone (we were at a weekend getaway for a friend's birthday)... Jenny, Myself & our cupcakes <3 Here are the photos of the dishes that we had on the night... 'European' Kinkawooka paella cooked by Ian Curley, The European. 'European' Kinkawooka paella Slow cooked suckling lamb, pearl barley salad & truffled pecorino cooked by Riccardo Momesso, Sarti. Slow cooked suckling lamb, pearl barley salad & truffled pecorino Seared scallops, green chilli aioli, almonds and celeriac remoulade cooked by Anthony Musarra, Stokehous...

Adam calls it pearl pudding in his book but I have always known it just as sago with gula melaka (though there is coconut cream involved), its more of a mouthful but it's what I am use to and it is so for a lot of Malaysians out there. Up until now, I haven't shared any of Adam's recipe coz I think everyone should get his cookbook but I will for this one because it's a Malaysian classic and an all time favourite. Mine looks nothing like Adam's as I did not have the moulds but it taste just as good :) Serves: 8 Preparation: 30 minutes Cooking: 50 minutes + 2 hours setting  INGREDIENTS 250g dried sago or tapioca pearls Palm sugar syrup 200g palm sugar, grated or chopped 40g dark brown sugar 3 pandan leaves, roughly chopped 20g ginger, sliced Salted coconut cream 400ml thick coconut cream 1/4 tsp fine salt METHOD Lightly oil eight dariole moulds. Bring 1.25 litres of water to the boil in a large pot and add the sago. Cook over medium-low heat, ...

I decided to cook this dish for everyone who lived at home and a couple of guest, that comes to a total of 9 people. My lesson learnt? Choose another dish to make if I was to cook for a big group of people. I did not realise how expensive duck breast fillets were, I certainly choked when it came to the time that I had to pay for my goods. If I was to make this dish again, I would keep it to a maximum of 4 people, the less people the better coz it ain't cheap. Adding to it, salted duck eggs ain't that cheap either...depending where you buy them from, it can range from $1.10-$1.30 just for one. Was it worth it? I would say so coz everyone certainly enjoyed it and that put a smile on my face :) parent and child duck rice bowl Adam's recipe: 81 Steph's completed: 10