Wednesday, October 14, 2009

My style of cooking......

I had an interesting short chat with a blogger at gmail chat yesterday. After the normal salam and hi....the topic went to food...he said maggi mee is not good to eat. I agreed with him because i am not a fan of instant mee or any instant food. Even if i was craving of cokodok ikan bilis, i wont be making from Adabi instant mix....of course to all working mothers, these instant mix/spices are a God send after a tiring day in the office. I am not saying they are bad or anything of the sort....its just not authentic to my anak tekak....

anyway....the next topic was the use of Pak Ajinomoto in cooking. I never bought a packet of Ajinomoto before and i surely will never buy one in future. To me if all the spices and ingredients are enough in one recipe, it doesn't need the Pak Aji to make it taste better. Both my parents never approved of Pak Aji in the cooking at home and i continued that way when i have a family of my own. But really we have no choice if we ate out kan?? He suggested to replace Pak Aji with sugar...i am ok with that but i use sugar in certain dishes only, even that i use brown sugar. As for salt, i use fine salt only to fry fishes, tempeh and vegetables, but coarse salt in everything else. My fishes would only be fried crispy except for meaty fishes like tenggiri or bawal.

Here i am sharing recipes for my masak lemak coz someone in the Facebook asked me for the recipe and also my sambal belacan.

Crispy fried mackerel/kembung


Lemak cili api daging with potato.
The recipe;

500gm beef ( best use batang pinang) - cut bite size crossing the grains
200gm coconut milk
1 piece asam keping
one lemon grass - lightly bash the bulb
10-15 small bird eye chillies* ( more if you want it hotter)
an inch of tumeric*
*pounded or blend together
2 - 3 potatoes -quartered

Wash the beef, put it the deep pot, throw in the pounded chili and tumeric and the lemon grass. Let the water dry a bit, if the beef still not soft add a bit more water ...then put in the coconut milk, let it boil, put the potatoes and asam keping in and let it boil till the potatoes softened. Put some coarse salt to taste and do stir frequently to avoid the coconut milk become 'curdled' (separated?? any better word for this?).

Lemak chili api tenggiri with bittergout.

500 gm tenggiri
200gm coconut milk
1 piece asam keping
Half of big bittergout - sliced thickly(abt half cm ) and soak in salted water
10-15 small bird eye chillies* ( more if you want it hotter)
an inch of tumeric*
*pounded or blended together

Wash the fish, put it in a deep pot, throw in the pounded chili and tumeric. Let the water dry a bit, then put in the coconut milk, let it boil, put the sliced bittergout and asam keping in and let it boil again. Put some coarse salt to taste and do stir frequently.

My kangkung belacan

My mix vege
My lala in hot oyster sauce.

My fried bihun with secret ingredient..the minced touchu
Simple tumis french beans
Sambal belacan
2-3 red chillies
5 - 10 bird eyes chillies
1 inch roasted shrimp paste
salt to taste
juice from one lime
Pounded all coarsely except the juice. Add in the juice and serve.

All of the dishes were cooked without the Ajinomoto.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Weddings, open houses and etc.......

Purple was never my color, so when anyone requested for my cakes to be decorated in purple, it would be a bit of a struggle for me to let my creative juices flow ha ha ha...macam la creative sangat. So for requested purple silver, i came up with these deco, the blue was actually another shade of purple but looked blue in the pictures. These cupcakes travelled to Pasir Mas 2 weeks ago.


Combination of purple and pink on white was requested which i found a bit easier to come up with...the flowers roses roses, rolled and petaled, i cant remember the name of the yellow flower. These cuppies went to Kajang.Then, on two Saturday ago, we started our journey to Johol for dear hubby's cousin wedding. The rain was so heavy during the solomnised ceremony. Picture was taken by my youngest boy.


From Johol, we drove down to Senawang which actually quite near to our house, for my cousin daughter's wedding. The newlyweds were distributing the wedding cake to the guest.In the middle of last week, Wednesday to be exact, i baked 700 pieces cute little cupcakes for wedding favors. The cakes were collected by the bride herself on Thursday night. Selamat Pengantin Baru to Maz semoga kekal ke anak cucu.
Since the heavy baking was done by Thursday, i was looking forward to spend time with my 3 rascals and the father. We were invited to a Raya do in Tanjung Malim and in KL on Saturday. So we left for TM late morning that Saturday, and we were in TM until about 2.30 and stopped by Sungai Buaya to see an old friend. Chatted and had nice Laksa Johor (moi) and Carbonara Spagetthi (the boys), we left for KL at almost 5 o'clock. Lepakking in KL(Cheras) until 7.
We reached Seremban at 8pm, rushed for shower and went to another open house hosted by a young neighbors just infront of my house. Yak for awhile and went to bed so early. I was told that i started snoring at 10.30 that night ha ha ha.....that was way too early for me....must be too exhausted.

Because of the early night, i woke up at 6 am on Sunday morning. I did some cleaning up in the kitchen, and was suprised that hubby was up too. So we decided to have breakfast at the stall near Seremban Hospital. It was almost full, we had to share the table with another couple. Both of us had nasi lemak. I actually wanted to eat the kuih that they had, but all were finished by the time we reached the stall. Most of the patrons ate curry mee there but to me the mee is not up to my standard he he.....then we decided to check out some clearing sale in a shop in Seremban Parade. Poor us, by the time we arrived the shop, there were not much things left. Then we just went around the ground floor of the complex enjoying the Coloring and Drawing contest held there.


I like this girl's work. See his face expression.
Saw this boy almost crying face and yet still vigorously did his coloring. Apparently the siblings were enjoying McD meals and of course he wanted to have some too...i heard the mother/grandmother was 'pujuking' and best was when he started coloring the face looked quite calm but the moment he saw the mum, he started grimacing.....but he was so cute....