Recipes from a Cook Wannabe

Urgent - Puppies for Sale

2009-07-18T11:01:00.003+08:00

Just helping a friend out. Pop over to my other website and have a look if you are interested.

Have a great day everybody. I will be back with more post shortly... and I really mean it this time :)

2009-05-24T11:25:00.001+08:00

Chilled Oreo Cheese Cake

2009-02-25T16:15:00.008+08:00

There were so much great food to eat over the festive period just past and before I get into the Chilled Oreo Cheese Cake, I have to show you the beautiful Peach Cheese Cake that my niece-in-law brought over during the Chinese New Year celebs. Yah, she is the same one who did the Little Moo Moos thingy :). I am still waiting for her recipe for this cheese cake as she did this one without eggs and with a hint of some sort of liqueur. If I am lucky, I might get it before the year is up haha.. coz we don't really get to see each other that often.. only during cny.

After that cake, I was truly inspired to try to do one myself and since it was Nick's birthday on the 27th of January, I said.. what better reason to do one. So, went to dig up my recipe books and came across one which had the basic ingredients for the cake. Did a little bit of improvisation (as I always need to do since I am such a bad planner, I don't always have enough of everything that the recipe calls for) and wallah, I got a pretty presentable Chilled Oreo Cheese Cake.

Ingredients

Base
120 gms of Oreo Biscuits without the cream inside (I used 60gm of Oreos and 60g of Digestive Biscuits as I only had 1 tube of Oreos)
60 gms of butter, softened at room temperature

Fillings
1) Using a double boiler, cook

2 egg yolks
150 gms sugar (reduced to 120 gm if you desire a less sweet cake)
160 gms milk

2) 2 1/2 tbsp gelatin dissolved in 6 tbsp of boiling water

3) 250 gm of cream cheese

4) 250 gm of double cream (lightly whipped)

5) 2 pieces of Oreo Biscuits with the cream fillings. Put in through a blender so that when mixed with the cream cheese mixture, the Oreo black spots are seen.

6) 1/2 tbsp of lemon juice

Method

Combined the crushed biscuit crumbs and the melted butter into a base of a 9inch loose base pan. Leave in the fridge to chill.
Beat cream cheese until smooth and then add all the rest of the ingredients.
Pour the mixture into the chilled biscuit base and return the cake into the fridge for 3 hours or overnight.

For the decoration, I just whipped up some whipping cream and if you like it to be a little bit sweet and stiff, add a little icing sugar. Put it inside a pipping bag and decorate. If you also have only 1 tube of Oreos for the entire cake and have been following the recipe above to the letter, you will find that you will have about 6 pieces of Oreos left, which is exactly all you need to have.

Cut 4 of them into halves and decorate all round the cake. Have one whole Oreo for the middle. The 6th piece is a spare, in case whilst cutting the Oreo's into halves, you break any. But if you didn't need to use the 6th piece, then put it into you mouth and savour the goodness of a delicious Oreo's Biscuit...mmmmm....

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Little Moo MOo Things in a Bento Box

2009-02-14T07:11:00.009+08:00

The Chinese New Year celebrations have officially ended. And so have most of the other festivities. In addition to that, I have also completely moved on from my job of 15 years. Looks like I have almost run out of reasons for not having the time to blog :).

There are plenty of nice photos which I have managed to take during the last month and this is one which I would like to share first. This is a little something which a very close relative brought to the house during the "tuen lin"- family reunion lunch. They were almost too cute to eat, which ordinarily the kids would have just popped them in the mouth and the adults would have just looked past them as they are rather high in cholestrol.

Ha ha.. aren't they just oh so cute. Little moo moo quail eggs. Decorated with punched out nori sheets, little bits of carrots, spring onions and ham pieces, sitting on little paper cups and all in a bento box. I would say a fair bit of effort but really a great piece of eye candy.

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Bento #19

2009-01-19T17:01:00.007+08:00

Wah.. it has been a long while since I have published a Bento post. It is not because I have not been Bento-ing, I have :). But I have not been blogging as frequently as I use to do. Why? Coz something is brewing in and soon I will share with you what's coming up :).

So, for this Bento #19, it is somewhat a left over from dinner the evening before. I made dumpling noodles for dinner and as I had extra dumplings, I decided to keep a couple to be brought to work the following day. I only cooked them in the morning.

In the evening, these were what we had for dinner....

Dumplings with fish balls in soup

Dry wanton noodles with dumplings

For lunch the next day, I packed these which I cooked in the morning....

Left: Wanton noodles with dumplings and fishballs
Right: Water chestnuts and jackfruit

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Chinese Styled Fried Rice

2009-01-13T10:46:00.013+08:00

My mum has always told me that fried rice is the easiest thing to cook where the preparation time and the actual cooking time is relatively short. Most of the ingredients that one needs for fried rice could be anything that is left in the fridge. The most important ingredient being leftover rice as great fried rice normally is cooked with overnight refrigerated cooked rice :).

Oh yeah, there is this toy in the cupboard that I have not yet opened and I am quite excited to see if it does what the packet says it will do. It is a Rice Mold that I bought from Daiso.

Took it out of the packet, washed it and laid it out to dry whilst I prepared myself to do a Chinese Styled Fried Rice.

Ingredients

2 cups of overnight cooked rice
2-3 shallots (sliced)
1 Chinese sausage (this can be replaced with chicken meat, ham slices or any meat bits you may have left in the fridge) - sliced
2 eggs
1 cup of frozen mixed vegetables (corn, carrots and peas) - washed
A few leaves of lettuce (whichever type you prefer) -sliced
Cooking oil
Sesame seed oil
Soya Sauce, Salt, Sugar and Pepper to taste
1 tomato (for garnishing only)

Method

1) Heat some oil in the wok/pan and put in the sliced shallots. When the shallots turns aromatic, put in the sliced Chinese sausages. Fry these for about a minute or so.

2) Add in the cooked rice and sprinkle a little water (with your hands) into the hot wok if the rice appears too dry. Break up the rice clumps.

3) Make a little well in the center of the rice, pour a little sesame oil into the center and crack in two eggs. Put in a dash of soya sauce into the eggs and scramble them.

4) Add in the cup of mixed vegetables. Add in soya sauce, sugar, salt and pepper for taste.

5) Lastly, add in the sliced lettuce. Stir in and your rice is ready to be served.

I scooped my rice into the rice mold. Since the mold is made of metal, it can get pretty hot. So, use an oven mitten or a cloth to protect your hands *ouch.. I learned this the painful way.

I think I should have to pack in the rice tighter as the rice shape was not as nice as that on the picture on the packet. Oh well, I will do it again soon as I simply love fried rice and I can eat bowls and bowls of it... *carbo meter blowing up...weeeeeee

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Bellygood - A Pork Lover's Paradise

2009-01-12T13:59:00.015+08:00

It has been my plan to visit this restaurant but somehow, the time was never right. The first time I saw this was on my way to a Christmas Party and another time was to meet up a friend for dinner...sigh. You've guessed it. I am really a true-ching-chong, whose best friend is the piggy, esply when it is bbq-ed :D.

Anway, I finally made it yesterday evening and even at 8pm, the crowd was virtually queuing up onto the 5-foot-way (exaggerating only lah).. haha..but there were 5 sets of people waiting in line before me. We had to write our names on the list and I saw that there was a group of 6 pax, 2 sets of 4 pax and 2 sets of 2 pax in front of me. So much for slowdown in the economy. We finally got our seats after about 15 mins of waiting. Not too bad.

Wow.. my eyes were salivating before my mouth could do so on their porky selections in the menu. Everything looked so tempting but I know that I will have to come back many times to try all of them. We ordered soups, starters, main porky main courses and of course desserts.

I did not managed to take photos of some of the dishes that came as they were wolfed down within seconds. But never mind, I managed to "steal" a photo here and there from Bellygood's website and a blogger named Donny Ang. Lovely shots Donny :D.

This is the Sausage Platter RM26.90 (Photo courtesy from Donny's post)

I must say that the food is really good, especially the ribs with their Honey Mustard Sauce. The next time I will order their platter, so that I can have of them in one dish, I mean on my own dish, without having to flick them from other people's dish.

They only have soup of the day (Mushroom for that night), but my oh my, the soup is lovely. RM8.30 a bowl

Apart from the food, the service is wonderful. Even though the place was packed and naturally the kitchen is already full steam ahead, tempers of some of the diners there were running a bit short, especially this rather round gentleman seated at the 5-foot-way table. He was showing his irritation towards the poor waitress when she could not tell him the name of the dish he was just served. Perhaps it was because she could not quite understand what he was asking. Overall, the waiters and waitresses kept their cool and their smiles intact. Kudos to them :D.

This Baked Portabello Mushroom with Bacon and Cheese must have fallen from Mushroom heaven..yuuuummm RM12.50.

The only thing that irritated me was the neighboring food outlet. We were seated outside as the air-cond area were full. And as we waited, the smell of the bbq was really agonizing (the stomach was doing its' flipflops already, as the wait was to be expected) and the smoke was horrible as it billowed quite thickly over to where we were seated and I can imagine the diners all swathed with oil particles in the air.. yuck!

Apple Pork Ribs with Mash and Coleslaw RM24.90 - This is a CNY Special

We ordered the Honey Mustard P. Belly (RM22.90) but the porky belly didn't not last long enough to see the light of (day) the camera's flash. This photo is taken from Bellygood's Menu.

There was no way I was going to end my feast without savoring these two beauties. These are 2 of the 3 flavors of Ice Cream Cakes they have on their menu. The 3rd one which we didn't order was their Mocha Ice Cream Cake. Next time my love... I promise you....

Cookies and Cream IceCream Cake (RM8.90)

California Raisin Ice Cream Cake (RM8.90). This has a hint of alcohol taste which is rather nice.

My verdict is that the food is great, the price is reasonable, the location is good. Their operation hours are 11am to 11pm everyday, with Mondays off. So, the next time I visit Bellygood, it will definitely not be a weekend :D as I want the totally undivided attention of their waiters and waitresses.

The Mixed Platter that I want to order on mynext visit (Photo also courtesy of Donny Ang's blog)

Location:

20, Jalan PJS 8-18,
Dataran Mentari,
Bandar Sunway,
46150 Petaling Jaya
Selangor Darul Ehsan
T 03 5630 1699
E reservation@bellygood.com.my

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Belated Christmas Gifts... for Myself :D

2009-01-09T17:19:00.012+08:00

Christmas is always about getting gifts for those you love but who does one love most in this world? Oneself lor.. hahaha.. I dare to say this now after having been told my so many wise ones that in order to love others, one must first love oneself. And because I do love myself, I decided to splurge and get all these nice little prezzies for mua :).

I got them from a shop which actually if I had a choice, I would not like to shop in. Now why is that you might ask? Oh, they have got lots of great stuff there and a girlfriend swore that after doing her market survey, this company's outlet in her housing area apparently sells baking stuff at the cheapest price. However, that skinny lady with the glasses at the cash register must be be a yearly recipient of the Rudest Person in the World Award for the longest time. It really pays not to ask her anything whilst you are paying for your stuff if you do not want to be shouted at. Anyway, I am not the only one at the receiving end of her sharp tongue. I have been there at least 3 times and I must say that each time, other customers have also gotten it from her. This time, I refused to say a single word to her and I got off unscathed :D

Anyway, if you are really interested to get these "toys", just drop me a comment and I will "whisper" in your ears the name of the shop hahaha.

Blossom Plunger RM9.50

Snowflakes Plunger RM11.50

Leaf Plunger RM9.50

Small Daisies Plungers RM9.50

Three Leaf Holly Leaf Plunger RM8.00

Big Daisies Plunger RM14.50

Flower plunger RM9.50

Leaf Plunger RM9.50

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Almond Biscotti

2009-01-07T14:25:00.005+08:00

I actually did not have intention to bake last night. In fact, I was looking forward to a nice quite evening, in front of the telly. However, after chatting with my dear friend Susan over the MSN in the afternoon and after looking at the link to a recipe which she sent, I was totally inspired to test the recipe out.

The recipe is from Aunty Yochanna's blog which I have reproduced below.

Ingredients:

3 egg white
100 gm. sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla essence
200 gm. whole almonds
120 gm. plain flour

Method:

(1) Whisk egg white (about 100g) with sugar and salt till thick.
(2) Fold in flour and almonds.
(3) Pour into a 7" sq. tray.
(4) Bake at 170C for about 25 mins. until light brown.
(5) Remove and place onto a cooling rack to cool.
(6) Wrap cake with aluminium foil and keep in the fridge for a couple of hours.
(7) Slice the cake into thin slices and lay onto a baking tray.
(8) Bake in oven at 160C for about 15 mins. or until it's crispy.
(9) Cool and store in cookie containers.

After the 1st round of baking

Waiting for them to cool

All bottled and waiting for my test bunnies

I followed Aunty's recipe to the letter and the results that came out looks nice. However, I felt that it was still a little hard. So, what I did was I took half the stack to work this morning and along the way, gave it to some test bunnies.

These were the comments from my bunnies:-

1) Bunny Malaysia Voxique - mmmm.. very nice, very crunchy

2) Bunny PuayAun - isn't this how biscotti should taste like... I mean, people have to dunk them into their cuppa, don't they?

3) Bunny Babe - nice and crunchy. Yah, a bit hard but you should have tried biscotti from my first try... hard like rocks, had to throw away the entire batch :(

4) Bunny DCYK - *crunch crunch... nice..*crunch crunch.... *takes a second piece.. :)

5) Bunny Anna - nice, thank you.

6) Bunny Sharon - nice, a bit hard though.. but something's missing...arrrhhh.. just cannot put my finger on it....mmmmm...aroma?...mmmmm

7) Bunny Thoughts - a bit hard but nice

Conclusion : I have a feeling that I may have to do another batch again this time doing 3 things. One, to add the egg mixture to flour instead of flour to eggs. Two, to use only pure vanilla essence, and not the el-cheapo ones. And three, try to slice the biscotti into thinner slices, but at the same time, without it breaking up.

Perhaps I will do another batch during the weekend, when I buy more almonds. Anyone wants to volunteer as test bunnies ? ;)

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Walnuts & Choc Chip Cupcakes

2009-01-06T13:10:00.004+08:00

Wow, I just realized that it has almost been a month since my last post. What happened? I supposed that time just flew by without me realizing it. I did bake some, cook a few things but perhaps I just didn't have the time to post them up.

I decided to make this Walnut and Chocolate Chip Cupcakes after clearing my kitchen cabinet and finding that I still have heaps of walnuts and chocolate chips in there. It is going to be Chinese New Year soon and I do need the space in the kitchen cabinets for storing the new stuffs.

I tried this recipe which I picked up from a friend. The cake tasted quite ok but I had complaints from the few test bunnies. They complaint that I didn't put more walnuts into the cupcakes. Ok Ok..next time yeah.. have to put a note at the recipe :D

Ingredients

115g unsalted butter
115g Castor sugar
115g self-raising flour
2 tbsp of cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla essence
1 cup of chocolate chips (Van Houtens)
1/2 cup of chopped walnuts (have to increase that to 1 full cup)

Preparation

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy
Add in the eggs, one at a time
Stir in the cocoa powder and flour (sieved beforehand) and beat on medium speed for about 2 minutes.
Gently stir in the vanilla essence
Add in the chopped walnuts and chocolate chips into the mixture (leave a bit for the top of the cupcakes)
Scoop and fill the cupcake cases up to 2/3 full.
Sprinkle some chopped walnuts and chocolate chips on top of the cake mixture
Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for about 20 minutes in the centre of the oven.
Take out and cool in the cake tray for 5 minutes before removing them from tray.
Continue cooling on the wire rack.

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Kopi Club at Low Yat Plaza

2008-12-09T17:48:00.008+08:00

Going out for lunch with JW these days are never planned. All you get is a call or an sms about 1/2 an hour before lunch. But then, that is alright for me. When it is about food, you can just snap your fingers and I am there :D.

That was precisely what happened last week. JW sms-ed and told me that she was in the city and whether I would like to have lunch. We decided to go over to Low Yat Plaza for lunch. When we got there, I surprised myself by deciding to skip my favorite Chee Cheong Fun stall and settled for Kopi Club. Was thinking to myself, the last time I was there, I was with Babe and not being very sure when that was, I decided to go browse her blog and there, I found it. The last time I was there was with Babe was in September, almost 3 months have passed.

This time around, I decided to try something western and their Chicken Chop (RM11.90) looked quite inviting and the portion was quite generous too. It came with a bun, yum-yum, with a real slice of butter in it, some french fries and gravy with lovely carrots and onions.

JW opted for Nasi Ayam Goreng (RM10.50) as Ayam Goreng is her favorite. I thought we just had Ayam Goreng at the Sisters a few days ago. Haha.. I reckon JW can eat Ayam Goreng everyday.

With a Hot Lemon Tea (RM3.90) for JW and an Ice Honey Lemon (RM4.80), the total bill came up to RM32.66 (Service Tax of 5%). Once in a while, we have to treat ourselves to good food like these.

Venue:
KopiClub
LG-8, Plaza Low Yat,
Off Jalan Bukit Bintang, KL

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Marble Cake

2008-11-26T16:47:00.006+08:00

Wow.. I didn't realize that it has been weeks since my last post. Time really flies .. especially towards the end of the year. And soon, Christmas will be here and I thought to myself? After not having baked for such a long time, could I still do it? So, I decided to bake the world's easiest to bake cake, the Marble Cake.

As usual, started only doing this on Sunday evening. Luckily I still have a block of butter in the freezer. So, took that out at dinner time and by the time dinner was done and all the dishes have been washed, I started work on the butter cake.

My cake has a big fat mouth.. just like me *smirk

This is an old recipe which I cut out from a news paper many years back but it is quite a foolproof recipe.

Ingredients

2 cups wheat flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup of butter, soften (about 115g)
2 eggs
1 cup of milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Van Houtens)

Method

Preheat the oven at 180C. Grease and flour a 9 inch round pan (I cannot remember if mine was actually a 9in or 8 in pan. Should have written it down at the bottom of the pan when I first bought it).
Place the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter, eggs, vanilla and milk into a mixing bowl. Mix it all up with a spatula and then beat it with an electric mixer at slow speed for about 2 minutes until the mixture is smooth.
Remove about a bowl of batter into another container A.
Stir in the cocoa into this batter in container A until it is well mixed.
Pour in 1/2 of the original batter into the cake pan.
Drop in either spoonfuls of the chocolate batter into the cake pan or if you are lazy like me, I just plonked in the entire lot of chocolate batter into the middle of the cake pan.
Cover the cake pan with the remaining original batter.
Using a knife or a chopstick, swirl the batter around so that this will create a marble effect to the cake.
Bake in the oven for 35 minutes or until the wooden pick comes out clean.

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I Love Japanese Ra-Men

2008-11-09T17:49:00.007+08:00

I love Japanese Ramen, whether it is from the shops or those in the packets which I cook at home. They taste much better than the local instant noodles as I find the Japanese Ramen a lot tastier. I am not sure how much I paid for them but I don't think that they were too expensive. Will need to go check out the price for a bag of 5 packets the next time I go shopping.

Normally I will just add some vegetables, a little meat (like left over chicken or duck from dinner) or half an egg into the ramen. This was what I had for lunch.

After eating that nice lunch, I decided to go check my email and I received an email from an old friend from University. He sent me a mail entitled " Beware! If you love Ramen". His email read "Sorry guys. Have to send to you so many negative news concerning foodstuff these days. Pretty soon, I'll run out of things to eat."

This was his email to me.... "Beware! If You Like Ramen"....was rather scary. I didn't want to post the pictures here as I don't think it is right to spoil people's appetite for Ramen. But if you want to have a look at what the email has to say, then click here at my other blog to have a look.

I know the packet of Ramen that I bought and cooked was manufactured in Hong Kong, China but I don't think I will throw away the last 2 packets. I am sure my body can handle it :D But I might not want to buy any more after this until I do a bit more research (coward me).

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Cup Cake Toppers Makes My Life Simpler

2008-11-08T22:42:00.015+08:00

I have been rather busy doing a lot of exciting things of late and blog wise, I have appeared to be doing a lot of bento-ing rather than baking... so much so that Christene of AllThingsPurple gave me a call 2 weeks ago for a chat and also to ask me if I still bake. Ha Ha.. yeah I do.. especially for a good reason or a good cause. I have realized that baking for me is really a hobby that I love. It will never really be a business or a money making venture for me. The money bit may be okie but the time it takes to bake and decorate can be rather long. Furthermore money does not appear to be the compensation I seek from doing it. It is the happiness and joy from recipients faces that I seek and value. Perhaps that is why I have only been doing baking for family, friends and charity. And I really had a hard time convincing Christene that I will not accept any money for baking those few cuppies for her little girl's birthday. Read here for her little princess' birthday party. Ha Ha.. in the end, we reached a compromise. I will bake the cuppies and she will go get the toppers for the cuppies.

The spirals were done using the lovely rolling pin I bought at Cake Connections

These imprints were done using a little rolling pin which was a present from my good friend Susan (Sue mei mei)

For the cuppies' recipe, I merely used a simple butter cake recipe but added chocolate chips into one batch and dried strawberry bits in the other. The butter cake recipe was taken from Aunty Yochana's website here. I will normally try to use her recipes as they are guaranteed to work and furthermore, she uses weight measurements. I get a little worried sometimes when I read recipes when the ingredients are measured with cups.

A plain old cuppie design with a fondant table cloth design which I made

A cuppie that most child would love.. thanks to the added sprinkles and clown topper from Cake Connections

I actually took 2 evenings to prepare the cakes. The first evening was for the fondant and I know that fondant can be kept longer than the cuppies. I made the fondant into a few colors and set them aside. The next evening was for the baking and the laying of the basic decorations with the fondant and some sprinkles.

Now isn't this a lot prettier?

And this too?

I think if I were to have made the toppers for the cuppies, it would easily have taken at least one to two evenings shaping them as we need toppers for 40 cuppies. Hence, I am so glad that Christene was getting the cuppies toppers from Cake Connections.

The basic decorations on the cuppies which I did at home before they were sent to Christene's house

At Christene's place, we took out the cuppies and laid them all on the dinning table, took out the sprinkles and the toppers she bought and I think in less than half and hour, we were done decorating 40 cuppies. Opps.. forgot to mention. We were so efficient and quick as we also had a little helper. Her name is Kimberly (Christene's elder princess). She managed us using the convey style system. She will first dictate which of the cuppies get to be decorated with sprinkles (which was my job - to put on the sprinkles). Then her job was to stick on the topper and mummy's job was to put them into the plastic dome cup and staple them. See, when you have a system, everything works efficiently and quickly. This child has potential and I have already earmarked her for one of my projects when she grows up :D.

Pretty flowers for the little girls

Cute clowns for the little boys

I am so happy that people like Cake Connection has made my life as a cook(baker)wannabe so much simpler. When in need a great toppers, I know where to get them :)

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Pancake House International - Food Review

2008-11-05T15:10:00.011+08:00

It was Sunday late afternoon when my mum decided that she wanted to buy some nyonya kueh for offerings to one of the ancestors. As I was going out in the evening, decided to go to Sunway Pyramid to see if there were any around. Was walking towards the supermarket entrance into Jusco when I spotted the Pancake House International. Mmm.. I have only tried Paddington's Pancake at The Curve and Mid Valley, The Gardens. Was wondering how different this would be.

Decided to go try it out after picking up what I wanted for mum (mum had to settled with Man Tou - dumplings from the frozen food section as I couldn't find any nyonya kueh).

Surveyed the menu and it turned out that the food sold there was quite interesting. Pancake House unlike Paddington's had more than pancakes on the menu list. They had pastas, rice dishes, pancakes (of course) and waffles.

We order one piece of their "Best Taco in Town" (RM6.50). I like it a lot as it is light and tasty. Generous amount of cheese toppings.

For the mains, we tried their Gambero Spaghetti (RM21) and the Smoked Golden Tinapa with Garlic Rice and a fried egg (RM15).

The Gambero Spaghetti, a tomato based sauce with about 5 medium sized prawns was quite tasty but not hot enough. At best, it was only warm. That kind of spoiled it for me.

The Smoked Golden Tinapa was quite a disappointment. Firstly, if you looked at the picture, you might not have guessed that it was a fish dish. The poor fish came with it's skin broken up and it was not on the fish. The waiter did apologize to us for that but he gave us the excuse that they have to make sure that the fish is cooked before serving it up. And the garlic rice served with the fish.. which was under the fried egg is again at room temperature. I expected the rice to be hot. The taste of the marinade on the skin of the fish was quite overpowering. Overall, I didn't like this dish one bit :(.

Their desserts were much better (luckily). We ordered 2 desserts as I was so tempted by their Waffle Foldover (RM12.00) but since this is a pancake shop, we also order the Caramel Banana Pancakes (RM12.00).

The Waffle Foldover was very nice and they were very generous with their scoop of vanilla ice-cream. It was gi-nor-mous. And they sprinkled it with a good bit of chopped walnuts and smarties.

The pancakes are what pancakes should be but I was just wondering where the caramel was. It came with a small container of maple syrup only... mmm..

The entire meal with 2 bottles of mineral water came up to RM78.65 (10% service charge - RM7.15 included). Well, I am not sure if there will be a 2nd time for me there but if I do go again, it will definitely be for their Waffle Foldover :D.

Pancake House International
LG, 126 Sunway Pyramid
No 3 Jalan PJS 11/5, Bandar Sunway,
46150 Petaling Jaya,
Selangor

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Bento #18

2008-11-04T14:21:00.006+08:00

Ya Ya.. I know. I have been bento-ing a lot more often then I am baking these days... so much so that my dear friend Christene of AllThingsPurple called me up to ask me if I am still baking haha. Yah I am still baking. It is just that bento-ing seems fun and lately it has started to become more a necessity as I am planning to start my 3rd project... a weight management project. Will share this once I have tighted up all the screws to my little project boat.

The other thing is also to catchup with the other bento bloggers so that I can qualify for competitions organized by my favorite bento blogger - Pat of BentoPet. So, here goes my Bento #18.

I made this bento for lunch as using minced meat that was left over from making my wonton during the weekend. I found out that I made more meat then I had wonton skin. Oh well, improve a bit to make it into another meal :D

These are the meat patties that I made. For simple meat patties you can use minced chicken (or pork), mince prawns, water chestnuts, spring onions and some shitake mushrooms. Marinade the meat with a little sesame oil, salt and sugar to taste and a dash of pepper. Shape them into a small hockey pucks. First dunk them into a beaten egg, then cover the pucks with some breadcrumbs. Fry them in a wok of hot oil and there you have it... home made meat patties.

This other tray holds my rice topped with some nori bits and sesame seeds, a rolled up plain omellete and stir fried mushrooms with brocolli.

Okie.. that is my 18th bento post.. Another 82 more to go if the qualifying criteria is 100 bento posts for next year's competition :D

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Japanese Curry

2008-11-03T16:41:00.006+08:00

I have only tried Japanese curry once before this and it was at Sushi King. They were having a promotion and only after much persuasion by the nice waitress that I decided to order my first Japanese curry. Not sure why there was so much reluctance on my part but I think it is my stupid mind set. I always only associate good curries to Indian and Malay cooking. Ha Ha.

Anyway, the curry tasted quite good. A little sweet but then sweet is my favorite flavor. Have not ordered it again, not that I didn't like it. But I reckon it was more like a habit.. a habit of not ordering it.

So, one day, I decided to get a pre-cooked curry pack from the Japanese food outlet. They actually had a whole lot to choose from. I decided to pick one which was in a blue box, blue being one of my favourite colors.. and also I was told that it was one of the more popular one :D.

The cooking is very easy. Just microwave it or dump the entire packet (take it out from the paper box first yeah) inside the boiling water for 5 minutes (I forgot how long .. please read the instructions on the box). I boiled some rice to go with it.

The taste is as I liked it, sweet with only a tinge of spicy. My only complaint is..... where are all those chucks of meat and vegetables they showed on the box?? It was like "hoi dei low chump" - trying to fish a needle from the sea (literally translated from Cantonese to English).

Mmmm.. cannot read the Japanese writings on the box. Maybe I was supposed to add more meat and veg into the curry???

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Bento #17

2008-10-30T13:40:00.003+08:00

Last week, I put up a post on how to cook Okonomiyaki. As I had 1/2 a bag of flour left, I decided to finish it before the horrible weevils find their way to that bag of floor, especially in this damp weather. This time, I replaced the mushrooms with a little white squid and small prawns. Maybe I didn't add enough squid and prawns as I could not really taste that much of a difference, except the little bit more chewy when I bit into the squid. I think I will stick to the mushrooms the next time. Healthy and cheaper :D

Top tray : Okinomiyaki with squid and prawns
Lower tray : White rice with a sprinkling of the yummy nori bits, bonito flakes and some leftover egg furikake.
Right tray : Lovely seedless grapes

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Bento #16

2008-10-28T18:46:00.005+08:00

Bento #16 is a relatively simple on as it is made up of mainly leftovers. The rice is from the same batch of Multi Grains Rice which I made earlier.

The meat stew is a plain one which is made up pork bits and I added a freshly boiled egg as mum says that it is not good to eat eggs which have been left overnight. Not sure why but when we were kids, she absolutely refused to let the sons eat them.

The veg is freshly stir fried as normally vegetables are all eaten up on the day they were cooked. I guess vegetables which have to be refried will be rather limped and none of the vitamins would have been retained. The veg dish was stir fried carrots, cabbage and some abalone mushrooms in a little garlic.

For desserts, I had a banana.. yum yum :)

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Mixed Grains Rice

2008-10-27T18:27:00.008+08:00

I have never tried mixed grains before. At best, it was either brown rice or the Thai Red Rice. But after reading Babe's post on Mixed Grains Fried Rice, I simply had to give it a go. Got some advice from Babe and went shopping over the weekend. Actually, there were quite a few varieties of mixed grains at the Organic shops. I was actually at a loss as to which one to select. Finally, I went to this Organic shop in near OUG (Overseas Union Garden) market in Kuala Lumpur. The lady was very helpful and she recommended the Chinese Yam and Multi Grains Rice. This is the packet I bought. The cost of this packet was RM14 for 1 kg.

The ingredients inside the bag included Australian Brown Rice, Oat, Sorghum Rice, Job's Tears, Buck'wheat, Gordon Euryale Seed, Wheat, Barley, Red Lentils, Pearl Rice and Yam. Actually, I could not recognize more than half of the stuff inside the bag.

Her advice was to soak the grains between 1 hour to 2 hours before cooking. And as this was my first time eating this, she also recommended for me to add in 1 cup of white rice to 1 cup of the multi grains rice, in case I am not use to the texture.

Well, I followed her instructions to the letter and cooked up a pot of multi grain rice with the same portion of white rice. This is what I got. It was quite yummy but the best part of it, after eating a bowl of it for lunch, one can last the entire afternoon until dinner without any hunger pangs :D. A great diet meal.

The results .......

1 cup of white rice, 1 cup of mixed grains rice (soaked for 2 hours) and 2 and 3/4 cups of water. I steamed the rice instead of putting it into my lousy rice cooker. I reckon that if you did put it into the rice cooker, you may need to add a little bit more water. A bit of a trial and error.

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Okonomiyaki

2008-10-23T14:50:00.007+08:00

Okonomiyaki is one of those Japanese dishes that I like very much and I finally was able to get all the ingredients that I needed to make this. Okonomiyaki is really like a Pizza, japanese style. But when I did it, mine looked more like a pancake :D. This is how it out to look like, in a restaurant..

This image was borrowed from Travel To Japan website.

This is what mine looked like.Not sure why the entire photo color is orange but then it was only a camera phone.

Here's another picture of my okonomiyaki.

It was very easy to do and quite tasty. Here, this recipe was taken off a brochure they were handing out at that nice little Japanese shop at Mid Valley, The Gardens. Haha.. finally got the name of the shop.

I already halved everything in the recipe as I think one full pan of okonomiyaki is quite enough for 1 meal.

Ingredients

100g okonomiyaki flour
2 eggs
100 cc of water
250g of cabbage
50g of meat ingredient (chicken/beef/squid/prawn) - I didn't add any... coz I didn't have any in the freezer
50g of vegetable ingredient (mushrooms/onion/ corn) - I only used mushrooms and onion)

Garnishing

Brown okonomiyaki sauce
Mayonnaise
Dried Bonito flakes
Green seaweed flakes

Method

Slice cabbage finely
Finely cut up the ingredients that you want to add
Mix okonomiyaki sauce, eggs and water together in a big bowl and stir until frothy
Add cabbage into the mixture
Pour in all the finely cut ingredients into the batter and mix thoroughly
Heat some oil in the frying pan
When oil is hot, pour all the batter mix into the frying pan and fry in medium heat
When the bottom surface of the okonomiyaki has turned golden brown, flip it over
Once both sides have turn golden brown, serve it on a plate
Garnish it with the okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise
Sprinkle the bonito flakes and the seaweed flakes just before serving

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Bento #15

2008-10-21T13:49:00.005+08:00

Went over to the Japanese Store at Mid Valley The Garden again over the weekend and bought a few cool stuff. I hope I still have the packet at home as I forgot to take a photo of the bag. It was a sushi rice mix, I think the bag only had Japanese words on it. The little white sticker with the few English words on it had quite a lot of things on it... including carrots, vinegar, etc etc. I must really go back and retrieve that bag soon, if I have not already thrown it away.

Anyway, I made a simple bento for lunch using whatever that was in the fridge. I noticed that I have been bento-ing more than I have been baking.... oh, I do miss baking... but bento-ing is fun and it is quick and simple too :).

I have also started discussing a new project I have in mind with my dear bento blogging friend Pat of Bento Pet. Hope to see my proposed project take off soon. And thank you very much Pat, for giving me the time and keeping an open mind on this (hopefully NOT) a hare brain scheme of mine. Keeping fingers and toes crossed.

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Top tray : Short grain rice with the delicious pre-mix that came complete even with the nori bits for garnishing and 2 sausages (steamed)

Bottom tray : Quail eggs (bought a rabbit craft cutter from MPH bookstore MidValley but the sumo were cut free-hand - notice how untidy they are heehee), cucumbers, crab sticks and grapes.

Bento #14

2008-10-17T15:26:00.007+08:00

Ever since I found that little Japanese supermarket like outlet at the Gardens, Mid Valley, I have been going there almost every weekend. The people there are rather nice as they will take the time to explain to me what new products they have and also how to use some of the products. I have been buying quite a few interesting stuff from them each time.

One of the items I bought recently were rice cakes (I think that is what they are called). They are made totally of glutinous rice and they come in either rectangular pieces like those in the photo below and also in small disc forms. These can be either lightly fried in a little oil or put into sweet soups like the red bean soups to give it more body.

I also got some of these Egg Furikake. Looks very nice and interesting.

With just these two ingredients, I am ready to make my very simple Bento #14.

I just had to lightly fry the rice cakes and once they are done, i used a small piece of nori sheet to hold it up. Lightly smear some Japanese mayonnaise around the 3 sides of the cake and press it into a pile of Egg Furikake. And this is how it looks.

Cut up a plum or two, wash a bunch of grapes and some cherry tomatoes and you are ready.

And this is the end result, almost hassle free.

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Bento #13

2008-10-14T18:43:00.004+08:00

I didn't think that I will be bento-ing yesterday as I knew I was going to have a company paid lunch but when I got back, I realize that I didn't have much time for a leisurely sit-down dinner before I had to rush off for my Monday night meeting with some of my business partners. After frying the rice and taking a quick shower after that, I only had time to cut up 2 plums and 1 kiwi fruit and stuff some rice into my bento box before I ran off.

I think it was rather rude of me but I cannot help it. I arrived at 10 minutes to 8pm and the meeting is to start at 8pm. So, without too much ceremony, I just took out my Bento and ate my dinner at the office, with 2 of them eyeing my food. I didn't ask if they have eaten as there was definitely not enough to share *evil grin*

Left tray : 2 plums and 1 kiwi fruit
Right tray : Fried Thai Red Rice (recipe in the previous post)

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Fried Thai Red Rice

2008-10-14T18:19:00.008+08:00

I have normally eaten only white rice or brown rice. But the first time I ate red rice was at this eatery Ying Ker Lou - Hakka Cuisine in Sunway Pyramid which serves authentic Hakka Cuisine. The dishes were lovely and I am trying to get some photos to post it up on the blog. I remember taking photos with my camera phone but I cannot locate them now :(

Anyway, I found the red rice very nice indeed and decided to buy a very small packet (I think the 1 kg packet) as any packet larger than that will be a magnet to weevils (gosh, how I detest these little bugs). I cooked them the first time following the directions on the packet 2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice. The rice turned out pretty hard. Luckily none of us who ate it had indigestion that night.

Yesterday, I cooked it again but this time, with 2 1/2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice. It turned out much better. As I was in a hurry to rush of for my Monday night meetings, I had only enough time to fry it all up with whatever I can find in the fridge. This is the result.

Ingredients
2 cups red rice, cooked
3 shallots - chopped
1 large carrot - diced
1 cup of frozen corn
1 fresh red chilli - sliced
4 pieces of mushroom sausages - sliced
2 eggs, beaten and scrambled
1 tbsp of mini dried shrimps

Method

After the rice is cooked, dish it out and fluff it to be cooled whilst preparing the other ingredients
Heat up the wok/pan and add a little oil.
Once the oil is hot, put in the shallot and fry until aromatic.
Add in the dried shrimps and then add in the sausages.
Put in the chilli, carrots and corn.
Add in a 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 sugar and some pepper
Put in the rice into the wok and mix all the ingredients into the rice.
Add soya sauce to taste.
Finally add in the scrambled eggs and dish it out.

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