CNY lunch with the youths

Hey Theods!

Here's another update!

As you already know, Mom cooked for the youths when they came over yesterday.

She cooked your favourite cabbage, long beans with XO sauce and scallop floss, baked wings, mutton curry (you've already seen it) and onion omelette.

Here are the pictures!

The wings were really delicious because she didn't stinge on the seasoning like she usually does. Super tasty and juicy! The colour was nice too because I controlled the temperature well. I wanted to have just 1 wing, but ended up having 3!









The vegetables were great too! The long beans were absolutely tasty and easy to cook. She just fried it with the XO sauce she bought from Hai Tien Lo and added some of the tasty and expensive scallop floss that I have, and voila! It was another delicious vegetable dish!

Mom has been glued to the ASOS website since last night, sourcing for a nice coat for Dad. Dad seems too relaxed and chin chye. They went to Rev. Singam's wake and will be back later for dinner. We'll be having steamboat! Yummm!

Will update with pictures again!

Food Updates!

Hey Theods!

I'm typing this post as mom's talking to you about Mei-lan. Haha!

Anyway we haven't updated in a long time. So here goes!

1) My house!

It's progressing crazily fast! The estimated completion date is 2013, but looking at the rate it's going, I reckon I can collect the keys by end of 2011! Great! I'm already keeping an eye out for nice home designs! Design on a Dime is now my favourite show on MioTV! I even keep a little notebook to jot down ideas and sketch designs!



2) Basilico

I went to The Regent last Saturday because I had an appointment with the wedding coordinator there. I ended up having dinner at Basilico because the food looked really good! It was a 3-course meal. There was a buffet of appetisers & desserts and you choose your main from their menu. I loved the appetisers! Really good! I'm hoping to have the Brunch soon for my birthday!





3) CNY

I bought a lot of CNY goodies and made some. I made the usual almond cookies, pineapple tarts and honey cornflakes crunchies. Wendy's mom also bought me Bee Cheng Hiang Bak Kwa! I already have the Gourmet Bak Kwa from Jason that is not finished.









We had our reunion dinner yesterday! Korean BBQ! Quite enjoyable as it was a simple affair. We had our meal with Choya which mom found hard to drink, but surprisingly Dad found it ok! Haha! We ended the meal off with Ben and Jerry's Smores Ice-cream!
















4) Mom's making mutton curry for the youths who'll be coming on Fri. It'll be a small group this time, just 6 of them. And mom even bought drinks for them - listen to this, Winter Melon packet drinks from Yeo Hiap Seng! What?! Doesn't she know what youths drink?!



Uncle Titus and his family will be coming over for a short visit later, after which we'll proceed to Auntie Soo Wee's house and PoPo's house. I'm sure you heard about their family conflict. So childish! Think even we're more mature than them!

Anyway we're waiting for your updates! Have you been cooking?

Phad Thai noodles

Have been craving a little Thai food recently, hence, a trip to the Asian market saw me home with some rice stick noodles and pad thai sauce. As a poor student, I can hardly afford to buy fish sauce and tamarind paste separately to make my own phad thai sauce. Thus, I bought a pre made bottle of phad thai sauce to fry my noodles with. Delicious again as usual :)
I cooked bacon with eggs and some pork (marinated with charsiew) and while preparing, soaked my noodles in warm water for 15 mins till it was al dente. The next part was simply throwing everything together in the pan with a little water and noodles and sauce and taa dahhhh! A delicious thai noodle dish in less than 30 mins. Since it was so simple to cook, I would probably do it in days I'm famished. What was missing was ground roasted peanuts as a topping.

Say bye bye to restaurant food and hello to I-can-cook-my-own-restaurant-food-right-in-my-own-kitchen! :)

Theodora's Baked honeyed baby back ribs!

This was my first time baking ribs and even the logical me will say that this is definitely the best ribs I have ever eaten. Way better than what i usually get at BBQ express, bobby rubinos or even the horrible cafe cartel. I'm not sure if the portion of the meat contributed to the delicious-ness of this dish but everything fit well together. The meat was succulent and tender, the marinate was a perfect mix of natural sweetness of honey and salty flavor of the meat. I marinated the meat for 10 hrs in the fridge with honey, oyster sauce, soya sauce, dark sauce and lots of smashed garlic in the ratio 2:2:1:1:as many as you like respectively. I baked it in a pyrex dish, uncovered and it took me 45 mins at 200 degrees celcius. Half a slab was definitely not enough and I'd be cooking more of it in future!

I had some vegetables and egg as accompaniement, and the resulting texture was good as well. The crunchiness of the long beans fits very well, complementing the flavour of the meat.

The colour was perfect.

The caramelized honey gave the ribs the nice colour.

In it's full glory! The steam from the food made the picture look blurry.

A bag of bones, no rather, a plate full of the cleanest bones you can ever find. Compliments of a hungry diner - yours truly :)

Bee hoon and Oyster sauce pork

Been missing home so I decided to make some bee hoon! Simple and homely meal. I went to the Asian market and bought a pack of 500g bee hoon for SGD$4 (enough to cook 10 meals). I took 100g of marinated pork (Oyster sauce, soya sauce, onions, bellpepper, black pepper) and fried it first before adding in the noodles which I had soaked in warm water for 20 mins. I then added dark soy sauce, which I purchased from the Asian market today, to get the nice brown colour of the noodles. Preparation and cooking time was less than an hour, maybe about 30 mins. 15 mins to chop the onions and marinate meat and 15 mins to fry everything. Will cook this again some time soon.

I also bought char siew sauce, flat rice noodles (planning to cook phad thai), phad thai sauce, dark sauce and roti prata today from the Asian market. Restocked my supply of pork in the fridge and now I'm good to go! Char siew baked chicken wings and sunshine egg for tomorrow coming up! :)

Croque-monsieur or Honeyed sugar french toasts anyone?

So I got a little bored today with rice and decided I needed some bread! As always, I am a bread lover so I am always up for some toasts! This time around, it was simply Croque-monsieur, simple enough. It's basically just melted cheese and ham sandwich with a fancy french name. But, it never goes wrong. Just bake in the oven for 10 mins and you're good to go.

Next up, honeyed sugar french toast. I drenched my bread in a mix of honey, sugar, egg and milk and fried it for 1 min on each side. Had a delicious dinner :)

Finished with rye flakes and yoghurt and ice cream!

Oyster Soya fried Pork with onions and bell peppers

Ok, so this was another simple dish I prepared. Something like the sweet and sour pork, only this time with oyster and soya sauce. It tasted really good again. A hearty meal when eaten with steaming hot rice.

I've also taken to cooking simpler meals like bacon egg fried rice. This time, the rice I bought was a little sticky, like sushi rice, which I adore. I love rice whose grains are indiscernable, a little stuck together. So in the end, my fried rice was half glutinous rice with bacon and eggs. Yummy! It helped that I added a spoon of oyster sauce into the rice, and alot of dashes of flavoured pepper. You know what guys, my taste has become spoilt in Europe. I no longer like plain pepper. I love pepper with garlic and other kind of spices in it. It tastes so good! Ordinary pepper is boring now. You all should try getting it over at your side or I wouldn't mind sending some stuff over :)

I recently bought rye grain as well, a huge bag of it. Its very healthy, even better than muesli which has alot of sugar in it. Trying to lok for rye grain recipes since the bag is too big for me to eat all by myself. Thus far, I'm using it as a topping for ice cream and for yogurt as breakfast as well. Works better than nuts or chocolate or other topping because it is crunchy and healthy. So thats it, my dessert thus far has been yogurt with rye flakes and I love it.

More pictures will be posted next time when I cook an elaborate meal, though that will hardly be so since I have little time on my hands and only I am eating my meals unlike you guys. So continue posting what you all have cooked. I like my home cooked meals, it makes me feel healthier and happier. Bye bye cakes and pastries! :)

Bacon & Mushroom Aglio Olio with Bangers

Hey, I cooked dinner for Jason and I!

Here's my aglio olio, one of my favourite pasta because it is so easy to make and relatively healthy compared to the creamy ones. All you need is garlic, olive oil and dried chilli flakes.












Anyway, CNY is 3 weeks away. I'm thinking of making pineapple tarts again! And I don't mean to do this, but I went into JB yesterday and bought the arrowroot chips! Remember the one we bought last CNY when you went in with us? I bought love letters too! Heh. Been eating non-stop again! Can't wait to make my tarts. Hopefully it'll be as good as last yr's!

Will update soon! Do continue cooking! Don't slacken!

Baked Fish & Potato Salad

Hurray! Our first meal since the start of the blog!

We finally got down to cooking Theods!

We decided on fish and potato salad and I worked on looking for some recipes and viola! Everything was done in 10 minutes. We had all the ingredients at home, so we didn't have to spend on anything except for the Dijon mustard. We even had dory fillets at home, the frozen kinds though. But seriously, they taste just as good as the fresh ones, and definitely much cheaper!

For the grilled fish, Mom marinated it at home while I was in school. We left it in the fridge after marination for about 4hrs. We marinated the fish with minced garlic, olive oil, rosemary leaves & dill, salt and pepper to taste, and a few drops of lemon juice and lemon zest. It was marvelous! The flavours came out so well. It was really tasty and moist and the burst of flavours in your mouth was great! The herbs really make a difference! Before putting the fish in the oven, we added big onions on top of the fish.

Before it went into the oven





This is what it looks like out of the oven




We also made potato salad! The recipe called for mayonnaise, but I substituted sour cream for it since it is healthier. We boiled the potatoes, cut it into cubes. There were hard-boiled eggs too and we mashed it up with a fork. I then added dijon mustard, sour cream, salt and pepper and dill. You'll realise I love all these herbs! They make everything taste good instantly! I'm tempted to get lemon-pepper, garlic powder soon! Sounds good yeah! I mixed the eggs, creams and seasoning evenly before adding it into the potatoes. I chilled it for about an hour and before serving, we mixed some crumbled crisp bacon and tosted almond silvers. Ooooh, super good! I've never been much of a potato salad person, but I finished every bit of this!





Added a little cayenne pepper.



We also cooked up the last 2 portobello mushrooms that I had. We just stir-fried the big onions and bell pepper for a long time till it was sweet and fragrant and sweet, and then added in the mushrooms to fry a little while more.





Everything was really good!

This is our end-product. With a glass of white wine!







Mom & Dad looking satisfied! As usual, dad said it'd be better with soup & garlic bread. Tsk tsk! I buttered him a slice of brown walnut raisin bread after his meal.





We had fun cooking, and hope you're having fun cooking there in Sweden! I'm really glad we can share our cooking joys here on this blog. This is a really good idea! Keep the photos and posts coming!

We're thinking of cooking something Asian this week. We'll think about it again!

Lots of love from back home
Tabi, Mom & Dad