This recipe was created by chance. I was thinking of blanching some broccoli to make garlic butter broccoli to go together with the pasta that I cooked (yes, apart from the usual Asian fare, I do cook pasta quite often) when I realised that I had some left over ingredients in the fridge which could go together to create something oriental.

By that, I was referring to calamansi and fresh red chillies. Add a little garlic and some sauce and you’ve got yourself a tangy and zesty Oriental Broccoli Salad. The garlic can be a tad pungent for the uninitiated and can leave an unpleasant garlic odour in the mouth hours after eating. Might not be suitable if you plan to go dating after having this salad.

This is my recipe for Oriental Broccoli Salad Read the rest of this entry »

At some wet markets or stalls in Malaysia, you will find hawkers selling fried noodles at an economy price ranging from RM1.00 to RM1.50 per plate / pack. These noodles usually sell well because of the pricing and simpleness in the ingredients used. The type of noodles used are the yellow noodles which are commonly available in the markets themselves.

For home cooking, I have cooked this type of noodles once in a blue moon and the usual ingredients which I use are garlic, sliced fish cake, eggs and bean sprouts. Sometimes I do add in a little chinese green mustard leaves (sawi). It is pretty simple to cook though the preparation of the bean sprouts can be a little time consuming when removing the tail / root.

This is my recipe for Economy Fried Noodles Read the rest of this entry »

Lately I have been quite fond of eating Bak Kut Teh, a herbal soup with pork parts (predominantly ribs). Bak Kut Teh is transliterated to the Hokkien / Eng Choon dialect as “Pork Rib Tea”. All these while, I would buy Bak Kut Teh from a nearby stall and have it for dinner with steaming white rice. That was until the thought of cooking it myself came about when I popped by at a Chinese herbal medicine shop. I wanted to see if I could replicate it at home.

Ready made Bak Kut Teh herb sachet are commonly found in supermarkets and grocery shops and the different brands available can be quite mind-boggling. We bought ours called the Chat Lin Brand, manufactured in Semenyih, Malaysia. So, last Saturday morning, I went to get myself about 700 grammes of pork ribs and loin and the experiment began.

The recipe was simple and easy to follow, though I did add the seasoning to my personal taste. I also added some Goji berries to sweeten the soup. The end result was a satisfying dinner for the family and I am looking forward to cooking the other sachet soon. There are 2 sachets of about 8 grammes each in a packet.

This is the Bak Kut Teh recipe Read the rest of this entry »

I saw a recipe somewhere before on stuffed mushrooms but did not take down the recipe. So, relying on the basic idea on how it should be prepared and cooked, I came up with my own Stuffed Mushrooms recipe. The mushrooms which I used are the dried chinese mushrooms which were pre-soaked to soften them. You can also use Shiitake mushrooms. These mushrooms are chosen due to the natural shape which looks like a plate when turned upside down and are not too small (like button mushrooms) or too big (portobello, oyster or grey mushrooms). The ideal way is to have them in bite sizes, not unlike a dim sum treat.

For the ingredients, I initially wanted to use salted egg whites as one of the ingredients but silly me, I cracked the egg with the black coating still on the egg without realising that I should have washed the coating off first. In the end, I could only salvage the salted egg yolk but it was interesting as the salted egg yolk gave the Stuffed Mushrooms a twist in the flavour. Sorry as I am unable to describe the taste in words but if you have eaten salted egg yolk mooncakes, you will know the taste.

This is my recipe for Stuffed Mushrooms Read the rest of this entry »