Just for fun - Cooking Curry Day Singapore

Just for the fun of it, we had curry tonight for dinner.

We don't really care about how 'the incident' about how it came about after we found out that it happened more than 6 or 7 years ago! Cheh!

We are just curry lovers!



The Sakura Chicken Curry.

I used a curry ready to cook wet premix instead of making it from scratch. But added extra ingredients to make it better. (chinese celery roots, 1 tomato, curry leaves and 1 onion.) I used Sakura chicken because it has less fat to remove when you cut it up. It also taste nicer.

I added only half the amount of coconut milk that's required and substituted it with milk.





Curry Vegetables

The wife made curry vegetables. She also used a ready to cook wet premix. Added brinjals, long beans, okra (lady's fingers), tomato, cabbage, curry leaves. We forgot to put in carrots! Realised it only half way.

Portioned it into two portions. We cooked like 1 kg of vegetables! The second portion will be for tomorrow!




Halibut Green Curry with mushroom

Aunt cooked halibut green curry and brought it over in a thermal pot. Two families cooking and bringing food together is more fun and there's more variety. Aunt cooked it from a green curry paste that her friend brought back from Thailand.


We had it with hot steaming rice and a baguette from Delifrance (from the petrol station down the road).
We finished off with cupcakes, tea and ice cream for dessert.

Happy Curry Day!

Treats from Paris

Our cousin came back from her holiday in Europe and brought us a little treat which we had after dinner at our home tonight.



They liked us did not specifically walk into the shop it seems.
They saw a nice chocolate shop and walked in and like us found out later it's one of the best chocolate shops in Paris!



These little truffles were simply luxurious!

Sweet and yet bitter, it's so smooth and yet the chocolate dusting over it gives it some rough stickiness when it's in your mouth.

One chocolate truffle is never enough!




Our cousin was thinking of us when she was holidaying!
She also brought back a little box of macarons from Laduree!




She and her parents tasted so many kinds of macarons from so many shops. She did her research and went macaron hunting in Paris! We asked her which one she liked, she said Laduree is nicer than Pierre Herme. 

The above, the chocolate macarons from Laduree. Since there was so many of us at home, we took out a knife and cut it into small pieces, almost the size of mooncake tasting portions at Takashimaya. OK, that was exaggeration. We cut them into quarters.



Our cousin also said there's macarons sold in McDonald's in Paris as well! Yup, she tried them too! She had giant ones as well from cafe at the corner of her hotel along Champs Elysee, which she whatsapp me. I wondered how many macarons she had on her trip!

The bright yellow macarons is lemon flavoured.




The macarons were hand carried all the way from Paris to London via the Eurostar and then hand carried again from Heathrow to Changi. So the green, lime flavoured macaron got slightly 'kemek'!

The flavours were all very nice. You need to sample them really slowly. It's not only lime or lemon that you taste. You can taste other stuff they put in too! They were oh so good!


Thanks cousin for the sweet treats from Paris!

Singapore Laksa La Mian

We bought 2 packets to try a few weeks ago when we saw this on sale in the supermarkets.
After trying it, we liked it and on the next grocery trip, we bought 6 more packets to keep at home, in case we are hungry at odd hours of the day.

As I am typing this, my aunt is carrying like a whole box of it to London for another aunt and cousins!
But these instant noodles are not cheap. It's around $2.60-2.80 depending on which supermarket you buy them from.

(We wondered if it's available in UK! If it is, aunt would have wasted her luggage space!)



Even the packaging looks delicious!

We liked it because there is no MSG added, it's air-dried noodles. Mum was saying, nowadays they are all like that.




Open the pack and you see a round piece of noodles. If you are one of those who needs two packs of instant noodles to feel full, this 1 pack should be enough.


It reminds me when we were young, we were crazy over Myojo's noodles (remember the advert on TV?). Some of their noodles (I remember it was Mee Goreng) were 100gm instead of the smaller packs by other brands. They were also round!



Instead of small packs of seasoning, the seasoning looks big!
Look at 2 photo above to see the size. It's like cooking Prima Mixes stuff!

We were discussing the other day with my aunt. She said the sauce is too thick and she prefers only to put half of each pack. I think if you like your laksa super lemak and 'gao gao', you should put all in. I know some of you will say, you will go 'botak' soon!




It takes a long time to cook though! 7 minutes it says on the wrapper.
I was cooking two packs at together to be shared with my sister.




We thought it looked a bit too plain, so while I was cooking, sis went downstairs to buy $5 of Char Siu to go with our noodles. Why did not we just eat laksa from the stalls? Because some laksa stalls simply cannot make it! LOL. This cook at home noodles taste better than many laksa stalls!

Our family other favourite is Koka's Tomyam Hor Fun and also Indomie's Mee Goreng!

Have you tried it, what's your verdict of this noodles?

Burger Dinner @ Home

After this burger post, I will have a break from posting more burgers. I still have lots of photos of burgers from burgers from Singapore and also overseas. If you have the Lonely Planet Queensland guide, they have an entry about the best burger in Brisbane. It was a tiny shop, far away in the suburbs. Sis, Momo and I travelled more than an hour to go try it, and yes it was worth the trip. The burge was superb! We are sometimes so crazy while on holiday.

We will still be eating them though, we love burgers! I will refrain from posting more burgers until I have the urge to burger bomb my blog again.

A few weeks ago, as usual, we were at home working on our laptops. We usually have either Asian Food Channel or Food Network Asia providing the background noise when we work. For that particular day, we were subliminally influenced to have burgers! On both channels that we kept swapping, it was all about burgers, burgers and more burgers! Since we saw the programs making it, we decided we would make some too! We invited a few people over for dinner that night too!

My sis did most of the work. I did most of the eating. She prepared the patty, cut up everything. When there's a lady busy in the kitchen, it's best to leave her alone. The golden rule is that there can only be one person in charge in the kitchen.




A very healthy looking burger that we made. The vegetables used had more nutrition too. We had baby spinach instead of lettuce. Carrots and crunchy water chestnuts were also added into the patty as well.




If you are veggies hater and prefer more meat, no problem!
Use two meat patties instead! This is also the no carbo version! Great for losing weight!




Another version of the carbo-less burger. Tomato slices used instead of bread.
The combination is up to your imagination!

We had baked potatoes and corn as sides for those who wants more carbo that is not made from white flour.  ;-)





Since sis has done everything else, I was in charge of cooking.

I got a scolding for making the patties too small. Always remember to ask the person in charge first before being "kay-kiang" and start cooking. Use the weighing scale too, if she specifies she wants a 40, 60 or 80 gram patty!

The good that came from the mistake is that we had lots and lots of patties and we could have different variations!
 We got our minced meat from Culina at Fairprice Finest as that's the supermarket nearest to our place. The recipe sis used was originally from The Biggest Loser cookbook. It had lots of herbs and spices in it. For the meat patty, we did not add any flour into it.  If you don't have any flour in the patty, the meat loosens when you cook it. So how? You know when you cook at home, you do try to finish up stuff you have at home. I told sis, add in the almond powder that we have extra from making macarons some time ago. Hey, it turned out nice!

It has been a long time since my Scanpan grill griddle pan saw the light of day. Aren't the patties beautiful? When cooking patties, please don't keep pressing them. If you do, all the juice from the burger comes out and the patty will taste dry.

Be a little patient, let it cook slowly and gently press them to get the grill marks. I did not use any oil, because the instruction was please keep it healthy.  

(It's weird huh, we try to eat healthy at home, but when we are out, we order the most unhealthy stuff! haha)




We thought of making our own buns, we had all the ingredients at home, but we got lazy and went to buy gardenia buns instead.

We love gherkins in our burgers. There are two kinds of gherkins for sale in the supermarket. I prefer the sweet gherkins so I got the bottle above. But....  the ladies who came for dinner said I got the wrong one. They prefer the tart gherkins. Oh well....




The best tasting cheese we think are the ones by President.  It does taste better! They are a bit more expensive though. We used organic baby spinach instead of lettuce. It tastes so much better and is also more nutritious.




We had sides like steamed corn and baked potatoes as sides as well.
If you noticed in the supermarket nowadays, they sell colourful of potatoes all in a bag now. We bought a pack to make wedges!




Wash the potatoes cut them in wedges and throw in the spices you like. I had some high quality olive oil in it (I used the same brand used by the famous Ferran haha), spanish smoked paprika and dash of dried parsley with some kosher salt. Bake them for 20 minutes and that's it! Simple.

Note: We read recently that if you want super crispy potatoes when baking, soak them in water first. You might also read that cooking starch rich food in high temperature is not good for health. It produces something called acrylamide. Well, this research says that when you soak your potatoes in water before cooking, it reduces it. So, soak your potatoes before cooking! Pardon me if you get confused, just my geek-ness.

We are no burgers expert. We are just experimenting. ;-)

Bon Appétit

Aunty Foo's Punggol Delicacies (Part 2)

Next this was pig stomach soup. Aunty Foo has actually cut them and twisted all of them up. Actually it was the little girl at home that help grandma tie them up. Cute ya!



This is without the soup, so you can see what is being served in each bowl.
Actually, I do not like eating these stuff, but I love the soup. The soup is peppery and hot! Yum yum!



Next was gigantic prawns. Our aunt from London was having dinner with us, she said in London it is very rare to have prawns that are this big. Their big prawns there are like the small prawns we have here.



The last dish is the steam pomfret. Do you know what ingredients here made the soup superb? Next time when you steam fish, add in leeks! Then you can taste the difference.



Hope you enjoyed this and can use them to plan for your coming home cook meals.

Aunty Foo's Punggol Delicacies (Part 1)

Recently, we went to our relative's home in Punggol to have dinner. Here's what we had...

The 'petai' that causes super potent gases. haha...



Minced pork with potatoes. This are the kids favourites.



Aunty Foo's famous curry chicken. I tell you, it's yummy oh....




This is one of the traditional dishes at their home. It's hairy gourd with 'tang hoon' and mushroom. It's very good!



More tomorrow... Remember to come back! haha...

Cooking flower drummets at home...

My cousin loves this dish. It's her maternal granny's specialty. So, other than yesterday's crabs, aunt also made this dish.

I am not very sure of the exact seasoning. When I find out and prepare it myself one of these days, I will post the recipe up.

The chicken drummets that have the meat all pushed to the top. Seasoned for a few hours in the fridge.



Then the oil.... for deep frying lah..



You dip it in a combi of floor. Rice flour and normal flour I think.
Then you put the big portion part right into the oil.



Then you add more.... and more.... and more....



After the thicker parts have been cooked, you can start to stir them so that the whole piece of chicken is cooked.



Then you drain off the oil.



That's it! Serve.....



I like the taste of it. If I am not wrong, the seasoning very simple. The main ingredients are galangal, onions and garlic.

How to cook your own chilli crabs at home... It's easy. Really!

Last weekend, went over to aunt's place. Remember the birthday cake? It was a birthday party.
The main thingy is eating crabs.

So here's the whole process of cooking crabs. You can do it at home too...


This are crabs that was just bought a few hours earlier. The secret to great tasting crabs is freshly 'murdered' crabs. haha.. No need to teach you how to kill crabs lah...

Here's the first container of the crabs.



These are the leggies part of the crabs.



That is a mix of onions and garlic and ginger.



Usually we use prima's crab mix, but the kids that was sent down to buy, bought this instead! haha..



Then after it smells really good, add in the chilli crab paste.



When it's nice and smell simply intoxicating, add in the crabs!



Stir fry them, mix them really well. I tell you, cooking chilly crabs will get rid of flabby arms! The exercise that you have to do to stir.... This is after adding water.... You can see the colour has changed...



Then after adding in the beaten eggs, it looks even yummier now...



After that, serve..



Chilli crabs must go with buns... This is the ones you get from the frozen section...



After steaming it... looks good ya...



Hope you enjoyed today's post. No, I did not cook them this time. Aunt did it. I just took photos.

Geek Cooks: Olive Oil Mash Potatoes with Sweet Peas

Last Saturday was rare. I decided to stay home and not eat out!

So photos for today's food blog was what I prepared last Sat. It's been a long time since I use any of my 'expensive' kitchen decorations!

This is what I made. Mash Potatoes in Olive Oil with stir fried sweet peas.



Mash Potatoes with Olive Oil
- 1 bag of potatoes (approx 1 kg I think)
- 8 table spoons full of extra virgin olive oil (instead of butter, healthier mah...)
- fresh milk (about half cup)
- about 1 bunch (5-6 sprigs) of spring onions (or scallions)
- about 1 bunch (3-4 sprigs) of parsley (or cilantro)

Don't laugh at me ok? No I am not paid to name these brands. LOL...

1. Fill up a Scanpan Ceramic Titanium Wok with water filtered using a Brita Water Filter. Add in 2 teaspoons of salt in the chlorine free water.
2. Immerse the potatoes that have been cleaned and peeled, boil for around 25 mins or till its soft.
3. Pick up the potatoes with a Cuisipro Tongs and put them into a WMF pot.
4. Start mashing them using a NTUC-homebrand masher and crush the potatoes into smaller pieces.
5. Add in the extra virgin olive oil and mash. Add in milk and continue to mash till they are very smooth.
6. Add in the finely chopped up spring onions and parsley and stir.
7. Using a pepper mill, crush black pepper over, stir and that's it.

(I did not add salt in, if you wish, you can... I already boiled them in salted water)



Stir Fried Sweet Peas.
1 pack of sweet peas (use snow peas if you like)
1 medium size onion
3 cloves garlic.
1 1/2 teaspoon premium oyster sauce

1. Heat up the Scanpan Wok again, add in Extra Virgin Olive oil, and the sliced in rings onions. After they are translucent, add in the finely chopped garlic. After they are fragrant, add in the oyster sauce.
2. The sweet peas are sliced so they look like mini flattened rings. Add them in the wok. Quickly stir fry them and that's it!

I stir fry using a WMF spatula, and you can slice your onion using a Kyocera Ceramic Slicer too! LOL


OK. Enough of a geek cook who likes to buy kitchen utensils and never really use much of it. Mum always says 'waste money', my cheaper stuff can cook better food. Real skill. :-)