Home-cooked Japanese Curry

Cooking sometimes can be quite therapeutic.  During a weekend when I was free, I tried out the Japanese Curry recipe from Noobcook and it turned out to be very successful!  I was very happy with the results as I never thought that I could cook curry on my own!  Of course, with the "play-cheat" method, using the ready curry sauce mix, cooking curry at home is quite easy even for one who doesn't really know how to cook well.

   

  

It was quite fun cooking this dish.  Do try it out too!

Happy New Year 2014!!!

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

Hope the past few days of the New Year had been smooth sailing for you so far!!  :)

How did you spend your New Year Day?  Well, for me, I went to my 3rd Aunt's place for potluck party!  They decided to host us as they had just done with renovating their house.  As usual, we had lots of food prepared by my Ah Ma (Grandma) and all the aunties.

Fiery Fish Head Curry

 Ah Ma prepared Mee Siam and Fried noodles.  At first, I thought it was bought from outside as the presentation was so nice right?

2nd Aunt attempted to make Hakka Yam Abacus Seeds. ( 算盘子)

 My cousin (vegsmoothiebunny) prepared a salad of broccoli, celery, mango etc to encourage us to eat healthy.  She had a very interesting and informative blog on healthy eating.  Do check it out!

 Shephard Pie

Prawn Roll

I prepared my "specialty dish" - Baked Portobello Mushrooms with Ham and Cheese.  Glad that my family, especially my youngest cousin liked them and requested me to bake more next time.  I bought the mushrooms from Giant supermarket near my place.  In each pack, there were six giant portobello mushrooms.  The mushrooms looked very big and so I bought only 2 packs.  However, the mushroom will shrink to about half the original size after baking.  Theses bite sized baked portobello mushrooms served as a very good snack!

The nice view that they used to have is now partially blocked by the new blocks of flats.

After this family gathering, I went over to the newly opened Bedok Mall to meet my secondary school buddies.  So happy to spend my New Year Day with my loved ones.  

How did you spend your New Year Day?

Easy-to-bake Pasta using Perfect Italiano Perfect Bakes

Recently, I bought a pack of "Perfect Italiano Perfect Bakes" to try baking pasta after being inspired by food bloggers such as Keropokman, Camemberu and Melicacy who had tried out simple receipes using Perfect Italiano cheese and shared their cooking experiences on their blogs.  For "Perfect Bakes", it contains three cheeses blended to give pasta bakes, vegetable bakes and lasagne a superior flavour and delicious golden crust.

 The pack came along with a small recipe booklet which gives us many simple but good ideas on the different dishes that we can whip up with Perfect Italiano cheese.

 Basically, these are the ingredients required other than the Perfect Italiano Perfect Bakes cheese, cooking cream, pasta and tomato pasta sauce.

To cook the pasta, normally I will add quite a bit of salt and a bit of olive oil. 

 Saute the onion and garlic with olive oil, then add in the mushrooms and turkey ham.

 Tomato Pasta Sauce and Cooking Cream were added next to the ingredients. 

 When the pasta was cooked, I added the pasta to the sauce and mixed them well.

 Transfer the pasta into a baking pan and top it with Perfect Italiano Perfect Bakes cheese.   Bake in oven for about 20 minutes until the cheese melted and turned golden brown.

I was very pleased with the outcome and the baked pasta was really yummy!

Would love to try out the other recipes from Perfect Italiano soon!

Fishcake Omelette using Happycall Pan

An easy to prepare omelette dish using Happycall Pan.

 Most people will think this is Chinese carrot cake.  It does look like one, isn't it?

Recipe adapted from Noobcook.com  (Serves 2 - 3)

Ingredients:
2 to 3 fish cakes (about 50g each), diced
1/2 tsp cooking oil
chopped spring onions (for garnishing - optional)

Mixture A
3 eggs, beaten
a dash of ground white pepper
1/2 tsp light soy sauce

Method:
Heat oil (As I am using Happycall Pan, I only use a few drops of oil) and stir fry diced fish cakes for about a minute.
Pour egg mixture (A) over the fish cake.  Gently tilt the wok to ensure all the diced fish cakes are covered in the egg.  Cook a few minutes on one side until dry and nicely brown, then flip the pan and do the same.  Garnish with chopped spring onions (Didn't use in this case).

Credit:  Noobcook.com

Happycall Pan - I Baked my First Brownie Cake!

Thanks to Happycall Pan, I had succeeded in baking my first cake in my entire life (excluding cupcakes).  For first timer like me, I bought the Betty Crocker Original Supreme Premium Brownie Mix with Hersheys. 

Simply stir everything together before adding in the Hershey chocolate syrup which is also included in the package.

Pour the mixture into the Happycall Pan.  PS:  Make sure you place the pan evenly and not like this.  :P

I baked it with low heat and you got to lock the pan.  Once the top part was hardened, quickly flipped it to the other side and continued to bake for another 8 minutes.

You can see that the pan was still quite clean after all the baking and it was a breeze to wash it.  No scrubbing is required.

The whole baking process took less than 20 minutes! :) :)

Fuss-free Homecooked Meal at home with CP products

It is always good to stock up these easy-to-prepare CP food products at home.  They will come handy especially for rainy days when you are lazy to go out for meal.   

The shrimp patties are individually packed.

I cooked my spaghetti and topped it up with Prego tomato sauce, CP shrimp patty and CP chicken rolls.

Also prepared another portion for hubby :)

My Mom's Cooking at Grandpa's place

Today, I went to Grandpa's place to do some praying for "Qing Ming".  As usual, my mum did all the cooking and these were the dishes that she cooked for lunch.

 Our dialect is Hainanese.  I suppose these kueh is some type of Hainanese kueh? 

Our X'mas Eve

We woke up very early on X'mas Eve as it was my hubby's company "Family Day".  The company booked the whole of "Old Town White Coffee" at Suntec for the morning function.

After breakfast, we proceed to the theatre to watch the movie "Gulliver's Travels".

We didn't watch it in 3D  but anyway, this is a family movie.  The kids will enjoy it more...

We had a simple lunch at Millenia Walk after the movie and we continued with our shopping.  I got a new Titus watch from hubby as a X'mas pressie.... Hiaz.. I lost my other Titus watch at home (I think..), not sure how this could have happened :(  We went Carrefour to buy the ingredients for dinner. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We bought 2 pieces of Cod fish.  Each piece cost around $10.  I decided to follow Wokkingmum's recipe of Baked Cod Fish with Garlic Mayonnaise as it is easy to follow.

Mixing the garlic and the mayo together

Spread garlic mayo over the cod before baking them in the oven.  Heat for about 20 minutes.

The Result:  Success!  (At least for my standard)