My first attempt at Pulut Serikaya
Obtained the recipe from the Cooking to a degree cookbook from Jaster, it's actually much simpler than I thought. Just need abit more green colour and less rice.

Sam's comment : The green layer should be a bit thicker, but the taste is good.

Png Kueh 饭桃

Recipe for Png Kueh from these 2 website ( Asian Eats and Roseskithcen)
Ingredients - Dough
300g rice flour
50g tapioca flour
Boiling water, about 2 rice bowls
A few drops of red food coloring

Ingredients - Fillings
300g glutinous rice, washed & soaked for 3 hours.
Soy sauce to taste
100 g dried prawns, washed and soaked
4 dried mushroom, soaked

Fillings
For the glutinous rice, add enough water (I used the water from the soaked mushrooms) and steam until cooked.
Cut the dried mushroom into strips and stir fry it together with the dried prawns until fragrant.
Add the cooked glutinous rice.
Add Soy sauce to taste
Mix well and set aside.

Kueh
Mix the flour together, add the boiling water until dough is formed and mix with a wooden spoon.
Add the red food colouring
Mix well and leave for a few minutes until the dough is not hot to touch. In the meantime, you can prepare a small bowl of water with some oil (water-oil solution).
Grease the plate for steaming and the mould for the kueh.
Knead the dough using the water-oil solution.
The hardest part of the task - Wrapping the filling and make the mould.
Pinch out a small round of the dough, flatten it and placed it over the mould, like a bowl.
Put about 2 tablespoons of fillings into the "bowl" & wrap the dough by pulling the dough together to cover up the fillings.
Press the wrapped dough into the mould. Knock the moulded dough out.
Place it on the greased plate and steam for about 15 mins.
Pan fry later when ready to eat.

The above recipe makes about 15 png kueh. I think it's possible to make more than 15 as I kept pushing the filings in and the skins are thin. Some leftover dough, thus likely to make more than 15 if you go easy on the filings.

Sam comment : Too light shade of pink!

九层糕

Steamed the kueh today using this recipe, however I'm using creamed coconut pack, thus it's abit more oily than usual.

9 layers and a red top layer as requested by Sam.

Hokkien Prawn Noodles
Found a recipe for Hokkien Prawn Noodles in the diary received on Singapore Day which I thought was achievable. Receipe as follow, modified by me (to serve 3) :-

Stock - about 20 prawn heads, some pork (should be pork bones), half ikan bilis cube, 1 dried scallop, 1 tbsp sugar, some light soy sauce (add to taste), 1 bulb garlic (separated and peeled), some white peper and water. Bring this to boil and simmer for an hour and need at least 4 ladles prawn stock.
4 eggs - beaten, fried and cut into small pieces
Pork lard - fried
6 small squids, sliced into rings
12 prawns
Some fish cake (none at home, so didn't put this in)
Bean sprouts
5 sprigs of spring onions, cut into about 5cm pieces
Bee Hoon (1 pack from Tesco)
Yellow noodles (1 pack from Tesco)
Limes (forgot to buy from Tesco!!)

In the wok, heat the oil and fry the garlic. Add the prawn and squids for about 1 minute. Add been hoon and 1 ladle of stock, ensure that the been hoon absorb the stock. Add the yellow noodles and add in 2 ladles of stock. Add the rest of the ingredients except for the lime. Add chili (sambal blachan) if you want. Add the ladles of stock. Add water if you want it abit more watery.

That's it, delicious!!

Turkey

This year, I had ordered a free-range turkey from the Bury Lane farm shop instead of buying it off the supermarket's shelf.

Hope it's worth the money. Cost £8.75 per kg and the turkey I ordered was the smallest at 4kg. Seriously doubt the 4 of us would be able to finish it but it's the smallest turkey they have!!

According to this article, the most expensive turkey is the Whole organic free-range Devon bronze turkey from M&S, priced at £12.69 per kg. So expensive!!

Nasi Lemak

Found the spicy chicken wing recipe online and I thought of trying it out, so here's my treat for Sam for dinner.
Notice the coconut rice is green hor. That's because instead of pandan leaf (which our pandan plants are still small but growing), I had used pandan paste.
Recipe :-
- Spicy chicken wings
- Coconut rice (2 cups of rice, about 150ml of coconut milk, abit of pandan paste & add water to require level to cook the rice)
- Eggs, Spam, Ikan Bilis, just fried separately.
- Chilli, we bought the paste from Singapore, so didn't make it myself. If not, you can found the recipe for the chilli here.
That's it. Next I shall try to source out the fish paste and make some otak!!

Juicing machine
Bought this juicing machine for only £9 yesterday!! Bargain!!!
So today we bought alot of fruits and tried to be healthy.







Pink lady apple juice, orange juice & the cheap apple juice. The cheap apple juice taste sweeter.

Tomato Garlic Prawns

Stir fry prawns with Tomato Garlic sauce this evening, smells and looks good, but abit too salty, prehaps it's because I used 2 packets.

New Year's Eve Dinner

Our New Year's Eve dinner :-
- Beef with black pepper sauce (using the sauce mix from Singapore)
- Stir fry vegetable



- Creme Brulee
- Margarita


All cooked/ mixed by us!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!

Christmas Dinner



Took me about 3 hours to finish cooking this dinner!! It's definitely a dinner for more than 3 person.... we got sooo much left over, can still have it for tomorrow breakfast, lunch and dinner....

See Jaster blog for more pictures of my cooking.

Beautiful roses from Sam who cycle out in the cold to get it... My Christmas present... Thank you very the much...

Recipe cooking


We decided to cook the beef noodles using the recipe from the cookbook (Cooking to a degree) that Jaster got from British Council before coming to UK.



Verdict of the beef noodles : We don't like it. Take about an hour to cook it, taste bland, not recommended, thus no recipe posted here.

Disclaimer : The above verdict is only based on our tasting and our cooking.

Christmas turkey






Oh boy, the turkey we had last night was delicious!!! So here's the recipe

Turkey recipe
Turkey (I bought the smallest which is for 4-6 people and weight 4.2 kg)
250g unsalted butter
4 cloves garlic (minced)
Thyme
Pepper
Salt
1 white onion (cut in half)
4 cloves garlic

1. Soften the butter with a wooden spoon and add the minced garlic, thyme, pepper and salt.
2. Preheat the oven to 180 C.
3. Cover the turkey with the mixed butter using your hands. Also using your fingers, loosen the skin of the turkey and stuff the mixed butter between the skin and the turkey breast.
4. Stuff the onion and cloves garlic in between the skin.
5. Place the turkey in the roasting tray and cook for 3 and a half hour (for 4.2 kg turkey).
6. Every half an hour, take the turkey out of the oven and pour the oil in the baking tray over the turkey. (This is to ensure that the turkey will not be too dry and will taste juicy)
7. Halfway through roasting, take out the turkey and turn it around in order to roast the other side. At the same time, take out the onion and garlic stuff in between the skins (ready to be serve later on).
8. Remember step 6 after this and the turkey will come out nicely done.
9. Ready to serve.

Brussels sprouts recipe
1. Wash and boil the brussels sprouts for 10 mins.
2. Take out the brussels sprouts and shallow fry them with butter for a few minutes. (this is to add fragrance to it).
3. Ready to serve.

Sage and Onion Stuffing
1. A packet of PAXO Sage and Onion Stuffing.
2. Mix as per instructions on the packet. (which is to add water and a knob of butter)
3. Form the mixture into balls and bake on a greased baking sheet for 25 mins. (I love it crispy, thus used this option.)

Roast potatoes
Too lazy so had bought frozen roast potatoes, just need to pop them in the oven.

Roast turkey gravy
Well, just buy those packet ones and follow the instructions.
Add some of the oil from the turkey for a fuller taste.