It is really hard for me to explain how to cook a very nice homely mie goreng in this blog. As long as you do your stir very quickly, then you got a nice mie goreng. I guess you have to use your senses. Good luck

Ingredients

• 300 gr egg noodles (treat according to the packet instructions)
• 100 gr chicken breast, slice thinly
• about 1 cup meatballs, slice thinly
• 1 tbsp mince garlic
• 1 medium shallot, slice
• 1 large carrots, julienne cut
• 1 small green capsicum, slice
• 1 stalk spring onion, slice
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp sweet soy sauce or just enough to achieve the light brownish colour
• 2 tsp fish sauce
• salt and white pepper, to taste
• oil for stir frying
• deep fried shallot to serve

Instructions

1. Heat oil in the wok. Add in garlic and shallot, and stir until the fragrance is out.
2. Add in chicken slices and stir until the chicken is almost cooked through.
3. Add in meatball slices and do a quick stir.
4. Make a well in the middle and break in eggs in the middle. Add in about 1 tsp salt (you could add some more later on if it is not salty enough). Do a stir  every few seconds.
5. When the egg mixture is still wet, add the carrots and stir.
6. Add the cooked egg noodles and green capsicum and stir.
7. Add in sweet soy sauce and fish sauce and stir.
8. Add white pepper and stir.
9. Now it is time to taste your noodle. Add salt accordingly.
10. Add in spring onion and switch off your stove. Stir.
11. Serve with deep fried shallot.

Culinary tradition: Chinese, Indonesian

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

My busy Monday started with preparing my oldest son morning tea and lunch box, then dropping him at kindy. Then off I went to the kitchen preparing this cake with few pauses because the little one waking up. Sorry baby, probably you are not used to the loud mixer sound, well you better get use to the sound as you will hear it most of the time in the upcoming future. I will post the recipe later with few notes and tips as I didn’t do so well with this cake.

How my oldest boy felt so happy looking at the cake. He always excited looking at cakes because he loves singing the birthday song and blowing off the candles. This time, he did like uncountable times of singing, blowing and clapping hands. I guess it was kinda like a little practice before his upcoming birthday at the end of August.

Tuesday was all about planning, scheduling and shopping. Garlic, shallot, ginger, turmeric, candle nut, lemon grass and chillies for pounding, grinding and pureeing. Banana leaves, garlic shoots, broccoli, spring onions, parsley and carrot for decoration. Glutinous rice and flour, coconut milk and cream, potatoes, tofu, chicken eggs and quail eggs, prawns, can of petai in brine for the ingredients.

Buzzz… grrrrrrr…buzzz…. grrrr, that was the sound of Wednesday. Oh not to forget the hwaaaaaa… ooowaaaaacccchhhhh… (baby crying) and mommy look at this… mommy I want this that and it goes on and on and on…

Thursday, let’s the kitchen war begin!!! YAY and hubby had a day off, meaning that lots of lots of help with my two boys. Early in the morning, hubby and the oldest one went to the embassy to renew the passport and that made me so much easier in arranging banana leaves on platter. This was my third attempt in making the platter.

• The first one was last year on my boy’s birthday. Result: unsuccessful because of poor time management.
• The second attempt was last December on hubby’s birthday. Result: unsatisfied because of lack of research on how to arrange and decorate your dishes on the platter.
• The third attempt: Satisfied, however still need to improve on decoration varieties and perhaps bigger platter will be result in a much more attractive looks.
• Note to myself: find a storage space in the tiny apartment to store a new big platter

Here are the dish starting from yellow rice clockwise: Nasi Kuning (Festive Yellow Rice), Sambal Udang Pete Balado (Prawns with Petai cooked in Sambal Chilli), Perkedel (Fried Mashed Potatoes), Telur Dadar Gulung (Rolled Omelet), Tahu Bacem (Fried Tofu Marinated in Palm Sugar and Herbs), Sambal Bajak Terasi (Sambal Chilli with Shrimpt Paste Bajak style in Tomato Basket), Mie Ulang Tahun (Fried Egg Noodles with Red Boiled Quail Eggs), Ayam Panggang Kremes (Grilled Chicken).

Conversation with Hubby while preparing those Tumpeng dishes around 4 PM:

Me: OMG we ran out of rice. We need to buy them ASAP.

Hubby: Ahhhh… I don’t wanna go out anymore today (answering with sleepy eyes, laying on the carpet)

Me: Oh well I suppose I could go tomorrow buying rice (25 kg) and chicken for Saturday (about 28 pcs of Chicken Maryland, those are for Theo’s one month things. We usually gave a packet of yellow rice with chicken, red egg, red traditional cake, and sweets to close friends and relatives. Traditionally, this thing is done to let them know that there is a new baby born in the family)

Hubby: Zzzzzzz… (snoozing already on the carpet while the toddler destroying the house with all of his toys all over the house)

Friday, lots and lots and lots of thing had to be done. First thing, feed all the boys then bath them and myself. Before we went out, it was already 12.30 PM. I was in a panicking zone. We all went to the city and darn it.. as usual no parking spot. Thank God I had a help that day from a friend. She watched the boys while I parked my car in a no parking zone (hoping that no parking office will pass and give me a ticket). I ran to the shop telling to the housekeeper that I need a 25 kg rice and then straight to the butcher asking him to give me 28 pieces of chicken maryland. I told them to be quick as I parked in the no parking zone. The porter carried the rice to the car, but there was no sign of the chicken from the butcher yet. I ran straight to the car and I was so lucky to spot a parking spot, although it meant that I had to drive backward about 5 metres on a busy zone. Back to the butcher asking him where the hell was my chickens. Surprisingly he handed me a big box of chicken.

Me: (still looking surprised) OMG how come you gives me the box? I only asked for 28 pieces of chicken.

Butcher: Yes 28 pieces of chicken maryland.

Me: (wondering how big those chicken pieces hidden inside the box) Mmm.. I need someone to help me carry this box to the car

Butcher: Okay.. no worries

Me: Hang on a second, I need to buy extra lemon grass

(Butcher kept going and went out of the store without me while I was paying the shopkeeper. Me following behind him and running)

(Me Arrived at the back of the car panicking and worrying that all those salmonella leaking and dripping from the wet box would contaminate my beloved car. I quickly placed lots of plastic bags on the car so the butcher could place that salmonella box on top.)

I think the box weighs almost 20 kg and don’t ask me how I get them all up to my apartment. A very hard work indeed. I had a very busy day and night after the chicken arrived on my kitchen station.Lots of chopping on the extra chicken fat. Lots of pinching the extra feather left on the huge chicken pieces. I wonder how big the chickens were when they were alive. I had to finish at 1.30 AM in the morning since my brain wasn’t really synchronized with my doing anymore.

All I can say about Saturday was busy hectic and kind of panicky, not so much for the cooking but for my two nagging boys. We started the delivery at 12.30 PM and arrived back home at 7.30 PM at night. What a journey, starting from inner west, eastern, northern, west, and city. Well thank God both of my boys was behaving nicely, especially the little one who slept all the way through and only woke up once for a fed.

This is one of the packet we delivered to relatives and close friends. I made 25 packets of them, each consists of Nasi Kuning (Festive Yellow Rice), Ayam Panggang Kremes (Grilled Chicken), Telur Merah (Red Boiled Egg), Kue Ku (Glutinous Rice Cake filled with Mung Bean Paste).

Cap Cai is a common vegetable dish to serve at Indonesian Chinese dining table. It consists of various vegetable stir together and complemented with quail eggs or meatballs or chicken or meat. The sauce is slightly thickened with diluted corn flour at the end of cooking process. This is also one of the must dish which is always ordered by my grandparents when we dine out at Chinese restaurant.

Ingredients

• 3 cloves of garlic, sliced
• about 2 cups of cuts chinese cabbage
• about 1 cup of sliced carrot
• about 1/2 cup of snow peas
• about 1 cup of cuts cauliflower
• about 1/2 cup of cuts spring onion
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1 dozen of quail eggs, boiled and peeled
• about 2 cups of meatballs
• salt to taste
• diluted corn flour to thicken the sauce
• oil for stir frying

Cooking time (duration): 20

Culinary tradition: Chinese, Indonesian

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Sydney’s weather has been unfriendly for weeks now. The rain has been pouring non stop throughout the week and that made me feel like I want to stay indoors. Lucky my husband offered to drive me to the Paddish Market in the afternoon, so I could do some quick shopping. I went to a butcher and bought a whole chicken. I also asked them to chop them into small little pieces, and one of Laksa making task is done. I went to the groceries store next to the butcher instead of crossing the street to get to Paddish Market, because the rain was pouring so bad. It turned out that the grocery store did not have any fresh lemon grass left, however the do have some finely chopped frozen one. I thought that would do for me.

We arrived home at half past six and I went straight to the kitchen to prepare everything. I was hoping that we could have dinner by half past seven. I would say that making laksa is not a hassle or hard work at all. It was pretty simple and quick. Just be aware of the chillies if you are not a big fan of some hot and spicy stuff. I used about 10 dried chillies and to my surprised, it was pretty hot for my toddler liking. My 2 years and 9 months son like a little bit of chilli in his food but this is just a bit way of his range.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken about 1.5 kg, cut into little pieces (ask your butcher to do it)
• 6 cloves garlic
• 4 cloves shallot
• about 2 fingers ginger
• 8 dried chillies or less, soaked in hot water
• about 10 gr belacan/shrimp paste (I used 2 dried blocks of belacan)
• 4 pieces of galangal, about the size of 20 cents coin
• 1 stalk of lemon grass, bruised
• 3 bay leaves
• 2 tsp of turmeric powder
• 400 ml of coconut milk
• about 800 ml of water (water is needed to thin the laksa. They should be light, so add water as needed)
• salt, sugar and lime juice to taste
• a packet of fried tofu puffs
• oil for stir frying
• vermicelli noodles, soaked in the cold water
• egg noodles (optional)
• bean sprouts to serve
• spring onions to serve
• fried shallots to serve

Cooking time (duration): 45

Culinary tradition: Malaysian, Singaporean

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Back to the chicken wing journey from Woolworths to my kitchen. Woolworths sold this bulk pack of chicken wings which sounds economical and ended up me on buying them. I had no idea at that time what I am going to do with them. I thought just buy them first and figure it out later what I can do with them. Anyway, I ended up making this dish because it was almost 2 o’clock in the afternoon and I had to pick up my toddler at kindy. I need something quick and easy for my lunch and there was it Fried Chicken with Sweet Soy Sauce.

If you would like to share this dish with the little one, don’t slice the chillies up. Leave them as whole, so the adult could still enjoy the spiciness of the chillies on their own plate.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg of chicken wings
• juice from 1 lime to marinade
• salt to marinade
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 clove of shallot, sliced
• half punnet of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• small chillies, according to your preferences
• 3/4 cup of sweet soy sauce
• salt to taste
• oil for deep frying and stir frying

Cooking time (duration): 20

Culinary tradition: Indonesian

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken (about 1.6-1.8 kg), cut into small bites about 20 pcs
• 2 tbsp lime juice to marinate
• 1 1/2 tsp salt to marinate
• 250 gr green long chilli, puree
• 1 /2 tbsp garlic puree
• 3/4 tsp salt or to taste
• 1 tbsp vinegar or to taste
• 1/2 tbsp tomato sauce
• 1 1/2 tbsp sugar or to taste
• oil for deep frying and stir frying

My suggestions before you start to cook this dish are:

• When you marinate the chicken, make sure all the pieces is coated evenly with the marinade mixture. Do not put too much sweet soy sauce, just enough to cover. Otherwise, when you deep fried them, they will be darken and bitter on the outside (because the sweetness in the soy sauce make them to burn quickly) and under cook on the inside.
• Use medium heat to deep fried them, so they don’t get burn to quickly on the outside.
• When you want to stir fried the chilli, use generous amount of oil to start with. What I meant is heaps of oil, where the oil is covering the chilli mixture.
• I found that everytime I bought chillies, they always have different level of heat, so always remember to adjust the sweetness, saltiness, and sourness to taste.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken (about 1.6-1.8 kg), cut into small bites about 20 pcs
• 1/2 cup of sweet soy sauce or just enough to coat the chicken, could be more or less
• 3 tbsp of garlic puree (2 tbsp for marinating and 1 tbsp for stir frying)
• 2 tsp of five spice powder or ngo hiang powder
• 1 tsp of white pepper
• about 1/2 kg potatoes, cut into wedges and deep fried
• 250-300 gr of red long chilli puree
• 1 tsp of salt
• 1 tbsp of vinegar or to adjust accordingly
• 2 tbsp of sugar or to adjust accordingly (see note)
• 1 tbsp tomato sauce
• oil for deep frying and stir frying

Ingredients

• 250 gr chicken breast fillets, sliced
• 1 small carrot, sliced
• 1 small zucchini, sliced
• 2 stalks celery, sliced
• 100 gr bean, chop into 2 or 3 parts
• 1 tomato, chop into wedges
• a handful of roasted cashew, optional
• 2 cloves of garlic, sliced or minced
• 2 tbsp of oyster sauce, more or less according to your preferences
• little bit of water just enough
• salt and pepper
• oil for stir frying

A little information about Kwetiau Goreng for those of you who have no clue about them. Kwetiau Goreng is also known as Cha Kwetiau or Fried Rice Noodles. It is a common dish in most Asian household, especially Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean. You definitely could find it in Asian food court and hawker stalls.

Ingredients

• 500 gr rice noodle
• 3 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 2 cloves of shallot, sliced
• 3 small chillies or according to your preferences
• 1 tomato, cut into wedges
• prawns or chicken or beef or pork (I used beef balls)
• 3 eggs
• 3 tbsp of sweet soy sauce or as needed (When added to the noodles, stop when the noodle is brown enough)
• 1 tbsp of fish sauce
• salt and white pepper
• 1 tbsp of tomato sauce
• oil for stir frying
• bean sprout ans slices of spring onions to serve

I tried making Hainanese Chicken Rice so many times. They always turned out like bloody in the center, despite the fact that I always boiled them longer than the recommended time. I steamed them like an hour and they were still blood in between the flesh and bone. So we ended up having Fried Hainanese Chicken Rice instead. I almost give up making this dish, which is supposed to be a simple dish.

This is my latest attempt on making Hainanese Chicken Rice. They turned out OK, not as great as I expected them to be. I still could found some blood in the middle, but after steaming, they were fine. Now, I wonder whether the main factor of failing is the kind of chicken used. I used free range chicken for this recipe, last time I used ordinary chicken. If you would like the recipe, click here.

Culinary tradition: Chinese, Singaporean

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Anyway, why did I make this this? Simple. A different menu variety for my toddler and family. Because I never make them before, I started to surf the web finding out how others make them. It turned out that people making them in few different ways. Some actually did as mine, however they didn’t steam them again before serving. Some put the sweet soy chicken in a bowl together with an uncooked rice and chicken stock, then steam them. I found the second way quite tricky, because there are lots of rice variety so that you can’t really follow others recipe in terms of chicken stock amount to cook the rice. So, I just did them my way and wouldn’t be bothered as long as it looks like how it is supposed to be and tastes great or at least eatable.

Before you start, here are few tips that might help:

• The longer you simmer the soup, the nicer and deeper the soup taste. So I suggest that you to prepare them ahead of time.
• When you wash the rice, drain them thoroughly so that when you sauteed them with garlic and ginger, they really could absorb the fragrant of the spices.
• Do not peek while the rice is cooking, at least not before 15 minutes, so that the rice could cook evenly.
• Taste the rice after cook, they should have rich taste and slight saltiness on them. Not salty but you could taste the salt, if you understand what I mean. If you find that you can not taste the saltiness, add some fish sauce to the rice and stir until well combined.
• Press the rice into the bowl, so that after steaming you could have the nice bowl shape rice like mine.
• Sometimes it is hard to take the rice out of the bowl after steaming. Just place them up side down on the plate and let the bowl cool off slightly. Or you could try pushing the rice on one side using the back of the spoon, and gently squeeze them out.

Ingredients for the soup

• chicken bone from a whole chicken
• 2.5 liter of water
• 2 medium carrots
• 3 cloves of garlic, smashed
• half onion
• 2 stalk of spring onions, cut about 1 cm in length
• salt, sugar and white pepper to taste

Ingredients for the rice

• 700 gr of rice (not steam rice but uncooked rice), washed and drained
• 800 ml of chicken stock that you got from making the soup
• 1 tbsp of pureed garlic
• 2 1/2 tbsp of pureed ginger
• 2 tbsp of light soy sauce
• 2 tbsp of fish sauce
• 3 tbsp oil for stir frying

Ingredients for the sweet soy chicken

• 600 gr chicken fillets, preferably chicken thigh fillets, cut into cubes
• 8 dried shitake mushrooms, soak in warm water until soften, cut off the middle hard bit, and minced
• half onion
• 2 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 2 cloves of shallot, sliced
• 2 tbsp of pureed ginger
• about 2 tbsp of mushroom soy sauce, or normal soy sauce
• 1/3 cups sweet soy sauce
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 tsp of white pepper
• salt and sugar to taste
• oil for stir frying

Preparation time (duration): 60

Culinary tradition: Indonesian, Chinese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Anyway before you start, I have few tips of my own:

• I almost ruined the dinner by not reading the recipe properly. I doubted my self for a while looking at 1 cup of salt as House Seasoning to mix to the chicken pieces. Instead I put 3 tsp of salt and it was so salty (I test fried them) that I had to cut another whole chicken in the fridge (Thank God I had another whole chicken stored, but it was for Hainanese Chicken). So my point is to read to your recipe properly (*-*)
• Try to trim the fat as much as you could, so you will feel less guilty. I think it tastes much better.
• Mix 2 eggs first with the hot sauce, ans add another one if you really need it. As I only needs 4 eggs for 2 whole chickens.
• Same as the eggs, just use your flour half the recommended portion and add more if you need more.
• If you have the leftover chickens and they went cold, heat them again in the oven. All of the oil came from chicken fats and oils will be released and your chicken will taste crunchy and crispy again, with less fat of course.

Ingredients

• a whole free range chicken (about 1.5 – 2 kg), cut into pieces
• 3 eggs (I used 2 eggs)
• 1/3 cup water (I use 1/4 cup water)
• 1 cup hot red pepper sauce, recommended Texas Pete (I used 2 tbsp Tobasco)
• 2 cups self raising flour
• 1 tsp pepper
• House seasoning (1 cup of salt, 1/4 cup of garlic powder, 1/4 of black pepper) (instead of this I use 1 tbsp of pureed garlic, 2 tsp of salt, 1 tsp of fresh crack black pepper)
  
• oil for deep frying, preferably peanut oil (I used Canola Oil)
  

I bumped into Jamie Oliver recipe few days ago, and decided to give it a go since he have so many great reviews. To find out the recipes, click here.

These are few things that I did, I hope they are helping:

• When he says rub a generous amount of salt all over the chicken, in and out. He really means GENEROUS amount. I don’t think my amount is generous enough as I couldn’t really taste the saltiness. I should just rub the sea salt all over its body instead of cracking the sea salt over the chicken.
• I didn’t leave the chicken long enough in the fridge so I guess they are not really marinated with the salt and the salt is not absorbed thoroughly into the meat. I only left them in the fridge for about 30 minutes, because I was waiting for my brother coming back from buying lemon.
• The recipe states that the potatoes skin has to be peeled. I didn’t peel the potato skin because I was worried that boiling them for 12 minutes would make them well done and thus turn them into mash potato. However today (few days after I made them), I find out that you actually have to peel the potato skin and boil them for about 5 minutes (not 12 minutes, or probably it is depend of what potatoes you are using).
• My steam potatoes couldn’t get chuffed up and fluffy when they were toasted on the pan, and they didn’t turn crispy when roasted. I probably really need to peel those skin
• I tossed butternut pumpkin in the pan with some fresh crack sea salt and olive oil for about 10 minutes. Then I placed them together with potatoes in the roasting pan (the last 45 minutes of cooking process).
• A handful of thyme was a bit too much for me. The smell of the herb was so strong that I felt like smelling a menthol balm.
• The roasted garlic was so good.
• The overall recipe is great and easy to follow.

So, here are some pictures of my roasted chicken fresh from the oven. The above picture was taken using a table lamp, and the below picture was simply on the manual mode. They should look better when are taken on daytime, but what can I say it was our dinner.

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

If you notice the way I double coat the chicken in flour and egg, it is just the way I prefer them to be. However you could just do them once each. There was a story though behind all the double coated and double dipped. I and my mum were running the catering business before. In order to get more chicken katsu pieces, we double coated and double dipped everything, so that the chicken katsu also looks thicker in appearance ;p It was all “business trick”. However, the habit still lives on.

Ingredients

• Pair of chicken breast
• egg or egg white, whipped
• plain flour
• bread crumbs
• salt and black pepper
• oil for deep frying

It was weekend and I was very excited to do my groceries shopping for this menu. Oh my…. what a bad weather that Sydney had. So we drove to the city instead of walking, as what we usually do in the weekend. As usual, there must be something that I forgot to buy, and this time it was chillies. I need these chillies to be pureed so I could make the Gila Sauce. So there you goes, my ‘imitation Bakmi Gila’ turns into ‘ordinary Bakmi Ayam’. (Next time I will post my trial recipe on my imitation Bakmi Gila and let you guys who tasted the real one and tried my recipe be the juries)

Ingredients for the soup

• chicken bone from a whole chicken
• 3 medium carrots
• 2 cloves of garlic, smashed
• 1/3 cup oriental baby celery, chopped
• about 2 to 3 liter of water
• salt and sugar to taste
• ready to use meatballs (I bought beef balls)

Ingredients for the sweet soy chicken

• 1 kg chicken fillets, preferably chicken thigh fillets, cut into cubes
• 2 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 2 cloves of shallot, sliced
• 1 tbsp of pureed ginger
• 3 small chillies, chopped (optional)
• 1/3 cups sweet soy sauce
• 1/2 cup water
• salt to taste
• 1 tsp of sesame oil
• oil for stir frying

Other Ingredients

• 6 cloves of garlic, minced
• about 1/2 cup oil
• green vegetables such as choy sum or bok choy (I have no idea what mine called, but the vegetables taste great)
• fresh egg noodles
• tomato, chopped
• chillies, chopped
• spring onions, sliced
• sweet soy sauce
• tomato sauce
• chilli sauce

Preparation time (duration): 60

Culinary tradition: Indonesian

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!