Noodle Soup with Roast Duck

Ingredients include pork slices, fish balls, chye sim all dumped into water. Topped with roast duck and shallots.

My type of comfort food.

Princess taken on 24/9/05

One happy chick!

More Bargains from TK Maxx.......

Bread pan £2.99
Apron £3.99 (down from £13.99)
Oven Glove £3.99 (also down from £13.99)
Laguiole cake server £4.99 (RRP about US$25)
Star buy - Wedgwood Wild Strawberry scallop dish £4.99 (RRP £39.99!!!)


Big King told me he can eat cereals using the scallop dish. 'Perfect size', he said. I was mortified !!!

Assorted Green Tea Bread (pic only)

I finally found green tea powder for baking from an online store, Mount Fuji. While I was browsing, decided to add green tea sprinkler (finely milled sincha-new tea) to my order as well.

Taadaa, my first batch of green tea creation was born............

Kway Teow in Eggy Sauce (Wat Tan Ho)

My 2005 Birthday Meal

Lunch

Vegetable curry on garlic bread

I made garlic bread from the Pain Normandy I bought from Dumouchel. Cooked onion, carrot and potatoes Japanese curry (from instant S&B curry cubes) and spread it on garlic bread.

Possibly the best bread I've ever tasted! It's made from flour from Normandy (which Dumouchel has to ask permission from local authorities to 'export' it out of the region). Sourdough starter was used instead of yeast and the loaf really benefit from the slow proving process. The end result was simply stunning, bread is chewy, springy yet soft. I'll never be able to replicate this at home in a million years! At £2 per loaf, it ain't cheap...........

Dinner

1/2 duck and 1/2 chicken, £14.50

This was bought from a restaurant called 'Lucky Dragon' in Leeds chinatown. It's also the only place which serves decent dim sum fare in town but cannot compare to my all time fave - Glamorous.

Their version of roast duck and yau kai are simply divine, I have to admit they are far superior to Glamorous version after having tasted both. Glamorous called their roast duck 'The Ultimate Roast Duck', I guess that makes Lucky Dragon's duck 'Beyond Ultimate Roast Duck', hehe.

Spicy Chicken Korean Style

The recipe is adpted from Julia of AromaCookery.

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts or 4 chicken drumsticks, deboned and cut into strips
½ onion, sliced
2 tbsp go chu jang (see pic below)
2 tbsp light soy sauce
a few drops of sesame oil
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cornstarch

Method:

1. Combine everything and leave in the fridge to marinate overnight.

2. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a non-stick skillet and put in the marinated chicken and onion.

3. Stir-fry until cooked.

4. Serve with cucumber slices.

This dish is incredibly easy and tasty. I find the sauce tasted a lot like nasi lemak chilli.............

Korean Spicy Paste: Go Chu Jang

Pearl Meat Balls

珍珠丸子

Marinated meatballs (pork or chicken) covered in glutinous rice (pre-soaked for 4 hours) and steam for 15-20 minutes.

Birthday Pressie from Big King

A package arrived yesterday afternoon destined for me.

Turned out it was my ASUS W5 laptop in white, it was only purchased online the day before!

It has DVD RW, built-in camera, flash memory reader and a matching wireless mouse, best of all it is only 1.6kg.............

Loving it at the moment

A big thank you to my beloved Big King

New Toys - Matstone Juicer and Morphy Richard Compact Breadmaker

Dumouchel Cakes

Pretty packaging from Dumouchel

I am not going to bake my birthday cakes, nooooooo.................

I came across an article in the September issue of Olive (eating/makan magazine which I STUDY religiously every month hehe) on patissier Thierry Dumouchel.

Hailed from Normandy, Dumouchel has worked all over the world and finally settled in Leeds (hurray!) after marrying his wife from (yes you guessed it) Leeds.

He produces exquisite chocolates destined for Harvey Nichols. If it's good enough for Harvey Nichols, it's good enough for me! I told Big King he must drive me there to have a look see and pick up a cake or two........

A tiny shopfront with magazine features (several) pasted on the door. Tacky, I thought to myself........

When I entered the shop, only two trays of cakes greeted me :( plus odd pieces of quiche and one danish. It was only a little after 11 am! Surely that's a good sign that they are almost sold out so early...........

I went home with 2 slices of cakes, 1 danish and 1 Pain Normand (Normandy loaf I think).

The cold pastry was still crispy! Only fresh and seasonal fruits are used, nice............

Left: White chocolate mousse and raspberry slice
Right: Raspberry or strawberry? mousse slice

The cakes are delicious! Easily one of the best or the best I have tasted so far! Even Big King (whom sometimes I think has lost all taste sensation....) gave a thumbs up

I will definitely return for more! Oh, L'Opera wait for me...............

Lemon Curd Madeira Cake

A twist on the traditional madeira cake. I reduced the butter and substituted with lemon curd.

There is still lemon curd left in the fridge, I must find yet more ways to use them up..............

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival - Snowskin Mooncake

Left: Custard with salted egg yolk in pandan snowskin
Right: Red bean in pandan snowskin

The shops here do not sell mooncake mould and ping pi mooncake, like that's going to stop me from making my own ping pi (direct translate: snowskin) mooncake.............The fillings were also made from scratch........

So using my ramekins, I moulded these ugly mooncakes

Nonetheless, they tasted delicious, not bad for my first attempt

Birthday Cards

Cards I received from my beloved siblings and Big King.

Thank you so much, I love you all!

The King and I

Create your own, here.

Barbeque Eel

One of my all time favourite and my mum's too. I was over the moon when I saw them sitting in a frozen food specialist in Chinatown. Retailing at £6.80 per packet, it is not cheap.

Preparing the eel is easy, the instruction said just boil the packet in boiling water. I took the pack out of the freezer and let it thaw for about 10 minutes or until the fish can come off easily and does not stick to the inside walls of the plastic packet. Cut open and take half a portion put it on foil and grill it in the oven for 5 to 10 minutes, skin side up.

Serve it on bed of rice and Japanese style dashi stock sauce.

The other half of eel, I used it in fried rice.

Made meat roll in beancurd to go with the fried rice.

I am a Supergirl!

Chicken Curry Katsu

Crispy fried chicken cutlet topped with Japanese curry.

Chicken is moist and tender, i prefer this to pork cutlet. The British pork is too 'skinny', always become too dry when cooked.

Soup cooked with any ingredients I can find in the fridge!

In the soup, there are diced fresh shiitake mushroom, diced carrot, diced ham, fresh corn kernels and beaten egg.

They were Big King's birthday dinner. No big feast as he is working night shift.

Shanghai Pancake

Crispy pancake encased with sweet red bean paste.

小妹這個送你吃。

Tarte Au Citron

Add cream and egg to lemon curd, you have filling for lemon tart, a French Patisserrie classic.

Cross section view of Tarte Au Citron with short crust pastry dusted with icing sugar.

White fungus with Papaya

Slow boiled white fungus and papaya sweetened with natural yellow rock sugar. Very good for the skin, but papaya is SUPER expensive here and have to cook for 4-6 hours, aiya malas (lazy) ............. so only appears occasionally. Can also cook with chinese Ya pear but I prefer papaya............

Stir Fried Mixed Vegetables

Stir fried black fungus with fresh shitake mushroom and mung bean thread in oyster sauce surrounded with boiled broccoli ring.

Trafford Centre, Manchester

We came here to shop after yum cha.

The mall is full of people, payday time........

Princess at Glamorous Restaurant Encore

Taken on Sunday 28 August, 2005.

Yum Cha Encore at Glamorous Restaurant

My earlier post on Glamorous, click here.

British Strawberries

Egg tart with easy custard making procedures

Method:

1. Warm the cream and milk (equal volume) in a saucepan, DO NOT boil.

2. Stir sugar into beaten egg and mix well, do not overbeat.

3. Pour warm milk into the egg mixture slowly, stirring all the time.

4. Mould pastry into pan (I used ready-rolled puff pastry, leftover from making char siew pastry before).

5. Pour custard into the moulded pastry about 80% full as the filling will puff up during baking.

6. I bake mine at 200°c for 20 minutes.

I have some custard left so I made creme caramel as well.

To continue with the custard theme, here's a bread and butter pudding I baked recently using wholemeal bread.

The perfect pudding must be a bit wobbly in the middle, I bake mine for 12 minutes at 180°c for that texture (for baking 2 individual size portion).