Prawn Noodle Soup & Rojak

These 2 days was a rest and relax weekends for both of us.

On Saturday morning, we went to had some really nice Yum Cha at Tai Pan. It was our 1st visit but we did read about it on the Good Food Guide 2008. We decided to give it a try since it's near our place, can't be bother to drive to far. The restraurant was crowded when we got there but it didn't take them long at all to orgainse us a table for 2. Right after tea was serve, trolleys of food came one after another. Within 15 mins the whole table was full of the usual dim sum which we both love.

Sorry I didn't take any pictures at all as we were just too hungry!!!
The pork and century egg congee was thick which I prefer but not CL. Char Siew Bao was super soft, not too sweet and not too much colouring added. Har Gau was pretty average, had much better ones elsewhere. Spare ribs was super soft (hmmm....wonder how much meat tenderiser powder did they use). Feng Zhua was really nice, the "toes" didn't fall into pieces when I pick the feet up with my chopstick and it's full of flavour.

We actually wanted to order another plate of Char Siew Bao but we suddendly had craving for pineapple bun when the trolley came. The pineapple bun was amazing! It was stuffed with custard cream and not too sweet. As for dessert, we had Dou Fu Hua, Mango Pudding and Mango Sago. Although the dou fu hua is not as smooth as some other restaurant but it was full of soy bean smell and taste. The mango sago was very refreshing for us as most of the yum cha places we visited serve Rockmelon sago.

That was for breakky cum lunch, as for dinner I decided to try cooking Prawn Noodle Soup from scratch without any packet paste.

Prawn Noodle Soup
Soup base was chicken stock which I boiled and freeze. It was further boiled with pork ribs + fried prawn shells with garlic. Season with pepper, rock sugar and dark soy sauce. The soup was easily left on the stove for more than 2 hours.
Noodles, fish cakes, shelled prawns, bean sprouts and kang kong were all cooked in boiling water and drench with soup stock. I was very pleased with the result but not CL. He felt that the stock wasn't thick enough!!! Honestly, I had no idea what I can do to make it better. Suggestion anyone???

Rojak
This afternoon, I tried making rojak. My first try, I didn't do any cooking or baking. I just mix and piece everything together. We only bought a few ingredients, cucumber, pineapple and You Tiao which I heated it up using the oven to make it crispy.
With lots of shrimp paste, sugar, fresh lime juice, tamarind juice all mixed together to form the dressing. Dump in all the rest of dry ingredients and mixed it all up. Sprinkle some crashed peanuts on top before serve. In less than a few minutes, we were digging into a huge bowl of rojak. Yum Yum!!!