Popiah But Using Rice Paper Roll

I did something different and special for dinner last night. It was popiah but instead of wrapping with the traditional popiah fresh skin, I used rice paper roll. Mainly because I  couldn't find fresh popiah skin in down under. Only available at the oriental supermarket are frozen spring roll skin which I find them too thick unless deep fried.

As filling, I stir-fried some granted turnip and carrot with some light soya sauce, sugar,pepper and dark sauce for seasoning. I also prepared some shredded omelette and bean curd and steamed chicken thighs.

It was my 1st time using rice paper roll. I had ordered Rice Paper Roll numerous times at Vietnamese Restaurant but had never tried wrapping it myself. Oh man, it wasn't easy on my 1st try! Maybe because I wet the rice paper roll in hot boiling water instead of warm water which caused the paper roll to soften up too fast. As a result it stick together as you can see above. But subsequently I got the hang of it very quickly.





To assemble:

1. Spread some sweet dark sauce and homemade chilli paste on the paper roll.

2. Pile on omelette and bean curd, follow by lots of cooked turnip.

3. Topped it with some shredded steamed chicken.

4. Wrap and served.

I lost counted how many popiah we had but both of us enjoyed the meal very much and I will definitely make it again with something different as filling.

Liz's Version of The Rock's Favourite Chocolate Chips Cookies

I was itchy to bake for weeks and finally found time last week to bake cookies. Plus I could test out our newly bought camera.

I found a recipe from Sarah's blog and decided to give it a try. But I did some changes to the recipe.




Liz's version of The Rock's Favourite Chocolate Chips Cookies

1 cup butter
1 cup caster raw sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
2.5 cups rolled oats, ground to fine powder in a blender
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
chocolate chips
nuts

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
Add eggs and vanilla, beat well.



Mix in flour, oats,baking powder, baking soda.



Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. I used all kinds of nuts I can find in my pantry.


Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls, flattening slightly and baked them in a 180 degrees preheated oven for 10-15 minutes.


I really like this recipe. Love the idea of grounding the oat and mixed it in. The cookie turn out to be slightly crunchy and also chewy. I was initially afraid that it will turn out too sweet but it didn't. CL just requested to bake another batch but just with chocolate chips.

Food I Tried/Eaten During My Trip

I actually started this post few weeks ago but didn't manage to finish it at all *sigh*. Reason being I'm too busy or am I too disorganised or I'm too lazy??? Too lengthy???

Well all the photos posted on this entry all taken during my latest trip to Singapore. Spending more than 2 weeks, I in fact didn't satisfy a lot of my craving! I can't believe I didn't eat much at all.....not much appetite. Mostly due to the extreme heat and humidity and also without CL :P. Note: I didn't manage to take all the food I eaten during the whole duration of the trip.

I spend the 1st 3 days hiding at home eating my favourite chef homecook food, spending quality time with my family members and doing a lot of catching up with them.

My 1st outing was to CityLink, Marina Square and Millennia Walk with my best friend,her hubby and godson. We had lunch at a Japanese place at MS. Honestly I don't remember the quality of the noodle because I was busy talking...hehe. The dessert was pretty nice though, a good mixture of red bean paste with two different types of rice balls. But the service was shocking! The place was almost empty as it was early and a lot of families were still doing their house visiting instead of shopping. The waiter who served us can't even hold a basic english conversation. I had difficulties conveying my order to him. I never expect that in a restaurant in the city with a high chance of tourist walking in.

The next day, I met up with my best friend again and this time she bought me to the newly open Ion at Orchard. We had an early lunch before starting to shop. I had a short tour around on the million dollar renovation food court at the basement (is it really necessary??? food taste nicer??) before we decided to try the Katsudon which 8-days magazine recommended. The tonkatsu was very well done, not dry inside and super crispy outside. Plus it's not soak with oil even though it's deep fried. As for the curry, nothing to shout about.

Basement of Ion has a lot of food stalls selling quite a huge range of food. 50% are japanese style food. We shared some Takoyaki. They were definitely different from those I used to have. These were huge, filled with ingredients, not tough inside. I also bought some japanese steamed rice cake for my Godson and also nephew. Mum told me Truman loved them.

Cai Fan(vegetable rice) for lunch, Dad and me went to get takeaway before we popped into Sis's place. This is CL's favourite, a huge choices of vegetable, meat, seafood, tofu, curry, eggs etc for you to chose. We packed 4 packets of rice each with 3 different combination of vegetable and meat. In total it cost less than S$10. Good budget!

Daddy also bought me and Mum to Zion Road market to have the famous Char Kway Teow. I also ordered some Satay to share because I had craving for Kueh Tupat. I also ordered a huge glass of freshly squeeze sugar cane juice with lemon. I had so many glasses of sugar cane juice during that 2 weeks.

I never fail to have my Gui Ling Jao and herbal tea after my visit to Guan Yin Ma Temple at Bugis. I'm a strange creature because the more bitter the herbal tea is, the more I enjoy. 

Chinese style pancake (Mi Jian Kueh) is another favourite snack/breakfast of mine. I did tried making them, passable but a lot of room for improvement.

Daddy and me also went to have Nasi Briyani and Indian Rojak at Little India Hawker Center. I loved Indian Rojak and so far have no luck getting them in Melbourne. It's a hassle to make as it consist of too many different ingredients plus I feel that the sauce is the most critical.

I walked past the hawker center and I couldn't resist to pack a packet of Chicken Rice even though I'm meeting my ex-colleague for dinner later that evening. It's a popular store and there wasn't any queue. Fantastic! Bought 2 packet, 1 for myself and 1 for daddy. It only took me 5 mins to finish it.

Muffins, Chocolate Chips and Berries

I got a bit sick of cereal plus weather being too crazy, extremely cold 1 week and warm the other. Almost half loaf of bread always end up in the bin because we didn't manage to finish it before expiry date. I need something different to start my day so I tried baking muffins.


I started off using Nigella How To Be a Domestic Goddess book but instead of baking Blueberry or Baklava or Banana Muffin in the book. I followed the basic mixture recipe and mix in Chocolate Chips to half the batch and the other half frozen Berries. 2 different choice of Muffins in 1 bake!


Not sure how many breakky I will end up. CL already eaten 2 of the Chocolate Chips Muffins.

Ayam Nasi Briyani

I'm now in bed, suppose to be resting but got woken up by a phone call. Since I'm awake, might as well make use of the time. Post a entry and go back to sleep.
This is the Ayam Nasi Briyani I tried from the newly added cookbook "The Best of Singapore Cooking". It's the 2nd recipes I tried and I loved it!




This is the picture taken from the book. It looks yummy isn't it? Comparing the appearance of the Chicken dish, it's quite different. Guess that's most probably I didn't really follow the recipe very closely.


For this entry, I'm going to post the recipe on. I love going to food blogs not only to look at photos, finding out where the good foods are. I also love to hunting down recipes and try it out myself. So why not start posting recipes on my own blog too. Right? If I need to cook when I don't have my cookbooks with me, I can just refer from my own blog. How easy is that???





(A)

1 thumb-sized piece ginger
3 cloves garlic
4 green chillies (left them out during marketing)

(B)
1 handful mint leaves (skipped, because he doesn't like it)
2 stalks coriander with roots,rinsed (skipped because he think this is poisonous)
2 tomatoes,cut in eighths
2 tablespoons tomato puree (instead of opening up a big can of puree and used only 2 tablespoons, I put in more fresh tomatoes)

(Seasoning)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon msg (skipped, I never cook with msg)

1.6kg chicken quartered (I used 6 chicken drumsticks)
225g Ghee or 112g butter with 112ml oil (I used butter and definitely didn't use that much!)
1 teaspoon dry chilli powder mixed to a paste with water
1 level teaspoon garam masala
170ml evaporated milk mixed with 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 112ml water
285g shallots, thinly sliced

Marinate chicken pieces with 1 level tablespoon salt for 1 hour.
Heat a large saucepan with half of the ghee. Fry shallots till golden brown. Set aside.
Fry (A) till fragrant. Add chilli paste and garam masala, then add in (B), seasoning and 1/2 milk mixture. Stir-fry till oil bubbles through.
Put in chicken pieces, fried shallots, remaining milk and oil. Cook over high heat for 10 mins,
Reduce heat to low and cook gently till chicken is tender. Drain chicken, keeping oil to cook the briani rice.





(C)
1 teaspoon chopped ginger
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
4 shallots, thinly sliced

(D)
5cm cinnamon bark
8 cardamoms,lightly bashed
6 cloves

600g Basmatic rice, washed and drained (I didn't measure my rice, I cooked closed to 2 cups. Enough for dinner + CL next day lunch)
55g ghee (I used butter instead)

(Seasoning)
1 chicken cube
1.5 teaspoons salt
1.1 litres boiling water

(Colouring)
Mix 1 teaspoon yellow food colouring with 0.25 teaspoon Rose essence (skipped, because I didn't have any in my pantry) and 4 tablespoons water

Heat wok with ghee to fry (C) til lightly browned, add (D) and stir-fry for 0.5min. Add in the remaining oil and rice. Stir in pan till oil is absorbed into rice.

Pour n the boiling water and seasoning. Cook rice in electric rice-cooker till dry and fluffy. Do not stir while cooking.


Remove lid and sprinkle yellow colouring mixture over rice. Continue to cook for another 10mins. Remove from heat. Loosen rice,mixing colours evenly.

The rice was really fragrant. The whole house was filled with the fragrant smell while the rice was the the rice cooker. As for the Ayam, the gravy was a bit too watery. Maybe if I use tomato puree, it will have thicken it. But I like the taste, not too spicy, can still taste the sweetness of the tomatoes. As it used evaporated milk instead of coconut milk, it very different from Curry Chicken, not heavy. Overall, I feel it's a more healthy alternative.

Went Crazy at Kinokuniya, Singapore

Flipping back thru the past entries, I realised I have being blogging lesser and lesser. That's not because I ran out of restaurants I tried and love, or I ran out of recipes which I tried. It's because I ran out of time! I have being busy with work, trying to juggle 2-3 people workload by myself, running around like a mad dog trying to cater and please all the different project in-charge. It's not easy especially at the end of the day, it seem like workload is piling faster than clearing.


I didn't even manage to blog 1 entry in the month of February!!! *faint* I made some pineapple tarts just before CNY and also flew back to Sing the day before CNY eve to attend to some family matter. It wasn't fun having to hunt air ticket the eve before departure, dumping personal belonging into suitcase + trying not to miss out anything and also dumping all my messy work hoping someone will help me pick it up when I'm away.


The last trip back was more than 2.5 years ago. Because it was such last minute decision trip, I didn't really informed anyone except my family members and my best friend. For 2 weeks, I spend a lot of time with my parents, sister, nephew and my newly addition niece. It was great! I really bonded very well with my nephew on the 2nd week. I also managed to meet up some friends who being keeping in touch with me. I know there are some friends which I missed out but time wasn't on my side. Learned about the current lifestyle of Singaporean, what are the difficulties my fellow mates are currently suffering etc. It definitely triggered the citizenship question which has being in my mind again. This trip has actually help me to make a decision. Now it's only action.


Just before I left for Sing, I came to learn about a set of food manga which I read it from here.  I  know I won't have much luck since the only Kinokuniya Australia is in Sydney and never seen Borders carrying manga. Plus even if they do, it might cost a fair bit. So when I was shopping at Orchard, I went to Kinokuniya to try my luck as I only remember the cover and don't exactly remember the exact title at all! I was lucky!!! I spotting 1 of them once I'm at the manga section and got help to find the rest.


I only picked 1 out of 7 to have a go and see whether do I like them that much that I will carry them all the way back to home. I really did!!! Even my sis was reading it.


 Whole set of Oishinbo. I just finished the last book : Joy of Rice last night. I learned a lot about Japanese food thru the 7 books and wondering is there a full version (100 books) in Mandarin coz I don't understand Japanese.


 In every beginning of a book, there is a recipe related to the book theme with step by step instruction. Definitely something in my list : Things to Try.


On my 2nd trip to Kinokuniya, I went crazy buying books! If it's not because of the baggage limitation, I will have got more!!! Already both 2 story books at Melb airport before I departed.


I also got a Singapore/Nonya style cookbook titled The Best of Singapore Cooking by the Late Mrs Leong. I did tried finding Singapore/Malaysia style cookbook at Borders but it doesn't carry a huge variety. This cookbook cover from Nonya food to hawker food to Kueh to dessert. So far I had tried two recipes and both turned out really nice (I will blog about it on my next entry).





 The next book I got was introduced by a lady which I met at Kinokuniya while I was comparing two different cover of Julie and Julia (just checking they are in fact the exact same content). I love the movie and had watch it twice, 2nd on the flight to Sing. The lady told me My Life in France by Julia Child with her nephew is a much better book to read instead and she highly recommended it!


 Costing only S$13, how can I not drop in into my shopping bag??? Definitely I can fit in into my carry-on baggage.

Pineapple Tarts

Liz's home made Pineapple Tarts

I managed to baked some Pineapple Tarts to satisfy my craving. Didn't really spend much time hunting down a recipe to try. There are tonnes on internet as everyone baking them. It didn't take me long to make. From memory, I spend about 4 hours starting from measuring the ingredients to last tray of pineapple tarts out from the oven. I ended with 130 pineapple tarts....not too bad right???

Craving = 2 Huge Pineapples sitting on the bench top

Even though I haven't being blogging, I still faithfully reading a lot of food blog every night. I started to have craving for pineapple tarts since last weekend after spotting some Chinese New Year goodies at the oriental supermarket.

It got even worst after spotting a homemade pineapple tart on Jeroxie food blog!!!! I decided to make some pineapple tarts this year!!! I didn't have any last year from memory. Plus there are friends who I can passed some too :).....dun need to finish everything by ourselves. This morning after exercising, I went to nearby vegetable stall and bought 2 huge pineapples. But they are still sitting on the bench top as I'm too tired and whole body aching to move let alone cook into jam which is a long process. Planning to do it tomorrow morning if not my CNY goodies won't make it in time.

Wish me luck in finding the perfect recipe!

Chocolate Snowcap Biscuits

I know I haven't being blogging at all. I had a few busy weekend for the past few weeks. Wedding to attend, CNY festival at Victoria Street, BBQ on Australia Day follow by firework, watching Australia Open and also catching up with friends etc. I also being trying to do my housework during weekday evening after work and dinner. 

This morning I attended my 3rd training session with Step Into Life. Both me and CL had signed up and committed 2 sessions a week. We haven't being exercising for more than a year now and it's really tough to get that back into our routine and the body is taking time to adapt to it. We realised how badly our fitness is after the 1st session. It;s something which I hope I'm able to continue even if my workload increase. *finger cross* Plus it's a great way getting to know more people especially when all stay in the surrounding suburbs. I'm definitely enjoying it but I'm exhausted and aching all over now. :(

I manage to squeeze in some baking last week after work. CL was scheduled night shift the next day and just nice to bring in some freshly baked goodies to share with his colleagues. Came upon this recipe when I was flipping thru a newly addition cookbook which was a X'mas gift from Zac.

End product on the left and on the right unbaked product

I had all the ingredients in my fridge and pantry and I reckon it won't take the whole night. But I was totally wrong!!! All because I didn't read the recipe detail enough! While beating in butter and sugar, I realised I'm required to fridge the dough for 2 hours! It was almost 8pm by then and there is no turning back. Told myself I just got to fridge till the max duration I can afford then. In the end, I did manage to fridge it for almost 2 hours and as the result, I ended up going to bed late. But it's all worth it because the biscuits are delicious!!! Firm, slightly crunchy surface and soft inside. The texture is almost like cake. The recipes stated 12 biscuits but I eneded up with 3 times more! I must have made them too small. My biscuits didn't cracked as much compared to the photo and I didn't coat a thick layer of icing sugar before baking. I was really afraid it will turn out too sweet. 

Ladies final is starting soon. I will try to blog a bit more soon. 

*faint* I got so much back entry still waiting to be done.

Class???

I'm still battling whether should I start taking some short courses. I'm not talking about courses for work but cooking and baking classes. :P I did start searching for such courses more than 2 years ago but a few factor put me off till now.

• Location - I don't used to drive. Even till now, I'm still confine although I got my driving license and own car. I don't explore areas, places by myself. If I'm going out with CL, he's definitely the driver. I'm hoping I will gain my confidence and start exploring Melbourne myself. 
• Cost - It's not cheap to take up short courses. A 4 hours cooking course costs almost $300. How much do I have to fork out each year to attend those I'm interested??? This year should be save, save, save! Planning for a long vacation (4 or 5 weeks) in Sept to LaLa Land to see my family and also to attend CL's bro wedding. We are also targeting to at least visit 2 asian country. Sipandan? Maldives? Thailand? Vietnam? Cambodia? OMG!! We have so many places which we would love to travel!
• Will I gain??? - I guess no can guarantee I will learn something and enjoy the course. If I chose 1 and start with it, will it give me a better idea what the course install???

I'm still thinking, thinking, thinking...hmmmmmmmmm