Back to craft projects

As the weather turns cold and daylights got shorter, I'm back to doing my craft work. Crocheting my old granny square rug which I started last year and stopped.

I just started knitting a scarf for my MIL last night (we are expecting them in mid June, another excuse for me to knit). It's a very simple basic stitch so it shouldn't take me long. Plus it only 4 balls of yarn knitting two balls at the same time. My aim is to finish both projects before june so that I can put both into good use during this coming winter.

BBQ Chicken - Nando's Style

CL had craving for Nando's style bbq chicken after I had shared with him my Nando's takeaway lunch few days ago. He suggested to marinate some chicken and popped them onto the barbie for dinner. It sound good to me, nice, simple and easy.

I already had a whole chicken in my freezer. I dropped by Coles, get some Nando's Peri Peri marinate sauce and saw some cheap but still fresh cabbage. Therefore decided to make some coleslaw as salad. Also grabbed 2 corns to put on the barbie.

It didn't take CL long to start the fire this time. Kinda of experience now. :)

I chopped the chicken into half to speed up the cooking process and have more "burn" parts to eat. I also popped in a sweet potato for lunch the next day.


Dinner for the night. CL definitely didn't had enough to eat as it was too delicious. The corn was cooked just right. It was juicy and sweet without any burned at all!

Almond Biscotti

Almond Biscotti, it was my 1st time baking them.

1. CL was scheduled to work night again and I had all the free time during the day.
2. I haven't bake for a long time.
3. CL's and his colleagues can have fresh biscotti to snack through the night.
4. This recipe I came upon doesn't require any butter nor oil. Or all biscotti's recipes doesn't include butter or oil?
5. It looks really simple and easy to make.

With some many excuses to try baking, why not? Don't think I need more excuse.

I tried taking more photos as I bake/cook now. I'm still not very good at it and kept forgetting. I'm still trying my best.

After the 1st bake, slicing them and laying flat on the tray preparing for 2nd bake.

Two trays of biscotti in the oven during final bake.

End result

1. It was too hard. The dough was too wet and hard to moulded into shape so I added more flour. I must had gone a bit too far.
2. The sweetness was just right.
3. CL's colleague suggested to slice them thinner.

Overall the review I received was pretty good. I was very surprised CL's colleagues finished everything (he was feeling hungry at around 5am and wanted some biscotti but found an empty container instead). I thought it will all goes into the bin because it was too hard. But it was actually pretty nice to munch on bit by bit. Even my colleagues gave pretty positive remarks. I will definitely try it again.

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!!!