Salad

Mister have being having quite a bit of salad when I was away. He got hooked onto salad and requested them almost very alternate days. To cut down on our carbohydrates, we started having more salad each week and limited ourselves to 3 dinners with rice a week.

I started trying out new fresh greens to spice up our salad. Adding all kinds of beans is another method which I did.

 Prawn and Calamari Salad

1. Marinate some Calamari with Sweet Thai Sauce and Lime.
2. Grilled some fresh Prawn with shell intact and marinated Calamari and set aside.
3. Cooked some sweet peas in boiling water for less than a minute. Drained and set aside.
4. Poached an egg in boiling water for few minutes. Peeled and set aside.
5. Mixed diced tuss tomatoes, cucumber and canned corn with  some olive oil.
6. Placed everything on a bowl/plate and served.


 Another salad which I did was Boiled Sweet Peas and Snow Peas + Diced Cucumber, Carrot, Tomato, Avocado and Apple + Fresh Sprout toss with Macadamia Olive Oil served together with Pan Fried Salmon.

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.