Rockmelon Sago in a Boat

Roll roll roll your boat...

Ingredients
1/2 rockmelon
1/3 cup sago
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
60ml coconut cream (I used Kara brand)
1/2 tsp salt
Some atap seeds

Methods 
 1) Boil 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water till sugar dissolves, set aside.
2) Boil sago in water using medium to high heat for 6-8mins until most sago turn translucent. Off fire and keep pot covered for 5 mins. Do not over cook the sago or the whole pot will become gluey mess.
3) Sieve the sago and rinse with cold/tap water.
4) Using a melon scooper to scoop out the rock melon in round balls or simply using a small spoon to scoop into semicircle shape. Using knife to cut into cubes also can.
5) After you have scoop out most of the flesh, use a spoon to dig out the balance of the flesh and use a masher to make puree. Do not dig too deep, we do not want the green skin portion.
6) Now your boat is almost ready, shave off a bit of the outer skin with knife for it to stand properly.
7) Pour puree, melon balls, sago, coconut cream, syrup and salt into a bowl and mix well. I used about half of the syrup I mixed, you can use more to your desired sweetness.
8) Chill for at least 1 hour.
9) Serve the dessert in the boat prepared earlier and top with atap seeds. You could also add ice cubes/ shaved ice.

Notes
You could add more coconut cream to this recipe so that more pax can share but the boat (1/2 rockmelon) can only take in about 60ml.

Pumpkin prawn 金瓜奶油虾

I tried this dish at a zhi-char stall and it was delicious but unfortunately the stall has moved. To curb my craving, I tried to cook this and it turned out pretty close to the taste I want :)

Ingredients
8-10 medium size prawns
1/4 pumpkin
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp garlic powder (optional)
handful of curry leaves
1 red chilli (cut into slices)
1 tsp of salt

Methods
1) Remove heads from prawns, use scissors to slit open the shell and flesh like how you did for butterfly prawns and devein.
2) Cut pumpkin into small cubes and steam until soft
3) Mash the pumpkin using masher and set aside
4) Heat up pan and melt the butter
5) Stir fry prawns with garlic powder and add 2tbsp of pumpkin mesh before prawns are fully cooked
6) Stir in evaporated milk and mix well
7) Throw in curry leaves, chilli and salt. Stir fry awhile and serve

Notes
I used only 1/2 of the pumpkin mesh, balance mesh I freeze for future use.
You can add more or less of evaporated milk depends on how concentrated you want the gravy to be. Pretty flexible here.

Who says gingerbread man must be bald?

Appetizer for X'mas party

Give them some hopes please, shredded cucumber is all it takes to make them look hairy ;)

Congratulations to the arrival of Baby Glen

I went through a lot for this project and so far the most painstaking one. I planned this probably a month ahead and started with purchasing cookie cutters from ebay. Well, one month the cutters should arrive by then but it didn't. It was lost :(

Sometimes things don't always turn out to be how you planned. A week before the baby shower, I sourced for another seller and and managed to get the cutters I want. heng ah!

With a butter cookie recipe, suitable cookie cutters, ready-made fondant, coloring gel, gift accessories I embarked on the project one day before the event. During the process of making the cookie dough, I realised my wooden rolling pin have molds. Arrggghhh just not my day, discarded the rolling pin and here's come my powerful and muscular arms. I manually rolled the dough and this dough was tough. Gosh it took me forever to roll the dough and cut their into desired shapes. My arms especially right hand started to shout for help but I couldn't stop. Finally I finished trays of cookies and they turned out very cute, don't you agree?

What did I say about things don't always turn out as what you planned? I put in the wrong amount of butter and the cookies were hard as rocks! No joke, I dropped one on the floor and it didn't break. Wow, it was shock-proof! How I wish these are my handphones, super robustic. Sigh, project failed. I was very upset looking at 70 cute and strong cookies, and at the same time my right arm was hurting me. I pasted ache-relief plasters on my arm and rested.

Did I mention that when you are down on your luck, everything just doesn't go your way? What could be worst than a painful arm right? Let me tell you, both arms! Soon the left arm also start to hurt and so painful that I couldn't move for the entire evening. I had no choice but to pop painkiller and go for an early night rest.

The next day.... I woke up feeling much better, although arms were still aching but at least I could move. The day before was really a nightmare, thought I might need to visit a doctor if the pain persisted. I walked into the kitchen and saw that 70 cookies again. Sigh, still hard as rocks! Stubborn rocks! Suddenly, a bulb appeared! A bright idea came from joking hubby "Just buy ready-made cookies loh...hehehe". YES! I have a box of cookies and I still have some time. Without delay I rolled out the fondant, colored them and cut into the patterns that I wanted. Needed some time to air dry them before sticking them to the cookies and wrap it up as gift. Weren't my arms still hurt, yes they were but I was glad that my project didn't fail entirely. At least I still manage to come up with a substitution and I love how the gift turned out to be.

My painstaking project ;)

The end!

Spinach in pumpkin sauce

It's a bird!
No, it's an egg!
No, it's a NEST!

Another day where I put on my creative hat, I love how it looks like a nest of eggs. I made used of a pack of frozen pumpkin puree which I did it previously for pumpkin prawns.

Ingredients
A pack of spinach
A slice of pumpkin (about 1/8 size of whole pumpkin)
2 garlic cloves (minced)
7 quail eggs
4 tbsp evaporated milk
Dash of salt
Cut chilli (ganishing - optional)

Methods

1. Boil quail eggs and de-shell when cooled, set aside.
2. Poach spinach in boiling water, drain the water and set aside the vegetables.
3. Cut the pumpkin into small cubes and steam. Once the cubes turn soft, remove from steamer and mash into puree form.
4. Heat the pan and sautee the minced garlic till fragant.
5. Pour in pumpkin puree, evaporated milk, dash of salt and stir for awhile.
6. Dish out and arrange according to your preference.

Notes
Spinach when cooked will turn the water into greenish colour, for some dishes I will retain the water as gravy. But for this dish the gravy is pumpkin puree hence I omitted the water from the spinach.

Matcha Red Bean Muah Chee

This idea striked me on Saturday morning, a new flavour for muah chee using ingredients that I already have in my kitchen. My mind got busy after that to think through the process of making it works after I have decided on the flavour.

Here it is, my new flavour:

Ingredients
1 cup glutinous rice flour
3/4 cup water
1/2 tsp baking green tea powder
About 3-4 tbsp red bean paste
1 tsp shallot oil
Peanut powder (with sugar) for coating

Appliance used
Happycall pan (hcp)

Methods

1. Mix the first 3 ingredients in a cup or bowl until no lump.
2. Roll the red bean paste into a long dough using cling wrap as long as the length of hcp, set aside. You could adjust the paste quantity according to your preference, but I would recommend a thin dough.
3. Heat up hcp with shallot oil, slowly pour the batter and make sure it covers the entire pan.
4. Once the batter sets from the sides, place the red bean paste on top of the batter and use tongs to start wrapping the paste.
5. Once the batter is cooked, remove from hcp and coat with peanut powder.
6. Cut the coated muah chee into small pieces and serve.

Pictures speak a thousand words, here are the photos taken during the cooking process:

Where to purchase the ingredients?

Red bean paste - I got mine from Phoon Huat at $7.50 for one kg. Too big a pack? Alternatively you could try Daiso for it's 200g pack.

Baking green tea powder - From Phoon Huat too, comes in a bottle.

Peanut powder - This is from supermarket, there are few brands to select from. Mine is Camel brand and it comes with sugar.

Company's Annual Dinner

We had our company's annual dinner at Villa Halia in the mid of March. This year's theme is "garden floral" and unexpectedly many staff were pretty sporting to turn up in their flora apparels.

My Lunch Kakis

One of the door gifts include a flower where you can either clip it to your hair or blouse. Before the event, we thought that guys will resent the idea of putting on flower but we were utterly wrong. Those vain pots proved to us that they are as vain as the girls, a few even took more than one to decorate themselves.





The Drunkards



With Winnie who won the Best Dressed