Parsley and Garlic Buns

When I saw these buns at Grace of Kitchen Corner I bookmarked it right away but only now I have the chance to try it out. This recipe is a keeper as the buns turn out to be really soft and fluffy. I did some minor changes to the topping and added garlic to it. Do go and check out her wonderful blog  where she showcase all the beautiful bakes.

Ingredients for dough

150 gram bread flour
50 gram flour
15 gram sugar
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp yeast
130 ml milk
15 gram unsalted butter

Nyonya Vegetable Curry

It is the time to clean up the vegetable compartment of my fridge. I do this every two weeks before I buy more of it. As usual there will some leftover of vegetable in there. A little bit of carrot, long beans, red peppers, zucchini etc. I will normally make a quick stir-fry out of it but when I saw this delicious looking Nyonya Vegetable Curry at Kiersten blog I decided to give it a try. The curry turns out really good. There is nothing more comforting than indulging a big bowl of this homemade curry.

Ingredients:
Recipe adpated from here

1 zucchini
1/2 head of cabbage, cut
A bunch of long beans, cut into 2” lengths
1 carrot – cut into 1” lengths
2 red pepper, cut into wedges
½ packet bean curd pockets (tau foo pok), cut into halves
2 potatoes – peel and quarter
2 - 2 1/2 cups of coconut milk
2 tbsp curry power, mixed with 3 tbsp water
1 chicken stock cube or vegetable cube
Salt and sugar to taste

Plum Galette/Plum Crostata

We’ve got plums coming out in abundance now. I bought a big bag of it the other day and it just cost me $1.98. I left it on the counter to ripen and they were so sweet and juice. With the leftovers I made this free-form crostata or gallette, it is the easiest way to make a pie. You don’t need a pie pan, no elaborate edge crimping, and no lattice weaving. All you have to do is roll out the dough and fold it up over the fruits of your choice. This rustic plum galette is bright, delicious and a great way to finish up all the plums that you has at home.

Ingredients for the pastry:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
10 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
some ice water

Mix the flour, salt, and sugar together in a bowl. Cut in the butter by hand or using a mixer with a paddle attachment, leaving some pea-sized chunks. Sprinkle the ice water over the top by the tablespoon and toss it with the flour mixture until you can bring the dough together into a ball. Press it into a disk and refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling it out.

Savory Glutinous Rice/Chu Bee P'ng

Is the time of the year again. Malaysia will be celebrating her 53rd birthday end of this month. As usual Babe In City - KL is hosting a Virtual Merdeka Open House 2010 and team for this year is Food From Our Hearts . We were to cook a dish close to our hearts.

Being so far away from home makes me appreciates home cooked food even more. I used to take it for granted that I can easily eat the food at home or buy it outside. But since living here in the US I don’t have the luxury to do so. If I want something from home I have to cook it myself. In a way it is a good thing as I learned how to cook them myself.

Today I wanted to share with you my mom’s simple Savory Glutinous Rice. I remember on every festive season she will cook a big pot of her savory glutinous rice. She will wakes up as early as 5.00am to cook this dish besides other dishes. She likes doing that as this way nobody gets in her way in the kitchen and she can cook in peace. We used to get upset with her as we will smell the fried garlic and shallots all the way to our upstairs rooms where else we still wanted to continue our beauty sleep. But now I wish I can have that smell to wakes me up in the morning here. This dish has both a sentimental and comfort  to it that will always reminds me of home and my mom.

Bibingka Cassava

Bibingka Cassava is a tradition Filipino dessert. This dessert is very similar to our Malaysian Kuih Bingka. The traditional bibingka will have a cheese or custard topping to it but I omitted that. I prefer it plain. For me the taste of this bibingka is a cross between mochi and kuih bingka . I was surprised that Carlos didn’t turn away from this dessert. I think it is because this dessert was baked and not steamed.

Ingredient A

2 pounds grated cassava
1/2 cup fresh grated coconut
3 eggs
3/4 cup coconut milk
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1/4 cup Mochiko flour/glutinous rice flour
4 tbsp melted butter

Mee Goreng/Fried Noodles

It is difficult to find our Malaysia thick black soy sauce here in the US and I will usually end up using the one imported from China. No doubt they are black but I don’t like the smell and flavor of it. I finally found our Malaysia black sauce  in New York and I lug the heavy bottle all the way back to PA. After buying it in NY I found out they do sell it in PA. What a bummer!! Anyway, I love using black soy sauce in my cooking. I think food taste better when it has dark caramel color to it. The first dish I cook with the dark soy sauce was this Mee Goreng. What do you think? Do they look appetizing?

Ingredients:

400 grm fresh yellow noodles – wash and drain dry
2 shallots – sliced thinly
3 cloves garlic - chopped
1 piece chicken breast – cut thinly and season with salt and pepper
15 shrimps – peel and deveined
1 small bunch of Chinese chives – cut into 1” length
2 cups of bean sprout

Almond Crusted Meat and Shrimp Balls

This tasty finger food is great for parties or gatherings. I remember eating something similar at a wedding banquet but I forgot what was in the balls so I recreated something with whatever I have in the freezer. If you're not a fan of sliced almonds you can always roll it out in tiny little white bread cubes.

Ingredients:

1 pound of ground meat (can be chicken, pork, turkey or beef)
½ pound shrimps – shell and deveined
1 medium size carrot – peel and grated
10 water chestnuts – cut into small cubes
3 green onions – cut small
2 tbsp of cornstarch
2 tbsp oyster sauce
3 tbsp soy sauce
½ tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine – optional
Salt and white pepper to taste

Curry Noodles/ Curry Laksa

There are times Diana and I will crave for a bowl of piping hot curry laksa. Making the laksa broth from scratch takes a lot of works so we opted using the ready mix laksa paste. There are so may type of premix paste out there but our favorite is still Tean’s Gourmet brand. We are lucky that we are able to get this laksa paste here so I will always keep a few packets handy my pantry. Preparing this noodles dish is easy and you can have dinner on your table in less than half an hour. All you have to do is add some water, coconut milk and the Laksa broth is done. As for the condiments it is all up to you. You can add noodles, tofu puffs, long beans, eggs, bean sprouts and etc to it. Nothing is more comforting to me than a good bowl of curry noodles.

Custard Raisin Fan Rolls

Carlos take his breakfast at home every morning so each week I will baked something for him to have with his coffee. I think he is pretty bored with my regular banana bread and cinnamon rolls weeks after weeks so I decided to try out something new.

I remember eating some kind of custard snail like looking rolls from a bakery in New York many years ago. The bread was soft and it has some kind of custard and raisins inside. Inspired by that custard rolls I decided to try my hand in making it.

Dough

460 gram bread flour
2 tsp yeast
60 gram milk powder
70 gram sugar
½ tsp salt
1 egg
150 - 160 ml milk (you might need a bit more or less)
70 gram butter
100 gram water roux

Spring Onions Paratha Bread

This is an easy but most important quick flat bread to make. I’ve tried out a few versions but I like this the best. The texture was great, a bit chewy just the way I like it.

I sprinkle some spring onions to it but you can actually put any type of fillings like mashed potatoes, steam cauliflowers, spinach to it. Brush it with some butter or oil and pan fried the paratha till golden brown and savored it with your favorite curries.

Eggs in Purgatory/Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce

This is something that I learned from an Italian chef a long time ago. He told me that his grandmother used to serve this as a quick, light lunch so that they can all get back to the farm to continue working. I am not sure why such a dramatic name for such a simple Southern Italian Dish. Basically it is just poached eggs in tomato sauce. For this dish I like using over-ripe tomatoes which are plenty during summer. With just a few ingredients you get a healthy robust flavor meal. Remember to get some fresh Italian bread before you make this as you’re going to need it to slop up all the sauce.

Raspberry Cheesecake Slice

It's already August and soon summer will come to an end. I try to enjoy all the locally grown fruits as much as possible. Each trip to the produce place I will haul back way too much fruit for the 2 of us but everything just look so fresh and good and I just can't resist it. We like to eat them fresh but fruit like berries doesn’t last too long. They will dries up pretty fast in the fridge so I tried to put it in dessert and baking. For this cheesecake you can use any type of summer fruits like blueberries, strawberries, cherries, blackberries etc.

Crust:

150 gram Oreo cookies – crushed
50 grm melted butter

Homemade Steamed Rice Rolls/ Chee Cheong Fun

Chee Cheong Fun is a type of rice noodles roll or steamed rice roll. Commonly roll in round shape but some comes in square thin pieces. There are two types of chee cheong fun; one is the local (Malaysia/Singapore) kind which served with tim cheong (sweet bean sauce) and another one which is the Hong Kong style served at dim sum places with fillings like shrimps, roast pork or minced meat in it. Since I have some shrimps in the freezer I decided to try out the Hong Kong Style CCF.

Making CCF at home isn’t as difficult as I thought it might be. It turn out pretty well except I need to improved on my rolling skills. I should have let the CCF cools down a bit more before rolling it as you can see there are some cracks on the CCF. Nevertheless they were delicious.This recipe is adapted from here .

Spiral Coffee Cake/Giant Cinnamon Roll

This is not exactly a cake or should I say it's more like a giant cinnamon roll. Instead of inidividul rolls I made it into one giant roll. This awesome coffee cake with its beautiful spiral and layers of cinnamon has a texture of soft fluffy bread and not overly sweet like the usual cinnamon rolls. The dough is a joy to work with but I did encounter some minor problem along the way especially coiling up the dough. I did the coiling on the kitchen counter rather than right in baking pan. When I was done coiling I have problem picking the whole dough up as it was too heavy and soft. So if you plan to make this try doing the coiling steps in the baking pan.

Ingredients for the dough:

2 1/2 to 2 3/4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 tsp yeast (about 7 gram)
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup milk - lukewarm
1/2 stick/56 gram unsalted butter - melted
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Zucchini Fritters

Summer is here and so is zucchini. You can see zucchini everywhere and they are really cheap too. There are so many different ways to eat a zucchini and I have had it stir-fried , cooked vegetable curry and make into zucchini pancakes . My neighbor Nancy gave me a few of it and I have been contemplating for a few days on what to make out of it. Carlos is not a fan of Zucchini and if I cook with it I will always end up eating it all by myself but this fritters totally changes his mind about zucchini. He absolutely loves it. The fritters were crispy on the edge with a delicate soft center. This is a very simple recipe that comes together relatively quickly.