Sweet Potato and Taro Fritters/Banh Tom

I love these shrimp cakes. Banh Tom is a popular dish in Vietnam. It is made of thick cut sweet potato and shrimp, coated with light batter and deep-fried until golden brown. It is often served as an appetizer and commonly eaten wrapped with lettuce, pickle, herbs and dipped into nuoc mam sauce. It is very similar to our cucur udang except it has sweet potatoes in it. Since I have a small piece of taro in my fridge, I added it to the batter beside a few extra ingredients. The sweet potato is usually cut thick but I julienne it for faster cooking. The lettuce and vegetable pickle compliment so well with the crispy fritters, while the nouc mam sauce ties all the flavors together.

Lemongrass and Ginger Cookbook Giveaway Result

It is my pleasure to announce the winner of the Lemongrass and Ginger Cookbook Giveaway generated by the true random number service. Janice was the commenter's No 12 of 73 comments. Some of you might be wondering how come I am drawing only 73 comments. It is because there were 2 repeat commenter’s – (Rona and Catherine Lee) so I have to put them as one comment each.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to participate and your kind comments. I wish I can give all of you this cookbook but it is not possible but you can always purchase the cookbook from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Book Depository. Do come back and check out another one of my giveaway soon.

Prawn/Shrimp and Pineapple Curry

It was good to take a short vacation with my husband. Every weekend were occupied with something since we moved here until last weekend. Carlos took time away from work and we went to Monterey Bay and Carmel . We had such a great time and I took tons of pictures of the scenic views especially the 17th Miles Drive . We plan to go back again soon as we want to go for dolphins and whale watching. I will post up the pictures on my FB and my other blog later. In the meantime here is the sneak preview of one of the many pictures I took.

Now, let’s get back to this dish. I cooked this last week and I just love it. It goes really well with rice. My rice was swimming in the wonderful gravy and that is how I like to eat it. Yummy!!

Vanilla Cupcakes with Meyer Lemon Curd

Carlos is not a fan of cupcakes that is why I hardly make any. He said it is too troublesome to eat it as he need to peel off liners and his nose always touches the frosting ha ha...That is the problem when you have big nose. Anyway, I bought this nice tall muffin pan and I wanted to make some nice cupcakes with it. This pan is much taller than the regular muffin pan and it gives the cupcakes a very nice shape, tall and slim. I wish I am l have a shape like that ha ha…Since I have some Meyer Lemon Curd I used it as the frosting. The curd gives a nice tang to the cupcakes.