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Out of all the places we ate in Perth, the one restaurant that really stood out was this simple Italian restaurant owned by an Italian who migrated to Perth. I still think of that pasta dish till today because it is in every essence the BEST pasta I’ve eaten in my entire life. That speaks volume.

Sadly I do not remember that name of the restaurant, however I do know where it’s located – that’s more important and we’ll be regular customers of that place one day I”m sure

I should add most restaurants here are old looking, like as though they’re still stuck in the 80s for some strange reason.

I remember glancing through the menu and didn’t know which pasta to order coz most of it had either pork or beef which I both don’t eat. Sauces are pre-made so there is no option of changing it to chicken. I also had to make sure it was tomato sauce based since I was going to share it with Sairah. So the owner, this BIG fat dude who looked like he was at least 7 months preggie suggested I try the Penne Ala vodka.

But there’s vodka in there and I’m sharing this with my daughter I said.

He gave out this big laugh and said surely the little vodka used to make the sauce would not make a huge impact on the little one or cause her to sway around like a drunk lil sailor. He actually proceeded to tell us how it’s cooked which I thought was very generous of him because most restaurateurs don’t really share their recipe.

Guess it’s no biggie coz my pea brain didn’t remember half the things he said so I resorted to googling this recipe instead.

Btw he is right, toddlers CAN eat vodka sauce as the alcohol evaporates at boiling point.

But yea, fat dude was right! She didn’t get drunk, she only made a BIG poo after lunch was over coz food was that RICH and bloody good. To her defense, have you had a meal so full that you just had to go after that? You’d be lying if you said no

Hubby scrapping off what’s left of our food because we finished them allllll, baby included!

You may sprinkle more red pepper flakes if you’re Indian If you can get hold of fresh basil add that into the pot almost at the end.

Yummy in my Yindian tummy….

And  I hope y’all had a good Mother’s Day treat yesterday. Mine was spent redeeming a lunch voucher meal which I bought in the first place (what to do, hubby keeps getting cheaper by the day, heh), followed by a short mall trip where we got the little one this fun art piece. I made this pasta dish for dinner so I cooked my own Mother’s Day dinner, hah.

Scribble scribble….Imma little artist

So much intensity over her art work.

Despite telling her to hold the ORANGE pen to color the tiger, she kept going for various colors. After a while I gave up and thought why not? Why must a tiger be orange? Lets have our imaginations run wild shall we…..and not conform to what the world perceives as right for just a littleee while.

So this is how a tiger looks in Sairah’s world – a mixture of pink, blue, green, orange – all colors she can actually pronounce.

So damn proud of her colored tiger And you know what, I am too! This definitely goes onto our fridge!

Woo I made Japanese. Korokee if you must. Which if you ask me is pretty much a fusion dish mimicking the French/Spanish croquette. Probably was created in recent times because I almost don’t remember seeing this in Narita during my trip yonks ago.

Either way it’s a great dish because it’s one of those dishes meant for weekday cooking. You know, where you can make it on a weekend, freeze it and then just cook them buggers on a working day. Very easy, convenient and minimum cleaning up to do after.

I don’t always cook on weekdays but when I do, it turns out awesome!

Hah, that should be my tagline for weekday cooking, okay kidding. But I have to say cooking on a weekday is indeed a rarity on my part!

Here’s the recipe:

4 russet potatoes
Tray of minced chicken
1 large white onion
2 eggs
Panko
Flour
Black pepper & Garlic salt
A dash of soya sauce & Worchester sauce. (I added this on my own, just for extra flavor).

As simple as the ingredients look, it does take some effort in preparing it.

Instructions:

In a large pot, boil potatoes until soft. Put them in a large bowl and mash it down while adding some butter, black pepper & garlic salt.

In a pan, fry onions and then sauté the minced chicken. Add in some black pepper, a dash of soya sauce and worhester sauce.

In the bowl containing the mash potatoes, add in cooked minced chicken and mix them. Add in more black pepper.

When mixture is warm shape them into ball shape. The recipe calls for putting this in a fridge for 10-15 minutes before you coat it. You can do that if you have time (I’m assuming it’s to hold the potato + meat better) but if you don’t, no biggie.

Dredge each ball into flour, egg and then in panko. It’s a tedious process but well worth it!

Now FREEZE! Or if you want to cook it then and there, so be it

When you’re ready to cook them on a weekday, let it thaw and deep fry it in a pan.

Transfer your Korokee balls into a paper towel to absorb the oil.

This is how they should look as they thaw

And here’s the end results Looks just like the ones you can find in Jusco don’t ya think, ahem

Also, my deep frying skills suck. I can get Panko covered stuff cooked beautifully the first two batches and then after, it goes down hill like so:

But iz okay, it was still pretty good. I gave the husband the nicer looking ones and sacrified myself by eating the ugly batch. Such a good Indian wife I am.

You can eat it with Tonkatsu sauce on its own. I couldn’t find the Tonkatsu sauce it in Jusco coz it was all out so we used chili sauce instead and it was lovely. And if you prefer rice, you could always sauté up rice with soya sauce and egg and eat it with this I reckon. I”m going to try to stuff some cheese in there next time and see how that one turns up. Even the baby refused her soup with rice and ate this instead.

So now it’s a shame I can cook Japanese better than I cook Indian. Hah. But in all honestly, I”m not much of a Japanese food fan except for sushi with tuna bits. How about you guys?

P.s: Anyone looking out for a good afternoon tea set, do check this one out for Delicious All hail the group-discount queen

To be sung to I had a bad dayyyy….

Yup, there’s such a thing called an off day.

Actually, there is such a thing as an off-day cooking, off-day restaurant visit and heck even off-day casting! And all that can happen in a day.

Allow me….

We went to Ala Thai on Saturday to redeem our voucher. You could say  almost all our meals are voucher based, lol. Usually our experience have been a real good one (coz let’s face it, some restaurants take part in group discount sites to get in customers, hoping you would return to them again) except for this restaurant called Ala Thai in Solaris Dutamas.

First off cock waiter lied and said some sessions were fully booked making us to settle for the 12.30pm slot. We get there at 1pm (coz we’re rebels like that) only to find the restaurant half empty anyway. As soon as we whip out our voucher, you could see the waiter’s face change. True we paid RM9.90 each for a four course meal but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get proper treatment right? Anyway, service was slow, had to raise our hands up for the longest time before we got any service. The restaurant wasn’t even that huge for us to go unnoticed. And then when I asked for an empty plate, it never came!! The pineapple fried rice I had was horrible. Even the soup and dessert that came with it was so bloody off, it was beyond tasteless and watered down. Husband had better luck with his Pad Thai and dessert, to give them some credit.

The heck kinda service is this?? Ponders baby girl…

I should add the prawns in my rice was stale and old!

Anyway, will we be their return customer? Of course not.

After hanging around Publika,  we took the little one for a casting after lunch and my pedicure She was to be casted as a ‘fair urban malay’ toddler. I never knew people could be described that way, lol. We got there to find alot of people waiting for their turn. It would be a minimum wait of 1 hour I thought. But lo and behold our name got called within 5 minutes of our arrival! I was happy with the VIP treatment (of course later it dawned to me the lady had mixed up the papers and reached for mine first). It was also close to the little one’s sleeping time so I was afraid she’d get cranky and true enough……….all she did in that casting room was cry cry cry her head off. Would have been perfect if that was for a Cry Baby ad I’m sure.  She didn’t want to pose, kept hiding behind my leg and calling out to me – she was afraid of the casting director. Infact I had to tell him if it was okay for his lady assistant to take her photos and video. We had better luck, but she still was slighty uncooperative. Castings are definitely best attended in the morning me thinks :)  Sairah knocked off for 1.5 hours that evening though

Then I thought it would be nice to cook Indian food for a change for dinner that night. You know, to make the Indian husband happy. A nice EASY Garam Masala Curry I thought. Heck, even the recipe said it was EASY! Easy my foot coz the curry just went all wrong. I stood there for the longest time wondering what I should add in more and even resorted to using Tandoori Masala powder and yogurt even when the recipe didn’t call for it just to balance out the taste and spiciness. In the end it was the husband who came to the rescue to make it taste better – something about adding lime to cut down the spiciness he said, whatever.

I am not destined to be a good cook where Indian food esp curries are concerned. Period. The spices involved are a whole lot more trickier than rocket science! Swear he’s in charge of making curries in the future. But if anyone has a good curry recipe then share pleaseee.

I did have better luck where the vegs were concerned so maybe Indian vegetables dishes could be my thing. I got the recipe from here but instead of baking it, I fried it after boiling the potatoes and it was super yummy. Threw in some taufoo too just coz the packet was lying around.

Looks like a smiley face! A good end to the day that was pretty off I reckon. And the cherry on top was seeing my little one sleep throughout the night like a log coz she was exhausted from all that swimming in the evening.

Guess it wasn’t that bad of an off day afterall eh?!

Goodness, I have not cooked for a LONG time!!! You can tell by the lack of cooking post can’t you? :D  Bad wife…bad bad wife!

So for lunch yesterday I decided to whip up something easy and my all time favorite go-to dish when I crave for spaghetti: Spaghetti Chicken Bolognese. Admit it, it’s a favourite dish of yours too What’s not to like about this Italian dish.

Here’s the recipe:

One whole white onion, chopped

6 clove garlic, chopped

Half carrots, chopped

Quarter green capcisum, chopped

1 packet Maggi Spaghetti Bolognaise sauce mix

1 tray minced chicken

1 big tomato can (I used Hunts as I find it not sour)

2 tablespoon tomato paste (Hunts)

1 tablespoon tomato sauce

1 tomato, chopped

Parmesan Cheese

Monterey Jack Cheese

1 tablespoon sugar and a pinch of salt

Black Pepper / Basil / Oregano seasoning

Italian Parsley

Directions:

1. Boil spaghetti until soft, set aside

2. In a pan, fry onions and garlic in olive oil until slightly brown. Add in carrots and capsicum and fry for another 2 minutes. Add in minced chicken followed by the maggi spaghetti sauce mix powder (this is just for added flavor!) and fry until meat is cooked. Throw in a can of tomato sauce followed by half  can of water. Add in tomato,  tomato paste, tomato sauce, sugar, salt followed by all the herb seasoning.

3. Let the sauce thicken and add in more water, black pepper and herb seasoning if you like. Throw in Italian Parsely and let it boil for another 10 minutes. The thicker the sauce, the better. And the longer you leave it out on the pan (I made the sauce first then only boiled the spaghetti) the more tastier it becomes. Add in a little parmesan cheese to the sauce.

4. Arrange spaghetti on plate, throw in the awesome sauce, add more parmesan cheese and top it up with some monterey jack cheese cube (I found this single pack serve in Cold Storage in Parade for just RM3!!) and wala – a simple yet luxurious yummy meal! This tasted just like mom’s cooking which is a VERY good thing in my books.

Excuse the large cubes,  I told the husband to cut it smaller but he never listens….the monterey jack cheese went so well with the sauce.

Mmm all ready to dig in.

Yum yum let’s fatten me up!

Oh oh oh, and if you happen to pick up this months’ HER WORLD magazine, see if you can spot my lil review in the magazine I was hoping to score the spa package review that was featured two months ago in the magazine but got this instead, hmpf. I’m still thankful though coz I got to keep the product which I’ve since given it to my mom

Meanwhile you sooo gotta try my chicken spaghetti bolognese recipe, just saying

Wei, got update on a Sunday la! Figured I”d share a recipe for those who are trying to figure out what to cook for Sunday dinner

Inspired by Fieran’s post here, I set out to make us some Chow Mein Noodles. I love the word Chow Mein. I can say it a hundred times and it tickles me for some strange reason. Chow mein chow mein chow mein chow meiiiiiiiiin!

Chow Mein means fried noodles, which is how these noodles are cooked for this recipe. Incase you haven’t picked it up already.

The hubby pointed out the term “Chow Mein’ noodles is such an American thing, because we hardly use that term there. He is such a smart ass sometimes.

Moving on, ingredients as follows:

Packet of egg noodles. I got the flat type.

1 chopped medium size white onions

4 clove garlic, chopped

1 chilli chopped

Chicken cubes

Half chopped cabbage and carrots

A handful of bean sprout

2 eggs – fried and put aside.

Seasoning: Now I ALWAYS have issues with some seasoning recipes. They usually call for too little seasoning, while I prefer to have alot of sauce in my noodles. After doing some extensive research (I’m so lifeless!), I combined these and wala, it wasn’t too bad at all! Not THE best like you get in restaurants, but will suffice

6 tablespoon oyster sauce + 6 teaspoon light soya sauce + 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil + 1/2 tablespoon sugar + 1/2 tablespoon dark soya sauce + 2 tablespoon sweet soya sauce (kecap manis) + pinch of chicken stock granules = mix with some hot water.

Pepper and salt to taste.

Spring onions, for garnishing.

Steps:

1. Boil noodle in hot water until soft. Drain in cold water and set aside.

2. In a pan, fry onions, garlic and chilli until aromatic.

3. Fry the chicken until light brown and throw in the cabbage, carrots and bean sprout. Cook until vegetables are soft.

4. Dump in the noodles, add in seasoning followed by black pepper and salt to taste.

5. Garnish with eggs and spring onions and WALA:

CHOW MEIN NOODLES Y’ALL!

Just sooo soooo easy to make and the perfect dish to whip up on a lazy sunday evening! Helps that it taste good too Even the toddler approves. Try it.

What’s your easy peasy go to dish on a lazy Sunday evening? Share! Who knows, I might cook it next