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Guess who cooked during the long extended Raya break? Long weekends always make me want to cook for some reason :) Maybe coz I know the husband will not be pleased by spending $ and eating outside for too long! I unleashed my inner-Martha (if there’s ever such a thing, heh) and decided to cook AND bake and the satisfaction I got was truly errr satisfying

Also helps that the husband went out to get me a new Tefal frying pan! And interesting story about our new pan – he had gone to Tesco to buy groceries (yes I’m lucky thank you) and saw this pan going for RM69 or so it says on the price tag. During checkout, the cashier pointed out that there’s a mistake to the price and it should be RM149 instead! Minutes later after talking to the manager, he decided to honour the price shown on the price tag and wala, brand new pan for only RM69, wooots

But of course, within a day I scratched it a little by accidently using a metal spoon

Anyways to quickly divert my stupidity –  it’s been ages since I baked. After loading up on baking supplies during our trip to PD (where I found this shop selling baking pans for dirt cheap), there was no excuse not to bake. So I went for something simple and a crowd favorite: BANANA CAKE!

I got the recipe from here.  I didn’t have a weighing scale so I had to convert everything using per cup measurement so I was nervous as hell. Afterall, which idiot bakes without having a weighing scale right? Story of my life.

But what do you know – 45 nerve wrecking minutes later, my cake came out beautifully moist, soft and flavorful! Which sort of makes me awesome in a way coz hey, I did it without having a weight scale around – SCORE. It had a tinge of lemon-y taste to it too thanks to the lemon rind and it balanced off the banana flavor nicely.

Mmm mmm hot out of the oven.

Sairah kept coming to the kitchen and asked ‘what mommy doing’ and I told her I was baking a Banana Cake. There on she kept popping by the kitchen every 5 minutes to see if the cake was ready

All happy after her slice of mommy’s home-made banana cake. She eats whatever mommy cooks and bakes and in many ways it inspires me to find more new recipes :)

After I was done with my cake, the hubby was all set on making his pizzas because BabySis and the cousins were coming over for dinner. While I was busy seeing to the cake in the oven, he got to play chef by preparing the necessary.

Yes the kitchen is messy thanks to him!

And one thing I’ve realized, I have immense respect for my mom now for cooking dishes after dishes every gathering/parties they have because let me tell you, it’s no easy task. It’s super tiring and there’s just so much to do! I was only in charge of the spaghetti and ‘murtabak maggi’ that night (and let’s not forget the cake!) and I was already super stressed out by thinking which to make first. Coz I always like to serve my food hot and fresh!

One great way of course is to cut everything up way before, cling wrap it and leave it in the fridge. Oh and of course I did stick to easy to cook recipes….

I just love the colors in here.

I made my spaghetti chicken bolognese Always a classic favorite and easy to make too. I attempted to this Murtabak Maggi  and somehow I couldnt flip the maggi with the egg (it’s an impossible task, I wonder how the chef did that?) so I scrambled everything the last minute and we ended up having plain old maggi goreng – the recipe was pretty decent nevertheless.

My spaghetti was literally gone within 3 minutes!! I looked at the husband and went, damn we spent 4 hours slogging in the kitchen, I cannot believe it’s all gone in a flash but hey that’s a good thing I’m sure

Maam maam time!

The hubby’s yummy pizza – only remembered to take a photo half way through and by then only 3 slices were left coz it was that good. But not as popular as my spaghetti, but of course

Cousins brought some nuggets and fries from MCDs, lol there’s always alot of food when we meet up. Always.

And one of those nights, I decided to go for something simple and easy so I made soup! Not just any soup – cauliflower soup. You’d think this would send a child running the opposite direction, but no, it was pretty good, rich and creamy that even my 23 month  old (who usually doesn’t adore vegs) gulped it all down not knowing she was having her vegs! In blended form.

Honestly I think this is a perfect recipes for kiddies.

Here’s the recipe incase one is keen.

Directions

Boil about half chopped potatoes until soft. Set aside. Heat a soup pot and melt 2 tablespoons of butter in it. Stir-fry half chopped onions and 6 clove garlic for about 5 mins over medium heat. Add chicken broth (you could use one cube of chicken stock and add in 2 cups of water), add in your one medium size Cauliflower florets (do chop off the stems) and let it simmer for 10 mins or until soft. Add in the already soft potatoes at the end for a while.  Once done, pour the mixture and puree or blend it until you’re happy with the consistency. Add in some water if you prefer it less thick. Add the contents back into the soup pot, boil for another 2 minutes, add in some salt and pepper with 50ml of whipped cream and wala – you have officially tricked a toddler into having her vegs Seriously – this recipe is a keeper and I”m going to make her Brocolli soup this weekend!

I also made Egg and Potato Fritata to accompany the soup.

Fluffy soft potatoes covered in cheese and egg, yummeh!

All that food cooked thanks to my new Tefal pan of course. I”m trying hard to avoid thinking how I’m responsible for the scratch on my new pan.

So yes am gonna divert those thoughts into these photos!

The last of my super long locks until I got 2.5 inches chopped off last week before the trip.

We want cake! We want cake! Weeee

Yup there’s Daddy coming out of Merienda De Eva with a chocolate moist cake which we had for dessert with the cousins.

OMG cakeeeee, I wonder if I”ll get a slice later. Must.Be.On.Bestest.Best.Behavior.

Unfortunately for her, she didn’t get a slice of that choc cake. Only mommy’s banana cake. Why? Coz it was freaking baked with love, that’s why! And a healthier option for her of course

And now with another long weekend around, you bet I”ll be cooking even more

Aight, confession time - in the span of these few months and yes from the last cooking post I made, I’ve only cooked three new dishes! The other lazy times the husband just makes us fried rice :)  We’ve been busy redeeming vouchers every weekend, coz sometimes it’s much cheaper than going to buy groceries – have you been to the supermarket lately? Everything is so expensive!

To balance it off, we do have our home-cooked meals at mom’s place on weekdays so…..and honestly we need a new freaking pan coz the old one is just so worn out and useless (proof that I have cooked alot nevertheless, ahem).  Yea, that’s the excuse I”m giving the husband for not cooking

Anyway, my dad’s uncle passed away a few weeks ago. We usually have 30 days of prayers being Sri Lankan Tamils and all, but my dad made the decision to cut it down to 2 weeks so for that whole 14 days I was actually vegetarian and regularly went for evening prayers! I never knew I could still have the discpline to seek out all vegan food but I did *pats back* 

This was the only vegan meal I cooked – vegetarian spaghetti in tomato sauce topped with brocolli and cauliflower. It was alright, not the best, something I would serve an enemy who loves meat just to see the their face change, heh.

Bloody wife is vegetarian and forces this down my throat!  I do think he was kind enough to gulp everything down nevertheless.

Oh and when everything was over, I decided to cook a meal with chicken in it. You can’t see the chicken pieces but oh it’s there alright. And in the spirit of Ramadhan and all, I thought I would cook a Malay dish so I made Ayam Paprik!!

It came out pretty good I say,a lil on the spicy side but I think the hubby would appreciate something spicy than just eat all vegs. Great dish for lazy cooks coz you get meat and vegs all in one.  You can check out the recipe here, I played around with the seasoning and substituted the lime leaves with curry leave coz stupid supermarket didn’t have it. But if anyone has a Ayam Paprik recipe they swear by, meh, tolong bagi I yeeee.

As for the third dish, I made Hunan Chicken and  I can’t even find the damn photo coz it’s been that long

And now for some random photos: I got her this butterfly necklace recently and the little one just seems really hooked on it. She used to look at my necklace/bracelet and go ‘oooo nice, pretty bangle/chain’, like I always tell people – she’s as girly as it gets!

Yup she’s in a total butterfly phase. Her eyes are so sharp she impressed us by spotting a butterfly poster on the ground floor in BV. We were standing on the third floor mind you.

And quite recently she also mastered the art of eating soup with minimal spill. Yipee.

Getting all sweaty from eating hot soup. Besides the restaurant was pretty stuffy anyway.

Mmmm soup! 

Oh and another confession time. I wasn’t all vegan for that 14 days though I did replace one more day with more vegan food. We were in Tearoom to redeem my vouchers and in a haste I ordered something completely opposite of vegetables.

Half way through lunch, I looked at the husband and went OMG!!!! Why couldn’t you warn me! That sent him in a frenzy of whats, probably panicking wondering what he did wrong, heh. I asked him, what am I eating? It was then it occured to him (actually both of us) I was chomping down on a bowl of a very delicious I might add, CHICKEN LASAGNA!!

Le sigh, shit memory is shit! But hey at least compared to other family members who weren’t full vegans at that time, I still did pretty well but can I go on days without my meat? Sadly it will be a tough battle now. For now I can only proudly say that once upon a time, I was vegetarian for 2 1/2 years and those were the days of being a vegetarian.

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?!