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I’ve realized there are lots of recipes that I try only once then forget about it because I”m always anxious to try new ones out. And days when I can’t be arsed to look for new recipes – I just cook dishes that I”m familiar with.

So on Sunday, I decided to try this for the second time. I previously blogged about it here. Again, I have to say this is such a wonderful recipe. It’s quick, easy and very yummy. Just marinate everything ………..

And dump it into the grill pan which we FINALLY bought from Ikea. Paid  less than RM80. But just to make sure the meat inside was really cooked, I cooked it in the oven for a few minutes. But I think the oven option is much better as it’s more healthy. Wonder why we bought the grill pan anyway then?! Now I”m thinking of getting a steamer but can’t for the life think what to make with it?

Did up the topping and served with some baked beans this time. A healthy yummy-licious dish I would say

The face that says it all.

Totally unrelated – past two weekends saw Shera and Azimah walk down the marriage club and possibly parenthood next year, hopefully?

Baby Sairah graced their wedding with her presence I was going to get her a cute lil baby baju kurung but couldn’t find one on time.

The groom looking very much like the dude on our dollah bill

The lovely couple. Her outfit was totally gorgeous with its laces. Peach is such a gorgeous color!

Then on Saturday, the reception was held at the Palace of  The Golden Horses. Sairah of course stayed at home with her grandma.

Prabin making his hillarious speech

A group photo – without the bride and groom though.

A bigger group photo. My camera is so shit, we totally need a new one asap!

They leave to Paris sometime next week for their honeymoon so let’s hope they come back with ‘happy’ news aka more friends for Sairah :D

And totally totally unrelated – I mentioned that Sairah might get chosen for a lil assignment and she was chosen for it! Unfortunately we couldn’t make it coz we just got back from Bangkok, couldn’t take leave and let’s not forget, my baby doesn’t even have a passport to begin with so we had to graciously (and sadly) decline it :(  So note to self: GET YOUR BABY’S PASSPORT SORTED asap.  In the process the husband and I were deciding if she should have her own or have it under my name. I was dead set for under my passport – coz I said it’s a brilliant thing a mother could ever do, incase the father decides to run away with the baby, besides I wouldnt want my baby travelling without her mother, so we’re pretty much stuck for life, sorry about that baby girl :)

I decided to make something Asian the other day. Although Italian food is easy peasy and a dish I LOVE to make, it’s something I don’t think I would be able to make pull off every weekend without the husband missing his spicy food

SO I sourced for a local recipe and found this – spicy chicken in tomato sauce! I was SOLD at spicy

Ingredients were fairly easy to find and most importantly it tasted pretty good! Almost like panang curry according to the husband

Here’s the recipe which I’ve modified to suit two people. You can read the original recipe here. I omitted the candlenuts coz I thought I had some but realized I didn’t when I was about to cook.

1 onion, chopped

3 clove garlic

A handful dried chilies (soaked in hot water and drained) Go slow on the chillies if you don’t have an Indian husband, haha

1-2 inches galangal (lengkuas)

1-2 inches ginger

Chicken breast meat, cut into bite size (yay to no bones)

1 tablespoon turmeric powder

1 cinnamon stick (cut into half)

3 cardamon pods

1 lemon grass, bruised

1-2 tablespoon tomato paste/ketchup – I used both

A small box of coconut milk

Salt and sugar to taste

Method

In a blender, blend onions, garlic, dried chilies, galangal and ginger. Add in a bit of hot water. Set aside in a bowl.

Coat chicken with turmeric powder, salt and black pepper for 15-30 minutes. Then proceed to fry the chicken pieces until brown. Remove and set aside.

In a wok, sauté cinnamon, cardamom pods and lemon grass till fragrant. Add HALF the ground ingredients that you’ve blended first and fry until fragrant. Now add in the tomato paste (I used Hunt’s), some Maggi tomato ketchup, coconut milk followed by the fried chicken.

At this point, the dish is pretty SOUR. And spicy! Add in some sugar and salt and taste as you go along. Play around with the coconut milk, sugar and some water. You can also add in some tomato ketchup to tone the spicy-ness down. If it’s not spicy enough, you may add in the balance of the ground ingredient and once again play around with sugar and coconut milk. Getting it to taste the way you want is not that hard but does require some effort.

Let it simmer until sauce is thick. Once done, you’ll get this

It goes REALLY well with rice thanks to its tinge of spicy-ness. A real winner in the husband’s books

It is recommend to eat this with the tomato rice, see recipe here but because I’m lazy like that, I decided to have it with white rice and with some cabbage and carrots cooked in oyster sauce.

YUMMY I tell you!

I made Mexican!! Aiyayayaya. OR rather what looks like Mexicano, lol

I decided on some chicken fajita – the easy peasy version that I came up with. I noticed I had some of the basic bare essentials lying around in the fridge. Now all I had to get was some tortilla bread and fajita seasoning.

What you need to get the husband to do:

Chop chicken into bite size

Have your tortilla bread and fajita seasoning (easily accessible in Cold Storage though the tortilla was a bit stale, hmpf). You can even use enchalada sauce instead of fajita seasoning or any sort of seasoning. Think black pepper / chili flakes etc.

Some tomato paste or sauce , butter, slice cheese and mozzarella cheese. Let’s not forget ze olive oil too (too shy for a photo)

Now take some time off to take a photo of your baby bear

 Directions.

Season your chicken with fajita mix. Feel free to add in some black pepper or chili flakes to make it spicier if you so wish. If you want to season it with other stuff  go ahead.

In a pan, drizzle some olive oil and butter and cook the onions (I used half of it as I wanted to save the uncooked ones for some crunchy effect) and green pepper until slight brown. Now add in the chicken and cook. You may add in a little bit more butter for taste. Once cooked, put aside.

Now assemble one tortilla bread on a plate, spread on some tomato paste, followed by the chicken + onions + bell pepper, your raw onions, your cheeses (the more the better, yum), more black pepper.

It should look like this:

I attempted to heat it up on the pan but I realized the cheese refused to melt so I put them in the microwave to nuke the cheese, added them tomatoes and wala, beautiful and SO SO  yummy! You can really opt to have another tortilla bread on it or just have one, like a pizza or you could roll it up though it might be tough since since you have all those goodies in it.

Look at all that nuked cheese!

We ate it this way – TWO tortilla bread – not highly recommended when you wanna look lady-like. But I”m married. With a baby. So it’s forgiven.

Sour cream, ah yes, you could have some sour cream in there too. And bake it too. Your call.

I LOVE this recipe, it’s a very easy fuss-free recipe that ensures lunch/dinner in a little under 30 minutes.

The day the husband proposed, I set out three conditions to that man before I even said YES. I told him he would have to take me on a nice holiday at least once a year (and he has been generous so far), he has to stop being such a mama’s boy coz there’s a new skirt in town now and last but not least, so long as I work, I won’t cook dinner on a weekday coz it’s tiring, period.

Ok I kid about no 2. Hmm.  *sheepish smile* And at my conditions too – I obviously gave those conditions AFTER we got married LOL

Anyway, it’s safe to say that we usually have most dinners at my parent’s place on weekdays (my mom loves to cook you see and when you tell her to keep it simple, there will be 4-5 dishes on the table, that to her is simple) . Some times we go out and eat, and sometimes we just opt for something simple at home.

I’ve somewhat made it clear that ME slaving at the kitchen is only a luxury he will get come weekends.  I think sometimes being a working wife/mom has its leverage. If he gets tired from driving to work and being stuck in jam, it’s the same for me. If he has to wake up early morning, it’s the same for me too. If he’s feeling stressed out then errrr, I can be too (though my working life is pretty much stress-free, don’t ask).

So ever since moving in we’ve agreed that weekday dinners will consist of the simple stuff – sandwiches, soups, home-made burgers – stuff that requires no defrosting (god I hate waiting for meats to defrost, I swear we spend most of our lives waiting for crap to defrost! People included), easy and quick assembling and more importantly EASY to clean up.

But then all of a sudden I itched to cook, on a weekday!! So I tried to set out for the simplest of recipes, which requires simple ingredients and quick cooking time.

I decided on three items for last night’s dinner – potato salad, sausages and broccoli in cheese sauce. Basically we had some carbs, meats and vegetable all in one meal  (though the vegetable was drenched in FATTENING stuff)

The healthy greens drenched in my favorite – CHEESE and cream sauce

Forget the brocolli, forgot the sausages but remember the potato salad coz it was bloody REALLY good! Even the hubby said it reminded him of potato salads you get in the US and asked for second helping.

Here’s the recipe for two:

4 medium size potatoes, boiled in water until soft

1 chopped red onion

some chopped spring onions

3 teaspoon mayo

2 boiled eggs

some black pepper, white pepper and salt

Directions:

After removing skin (or you could have some skin if you so wish), chop into cubes and put in bowl with onions and spring onions. Mix them all together. Then add in the black pepper, white pepper and salt to taste. Add in your mayo and taste along. Using a potato masher, mash them buggers alllll together until soft. Then add in the chopped boiled egg (and I removed most of the yolk coz I hate yolk). Taste and if need be, add in more mayo and black pepper. You may throw in a dollop of butter too.

And you’re done! It was relatively easy but of course I can’t comment on preparation time since my mom helped out in chopping the onions, boiling the eggs and potato and handed it to me when we picked Sairah up to take her back (Thursday night duty yo, my parents actually went on a movie date last night, lol).

Here’s my itty baby playing alone in her playpen. She chose to be clingy AFTER dinner time right until bed time!

It still took me about 45 minutes to prepare and cook AND took the hubby sometime to clean everything up! By the time we were done, it was close to 9pm. Hmpf.

Which is why I hate cooking on a working weekday, it eats into what little quality time you have after work. But it sure is a nice change ONCE in a while

And oh yes, her room is now FINALLY complete with this horsey or is it a unicorn?! Was a real bitch to source (horse?) but I DID IT!

And you could wanna cover your face too if you were walking around with a PINK toy!

I cooked!! Like a good Indian wife, I FINALLY managed to freaking cook something in the kitchen after a 6 months of absence.  I’m so thrilled to update my cooking category

I had already narrowed down what I wanted to cook (why of course it’s a pasta dish), with the recipe. I printed it out and after getting home, I realized I left my recipe in my other bag at my parent’s place!

So what’s a girl to do? WING IT of course. And good thing I had somewhat memorized the recipe already *thank you elephant memory*

For someone who used to cook quite a bit, I was a nervous wreck that night. SO nervous that I had a little accident while chopping up those damn onions. Right after I told myself, please don’t cut yourself, please don’t cut yourself, I lost the balance on those onions and the knife sliced through my finger:

Sucks to be me. Damn you onion! But like they say, the show must go on…………..

I decided on making some fettucine with tomato cream sauce. I first tried it out in Bermuda & Onions last year and it was fantastic. Of course the craving came back and I was determined to give into it

I modified the recipe coz you know some recipes can be bland. The recipe called for no meat but I decided to throw in some chicken, coz I’m naughty like that.

For the chicken:

I marinated it with some salt, pepper, basil, paprika and rosemary  and fried it with some onions using olive oil and left it aside.

For the awesome sauce, this is what you need (and the sauce is really awesome *promise*)

Fettucine for two

One chopped onion - careful with the knife.

3-4 clove chopped garlic – also be careful with the knife.

1 big can of tomato sauce (I used Hunt’s tomato sauce coz it’s not sour at all)

Some sugar, salt and black pepper and basil for seasoning.

Butter

1 small packet of parmesan

1 box of cream (about 200-250ml)

A packet of Mozerella cheese (Romano would be better if you can find it but don’t sweat it if you can’t).

Directions:

In a pan, throw in a spoon full of butter and some olive oil, put in the chopped onions and garlic and fry until aromatic. Throw in the whole can of tomato sauce, dilute with a bit of water if need be. Add in some salt, sugar, black pepper and basil and adjust accordingly. In a separate bowl, whisk heavy cream with parmesan cheese. Now dump it into the tomato sauce mixture and stir until thick. Watch it change color. Add in the chicken. Lower down the fire and be generous with the mozarella but not too generous as your sauce might end up gooey. If it is, pour in some pasta water to thin it down. Turn off the fire and stir.  Adjust your seasoning accordingly. Now you may add in the fettucine into the sauce and let it immerse in all the saucey goodness.

This is the end result:

The husband enjoyed it to the point of licking the bowl empty AND the baby wishes she could have some. But no, not yet Baby girl.

The sauce was full of flavor (and of course let’s not forget how fattening it really is) but best of all, it’s so very easy and quick to make – which is what I want since I can’t afford to spend hours in the kitchen with the baby around.

Now, if you regularly cook pasta dishes, you will know that sometimes there is always lots of sauce left behind, esp if you’re cooking for two.

So what’s a girl to do? Throw it away? No – waste not. Let’s invent a funky way of finishing up that damn sauces while saving you ample time AND $ for tomorrow’s dinner

I freezed up the sauce and for last night’s dinner, decided on a FAST, light dinner by re-heating the sauce in the pan. I lined up 4 slices of bread, spread the sauce on it, added in some chopped nuggets (you can do sausages or other meats as well),  added more sauce to it and topped it off with some mozerella cheese (seee, make use of what you already have!) before popping it into our toaster oven for a few minutes.

Mini pizzas.

When done, throw in some basil and black pepper on top and we’re GOOD to go people.

Dinner was YUMMY, (yes I also realized it’s fattening but we live life only once folks), economical, easy and best of all, takes no effort in cleaning up the kitchen.

Enjoy!