Planning the dinner menu on an amost daily basis is challenging. As a norm, I prefer simple recipes that don't result in a dish that takes ages to materialise. Of course, every once in a while, I do get a bit more adventurous and try new stuff that may be slightly more labour-intensive.

Anyway, this is what our typical dinner spread would look like.
I made soya drink from scratch lately and decided to turn the soya bean grindings into mock meat for loh bak. It worked out pretty alright, abit mushy inside, but otherwise the taste was there. The chicken stock powder really helped!
This was loh bak made from a mixture of real minced meat and water chestnuts, as taught by hubby's mom.
My first attempt at ma pou tofu with loads of Szechuan peppercorn and minced meat. I think I should have used a softer type of tofu, but taste-wise, this was pretty close to the ma pou tofu that I've eaten in restaurants.
Lotus root and groundnut soup which hubby loves.
Mango salad which hubby stayed away from because it was too vinegarish.
The usual greens.
Szechuan stir fried french beans with minced meat. Yummy!
Kangkung belacan, we are really learning to be good at this dish!
Assam pedas fish curry. Reminiscent of assam laksa because I used alot of daun kesum.
Mom bought us this new convection oven last Christmas and we have been putting it to good use, especially for broiling chicken. It's excellent; the fats drip off, the chicken is all crispy on the outside, while remaining all tender and juicy inside.
Ok this chicken may look good, but it was really our first bbq disaster. We smoked the chicken leg for a couple of hours in the bbq pit and it ended up tasting like charcoal. I mean, literally, I felt like I was breathing fire when I had my first bite. It had a very tart, acrid aftertaste. We tossed it. No more smoking food for us.
My latest experiment was potato and meat patties, marinated with all the Indian spices. Tasted almost like vadai.
Stir fried ginger and spring onions with pork slices. Hearthy and traditional.Burgers!




We sometimes have one-dish meals too.....vegetable noodle soup with pork chop and fried egg.





Hubby liked the chilli paste with preserved beans which came with his noodles. I, however, found the taste kinda weird.
Stir fried crunchy french beans (RM12.00), with bits of salty "choy poh" and minced meat goodness. We are simply addicted to this dish.



Another firm favourite was the savoury seared french beans (RM12.80) which had delicious tiny morsels of mui choy and minced meat.
Belly pork with Lao Gan Ma (RM29.80) was somewhat pricey and a tad fatty for my liking. It had a strong 5-spice powder taste.
The ultimate dish of the night was undoubtedly the stir fried chicken with Szechuan peppercorns (RM25.80). Excellent bite-sized bits of deep fried, marinated, boneless chicken that just exploded in the mouth with savoury, salty, Szechuan peppercorn flavour. This dish was insanely good.