Home Cooking

I find myself cooking alot these days to decompress after a busy day at work. It is strangely soothing to stop thinking about the next report and presentation to prepare for, and just be doing elemental things like chopping vegetables and stir fying meat. Here's a compilation of some of the stuff I've been dishing up lately.

I like simple green vegetable dishes like choy sum.

And ladies' fingers with caramelised onions and garlic....very tasty.

Fried eggs with spicy birds eye chillies in soy sauce.

Kung pao chicken. My first attempt.... and it proved a success!

Tamarind chicken....hubby liked this dish.

Since it's the mango season, we cut and froze a tonne of mangoes....

...and we made mango lassi : frozen mango, yoghurt, honey, brown sugar, blended to a thick paste...delicious, buttery, sweet, fragrant. The perfect dessert!

Tesco Wins The 5-Bam Award

Most women I know like shopping at malls for clothes, shoes, handbags and other branded goods. Me? Yawn. Give me groceries and Tesco any day. Fresh fruits, vegetables, drinks, poultry, meat, seafood, cat food, toiletries top my list the way an LV handbag never would. A Tang's loyalty card is wasted on me, but I cherish my Tesco Clubcard the way I would my credit card. Hubby thinks I'm strange that way....but hey, James Dean royal rebel, remember?

I have a rabid obsession with Tesco. I know there's Carrefour and Giant as well, but after all my years of analysing all 3 hypermarkets' price pattern, Tesco has remained a firm favourite. In general,  Carrefour has the cheapest eggs and dairy products, but they stop being competitive in the fresh produce section (especially the greens). Tesco offers the best price and quality when it comes to fruits and especially vegetables. What I like most is that Tesco regularly clears its stock (I think on a daily basis) by putting their old stock in the "Reduced for Clearance" section....where one can often find gems that are still in perfectly good condition. The other hypermarkets do not regularly practice this, which makes me kinda wonder what they do with their old stock (throw?). Of the 3, Giant is the most expensive...in general. Of course, once in a while, each chain will have promotions for certain items that are the lowest of the low in terms of pricing, but I'm talking overall price, freshness, ambiance and quality comparison here. Tesco wins.

Sign me up as a Tesco life member. Truly. I monitor weekly prices of goods/food/whatever and hubby takes me to Tesco for me to destress after a long week's battle. I literally decompress at Tesco....walking into Tesco's beckoning doors is a weekly ritual and an experience that to me, is akin to a kid walking into Disneyland. The weight lifts off my shoulders, the mood lightens, the excitement builds. It never gets old. I am Tesco's biggest fan. If I didn't work where I'm working now, I'd probably be working for Tesco as their Chief of Procurement (ahhh what a dream)....LOL!

I trawl Tesco's website at the end of every week, to get the latest promos to feed my "aunty" instincts. ( I do not understand why Giant and Carrefour do not religiously update their websites on a weekly basis - such a waste of a perfectly good advertising resource!). I wish that Tesco would send their weekly fliers to my residence, unfortunately they don't. So website it is, and the weekly newspaper adverts of course. Last Friday, the website advertised  frozen pizza at RM6.90/box...usual price is probably around RM10.00 I'm guessing (well Jaya Jusco sells their pizza at RM10.00/box, same size). Had to buy! Had to buy!

So I drove to the nearest Tesco after work and had a good old time examining all the latest products. They were introducing a new line of in-house brands (apart from the existing Tesco Choice and Tesco Value), and many of the goods and food items were being sold at introductory prices.  

Finally got to the frozen foods aisles, and found that they had many varieties of Tesco Choice pizza going for RM6.90. There was Hawaiian Chicken, and some other chicken-related flavours. I took a box of Four Cheese Pizza (350g) and put it in my cart.

I took 4 boxes of Beef Pepperoni Pizza (RM6.90 for 400g), and into my cart they went.

This was how the Four Cheese Pizza turned out, after we added even more cheese (mozarella, parmesan, cheddar) and ham toppings at home!

In my opinion, the Beef Pepperoni Pizza tasted better than the Four Cheese Pizza because it had more tomato gravy on it. No regrets here! Great value for money.

So yeah, Tesco is my fix. And I was overjoyed when I recently found out that they were in the midst of building a Tesco in Old Klang Road (diagonally opposite the main wet market).....oh so near to our crib. Construction is underway and it is scheduled to be completed in 2011, by which then it will take us all of 5 minutes to drive to Tesco. Yay! Tesco rules! 

Homemade Roast Chicken with Baby Potatoes, Carrots and Onions in Creamy Gravy

Chicken was going cheap at Tesco last Friday (RM3.99/kg), so I bought an entire chook for only RM6.90. I decided on the spot not to have the butcher cut it up into pieces since it was a nice, plump, symmetrical chicken.

We marinated the chicken overnight with lots of herbs and spices : salt, pepper, paprika, rosemary, oregano, bay leaf, chicken stock powder, ginger powder, lots of fresh garlic and butter (stuffed under the skin and in the chicken cavity), and a whole orange up its behind. We were judicious with the western herbs as hubby does not quite fancy their strong taste (I call it the Christmas tree taste). Together with a bunch of baby potatoes, cut carrots and onions, we roasted the chicken in the oven at 250 degree Celcius, covered in foil for about 1 and 1/2 hours, before putting it in the broiler to brown. It's important to cook the chicken slowly in the oven, covered in foil so that it becomes really tender and yet still remaining juicy inside. Uncover the foil only when it is cooked and you're ready to brown it. We transferred the cooked chook from the oven into a broiler to brown the skin.   

For the gravy, we kinda cheated and used the Lobos Chicken Gravy Mix that we bought from Thailand. It's creamy and very umami-ish, similar to the sauce you get on KFC's mashed potatoes.

We took the roasted vegetables and stir fried them with the Lobos Chicken Gravy Mix and added evaporated milk to make it thicker.

Our roasted chicken dinner with an orangey twang. The entire roast chicken lasted us 2 meals. Delish!

Pizza Weekend And "Lipodermophobia"

Hubby fancies himself a baker. Myself, not so much. Not unlike Mr Adrian Monk and his phobia for dirt, my personal nemesis is oil (lipodermophobia?). Dirt and dust do not annoy me that much......but oh! the feel of oil on my skin just plain drives me nuts...the idea of sticking my hands into buttery dough makes me want to run for the disinfectant and dettol my entire arm. Yes, oil is my weakness. I am OCD about keeping utensils, appliances, tables and countertops (and myself, of course!) free of all traces of oil. I have a cupboard full of detergents, all manner of cleaning agents and toiletries, so as to be able to liberally use them in my perpetual war against lipids.

Hubby does not always understand this, and I've often found him guilty of "transference"....in my CSI zoom-into-the-micro-details-camera mode, I've often spotted him either dripping oil down the sides of containers/bowls which then pools on the table/drips on the floor........or he opens the fridge door with oily hands in which case the oil transfers to my hands the next time I open the fridge door and I'd have to disinfect the fridge handle and my hands. Yes, to me, oil is like an "infection" to be tracked down and contained.

And so I don't bake. And when I cook, it involves a whole lot of hand-washing for every spatter of oil that gets on my hands/arms. No COR (cooking oil residue) please!

So I left hubby in the kitchen to do the baking, kneading and spreading of shortening all over the kitchen counter in relative peace. At the back of my mind, I knew that this day would end with a thorough disinfecting of the entire kitchen counter. But, before that, a scrumptious meal!

From the pizza flour, hubby made the yeasty dough peppered with oregano flakes.

We added grilled capsicum and fresh tomatoes.

For meat, we liked the smoked beef sausages from Jaya Jusco, and also some chicken meatloaf and pork bacon.

Some fresh brown mushrooms and a sprinkling of onions for a more piquant pizza.

We went crazy on the cheese, 3 types : Smoked BBQ Cheddar, Mozarella and Parmesan. This brand of Parmesan cheese (Millel) did not smell pungent like the Parmesan we've smelled/tasted in the past. I was at first hesitant to purchase it, but since it was a bargain at Tesco (RM16.00 instead of its usual RM31.00 - just because the Parmesan block was a bit cracked), we decided to give it a try. No smell of vomitus, thank god! It was surprisingly pretty good!

We enjoyed the fruits of hubby's labour (I helped with the assembly of the pizza!)......two very cheesy, smoky and meaty pizzas. Absolutely delicious! Excellent!

If hubby can bake, so can you (but not I)!

Epilogue: And then there was the kitchen clean-up.

4-bams for hubby!

Eating At Home

Sunday night's grub was simple and somewhat traditional....but oh so satiating!

We had bean sauce tofu  with fresh brown button mushrooms which hubby cooked beautifully without breaking up the soft, delicate tofu too much. We topped it with a generous sprinkle of scallions.

We had some ladies fingers left in the fridge so a simple stir fry using the savoury Maxchup stir-fry sauce (yellow bottle)  we bought from Thailand was really the simplest thing to do.

I recently bought a whole bag of turmeric roots from Tesco at reduced price (RM1.50 for 656g!) and was trying to figure out how to use them. Maybe I'll plant a few turmeric roots and see if they grow. In the kitchen, however, we decided to try our hand at cooking Nyonya Acar Fish using senangin fish, following one of the Nyonya recipe books that I've religiously collected. This sweet and sour (and mildly spicy since we took the liberty of  adding bird's eye chillies)  dish is a hit....fried fish bathed in a vinegary oil infused with a strong aroma of turmeric, garlic and ginger! Yummy!

Mom's Cooking

After our visit to Lemon Tree Restaurant, hubby's mom made her first attempt at cooking crabs.

Live crabs in the kitchen sink. Kinda pitied them....poor little fellas all unaware that they were about to become lunch! Mom bought these female roe-crabs from the market at RM20.00/kg. According to her, the male meat crabs cost only half that price (i.e., RM10.00/kg). So cheap!

Mom did the crabs in salted-egg style, with birds' eye chilies and curry leaves. Excellent stuff, I think I must have eaten the bulk of it.....very slowly. Nobody else seemed to have the patience to sit at the table for hours, happily sucking on spindly legs and claws.

She also steamed a garoupa fish. The pork stock powder we bought from Bangkok (can't find it in Malaysia) really adds a kick to the gravy.

I've tried cooking this deceptively simple dish of soya sauce-sesame oil pork (chien bak) many times, and have never gotten it to taste like how hubby's mom cooks it. Wonder what's her secret?

Steamed eggs with minced meat at the bottom.

Greens.

Yummm, kerabu salad!

Eating at home

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.

Plain fried tofu, eaten with lotsa HP sauce is how I like it.

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.

Curry chicken and eggs.

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.

Broiled chicken leg on a bed of salad.

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.

Pork chops in sweet and sour sauce, our attempt at pai kwat wong, which turned out really well, actually.

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

Burgers!