28 Aug 11 (Sun) - Cream Sauce Pasta with White Fish and Shirmp Wonton Noodle Soup

Headed out as early as 4.45am yesterday morning to do duties all the way till 9.30pm before allowed to go home. Was really tired today and so didn't even want to go out for meals today hence my breakfast was some snacks which I took from the place where I did my duties. Dug around my fridge and found stuff like leftover cabbage, leftover white wine, a box of NTUC shrimp wonton, white fish, creamy pasta sauce and so on. So decided to use whatever ingredients I could find to cook today's lunch and dinner.

Cut the cabbage into thin strips and boiled a pot of water to make chicken stock using a piece of chicken cube. Then added the shrimp wonton and cabbage into the pot to cook and then set aside. After that, cooked some angel hair and then poached the white fish with white wine, water, salt and pepper. Finally heated up some creamy pasta sauce with chili padi and then poured over the angel hair and white fish. As I had some cooked angel hair leftover and so ate those with the shrimp wonton and cabbage soup.

Cream Sauce Pasta with White Fish Shirmp Wonton Noodle Soup

Cream Sauce Pasta with White Fish - close up Shirmp Wonton Noodle Soup - close up

22 Aug 11 (Mon) - Mango Flavour Yogurt with Tapioca Pudding

Made the mango flavour yogurt yesterday evening and then went on to cook the leftover DIY tapioca flour. Boiled some water with sugar and then added the flour. Stirred till thicken before steaming it for another 30 minutes. Cooled it before putting it into the fridge. Checked the yogurt this morning and then put the container into the chiller for the day.

Came back from work, scooped some pudding into a bowl and added some mango yogurt to go with it. Took some photos before eating. The sweetness of the pudding complimented the sourness of the yogurt. Talk about creative eh?

Mango Flavour Yogurt

Tapioca Pudding

Mango Flavour Yogurt with Tapioca Pudding

20 Aug 11 (Sat) - Red Ruby Dessert [Thap Thim Krawp] (红宝石甜品)

Had some pearl sago left previously but didn't want to do the usual sago dessert so searched for new recipe. Found one on a thai dessert called red ruby dessert that make use of tapioca flour, water chestnuts and coconut milk. And since pearl sago is actually made from tapioca so decided to just grind the pearl sago into powder using a food processor and use it as a replacement to tapioca flour. The process of converting the pearl sago to powder form wasn't easy. Took me one over hours and I didn't manage to get it to be as fine as flour.

Didn't know the exact amount of the DIY tapioca flour and so couldn't estimate the amount of water chestnuts to use accurately. Started with just five water chestnuts but then later realised that I could add more and so added a couple more and then another few till I lost count. I could have used about 10 to 12 water chestnuts in the end.

As I was in the process of coating the water chestnuts with the tapioca flour, I realised that it is very important to get them coated in the first round coz the subsequent rounds would make the flour lumpy and difficult to stick to the water chestnuts. After coating all of the water chestnuts with tapioca flour, I set a pot of water to boil and then put the coated water chestnuts into the boiling water. Scooped them out after they floated and put them into a bowl of cold water to cool.

Some of the coating came off and left the water chestnuts exposed. Then went on to make some sugar syrup and added it to the coconut milk. Poured in the cooked water chestnuts, mixed them well and put into the fridge to chill. My sis said it was rather good while my BIL and his dad shared the rest of the dessert after their dinner. I, on the other hand, felt that the rubies were not as chewy as those sold in the dessert stalls.

Uncook coated water chestnuts Red ruby dessert

Cooked water chestnuts Red ruby dessert - close up

9 Aug 11 (Tue - National Day) - Tripe Funghi Cream Sauce Pasta

Bought a box of premium mix mushrooms, a bottle of creamy pasta sauce and a packet of angel hair last week and so today cooked the triple funghi cream sauce pasta. Didn't follow any particular recipe and all measurements were to my own estimations. Washed and cut the mushrooms, poured some oil into the pan and added the mushrooms to stir-fry for a minute. Then added the cream sauce and some white wine and let it simmer while I cooked the angel hair in another pot till al dente. Arranged the cooked angel hair on plates, pour the cream sauce over and arranged the mushrooms before taking some photos of my creation.

Premium Mix Mushrooms

Creamy Pasta Sauce and Angel Hair

Triple Funghi Cream Sauce Pasta

7 Aug 11 (Sun) - Okonomiyaki Omelette, Steamed Banana Milk Custard (炖香蕉奶) and Steamed Almond Soya Bean Milk Custard (炖杏仁豆奶)

Saw a recipe on okonomiyaki omelette on Today papers dated 28 July so decided to try it out this weekend. Followed the recipe closely but replaced the prawns with seafood sticks, omitted the dashino-moto coz I didn't want to buy it and used light soya sauce instead. The recipe said the portion serves two but it turned out to be about an inch thick and of the size of a personal pan pizza. In my opinion, the portion can actually serve three easily or four. So next time if I want to cook this dish again, I better cut down everything to half. Tasted the omelette and was rather good. Since I had some chili powder and mayonnaise so added them to the omelette and it tasted even better.

Udon and Egg Tofu Okonomiyaki Omelette

Tonkatsu Sauce and Seaweed & Bonito Flakes Okonomiyaki Omelette - close up

Ingredients (serve two):
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp chopped garlic
5 seafood sticks, cut into 1cm slices
8 chinese cabbage leaves, thinly sliced
200g udon
1tbsp light soya sauce
1 tube egg tofu, cut into large pieces
5 eggs
2 tbsp tonkatsu sauce
2 tbsp seaweed and bonito flakes
chili powder
mayonnaise

Method:
1.  Heat oil and garlic in a 23cm wide, non-stick pan over medium-high heat till oil shimmer slightly
2.  Add seafood sticks and cabbage and stir-fry for a minute
3.  Add udon and light soya sauce and stir
4.  Add egg tofu, stir gently till it is evenly distributed
5.  Beat eggs in a bowl and pour into the pan
6.  Reduce heat to medium-low and allow the eggs to cook through for about 8mins
7.  Once eggs are cooked and the edges are browned, carefully remove omelette to a plate
8.  Drizzle tonkatsu sauce, sprinkle chili powder, seaweed and bonito flakes over and top with some mayonnaise

After cooking the okonomiyaki omelette, I went on to do the steamed banana milk custard (炖香蕉奶)and the steamed almond soya bean milk custard (炖杏仁豆奶) using the recipe on the steam milk custard. The only difference was that I didn't add sugar for today's milk custards since the milk was flavoured and sweetened.

Almond Soya Bean Milk and Banana Milk

Steamed Almond Soya Bean Milk (炖杏仁豆奶)

Steamed Banana Milk (炖香蕉奶)

Ingredients:

2 egg whites

140ml banana milk

140ml almond soya bean milk

Method:

1. Warm the milk in the microwave but do not boil them

2. Whisk the egg whites in two separate bowl each

3. Add each egg white to the different bowls of warm milk and mix well

4. Strain the mixture to two other bowls

5. Cover the bowls with foil

6. Steam them for 12mins in a pot with a lid on using medium-high heat
7. Lift the lid up a bit to release some steam every 4mins
8. Off the heat after 12mins and leave them in the pot for another 3mins

9. Serve hot or chilled

6 Aug 11 (Sat) - Song Pyeon

Went to Giant last Wednesday to get the ingredients I need for tomorrow's udon pancake since I was in Vivo City to go check out the long-sleeve t-shirt at Uniqlo. Ended up buying more stuff than I had intended to and one of them was the glutinous rice flour. So decided to attempt to cook song pyeon again today. Only used 100g of the glutinous rice flour, managed to get the dough formed, wrapped the peanut fillings and carefully moulded it into the half-moon shape. The amount of ingredients yielded about 10 song pyeon.

There were some pandan leaves in the fridge and since I didn't have pine leaves so used pandan leaves instead. Lined the plate with pandan leaves strips, placed the song pyeon onto them and put the plate into the steamer after the water was boiling. Checked the song pyeon after 10 minutes and they looked cooked but I thought another five minutes wouldn't hurt in case the center wasn't cooked. Turned out that I was terribly wrong.

When I off the fire after the 15 minutes was up, the song pyeon was already at the state of melting. Quickly transferred them to the bowl of water with some olive oil that I had prepared earlier. Had difficulty getting them off the plate coz they were stuck so in the end, my carefully shaped song pyeon all went out of shape. Oh well... people always said "Failure is the Mother of all Success" so I guess I just need to try again another time.

Song Pyeon

Song Pyeon - close up

Ingredients (Makes 10):

100g glutinous rice flour

6 tsp sugar

a pinch of salt

1/2 bowl boiling water

1/2 bowl peanut powder

Method:

1.  Mix the peanut powder with 3 tsp sugar and set aside
2.  Dissolve 3 tsp sugar and a pinch of salt in boiling water
3.  Add the solution bit by bit to the flour and combine them with hands
4.  Knead the mixture to form a dough
5.  Tear out some dough and roll it between the palms to make rice balls
6.  Press the thumb in the centre of the ball to make it shape like a cup
7.  Fill the cup with the peanut mixture
8.  Seal it using thumb and index finger to form a half-moon shape
9.  Wash a few pandan leaves, tear them to thin strips and line the plate
10.  Place the song pyeon over the pandan leaves on the plate
11.  Fill a pot with water and when the water boils, put the plate of song pyeon in to steam
12.  Prepare a bowl of water with a bit of olive oil
13.  Off the fire after 10mins, transfer the cooked song pyeon into the bowl of water
14.  Take them out after a couple of minutes and arrange onto a plate