Happy New Year 2009

A very Happy and Healthy New Year 

to all my blogger friends and all my blog readers!!!

Time flies and today is the first day of year 2009 . Every year I will be making a list of new year resolutions but I have to admit here that I can NEVER keep to them :p but this year I have added two new items....one - to continue to bake and improve my baking techniques and two - to continue to blog and improve my photography.  Hopefully , I will be able to keep these two and fulfill them 100% :))))).

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and everyone of you who has been continuously encouraging me and supporting me through out this one year of my blogging. Another twenty days from now is Elinluv's Tidbits Corner  1st year anniversary. I have truly enjoyed my this one year of blogging and hope to blog on . Sharing out tested recipes is indeed a joy and nothing gives me more pleasure than this.  :0 :0 :)))

Have a good day and have fun today..the beginning of a new year!!!!

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Daddy's Special Pot Roast

Happy Holidays to all my friends , my blogger friends and my blog readers..hmmm sounded long winded a bit though but I know for sure I am having a wonderful year end long holidays with my Piggies ^ *

I did not cook much during this holiday season coz most of the time we ate out or we were invited to eat together with friends….a get together sort of parties :)

I have to post up Daddy’s special dish for us on Christmas Eve dinner…long overdue though ^ * This dish is specially prepared for us…heehee he loves to cook western for us. Adapted from the Pot Roast recipe. He used lamb shoulders instead of beef chucks. While it was cooking in the pot, the aromatic smell from the mixed herbs infused into the pieces of lamb shoulder was really mouthwatering. He stewed it till the lamb shoulders was tender and the gravy absorbed into the carrots and big onions. It was a dish that my Piggies looked forward to. Haha, I wish there were many Christmases in a year (“,)

Thumbs up for this wonderful dish that Daddy took the time to show off his skills in cooking for his Piggies. When we were courting , how come he never cook this dish for me :( ….juz kidding. Thanks Daddy for such a wonderful dish! New Year Eve’s dinner …..what are you cooking for us???

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Christmas Greetings To All ^ ^

Wishing all My Friends and Readers 

"  Merry Christmas n  A Happy New Year  "

I had a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner prepared by Daddy and I heart his cooking . Really, even our Piggies say he cooks better than me ....* Daddy, you can take over my role in the kitchen starting 1st January 2009.  I officially hand in my resignation as from today.....** LOL

Seriously, he can cook and for most festive dinners he will want to showoff and cook something delicious for us all and we love festive seasons coz we get to discover his talent each time he takes to the kitchen. Will post up the photo of the dish when I have uploaded it...stay tuned!

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Colorful Glutinous Rice Balls

Yesterday was the day the Chinese celebrated the winter solstice . In ancient times, the Chinese people celebrated the Winter Solstice Festival (Dong Zhi) by visiting relatives and friends, in much the same way as the Chinese Lunar New Year. There is customary feasting, and businesses will close up for the day. Glutinous floor balls known as "tang yuan" are consumed as a symbol of family unity and harmony on this day .

I took the opportunity to teach my two Piggies how to make these colorful glutinous rice balls aka ‘ tong yuen ’ in Cantonese. We love to eat these colorful balls ( the authentic one is the one without any fillings ). Now they have come out with peanut and red bean paste fillings. People are more adventurous and creative nowadays :) Next time I will try durians fillings :))))

I taught them the plain one or rather the authentic one which my mom taught me when I was young. And here are the colorful balls they managed to produce after they pinch my selection of food colors from my pantry meant for making sugar icing :)

Now, my Piggies are good at making them…and had lots of fun making them , reading from their expressions , I suppose it reminded them of their younger days during playtime…similar to PLAYDOH :p Guess what ? And all the colors are Barney colors !!! ^ *

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Tofu Pizza

Tofu is the family’s favourite food . I know there are many ways of preparing tofu but I have never come across tofu pizza till a foodbuzz friend introduced me to try this out. Me being the adventurous one will of course want to try it out :) and this is the outcome of the dish. A fusion of the east and west. The silky texture of the tofu blends well with the melted cheese and the fragrant of the capsicum added extra flavor to the tofu . My Piggies loved it and I loved it too ! Now I know that tofu can be baked and the texture still remains silky and soft despite being in the oven for 20 mins.

You can have any vegetables of your choice for the topping and I chose egg plant, green capsicum , crabstick filaments , oyster mushroom and cherry honey tomatoes.

Knowing Piggy Gal’s love for cheese, I added extra cheese for her :)

I have to thank Robert Gilles for sharing this wonderful tofu pizza recipe with me . Simply delish! A healthy food indeed.

This is the comment Robert wrote sharing the tofu pizza recipe at the same time :p

Dear Elin!
Greetings!
You are becoming Japanese!
One simple recipe for tofu:
Put one slab on a a piece of baking paper on the oven plate. Cover it with hot tomato/ketchup sauce, some very finely cut vegetables and covr the lot with shredded cheese:
Tofu pizza for vegetarians!
Cheers,
Robert-Gilles

These are the ingredients I used for my Tofu Pizza

Ingredients:

1 slab of silky tofu

salt to taste

tomato paste,

1 tablespoon olive oil

My choice of vegetables

1/2 capsicum- cut finely

1/2 aubergine - cut finely

a few oyster mushrooms - cut finely

crabstick filament - shredded

a few cherry honey tomato - cut into slices

lots of shredded cheese ( I use mozzarella )

dry oregano * optional

Enjoy!

Have a nice weekend :)

*** I am most happy when my Piggies are back for the weekend***

Cheese And Smoked Streaky Bacon Twists

At last, I am back to baking again and this time round, I tried out this recipe from dailydelicious , Cheese & Salami Twists. I have no salami available in the fridge so I substituted it with smoked streaky bacon, chopped them up and lightly fry them in a non-stick pan to get the aroma of fried bacon..hmmm really mouth watering while frying this chopped bacon. 

As usual, her Cheese & Salami Twists is another award winning recipe :) really , it turned out really soft and light and the aroma of smoked bacon really can get me intoxicated. Especially while it was being baked in the oven. A keeper for sure and I will definitely bake this again. Haha, please do not compare mine with hers...my handiwork is truly horrible..I can't even get a good twist...I guess the saying goes again for this...practice makes perfect. I must confess, my skill in twisting it, despite following her step by step demo , was simply horrendous...but I promise you I will practice till I have mastered the art  in  twisting it to perfection :)))) Meanwhile, just drool as if you are looking at a master piece.  Okay, I know, I am not doing justice to dailydelicious. Hers was simply marvelous..she can turn a piece of dough into something marvelous and delicious!!!

The texture of the bun is soft and light...the smoked streaky bacon and mozzarella cheese blends well and the end result, a bun you will not forget and you will hunger for more after taking the first bite.

Thanks, Pook for sharing yet another wonderful bun recipe. I love it and I am sure my Piggies will love it too. At the time of baking this wonderful bun, my Piggies  were away in college but I will make again for them when they come back for their Christmas Holidays!

Hot Sweet Sour Crabs

Lately , we have been consuming in too much seafood :( not good for health especially for Daddy and myself….what to do , we are Piggies all right (“,) But one consoling factor is , whatever we eat, we eat in moderation ^ * .

I prefer mud crabs to blue flower crabs…their meat are sweeter and tastier though their shells are harder compared to blue flower crabs. I don’t mind how they are being cooked, they taste good in anyway. At times, I just steamed them and eat with dipping sauce , pounded garlic with fresh red chilli , light soy sauce and some lime juice would make a perfect dipping sauce for the steamed crabs. At times , I will cook them in hot sweet sour sauce …Piggy gal’s favourite dish :)

Today, I am going to share with you , my family’s favourite crab dish…hot sweet sour crab. Hope you will like this dish too :)

Ingredients:

1 kg mud crabs – cleaned and cut into halves

(A)
1 tbsp ground dry chilli paste
3 tbsp sweet sour plum sauce
1.5 tbsp fermented soybean / *tau cheong*
5 pips of garlic – chopped finely

2 tbsp of cooking oil

1 egg
2 tbsp of cut spring onions
Salt to taste
a pinch of fine sugar * optional

Method:

Heat up the oil in a wok, add in the ingredients A and stir fry till fragrant. Add in the crabs and stir fry till the crabs are coated with the ingredients A. Add in a cup of water and cover with the wok cover and cooked under big flame and when the crabs has turned red and cooked thru, lower the flame ,add salt to taste add in the egg and off the fire. Do not overcook the egg or the egg will curdles . Add in the cut spring onions and dish up. Serve hot.

* Note: the egg is for thickening the gravy and add oomph to the gravy.

Enjoy!

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Dry Curry Shrimps

I have not been blogging for the past one week due to attending some family matters and now I am back again to post up some of my lastest cooking and baking adventures :)

Recently , I learned to cook this dry curry shrimps from a friend. She gave pointers which were valuable in cooking this curry dish. :) It was one fantastic dish and I managed to cook it to the right consistency and the taste was extremely delicious… the combination of the curry paste with added curry leaves, lemongrass , pounded shallots and last but not least the most important ingredient, the coconut milk, has given the curry a uniqueness only the tongue can describe.

A favourite dish of Daddy and Piggies….but I won’t allow Daddy to take more than 5 shrimps at a time…I counted the shrimp heads on his plate :p :)))) I have to control his diet or he can finish the whole dish at one go and he is pestering me to cook this dish again!

Dry Curry Shrimps

Ingredients:

½ kg medium sized shrimps – cleaned it and leave the shell on

½ cup of fresh curry paste – from the wet market

½ cup of pounded shallots

a few sprigs of curry leaves

2 stalks of lemongrass – lightly crushed

1 cup coconut milk

¼ cup oil

Method:

Heat up oil in a wok, add in all the ingredients above except the coconut milk and the shrimps. Continue to stir fry the ingredients under small flame till the oil separates and surfaces. Slowly add in the coconut milk and keep stirring and cook till the fragrance of the curry paste has been released. Add in the shrimps and cook till the gravy has thickened and the shrimps is coated with the curry paste. Dish up and serve hot with rice.

Note: This dry curry shrimps goes well with yellow glutinous rice too.

Enjoy!