Fresh Bay Scallops Steamed In Simplicity Is Best !

I finally found a great place where I can get fresh and frozen seafood...salmon, cod fish , oyster , and many more. Expensive but very fresh and I don't mind paying for something good though pricey a bit. I saw some shucked bay scallops, picked up a packet and the mind was already planning what to do with them. Jo and myself love any form of seafood and needless to say, after savoring those from Oyster King @The Gardens, we still crave for fresh oysters and she was beaming happily when I showed her what I bought from the seafood shop. I bought some fresh oysters too to make oyster omelette / 'Or Chien' but it turned out scrambled egg 'Or Chien ' so I am not showing you that until I have master the art of making 'Or Chien ' :p

Back to these bay scallops, it was so fresh in taste and the sweetness is awesome , even though it was frozen when I bought them from the shop. I just simply steamed them in soup spoons for 3 minutes with chinese wine and topped it with fried garlic oil , chopped parsley and chilli.  I will let my pictures tell how great this preparation was :p

Stir Fry Homemade Silky Egg Tofu With Veggie

Being able to make my own egg tofu is a sheer joy that money cannot buy and something I am proud to present to my family and friends. Eventhough I have make this many times, but each times it still brings joy and happiness to me...something I cannot describe to you in words :)

 It is  much healthier without the preservative in them.  I made the egg tofu in the early morning ( 6.00am) and managed to cook this dish in 30 minutes . After which I have to leave for work at 7.30 am . It takes only 13 minutes to make the egg tofu.  A very simple to make egg tofu that I am sure all of you will be delighted to learn or most of you already knows how to make your own egg tofu :)))  Read on to learn how to make your own healthy tofu for your family :)  You must be wondering why I cooked this so early in the morning and on a working day too....I prepared this for a very dear and close friend of the family , Miss M . Hope she loves this dish for her lunch and hoping she will request for more :p  I love to make people happy with the food I cook. There is a saying -  " if you put love into something you do, it will turn out great " and for this egg tofu...I have put in lots of love :)))

Stir Fry Wild Fern Shoots With Shrimp Paste

Wild Fern Shoots or what the malays called them Pucuk Paku Pakis were eaten only by the malays , I remembered my Mom told me that the chinese doesn't know how to eat them  during her time :)  But now it has become a delicacy veggie dish among the chinese and even some restaurants are having them as one of the dishes served. Normally served as Stir Fry Wild Fern Shoots With Shrimp Paste, a simple stir fry but  appetizing at the same time.

Sushi -Zen @ The Gardens

Continuation from the previous  post Oyster King @ The Gardens......

After a quick ' high tea' at Oyster King, we walked around Cold Storage @ The Gardens to burn off some calories so that we can stomach more food later . We went up to look for handbags and Jo bought a nice leather bag for herself , so after the purchase , we went for another round of food.....yesss  sushi as we still have some space for Japanese food :p  See the happy expression on Miss Piggy's face while waiting for the food to arrive.  Happy also because she bought hereself a nice elegant leather handbag :)  Read on to see what we ate at Sushi-Zen @ The Gardens.

Nothing Beats Having Steamboat/Hotpot At Home :)

Really, nothing beats having steamboat at home ! Daddy is the first to vouch for it :)  Eat in comfort and can have our favourite meatballs, fishballs, seafood and veggies for home steamboat or hotpot.  Daddy will normally purchase those beef meatballs and stuffed tofu and bitter gourd from the famous shop in Ipoh. And I will sneak in my salmon fillets and mussels and lots of enoki and veggies  :p 

Actually Jo missed home prepared steamboat and she being a slow eater, she prefers to eat in rather than paying for buffet steamboat and not having our favourite beef balls , thus I am going to share with you what we had for our home prepared steamboat for the 3 of us :))) and of course, the wicked Momsie will not let Josh off so easily....I want him to see what he missed for not coming back  !  Let him drool and salivates for those beefballs and stuffed bitter gourd are his favourites :p

Oyster King @ The Gardens

Jo was very hungry by the time we finished our tasks  and asked to have our  'high-tea'  at Oyster King @ The Gardens  . Jo and myself were in KL last Monday to collect some documents from her college . We were there on a day trip and we have 3 hours left before we took the 6pm train back to Ipoh  so we took the KTM train to Mid Valley from Sentral   Piggy Jo introduced me to this Oyster King in The Gardens food court which serve large , succulent fresh oysters....OMG...I love their baked garlic oysters and their Malacca Style  Fried Oyster Clams / 'Or Chien ' . I leave it to your imagine...how the hungry Piggies tucked in these mouth-watering fresh oysters cooked in different style...........my photos here will surely make you salivate and  have you run to Oyster King for a taste of their succulent fresh oyster baked with garlic oil :p

Fruits de la mer Pasta In Papilotte

Fruits de la mer in french means seafood  ,a new word from Piggy Jo .  I picked the name Fruits de la mer instead of seafood  :p  French lesson no 1 . She ate something like this in Paris but said mine was better :p Kidding ??? And here I was , tellling her that I want to fly over to Europe one day and try all the french and italian food !!! Of course she was kidding...just wanna butter me up or no food for her * wink , wink . Okay , back to this pasta dish.  I saw this beautiful recipe from Angie Tee's blog - Seasalt With Food and I am sure many of you would have seen this recipe on her blog - Seafood Pasta In Paper Bag . I am crazy with cooking food in papilotte for it enhance and seal in the aroma and flavors and what more with the leftover of steamed crabs - thus Angie Tee and her seafood pasta comes to mind .........

Steamed Mud Crab With Roe In Chinese Wine

Went to the wet market yesterday ( public holiday ) to grab some beef for my two  ' four-legged children ' and on the way passing through many stalls, this lady selling mud crabs called out to me and managed to convince me to buy back a kilo of mud crab ( with roe type )  - ' koe hai ' ( in cantonese ) at a whooping price of RM27 per kilo.  Needless to say, my mind was already trying to figure out how to cook them .  Steam them or cook them in sweet sour sauce..........

Joshua 's Birthday Lunch @ Tony Roma's

Piggy Joshua will not able to come back home for his birthday this weekend , so we decided to go up to KL and have lunch with him last Sunday. We travelled to KL on a day trip just to have lunch with him....with the electric train we were able to be in KL in just 2 hours thus making it possible for us to lunch together :)  Josh met up with us in MidValley....and we had our lunch at Tony Roma's...an early birthday celebration for him....haha Jo and myself wanted that as an excuse to be in KL but we have other ulterior motive.... shhhhhh ...yeah shopping , what else !  :P  Christmas pressies for ourselves !!! 

Lightly Braised Bitter Gourd With Salted Black Beans

This is our family favourite dish and I will cook this very often . My Piggies love bitter gourd or bitter melon which is a surprising thing for bitter gourd may not be a youngster's cup of tea so to say as it has a slightly bitterish aftertaste. They started to like eating this only after they entered their teens. Bitter gourd has a lot of nutrients and bitter gourd is often used in Chinese cooking for its bitter flavor, typically in stir-fries , soup and also as tea.  My mom used to boil them as tea for me when I was a teenager, 16 to be precise...it is believe to purify our blood as at that time pimples were blooming all over my face :(  but thanks to all those bitter gourd tea I drank during my teens that today I have a smoother complexion :p  Seriously and today my Piggies were given the same treatment when they had pimples on their face.  They love bitter gourd in stir fries but not as a tea.....but wanting to have a smoother complexion overcomes everything :)

Red Wine Honey And Sesame Roasted Drumstick

esame seeds are good for health and I love to add them to my salad , buns and roasts. They contain sesamin and sesamolin, substances that is believed to prevent high blood pressure and protect the liver against damage. They are rich in Vitamin E that helps to strengthen the heart and nervous system.  Good news for us women....sesame oil can help removes wrinkles !  I just discovered that half cup of sesame seeds contains 3 times more calcium than half cup of whole milk. Whoa...... calcium helps prevent osteoporisis ...I can use them generously for my cooking from now on....:)

Scad ( Ikan Selar ) In Papilotte

Back to home cooking again after eating out the last few days....Piggy gal missed Ipoh food ,we took her to some of her favourite haunts for dinners thus for the absence of homecooked food posts :)  She has been drooling on my past posts on  'fish on papilotte' and has been salivating over them so I decided to make this for her. She likes fishes of any kind as long as they are fresh. Scad is one of her favourites. This recipe is from the Flavour Magazine ( past issue ) . I love fish cooked in papilotte...it helps seal in the flavors and keep the the fish moist and juicy......mmmm delicious !

A Toast To Jo @ Jogoya, Starhill, KL - Part 2

There were so much to choose from the dessert section and here are some sweet indulgence I took after those oysters and scallops ( I took so much of those arteries clogging stuff that I think my arteries will suffer after this indulgent )...there were lots of mouth-watering cakes too  - cheesecake, moist chocolate cake and lots more but we just drool at them coz our stomach really can't hold anymore of those delectable cakes so we just took a few pieces of red bean pudding cake and some wolfberry jellies and some Haagen Dazs and NZ Natural Yoghurt ice cream of different fruit flavors.  Saw this  Puff Mushroom Soup when I went to pick up some yoghurt ice cream...couldn't resist it eventhough I can't hold  anymore  LOL! Gosh... it's creamy rich fresh mushroom flavor was enough to make me want to make them myself.  I told Jo, I want to make this..........LOL!  She just rolled her eyes :p

A Toast To Jo @ Jogoya, Starhill, KL - Part 1

We went to Jogoya Starhill, KL  to have our dinner - a graduation celebration for Jo and a valid excuse for me to indulge * wink wink .  It was our first time there and Jo's second . In fact she was the one who suggested that we have the celebration there since our hotel was just a stone's throw away . It doesn't matter where or what we eat as long as we are together again and it is the fellowship that is most important :) Family get together is always fun :)

Here are some of the food we took for the night and I wished that I had a bigger stomach for I realised I was already full and I have not even sampled their steamboat and dim sum at the far end of the room :(   Seriously, there were so much to eat and sample but unfortunately my stomach is so tiny :p

Welcome Home Piggy Jo !!!

My Piggy Jo is back !  I am glad that she has finally graduated with a 1st Class Honours in Materials & Manufacturing Engineering  :)  Daddy had a business appointment at Parkroyal , so only Josh and myself took the KLIA Express to the airport to welcome her back and you can guess how much we all miss her and now I can have 3 months with her before she continues her studies again...in pursuing her PhD  :)  Welcome home Piggy gal :)

We celebrated her graduation in Jogoya, Starhill, KL and shall post up the food we had in my next post :)

For now...it is about the welcoming home for Jo :)