All posts filed under: cooking

Mochi Black Rice Ball

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Have you tried Mochi? It’s also called Japanese rice cake. It is made from short-grain japonica glutinous rice. The Mochi is soft and slightly sweet. It is used for making sweet or savoury dishes. Very often, we have it with stuffed red bean paste as a dessert. Traditionally, it involves a lot of hard work to make Mochi. Two people have to pound the glutinous rice with wooden mallets. However, these days, we can make it from sticky rice flour, cornstarch and sugar at home in a microwave. You do need to knead the dough a bit. From time to time, I like to make these rice balls as my breakfast or a quick lunch. The filling I used is pork floss this time. Just remember Mochi is very sticky to work with.  I wear gloves to prepare it. It’s so much easy in that way. I hope you like it. Makes 6 big rick balls or rolls (more if you make small size rick ball) INGREDIENTS: Sticky rice flour – 100g Cornstarch – 30g Full cream Milk …

Tofu Avocado Salad

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Have you tried the combination of tofu and avocado? No. I high recommend it. Well, the truth is I was quite sceptical for this combination myself at the very beginning. I think it’s just weird. However, I know soy sauce goes well with both tofu and avocado. One of my favourite ways of having avocado is with soy sauce, lemon juice and fresh ground black pepper. Back to Tofu and avocado! The only question left was whether tofu and avocado can compliment each other. Well, there is only one way to find out, right? Since it’s a cold dish, I just need to chop everything and make a dressing. I decided to go for soy sauce and mustard with honey. I also added a little bit of roasted almonds. I think pinenuts would be nice too. I love fried onion. You probably have seen fried onion in some of my recipes already. It just adds more rich flavour to the dish. INGREDIENTS: Soft or Silk tofu – 350g Avocado – 1 Green onion – 1 …

Broccoli Soup

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Sometimes, all I want is a nice warm soup, like today. I woke up, and I was craving for warm soup. Soup it is then! I had every ingredient in my kitchen. I just needed to chop everything up and cook. Blender will do the rest. It doesn’t take long to cook the sweet potato if you chop it into small cubes. It will cook in 5 minutes. Then, it probably needs another 5 mins to cook the broccoli. Grind heaps of black pepper. It makes the soup really yum. After everything is cooked. Just blend and season. It’s ready for you. You can have it warm or cold. The chicken stock can be replaced with vegetable stock. I garnished with some chopped pistachio and fried onion. A little bit of cheese or cream would be nice too. 🙂 Hope you enjoy the recipe! INGREDIENTS: Sweet potato – 150g, chopped into small cubes Broccoli – 370g, chopped Garlic cloves – 2, chopped Onion – 1/2, chopped Butter – 20g Freshly ground pepper – 1/4 teaspoon …

Potato Bacon Buns

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Hey guys, it’s Friday again! I hope you all have had an amazing week! I am really looking forward to the weekend. Just want to spend a cosy weekend at home with my husband and probably catch up with some friends too. Life has been a little bit hectic at the moment. I haven’t had much time for cooking. I really miss it! Today, after I came back from the grocery shopping, I realised I didn’t get any bread from the bakery. I really can’t be bothered going out again. So I have a perfect excuse to warm up my oven. 🙂 I want something more than just plain bread.  I want something with filling. I sautéed some potatoes with bacon and heaps of black pepper in olive oil. My Kenwood chef has to do the work to make the dough. When the dough is ready, I made eight buns with the filling I prepared. Time to let it rise again. Patience, patience and patience! I cut the top before sending them in the oven. They looked …

Tagine Chicken wings and Prawns

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Have I talked to you guys about Tagine yet? It’s my secret weapon to cook a quick meal. It’s a bit like one pot meal. I find myself using my cast iron Tagine whenever I am busy, but still want a home cooked meal. All I need to do is chop all the ingredients and marinate for a while. I normally would like to chop everything when I get home after work and marinate for 30 minutes. During that time, I can go play and feed the pets, or have a glass wine with my hubby. For this recipe, I made a sauce for the chicken wings and prawns. It has oyster sauce, wholegrain mustard and tomato paste. If you don’t like chick wings, you can always use different meat. I just like chicken wings. It goes well with rice. Otherwise, make a green salad. Dinner is ready! 🙂 INGREDIENTS: Chicken wingettes and Prawns: Chicken wingette – 8 Banana prawns – 8 Five spice powder – 1 tsp Minced ginger – 1 tsp Fresh ground black pepper …

Dog Birthday and Dog Cupcakes

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Hello lovely people. I hope you have had a good week so far. 🙂 Our dog had his 4th birthday this week. I still remember he was such a cute puppy! I know, we all think our dogs and cats are cute. Can’t help it! To celebrate,  I baked some cupcakes for him. First things first, let me introduce my babies. We have Chico (the dog), Tigger (black and white cat) and Leo. I had a post about Leo last year. If you want to know a little bit more about him, you can find the post here. Both Chico and Tigger are 4 years old this year and Leo is half-year older. Aren’t they gorgeous? 😉 The minute I showed Chico the cupcake, he fell in love with it immediately. I can tell, haha. 😉 Certainly, Tigger wanted to have a bite as well. Leo was somehow busy attacking my tree at the backyard. However, when mom said we had to take photos first, the kid was very disappointed….. At last, the birthday boy got …

Blanched Asparagus

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Baby asparagus is so delicious and tender. when it’s the season for fresh asparagus, I love to cook it just use the basic method – blanching. It’s simple, but it also let the origin food flavour shine.  It’s the easiest way to enjoy the food. Remember to trim the ends of the asparagus. Although spears are tender, the ends usually can be tough. It is hard to chew and unpleasant. You wouldn’t want to spoil your mood of enjoying nice food. I like to drizzle a little bit of olive oil and add a pinch of salt to the water I use to boil the asparagus. It not only helps to seal the nutrition in the vegetables, but also gives a bright green colour after you blanch the asparagus. INGREDIENTS: Baby asparagus – 2 bunches Extra virgin olive oil – 1, 1/2 teaspoons and extra Black bean paste/Soy Sauce – 1 teaspoon Sea salt Black pepper – freshly ground INSTRUCTIONS: Rinse and trim the asparagus end. Prepare a large sauce pan and boil enough water …

Roasted Fennel with Rice

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Hello everyone, I hope you have had a lovely week. I actually have been sick for few days…Winter flu…It’s really horrible. Anyway, when I am sick, all I want to eat is vegetables, vegetables and more vegetables. I found the fennel bulb in my fridge and some other vegetables. Here is what I came up with. I will keep this post short since I am still a little bit dizzy. What I did was that I roasted the fennel wedges with soy sauce and olive oil for 30 minutes until it’s caramelized. I found it tastes better in this way. You will see I used a mixture of short grain rice and black rice in this recipe because my husband does not like black rice much. However, I really love black rice. So I added some shot grain rice to make the texture softer than just black rice. You can also replace the chick stock with vegetable stock. In that way, it will become a complete vegetarian dish. 🙂 INGREDIENTS Fennel bulb – 1 Large Portobello …

Matcha Crêpe Cake

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We celebrated our anniversary recently, and I made this Matcha crêpe cake as the dinner dessert. I don’t know if it’s age, we spend more and more time together at home. We would make dinner together, open a bottle of wine or two maybe, try different recipes, talk or listen to the music we both love. We celebrate things, just not very loud, I guess. 🙂 Sorry! I got carried away. It happens quite often lately. Back to the cake! I got this 15cm frying pan the other day for 10 dollars. It’s the perfect size for making crêpe cakes. For the batter in this recipe, I made about 18 crêpes. I think I used 15 crêpes for the cake. The numbers may vary depends on the size of your pan and the thickness of the crêpe you make. When you make the crêpe, keep the pan at low to medium heat. It might take a little longer to finish making all the crêpes. However, it will not burn it. Pleae be careful not to burn your fingers, …

Black Rose Tea Infused Tofu

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Tofu is a good source of protein, iron and calcium. It has a lot of health benefits. Although it doesn’t have much taste, tofu absorbs the flavours from other ingredients very well when you cook it. That’s the way to make tofu tasty. One of my favourites is black tea infused Tofu. It can be prepared beforehand and stored in the fridge. You can use it in salad, some stir-fry dishes, grill it, or just eat it directly cold. The taste is quite mild with a light tea flavour. You only need few ingredients to cook this marinated tofu, cinnamon bark, Star anise, bay leaves, and tea of your choice. I used black rose tea this time, which had strong rose aroma. It turned out quite well. Feel free to add some other spices you like. Some dry chilli flakes maybe if you like spicy food. Tofu has high water content. If you have time, it would be great to press some water out of tofu. I didn’t have much time. What I did was that I …