Luffa with egg

As my mom is a home maker, we are blessed to get home cooked food daily.

Soup is compulsory while I was growing up. Not every meal is an elaborate one of course. There will be days, simple and yet delicious are enough to satisfy a hubby and 4 growing kids.

One such dish that I enjoy is Stir fry Luffa with eggs. I tried making this dish sometime back but I bought a bad one. It was dry.

Thus when I saw some really fresh looking luffa available in the wet market, I just bought one home! I guess the colour of the luffa tells its freshnest!

Felt so nice to be receiving a Liebster Blog award from Yummy Bakes. Especially when Liebster actually means favourite or dearest in German. Thanks Chris!

Sure been a long time since I last seen award passing around. A nice gesture to keep fellow bloggers in mind and continue to motivate them further.

Rules for accepting the award:

Thank the person who gave the award and link back to their blog.
- Copy and paste the award to your blog.
- Reveal the 5 blogs you have chosen to award and let them know by commenting on their blog.
- Hope they pass it forward by accepting and awarding it to bloggers they would like to honour.

Off hand, here are the five favourite blogs that I would to share this award with:

1. Do What I Like - a blog that I first looked up to for cake baking. Her recipes never fail.
2. Bisous À Toi - a great blog as well as a great food stylist.
3. Kokken 69 - a flair in balancing simple and yet elegant styling.
4. Frozen Wings - for always coming up with new ideas and a great inspiration for me.
5. Cuisine Paradise. Making homecooked meal look simple and yet delicious.

Of course there are more than 5 blogs that are my favourite! Don't be sad for you are not forgotten.

Mom's Braised Mushroom

Actually I have been slowly cleaning up my blog for the past weeks. I realised that many of my old blog posts were all misaligned.

As you know, I lost my data twice within these 6 years of blogging and thus my recipe index was not in proper order. I guess it is also time for me to revisit some recipes that I enjoyed.

Since we are in the midst of Lunar New Year celebration, I decided to prepare my

mom's braised mushrooms. Mom's does it so well that even my new brother in law is using it as a bench mark for his new wife. Tough.

So if you are a mushroom lover, I guarantee you that you will definitely love this dish.



With the heavy diet we had the last few days, I think 斋菜 will be a good change for our palette.

No pic

Okay now let’s continue to enjoy the bonding time with family and friends.

I am submitting the above to Aspiring Bakers #15: Auspicious Dishes for CNY (January 2012) hosted by Wen of Wen's Delight.


Mom's Braised Mushrooms
What you need

400g mushroom (wash and remove steam, soak over night in hot water)
dried oyster (soak about 10 mins and clean)
4 X 5 inches spare ribs
4 tbsp cornflour
8 - 9 tbsp ginger juice
4 tbsp oil
1 1/2 litre of water
1 tsp light soya sauce
Oyster sauce to taste

Method

Marinate mushrooms with cornflour, ginger juice, oil. Set aside for 10 mins

Put mushrooms and water and boil for 1 hour.

Marinate oysters with light soya sauce and a few drops of oil.

When the mushroom has softened, add oysters and spare ribs to mushroom stew after it has been cooked for 1/2 hour.

Turned down heat to low and slowly simmer for an hour till spare rib has soften.

Seasoned with oyster sauce and salt.

Note: you can put in Fatt Choy only the last 5 mins of cooking.

Ajitma (糖心蛋)

These days, my girl and I lunch out twice a week for she has tuition right after school.

Months ago, we found a new (at least to me) Japanese restaurant in one of the shopping mall near my girl's tuition place. We both had ramen. One of the side order that came was this very interesting hard boiled egg. I can't recall what they called it but somehow, I found a forum member sharing this recipe.

I immediately KIV it for I know I will want to attempt it. I am not fan of hard boiled egg. I find the hard boiled egg yolk hard to swallow, it has this cakey powdery feel thus I always asked for half boiled eggs or soft boiled eggs.

Anyway, Ajitma (糖心蛋) as I found out, is a hard boiled egg with soft egg yolk. I really like it very much.

So when I saw cute small eggs available in the supermarket, I knew this will be perfect as our finger food. I bought two dozens.

Unfortunately because the eggs are smaller, I think my timing to cook the egg was also off from the instruction.

I didn’t get the orangey egg yolk but it was that far off either. I am sure if I fine tuned it a little, I will get it right.

Thanks for sharing, for now you have changed my perspective of a hard boiled egg.

Please refer to https://rumblingtummy23.blogspot.sg/ for full recipe.

Is Santa coming tonite?

Merry Christmas to all my visitors! As a tradition for the past couple of years.

I always gathered round my immediate family to have a dinner on Christmas eve. I am not someone who likes routine even though it is only once a year.

I love to rotate my theme for each year. So this year, my theme is Japanese. I started off with lots of planning.

It is so easy to go to a Japanese restaurant and order my favourites. Preparing Japanese food is something new to me. I didn't even know how to do a good miso soup, it is not about just adding miso paste I found out.

Thanks to Joshua who has shared valuable tips with me. So here is my Christmas spread.

Miso soup with beancurd, mushrooms and wakame. (unfortunately no picture)

Cold soba





Sushi platter, wanted to have California roll but my avocado didn't ripen on time.

Hubby only captured these two platters, I wonder who happened to the rest. This ones, my family has a hands on experience.






Tempura platter, I lost my tempura recipe so didn't know how to do the batter portion and also I got cheated by the fishmonger on the size of the prawns.



My grilled items, Yakitori and Asparagus with bacon.

Sorry, pre grilled only.

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Initially, wanted to have Katsu Don (my hubby's favourite) but I ran out of time and only managed to have Tonkatsu instead.



Last of all. Dessert: Green tea milk jelly, coffee jelly, red bean mochi and my Christmas Fruit cake.

My disaapointment was my green team milk jelly because I didn't have sufficient time to really set the jelly and my coffee jelly without whipped cream (poor time management). (oops, hubby was too busy tucking into his dinner that he forgotten to capture my coffee jelly)





But overall, dinner was good and the party ended till countdown. This will be the last year my brother and family will be joining us.

Though I am sad (going to miss my little nephew) but yet I am happy for them. Same time next year, they will have a chance to be able to experience a totally different Christmas ambience.

Have a Blessed Christmas everyone.

Curry leaves chicken/ Mock abalone tofu/ sambal kangkong/ hot dog bun

Have been coaching and preparing son for his forthcoming Final exam. After a week of intensive tutoring, I am losing steam. It is so hard and tiring. To worsen the situation, he doesn't seem to retain any information at all. I am panicking but he, not too bothered by it. Was I that difficult when I was young? So to destress, my sister came over and help me coach him. In return, I cooked them the following for dinner. Curry Leaves Chicken

Mock Abalone Tofu and Sambal KangKong

  I also baked for my niece and nephew some Hot Dog Bun for breakfast.

  After spending a good 2 hours, I gave my kitchen a good steam cleaning. Now I am ready to face another day.

Stir fry bittergourd with beef/ Egg tofu with minced pork

You need to acquire the taste of bittergourd. To some, they find it really difficult to accept. The strenght of bitterness varies with individual. For my hubby, it takes him many years to finally accept this dish. Bittergourd has its healing properties, it is known as a cooling vegetable. Thus, it is good to dispel "heatiness" from the body. This is my first attempt at Stir Fry Bittergourd with Beef. Let's see whether my kids will eat it as they refused the soup version.

  Tofu has always been a hot favourite with my kids. Perhaps they are too lazy to chew. Recently, I was told that no matter what, you need to expose your kids to chewing meat. Reason being, it is an extremely good exercise for the jaw as well for the gums. So when their permanent teeth "sprout", they will be nice and straight. Our Egg Tofu with minced pork.