My love for flat noodles

Boo! I tried to make a carrot "flower" with 5 petals, but somehow only ended up with 4 petals!

This stir fry was good, but I'd prefer veggie ingredients in it. Too bad, it was the end of the weekend and my fridge was empty.

Oh I love flat noodles. So satisfying to eat with its chewy-soft texture. I'm craving drunken noodle (same flat noodle) as I am writing this up!

Happy Birthday equals...

...Happy Cake Day! (According to my niece's thinking.)

I'm gonna sound old, but kids grow up so fast, don't they? I remember when she was just a newborn, and now she's starting school next year!

My niece told me the cake was so so yummy, and asked me to make her a happy birthday cake again tomorrow night. ^_^

I like making kids happy with cakes since I only got one cake ever for my birthday growing up. Cake cake cake! I'm the sweet cake auntie for the kids now.

One birthday, One cake- a strawberry sponge cake

Yes... another birthday cake. In fact, I'll be making yet another one next weekend too. ^_^

This cake came out so much better than the previous ones I've made! I think it's because I altered the ingredients slightly.

The recipe is still the same, except I used 110g of cake flour instead of 150g. The cake was softer. This time, I also whipped the eggs (both whites and yolks) longer, to incorporate more air into it. Whipping it on medium speed, rather than being extremely fast, will stabilize the air bubbles more... creating a more airy cake.

If you think making a whole cake one day is too labor intensive, then you can bake the sponge cake part the night before and wrap it in plastic wrap. All you gotta do the next day is whip up some whipped cream and decorate the cake. Happy cake eating!

Congee..!

With thousand year old eggs.

I like to fry up some scallions and ginger too, to mix into the congee. Add some soy sauce/fish sauce, sesame oil, and chili flakes. yummee!

Some people like congee loose and liquidy, but I prefer to have it thick and creamy (from the rice starches). One of my favorite things to eat on a cold day.

If you eat meat, you can saute some minced pork with garlic and add it into the congee. That would make it heartier.

Roast Chicken

For some reason, I like to roast chicken in pieces, rather than keeping it whole. I guess it's easier for me to handle, in turning, glazing, and crispening it up. You gotta chop it up in pieces anyway, right? My family never does the fancy carving thing at the table. Just pile it on a plate, and every one can eat without wait of carving.

I think this one came out much better than last time I did it. Ooh! I used a hoisin sauce glaze. Mmm Chinese BBQ sauce. The marinate was basically juiced ginger, garlic, pepper, fish sauce, dark soy sauce (for some color), sugar, 5 spice powder and sesame oil. It's best to marinate the chicken overnight in the fridge.

Covering the chicken with a piece of aluminum foil ("tenting" it) during the roasting also traps in the steam, to cook it more quickly and not to let the meat dry out. When it's done cooking, just remove the foil and spoon out all the juices from the chicken. Turn on the broiler, and the skin will crispen up with the glaze. Watch out, don't burn it!

Drunken Pear Frangipane Tart

Pear Frangipane a classic French tart- combining pears and almonds together to create a beautiful, velvety texture. It is delicious with café au lait or a cup of tea.

Frangipane is basically an almond filling. I made it by grounding toasted almond slivers (from TJ's) in my spice grinder, cleaned out, of course.

This is the recipe that I used, from here. I made some changes, like using less cloves and also substituting orange juice and water for raspberry lager when poaching the pears. So I guess this is just a tizzy pear tart with the bit of rum, and not really a drunken pear tart.

One more change was adding orange zest to the poaching liquid to make it more aromatic. Gives the pear a very nice orangey hue.

This tart is very easy to do. You can either make your own (almond) sweet pie crust, buy a sweet pie crust, or even use puff pastry for a "lighter" tart. Overall, I liked it, but regretted not adding some lemon juice over the sliced pears to give it some zing. It's good with a scoop of honey ice cream!

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Unlike Chinese spring rolls, Vietnamese spring rolls, or summer rolls are not fried. Although you can use the rice wrapper to wrap things like shrimp, pork, or crab meat, and dry them. They'll have a different kind of crispiness to them, compared to Vietnamese chả giò.

Many VN restaurants have adopted the wheat flour wrapper, in place of rice paper, to make the rolls crisper for a longer period of time. This makes it confusing for people to know between chả giò and egg rolls.

Anyway, whatever the name, just use the one that you'll remember easily and eat the ones you like.

I think I like to eat things that are colorful. Even though there are no carrots in summer rolls, I like the orange color peeking through, in place of shrimps, for the vegetarian version. The sauce is simply a mix of fried minced garlic, hoisin sauce, chili, soy sauce, and a bit of sugar. Then topped with some crushed peanuts. You can do a fish sauce combination too, of fish sauce, boiling water, garlic, sugar, lime, and Thai chilies.