Bento #19

Wah.. it has been a long while since I have published a Bento post. It is not because I have not been Bento-ing, I have :). But I have not been blogging as frequently as I use to do. Why? Coz something is brewing in and soon I will share with you what's coming up :).

So, for this Bento #19, it is somewhat a left over from dinner the evening before. I made dumpling noodles for dinner and as I had extra dumplings, I decided to keep a couple to be brought to work the following day. I only cooked them in the morning.

In the evening, these were what we had for dinner....

Dumplings with fish balls in soup

Dry wanton noodles with dumplings

For lunch the next day, I packed these which I cooked in the morning....

Left: Wanton noodles with dumplings and fishballs
Right: Water chestnuts and jackfruit

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Chinese Styled Fried Rice

My mum has always told me that fried rice is the easiest thing to cook where the preparation time and the actual cooking time is relatively short. Most of the ingredients that one needs for fried rice could be anything that is left in the fridge. The most important ingredient being leftover rice as great fried rice normally is cooked with overnight refrigerated cooked rice :).

Oh yeah, there is this toy in the cupboard that I have not yet opened and I am quite excited to see if it does what the packet says it will do. It is a Rice Mold that I bought from Daiso.


Took it out of the packet, washed it and laid it out to dry whilst I prepared myself to do a Chinese Styled Fried Rice.

Ingredients

2 cups of overnight cooked rice
2-3 shallots (sliced)
1 Chinese sausage (this can be replaced with chicken meat, ham slices or any meat bits you may have left in the fridge) - sliced
2 eggs
1 cup of frozen mixed vegetables (corn, carrots and peas) - washed
A few leaves of lettuce (whichever type you prefer) -sliced
Cooking oil
Sesame seed oil
Soya Sauce, Salt, Sugar and Pepper to taste
1 tomato (for garnishing only)

Method

1) Heat some oil in the wok/pan and put in the sliced shallots. When the shallots turns aromatic, put in the sliced Chinese sausages. Fry these for about a minute or so.



2) Add in the cooked rice and sprinkle a little water (with your hands) into the hot wok if the rice appears too dry. Break up the rice clumps.



3) Make a little well in the center of the rice, pour a little sesame oil into the center and crack in two eggs. Put in a dash of soya sauce into the eggs and scramble them.



4) Add in the cup of mixed vegetables. Add in soya sauce, sugar, salt and pepper for taste.



5) Lastly, add in the sliced lettuce. Stir in and your rice is ready to be served.


I scooped my rice into the rice mold. Since the mold is made of metal, it can get pretty hot. So, use an oven mitten or a cloth to protect your hands *ouch.. I learned this the painful way.


I think I should have to pack in the rice tighter as the rice shape was not as nice as that on the picture on the packet. Oh well, I will do it again soon as I simply love fried rice and I can eat bowls and bowls of it... *carbo meter blowing up...weeeeeee

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Bellygood - A Pork Lover's Paradise

It has been my plan to visit this restaurant but somehow, the time was never right. The first time I saw this was on my way to a Christmas Party and another time was to meet up a friend for dinner...sigh. You've guessed it. I am really a true-ching-chong, whose best friend is the piggy, esply when it is bbq-ed :D.

Anway, I finally made it yesterday evening and even at 8pm, the crowd was virtually queuing up onto the 5-foot-way (exaggerating only lah).. haha..but there were 5 sets of people waiting in line before me. We had to write our names on the list and I saw that there was a group of 6 pax, 2 sets of 4 pax and 2 sets of 2 pax in front of me. So much for slowdown in the economy. We finally got our seats after about 15 mins of waiting. Not too bad.

Wow.. my eyes were salivating before my mouth could do so on their porky selections in the menu. Everything looked so tempting but I know that I will have to come back many times to try all of them. We ordered soups, starters, main porky main courses and of course desserts.

I did not managed to take photos of some of the dishes that came as they were wolfed down within seconds. But never mind, I managed to "steal" a photo here and there from Bellygood's website and a blogger named Donny Ang. Lovely shots Donny :D.

This is the Sausage Platter RM26.90 (Photo courtesy from Donny's post)

I must say that the food is really good, especially the ribs with their Honey Mustard Sauce. The next time I will order their platter, so that I can have of them in one dish, I mean on my own dish, without having to flick them from other people's dish.

They only have soup of the day (Mushroom for that night), but my oh my, the soup is lovely. RM8.30 a bowl

Apart from the food, the service is wonderful. Even though the place was packed and naturally the kitchen is already full steam ahead, tempers of some of the diners there were running a bit short, especially this rather round gentleman seated at the 5-foot-way table. He was showing his irritation towards the poor waitress when she could not tell him the name of the dish he was just served. Perhaps it was because she could not quite understand what he was asking. Overall, the waiters and waitresses kept their cool and their smiles intact. Kudos to them :D.

This Baked Portabello Mushroom with Bacon and Cheese must have fallen from Mushroom heaven..yuuuummm RM12.50.

The only thing that irritated me was the neighboring food outlet. We were seated outside as the air-cond area were full. And as we waited, the smell of the bbq was really agonizing (the stomach was doing its' flipflops already, as the wait was to be expected) and the smoke was horrible as it billowed quite thickly over to where we were seated and I can imagine the diners all swathed with oil particles in the air.. yuck!

Apple Pork Ribs with Mash and Coleslaw RM24.90 - This is a CNY Special

We ordered the Honey Mustard P. Belly (RM22.90) but the porky belly didn't not last long enough to see the light of (day) the camera's flash. This photo is taken from Bellygood's Menu.

There was no way I was going to end my feast without savoring these two beauties. These are 2 of the 3 flavors of Ice Cream Cakes they have on their menu. The 3rd one which we didn't order was their Mocha Ice Cream Cake. Next time my love... I promise you....

Cookies and Cream IceCream Cake (RM8.90)

California Raisin Ice Cream Cake (RM8.90). This has a hint of alcohol taste which is rather nice.

My verdict is that the food is great, the price is reasonable, the location is good. Their operation hours are 11am to 11pm everyday, with Mondays off. So, the next time I visit Bellygood, it will definitely not be a weekend :D as I want the totally undivided attention of their waiters and waitresses.

The Mixed Platter that I want to order on mynext visit (Photo also courtesy of Donny Ang's blog)

Location:

20, Jalan PJS 8-18,
Dataran Mentari,
Bandar Sunway,
46150 Petaling Jaya
Selangor Darul Ehsan
T 03 5630 1699
E reservation@bellygood.com.my

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Belated Christmas Gifts... for Myself :D

Christmas is always about getting gifts for those you love but who does one love most in this world? Oneself lor.. hahaha.. I dare to say this now after having been told my so many wise ones that in order to love others, one must first love oneself. And because I do love myself, I decided to splurge and get all these nice little prezzies for mua :).

I got them from a shop which actually if I had a choice, I would not like to shop in. Now why is that you might ask? Oh, they have got lots of great stuff there and a girlfriend swore that after doing her market survey, this company's outlet in her housing area apparently sells baking stuff at the cheapest price. However, that skinny lady with the glasses at the cash register must be be a yearly recipient of the Rudest Person in the World Award for the longest time. It really pays not to ask her anything whilst you are paying for your stuff if you do not want to be shouted at. Anyway, I am not the only one at the receiving end of her sharp tongue. I have been there at least 3 times and I must say that each time, other customers have also gotten it from her. This time, I refused to say a single word to her and I got off unscathed :D

Anyway, if you are really interested to get these "toys", just drop me a comment and I will "whisper" in your ears the name of the shop hahaha.

Blossom Plunger RM9.50

Snowflakes Plunger RM11.50

Leaf Plunger RM9.50

Small Daisies Plungers RM9.50

Three Leaf Holly Leaf Plunger RM8.00

Big Daisies Plunger RM14.50

Flower plunger RM9.50

Leaf Plunger RM9.50

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Almond Biscotti

I actually did not have intention to bake last night. In fact, I was looking forward to a nice quite evening, in front of the telly. However, after chatting with my dear friend Susan over the MSN in the afternoon and after looking at the link to a recipe which she sent, I was totally inspired to test the recipe out.

The recipe is from Aunty Yochanna's blog which I have reproduced below.

Ingredients:

3 egg white
100 gm. sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla essence
200 gm. whole almonds
120 gm. plain flour

Method:

(1) Whisk egg white (about 100g) with sugar and salt till thick.
(2) Fold in flour and almonds.
(3) Pour into a 7" sq. tray.
(4) Bake at 170C for about 25 mins. until light brown.
(5) Remove and place onto a cooling rack to cool.
(6) Wrap cake with aluminium foil and keep in the fridge for a couple of hours.
(7) Slice the cake into thin slices and lay onto a baking tray.
(8) Bake in oven at 160C for about 15 mins. or until it's crispy.
(9) Cool and store in cookie containers.

After the 1st round of baking

Waiting for them to cool

All bottled and waiting for my test bunnies

I followed Aunty's recipe to the letter and the results that came out looks nice. However, I felt that it was still a little hard. So, what I did was I took half the stack to work this morning and along the way, gave it to some test bunnies.

These were the comments from my bunnies:-

1) Bunny Malaysia Voxique - mmmm.. very nice, very crunchy

2) Bunny PuayAun - isn't this how biscotti should taste like... I mean, people have to dunk them into their cuppa, don't they?

3) Bunny Babe - nice and crunchy. Yah, a bit hard but you should have tried biscotti from my first try... hard like rocks, had to throw away the entire batch :(

4) Bunny DCYK - *crunch crunch... nice..*crunch crunch.... *takes a second piece.. :)

5) Bunny Anna - nice, thank you.

6) Bunny Sharon - nice, a bit hard though.. but something's missing...arrrhhh.. just cannot put my finger on it....mmmmm...aroma?...mmmmm

7) Bunny Thoughts - a bit hard but nice

Conclusion : I have a feeling that I may have to do another batch again this time doing 3 things. One, to add the egg mixture to flour instead of flour to eggs. Two, to use only pure vanilla essence, and not the el-cheapo ones. And three, try to slice the biscotti into thinner slices, but at the same time, without it breaking up.

Perhaps I will do another batch during the weekend, when I buy more almonds. Anyone wants to volunteer as test bunnies ? ;)

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Walnuts & Choc Chip Cupcakes

Wow, I just realized that it has almost been a month since my last post. What happened? I supposed that time just flew by without me realizing it. I did bake some, cook a few things but perhaps I just didn't have the time to post them up.

I decided to make this Walnut and Chocolate Chip Cupcakes after clearing my kitchen cabinet and finding that I still have heaps of walnuts and chocolate chips in there. It is going to be Chinese New Year soon and I do need the space in the kitchen cabinets for storing the new stuffs.

I tried this recipe which I picked up from a friend. The cake tasted quite ok but I had complaints from the few test bunnies. They complaint that I didn't put more walnuts into the cupcakes. Ok Ok..next time yeah.. have to put a note at the recipe :D

Ingredients

• 115g unsalted butter
• 115g Castor sugar
• 115g self-raising flour
• 2 tbsp of cocoa powder
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp of vanilla essence
• 1 cup of chocolate chips (Van Houtens)
• 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts (have to increase that to 1 full cup)
  

Preparation

1. Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy
2. Add in the eggs, one at a time
3. Stir in the cocoa powder and flour (sieved beforehand) and beat on medium speed for about 2 minutes.
4. Gently stir in the vanilla essence
   
5. Add in the chopped walnuts and chocolate chips into the mixture (leave a bit for the top of the cupcakes)
   
6. Scoop and fill the cupcake cases up to 2/3 full.
7. Sprinkle some chopped walnuts and chocolate chips on top of the cake mixture
8. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for about 20 minutes in the centre of the oven.
9. Take out and cool in the cake tray for 5 minutes before removing them from tray.
10. Continue cooling on the wire rack.
    

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