I Love Japanese Ra-Men

I love Japanese Ramen, whether it is from the shops or those in the packets which I cook at home. They taste much better than the local instant noodles as I find the Japanese Ramen a lot tastier. I am not sure how much I paid for them but I don't think that they were too expensive. Will need to go check out the price for a bag of 5 packets the next time I go shopping.



Normally I will just add some vegetables, a little meat (like left over chicken or duck from dinner) or half an egg into the ramen. This was what I had for lunch.



After eating that nice lunch, I decided to go check my email and I received an email from an old friend from University. He sent me a mail entitled " Beware! If you love Ramen". His email read "Sorry guys. Have to send to you so many negative news concerning foodstuff these days. Pretty soon, I'll run out of things to eat."

This was his email to me.... "Beware! If You Like Ramen"....was rather scary. I didn't want to post the pictures here as I don't think it is right to spoil people's appetite for Ramen. But if you want to have a look at what the email has to say, then click here at my other blog to have a look.

I know the packet of Ramen that I bought and cooked was manufactured in Hong Kong, China but I don't think I will throw away the last 2 packets. I am sure my body can handle it :D But I might not want to buy any more after this until I do a bit more research (coward me).

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Japanese Curry

I have only tried Japanese curry once before this and it was at Sushi King. They were having a promotion and only after much persuasion by the nice waitress that I decided to order my first Japanese curry. Not sure why there was so much reluctance on my part but I think it is my stupid mind set. I always only associate good curries to Indian and Malay cooking. Ha Ha.

Anyway, the curry tasted quite good. A little sweet but then sweet is my favorite flavor. Have not ordered it again, not that I didn't like it. But I reckon it was more like a habit.. a habit of not ordering it.

So, one day, I decided to get a pre-cooked curry pack from the Japanese food outlet. They actually had a whole lot to choose from. I decided to pick one which was in a blue box, blue being one of my favourite colors.. and also I was told that it was one of the more popular one :D.


The cooking is very easy. Just microwave it or dump the entire packet (take it out from the paper box first yeah) inside the boiling water for 5 minutes (I forgot how long .. please read the instructions on the box). I boiled some rice to go with it.


The taste is as I liked it, sweet with only a tinge of spicy. My only complaint is..... where are all those chucks of meat and vegetables they showed on the box?? It was like "hoi dei low chump" - trying to fish a needle from the sea (literally translated from Cantonese to English).

Mmmm.. cannot read the Japanese writings on the box. Maybe I was supposed to add more meat and veg into the curry???

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Mixed Grains Rice

I have never tried mixed grains before. At best, it was either brown rice or the Thai Red Rice. But after reading Babe's post on Mixed Grains Fried Rice, I simply had to give it a go. Got some advice from Babe and went shopping over the weekend. Actually, there were quite a few varieties of mixed grains at the Organic shops. I was actually at a loss as to which one to select. Finally, I went to this Organic shop in near OUG (Overseas Union Garden) market in Kuala Lumpur. The lady was very helpful and she recommended the Chinese Yam and Multi Grains Rice. This is the packet I bought. The cost of this packet was RM14 for 1 kg.


The ingredients inside the bag included Australian Brown Rice, Oat, Sorghum Rice, Job's Tears, Buck'wheat, Gordon Euryale Seed, Wheat, Barley, Red Lentils, Pearl Rice and Yam. Actually, I could not recognize more than half of the stuff inside the bag.

Her advice was to soak the grains between 1 hour to 2 hours before cooking. And as this was my first time eating this, she also recommended for me to add in 1 cup of white rice to 1 cup of the multi grains rice, in case I am not use to the texture.

Well, I followed her instructions to the letter and cooked up a pot of multi grain rice with the same portion of white rice. This is what I got. It was quite yummy but the best part of it, after eating a bowl of it for lunch, one can last the entire afternoon until dinner without any hunger pangs :D. A great diet meal.

The results .......

1 cup of white rice, 1 cup of mixed grains rice (soaked for 2 hours) and 2 and 3/4 cups of water. I steamed the rice instead of putting it into my lousy rice cooker. I reckon that if you did put it into the rice cooker, you may need to add a little bit more water. A bit of a trial and error.

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Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki is one of those Japanese dishes that I like very much and I finally was able to get all the ingredients that I needed to make this. Okonomiyaki is really like a Pizza, japanese style. But when I did it, mine looked more like a pancake :D. This is how it out to look like, in a restaurant..

This image was borrowed from Travel To Japan website.

This is what mine looked like.Not sure why the entire photo color is orange but then it was only a camera phone.


Here's another picture of my okonomiyaki.


It was very easy to do and quite tasty. Here, this recipe was taken off a brochure they were handing out at that nice little Japanese shop at Mid Valley, The Gardens. Haha.. finally got the name of the shop.


I already halved everything in the recipe as I think one full pan of okonomiyaki is quite enough for 1 meal.

Ingredients

100g okonomiyaki flour
2 eggs
100 cc of water
250g of cabbage
50g of meat ingredient (chicken/beef/squid/prawn) - I didn't add any... coz I didn't have any in the freezer
50g of vegetable ingredient (mushrooms/onion/ corn) - I only used mushrooms and onion)

Garnishing

Brown okonomiyaki sauce
Mayonnaise
Dried Bonito flakes
Green seaweed flakes

Method

1. Slice cabbage finely
2. Finely cut up the ingredients that you want to add
3. Mix okonomiyaki sauce, eggs and water together in a big bowl and stir until frothy
4. Add cabbage into the mixture
5. Pour in all the finely cut ingredients into the batter and mix thoroughly
6. Heat some oil in the frying pan
7. When oil is hot, pour all the batter mix into the frying pan and fry in medium heat
8. When the bottom surface of the okonomiyaki has turned golden brown, flip it over
9. Once both sides have turn golden brown, serve it on a plate
10. Garnish it with the okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise
11. Sprinkle the bonito flakes and the seaweed flakes just before serving

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Chicken Curry with Nasi Briyani - Food Exchange Program

Lately, we have all been baking a fair bit of sweet stuff for the food exchange program, and not that I am complaining. I think I have not one sweet tooth, but all 30 over sweet teeth in this big mouth of mine. But something savory would make a nice change. Whilst I was doing my supermarket shopping yesterday morning, I decided to go pick up about 1 kg of chicken thighs, chicken drumsticks and wings. Bought the rest of the ingredients like coconut milk and that wonderful bag of premixed spices from Mak Nyonya. Decided to stick with this recipe as the previous one that I made for the potluck turned out dark and really not the type of curry that I like. In my haste to run through my marketing so that I could venture up to the Exhibition Hall at Mid Valley to view the Malaysian International Bakery & Confectionary Exhibition, I completely forgot to buy the Basmati (long grained) rice. Oh well, only realized after dinner when I was preparing to cook for the food exchange program.

The curry again turned out in the color that I like my curry to have.. heehee.. red and not brown. I also went back to cooking nasi briyani the simple way that I am used to.. and not the totally complicated recipe that I used during Joyce's potluck.


I used the one pot cook all manner of cooking this rice, i.e. washed the rice and place all the ingredients which included the ghee, the 1stick of cinnamon, 6 Cardamom pods, 1/2 tsp of mustard seeds, 3 star anise, 6 cloves, some cumin seeds and a sprinkling of mustard seeds. For garnishing, I added some cashew nuts and golden raisins. For 3 cups of rice, I used roughly 3 1/2 cups of water. Didn't use milk this time as in the previous time as it made the rice a little too mushy for my liking.


The curry and the rice were ready at about 11am and after letting it cool, packed the curry into little plastic containers. Ran out of these containers, so, had to pack the nasi briyani into aluminum foils. Reminiscence the time when I was a factory girl in Australia during my Uni days. Use to pack fried rice this way to work and factories in Australia has utilities like the Convectional Ovens, Microwave Ovens, Coffee-makers at the disposal of the workers. Hence packed lunch is a norm back then.


Anyway, hope this week's food for the food exchange program meets the expectations of those who are in the program. Sue, I am so sorry that you have to be left out this round as I knew that the traffic condition would definitely set your mood to register "LOUSY".. with all the road blocks coming into the city that it would not be wise to ask you to swing by my office to pick up this load... and (haha).. curry is going to further fuel that "seeing red" mode.

By the way, the food exchange program group has grown overnight to include PuayAun of Thought Bubbles and dcyk of See a lil bit of evil, Hear a lil bit of evil, Talk a lil bit of evil

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Spaghetti with Meatballs

After watching Hancock the Movie, my cravings for a good Spaghetti with Meatballs started to build up until I just simply have to have some. I have not really had them for the longest time as a result of consuming many a yucky tin of these in my Uni days. They were soft and yucky. But I don't think you are able to find these sort of canned food in the supermarkets in Kuala Lumpur. Not too sure about Cold Storage but I doubt it.

Anyway, after watching Hancock gobbling down those giant meatballs, I wanted to try to do some homecooked ones. Naturally I was not going to make them hand grenade sized... haha.. the prize of mince beef is not exactly cheap . Got about close to 300gm for RM12 over at Cold Storage... prime Australian beef... haha.. I am still very partial to all things Australian.. it is the country where I grew up in... virtually... coz before my 3 over years in Australia, I used to be a God useless coward.. who would set my dad's blood to boil each time he watches me whimper my order to the wantan mee seller hahaha.

Well, I must say that the meatballs that I made definitely had the asian taste to it and a whole lot tougher than those from the can.... mmmm...just the way I like them. Ray calls it their Spaghetti Madness on a Thursday... maybe I will call mine Spaghetti Monday Madness.... :D

Ingredients

Sauce

2 tbsp olive oil
1 lg onion, diced
5 cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup fresh basil, roughly chopped ( 1 made do with the dried ones from a bottle)
1/2 cup red wine (optional)
1 lg can (800g) tomato puree
salt and pepper to taste

Meatballs
300gm mince beef
1 tsp of sesame oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp of cornflour
1 egg

Others
1 punnet of fresh button mushrooms
a few sprigs of coriander for garnishing
Parmesan cheese (optional)


Method

1. Put in all the ingredients for the meatballs into a bowl and mix well. Set aside to marinade for about 10 minutes.
2. After 10 minutes, make little balls out of the marinaded mince meat. The size of the balls depends very much on personal preference. You can make them nice and dainty or giant hand grenade sized ones :)
3. Heat up some oil in a pan and when the oil is hot, fry these meatballs. This is so that the meatballs will be able to retain their shape later whilst being cooked in the pasta sauce.
4. Once the outside looks cooked, dish them up and set aside. Don't worry about the meat balls not being cooked as they are going into the sauce again later. Plus, beef can be eaten raw :)
5. Put the olive oil into a pan and when hot, put in the onions, garlic and basil. Saute until fragrant. If wine is used, then this is the time to add in the wine.
6. Add the tomato puree.
7. Add in the button mushrooms.
8. Finally add in the meatballs.
9. Simmer for about 10 mins or until you hit the thickness consistency that you want.
10. Add in salt and pepper for taste.
11. Dish up onto some cooked spaghetti and garnish with some coriander and Parmesan cheese.

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Cream Pasta Sauce with Prawns

I must say that I do prefer cream pasta sauce to tomato based pasta sauce. Maybe I had a bit too much of that during my University days. I can still remember the yucky beef balls in tomato sauce in a can that I used to purchase to be eaten with home cooked pasta.. yucks...how could I have eaten those almost every other week. Maybe because it was the cheapest thing on the supermarket shelves.

This is a relatively simple sauce which can be made in a jiffy. Whilst preparing the sauce, I had a boiling pot of water for my spaghetti. Before putting the spaghetti into the boiling water, add a bit of oil and salt into the water.

I bought large prawns from the hypermarket. I cannot remember how much they were selling but I got 10 of them for RM8.60. The rest of the ingredient were what I could rummage from the kitchen cabinet, including a can of large button mushrooms.


Ingredients

1 can of button mushrooms (fresh would have been much better)
115g butter
2/3 cup flour
5 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
4 c. chicken stock
2 c. light cream
1 c. grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Heat up some butter in the pan and put in some of the chopped garlic.
   
2. When the garlic turned aromatic, put in the prawns and fry them until they turn orange in color.
3. Remove them from the pan and set aside.
4. Add in the remaining butter and when hot, put in all the garlic and fry.
5. Drain the button mushrooms from the tin and add into the hot pan.
   
6. Saute the mushrooms for a minute
7. Mix the flour and chicken stock before pouring it all into the hot pan.
   
8. Lower the heat and stir until the sauce thickens.
   
9. Add in the cream, salt and pepper.
   
10. Finally, put in all the prawns into the sauce.
    
11. For garnishing, use parsley and the grated Parmesan cheese
    

I know that I will not have that much time in the kitchen to cook or bake from tonite until the end of the week. Nope, I am not going away. It is just that there will be quite a number of activities lined up right up to Sunday.

Tonight, I will be watching Beauty and Beast at the KL Convention Centre.

Tomorrow night, I will be at Sukhi Hotu, who will be hosting a Dhamma Talk and Concert by Ravenna Michalsen..

Thursday night, I’ll be at DanSing Thro Broadway at the Pangung Bandaraya.

Friday is Casper’s birthday dinner, likely to be at Jaya33

Saturday, phew.. a breather here… dinner at mum’s

Sunday… yippppppppeeeeeee…..gumpaste and sugarpaste class at Min’s.. soooo excited lah.

Looks like the only rest I'd be getting is when I am working in the office...heehee

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Nasi Biryani

A very long time ago, I made an attempt to cook Nasi Biryani to JW's pot luck dinner and back then, I did not follow any recipe from the internet or book. It was a pure guessing game for me. I cooked it exactly the way I would cook claypot chicken rice, except instead of frying the ginger, chinese mushroom with the seasonings before adding in the rice, for the Nasi Biryani, I fried all the spices, cashew nuts and raisins before adding in the rice. That method is simple and I reckon quite yummy.

However, this time, when JW invited us to another of her pot luck dinner, I decided to be smart. Surfed the net and found a recipe for Indian Chicken Nasi Biryani. It took quite a lot more work than what I would have like. I think my mistake is that the recipe would really work if you were making Chicken or Lamb Nasi Biryani. But I only wanted to cook the rice without the meat. Hence, the result was a soggier version of how I would have preferred my rice to be. And at the dinner, someone commented that the rice was not salty enough. Sigh.. another one that takes me back to the drawing board.


The recipe which I used was from Recipes Indian and I have reproduced both the ingredients and the methods below.


Ingredients :

For Chicken
3 1/2 lb./ 1 1/2kg Chicken
1/8 tsp Ground turmeric
1/2 cup Sour cream
1 cup Crispy fried onions
2 tbsp Garam masala
1 3" cinnamon sticks
1 tbsp Brown mustard seeds
3 Star anise
3 Cloves
2 tbsp Cumin seeds
5 Small green chilies
5 cloves Garlic
2 tsp Paprika
Salt to taste

For the Rice cooking
4 cups Rice, washed
3 Clove
3 Cinnamon sticks
6 Bay leaves
8 Cardamom pods
1 tsp Brown mustard seeds
3 Pandan leaves
10 cups Water
1 cup Milk
1 tsp Whole saffron
1 cup Frozen green peas
1/2 cup Dark raisins
2 tbsp Vegetable oil
100g Butter or Gee
Some mint leaves
Salt to taste

Method:

For Chicken

1. Mix the chicken pieces with sour cream, ground turmeric and salt & let it sit for about 2 hours.
2. Mix crispy onions with garam masala and set aside.
3. Roast the cinnamon stick, brown mustard seeds, star anise, cloves, cumin seeds in a dry skillet. Pound them together in a mixer. Set aside.
4. Pound the garlic and green chilies together.
5. Mix marinated chicken with crispy onions mix, ground spices, paprika, garlic and green chilies. Set aside.

For the rice

1. Soak saffron in the warm milk and set aside.
2. Heat the oil in a skillet and add butter,add 1 cinnamon stick and 3 bay leaves and fry until nice aroma comes out. Set aside.
3. Boil the water in a large pan and stir in cloves, 2 cinnamon sticks, 3 bay leaves, cardamoms & brown mustard seeds.
4. Add rice, pandan leaves and cook until 2/3 done. (do not cover the pan while rice is cooking)
5. Drain the rice and discard the pandan leaves. Mix the rice with salt for taste.
6. Place all the marinated chicken in a pan. Add a layer of rice on the chicken and sprinkle with some colored milk, fragrant butter, green peas, dark raisins & mint leaves. Repeat the layers with the same order and bake in 325 deg F oven for 30 to 40 minutes until the chicken is done. (must have at least 2 layers).
7. Ready to Serves.

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