Christmas gifts for year 2013

This year Christmas was more merrier than I thought. It's a real God's blessing to celebrate Christmas and gathered with my friends. Thou I always had no luck, but I think I'm quite lucky for this Christmas as I got good present from the present exchange. Our present exchange session was designated in such that everybody would get one bad/weird present and another good/practical present. For bad one, I got glow in the dark nail polish which I think still not bad. While i got soft toy and hand warmer for good present. I really did thought of buying the hand warmer especially winter now. All of sudden I think I'm the lucky one. Hopefully all the good things is going to come after this Christmas. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2014...

Preparation for tommorow's lunch

Tonight is a Christmas night and it is also my duty to cook for tommorow's lunch. I got to prepare for 3 persons including myself.Last two weeks I bought the "Buddha Hand"gourd at FengChiHu near to Alishan. It's real cheap as I bought two for just 20ntd. It looks like guava except the bottom shape looks like a hand. The lady who sell it told me can cook as soup. So I decided to cook soup tonight with "rendang" pork. 

Preparing lunch for others isn't easy but I try my best. Outcome of tomorrow's lunch. I feel like a korean or japan mother preparing for her childrens. Haha...

Buddha's Hand Gourd. Such a big gourd for only 10ntd.

Here comes the soup. 

This is a Malaysian cuisine with slight modification. Rendang pork with egg.

Instant rendang paste

Mee sua (麵線), cold drunken chicken (醉雞) and fried wanton (炸雲吞)

Birthday and Welcome Back Celebration

12 December 2013

It's a friend's belated birthday and someone has come back to our house tonight. I'm going to organize a celebration tonight. I've been thinking for what to cook and of sudden cold drunken chicken crossed my mind. Let's get started with this simple drunken chicken.

Drunken chicken

Recipe:
Chicken drumstick (remove bone)
Shaoxing wine or rice wine
Red dates
Wolfberry (Gou ji berry)
Huang qi (Optional)
Dang gui (Optional)
Salt (If you want it to be original then don't need salt)

Methods:
1. Marinate the chicken with all the above recipe (basically I just simply add in the portion as I like i.e. I like it to be more alcoholic flavour or u can make it more of traditional herb flavour).

P/S: Shaoxing or rice wine is suggested to be added after marinating step as it will make your chicken texture dry if you add in during the marinating step.
2. Place the marinate chicken in a container and keep it in fridge for overnight or two nights.
3. After marinate, wrap the chicken in a aluminium foil and tie it so that the chicken will looks like its a whole drumstick again.
4. Steam the chicken till cook. Around 15-20 minutes depending on how big is your drumstick.
5. Let it cool to room temperature before store it in freezer.
6. Cut into slices to be serve.

The drunken chickens are to be serve cold

Red wine mee sua 

Recipe:

Chicken drumstick

Mee sua (麵線)

Black fungus (I substitute with mushroom especially for people who don't mushroom)

Ginger (Choped and pieces)

Red wine or rice wine

Methods:

1. Fried the ginger in a hot pan.

2. Add in chicken followed by water.

3. Let the water boil.

4. Add in red wine and salt. Adjust the taste suitable to your own. After all, there's nothing to be wrong or right in cooking.

5. Add in the black fungus.

6. Let it boil for a few minutes.

7. Prepare the mee sua by cooking it in a boiling water before adding it into the soup.

8. To make the egg as in my picture, you just have to add in your egg into a boiling water and count for 4 minutes before it is ready to be serve.

Red wine mee sua with fuzzy egg yolk

Fried Wanton

I guess I don't have to prepare the recipe for this wanton as I think it is very common.

Fuzzy Cocoa Cake

10 December 2013

Christmas is just around two weeks from now. Our house are also in the mood to prepare for coming Christmas. This week we tried to make some simple chocolate from both the chocolate bar and Hersey's cocoa powder.  When thinking of chocolates, it reminded me of my favourite steam cocoa cake that my aunt taught me. Hence, I enriched our baking activity with steam cocoa cake. And naturally, my friend come out with the idea to add in the unhardened chocolate that she had made on the previous day. Thus, we ended up making "chocolate lava cocoa cake"... 

                                             Different shaped black and white chocolates. 

Fresh baked cocoa cake

Christmas mood fuzzy cocoa cake

Cocoa cake recipe:

180 g butter

120 g sugar

200 g fresh milk 

2 eggs

100 g low-gluten flour

50 g cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder (substitute 1 tsp baking soda)

Methods:

1. Melt butter, sugar, fresh milk.

2. Let it cool.

3. Beat the egg one by one.

4. Add in the egg to the cooled butter mixture.

5. Gently add in flour, cocoa powder and baking powder (Make sure the flour is sieved before hand).

6. Transfer the well mixed batter in a tray and cover with aluminium foil.

7. Steam 45 minutes.

8. After steamed, cool the cake before cut it.

9. Add chocolate lava on top. 

P/S: To steam, please make sure the water is boiled before putting in your cake batter.

This cake looks a bit like the chocolate brownie to me. The differences between the two is brownie has hard and rough texture but this cocoa cake taste just like cake. And I like it well as I don't like harden cake. Feel free to try it out!!!