Happy Birthday Jesus! and Merry Christmas everybody!

I had a great Christmas. It was a day full of eating and eating and eating. After church, went with friends for Yum Cha. Then after that, went to my cousin’s place for dinner. I forgot to take pictures of the yum cha. So the following pictures are from the Christmas dinner. Very impressive I tell you! Please forgive me for the photo colours. I took it all with my new Samsung F480. As you can see, the colours are not vibrant enough.

The Banquet

Pumpkin Soup

Finger food – duck something. Very nice!

Root vegetables salad – consist of potato, carrot, beetroot, parsnip.

Crayfish salad, loved the salad dressing!

Leg of lamb, tender and succulent..mmm…

And, I forgot to take a picture of the dessert. It was mudcake with ice cream. There is another type of lamb, even more tender and juicy.

Apple lemon tea

Hope you all had a great Christmas as well!

My hubby’s birthday yesterday! (He still looks young btw, doesn’t look his age *grinning with pride*… lol)

The celebration started a day early on Sunday. After church, I took him to a Lebanese restaurant called Mezza Lebanese Grill. Unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures!!!!!! ARGH……. how could I forget! Could have used his hp camera to take >.< The food was satisfyingly good and interesting. From the name of the restaurant, “grill”, you would be expecting alot of meat. So ya, we ate alot of meat. Too much meat I think. Lots of lamb and chicken. Mathias noticed there wasn’t any beef in the menu.

After a very satisfying Lebanese lunch, went to get a triple scoop gelato, and happily licked it while walking home… hand in hand :”>. Took us 20 minutes to walk home.

And yesterday…. I made him Panna Cotta. This must be one of the easiest desserts ever! But it’s terribly fattening. It’s just a mixture of milk and cream, and add some gelatin to make it like jelly.

Panna Cotta

And, I also made him some scones. Dead easy!

Eat with strawberry jam and cream… YUM!

Scones

And for dinner… it’s almost like vege burger. Too much meat the day before, so better add in lots of greens and fiber! Mat loves beetroot in his burger… I think he’s turning oz.

Vege Burger… almost… because there was a little bit of minced meat.

So there! A very fattening BLESSED birthday to my hubby!

With Love…

If you’re a sweet tooth, you’ll love this. If you’re not a sweet tooth, you’ll also love it… heh. Sweet, and chewy. Abit like a Mars bar, minus the nuts. You can add nuts as well I suppose.

Ingredients

1 cup self raising flour
1 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup rolled oats
150g butter, melted
395g can sweetened condensed milk
2 tablespoon golden syrup
30g butter, extra
150g dark chocolate, melted (I used NESTLE Dark Melts) (the more you add, the thicker the chocolate layer)

1. Preheat oven to 180°C

2. Combine first five ingredients in bowl, mix well.

Make a well so you can pour the melted butter and mix is all up

3. Press into the base of a lined cake tin. Bake 10 minutes, until golden.

4. While the oats mixture is in the oven, combine sweetened condensed milk, golden syrup and extra butter in pan, low fire, stirring until a light brown colour. This will take about 7 minutes.

5. Pour caramel over cooked base, return to oven, bake further 10 minutes, cool.

If yours doesn’t turn out like this, don’t panic! IT”S OK!

6. After the caramel has cooled, spread melted dark chocolate over caramel filling. Allow to set in the pan before turning it out, cut into slice or squares to serve.

Tips:

*I don’t have a square cake tin, so my round tin will have to do. Preferably, use a square cake tin, easier to divide and cut. Doesn’t matter what’s the size I think. Smaller tin, then you get thicker slices lo. Bigger thin, then you get thinner slices lo.

* To measure the golden syrup, just use a chinese soup spoon. A level chinese soup spoon is exactly 1 tablespoon measurement.

*To melt the dark chocolate, if you want to do the professional way, put it in a heat proof bowl, and put it over a pan of boiling water (don’t touch the water), and melt the chocolate. As for me… just use the microwave. Give it bursts of heat until it is all melted, 20 secs, take out, stir, 20 secs, take out, stir…

Last Saturday, we went out of the house at 8.30 am, and reached home at 11.30pm. Dead tired.

First, went grocery shopping.

Then went out again to meet up with my cousins for breakfast. Went to Mart130 again. This time I tried something different. Special of the day, Omelette with mushrooms and spinach and whatever else they put in there.

Mat had the Mart eggs #4 with Salmon.

The breakfast somehow turned out into brunch.

After that, came home, and soon after, went out again for go-karting. You can read all this in Mat’s blog.

And right after the go-karting, hopped on the train, and went straight to my cousin’s place for BBQ. Had bbq-ed lamb, sausages, chicken wings and fish.

What an “action-packed” day.

—-flat—-

Last Sunday, we decided not to join our cellgroup for lunch after church. Because we know that they will surely choose a chinese restaurant. And Sunday is the only day we eat out, so we thought of trying something more adventurous.

Some of you read that Mathias went to try Greek food right? So he brought me to another Greek restaurant for me to try.

The restaurant is called Stalactites. No, he didn’t bring me to a cave.

Stalactites (man-made), on the ceiling of the restaurant

Mathias told me about the cheese that he ate called Saganaki. Sounds japanese to me. So we ordered that as a starter. Saganaki is grilled kefalograviera cheese.

Saganaki

How did it taste? Extremely extremely extremely extremely exxxttreeeemmmeeellyyyyyyyy

SALTY!

It’s like eating salted eggs, without the yolk of course.

Kalamari Platter

Next, our side dish, Kalamari Platter. It’s just lightly floured and fried kalamari. This dish is soooooo not what we expected. Mat said it’s not even like the one he ate at the other greek restaurant. It’s so soggy and oily.

Fortunately our main dish is nice. We ordered Mixed Souvlaki.

Mixed Souvlaki

It’s basically like a kebab. The meat is very good I think. Grilled lamb and chicken with salad veges wrapped up in some kind of bread. But there’s still something I don’t like about this. The bread is abit too oily.

I suppose this is our first and last visit to Stalactites. It’s not giving me a very good first impression of Greek food. If and only if, there’s another time we come here, I’ll just order the souvlaki.

But there are still many other Greek restaurants to choose from.

This must be the easiest recipe I’ve ever seen and made.

Cornflake Kisses

There was about 1/3 left of cornflakes sitting in our kitchen cupboard, and it was starting to masuk angin/lao hong/lou fong, direct translation… inflate air… hahahha.. or is it deflate air? Anyway, it wasn’t crispy anymore. It was left there in the cupboard because it is too cold to be drinking cold milk at this time of the year.

So I started googling and search for recipes which I can use my masuk angin cornflakes. I remembered my mum making cornflake cookies like this using golden syrup. But I was thinking there must be an easier way using ingredients straight from my pantry. And Right I Was!

Ingredients:
90g butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon honey
4 cups cornflakes

Method:
1. Melt the butter, sugar and honey until sugar is dissolved and mixture is frothy  in a saucepan. I used the microwave.
2. Pour the mixture over the cornflakes until all the cornflakes are coated.
3. Place cup cakes on try and spoon mixture into the cups. Put the tray into a 150C oven for 12 minutes or until slightly golden. I think I only put for 10 minutes.
4. Once out of the oven leave cups on the tray to cool a little and harden. Keep in an airtight container.

You’ll love the results… and yes, you will surely succeed… very hard to mess this recipe up. Happy baking!

WOO HOO! I’ve mastered the “art” of making the basic white sauce aka Béchamel sauce.

I know it’s no big deal lah… but I’ve tried sooo many times and it always ended up with lots of lumps and not a smooth sauce. But I finally did it! WOO HOO!

For those who doesn’t know what the white sauce is for… it’s the white colour sauce you see in lasagna. I made it just now for my fish caserole. It can be used to accompany many other food or to make many other sauces, like cheese sauce for your macaronies, or sauce to go with cauliflower, and fish, etc…

Ahh… I’m so happy… hahaha

Yesterday, 1st June, was our 4th year wedding anniversary! YIPPEE!

Mat brought me to Oriental Spoon, a Korean restaurant to eat. I gave him somemore time to save up to bring me to Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen on another anniversary… hehehehe

Oriental Spoon

I had a bad experience on my first taste of Korean food in Puchong, Malaysia. But it’s our anniversary, and Mat loves korean food, so, why not, I’ll try again. Fortunately, the food is pretty good!

First, we had steamed dumplings as appetizers.

Steamed dumplings

I ordered Bibimbap on stone bowl.

Bibimbap on stone bowl

And Mathias ordered spicy chicken bulgogi.

Spicy Chicken Bulgogi

His portion is so big that it can feed both of us. Not spicy enough, but it tastes good. The 4 little side dishes was good too! Lovely dinner.

During the dinner, somehow there was 1 time that we wanted to talk about the customers sitting at the sides of us (I forgot what we said about them), we had to use Bahasa Malaysia… hahaha!!! Most of the customers look asian, so you don’t know whether they are from China or Korea, so we couldn’t use our mandarin. And everybody understands english… so we had to come up with our BM… hahaha! You know, learning BM came in handy afterall!

Thank you honey for the lovely dinner… *HUGS & KISSES*

I just finished making onde-onde! WOO HOO! And it is a success!

I was browsing through the recipe magazines at my boss’ house when I came across a recipe called “Palm Sugar Balls”. When I looked through the recipe, it’s onde-onde lah… what palm sugar balls… -_-

So I gave myself a mision to try and make the onde-onde myself. And boy is it damn easy to make…

Before that, I apologize for the lack of quality in the following photos. My digicam battery FLAT! So had to use Mat’s handphone camera instead.

Ingredients:

Glutinous Rice flour (the one you use to make tang yuan)
Coconut Milk/Evaporated coconut flavoured milk
Gula Melaka/Palm Sugar
Pandan Essence (if you can’t find pandan leaves like me)
Desicated coconut (if you can’t find fresh grated coconut like me)

Make the dough by mixing the flour with evaporated milk and pandan essence. Then divide into small balls and flatten it and put gula melaka in the dough.

Then roll it up into a ball.

Then boil it in boiling water.

Then when it floats, take it out the water, and put in shredded coconut. I mixed a little of the evaporated milk with the desicated coconut to make it a little wet (to make it feel like freshly grated coconut).

Onde-onde… EASY PEASY!

Great afternoon tea snack

We were just looking around in the asian groceries supermarket when something made me gasp in excitement.

“Honey! Come! LOOK!”

HUP SENG .

PING PONG BRAND .

CREAM CRACKERS !!!!

Nostalgic cream crackers

I grew up with these cream crackers! I know we can find them anywhere in Malaysia lah, but since we’re here in Australia, away from home and all… you know lah, something familiar from home will build up some “home sickness” in you.

But these cream crackers really bring back nostalgic feelings lah. I remember how I used to eat these crackers… and I still eat these crackers like that today. I’m sure you guys have your own favourite way of eating this.

You must first prepare butter/margarine/kaya, a jar of sugar and a glass of hot milo.

My favourite way of eating: spread margarine on a cracker – be generous. Then, by using a teaspoon, dig in large amounts of sugar and spread it on top of the margarine, then tilt the cracker back into the jar of sugar to remove excessive sugars. Make sure every part of the margarine is covered with sugar.

YUMILICIOUS!

If you don’t like the idea of all the fat from the margarine and crunchiness of the sugar when you bite into it, you could always substitute this combination with Kaya. But I prefer my way.

The next way of eating it, I once heard someone describe it as like eating tiramisu. HAHAHA!

You don’t lick it, you dunk it, and you eat it!

When I say dunk, don’t just dunk it for 1 second. Wait for a few seconds, let all that milo get soaked up into the cream cracker, then you eat it. A spoon is of utter importance in your hot cup of milo. It will be a great tool to spoon out crackers which fall off, soaked up in all that milo!

*Sigh of contentment*