Sweet & Sour Chicken - Is it your favorite?

Sweet & Sour Chicken Recipe

I guess craving for certain food does not only apply for pregnant mummy but also to all the ladies at any time =). Sweet & sour chicken used to be our all time favorite dish when we are at Malaysia. But when I'm at Melbourne, I never cook it at home bacause I thought the cooking process will be tedious as I need to deep fry the meat and consume a lot of oil. But I was wrong, I just fry the meat within a small pot with just right amount of oil to cover the meat. It works!

I got this sudden craving which at one hot weather at Melbourne, when I was busy figuring what to cook for dinner of the day,I thought maybe I shall give it a try.  I have included 2 recipes here, one of them is using the instant sweet & sour sauce from Kantong which I found it taste perfectly nice as the homemade sauce. It is best for anyone that short of time but want to cook a delicious meal at short time.

Ingredients:
300g of pork belly / chicken thigh / chicken breast
** I found that pork belly & chicken thigh is better option in terms of meat tenderness 
1/2 onion
1/2 green pepper
1/2 tomato

Marinade:
2 tsp light soya sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp cornflour
1 egg
a pinch of pepper

Sauce:
3 tbsp tomato sauce / ketchup
3 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp white vinegar
6 tbsp water
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp cornstarch

OR
1/2 bottle of Kantong Pineapple Sweet & Sour sauce (Kantong only available in Australia, I think)

Method:

1. Cut meat into small cubes and mix in all the marinade ingredients. Marinate it for at least 1 hour inside fridge.
2. Cut onion, green pepper & tomato into small pieces.
3. Heat up a amount of oil in a pot. Amount of oil to use: Enough to cover the meat is OK. Dredge meat cube with cornstarch and fry the meat till golden brown & cooked through. ** Don't use too high heat as it might cause the outer skin to turn brown but meat inside is under cooked.
4. Heat up 1tbsp of oil to fry onion, green pepper& tomato. Add in the sauce mixtures and bring to boil over high heat. Turn of the heat and quickly stir in the cooked meat.

Hong Kong Style Mango Pudding

Yum Yum Mango Pudding

I have been crazy for mango pudding since I ate it at one of the dessert shop during my trip to Hong Kong. The smoothness of the pudding, nice flavor of the mango eaten together with evaporated milk really gives a "kick"and feels like in heaven! Mango lovers must try this!

Hong Kong style mango pudding is not same like other mango pudding in the market. The texture of the pudding is more soft and normally fresh mango flesh will be used in the pudding. It can be easily found in any dessert shop in Hong Kong and is a popular dessert at Dim Sum restaurant.

Since mango is in season during summer Australia, I grab this chance to make my favourite dessert. Below is the recipe for mango pudding, do give it a try as it is really for "yum" dessert especially for mango lovers!

Ingredients:
1)  Aeroplane Mango Jelly x 2 packets or (13.5g of gelatine + 75-90g of sugar)

2) 1 cup (225ml) boiling water & 110ml cold water
3) 175ml of fresh milk
4) 85ml of evaporated milk
5) 2-3 mango pureed + mango cube (if you like more mango flavor)
6) 1 egg (optional) - to make the pudding taste more rich 

Method: 
1) Add jelly powder to 1 cup (225ml) boiling water & mix well
2) Pour 110ml cold water into the mixture and mix again
3) Pour in the fresh milk & evaporated milk (make sure the mixture the cold enough before pouring the milk in)
4) Add in whisked egg & pureed mango
5) Pour into small cup or mould and chill for about 4 hours untill the jelly set
6) Serve pudding with evaporated milk.  

Hope you like this recipe! :) 

Royal Selangor Pewter

Royal Selangor is a Malaysian pewter manufacturer and retailer, the largest of its type in the world. It is recognized as a Malaysian brand icon (wikipedia). A quick search from the internet, pewter is a mixture of 85%-99% of tin with several other minerals such as copper, antimony,silver and etc.

Royal Selangor was founded since year 1885 back in Malaysia and has been growing in the market since then over few family generations. I still remember during my year12 school (1995), I visited their learning center in Kuala Lumpur and learnt how pewter are actually made. The company still stand strong up today with its popularity of innovative design and fine piece of artwork on each pewter products.

From a traditional tankards, today this company offers various type of tableware and gifts and have appearance in worldwide market including Australia.  I have a chance to visit to one of it's retail outlet located at The Block Arcade, Melbourne. It has been quite some time since I last visited a Royal Selangor outlet especially when I moved to Melbourne. I'm delighted to see that they are having wide ranges of pewter made gifts. Being an Asian based background company, they even have the Chinese zodiac figurines for the Chinese New Year. I specially fancy on their teapots set which look awesome for me. Just share some of the products below which I personally found very unique.

Since Easter Day is one the way, perhaps you are thinking a special gift for your loved ones. Do drop by their outlet or browse for more products from their website (www.royalselangor.com). They have wide range of products range from teapots, christening gifts, gifts for children, drinkware, ornamental and many more!

Christening Mug - Teddy Bear's Picnic Collection

Limited Edition Miniature Figurine- Mini Tankard, Mini Jug, Mini Melon Teapot

Merry Go Round Music Box

Tokyo Must Eat - Part 1

Japan is indeed a place with excitement and delicious food. I got the chance to visit Tokyo for several times during my employment with my ex-company and fell in love with every bits of this country. Never get bored with it's food and yummy delicious food is found anywhere at Tokyo even just a street food. With recent personal trip to Tokyo again, it was my longest stay period at Tokyo, 10 days. I got the chance to explore many of its nice food. Hope you enjoy the food photos taken although some of it might be look pretty standard Japanese food that we always see at elsewhere.

List of Must Try & Eat 
1. Bento Box
Deemed as one of the fast food meal for Japanese. Often come with various type of cooking style, ingredients and attractive packaging. Always fresh and available at all JR train stations. Normally we will buy this bento box before we depart to a long distance train and we will enjoy it in the train while looking at the nice scenery outside the window. It was really good.
 

                                      Gyu don - Beef Rice Box

 

Buta shoga yaki don - Pork Rice Box

2. Omelet Rice / Omu Rice

Omelet rice is another type of rice that are  popular among the Japanese. I would say it is a rice dish with both mixture of western & asian element in it. Very nice and healthy type of food.

Omelet Rice with Hamburg - Sauce: Mushroom & ketchup sauce. Yummy!!!!!!

3. Donburi

Donburi refer to Japanese rice bowl dish and is  consisting of fish, meat, vegetables or other ingredients simmered together and served over rice. Donburi meals are served in oversized rice bowls and served together with a bowl of miso soup (wikipedia). Some of the common donburi as such as tendon, unadon, gyu-don, oyakodon and many more. It's can be found at any restaurant in Japan such as Yoshinoya. My favourite donburi would be the gyudon & unadon. How about you?

 

Tendon ( Tempura rice bowl)

Buta yaki don (Roast pork rice bowl)

Airline In-Flight Meal

Some people say that in flight meals often very bland in taste and it's just another microwave heated food. I'm quite disagree with this statement as I tasted a "yum" in flight meal before when i flew with Japan Airlines 3 years back. I had a delicious & authentic taste of the gyu-don during my flight back from Tokyo. =)
During my trip to Tokyo end of last year (Nov 2012), we took up a flight with Cathay Pacific from Kuala Lumpur and stop over at Hong Kong. Although it is a long haul flight, but overall the service of Cathay Pacific was great and the in flight meal were delicious as well. Just have a look with the pictures below:

                                                                 Asahi Beer

                                                      KUL- HKG: Chicken rice

                                                     KUL-HKG: Omelet with sausage

                              HKG - NRT: Pasta with cheese with Haagen Dazs ice cream!

 

HKG - NRT : Black bean chicken rice. Yum!

                                                 NRT - KUL: Gyu-don with Kit Kat

                                   NRT - KUL: Spring onion with ginger chicken rice

                                                       Forgot the name of this meal :)

Stay tune for my next post on Tokyo Must Eat! :)

CNY 2013 Reunion Dinner

This Chinese New Year 2013 will be my first year celebrating with my lovely husband. It's also the first time for me celebrating CNY at abroad. I really miss the moment when we are celebrating CNY back in Kuala Lumpur with my family and my beloved Shih Tzu, Mickey.

It's been a tradition for every Chinese family that there must be a REUNION dinner on the CNY eve. Though we are Melbourne, we still keep the tradition going on and week before I have been to the Asian wet market to stock up some fresh ingredients for the dinner. We are considered lucky staying in Melbourne, a city filled with lots of Asian. Therefore, it's not a problem for us to get the Chinese cooking stuff. Most pleasing of all is we managed to get some CNY cookies from Malaysia, at least a little relief for our homesickness to hometown CNY snacks and CNY atmosphere.

 

Reunion Dinner Menu (clockwise): Roast duck, braised beef brisket, fresh scallops with broccoli, mushroom with sea cucumber & fish paste.

CNY Cookie from Malaysia

Snake Year 2013

Happy Chinese New Year 2013 to everyone! 

This year will be my first time spending my Chinese New Year at overseas (Melbourne) with my husband. Although the celebration in Melbourne is not as merry as back in Kuala Lumpur, but still it's not that bad. There are still alot of Chinese New Year activities around the city. We still can get some our favourite Chinese New Year cookies in Melbourne and manage to catch a glimpse of Lion Dance at Crown Casino too. What a blessing! :)

During times in Melbourne, we learnt to appreciate what we had. We really miss the family gathering that we used to have during Chinese New Year, collect ang pow, eating Chinese New Year snacks (mandarins, bak kwa, cookies & yee sang) and a little gambling sessions with our cousins. Nevertheless, it always not too late. We start doing something to appreciate people around us. Wish everyone have a blessed New Year ahead. God bless you!