Mushroom chicken stew

Mushroom chicken stew used to be my family's CNY signature dish. As what I can remember is the aroma of the dish and a thick layer of oil on the gravy. I don't really likes dried mushroom (I hardly eat dried mushroom as I found it chewy and have a feeling of difficult to digest)

Well, since I have a 'bird' from Sheng Siong and few packs of mushroom imported directly from TaoBao, I'm thinking to give it a try.

To my surprise, the mushroom that highly recommend by a friend is indeed superb.

After soaking for an hour, this is how the lil cuties look like. It smell like miushroom and looks like mushroom. I mean like the fresh one.

 then, time to clean up the chicken (oops, I should call it bird as it's just less than a kg)

this birdie is quite clean, even the internal organ is cleared. So, this cut down a lot of the preparation time.

Let the chicken has a hot water bath and standby for cooking.

put in mushroom, sliced ginger and bring water to boil. Chucked in the whole chicken when the water is boiling.

Turn to low flame once the soup is boiling. Simmer 1hr and leave it.

*Do not open the lid as it will continue to slow cook.

Added sea cucumber in the morning and simmer for 30mins.

*Do not cook for too long as it will spoil the texture of the sea cucumber.

The soup is perfect as a base for mee sua.

Most yummy mee sua soup that I have ever had.












* Learned from my aunty who always prepare this during CNY that to complete the dish, ones has to dilute some corn starch and boil it for few minutes. Then the soup base will turn thicker and that's why it is called a stew. (^.^)

mussles steamed egg

Many delicious dishes can be done with eggs. And, one of my simplest eggy dish is --> steamed egg with minced pork.

Here is the latest version of steamed egg.

Ingredients:
1x salted egg
2x eggs
150g of minced pork
a handful of wolfberries
a handful of mussles (can be replaced by crabmeat)
some pepper powder
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of Maggi light soy sauce
and a cup of water

1. smudge the salted egg by using fork and spoon.
2. Add in minced pork, and mixed well with salted egg.
3. beat in 2 eggs and add in seasonings.
4. lastly, pour in a cup of water, stir well and steam in boiling water.
5. after 20mins, put in the mussles one by one and steam for another 15mins.

Voila. Another version of steamed egg.

Another HappyCall.

Having great time shopping at Sg yesterday & bought so many things. I teased my friend that "we must be out of our mind to shop at Sg for food stuff when the exchange rate is so high now" Anyhow, we had great time shopping and dining. The favorite food that I always hunting for is beef noodles.

Without further hesitation, I bought myself another HappyCall grill pan. It's only $89 (from Metro) Well, I should have said a substitute, not another, since the previous one already has a spot on its surface. I think it's time to change to a new, and of course a bigger one.

Well, just a reminder : kitchen ware is subjected to 30% tax (30% of the purchase price). I had a nasty surprise when the custom officer told me about the above tax rate when she found the pan on the backseat. However, she let me off.

 Tadaa..... Can't wait to launch my new pan.

It comes with a spare 'packing' (the rubber around the pan) and a safety instructions handbook.

The first project is spaghetti with tomato sauce, cooked with fresh shitakae mushroom, cucumber, fresh mussles and Taiwan sausages.

 Taiwan sausages 20 for $3.00. Yummy......

 It's so simple and dinner is ready in half an hour time.

Grilling steak/pork chop should be the next assignment.

making delicious cupcakes by using blender

I bought this blender from Total Image roadshow 5 years ago but hardly use it. I remembered back then, I used it only for making fruit juice and the marinade sauce for chicken rice.

I always wanted to try making cupcakes with this blender after watching the Magic Bullet video clip. Always, but no action taken since then. (shy ^_^)

Last Sat night, it just crossed my mind on having it a try. I cut the ingredient into a small portion which fits in well to the tall cup.

Ingredient: (making 8 cupcakes)
100g butter
100g self-raising flour
60g castor sugar
2 eggs
few drops of vanilla essence
raisins or anything to your liking

Steps :
1. Heat up oven at 175°C.
2. Melt butter and blend it together with sugar.
3. Then add in eggs. Press and hold for 3 seconds
4. Fold in flour by using a plastic paddle. Press 3 times  (one second each)
5. Lastly, add in raisin or anything that you like. Mixed well with the plastic paddle.
6. Pour in the batter into cupcake liners and bake for 18mins.

*remember, do not blend the butter for too long as it will make your cupcakes shrink. Like my choc sun-dried tomato cupcakes.

Below website is just for your viewing pleasure. Looking at the way they compressed the usage of the blender into few minustes of video clips is just like watching magic show!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtpKjgwi4Sc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plbRSugctAA

for the next experiment, I'd like to try on pasta sauce. I'll definitely share it out once I successfully make my homemade pumpkin and tomato pasta sauce.

easiest way ever to clean your microwave

Believe it or not, many of our household has this. Be it as simple as for heating up to the high capacity type which has the function like convection oven, we are not going to live without one. 

However, cleaning it would be a disaster if you use yours for cooking, grilling as well as heating up food. Food which contains oil will definitely make the cleaning a nightmare. 

Some time ago, I came across an article about cleaning microwave by heating up a cup of water then clean it up with wet clothes and dish wash. I decided to give this a try. 

Instead of heating up a cup of water, I directly pour water on the glass tray with few drops of dish drops. At first, set the timer to 1 minute. After sometime, set the timer to 1 min again. Total 2 minutes can perfectly clean up the oil stain in your microwave. 

Put a cleaning towel on the glass tray to absorb extra water and bring out to wash under the running tap. Then, wipe off the stain inside and voila, your microwave is shining and smell good, like new one. I wish I learnt this 10 yrs ago. LOL

It has been a long while.

I don't even realise my blog has been left unattended for more than half a year! Time really flies too fast than we can imagine. Too many things to accomplish but too little time. (Poor time management, huh?)


After resting for too long, I'm going to start with a short sharing.


After return home from the clinic, you bring along the medicine that prescribed by the doctor. Of course, with the hopes that every single pills or capsules that you are going to swallow will make you recover the soonest. You just don't want to feel sick anymore.

Just my advice, before putting the medicine into your mouth, please spend a little time to google it. For those who has been with the doctor for very long time, you may give him/her a greater deal of trust. I was once prescribed asthma medicine for my cough.

However, the truth is, polyclinics are running by a group of GPs. Different GP may have different understanding on the medicine that they are going to prescribe on you. And the medicine they are going to prescribe to you is whatever they have in their stock at that moment. They may answered your request, "I don't have this medicine, but I'll prescribe you a similar one, xx" Or they don't have it at all. For throat infection, instead of going for antibiotics, I always rely on taking Difflam but many clinics doesn't has this. Some GPs would rather suggest you to take antibiotics right away.

There are many search engines can support this but the simplest one is by using http://www.wikipedia.org/ and this is what I found when I key in Bromhexine ==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromhexine


And for those who are not very good in English, you may use http://www.baidu.com/
Key in the same word : Bromhexine and you can find the info. in split second.

http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=BvXMwMzFdsF2pYWzjllQJlT5hs8VUU8vO9bnvCnB9vZKxNKWZBfrJdTt7jvrLaEDbIA4RFHcwr2UIFSPlYGhN_

Understand what you are taking may save your time and money, perhaps may speed up the recovery.
This is crucial especially you are given antibiotics which you are required to complete the course, and how if the antibiotics given may not target the exact problem that you are facing.

After checking, and once you have doubt on the medicine that is now in your hand, please consult your GP.

P/s: I used Bromhexine as an example as this medicine is commonly prescribe to cure common colds and cough.

My ambitious girl

While I was cooking in the kitchen, Yvaine came in and had a chat with me. She talked about her school graduation preparation, about her friends wearing wigs during the performance, about her tuition center friends....On and off, she asked me what I was cutting, what is that for.....

Out of sudden, she told me: "when I grow up, I want to buy a lot of pets"
"Why a lot of pets?"
With her eyes shining bright, "I want to buy a lot of pets to sell" (in-born entrepreneurship, what a surprise!)
"Then I use their skin to make clothes, or maybe bags" (OMG! sound so determined, but how she get this idea from?)

Even has a (cruel) business plan in her mind at this age.

"Well, don't you think this sound so cruel; to kill the animals for their skin?"
"Once you take away their skin, the animals will die."
"Huh?! Ok Ok, then I won't use their skin." (then what?)
She smartly changed to another topics. Back to the this Sun graduation preparation, again.