Valentine's Dinner

Valentines Home Cook 3 course Dinner 

We usually never celebrate any Valentines Day. As for me it is just another normal day in which mainly shops  and restaurants are making more money as people are spending their money on presents, flowers and dinning out. I prepared dinner everyday for my boyfriend, my son and also for a friend of ours Anna Karin who is living here with us. That day I decided to decorate the table with nice table clothe and set up to a fine dinning and 3 course dinner.

Since I have always been bad in doing any kind dessert due to my impatient and details that may required in baking, I have asked my sister in law to contribute a recipe which is very simple and easy so I will manage to get the dessert on the table. It turn to be very successful and everyone loves it.

Starter Shrimp with Mango

Ingredients

Shrimp

Chopped red onion

Mango

Thinly slice cucumber

Sweet Chili Sauce

Sesame oil

Lime juice

Sprinkle with Chopped Fresh Coriander Leaves and chopped Almond nuts

 Main Course

Chicken Stuffed with Spinach and dried Tomatoes with Pepper Sauce

Ingredients

Chicken Fillet grind them in blender

Add Spinach, thinly slice dried tomatoes 

Light soy sauce

Salt and Pepper

Mixed all together and shape them again into any shapes of your preferences

Sprinkle olive oil and into oven for 30 mins at 200 degree.

Potato

Ingredients

Peel potatoes and cook till its soft done

Pressed the potato with folk but not too smash

sprinkle on top of the potatoes with salt and Pepper

Cheese of your choice

Chopped Almond nuts 

Into oven 200 degree 20 mins or until cheese melted

Pepper sauce

Ingredients

Heat pan and melt a spoonful of butter

Crushed Mixed peppercorn

Double cream

Meat bujlong

Red Wine 

Dessert Croissant Chocolate Almond Pudding  with Vanilla Sauce

Ingredients

Croissants cut into half

Egg

Milk

Double Cream

Vanilla Essence

Mixed together all the ingredients above and pour in on top of the croissants

Let the mixture soak well onto the bread before baking them.

I spread generous amount of Nutella chocolate and chopped almond above and a dash of cinnamon before putting them in the oven for 30 mins.

Pour over Vanilla Sauce before serving.

Gado Gado

Gado Gado is a rather typical Indonesian vegetarian dish serves with peanut sauce. Somehow it is also a popular dish in Singapore and Malaysia.

Vegetables Ingredients

Bean curd and Tempe cut into small pieces and fry them till golden brown on all side

Long bean, Beansprouts, Cabbage blenched them in boiling water for few mins but not too long as it will be too soft and soggy.

Hard boiled egg, cut into four pieces

Boiled potato cut them into small bite pieces.

Cucumber slice

Shrimp Crackers

Peanut sauce

One cup peanut roasted or fried them first then pounded them till smooth paste using mortar.

3 garlic pounded to paste

1/2 cup Coconut milk

5 red chilies discard the seeds blended to paste

1 tsp dried shrimp paste

I add few table spoon of Sweet chili sauce since my family do not eat too spicy and sweet chili helps to make it milder and sweeter.

In a sauce pan, combine all the mixture with the coconut milk. Stir occasionally on a low medium heat.

Place all blenched vegetables, bean curd, Tempe, hard boiled egg, potato on a plate and pour the peanut sauce.  Garnished with fried shallots and Shrimp crackers.

you can either eat this on it own or with rice.

Home made Large Burger

I am sure everyone can do a burger home on their own. I am not practically a big fan of burgers but I did it from time to time as my partner seems to enjoy it. At times. I would skip the bread and even cheese which is the most important best part in the burger.

Preparing the burger meat

Minced meat

Chopped Onion

Chili powder

Garlic powder

Cumin Powder

BBQ sauce and if you don't have any BBQ sauce you can substitute with ketchup, light soy sauce, and if you like it little sweet add in sweet chilli sauce

bread crumbs

Mixed the meat together.

I fry them on a pan with melted butter and you can grill them in the oven too if you prefer. Since our family like it more moist and not too dry burger, I fry them  between 3 to 4 mins on medium high on each side for roughly 200 gram size of burger meat.

You could also spread butter on both sides of the bread and put them face down on the pan till it turn little color. That will bring little taste to the bread before adding your own mayonnaise, cheese, salad, tomatoes, cucumber, meat, bacon, sauces of your preference and top of with sunny side up egg ( individual preference)

Slow cook Beef in Crock pot

Preparation time 15 mins

Cook Time : 5 hours low heat

3 hours medium heat

Ingredients

1 large Onion thinly slice

3 Garlic chopped finely

 1 cm fresh Ginger thinly slice

Carrots and Potato cut them into small pieces

Cut the meat into chunky pieces

2 fresh tomatoes chopped finely

One cube of Beef Fond 

Handful chopped Parsley

Thinly slice cucumber

Fried shallot

Thinly slice piri piri (only if you like extra hot)

In a crock pot add little oil and stir in onion, garlic and ginger.

Followed by chunky beef, turning them from time to time until the beef looks done on all side.

Put in the chopped tomatoes, beef fond and water filling up to cover the meat.

Let it cook on a slow heat for 5 hrs, turning them every 45 mins.

Add more water if the water reduce.

An hour before it is ready add in the carrots, potatoes and parsley.

Once the meat are tender. Serves them on a bowl with thinly slice cucumber, fried shallots and piri piri.

Recommended serving with nice warm garlic bread.

I did my garlic bread with spreading butter, Garlic powder, thyme and white pepper.
Into the oven for 10 to 15 mins at 140 deg Celsius. 

Bargedil

Bargedil (Minced Meat and Potato)

Ingredients

Onion (Finely chopped)

Garlic (Finely chopped)

Coriander leaves (Finely chopped)

Spring onion (Fine chopped)

Nutmeg

Mined meat

Potato

Egg

Instructions:
Slice potato and deep fry
Once it is done, start pounding them.
Then set aside

Add little oil in a frying pan and when it is hot,

Add in chopped onion and garlic and stir fry for few minute

Add in minced meat and mixed.

Add a 1/2 tps of nutmeg

Salt and pepper

Once they are ready pour over a strainer to remove access oil

Combined the mashed potato, chopped coriander leave and chopped Spring onion.

Mixed well the minced meat and potato.

Round them into a small flat ball.

Once they are all ready for frying

Prepare one egg and beat them with little salt

Dip the meat ball into egg and fry them quickly on both side till it turns brown.

Once it is done, they are ready for serve!

Bone Steak or Soup Tulang Merah Singaporean style

Soup tulang merah is one of the popular dishes in Singapore. Usually, it can be found in most the Indian stalls but I am not so sure nowadays if they even sell it in other stalls.

Recipe
2kg bone steak boiled with star anise, cardamom, cinnamon stick, salt and 2 slice of pandan leave for 2 hrs.

Ingredients for gravy
1 large onion
4 garlic
10 pcs of dried chillies
3 cm of ginger
fresh corainder
1 stalk of lemon grass
Blend together all the ingredients above.

1 lemon grass smash
2 chopped tomatoes
10 tbs tomato sauce
1 tbs corainder powder
1 tbs cumin powder
1 tbs curry powder
1 tsp tumeric powder
5 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
3 cardamon pot
2 egg
1 meat bullion

Seperate the boiling water from the bone steak. Keep the water aside for later.

Add little oil in a pan and put in the lemon grass and the blended ingredients. Stir it for few minutes. Then adding in slowly each and every ingredients above except the egg.

Once it started to boil, put back the bone steak inside. Break in two egg ans stir. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Beef patty

Beef patty is a fast quick meal. Nice cheeses taste, BBQ sauce marinate.

Mince meat, chopped cheddar cheese, onion, BBQ sauce, pepper, salt.

Mixed them well n shape them into burger.

Toast bread spread them with Hellman mayonnaise. 

Top them with more slice cheddar cheese, salad. 

Fry the meat on both side in a very short while in a pan n making sure it's not too cook inside as it will be too dry otherwise. Then add slices of cheese and put them in an oven for melting for another 5-10 min.

Spread more mayonnaise before serving.

Chicken curry

Spicy chicken curry is one of my family's favourite dish especially when I did with roti prata or briyani rice. 

Ingredients

Onion, garlic, ginger; grinded them into smooth paste.

Babas Meat/chicken curry powder

1 tbs hot chilli powder

Star anise, Cardamon pot, cinnamon stick. 

2 fresh tomato cut into small pieces

Salt to taste

Add water till it covers the chicken to cook them. Sprinkle fresh chopped corainder once ready n serve.

My mom's Salad

It may not look that yummy but if u like spicy, this is a top salad especially to go with curry dishes. What I have in the salad is actually chop salad, thinly slice cucumber, thinly slice tomato, hard boiled egg. 

Gravy: pounded peanut into small chunky.

Chilli sauce, tomato sauce and touch of lime juice. Mixed well and spread it all over the salad.

I sprinkle a little bit of chop corainder. 

Ravioli

Ravioli is actually simple to do. Somehow I dont have the pasta machine so it takes time to do each ravioli. Did this pasta ravioli for dinner and my son just love it.

The filling are mince meat and chopped cheddar cheese. 

Boiled water and salt. Add in ravioli and once they float up the surface, they done.

I did a Italian cook tomato sauce to serve with and sprinkle some cheese before serving.

Epok Epok

 I prepared the dough and let it stand for 3 hrs as I went for a swim and when we came back we normally will be hungry and I did the filling and fry in just maximum 20 mins.

Epok Epok is what Singaporean called this dish and my spanish friends called it empanadas. I am not sure about the filling in empanadas but epok epok have many different filling when you bought them in stalls in singapore.

There is a blog which you can see how she did it.
 http://makandelights.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/epok-epok-daging-beef-curry-puffs.html

Tom Yum Bee Hoon Soup

Tom Yum Been Hoon Soup is one of my favourite noodle dish. It is not difficult to do at all and I like mine really burning spicy.  The ingredients given below are for 2 - 3 person. All you need to do this dish are:

Vermicelli noodle 

2 tbs Tom yum paste

1 Onion slice thinly

2 Garlic pounded

2 lime leave

1 lemon grass slice thinly

1 tbs Lime juice

1tbs Fish sauce

5 strand of chopped Coriander leave

6 pcs Thai chillies (optional)

Your choice of : prawns, squids, fish ball, chicken fillet, fish fillet

Salt to taste

Different small Dishes for dinner

Weekend usually we like to have few small dishes where we can be lazying in front of the TV and take our time eating few small dishes. This is a perfect dish I bought for dinner. Kalles Randiga caviar is a typical swedish tube soft cheese with caviar. I love this caviar and it is nice to eat with hard boiled egg for example but tonight we eating it with crackers and brie cheese and cheddar cheese.

 This is a meat ball which I made from 450g mince meat

chopped cheddar cheese

chopped spring onion

salt and pepper

fry in butter

never fry them too long as they will be very dry and once mince meat is dry they will be hard and chewy. I fry it maximum total of 4 mins on all side and done.

Muscles with chopped garlic, olive oil little butter and white wine.

salt and pepper to taste and we ate this with french bread.

 Wrap 2 or 3 asparagus in one bacon of any kind you like. Sprinkle with olive oil and pepper. Place it in an oven for 10 to 12 mins maximum.

Ready and Bon Apatito!!

My mom Fish Curry with lady finger

My favourite fish curry is the one which comes with the whole fish including the head but most people do not like the whole fish as there are so many bone so you can get white fish fillet in any supermarket. Get a slightly thick fish fillet not too thin as they will break apart when you cook them. As shown in the picture would be good. 

• 4-5 pcs of White fish fillet
• 4 tbsp fish curry powder
• 2-3 tsp chili powder (optional if you like it hot you add otherwise u can skip this)
• 1 Onion - sliced
• 3 Garlic- chopped
• 1 tbs brown mustard seed 
• 10 Lady Fingers - trimmed halves
• 1 tomato cut into 4
• Curry leaves
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 star anise
• 1 cup tamarind juice
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1 chili halves (optional)
• Salt to taste
• Vegetable oil for cooking

Method

1. Pour 5 tbs of cooking oil in a pot and heat up.
2. Put in 10pcs curry leaves, mustard seed, cinnamon stick, star anise, fry till fragrant. 
3. Add onions and garlic, fry around 1 to 2 mins.
4. Add in fish curry powder and stir evenly continuously stirred for approx 10 minutes (the paste should not stick on the pot).
5. When the oil rises up, add in the lady fingers and fish.
6. Add in tamarind juice, coconut milk and stir slowly so u do not break the fish.
7. Cover the pot, let it simmer for about 10 minutes.
8. Reduce the heat and simmer. Cover the pot for another 5 minutes (Do not over cook fish).
9. Serve hot with steamed rice or Roti pratha.

Singaporean local favourite Roti Paratha

Roti Paratha is one of my family favourite dish even for my Swedish husband. I normally do the paratha myself as buying the frozen ready made paratha is not so filling and they are normally very small and thin. Furthermore it is not that easy to find in nearby supermarket except it is sold in the Asian supermarket. Compared to living in Sweden, Stockholm before, there are several Asian store in the center of the city and some in Södermalm. Now that we have moved to London, there are plenty of Asian store in every area. Still at time I prefer doing my own paratha as my son loves the egg paratha while my husband loves the cheese paratha. 

Here are paratha ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of plain flour 

(in England choose the hard type of plain flour as I did once with normal plain flour and it is just too soft to stretch it)

1/2 cup ghee or butter is fine if you prefer.

 estimated 1/2 cup Evaporated Milk

Salt to taste

Method

Put the flour and salt in a big bowl

Then you can add in add 1/4 cups of ghee or butter into a hole made in the dough.

Mix well and gradually add enough milk to bind the dough.

Next knead the dough on a greased counter top for 5-8 minutes.

Place it back in the bowl and let it rest for at least 2 hours. This helps the dough to stretch well.

Below is a youtube video link of how she strech the paratha. This is a professional way but if you cannot do that kind of stretching you can also use a roller and stretch it slowly by your hands.

It is also shown with the egg paratha and you can either do it plain if you prefer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHvMUAi3Cy0

You can serves them with beef curry recipes or any kind of different curry if you prefer.

Mee Hoon Goreng (Fried Bee Hoon)

• 200 g rice vermicelli (bee hoon)
• Prawns
• Squids
• 5 garlic cloves
• 100 g bean sprouts
• 100 g round cabbage, sliced thinly
• 100 g carrots 
• 50 g Spinach
• 2½ tablespoons light soy sauce
• 600 ml vegetable stock
• 1½ teaspoons salt to meet taste
• Pepper to taste
• Vegetable oil for frying

Method:

1. Soften vermicelli in cold water for 15-30 minutes till soft. Drain and set aside.

2. Heat oil in wok over high heat and add chop garlic. Stir for 1 min.

3. Add in the prawns, squids and stir well for few minutes. Add a little water to let the prawns and squids cook for a while and be tender. Once the water reduce,

4. Add the light soya sauce, carrots and stir-fry until fragrant. Add sliced cabbage and spinach. Stir evenly then braise over low heat for 5 minutes.

3. Add vermicelli. Cook until water is absorbed and lastly throw in the beansprouts. Season with salt and pepper. Stir continuously to coat all the noodles and incorporate all the vegetables. (Be careful or bee hoon will stick)

Easy and Good Breakfast

Ingredients 

Any kind of  round thin slices of your choice of salami (chicken, turkey, beef, pork etc)

Egg (Beat the egg)

Bacon (Chopped into smaller pieces)

Cheddar cheese (tear them into small pieces)

Salt to taste

chop spring onion

Place one thin slice of your salami choices in the baking cup 

Pour in beaten egg, chopped bacon, sprinkle of spring onion and cheddar cheese

Bake in the oven at 180deg between 5 to 10 mins.

The cheese will melt and the egg will rise..Ready to serve warm.

Best hottest chili paste recipes (Sambal)

Did my invention of the best tastiest sambal. 

Habanero, Thai gren chilli, fresh red chilli and a large red chilli which i found it here in the supermarket which actually not hot at all but taste exactly like a paprika. 

Grind those chillies with

Onion

Garlic

Ginger

Shrimp paste

Dried shrimp

Lime juice

Fresh corainder 

Sugar n salt to taste

Sambal Fish

Mackerel Sambal fish. 

This dish is perfect to any kind of white meat fish as shown above. My best friend Suzanne since childhood have asked me to sent her this recipes as she enjoyed eating them when she came to visit me once in Stockholm. Each time we talked about food she would mentioned this particular fish that she enjoyed eating when she was in Sweden. 

It is so very simple to make and yet tasty.

Ingredients.

4 to 5 slices of fish.

1tbs tumeric powder

1tbs corainder powder

1tbs cumin powder

6 fresh red chillies

3 shallot

2 big onion

4 garlic

4 fresh tomato.

Salt and Sugar

Marinate the fish with salt, tumeric, corainder and cumin powder. Heat pan with oil and fry them till golden crispy. Once it's done take them out of the pan and set them aside.

Grind the fresh red chillies, garlic and shallot.

Cut the onion into rings.

Tomatoes cut into wedges.

Use only a little oil from frying the fish and add in the grinded items and stir fried for 2 mins.

Add in tomatoes and wait till it soften before adding in cuts of onion rings salt and sugar to taste.

Serves with rice.

Update of this week; Wine, shoes, walk and stir fried seafood noodle......

 I pampered myself with my favourite 

Stir fried seafood noodle. Really nice!!

Ingredients

Heat up hot oil and throw in the chop onion and garlic, stirring it for few mins till it turn slightly brown. 

Then you can add in chop tomatoes. I stir in for a while and add in water and a chicken stock.

 Followed by few pieces of prawns and slice cuttle fish.

Since I like it spicy, I sprinkle in extra hot chilli powder at this stage.

Pour in the yellow noodle, mixed well (add in more water if it's too dry as I like mine little wet but not soup)

Sprinkle in chop coriander and without doubt I never miss to add my small green whole chilli :)

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I tried updating my blog more frequently whenever I can find the time to squeeze in. Weather it find you interesting or it may not, doesn't really matter. I kept this blog for myself and have been having it for more than 10 years. Looking back at some of my old posting when all of my children were so much younger, It is really worth more than million to have this kept. Now I don't get to see my two grown up daughters as often as I want to as they have grown up to be a lady and living their own live. I have brought them up well to be a nice person and hopefully they will have a good easy life with a good family surrounded by wealth, health and happiness for always. Though we talk almost everyday with the latest technology which cost nothing, so how can you give excuses for not communicate with each other when its free. 

This is where Peter and I went to yesterday to have a glass of white wine at a British pub near our home. I was out for a meeting in town and on my way back, I decided to stop to rest my feet. I texted peter to let him know that I will be stopping at the pub to have a glass of wine and he offered to come and meet me there.

 This is the shoe that I seriously fall in love the first time I saw it at the River Island shop here in London. It's beautiful but it is so damn uncomfortable. My feet hurts like hell. I used it once and it was so painful and I so I thought a new shoes need to be season up before it gets comfortable, so I bear with it. Let my feet rest for a week before I had them on again. Yesterday I practically limping and walk so slow that I swear turtle can beat me faster in a race. So probably I give up on this shoes. It is nice and not cheap at all but probably not for my feet.

 Passing by this beautiful trees and since with my speed, I decided to stop and pretend to take a photo to rest my hurtful feet.

 Walking 100 meter home can be a real torture if your feet hurt. haha here I am following my track home

Yes..yes...yes. 

Last but not least my husband Peter and I managed to start going back to the gym again.