My Valentine’s Day celebration

This post is coming super late and yes i know Valentine’s was like nearly 3 weeks ago!!! I know i know.. haha.. so sorry.. i had to find some time to sort out all my pictures, re-size them, etc before i could get my posts up :p

Anyway, this was my special valentine celebration with my hubby this year which i’d thought i’d share with all of you This was actually very similar to the very first Valentine’s Day i celebrated with him where instead of going out to celebrate Valentine’s Day he had invited me over to his place instead and said that he’d cook me a special Valentine’s Day meal. When i arrived, i was expecting him to be in a mad rush trying to get everything ready and with his hair stuck on end and a big mess on his shirt. Instead what i found when i arrived was a beautifully cooked steak with a side of mash potatoes, all laid out on a romantically candle-lit table for 2!!! He had even taken the effort to a lay a table cloth over the table!!! After the romantic dinner for 2, he then led me from the table, asked me to close my eyes and led me to my Valentine’s Day present which was a big Forever Friends Sugar Bear holding a bouquet of roses… and… to top off the whole evening, he seranaded me to a love song with the accompaniment of his guitar…. wasn’t he romantic!!!

This year, i think my hubby wanted to recapture our first Valentine’s Day experience all over again and we decided to cook our own special meal. What was on the menu, well… a delicious crouton salad, roasted lamb in an aromatic rosemary and herb sauce, fried olive rice, and for dessert, sinfully rich milk chocolate mousse.

We decided to cheat with the salad and just bought the individualised packeted salads from Cold Storage, and while hubby cooked the roasted lamb, i tackled the fried olive rice and chocolate mousse. The dinner was a really sinful affair and we both were stuffed at the end of the meal. As for the chocolate mousse, it was a sinfully rich dessert that just melted on the tongue…

I do hope to share the recipes for everything in one of my posts later on once i get everything properly organised.. but for now.. there’s only the pictures for you to drool over!!  

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Christmas cake and cupcakes for my own Christmas Party!! :)

This Christmas my parents decided to have a little Christmas Party and invite all my cousins, uncles and auntie’s over to their place for Christmas. Since my parents are also getting a little old, my cousin suggested that instead of having my mom cook up a big feast, we’d have a pot luck. So after much discussion, it was decided that my mom would make her yummy pomelo prawn salad, and her yummy beef goulash with store bought ham and turkey while my cousin brought a deliciously sinful shepard’s pie. My aunt’s arrived early to my mom’s place and made ondeh ondeh and aglia olio. I know know.. the ondeh ondeh is a bit out of place.. but apparently they were influenced by the recent Peranakan chinese drama currently showing and well.. my aunt was just in the mood to try her hand at making it  

I brought chicken crepes filled with gooey parmesan cheese that oozed with every bite you take, and of course, the cakes and cupcakes And just in case the kids didn’t have enough to eat, i also went to Ikea and got myself a bag of meatballs with the sauce which is one of my favourite things to eat at Ikea, and my mom also made some fried wanton :)

By the time i arrived at my mom’s place, my aunts were in the midst of completing their ondeh ondeh.. unfortunately for me, i saw what they were making and opened my big mouth to ask.. Oh.. is that pigs in a blanket? How is it that the ondeh ondeh can look even remotely like pigs in a blanket you might ask.. well, the skin of the ondeh ondeh was pink!!! and looked exactly like ham!! Apparently i wasn’t the only one that thought it was a savoury food cos through out the night, several others also asked if it was ham.. haha.. but that aside, the ondeh ondeh did taste pretty good

The food was quickly snapped up and unfortunately for me.. i didn’t have time to take a photo of the spread before everyone dug in. :p

So once the food was devoured and the table was cleared, my Christmas cake and cupcakes made their debut Everyone oohed and aahed over the decorations but no one had the heart to eat the decorations so i ended up bringing them home as a keepsake  I added a little twist to the santa cupcakes which i’m not sure if anyone understood.. haha.. i got the idea while surfing the web and if you look at the santa cupcakes slightly hidden in the background of the picture below, you will notice that you only see santa’s 2 legs sticking straight up into the air :p That was suppose to signify Santa getting stuck in the chimmey.. I thought they looked pretty funny. Of course i also cheated a little with the cupcakes and bought some ready made santa’s and used them as toppers.

All in all the party was a great success and everyone went home with a full belly I hope everyone had as great a Christmas as i did. Merry Christmas everyone!!!

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Lobster and snow crab fried noodles and my guiness stout choc. cake for dessert..

Well… as promised these are the updated pictures of the assembled cake and a couple of my hubby eating the cake The cake was a hit!! Everyone gobbled it up within a couple of minutes. The only fault i could find with it was that the frosting was a little too sweet.. at least for me :p but my hubby loved it. Think the next time i do make this, i’ll reduce the amount of sugar in the frosting

Here’s the birthday boy making a wish, blowing out the candles and of course having his first bite of cake.. i thought the last pic of him eating the cake was hilarious!!!

Dinner was fantastic as well as my hubby’s parents just arrived back from Perth bringing back with them 2 giant lobsters and 2 huge snow crabs that were feeling quite frisky after their flight. Well.. they couldn’t escape the cooking pot and they were soon served up on a platter for our dinner… mwah ha ha….

These lobsters and crab was fabulously fresh.. we even had lobster sashimi… oh god!! Delicious!!!!

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Home made wanton soup..

My hubby has been complaining lots that he’s putting on lots of weight.. so i decided to make home made wanton soup for him. Where to get a good wanton recipe from.. well.. who else but my walking food dictionary.. my dearest mother

After a quick call to her, i thawed out a package of mince pork… not too fatty of course, but it must have a little bit of fat to bring out the texture and taste. To season the mince pork, I added a dash of soya sauce, sesame oil, pepper, a little pork powdered flavouring and a little sugar. Mixing up the meat thoroughly with the seasonings, i then left the mince pork to season in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Next, peel and chop up some nice, juicy and sweet water chestnuts (of course sneaking a couple of these delicious things in my mouth in between chopping) :p.. who can resist them. In the meantime, soak a couple of dried mushrooms in water and once they are softened, chop them up as well. Mix the diced water chestnuts and mushrooms in with the meat, add a little cornflour to the whole thing and plonk the meat back into the fridge for it to get the meat a little sticky. Here’s a picture of the mixture after mixing everything in… see all the yummy mushrooms and diced water chestnuts scattered between the mince pork. Yummy.. Oh and if you have some spring onions you can chop up some and add them in to the mixture as well.

Well.. onto the wrapping of the wanton…. i bought some ready made egg skins from the market and using a little flour mixed with water to make a glue paste, i basically added the meat to the wanton skin and voila… wanton! haha… i managed to get about 25 pieces of wanton from the amount of meat i had… not too bad i guess Here’s the pile of wanton’s i piled on a plate. Dumb me forget to add a little flour in between each wanton to ensure they don’t stick together.. so some did tear when i was ready to cook them later since they stuck to each other like siamese twins. Grr.. oh well.. i’m not fussy as long as they are delicious.

I cooked the wantons separately in a bot of boiling water for about 3 minutes and just added them to a pot of home made chicken stock soup…. and ta-dah.. dinner was served. I gotta admit they were delicious… haha.. after eating just chicken breast everyday for the past 2 months due to my husband’s healthy eating habits.. this made a nice change. We finished the wanton’s in no time and my hubby drained the whole big bowl of soup at the end of dinner.. :p the wantons were gone so quickly that i didn’t even have time to take any pictures of it.. suffice to say the home made wanton soup was a success :) 

I made wantons using minced chicken breast the next day and although i have to say i prefer the taste and texture of the pork wantons, i have to say the minced chicken breast wantons were quite good as well

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Food for Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner

Had my Chinese New Year reunion dinner recently and in my family it’s quite a huge affair with basically my extended family coming together for dinner. As my mom is the eldest of her brothers and sisters, the reunion dinner is usually held at my mom’s place with my aunts, uncles and cousins all coming over to have the reunion dinner.

 My mom usually cooks up a storm for the dinner and includes all the yummy chinese new year foods like “chap choi” which is a vegetable dish, as well as other traditional dishes like steamed mushrooms with oysters, sea cucumber and “fat choi” which I’ve always termed hair since I find it looks like it :p sounds gross but I love eating it

Anyway, decided to make some non-traditional dishes at home and contribute it to our reunion dinner. Thinking of what to make, I finally decided on making individual chicken pies, mashed potatoes to go with my mom’s beef goulash and lastly for dessert I decided to make a no bake strawberry cheesecake.

I had finished making the cheesecake, and mashed potatoes, and was half way through with my chicken pie before I realised that I had forgotten to take photos of the process! Arrgghh… so unfortunately I only have a few photos of my chicken pie to show you :p Here’s a close up view… yummy don’t you think

However, you can see pictures and process to my strawberry cheesecake in a previous post here

I started out making the chicken pie by chopping up all the ingredients for the chicken pie filling which included potatoes, onions, chicken and mushrooms. The worst was the onions.. cutting it up made me keep crying and as there wasn’t much of a wind that day, the noxious onion fumes just wouldn’t blow away which just made the tearing all the more worse. At the end of chopping up the onions my eyes were all red and just wouldn’t stop leaking. I had to wait for a while before I could go back into the kitchen to finish up chopping up all the rest of the ingredients. Once everything was chopped up, I then put everything in a big pot and began to cook all the ingredients. Of course to make it creamy, I used a shortcut and added Cambell’s Mushroom soup to the ingredients… at the end of everything, this is what the filling looked like. Of course no chicken pie filling would be complete without the mixed vegetables

To save myself some time I decided not to make the puff pastry myself but to just buy ready made puff pastry from the supermarket. After thawing it out I then rolled out the pastry and using round cutters, proceeded to cut up the pastry before molding the pastry into the pie cups… these were what the pies looked like before baking..

After putting it in the oven at 180 degrees for 35 minutes, these were what the finished product looks like…

The chicken pie was quite a hit at the dinner although I do need to work on being more consistent in adding the filling for the chicken pie.. haha… think there was some with more pastry than filling although I’ve always loved the chicken pie pastry.. haha…. Anyway, I made too much filling and still have some left over which I’ve put in the fridge. I think I’ll either do another batch of chicken pies or maybe make some baked rice with the filling… yummy…

Well.. that’s it from me… getting a little hungry from talking about all that food.. hehe.. luckily I made some extra bottles of pineapple tarts and almond cookies for myself this Chinese New Year.. think I’m going to go snack on them now hee hee…

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