ayonecan-cook

This is my fourth contribution to Food For Thought . A fortnightly meme, the brainchild of the wonderfully talented Jain of food With Style and of  Once in a Blue Moon .  If you read a book and love to cook post a post as Food For Thought. OLIVE KITTERIDGE BY ELIZABETH STROUT **** and a half Lives lived are mostly dysfunctional. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout throws that fact into our faces. And I find it hard to dispute otherwise. Olive is a large woman, solidly built, who lives without apology. She may be illogical, logical, temperamental, perceptive, obsessive, ego-centric, compassionate or abrasive. Or all of them at once. You feel her rage, you connect with her frustrations and her denials but at times you also despise her. Finally you sympathize in her fight to endure. This is a book about several people, each, neck deep in living out their lives and reacting. Some desperately, some resignedly and some stubbornly to the crap their world has to offer. This is also...

Here are some not so pretty pies that I made. Hunks. But they taste so good that I had to post. (The one in the picture above is one of the better ones). An odd thing about this pie is that it has a front and a rear end. It's twice the size of a curry puff, is not quite a semi circle, is not a round, is not a square nor is it a rectangle. It has an unname-able odd shape. And they're not exactly dainty either. I used to see these gorgeous hunks whenever the Chinese roti man in a van came honking around in the evenings in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. They were handsomer than mine. The pies. These are pies or turnovers made with a particular Chinese pastry recipe that I had scribbled down in haste from a tv show while pacifying my year old daughter at the time. A precious layered crust as delicate and as flaky and soft as a thousand year old stack of parchments newly dug from an archeological site Somewhere. I went through 2 trials to get the crust and shape to look somewhat presentable....

I falter at the word cake to describe Malaysian 'cakes' or kuih (pronounced ko-weh) . Ours, in culture, are very much more like the Spanish tapas, like snacks, served and eaten at any time of the day. In taste and texture, most kuih are sweet and when they are sweet they are also sticky, dense and heavy with the heady fragrance of coconut cream and pandan leaves combined. They are very rarely leavened with baking powder. So these are not light and fluffy  'cakes'. And never are they used as a centre piece to celebrate a birthday, anniversary or other occasion. Never are candles poked into them and never are they decorated with cream or sugar flowers. And I dare say never. I believe the idea of celebrating a birthday came into being with the introduction of a western cake.  At most our kuih are wrapped in banana leaves and served with a coconut cream sauce or a palm sugar syrup. For amusement we tint them in bright tropical colours and add layers for pain joy and dist...

This is my third contribution to Food For Thought, a fortnightly meme where books combine with food in a post, hosted by the wonderful and talented Jain of Food For Thought , Food With Style and  Once in a Blue Moon .   THE GIVER ~ ***** This book came with an ending that I could never quite forget. Not because it was spectacular, unexpected or odd but because it was warm, inviting and absolutely welcoming. It was a beginning. When you read about people who think about love as being meaningless or obsolete, when their life is black and white and grey, literally or otherwise, when pain and suffering has been lost to a world long ago that the wisdom that comes with it is no more, you begin to ponder on the purpose of their existence.  This is a childrens' modern classic. It is a book that has become required reading in schools across America and in Germany while at the same time arousing debate and controversy over the suitability of its mature themes such as euthanasia, ...

Did I tell you a long time ago that I am a fish person? Yes I did ~ I so did. And I am now even more of one.  How could I not love fish when I have these snowy carps swimming around in a dark pool of serenity. Like a floating dream on a moonlit night.  And how could I not love fish when it melts in your mouth after a crunch and a crisp. And when I bite it a little bit further it melts a little bit more and some of it so submissive that it sticks to the roof of your mouth so that you cannot speak until you have finished the whole little cookie fish. Naughty little cookie fish! Today I have a whole shoal of them.  I was inspired to make these by Shirley of Kokken69 when I saw her beautiful Kinako Polvorones made from wooden cookie moulds that she had brought home from China.  Now China was too far away for me to wander even if I did befriend Goosey Goosey Gander so I felt myself blessed when I chanced upon a box full of wooden Chinese cookie moulds that were, to me, ...

I am so inclined to whimsical food. Play food that is fun to make as it is to look at and to play with eat. These egg rolls filled my needs and are as pretty as a picture.  Tracie from Bittersweet Flavours is whom I have to thank. Thank you Tracie. Her wonderful mother obliges with food for her blog, Tracie herself is quite the accomplished baker and these egg rolls were made by her aunt and displayed on her blog. That is what I call teamwork. Which makes me wish I had a living breathing and an industrious team of little elves in my kitchen right now. However, these are what I made all by myself while my son hovered around the fringes. Waiting. And although the fish paste had little bubbles of air trapped inside I shall consider them not a failure but cute instead. But Perhaps I should have used white pepper instead of black. I had used the fish ball recipe that I had posted earlier on, here . I just added a sprinkle of finely chopped red chillies for colour. Then I made and 2 o...