ayonecan-cook

I love Aglio Olio... I love colours and... I love Pinterest. Why didn't anyone tell me that Pinterest could be so addictive? To the point of ridiculousness. Yours truly now needs a neck brace. And a good spanking. Oh and I love presents. J had given me these from her travels to Italy and Spain recently. How sweet ~ as sweet as the presents.....rainbow coloured pasta and a delicious looking red pesto sauce in a cute little jar. The pasta colours were all natural :) I'll use the pesto sauce tomorrow but for today I was craving some Aglio Olio.....my favourite way to cook pasta...forever. A, my sis, had also given me an enchanting kitty dish cloth  she had bought in Perth ...and which I'll never use as a dish cloth of course. I never use presents in a way that will make them wear out. I like keeping them like little treasures for important 'little moments'...... unless they are to be eaten of course. N the girl had also given me a stack of beautiful Japanese plates a...

I had planned to do a Hokkien Mee for dinner and then decided that I might as well blog about it. This is one of my favourite noodle dishes apart from a  hearty and spicy mee mamak. To be honest I didn't know that there were variations of this dish until I googled it. I had always thought of Hokkien mee as the dark, thick sauced, fat noodle dish. Period. Now I know that Penang has it's own version as does Singapore. All three look absolutely scrummy! This version however is really quick to put together and it must be made just before serving. Because the sauce is a simple mixture of sweet dark soy sauce, some oyster sauce and stock I find that the yellow noodles used in this dish cannot be substituted by any other because the flavour of the noodles contributes to the flavour of the dish as a whole. I had tried using my own home made noodles but it didn't quite taste the same because it did not have the flavour particular to Hokkien Mee made with yellow noodles. The yell...

Remember the Thai Sweet Chillie Sauce I made in my previous post? Remember? Remember? Remember when I said things could only get better from then on? Well it did. It did ~ Just like the first spring rolls 'recipe' these hardly needed a recipe  Which was good because I was feeling kind of slap happy ~ So what you'll need are some ~  finicky carrots ~ julienned see through glass noodles ~ softened in warm water, drained pinky prawns ~ gently boiled, peeled imposter crab sticks  ~ from a packet, unsealed sprightly sprigs of cilantro ~ plucked pretty basil leaves ~ whole minty mint leaves ~ itsy bitsy bits or anything else that strikes your fanciful highnesses ~ But don't you ever forget those slippery glass noodles ~ Because they add such a crunchy feely-ness, people ~ Then I crushed some strands of saffron thread  And soaked them in warm water ~  Until it turned into a liquid sunset  A minute later So I slipped in a disc  Of the fancy rice paper...

I craved these Hippo bites so badly that I had forgotten to measure the ingredients before making them. By the time I did I was halfway through. These are literally called Hippo Bites. Because by Malay standards they are big. Cucur or bites of any kind, sweet or savoury, are usually made in dainty bite-sized pieces so that you could pop the whole thing into your mouth in one go ~ without looking like you have just bitten off a hunky chunk of a hippo. But these are made bigger. So relatively speaking these are hippo bites or cucur badak. Those bright tumeric-yellow cake cups come from Sarah-Jane siliconemoulds.com Gorgeous yellow no? I LOVE these and I have an all time craving for them. Freshly grated coconut is sauteed in a mixture of pounded onions, chilly and dried shrimps, diced fresh prawns, sliced lemon grass and some tumeric. The dough is the exact same dough used for the kuih keria or sweet potato doughnuts. And also deep fried. A subtle sweet, chewy crust hiding a spicy...

Good evening boys and girls ! A tart is shallow, frivolous, fancy, dressed up with an open top. Usually baked in a shallow tin with a removable bottom and served on a pretty serving plate. A pie is down to earth, covered up, substantial and deep. Usually baked in a deep pie dish or bowl and served in it. But both may be sweet or savoury. And both are to be eaten. And I'm happy to report that in today's unisexual world the word tart is used not only to disparage women but also men who are considered promiscuous and flamboyant .. ... "with a fruity lisp and tight clothing"  Fruithy lispth?  F ruithy listhpth? Gasthp. That soundths adorable. Clathh dithmithed. This is a tart recipe I saw a picture of in GoodFood magazine. (I love GoodFood magazine). These tarts could be made ahead, frozen and re-heated when guests arrive. Extremely easy to put together and like all tarts are fancy and playful. And cute. I had a grand time with them. They are such dear little thing...

Dried shrimps are one of the most flavourful ingredients to have around in the kitchen cupboard. It is pungent and like all pungent ingredients it is packed with umami, like bonito flakes , like fish sauce, like belacan etc. A dish becomes irresistible when pounded dried shrimps are used as a flavour base. The list of dishes for dried shrimps is endless...stir fried veggies, fried rice, fried noodles...as a sambal, as a filling, as a topping... hey-ho. ....everything.  Hub had just come back from a  trip to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah,  also referrred to as 'The Land Below The Wind' by the Suluks , a sea faring people from the Southern Philippines. So named because Sabah is located just below and lies just of reach of the merciless typhoons that hit and devastate parts of the Philippines every year. This name has been popularized by Agnes Keith's book, The Land Below The Wind . Agnes Keith was an American born in Oak Park, Illinois. She married Henry G. Keith an Englis...

Drowned in oil and fiery. The whole fireworks. This is a dish originating from Padang in Indonesia.  It's hard to tear one's self away from one's ancestors when it comes to food. But I have done so. Because I'm married to someone who's ancestors come from a totally different part of South East Asia.  Someone who prefers soupy food as opposed to oily. And someone who had decided a long time ago, for some reason, that there's not much point in eating fiery food when it burns/numbs your tastebuds.  So it has been a long time since I've cooked anything remotely Minang, Padang-ish or numbingly fiery. But today when the cat was away I played. Crispy fried fish slathered in crushed hot chillie peppers. It was hardly numbing because I did not have little bird chillies. Bummer. But there's always another day. The recipe ~ 2 servings 2 pieces of fish, whole or sliced, any firm oily fish 1/4 cup plain flour 1/8 cup rice flour 1/4 tsp tumeric powder a pinch of b...

Glass noodles ~ cellophane noodles ~ mung bean threads ~ su'on ~ tunghoon ~ they're all one and the same. Slippery glass threads that are near impossible to scoop up if they were put into a soup. It's not to be confused with rice noodles. It's complete transparency and its feel as it slips through your lips, slides over your tongue and slithers down your throat makes it a very unique noodle.  It is an ingredient in a lovely soup with dried or fresh shrimps  that I used to eat as a child. A soup that's made up of bean curd skin, loofah, wooden ear fungus, golden needles and finally the glass noodles. Delicious. It was a favourite vegetable soup. But it was always the glass noodles that attracted and fascinated me more than anything else. It kept me busy. But the Thais have made it the main ingredient in a light and lovely salad. Less slithery because it is not in a soup but is a moist salad and very delicious because it is mixed with a spicy, salty, sour and sweet dr...

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...

When a warm tropical thunderstorm ceases I'm happy. I feel as fresh as a cold, squirmy fish soaking in a sharp, chilly lake in the lush, mountain jungles of Borneo. With a camera. Snapping cheerfully at my bowl of fish floss. Knees in a puddle, slipping about on wet leaves. It's the after rain feeling I'm having now. A little bouncy, blithe, light and gurgly. Its the ions. You know ~ the negetive ions~. And strangely enough my fish floss look almost like fish food. Fish food fit for a Fish King. Or for the Queen of Fish.  That's how gurgly I'm feeling right now..... ..pheash forgive me. Tuna is what I used. 3 whole tunas, filleted, skinned, poached and crumbled. And spiced up with some chillie, coriander seeds, onions, garlic, ginger and tumeric.  It's an appetizer, a side dish, a sandwich filler. It can be eaten as a topping for fried rice, with steamed glutinous rice or with bread for breakfast or as a snack. I love it. It's one of my favourite appetizers...