Chong Fan & Oden Bento (115)

I cooked a big pot of oden for dinner on Wed, these r some of the leftover. I bought the chong fan, sweet bean sauce, konnyaku knots and some assorted fish balls from my favorite vendor in PJ17 market, which r most of the ingredients u see here, really nice & convenient to buy most things from 1 stall.

As most of the ingredients r pre-cook, I only have to re-heat or steam them in the morning, I used about 10 minutes for the bento, used most of the time on skinning & deseeding the fruits.

Steamed chong fan, sprinkled with black sesames (white sesames were out of stock ;p) for added color, and the chic container stores some sweet bean sauce...

from the pot of oden: konnyaku knot, white fish balls (with fish roe stuffing), yellow fish balls (with squid stuffing), lotus roots and a container of sesame sauce

fruits: Korean kyoho grapes, plums and pomelo

Little girls likes chong fan lately, so I am not surprise to see her cleans the box of chong fan and oden. As for the fruits, she has 1 grape, a piece of plum, and a mouth of pomelo, then declares that she is full.

Double Chocolate Apam Balik Snack Bento (115)

We found a Malay stall selling apam balik (Malaysian pan cake) at Seremban market last Sun, little girl insisted on buying it and to our surprise, she loves it, she ate 4 pieces out of the 8 pieces we bought!

I remember I watched Sifu Chai (蔡季芳老師) cooked this on 1 of the old program 食全食美 showed at AEC before, I searched the web for her recipe, found lots of blogs having it but they r all in Chinese. So, here is the translation of her recipe:

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg

3/4 water

1 tbsp oil

Her recipe were those traditional apam, with peanut & sugar as filling, as I was lazy to roast & grind the peanuts, I decided to change the apam to chocolate version.

1. Mix all ingredients except baking soda til smooth and lump free, let rest for 1/2 hour
2. Add in baking soda, mix well
3. Heat a non-stick pan, lightly rub oil to pan with kitchen wipe
4. Pour 1/2 cup of batter to pan, cook on low heat til bubbles appearing (about 3 - 4 minutes)
5. Spread nutella and sprinkle chocolate bit on apam
6. Cook til the bottom of cake turn light brown
7. Fold apam to form a semi-circle, cut into 4 wedges
8. Serve while warm

I managed to get 3 big apam from the batter, hubby & me each had a piece, yum, hubby complained that it was too chocolaty ;)

Kept the rest in the box for little girl and her friends, by the end of the day, it was left with 2 pieces only. Little girl said it was different from the one we bought in Seremban market as this taste very chocolate and not crispy :(

I'll need to do more researches and experiments, must get a crispy version to satisfy my little girl.

Super Ugly Omuraisu Bento (114)

I had a terrible migraine last nite, til gotta climbed to bed much earlier than usual, thus I didn't prepare myself well for today's bento.

This morning, was waked up by very loud 'bang' noises from upstair, oh god, they r having renovation, very unlikely that I will have my peaceful time at home this coming few weeks :(

I used some over-nite rice to make the tomato and bacon fried rice for the omuraisu. The entire bento took me about 1/2 hour, did it very slowly, as I don really have the mood today, with those 'bang!', 'clarrr!', 'kong!' sounds surrounding me.

Little girl liked the omuraisu, though it was ugly. She managed to eat the whole omuraisu, left with little green peas and half of the orange, but she had an additional plate of sliced papaya gave by the kakak (helper) from school canteen. Lately, she has builded up a good appetite, would even ask for instant noodle for supper sometimes!

Sendayan Valley

Do u know that there is a grapes orchard in Malaysia, and it is not far from KL? I gotta know it from Sinchew last month, I did a search, found an article at TheStar too. Grapes growing in Malaysia, just can't believe it, isn't it?

We decided to go to the orchard last Sat, hoping that we'd be able to get little girl an experience on harvesting her own bunch of grapes. However, when we reached the orchard, we were greeted by:

Sigh... were disappointed to see this sign

We still went into the orchard, the farmers were kind enough to let us in for some photo-taking and told us that the next batch of grapes will ripe only on March next year... oh man... we have to wait for that long...

some unripe & tiny green grapes...

...more tiny green grapes

... will definitely come back for these grapes

The orchard is really small, there is a batch of grape trees planted here (on top of the little hut)...

... and another batch on this hill.

We spent 15 minutes in the orchard only, sad, thot I able to replay the eat-all-u-can fun like what hubby & I experienced in Japan a few years ago.

Crunchy Potato Crackers Vr 2

Baked this crunchy potato crackers again (the 2nd time), this time I used lesser oil and more seasonings. Here was my 1st attempt's result and recipe from here.

Ingredients:

200g potato, mashed

60g potato statch

3 tbs olive oil (I used the dining tablespoon)

Seasonings:

2 tbs parmesan cheese powder

1 tsp seaweed flakes

pinch of salt & pepper

It was much easier to mold them out this time...

... and the color was much lighter

The 1st thing little girl asked me when she saw this crackers was: " Is it cheesier this time?" Yeah, I didn't put in that much cheese last time, and she satisfied with this batch. They were must crunchier & cheesier, yum!

Stuffed Chicken Wing Bento (113)

I baked a batch of chicken wings last nite for dinner, and I stuffed 2 wings with fried tomato & spinach rice, as little girl's bento & breadfast today.

Therefore, this morning's preparation was speedy (only about 10 minutes), just blanched some edamame & artificial crab stick, placed a piece of cheese on the wings and heat it in the toaster oven. I took a few second to imagine what does the wing resembled, 1st a moose without the antler, 2nd a horse, finally I decided on a camel, so I cut some seaweed as its eye.

Once the bento was ready...

Me: Girl, can u come over pls?

LG: Yeah, mummy?

Me: Tell me what can u see from the bento?

LG: * look & start imagining * A whale! * slap forehead *

Me: No, it don look like a whale, I give u a hint, it is a animal live in dessert

LG: A camel? No, it is a whale!

Me: No, don u see, the camel is eating grass (edamame) and there are some flowers (crab sticks) near it.

LG: No, mummy, there r no grass and flowers in the dessert...

Me: Fine, this camel lives in the zoo...

LG: No, this is the whale's head (pointing to the chicken wing), here r some seaweed (edamame) and these r the sea anemones, it is a whale!

Me: Ok, ok, what ever... * surrender *

So, what do u see in this bento, a camel? a whale? or something else?

Barley Rice Spinach Bread

Finally, I'd hand-kneaded a loaf of bread, hooray!

As I mentioned over the previous post, I didn't get to bake bread since parent's house started renovation, I was so yearning for a loaf of home baked bread. After browsing thru Carol's blog again, I found her brown rice & spinach bread very interesting, but since I don have brown rice, I used barley rice to replace it.

When I was measuring the ingredients, I was surprised to find out that there was no liquid in her recipe, I double checked her blog and was confirmed, as it comes from the spinach. With feelings of half trusting half doubting (半信半疑), unsure and worried, I started hand-kneading the bread dough, in front of the TV! Hahaha.... make full use of time mah....

At the beginning, the mixture was very dried, I was really worried... but after kneaded for about 10 minutes, ok, a dough started to form, but once I added the butter, it became very very wet, til it sticked all over my hand... Oh o... should I add more flour now... better not, just continue kneading more... after kneaded for another 20 minutes or more, it slowly forming a ok looking dough and turned non sticky, phew! See, u really need some patients to hand knead the bread dough.

Ingredients

100g barley and rice, mashed

200g high protein flour

100g whole meal flour

3/4 tsp instant yeast

40g sugar

5g salt

40g butter

150g spinach leaves, finely chopped

I think I didn't knead enough as it didn't raise fully, not that spongy. Also, I didn't mashed the barley properly, thus those barley near the crust part had turned hard, but little girl found it interesting to nibble on the barley in her bread

Tasty on its own or with cheese

Verdict: 3 satisfied tummies and a pair of tiring arms. I think Popeye the sailor will be glad to have a loaf of this bread, po poo.... ;)

Honey Soda Bread

I didn't get to bake bread since last Thu as my parent's house is under renovation, and I don have a proper mixer at home to knead the bread dough (lazy to hand-knead it myself).

I came upon this honey soda bread from another blog that I had been hopping to often - Angie's Recipes. The soda bread neither need a long kneading process nor proofing time which really interest the lazy me.

I measured everything up last nite, so that I'd be able to start right away after I waked up (purposely waked up early to bake this). During the measuring, I realized that I had very few raisins (50g) left in the pantry, think-think-think, dig out the chocolate chips, aiyoh, after adding to the raisins, they weighted 100g only, still have 80g to meet, dig further, found some toffee bits, no choice, threw it in to accomplished the total 180g. Have to be creative sometimes. =)

Also, I had cut down the honey to 1/4 cup as the toffee bits are very sweet, but added another 10g extra of the yogurt.

While it was having 'sun-bathing' in the oven, it gave the similar aroma as baking bread, I was enjoying sniffing on the aroma while FBing with a mug of warm honey, what a great morning!

Now, coming to the taste of the bread, good & very filling, of course the texture have no similarity to the spongy type, it is closer to scone or shortcake, in between of cake & cookie. I ate the 2 pieces above with a mug of coffee (at about 9.30am) and it has lasted me til now (about 2pm), filling-huh!

Little girl ate a piece, she dislike the crust (just as always), and declared that she don wanna have it for breakfast 2moro, think she prefer those soft & spongy bread more. Aiyoh! I really have to hand-knead some soft bread for her now...

Crunchy Potato Crackers

Didn't get to bake for a few days, and my hands were so so so itchy.... ;p

I had been frequented Carol's blog (it is in Chinese), love all her recipes and the detailed steps she posted. I browsed thru her archives few days ago and found this interesting potato biscuits, since I had the ingredients (almost), and I just love crunchy savory biscuit, must go all in to try out the recipe ;).

The ingredients are simple:

200g mashed potato

60g potato starch

30g vegetable oil

1 1/2 tsp pop-corn white cheddar cheese seasoning

a pinch of dried parsley flakes

The problem I faced in this recipe was I didn't have enough potato starch (though it required only a wee bit), I looked into my pantry, found the leftover joshinko flour, I smartly top it to the remaining potato starch. Moreover, I didn't have a proper measurement cup to measure the small quantity of oil (the smallest measurement in the cup is 100ml), thus I just wildly guessing the quantity.

The potato mixture dough turned out on the oily side, quite difficult to transfer it to the baking tray after flatten and molding.

Then came to the baking time, after the 1st batch were out from the oven (according to the suggested time stated in Carol's blog), I found most of the biscuits still soft at the center. Therefore, after the 2nd batch was out, I send both batches to the oven again for another 10 minutes. That was why my biscuits came out so tan comparing with Carol's :(

The verdict: Though they were too tan/dark, they were very very crunchy. Also, as I didn't add in the salt as suggested by Carol, thought that the cheddar cheese seasoning would be salty enough, but I was wrong, it just added a hint of saltiness only, well, overall, it still tasted fine, just as tasty ;p

I let little girl ate it after her school, she just couldn't stop herself from stealing it from the the jar, and by the time she stopped, it was left with about 5 pieces only! Can u imagine how tasty it was?

Fish Ball Twin Bento (112)

After having holiday (1st, off 1 week for H1N1, then 1 week school holiday, after returning to school for 2 weeks, off for 1 week of Hari Raya holiday again) weeks after weeks, my brain had turned rusty and couldn't work properly. Well, basically I really turn idle & lazy during little girl's school holidays ;p.

I cooked the low shi fan for little girl's bento and for my lunch, as everything was cooked from scratch, thus it took me a longer time to get things done. This bento was ready in about 45 minutes.

The twin sister (seaweed fish balls) on a bed of fried low shi fan.

Watermelon balls, grapes and strawberry flavored sago jelly

Again, the sister on the left...

the one on the right.

As little girl came to canteen quite late after her yoga, she had only about 10 minutes to finish up her lunch. However, my little slow eater just couldn't eat fast, therefore she left a bit of the fried low shi fan, finished the watermelon and decided to keep the rest of the grapes and sago jelly for her snack later.