12 Dec 2010 - Salad Sunday

She went to do her hair and was expected to be gone for hours. What did that mean?

Got up around noon and had chicken soup before watching streaming videos, going on a marathon. Felt hungry again at around 3pm, and had a craving for instant noodles. One packet wouldn't be filling enough, so he rummaged through the fridge and found some leftovers. Some lettuce leaves, one slice of cheese, near empty mayonnaise bottle.

Soaked the lettuce while he slurped up the peppery noodles. Gave then lettuce a final rinse before shredding them. Added a teaspoon of olive oil, a teaspoon blob of mayonnaise, sprinkle of black pepper, and shredded some cheese to top it up.

There you go, the movie snack. Leafy vegetables help cool down a little on a hot day.

17 Nov 2010 - home-made oyster vermicelli

Just yesterday, they visited the supermarket. Some of the ingredients were gotten so that they could satiate cravings for oyster vermicelli (mee sua).

What they bought:
1x pack of vermicelli $1.10
1x pack of frozen oysters $4
1x pepper corn grinder $7.08
2x packs of cheese sausages $7.95
1x pack of parsley $0.85

Woke up really late today, so oyster mee sua was to be late brunch. Preparations as below, they used 2 pots of water, 1 for mee sua and another for blanching the oysters. Please note that this tastes nothing like the Taiwanese version which many of us love, it's just homemade and good enough for them.

For the mee sua pot:
1. Put to boil 3 bowls of water in the pot
2. Add 2x chicken stock cubes into the pot, 1x tablespoon premium dark soy sauce and 1x tablespoon standard dark soy sauce into the pot
3. Put mee sua into the pot when water starts boiling again
4. Add corn starch as needed to thicken the broth
(on hindsight, they probably should have tried adding a little Chinese culinary wine too)

For the oysters
1. Defrost and rinse (some of them burst easily, sad)
2. Drain and pat with corn starch
3. Blanch oysters in batches in the other pot of boiling water using a colander ladle (to protect oysters from strong bubbling)
4. Remove and put in a serving bowl to cool

To serve, heap vermicelli into a bowl, then add oysters at the top. Garnish with condiments of your choice. For them, one teaspoon of vinegar adds some zest, another teaspoon of sesame seed oil for aroma, and decorating with a sprig of parsley completes the picture with a certain sense of freshness.

His setting of the bowl for her


Her setting of the bowl for him


Sounds all beautiful, right? In between, they had actually microwaved a remaining potato to make cheese potato. Put the new grinder toy to work, and sprinkled the peppercorns onto the melted cheese. She added a sprig of parsley just for the picture.


They also had a pack of 5 cheese sausages microwaved, but it had all been gobbled up way before they even remembered the camera.

the enjoyable 2 weeks down under (17 Oct - 2 Nov 2010)

been away from the country for 2 weeks. this time, the overseas assignment was for them to go to Yeppoon, Queensland, Australia.

every shop in the vicinity would not be opened when they set off for work, and would be closed when they returned at the end of the day. the most important thing was to stock up with fresh produce. their first shopping spree was at Coles, Keppel Bay Plaza. for much of the first week, all he ate was boiled corn, carrots (~AUD1 for a kilo) and cocktail sausages (~AUD2 for 500g). no other cooking method was used, the only medium was water. well, not that bad, he had milk (~AUD1 for 1 litre), carbonated lemonade (~AUD2 for 2 bottles) and XXXX bitter (~AUD30 for a dozen) for drinks.

soon, he got tired of it and decided to get more variety, and this time round, they visited Woolsworth at Yeppoon Central Mall. bought potatoes (~AUD4 a kilo), cheese, eggs (~AUD3 a dozen) and instant noodles(homebrand ~AUD1 for packs for 5).

shown below would be the more palatable pictures.

milk from Coles' housebrand, looks like an advertisement huh


XXXX bitter - his favourite Australian beer


drained instant noodles with melted cheese, sausages and poached egg. first ate this cheese noodles when a classmate cooked for the project group. adds to taste especially when you're cooking with water, and have no oil, salt or pepper. you'll see how much more handy the cheese comes in in the other pictures.


the sun rose at 5am every morning, shining through the shades. signalled that it was time to wake up and make breakfast.


he just loves to eat at the balcony, good breeze, fresh air, infinity view.


close up of the smoking breakfast on another day. the hot potatoes had melted the cheese into a perfect coating. hopefully, it wasn't because he was too hungry that he thought that it was great stuff.


closeup of the melted coating


potato salad with grated carrot - the budget mayonnaise that he bought was not the kind of mayo he had expected. perhaps it lacked the mustard factor? he only attempted this once, and the rest of the mayo become dip for cracker.


on another day when the boss came by, a dinner gathering was organised at Sizzler. he probably had the heaviest meal of them all, a 500g T-bone. he enjoyed the salad bar more than the mains though, haha.


sidetracking a little from the food stuff. his lodging Villa Mar Colina was set upon a bluff, overlooking the sea. very neat.


check out the view from behind the kitchen sink. solid stuff.


but alas, not matter how reluctant one is, all good things have to come to an end...

the beautiful rocky coast...


the beach with fine powdery sand...


he had to leave all these to return to where his heart belonged

cheesy fried chicken, stir-fried bittergourd and congee

woke up at noon after a tiring day at the beach the day before. had some braised duck with plain porridge before proceeding to affirm the online recipes to start working on dinner.

she was doing some window-shopping online, so he went ahead to mix some all purpose flour with one egg, chopped green onions and salt in a bowl.

when she finally came into the kitchen, she sliced the chicken breast open to make one large piece of meat. dusted some pepper, salt, rice wine, wrapped cheese within, threw the batter on and put it into the refrigerator for 20 minutes. she then ordered him to thinly slice the bitter gourd, since it seemed he liked to chop things up. sliced it all up like a sushi master (maybe not), smashed and peeled some garlic, chopped some chilli padi and ginger.

next, he proceeded to shallow-fry the now-ready-chicken in the wok. around 6 (maybe more) sinful tablespoons of oil on medium heat before golden-browning each side. once done, he placed the chicken onto a plate with paper kitchen towels to absorb the excess oil.

cheesy fried chicken - cut it up with kitchen scissors after it had cooled a little. looks a wee bit like roti john, huh? chicken tasted tender even though it hadn't been bashed up, amazing.


he washed up the wok for the next dish, and by this time, she had finished marinating the minced pork with salt, soy sauce and rice wine. heated 6 teaspoons of oil and started frying the ginger, garlic and chilli till he choked. that was the signal to cook the minced pork. the bittergourd was added only when most of the meat had turned opaque. kept on medium heat and continued with frequent stirs until the bittergourd became tender.

stir-fried bittergourd with minced pork - a little too salty, she had soaked the bittergourd with too much salt and misinformed him to add salt when stir-frying! probably would have tasted fine with plain porridge...alas....


he decided he wanted to cook congee with his newly acquired chicken essence cubes. got a cup of rice, 6 cups of water, 2 cubes of chicken essence and put them to cook in the electric cooker. next was to marinate the remaining mince pork with salt, soy sauce and rice white (nothing new here). wife said to add a teaspoon of flour so that the meat would stick together better for him to make meatballs. mixed well and used a teaspoon to shape some meat before putting them to cook in the congee. had to add another 2 cups of water since it was already drying up, making the ratio of rice to water 1:8.

minced pork congee in chicken soup base. littlest brother commented that the congee looked yellow, but he attributed it to the soup stock. while writing this post, it dawned upon him that he had forgotten to wash the rice. oops. luckily google yielded little negative comments.