Tried out stir fried udon today for bam bam. We went to Bar B Q Plaza last weekend for dinner. She enjoyed the udon so much. So I thought let's see if she will like this.

Verdict is she likes the carrot more than the udon :s Well, as long as she eats, omitofo I'm happy d.

Ingredients:
Carrot, sliced
Onion, chopped
Red pepper, chopped
Green pepper, chopped
2 garlics, minced
1/2 packet frozen udon
1 egg

Seasonings:
1 tsp Oyster sauce
1/4 tsp Light soy sauce
White pepper

Method:
1. Beat egg slightly and fried under low heat. Keep aside.
2. Put some hot water into udon and keep aside.
3. Heat up some olive oil, stir fry carrot until slightly soften.
4. Add in other vegetables and stir fry until fragrant.
5. Add seasonings. Mix together.
6. Drain udon from hot water. Add into the pan and mix with other ingredients. Cook until sauce is thicken.
7. Slice fried egg thinly.
8. Garnish fried udon with sliced egg.

Nothing is easier than this. Grab a pot and throw everything in. Literally, that's all it takes for a pot of good soup. All it needs is time.

Ingredients:
1 old cucumber, cut into big slices
Handful of wolfberries
Handful of red dates (I removed the seeds)
Handful of dried oyster
1 chicken carcass (I added some chicken legs)
1.5-2 litre water (Just rough estimation, I fill my pot to 1/2 full)


Method:
1. Parboil Chicken carcass to remove excess oil.
2. Put all ingredients into a pot, boil for a minimum of 1 1/2 hours.
3. Season with a pinch of salt if preferred.

See, now the meals look complete :)

Flavoured rice is my girl's favourite. She finished 2 portions of this when I first cooked this rice for her. It's a very simple and quick rice dish which I modified from claypot chicken rice. The taste is very close except that I didn't use any Chinese sausage and salted fish. For adult's version, can totally add those and voila, rice cooker claypot chicken rice in 20 mins ;)

This is a very healthy and hearty rice dish for kids because no oil was added. Only a tiny bit of sesame oil for the chicken, you can omit that if want to go for zero oil. Great for busy mommies because all this is cooked in the rice pot within 20 mins or lesser (for my rice cooker).

Here is the super easy ingredients.

Ingredients:

1 chicken whole leg, deboned and cut into small chunks

1/2 cup rice (I use small shot glass and it's about 4 glasses) 

Few slices of ginger

2 white mushroom, sliced

Scallion, chopped

Chicken Marinade:

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1/2 tsp sesame oil

1 tsp dark soy sauce

1 tsp ginger juice

Dash of white pepper

Method:

1. Marinade chicken and keep aside.

2. Cook rice with few slices of ginger with rice cooker until most of the water is absorbed. Mine took about 15 mins or lesser. 

3. Add in marinated chicken and white mushroom to the rice. Cover and let it finish cooking.

4. Once it is cooked, fluff the rice with a fork and check for seasonings. Add light soy sauce or dark soy sauce if required. Press On and let it cooked another few seconds. 

5. Serve rice with a sprinkle of chopped scallion.

Note:

1. The chicken whole leg that I used was quite small. If the chicken whole leg that you bought is bigger, just use half of it.

2. Try not to use chicken breast because I tried, it was very dry. Chicken whole leg or chicken thigh will give a better texture.

3. Add slightly lesser water than it should be because there is extra liquid in the chicken marinade which will be added later.

4. If you want to cook smaller portion, cut down on the chicken marinade and under season it a little. Can always add on the seasonings when the rice is cooked.

Today's lunch for the mini queen. This macaroni recipe (basically no recipe) is very versatile and suka hati lol I love this macaroni coz my girl gets to eat all the vegetables and not picking them out. The key is to chop them into super tiny pieces hehe..

You can use any vegetables you have or meat. I made this with onion + cauliflower + broccoli, chicken + onion + mushroom, all taste great. Definitely no need to follow the recipe but I will just post it as a reference.

Ingredients:
Few florets of broccoli
1/2 Leek
1/2 to 1/4 yellow onion (depends on size)
1/4 cup Grated cheddar cheese
1 cup Milk (more or less)
1 tsp plain flour
Salt and black pepper to taste
Few tbsp of butter
1/4 cup macaroni

Method:
1. Cook macaroni as per package instruction. Drain.
2. Chopped vegetables into tiny tiny pieces.
3. Heat up butter in a pan.
4. Add in onion and toss until fragrant.
5. Add in all vegetables and toss until cooked. Season with salt and pepper (can omit salt).
6. Sprinkle flour over and cook for a minute. Lower the heat.
6. Pour in milk and cook until slightly thicken.
7. Add in grated cheddar cheese. Mix together.
8. Add in macaroni and toss together.
9. Serve.

Note:
1. It's ok to put more milk coz once the cheese and macaroni are added, it will dry up.
2. If add vegetable like carrot which requires longer time to cook, best to boil the carrot first.

First attempt in making siew pau with some leftover char siew fillings from last week. I cooked a total of more than 1kg of char siew fillings last week to make char siew pau for my family. They were complaining the previous batches were not enough. So, I made about 50 char siew pau and vegetable pau for them. Still, it was barely enough for everyone -.- 

On the bright note, I can now make quite good char siew pau from all the practices. Taste pretty awesome I must say. Reminder to self, must make another batch for photoshoot next round.

Back to this siew pau. I've never thought that it can be harder than making char siew pau. Obviously there are much work involved since it consisted of both the oil and water dough. I thought it is similar to karipap. My water dough was very soft and nice. But the oil dough was a little crumbly. It is supposed to be like that? After folding both doughs together, they are still pliable. Only when I rolled the dough flat to fill in the filling, I had to put a lot of force to roll it. Maybe because of that, the pleats bursted while baking.

The pastry is flaky but taste a bit bland. It doesn't look and taste like those siew pau from the stalls either. Mine was a bit whitish and not as brown as store bought. Maybe I should try a few more recipes to get it right. Overall, it is acceptable but much to improve (pastry wise)

Siew Pau Pastry

Source: mykitchensnippet.com

Oil dough

• 240g flour
• 120g shortening

Mix ingredients together and knead till a soft dough is formed. Rest the dough for 30 mins.

Water dough

• 240g flour
• 60g shortening
• 60g icing sugar
• 120ml water

Mix ingredients together and knead till a soft dough is formed. Rest the dough for 30 mins.

Char Siew Fillings

Source: Adapted from Table for 2 or more with adjustments. Below is my adjusted recipe.

• 1kg pork belly
• 5 tbsp light soy sauce 
• 3-4 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tbsp Chinese rose wine
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 180g sugar
• 1 tbsp cornstarch

* I use Chinese soup spoon for the above tbsp measurements.

Method:

1. Boil pork belly in a pot with 4 cups of water until cooked.
2. Fish out and let it cool. Keep 1 to 2 cups of pork boiling water for thickening later.
3. Cut pork belly into small tiny cubes.
4. Return to the pot and cook until it is fragrant and oil starts oozing out.
5. Add in all the seasonings, except sugar and cornstarch.
6. Cook until it looks dry.
7. Add sugar and cook until sugar melted.
8. Mix cornstarch with the remaining pork boiling water. Add into the pork to thicken the sauce.
9. Cook until the sauce is thicken.
10. Cool and keep in the fridge.

For detailed methods of folding the siew pau pastry and assembly, please refer to mykitchensnippets.com.

Pie crust (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 (315g) cup flour
• 1 tbsp (15g) sugar
• 1 tsp table salt
• 2 sticks (225g) unsalted butter, very cold

For detailed steps do refer to Smitten Kitchen. Here is my short-cut steps.

Methods:

1. Mix together flour, sugar and salt.
2. Put chopped cold butter into flour and mix together using fork or pastry blender.
3. Mix until the butter is the size of peas. Doesn't have to mix so thoroughly. It's ok if there is still small chunks of butter.
4. Pour a little cold ice water into the dough until the a ball is formed. 
5. Divide the dough into two, flatten and chill in the fridge at least an hour. 

Apple Pie Fillings

Ingredients:

• 4 apples (sliced)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• lemon juice

Mix all ingredients together.

Assemble the pie

1. Take out half of the chilled from the fridge and let it sit in room temperature for a while.
2. Roll the dough to the size of your skillet or pie pan. Put the dough into the skillet.
3. Use a fork and go all over the pie crust.
4. Pour in apple pie fillings. Put a few cubes of cold butter on top of the fillings.
5. Wrap the sides of the crust inwards.
6. Brush the sides with egg wash or milk. Sprinkle with coarse sugar.
7. Bake in preheated oven at 180C until the crust turns golden, about 30-40 mins.

It was Friday, which means it was time for me to prepare something nicer for my girl to snack on. She is not a picky eater but she has her preferences, sometimes. Nowadays she is getting smarter and smarter. Whenever we give her raisin or hotdog breads, she will pick and eat all the raisins and hotdog. Then give us or our dog the bread. 

So I thought maybe I could try chocolate bread with some cranberries. I shaped a few into a bear as well hoping my girl will find them cute and appetizing. She did find them cute and ate one side of the ear. Not sure where were the rest T____T

Nevertheless, the bread is really soft and fluffy when it is fresh from the oven. I took one with my girl and it was so good. Initially I thought it will be a little sweet looking at the amount of sugar but no, it is not. Not a hint of sweetness at all. This recipes had been getting many good reviews. Originally it is from mamafami who is no stranger. So I'm pretty confident this is a good recipe.

However, I think this bread or any other breads should be kept in an air tight container as soon as they are cooled. For instance, once this babies are done with their photoshoot session, they turned a little hard. So I would suggest to keep a few just for photoshoot and hide the rest to enjoy later.

Chocolate and Cranberry Buns

Adapted from Hana's Family and MamaFami's Spice and Splendour

Yield: 12 buns (about 35g-38g each)

Ingredients:

• 200g bread flour
• 50g plain flour
• 50g granulated sugar
• 5g yeast
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 40g margarine
• 125ml fresh milk
• 1/2 egg 
• 1 tbsp chocolate powder
• 1/4 cup cranberries

• Egg wash with the remaining 1/2 egg

Methods:

1. Put all ingredients into bread maker in the sequence of fresh milk, salt, egg, bread flour, plain flour, chocolate powder, sugar and yeast.
2. Select Dough setting. Once the dough comes together, add in margarine. Let the bread maker to continue kneading and proofing until it is done. Usually it takes 1 hour 30 mins.
3. Once the bread maker is done, take the dough out and punch out the air.
4. Divide into 12 equal sizes and shape it.
5. Cover the shaped dough with cling wrap and let it proof until double its size.
6. Preheat oven at 180C.
7. For bear shape, use circle chocolate rice as eyes. Cut chocolate chips into half to get the triangle shape for the bear's nose. 
8. Brush egg wash over buns and bake for 20-25 mins or until it is cooked.