Friday, 26th May 2006

Chicken wings seem to be featured a lot in this blog.

Here they are again. M & H had an early dinner (5.30 pm). Deep fried chicken wings marinated with oyster, dark & light soy sauce, pepper, sesame oil, chinese cooking wine and mashed ginger. Our helper had a sudden miraculous burst of initiative and included honey because she said it would improve the taste. Marinate overnight or for at least 3 hours, dip in cornstarch and deep fry till light brown and crispy. The chicken wings should have crispy bits of ginger and cornstarch sticking to the crispy skin. When you bite into them, once pass the crunchyness, you get an explosion of juicy flavours in your mouth. Best eaten hot from the wok!!! oh, that glorious crunchy skin.....

It was Sil & Dom's favourite and now M & H's.

Friday, 26th May 2006

Once every so often I go into a tidy, clean, sort, organise frenzy mode and will frantically attack anything in sight that needs 'sorting', sometimes its my nail polish drawer, sometimes the fridge, sometimes the crockery cupboard, sometimes my kids' Legos, sometimes my CDs, sometimes my clothes, but this time, this is what I did. ( I've even begged a friend to be let loose in her office to sort it out for her but she refused.... I wonder why, hehehe ).



Guess what's underneath these lovely little napkins? (bought them in HK, pure Irish linen, with embroidery in corners - 18 in a pack for HK$10 per pack - hahaha - I love bargains). You can use these napkins as little coasters or dainty finger napkins, they measure 15 cm x 15 cm.

My collection of fresh water pearl jewellery. My pearls used to be kept in little pouches here there everywhere and it was difficult to find something especially when you are in a hurry in the mornings.

Look, all neat and tidy and all in one place... just the way I like things to be

Unveiled...



On the ledge at my dressing table.

Thursday, 25th May 2006

Wm & her troop came over for dinner. I made this really strange claypot thingy - it has 2 types of tofu in it (the fresh ones in blocks) as well as 2 blocks of 'silken' tofu which is packed into plastic tubs and sold in most supermarkets. It also has mushrooms, dried oysters, a lot of whole garlic cloves, enoki & another type of mushroom, minced pork and a topping of salted fish and garlic. It turned out to be quite delicious, a wonderful mishmash of flavours - bland tofu, saucy sauce, textury mushrooms, and salty bits topping.

Here it is - we ate it with copious amounts of chilli oil.......



Brief recipe (its very very similar to the roast pork claypot dish I made last month)

1. Cut tofu into blocks, panfry and put into claypot.

2. Stew mushrooms & dried oysters with lots lots of whole garlic cloves (lightly browned first), when mushrooms & oysters are soft, add enoki mushrooms and another type of clustery mushrooms which I do know the name of. Stew till yummy using the usual sauces (dark, light soy, oyster sauce, chinese wine, sesame oil, pepper).

3. Pour on top of the tofu.

4. Fry marinated mince pork with some chopped garlic till aromatic and dryish.

5. Put on top of mushrooms.

6. Finally fry salted fish (the best kind - Mui Heong from HK, remove bones & skin) and garlic till brown and crispy.

7. Put on top of stew.

8. Set claypot on fire and let it come to a simmer.

9. Serve straight from the claypot.

Quote " wow, winter food "

After dinner, watched the finals of American Idol - yeah - Taylor won. Anyone who can dance with such abandonment certainly deserves my vote!

Tuesday, 2nd May 2006

On the subject of vegetables, here's another huge plate - Kai Lan this time - all for me.

Yummy.....

Tuesday, 23rd May 2006

I've had quite a busy week, running between two jobs and it was busy too at the other workplace. I've had quite a lot to do plus cramming in a lot of information as the other person leaves next week for almost 3 months. Ah well, I hope there will be no major hiccups. The other place is a big office and for the first time since I left the hotel which I used to work in, I now have many colleagues.

I've had less time to think about food, look at food or surf my favourite food sites, such as Delia Smith, Cooking for Engineers, etc as well as read food blogs and spin up recipes. And I don't have time to snack at work, haha.

Here is my dinner on Tuesday. Poached choy sum, topped with oyster sauce and lots of fried garlic. It was so delicious, that's more than half a kg of veg there but I ate everything.

Monday, 22nd May 2006

First day at work at the other place. Its quite nerve racking being the new girl/old girl - its been a long time since I was a newbie ..... I had lunch at PM with Wm and her colleagues but no pics as I was a bit anxious watching the clock with an hour's break for lunch. At my other workplace, lunch breaks are more, no, very flexible.. haha

This bowl of fried rice does not look very exciting but believe me, you have to try it at least once. Its an old family favourite - Ginger fried rice.

Fry garlic, shallots in very little oil, add ginger sauce (made with pulverised ginger, chopped spring onion lightly fried in oil with salt), add spring onions, add chopped long beans and cooked rice. Add sweet soysauce and salt. Keep stirring in between each addition. Push rice aside and add egg into wok, let it set slightly and stir into rice. Serve piping hot.

Here it is... another great comfort food.

Sunday, 21st May 2006

Spent a nice quiet Sunday with M, H and their friend James at the Sheraton Poolside. They swam and played sharks (of course H was the shark, M & James had a hard time 'capturing' her) while I read the paper and surfed.

Here is my dinner last night. After the excesses of meat, cream, rice, curries, noodles, etc which I've been having lately, it was a welcomed change. Still quite fattening though.

Grilled Tuna Salad with lots of diced onions and cheese on wholemeal roll - it was good, I washed it down with the remaining bottle of Riesling which I shared with Wm on Saturday night.

Friday, 19th May 2006

J, M, Wm & I all took a day off from work to go to Miri for a bit of shopping and a lot of eating. We were lucky enough to have C as our driver in the office 'bus' and M came along too as he needed new glasses desperately and Friday is a holiday for school kids in Brunei.

Miri is situated in Sarawak, East Malaysia, and about 2.5 hours' drive away from BSB. We set off at 7.40 am and first stop had to be the noodle stalls in Seria.

Fried kueh teow at the stalls - they were delicious, woky, hot, soft noodles..... very eggy and full of beansprouts - to enhance the taste, add lots of sticky sweet soysauce and local spicy chilli sauce.



Local cakes

We hit Miri at 11 am...



... and headed to the opticians where I picked up my super cool, highly trendy and coveted Tommy Hilfiger sunglasses which I've had prescription lens put it so I can see when I'm driving. I love them!!! Here they are. J lurved them and wanted a pair badly too but they didn't have any in stock but Albert will order a pair for her from Italy.


Here is our loot from the opticians.

M - 2 pairs
M - 2 pairs
Me - sunglasses and a pair of tortoise shell frame glasses
J - 2 pairs, several pairs of daily use contacts and a box of 'define' lens which make your eyes look bigger

8 pairs of glasses in total and all were cheap compared to the prices we would have paid for the same thing in Brunei. We were very happy.



After almost 2 hours at the Opticians, we were hungry so set off to have lunch at Maxim's.

We had deep fried pork leg, 'drunken' prawns and stir-fried forest fern.

The pork leg was good - the salt which they had rubbed into the skin made it extra crunchy and crispy. It was served with a sweet sour chilli sauce and mini mantous (deep fried bread) and some pickled pineapple.



The drunken prawns are not prawns which had been on a drinking spree, but prawns poached in Chinese wine with some herbs, wood fungus and spring onions.



The forest ferns were lightly stirfried with garlic and rice cake (used to make rice wine) seasoning, so it was slightly alcoholicky but very very healthy.



Then the shopping began!!!!!!!

Shoes - From McD's where M had his lunch, I saw the magic word 'SALE' at Vincci and my heart started racing...... Half an hour later, I walked out with 2 pairs of gorgeous shoes! Total cost B$40.

Here are my shoes with H modeling one of them.



The first pair is suedy look and it's flesh colour with faint lilac braiding. The second pair is glaring orange red in colour with cork wedges, painted with gold and red whorls. Toes are encased in red, black, gold and beige strings in front. I think these will cut into my feet badly but hey, I can sacrifice comfort for hot shoes! Easily...

The rest took longer but were just as successful:

M - 1 pair
J - 3 pairs
Wm - 1 pair

Here are the girls with our shoe loot. ( From L to R - J, M & Wm)



Next. We found a fantastic shop selling the most beautiful Mediterranean look crockery and tableware, all made in China for the US market. The designs and quality were incredible. J bought A LOT of plates, serving ware, bowls, etc for her new house. I had to resist as I have no room for storage but it was painful, so very painful, to walk away. I imagined the plates full of FOOD on my dinner table for Christmas, for birthday parties, for girls get together eat fests..... sigh..... - it still hurts to talk about it. In the end I broke and bought these 3 cuties:



( Don't you think they will look so cute on my Christmas table this year?)

Next stop, another shopping mall - not much success here but I bought 2 bottle of Chinese red wine for cooking ginger chicken in wine, and 2 bottles of Hsiao Hsing wine for cooking.

Last stop, dinner ( we all know that shopping is an exhilarating but hungry process) :

We ordered:

1. A whole 'cha chi kai' which literally translates to Fried paper chicken (the skin is very thin and crispy, and the meat still juicy, tender and well marinated).



2. Kau Yuk - Belly Pork deep fried and cooked in tasty sauce, steamed with yam slices, a very traditional Hakka & Cantonese dish. (sorry not a good pic)



3. Steamed Tiger Prawns with egg white, Chinese wine & garlic. (A disappointment as the prawns were tough).



4. Deep Fried Calamari with spicy salt



5. Forest fern again



Aside from the prawns, eveything else was delicious and we ate almost everything.

After that magnificent dinner, we piled into the bus and this time we were a quieter and more subdued bunch of girls as we were full and tired after the day's activities.

Arrived home at 10 pm. On the whole, a fantastic day out with super bargains, a lot of laughing, eating, walking, shopping and talking. I want to go again - I want that pair of turquoise strappy shoes with 3 inch GOLD heels - why didn't I buy it??? Why? And it was only B$22......

Tuesday, 16th May 2006

The food & company were great last night. As usual HL was in top form - we could tell she was gagging for a good laugh last night, H was very excited about her new job in China & J was sleepy as the restaurant became quite stuffy later in the evening. Me, I had a good time snapping food shots, eating and jointly entertaining HL with J.

J perked up later and we both got into our usual antics and made HL laugh with risque, bawdy jokes and imaginary scenarios involving her and other innocent diners last night.

Here are some snaps of our food.

We ordered 2 bluecheese seafood claypots - it was sinfully rich, creamy and tasty. We were so hungry and excited that I only remembered about taking pics halfway into the food. Please bear in mind that the girls had already demolished 2 enormous baskets of bread smothered with garlic butter before we sank into the starters.















This is a portion of baked mushrooms with mozarella. It was so-so after the richness of the cheese claypots. It is served with beef bacon on top but we asked for it to be served on the side as HL does not eat beef.
















This is J's main course. She ordered 2 fillet mignons with jacket potato & veg. Everything was later doused with blackpepper sauce and creamy mushroom sauce.



This is my main course. I had a blackpepper steak, jacket pot & veg. I had to send the first steak back as it was more well done than medium but the replacement meal came out 10 minutes later and this time it was perfect.



H had poached salmon with creamy spinach sauce, jacket pot & salad. The salmon was really tasty and I liked the spinach sauce.



HL had a chicken dish drenched with creamy mushroom sauce, sauteed potatoes & vegs.



For desserts we ordered 2 chocolate souffles, one with whipped cream and the other with vanilla ice-cream. The choc souffles were chocolatey enough but a bit too hard around the edges for my liking but we ate them all anyway.



Overall a great meal for B$34 each. The service was superb too. Our waiter looked after our table very well and of course, the girls had to tease him - when he came to collect our totally EMPTY plates, we told him that the food 'really wasn't very good tonight' and 'we didn't like the food'. He was quite taken aback till he realised we were just having him on! hehe

Looking back at this post, I think the pics need to be a bit more 'personalised', so for future food postings, I will try to include pictures of hands handling eating utensils, cutting food, empty plates and perhaps an overall table picture. Problem is, people are getting a bit impatient with me for whipping out my camera before they are allowed to even smell the food and snapping away... at each and every outing.. sorry, folks, bear with me... :P

Tuesday, 16th May 2006

I've changed my mind - I can't be on a diet after all. Going to Senja tonight with J, Hl & H. H is leaving shortly to work in China so tonight will be her farewell do. Look out for more food pics!

The small font is to reflect how I'm feeling now....

Monday, 15th May 2006

I think I start my diet today. There, I've publicly said it so there's absolutely no turning back.

What kind of a diet is this, I think I hear you ask? full cream milk, custard cream, FRIED noodles?? Well, I think there must be 250 cals in my breakfast, 800 cals in my noodles, so if I had some fruit or veg tonight - approx 200 cals, then I must still be within my daily calorific intake? I think so anyway.... :P

Breakfast

Coffee with Equal and splash of full cream milk
1 shortbread and 1 custard cream

Lunch

This - Dry fried noodles with seafood

Sunday, 14th May 2006

Chicken with Chinese Red Wine & Ginger



It was soooo spicy as I think I overdid it with the ginger. I used almost 2 bottles of wine with a kilo of chicken and almost a kilo of ginger. The wine was s-t-r-o-n-g, but sweet and alcoholicky.

We were all warm and toasty with all that ginger & wine inside us yesterday evening. Was all tucked up in bed, fast asleep by 10 pm last night.

Saturday, 13th May 2006

M asked for Chicken Stew for his lunch today and I was very happy to oblige. I made it with chicken drumsticks, pork sausages, white mushrooms, carrots and potatoes. It was served with a mountain of buttery, creamy mashed potato which I put into the oven to brown the top of before serving.

Recipe for Stew

1. Brown chicken drumsticks. Brown pork sausages. Put aside.
2. In same pan, soften whole cloves of garlic and diced onions.
3. Add tin of diced tomato ( I used S&W and it had added basil ), some chicken stock granules, a bit of Bisto, parsley, salt& black pepper and mixed herbs.
4. Add chunky carrots, potatoes and white mushrooms. Add small cup of water.
5. Simmer and let flavours mingle and get to know each other for maybe 15 mins.
6. Add browned drumsticks and sausages.
7. Let it stew for approx 20 minutes. Adjust seasoning if required.

Recipe for Mashed Potatoes

1. Peel and cut potatoes into even biggish chunks.
2. Boil with dash of salt.
3. When soft and fluffy, drain and put back into same pot. Add butter, milk and salt & white pepper. Mash till soft and creamy.
4. Put into baking tray, dot with butter and bake till light brown on top




p.s Spent all afternoon watching Episodes 17 to 20 of Desperate Housewives, Season II. Spoiler alert ahead - it was so sad when Gabrielle's baby was taken away by her (the baby's) birth mother... sniff...

Saturday, 13th May 2006

Do we ever go anywhere else? Here we are again at the Club! P & Wm, me & UR. UR had eaten earlier so P & Wm shared the 'Big Burger' and I had a Caesar Salad with Chicken. The kitchen conveniently cut the burger into 4 as they knew it was being shared. Look at the lovely grill marks on the bread.




Wm said it was very very satisfying, all meaty, bready and saucy.



Here is my Caesar Salad - with extra topping of cheese, croutons, beef 'bacon' & dressing. He forgot my extra anchovies and I didn't want to ask after having asked for the earlier extras.... but it was good all the same.

Friday, 12th May 2006

Took M & H to a dental roadshow held at a mall in the suburbs. It was fun, the children sat on fold-up dental chairs, and were given the disposable dental tools which were used on them. After the check-up, they were given a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste each and some reading material and stickers.

There was a 'guess the number of teeth' contest where you had to guess the number of teeth in a huge bowl. Those teeth, in varying shades, were extracted from adults and children at government dental clinics all over Brunei. It was absolutely gruesome..... H guessed 2,000.

Here's H being having her teeth checked and being taught the proper way to brush.

I used to be quite nervous about dental visits when I was young so its good to see H so relaxed and confident, and opening her mouth so trustingly for the dental nurse.

Friday, 12th May 2006

Had lunch with Wm at PM. Noodles, perfect for those looking for a carbo fix.

I had thick egg noodles with roast pork, prawn balls & lots of beansprouts and blackpepper. Wm 'food-styled' my noodles by fishing out all the prawns and putting them on top of the noodles before I took the pic.




Wm had 'wan tan ho' ( your favourite, Sil ), which is broad rice noodles (kway teow) with beef with vegetables and rawish egg. The egg will soon cook completely in the heat of the noodles. You can't really see the kway teow but they were extremely 'woky' which to us mean 'fried vigorously over high heat in a well-seasoned wok'.