Stock and Tom Yam Kung

Stock is an essential ingredient for chefs in preparing dishes, particularly soup and sauces. It is prepared by simmering various ingredients in water, including mirepoix and bouquet garni.

Mirepoix

Mirepoix is a combination of cut onions, carrots, celery and some other vegetables. The purpose of adding mirepoix is to enhance the flavour of stocks and sauces.

Bouquet garni

Bouquet garni is a combination of aromatic vegetables with herbs tied together into a little bundle. The proportions are adjusted depending on the nature of the dish. Bouquet garni can be small, medium or large.

Today, we made tom yam kung. We used fish stock as the base for the soup. To prepare the fish stock, you need fish bones and mirepoix but we substitute the fish bones with anchovies.

Boil the anchovies in boiling water.

Meanwhile, saute mirepoix in butter till fragrant.

Then add them into the stock. Heat to boiling point and reduce heat. Simmer for about 30 minutes.

And the base of our tom yam kung is done! Drain it and set aside.

Next, get ready with the tom yam ingredients.

Tom yam kung ingredients

Shelled prawns

Heat up the fish stock until it is boiled, then add in tom yam cubes and stir. You can add some tom yam paste and chili paste to enhance the taste and flavour.

Then put all the ingredients in and simmer for a few minutes until the prawn is cooked.

Tom Yam Kung

Rich Cakes

Coffee Rum Cake

Topped with delicious chocolate icing

To make chocolate icing, melt cooking chocolate with some milk over medium heat. Stir and add more chocolate (if necessary) until you get the right consistency. Then chill it (so it is firm enough) before applying it on your cake.

Coffee Rum Cake topped with chocolate icing

You can try baking your cake in a baking pan such as above.

Turn your cake upside down and this is what you get! It’s coffee rum cake topped with lemon icing and cherries. A great presentation for Christmas celebration.

Another great idea for festive seasons or weddings is sugee cake. Sugee is also known as semolina. Semolina is the inner, starchy endosperm of wheat (not yet ground into flour).

Freshly baked sugee cake from oven

Sugee cake is almost similar to butter cake but it is more fragrant as it uses more egg yolks and it is flavoured with spices and almond flakes.

Sugee Cake

Ever heard of boiled fruit cake? Well, it’s very simple once you have got all your ingredients. Just bring everything to boil according to the instructions and bake at 150 degree C for 1 hour. Such cake can be kept up to several months.

Boiled Brandied Peach Fruit Cake

Salad

Coleslaw

Waldorf Salad

Waldorf Salad is a type of salad which consists of sliced apple, sliced celery, chopped walnuts and mayonnaise as the dressing.

Gado-Gado

Gado-gado is a vegetable salad from Indonesia which comes with blanched kangkung, long beans, bean sprouts, sengkuang, potatoes, hard boiled eggs and fried tau kua. It is served with peanut sauce dressing.

Peanut sauce dressing for gado-gado

It taste like satay sauce. I like the crunchy grounded peanuts in it.

Avery (Month 8)

Argh… Mommy’s laughing at me

‘Sister Maria’

My sunnies

Swing time

I am eating cheerios. Can you see my tooth?

Where’s my food?

Sean came for a visit

Hmm.. let me play you twinkle twinkle little star

Preparing for beach time

Weee…

Beach time

1 Chicken and Vegetable Casserole please…

Butter Cake

Making butter cake is the simplest. You can create many types of cake from the basic butter cake recipe and best of all is you don’t need to memorize the quantity of the ingredients. All the ingredients weigh the same. For example, if you use 250g of eggs then the rest weigh 250g too. The four basic ingredients are butter, sugar, eggs and flour. That’s all you need and you can start making your favourite butter cake!

Today, we made 4 types of different cake from butter cake recipe.

Marble Cake

Marble Cake

Pineapple Upside Down

Peach Cake

Peach cake served with ice cream

Muffins

Butter cake with almond flakes and cherries

Fish and Chips and Prawn Cocktail

We learned about appetizer and main meal today. We made prawn cocktail for appetizer and our meal was fish and chips. We even made our own mayonnaise, cocktail sauce and tartar sauce! Haha.

Fish & Chips with homemade tartar sauce

Tartar sauce is a combination of mayonnaise with chopped gherkin, chopped onions, chopped hard boiled eggs, some lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste.

Prawn Cocktail with homemade cocktail sauce

Cocktail sauce is a mixture of mayonnaise with tomato sauce and chili sauce.

More Cookies

Shrimp Delight

Oatmeal-raisin cookies

Famous Amos

Gingerbread cookies

Club Sandwiches

Club sandwich is a type of sandwich which uses toasted bread and most often served as a double-decker. It is usually cut into quarters and held together by toothpicks or cocktail sticks.

Toasted bread

Triple Sandwich (with tuna, cheese and mashed egg filling)

Trim the edges

Insert toothpicks (as a guideline for cutting and also to prevent the filling from dropping)

Cut into desire shapes

Club Sandwiches

More sandwiches

Mini Pizzas (toasted bread as the crust)

Prayer

Lord,

Help me to live in this world but not be controlled by it. Give me the grace to adapt my days to Your plan and Your will. Grant me wisdom to place control in Your hands. Replace my limitations and impatience with your unlimited power and peace. Lord, there many times when I try to direct and plan things with my own strength and when things do not happen accordingly, I start to frustrate. I ask that Lord, You give me the wisdom to stay focus on You and to see that patience is the cure for frustration. Make it a daily part of my life, in my family and my relationship. Grant me the grace to be able to extend to all especially to those whose views do not correspond with mine. Lord, help me to place all in Your hands and to surrender to You completely, knowing You will do what is best for me, and in Your own time frame. Let me always be mindful of Your blessings. Thank You Lord. In Jesus precious name. AMEN.

Dutch Cookies and Butter Rosettes

Chocolate chip cookies, butter cookies, sugar cookies, cereal cookies, peanut butter cookies, oatmeal cookies, meringue cookies, fruit cookies, nut cookies, christmas cookies, gingerbread cookies, spices cookies, no-bake cookies, macaroons, biscotti and you name it. There are too many variations nowadays. Today, we learned how make dutch cookies and butter rosettes. In stead of the usual creaming method, we used another method called the rub-in method. You do not need a mixing bowl, just mix the ingredients on the table. So, make sure your table is clean!!

Mix flour, sugar, butter, eggs & vanilla essence

Chop, chop, chop… (like making ‘muar chee’)

Form into a dough and refrigerate

After chilling, divide dough into portions (approximately 70g per portion)

Roll them flat

Flat pieces of dough to be refrigerate to make them firmer

Remove the firm pieces of dough from refrigerator and thinly brush some egg white on the surface

(Egg white works as a ‘glue’ in this case)

Overlap the chocolate dough onto the vanilla dough

Cut them into half

Brush them with egg white again

Repeat the same process of overlapping

Checkers cookies ready to be baked

Tadaah!

Closed-up

Chefs are designers/artists too. Look at my group mates’ creativity.. haha!

Lovely assorted cookies

Cashew nut chocolate cookies

Assorted cookies from all groups. Some are nice and some are burned.