Archive for October, 2006
Impossible Pie
This one is Jean’s recipe. It is a very simple but yet delectable dessert. The Impossible Pie is crispy on the outside by the brown coconut flakes and creamy in the inside like an egg custard.
Anyone know why this is called the Impossible Pie? Perhaps its because it is impossible to go wrong with this pie.
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1 3/4 cups milk
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 cup flaked coconut
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
Instructions
The instructions are so simple that I do not have to post any pictures to illustrate them.
Pour all the ingredients into a blender and blend for a few minutes. Pour the mixture into a greased 9″ pie plate and bake in a 325F preheated oven for 40 minutes or until a knife comes out clean when inserted into the pie.
Vegetable Pancake
Minoo made a Vegetable Pancake in her cooking class at the Caring Place. If you have problems getting your kids to eat vegetables, like mine, the Vegetable Pancake is a good way to get them to eat it. This pancake is crispy which somehow camouflages the vegetables in it.
The tuna topping gives the Vegetable Pancake an extra edge. I think it’s a brilliant idea Minoo had of the tuna topping. I can imagine how rather ho-hum this would be without this extra topping.
Ingredients
- 2 potatoes peeled
- 1 onion peeled
- 2 carrots peeled
- 1 cup Biscuit or pancake flour
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup water
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 teaspoon dry or fresh herbs like rosemary, thymes, sage (optional)
- oil for frying
Toppings
- Mix a can of fish (salmon/tuna/sardines) with some mayonnaise and green onions (optional)
- Crush a can of beans (chickpea/navy beans/kidney beans) and add 1 tablespoon of oil and 1-2 teaspoons of chopped garlic
Banana Shrimp Cake
Banana and shrimp does not normally mix, does it? However, these Banana Shrimp Cakes are great finger food. They are crunchy on the outside and soft, sweet and savory on inside.
The Banana Shrimp Cake will go great with almost any type of sauce dip.
Ingredients
- 2 bananas
- 150g shrimp meat
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons corn starch
- 2 tablespoons egg white
- 1/4 cup bread crumbs
Seasonings
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 2 teaspoons cornstarch
Click on the link below for the instructions.
Fry Fish Fillet with Guava and Fermented Soy Beans
This is a very Chinese homey dish. My kids will certainly love the fish fillet with the fermented soy bean. The guava gives this dish a unique flavour. You may substitute the guava with other vegetables like zucchini, cucumber, etc.
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon chopped ginger
- 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
- 1 tablespoon fermented soy beans
- 1 medium sized guava, thinly sliced
- 1 lb Basa fillet
- salt and pepper to taste
- corn flour to coat the fish fillet
- 1/4 cup water
Click on the link below for the instructions.
Arctic Surf Clams
The Arctic Surf Clams is great as an appetizer. It is best served cold. You can buy frozen, ready cooked Arctic Surf Clams from Asian Supermarket like T&T in Vancouver.
Ingredients
- 1 package of Frozen Arctic Surf Clams
- 2 tablespoons chopped green onions
- 2 tablespoons chopped coriander leaves
- 1 to 2 tablespoons sesame oil
- 2 teaspoons chopped garlic
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon vinegar
- juice from 1/2 lemon
Instructions
The Arctic Surf Clams have to be washed thoroughly as there may be sand in them. In order to do that, cut the clams into halves and rub away any sands in them. Rinse with cold drinking water and pat dry them. The Arctic Surf Clams can be cut into strips if you prefer. Chill the Arctic Surf Clams in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
To make the sauce, combine together the sesame oil, Bonito seasonings, sugar, vinegar and lemon juice. Pour the sauce over the chilled Arctic Surf Clams and mix thoroughly.
Sprinkle the dish with Bonito Rice seasoning or toasted sesame seeds. You may serve the Arctic Surf Clams with a Garlic Soy Sauce.
The Arctic Surf Clams is great to be served in summer. I love the sesame oil and coriander fragrance which permeates the dish.
Yam with Cheese and Bacon Bits
I’m back. :-)
Lorna cooked up a storm in the South Arm Community Centre cooking class. We used to only make a dish or two during the classes. This time she made a record breaking four dishes. I like this because it gives me more materials to blog about! When we first started our blog, we always mulled over what we want to blog for the next day but today, we had almost one month worth of blog postings waiting to be posted. So, Ben had been insisting that we release more blog entries every day but no-can-do!
I digressed, the dishes prepared were:
- Banana Shrimp Cake
- Fried Fish Fillet with Guava and Fermented Soy Beans
- Arctic Surf Clams, and
- Yam with Cheese and Bacon Bits.
Just the names alone sounds so appetizing, doesn’t it? Well, it sounds good, it looks better and let me tell you, it tastes great!
We had a mini buffet after the cooking class. All the dishes were so absolutely yummy. I was so full that I had to skip my dinner that day.
The first dish is very simple and quick to make — it is called Yam with Cheese and Bacon Bits. Lorna told us that she makes this as breakfast for her family.
The whole yam is microwaved until it is soft and is then top with cheese and bacon bits. If you have more time, the yam can be baked in the oven until it caramelized and becomes very sweet.
I will post the recipes for the rest of the cooking Lorna demonstrated over the next few days. Lorna, thanks for sharing such great recipes. We surely learned a lot today.
Singapore-Malaysia Trip: Zipangu Japanese Restaurant at the Shangrila
Thanks for enduring my many postings on my trip to Singapore and Malaysia. This is the final posting in this series. From tomorrow I am gonna take a long rest from blogging and pass the baton over to Suanne. It was just a 2 week trip but did manage to blog 28 entries in all. Wow, Suanne had not blogged for 4 straight weeks — that’s not fair!
Joyce treated me to dinner at the Zipangu Japanese Restaurant in the Shangrila Kuala Lumpur. The Shangrila KL is perhaps still the No 1 hotel in KL. It used to have been voted as the No 1 hotel in the world. Joyce had a corporate membership in the hotel. For that she gets 50% off.
We were deciding over whether we should go for the RM$98 (US$ 25+) Buffet or try something different. We opted for the Japanese restaurant because there were a long queue at the buffet restaurant waiting to break fast (it was Ramadhan then).
The entrance were grand. We had to wind our way along walls of wine. Pretty amazing and I was thinking … gosh! how much is this meal gonna cost!!
The restaurant were impressively laid out. We could see the kitchen at work from where we were. This is so authentically high end Japanese restaurant. The service were prompt. They must have the best waiters and waitresses in the entire city. They not only looked pretty/handsome but they do come across as very intelligent and professional.
Joyce and I could not recognize most of what was in the menu. So, we opted for the Set Dinner. Each set dinner costs RM98, same price as the buffet. I went for the Tempura Set Dinner while Joyce chose the Salmon Set Dinner.
What came first was a tea pot for each of us! I initially thought that it was tea.
Opening the lid, we found out that it is soup with piece of meat in it. We mulled for sometime over how we’re supposed to take this. That was when the waiter came over and ever so politely explained to us the dish.
You see, we are suppose to first pour the soup into a small plate and sip from it. Forget the lime on the plate — it’s supposed to be squeezed into the pot.
After the soup’s gone, we picked the meat from the pot and eat it from the plate. It’s basically one prawn and mushrooms. This was really good — great start.
They also served a small bowl of salad. I am never a fan of cold salad.
Next dish looked good until we’re told that it’s duck liver! I wished they did not described this to me because it tasted really good. At this point, I really felt like one of the judges on Iron Chef tasting unique and exotic food.
Some vegetables. Nice and crunchy … don’t know what it is called. I like it even though it is a cold dish.
This is Joyce’s salmon main dish. The salmon fillet looked too small to me. Joyce said it was really good.
Oh yeah, what do you call this? Daikon?
This is my partly eaten Tempura main dish. It was not bad but compared to Joyce’s salmon, I wished I had ordered that instead.
Miso soup … must have miso soup, right? BTW, is it right that the proper way to drink it is to slurp as loud as possible straight from the bowl? I guess it is because they did not give us soup spoons like those we find in chinese meals.
We ended up with green tea ice cream with a dash of red bean paste. It was quite different but would still prefer chocolate anytime!
For Malaysian standards, this meal is really expensive. For Canadian standards, this is a steal. Anyway, thanks for this meal Joyce. It was great meeting up with you again and catching up on old times.
So … here it is … the last posting on my trip to Singapore and Malaysia! What do you think? You think I had fun? At the end of the two weeks I was hopelessly home sick and was just dying to get home to Vancouver.
Recipes for the next few weeks … no more travel … over to you, Suanne!
