Xmas goodies

I picked one of the hottest days in December to do my annual xmas bake. With 36degree heat at 10am in the morning, and the oven being on from 10am-8:30pm that night, lets just say I was more than a little hot, tired and cranky. But, in the end, I managed to get everything done. However, I was so busy I didn't get a chance to take photos of everything I made. Plus I was forever covered in flour and sweat and I didn't want to destroy my camera forever.

Cranberry and pistachio biscotti

Clockwise: Cranberry and pistachio biscotti, peanut butter cookies, shortbread, rocky road, orange and almost biscotti

The great thing about having a big family, is that I sat everyone down at the end of the night to help me start wrapping! There were over 60 packages to sort, wrap, tie and decorate. I did manage to finish before midnight which was a good thing! I kept everything in my room as I was worried the kids would eat everything, so it meant I woke up smelling the bakery in my room ;)

Top right: Pineapple and strawberry jam

Too bad my strawberry plants didn't have strawberries before I made the jam, otherwise it would've been home grown and home made strawberries. But then, my neice was raiding the strawberry plant every day and there was barely any left for me to eat! Same goes with my raspberry tree. I managed to get 2 whole raspberries off it before the kids ate everything!

One of my big plump sun riped strawberries

Home cooked dinner and the photo swap

It was pouring down rain on the weekend. The plan was to stay home in bed with my DVDs and my big pot of freshly cooked Pork Belly in young coconut juice with eggs and quail eggs. And since I had to leave work early on Friday because I was so sick, I thought it was the perfect way to recover.

However, Moishii called me and asked if I wanted to come over to swap photos, since he had the house to himself, and he even offered to cook me dinner! How could I refuse? Besides, my Pork Belly dish always taste better the next day. But since Moishii offered to cook, I thought I should contribute by bringing freshly homebaked peanut butter cookies. All wrapped up Rome style of course.

So in the pouring rain, I grab my laptop and my special package of cookies and slowly drive over to Moishii's place. I walk into the house and can I could smell something cooking. Moishii had made my favourite lentil soup! In the last trip, and the trip before, whenever I got sick (which is always in Istanbul) I would want lentil soup. Ever since the first time I tried it, I've been completely converted on Turkish Soup. Seeing the big pot of warm and comforting lentil soup was the best way to brighten my mood after driving in the horrid weather. Plus I was really sick that weekend as well! So whilst Moishii continued to cook dinner, I busied myself with doing the photo thing whilst we played the holiday videos on the background. Hey, I did offer to help you know??

Anyway, Moishii ended up cooking me a 3 course meal!! I'm surprised he did such a great job since he was tanked on wine!

In action

In action - close up

My favourite lentil soup and it was delicious!!

Greek salad - Turkish style

Table view

Me infront of the feast!

My plate all piled up

Sugar coated strawberries

Moishii with the cookie present

Peanut butter cookies

After completely pigging out on a delicious meal, Moishii put on a massive pot of Cay (Turkish Tea), and pulled out his secret stash of cubed sugar (I LOVE cay with cubed sugar!) where we sat down and slowly went through our photos whilst recapping some of the highlights of the trip. It did help with the videos playing in the background to jog our memories. Infact, we had ALOT of videos...

Yes....anyway, we finally got a copy of each other's photos. I took 4200 photos on my DSLR, and EASILY another 500+ on my point and shoot. Thats 4700 photos!! Crap! Oh wells, its better to have more photos than not enough photos to remember the trip. But anything I forget, I'm sure I can recap with Moishii over tea on a rainy day. Thanks for the lovely meal Moishii!! Lets do it again! HEhehe

SoRCook is back again!

Its been awhile since I've done any cooking. Theres been so many recipes I've wanted to try, and many things I crave that my mum either doesn't know how to cook, or doesn't want to cook it. Now its my chance! As I go home every night, I stop by the local butcher, veggie shop and asian grocery store to pick up my supplies for dinner that night. I'm trying to cook just enough for dinner, and maybe some leftovers for lunch (and some for my granny as well). So, what have I been cooking?

Shin Ramyun pork noodles

The Korean spicy noodles Shin Ramyun is my favourite hangover cure. Depending on how bad my hangover is, I would to boil the noodles in water, and once the noodle cake starts to break apart slightly, I would pour out half of the water. I then add an entire packet of the spicy soup mix to the pot and let that simmer until the noodles have absorbed most of the soup. This gives the noodles an extra spicy kick that really wakes you up. The more hungover I was, the more spicy I would make it.

For a more decent meal, I stir fried pork mince and cabbage with the soup powder that comes with the Korean spicy noodle Shin Ramyun. I let the mixture simmer for awhile so the pork absorbed all the yummy spicy sauce. Once the sauce starts to thicken up, I poured it over the cooked noodles before stirring through. This was absolutely delicious and a perfect hangover cure!

Satay Chicken, Veggies with Oyster sauce and rice

The one thing I miss the most about our family restaurant is all the restaurant food we used to eat. We never eat "restaurant food" at home. Anything we used to sell at the restaurant is basically never cooked at home. I don't know why, but I do know I miss the food a lot. And one of my favourite dishes was satay chicken. When I was working at Crows Nest, the local Chinese restaurant cooked something very similar to what we used to sell. Similar, but not the same. And now that I'm working in the city, I can't even find something remotely close.

So here's my attempt at it. And although I didn't mix up a batch of the satay sauce we used to use, this was close enough and definitely satisfied my cravings. The veggies were gently steamed and the oyster sauce was drizzled ontop. I know that looks like a lot of sauce, but I had a lot more veggies on the side.

Hokkien Mee

In 2 1/2 weeks time, I can finally go to Singapore and visit my favourite hawker stall for their Hokkien Mee. But I can't wait 2 1/2 weeks. I wasn't paying attention when I cooked this and accidentally made it too thick. And I chose to use a thinner noodle. I also didn't have any Ketjap Manis, so I used a lot of dark soy. I wasn't as dark in colour as a proper Hokkien Mee, but GOD THIS TASTED GOOD!! I even surprised myself! The sauce is rich and comforting. The sauce is caramelised and so moreish! I can't wait to make this again! I might actually go and buy a bottle of Ketjap Manis next time to make this properly. It tasted almost like the real thing! I just wished I had some pickled green chillis to go with it. MmMm and good thing I made extra to take to work, because this will definitely taste better tomorrow! I can't wait!!

The start of the eating spree

After getting rudely woken up at 9am with a hangover, I managed to pack my bags for a night out with the girls and headed into the city. After dumping everything at the hotel, we caught a cab to my favourite Jap restaurant Don Dons. (I'm not giving the address as its crowded enough and I don't want the prices to go up!!) All of my friends who have been to Don Don's absolutely love their udon noodle soup. Whenever you order a meal, they generally give you a piece of sushi, or a small bowl of udon noodle soup. We always swap the sushi for their udon. ALWAYS.

Entree udon noodle soup - the best you will ever have. I guarantee it.

After their udon noodle soup, their seaweed udon salad will have to come a close second. This is a must have in Summer, and a must have most of winter as well.

Seaweed udon salad

After completely stuffing ourselves, MnMs had to meet up with some friends to go to the Human Body exhibition. As I knew I'd be nursing a hangover, I decided to skip that and go to the Paddington Markets with Cookies instead. After a lot of impulse buys, we decided it was time for some cookie ice cream sandwiches!

Mochaccino - Chocolate cookies with espresso ice cream

Chocolate cookies with strawberry ice cream

God these were so good! And such a great way to celebrate our impulse buys! We really wanted their strawberry shortcake version, but they were all sold out. Oh wells, we both had bags of chocolate coated coffee beans (Creme brulee and mint flavours) and that should tide us over til dinner time.

We caught a bus back to the city, and stopped by World Square to pick up some snacks and ice cream for the night. After we got back to the hotel, we freshed up and decided to take a nap whilst waiting for MnMs to show up again. It was this time, when the both of us were in bed together, that house keeping decided to burst in. God this looked really REALLY bad. I swear there were no wandering hands under the covers!!!

When MnMs finally showed up, we did some DVD shopping before going to our favourite Spanish Restaurant, Encasa. Ever since we took MnMs here, this has become a "must visit" place. We decided to forgo the paella, and focus on the tapas. I think we got a bit greedy...

Octopus marinated in Lime

Spinach and pine nut omelette

King prawns in a saffron tomato sauce

Bread rolls to mop up the sauce

Fried potatoes with spicy salsa and garlic mayo

Chorizo fried in a herb butter

Garlic mushrooms

We were soooooooo full by the end of the meal! I wanted a lot more bread rolls to mop up all the delicious sauce, but I felt like my stomach was going to split open! But the food was so good!! I think the jug of sangria really pushed us over the edge though.

Because we were so full, and MnMs was so trashed, we decided to take a walk around the city and ended up at Darling Harbour. It was inside the shopping centre that we spent an entire hour in the shoe store because some people can't decide what shoes to buy! We actually got locked into the store because someone also insisted on fixing the shoes and rearranging their shelves!!!

After walking off all the food, we headed back to the hotel room and thats when the snacks and shot glasses came out:

Cowboy shots!

Lets just say we had a very interesting night. Lots of gossiping, LOTS of laughing, and there was an incident that involved ice cream and a window. We finally crashed into bed after 1am.

Easy Peasy Peanut Butter Cookies

Because of my Niece's intolerence to gluten, dairy and eggs, I've been obsessed with finding recipes that don't require 20 odd ingredients just to make something half decent and edible. I eventually stumbled across the world's easiest peanut butter cookies. Actually, easiest cookies ever. Unless you are cutting the dough from a tube.

Easy Peasy Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup peanut butter (I like crunchy)
1 cup sugar
1 egg (Chicken or duck)

That's it. Mix all ingredients together. Roll or spoon onto a baking sheet. Using a fork where the prongs have been dipped into sugar, press onto the cookie dough in a cross format. The granulated sugar will stop the fork from sticking to the dough and also gives it a crunchy top.

Pop into a preheated oven for 12-15mins on 180 degrees. Cool on a rack and enjoy.

You can spice the cookies up by adding extra nuts for more crunch. I also put about 1/2 - 2/3 of the sugar as I don't like my cookies so sweet.

MMMmmm cookies...

Yum Cha and cookies!

Yum Cha in Singapore is really expensive compared to Australia. The food isn't as good, and alot of them don't have the trolleys they push around filled with steamers full of food. *SHOCK* *HORROR* That's the whole fun of yum cha! Every trolley comes bearing steamers full of suprises. Its kind of a lotto draw most of the time as to what you get in each cart, the only difference is you'll win alot more in yum cha than you will in lotto! With that in mind, we decided to have a big family yum cha session to satisfy my sister's yum cha cravings.

It was off to the local Crystal Seafood Restaurant in Strathfield with the kids:

BBQ Pork in short crusty pastry

Black bean steamed pork ribs

Har Gow / Prawn dumplings

All was going well until the little one had another tanty! *Turns camera off to tend to crying child*

After yum cha it was time to bake some cookies for xmas. I went with shortbread this year and pulled out my new set of cookie cutters.

To those who missed out on the cookies, I might make another batch soon! So find any excuse to see me! :P


I also grabbed a packet of Cake Mate icing used to decorate cookies and cakes that come in an easy to squeeze tube. Perfect for the kids:

I also made a special Gluten/Egg/Dairy free batch of shortbread for my niece. I wasn't even sure it would work and I warned her it might not even be edible! But being the optimistic and happy go lucky girl that she is, her first comment after biting into the cookies I made her were "MMMMmmm.....Crunchy!!". They weren't meant to be crunchy......oh wells! Atleast she liked it! Me on the other hand......well.....lets just say that I never want to eat them again!! So being the kind sister that I was, I helped my niece decorate a gluten free cookie so she can give it to her mum and to make sure she eats the ENTIRE cookie infront of her!! MAUahAUha

The "ME" was supposed to be "MERRY XMAS".....I had to convince her to write something else cos it wasn't going to fit!!