No-Frills Recipes ... cooking, baking & excerpts on travel

We had lunch at the ' All people Chinese restaurant ' at Burwood, a suburb not far from the city. It was indeed a very sumptuous meal and I must say  that the lobsters we had were value for money.  We discovered later that they cost  very much less than what was being offered at the restaurants in the city's Chinatown.

I'm having a wonderful time in Melbourne experiencing my first X'mas reunion with my family.  There's not much of Christmas decorations in the city, so we took a drive to Ivanhoe, a suburb about 20 mins. drive from the city to view the X'mas light displays on houses put up by the residents of that vicinity.  Here, I share with you the pictures that I managed to take .....they're just awesome!

This is a quickie and easy veggie dish that I whipped up for the 'Winter Solstice' dinner ........ 'Stir-fry Razor clams with mixed vegetables'.

I have always wanted to try baking  an upside down cake and when I saw the Peach upside down cake in   'My Kitchen Snippets' ,   I bookmarked it. Well, this is my second attempt because on my first try, I used a round springform cake tin.  I didn't melt the butter for the topping, instead I creamed the butter and sugar so I thought it would be alright, as the peaches would certainly be more pretty in a round circumference and that was the only round cake tin I have. After about 10 mins. in the oven, I could smell something and on checking, to my horror the butter and sugar had melted and started to drip onto the pan below!   I didn't realise that the butter will melt and then seep through the tin!  Fortunately, it wasn't a major disaster, the cake tasted fine, moist and soft, but the peaches looked so 'naked'!  Nevertheless, it was a lesson learnt and the cake was finished in two days.

I made these Tartlets using the silicone boat shaped moulds, a gift from MaryMoh of   'Keep Learning Keep Smiling  '  when we met up in London a few months ago.  Do hop over to her blog to view her many fabulous recipes some of which are her original creations.  These tarts are indeed delicious and will be great as finger food or  as a light and refreshing dessert.  The recipe for the pastry was adapted from my post on    'Egg  Tart'.

This is a very quick and easy stir-fry dish which is light and refreshing.  I do like the crunchy capsicums, cauliflower  and together with a bit of lean chicken fillet will make do as a simple dish with a bowl of  hot white rice.

My children presented me with a Bundt cake tin for my recent birthday and I've been thinking of what cake to make with it.  The shape is a bit different from the usual Bundt tins and it's fairly high........ so finally, I decided on a Green tea Chocolate cake. 

Before the advent of plastic bags, plastic and styrofoam containers, we had to resort to tiffin carriers ~ 'kak lam' to carry or pack our food.  'Kak' means tiers and 'Lam' is basket, which literally means 'tiered  basket'. Those days tiffin carriers were made of enamel, plain coloured or with beautiful and colourful designs. I remember that many, many years ago I liked to patronise a 'Hor Hee' roadside stall in the hawker area next to the Majestic cinema along Chamberlain Road, Ipoh.  To take away, I had to bring along the faithful 'Kak Lam'.   At present, Majestic Cinema is now a furniture outlet. Coming back to 'Hor Hee' which I think is synonymous  with Ipoh, is a soup based noodle and you can opt for 'Hor Fun', 'Hokkien Mee', bihun or 'glass noodles'~ 'toong fun'.  Accompanying the noodles are fish balls, fish paste and their signature 'fish skin wonton', with a sprinkling of finel

Egg drop bittergourd soup  ......... this is one soup that I like to whip up as I find it very versatile.  It goes well with white rice or just add on some bihun or mee sua for a light and refreshing quick meal!

Stollen   is a type of German bread which is closely associated with holidays, especially Christmas.  It resembles somewhat like a fruit cake.  As this traditional bread can now be home baked it can be consumed the whole year through and not just during the festive season.

There are two popular outlets for Egg Tarts in Ipoh, one is   Hong Kee confectionary @ Kedai Kopi Weng Seng in new town and the other is Choy Kee @ Simee wet market.  Hop over to their sites to see what else they have to offer. Now, coming back to my post.  My first attempt at making puff pastry egg tarts was a failure, the pastry turned out hard!   So I flipped through my old recipe books and came across a 'Pate Sucree' foundation recipe for pastries which looked easy enough to experiment with.  The result was satisfactory and even though it's not puff pastry, it did go down well with the egg custard, well at least the guinea pig remarked that this time around, the tarts do have some 'standard'!  That's a consolation! I followed 'Frozen Wings' egg custard recipe but tweaked it slightly.  Also, I adhered to Christine's instructions on baking the tarts and indeed her tips were good and very useful.  A big thank you to both of you!

I served the  'Char Siew'  with Sou Mein ~ longevity noodles which are traditionally served during birthdays .... long, uncut noodles which signify long life!

I tried making Char Siew ~ BBQ pork and surprisingly it was not too difficult to prepare.  I made quite a fair bit as I wanted to keep the extras for other purposes as well.  The meat was indeed tasty and here's how to do it if you care to try ........