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

I baked this cake from a very old recipe that was on my-to-do list for a long, long time.  Using very basic ingredients, this cake is moist and the brandy blended very well with the chocolate and orange flavours.

Happy Easter :  I have been invited by Elin of  Elinluv's Tidbits Corner to place a menu tagging game for the Easter party.  Rule of the game is to suggest 5 to 10 recipes and upload the photos with their respective links.  After that, I've to tag 10 bloggers to do the same. Here's my Easter menu from my past recipes.  Click on the titles to go to the recipes. Bok Choy and Mushroom Soup Steamed Fish fillet with Rice Vermicelli Crispy Cereal Prawns Walnut streusel cake Pumpkin Snow fungus dessert I would like to invite the following friends to join in the fun :- CG  of   Cooking Gallery Shaz  of  Test with Skewer Jess  of  J3ss Kitch3n Jasmine of  The Sweetylicious Jen  of  Tastes of Home Chris  of  Yummy Bakes Wen of  Wen's Delight Hanushi  of  Simply Hanushi Mary Abbot of  Sweet Success Baking Penny of  Jeroxie is addictive and consuming Hap...

Pakeeza, a restaurant serving Northern Indian cuisine has been in existence in Ipoh for many years.  It's one of our family's favourite place for dining.  I did try to blog about the food in this restaurant before, but unfortunately the pictures taken then didn't turn out well even after editing, as the ambience, at that time was quite gloomy with blue coloured dining tables and dim lighting. Now it has been renovated and business was brisk and the place was packed when we were there last weekend.  We only managed to get a table right near the entrance, just at the fringe of the restaurant proper.  I took a peep at the interior, the place was full, not much decor but the ambience is definitely much brighter  now. Come to think of it, the place where we were seated is more conducive for picture clicking.  We had to wait for about 30 mins. for our food to arrive and that gave me ample time to wait for the customers at my vicinity to leave be...

Dongpo Pork is a porky dish accidentally created by one of China's famed poets, Su Dong-Po   in the Song dynasty.  It was believed that the poet stewed the pork and when one of his friends came by for a visit, they engaged in a game of chess.  They were so engrossed in the game that the dish was left unattended until a fragrant smell wafted from his kitchen.  Thus, this forgotten over-cooked stewed dish was created ~ 'Dongpo Pork'.

I was pondering what to do with some leftover homemade 'Char Siew' and then it dawned on me, why not roll it up into a bun, a big bun in this case .......  BBQ Pork Roll.

Whipped up this simple salad for dinner recently, something light and refreshing after having a heavy lunch.  I  enjoyed it tremendously and look forward to concocting  more of  such one-dish meal in future.

This is a simple straightforward noodle dish which can be done in a jiffy.  Quick and easy to prepare, yet double up as a one-dish tasty and hearty meal!

Another place of interest that we visited when we were in Foshan was the  Nanfeng Kiln   located in Shiwan town.  It's the oldest surviving furnace in the world and dates back to 500 years during the Ming dynasty.  There were some stalls there selling souvenirs of pottery like wine cups, teapots and cups, also some very fine and articulately done ceramic figurines.

I had a short holiday in Guangzhou, China recently and visited Foshan which is about 28 km from Guangzhou.  It was a free and easy trip as our main objective, my siblings and I, was to trace our roots and take a peek at our grandpa's village which is in Nanhai, one of the five districts that made up Foshan.  The above picture is of a couple in marriage, right at the entrance to the 'Zumiao', Foshan ancestral temple.  I was so engrossed in this that I'd forgotten to snap a picture of the facade of the temple.

It's the norm that we always associate red beans with desserts, mooncakes, sweet pastries or 'tong sui.  Well it didn't occur to me that they also make a good soup ingredient, savoury that is, until I had my first taste of red bean in a soup when I was dining out in Melbourne.  Now, here's my version of adding red beans in this 'Red bean, lotus root and pig tail soup'.

 I have tasted this dish many, many years ago but somehow it had never crossed my mind to cook this.  But then this morning I saw quite a lot of fresh green chillies in the market place going for a fairly cheap price and  it struck me to replicate this dish ............. yummy!