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

'Steamed Loh Mai Kai'.  This 'loh mai kai', literally translated as " chicken glutinous rice" is different from the normal loh mai kai that is available at the dim sum restaurants.  This is not served in dainty bowls but it's a whole chicken stuffed with semi-cooked savoury glutinous rice and steamed ....... served as a meal on its own!   When I cooked this dish I was juggling with the idea of what, how to name it, but then since there's chicken, glutinous rice and the method is by steaming, so logically, it's just simple 'Steamed Loh Mai Kai'.

I made this after gawking at Elin's  Almond Cranberry Bread which she made using the gelatinized dough method.  As I've tried making my Meat Floss Buns with this method before, I had no qualms making this as well.  The result was a soft, fluffy loaf of bread filled with vibrant colours of berries, rasins, nuts and not forgetting the custard filling.

This is one simple recipe of  steamed chicken dish which I'm sure many bloggers have blogged before.  Tasty yet easy and quick to prepare, this dish pairs very well with steamy hot white rice.

Yes, I experimented with raw Japanese pumpkin again and baked this.  The idea was to determine the colour of the cake based on the ingredients used.  Also I want to 'endorse' that baking a cake with grated raw pumpkin + butter will produce a  yellowish coloured cake.  Whereas, a cake baked with grated raw pumpkin + oil will deliver a brownish coloured one albeit with a minimal amount of cinnamon.  This time I used both a garnishing blade and a trimming blade to grate the pumpkin and  ended up with both fine and thick pumpkin shreds.  I like to see more traces of  golden coloured pumpkin and certainly, I'll be using the trimming blade in the future.

I bought Japanese pumpkin on my recent trip to the Cameron Highlands and baked this cake.  I was excited as this was the first time that I grated the pumpkin with skin intact and was very eager to see how it will appear with specks of green and golden yellow pumpkin shreds.  So, I waited patiently for the cake to cool before I could perform the opening ceremony.

This chicken salad is tasty and delicious yet takes very little time to prepare.  Looks a bit 'undressed' as I've only used juices as a 'top-up'. Use some orange juice, mix with some calamansi juice, toss in a bit of salt, add in some sugar to taste, mix and just drizzle over .............. tangy and appetising!

This is my third attempt at  making traditional mooncakes and now I believe that I'll always need to experiment thrice before I can sort of 'succeed'.  I've been watching videos on You-Tube, reading up recipes on traditional mooncakes just to get the hang of making them.  Have to admit that the more videos I watched the more confused and disillusioned I got.  So, before I raise the white flag, I gave myself one last chance.  I tried Anncoo's Handmade Piggy Mooncakes recipe for the dough and finally, yes finally I got it.  No more sticky, difficult to handle dough where I had to  load in more flour ultimately distorting the recipe.  Thank you, Ann!

After two failed attempts at making this spiral mooncake I was hopeful when I saw this post on Jeannie's blog .  Her post led me to Annie's post @ House of Annie and I was determined to give it one last try.  I was indeed delighted that I finally made it.  However, I tweaked it a bit as I used shortening instead of butter.  The pastry was crispy and stayed fresh for another 2 days, kept in an air-tight container.  A big thank you to both of you!