homemade pearls for bubble milk tea

have not been blogging much lately, just updates on my travels. hehe... been getting quite lazy. so today, i thought i'd share with you what i made a few weeks back.

as mentioned previously, i was on home vacation recently and while back, i took the opportunity to fill my stomach with all the yummy goodies that's so hard to come by here in the desert. one of my favourite is the bubble milk tea. this trip home, i found that so many outlets have sprung up, and so many brands too! every time i go out and see a stall, i'd be sure to join the queue to buy one.

fav brand of milk tea so far...

after my vacation, of course there's some sort of withdrawal syndrome from suddenly not having my fav drink in my system. actually while back home, i did wonder if these pearls are sold in the dried form, where i'd just need to take them out from the freezer and boil them up, much like those glutinous rice balls (tang-yuan) that's being sold here. then i remembered reading something in kel's place about homemade pearls. after putting it off for sometime, i finally decided to give it a try.

but first i need to go to the chinese grocers to get the tapioca flour and black sugar (or "red sugar" if translated directly from chinese). our typical grocers here dun really cater to east-asians, so it's quite difficult to get the ingredients we need.

so following the instructions in kel's place, i started kneading the flour with the melted sugar. i missed the part about having to pour the sugar mixture into the flour while boiling hot, so not sure if that's the reason for the difficulties i faced later on.

anyway, i found out that tapioca flour is SUCH A BITCH TO KNEAD!!! it's not like our typical flour at all. when kneading, it'll turn hard and powdery, as if it's too dry. but when i held a big lump in my open palm for a while, they'll melt all over my hand, like really watery mud! it's like putty! argh!!! so frustrating... so i wasn't really sure if i've used the correct ratio of sugar water to flour (i used the "agak-agak" method).

the worse part is when i was trying to shape it into balls. that's when the real nightmare began. first i pinched a small amount of dough and started rolling it with my palms. but it very quickly crumbled and disintegrated, very much like trying to roll dry sand into balls! ggggrrrr... not sure how to salvage the situation, i ended up pinching and squeezing and compacting the tiny dough with my fingers first before lightly rolling them into a ball. so means i had to do it all INDIVIDUALLY! luckily i only prepared a small amount, as i managed to get about 20+ balls out before my fingers couldn't take it anymore and i decided to throw the rest of the dough away.

anyway, the boiling part is also a headache. according to kel, we only need to cook it in boiling water for 5 minutes and then turn off the fire and let the pearls sit in the covered pot to let it continue cooking. well, maybe it's because she used potato flour and i used tapioca flour, but my pearls seem to take forever to cook! i think i cooked it for 20 minutes over the fire, but when i tried one, they still seemed quite hard in the middle. i also let it sit in the covered pot for about 10 minutes, but that didn't seem to soften them.

looked ok, though a bit pale coz i used less black sugar to avoid consuming too much extra sugar.

verdict: should have cooked it longer, and way too much work! may not attempt this again, as SO not worth the effort!

of mee hoon kueh…

been craving for this for quite some time, so i decided to try making it 2 weekends ago. i mean, how hard can it be, right?

yellow mee hoon kueh…

no, it’s not hard, but because i was only cooking for one, it’s quite difficult to control some things. for example, we’re supposed to knead the flour with water and egg. but because the flour needed is of such small portion, i didn’t even have to use water! i just broke the egg onto the flour and kneaded. that’s why the mee hoon kueh turned out to be yellowish. hehe…

anyway, i didn’t have anchovies, which is the main ingredient for the soup. the only anchovies i can find in the markets here are from india, and they looked quite weird. not at all like the anchovies we have back home. i also can’t find any ikan bilis stock cubes here. we have more varieties of knorr and maggi cubes here, compared to back home: chicken, beef, vege, tamarind and even pork. but don’t know why, no ikan bilis! *note to self: buy dried ikan bilis and ikan bilis stock cubes on my next trip home.

for the soup base, i put in prawns, dried shrimps (which is like redundant coz i already have prawns, but dun care lar), chinese mushrooms, chicken slices and some chinese cabbage that i bought from the chinese grocery store. the soup turned out quite nice, but the mee hoon kueh was too thick! so it’s not that nice. i should have thought of pressing it out with a rolling pin or a bottle to make it thinner. anyway, will give this another try when i get my ikan bilis.

making mee hoon kueh reminds me of my late poh-poh. when i was very young, while all the adults go to work and the bigger kids go to school, i’ll be left at home with my poh-poh. so most of the time, i’ll be messing around in the kitchen, while poh-poh was cooking lunch or doing whatever that adults do in the kitchen. i particularly loved it when poh-poh cooked mee hoon kueh, coz she’d always let me knead the dough and later when the broth is done, let me help to pull out the dough into small pieces to be dumped into the pot. then when it’s done, she’d ladle out a big piping hot bowl of mee hoon kueh for me, but won’t have any for herself because she’s a vegetarian.

i guess that’s the reason why i love mee hoon kueh so much. it reminds me of those innocent childhood days, all those precious time spent with my beloved poh-poh. for me, this particular dish would forever be my comfort food. it reminds me of a time in my life so long ago, where there was someone who spoilt me rotten and who held me so dear that in her eyes, i could do no wrong.

ok, stopping now before i soak up my sleeves…

chicken porridge…

made this last weekend, coz i bought some chicken breast fillets and had to finish them up.

chicken porridge with wolfberries and conpoy

just a typical weekend meal… but dunno why, even though i blanched the chicken, it’ll still produce the “white stuff” in my porridge/soup. maybe i didn’t blanch it properly?

claypot chicken rice…

i made this some weeks back, but didn’t post it up due to sheer laziness… :P

in satisfying my crave for claypot chicken rice…

been craving for this for quite some time, so decided to google up the recipe and try to make it myself. i found a few versions on-line, but in the end, decided to use the one sent to me by absolut ginger. it’s her mom’s recipe, and i chose it for its simplicity.

but my first attempt didn’t turn out quite so nice… coz i didn’t really measure out the amount of sauces used, but just went by my intuition. a dash of sesame oil, pinch of salt, a dollop of oyster sauce etc. the result was too salty!! so obviously i’m not that seasoned a cook yet to be relying on my “intuition”… hehe…

and no, i didn’t cook it straight in my claypot, coz i’m not sure if it’ll work on my electric stove (something like a hot plate kind). i don’t want the claypot to crack while cooking… think of all those mess i’d need to clean up! so i used the rice cooker method as per the recipe.

neeways, here’s the recipe absolut ginger sent me, in case anyone wanna give it a try:

chicken - chopped in small sizes.
garlic, pepper, sesame oil, oyster sauce, black soya sauce, soya sauce, chicken stock (knorr cube or ajinomoto)
my mom would stir fried chicken first.
1. add oil. put some chopped garlic into wok. stir garlic until brown.
2. pour chicken in it.
3. add in oyster sauce, thick soya sauce, soya sauce, pepper, a little sugar, maybe a little chinese wine if you like.
4. add some strips of ginger if you like.
5. cook until gravy is thick.
6. add in chicken stock/cube.

cook rice as usual - when the rice is almost cooked, pour in the chicken. stir. leave for 20 minutes. then add some sesame oil (as you like). stir. garnish with shallots, spring onions and red chilli.
serve while it's hot.

may give this another try, when i get another round of craving for claypot chicken rice ;)

kitchen goddess in training…

this is just something frivolous that i bought from daiso… :P

what i wear when i’m cooking… ;)

not that i cook that very often, but hey, it makes me happy to be cooking in a cute red japanese-style apron, even if it’s just a simple weekend lunch!

porridge with conpoy and century egg…

as mentioned yesterday, i was thinking of cooking porridge with conpoy, so that was what i had for dinner last night.

also added in a century egg, as well as some kei zhi and had it with some pickled szechuan vege.

the porridge tasted a bit bland, so i added in some sesame oil at the end. sedap! :)

lotus root soup…

been craving for lotus root soup for quite some time now and when i saw some frozen ones being sold at the chinese groceries store, i decided to cook some this weekend.

my lunch for today…

it’s kinda oily because i boiled it with some chicken wings (with skin). chicken wings are really cheap here, coz most of the people here like to buy skinned chicken meat. so since they can’t remove the skin of the wings, most people won’t wanna buy the wings. normally i get about 4 wings for only dhs 2 (rm 1.70).

other than chicken wings, i also threw in some wolfberries (kei zhi) and red dates. i also bought a small pack of mini chinese dried scallops or conpoy from the chinese groceries store. so i threw some of that in too…

mini conpoy for dhs 25 (rm 20.80)

actually i threw in all the ingredients into my phillips rice cooker yesterday night, set the timer for it to cook for 3 hours, finishing at 1pm and then keep warm thereafter. ah, i simply love my rice cooker, which i bought when i moved into my one bedroom apartment back in kl last year. it has artificial intelligence! just pray that it don’t decide to take over my apartment one day! lol!

anyway, i’d love to throw in some peanuts in the soup, but i discovered the pack of peanuts i bought from lulu’s hypermarket some weeks ago was infested with worms! yucks! lucky thing i stopped to scrutinize it, rather than throwing them in blindy!

still, the soup was delish! and i threw in some “transparent noodles” when i’m ready to eat, for a more filling lunch. i don’t know what’s the actual name of that noodles – you can see it in the 1st picture above. it’s broad like kue-teow, but will become transparent when cooked. i think it’s made from yam or something. the menu at xiaowei yang steamboat labeled it as “mongolian noodles”, but sweet sheila said that’s not their real name. she mentioned something else, but i totally forgot.

i had 2 big bowls of this soup (1 with the yam noodles and one without), and there’s still one more bowl in the pot for later. now i’m thinking of cooking some porridge with dried scallops for dinner. ah… satisfying weekend meal! :D

sweet potato dessert…

this is something i cooked last weekend. saw some sweet potatoes at carrefour last week, which made me crave for some fan shu tong-sui (cantonese: sweet potato dessert). so i bought a smallish sized one and a small ginger, determined that i’m gonna have some that very weekend! 

doesn’t look very appetizing, eh?

but then when i was skinning the sweet potatoes, i discovered that the flesh is white in colour! eh?! i thought it’s supposed to be reddish-orangey in colour? i panicked for a bit, but then they still smelt like sweet potatoes. so what the heck, i still threw them all into my rice cooker, together with some sliced ginger.

while it was cooking, i chatted with my parents in our weekly skype sessions. so i mentioned to my mom about the white fleshed sweet potatoes. she said that there are a lot of types of sweet potatoes. white, orangey, purple etc. but most people would use the orangey one for dessert, coz they’re sweeter. *phew* so i’m still on the right track, even though it won’t be so sweet.

verdict: tasted like the regular fan shu tong-sui, but not very sweet. and it’s rather too spicy, coz i sliced up the whole ginger to be cooked together with the sweet potatoes. still, it’s sedap (malay: delicious)! :P

more tom yum cooking…

cooked this some time ago, but just didn’t post it up. i think it was one week after my fried tom yum… actually, i was just gonna cook some instant indomee when an idea struck me. why not i use the tom yum paste like i would the instant noodles condiments? so i experimented…

first, i threw in the mihun, frozen prawns and button mushrooms (i was out of kangkung) into a pot of water and brought it to boil. then i scooped out 2 spoons of tom yum paste onto a plate and after draining the boiling water, poured all the ingredients onto the plate and stirred.

ta-dah! instant stirred tom yum mihun! and don’t taste so bad too! :)

then one week later, since i still had so much tom yum paste left, i decided to cook some tom yum mihun soup. so i went to buy some frozen okra (i love frozen stuff! can use a little at a time and freeze the rest), canned bamboo shoots (used up all my button mushrooms) and some kangkung. oh yeah, i found some galangal too. actually i’d wanted to buy some lemongrass and lime, but totally forgot about it. and i was lazy to walk to the minimart again, so my dish would just have to do without lemongrass and lime juice.

overcrowded bowl of tom yum mihun sup! :P

taste-wise, it’s missing something. must be the lemongrass and lime juice! must remember these 2 essential ingredients the next time. but otherwise, it’s quite ok for a first attempt :)

see what i bought!

been craving for claypot chicken rice for the longest time now. so when i saw this at daiso today, i thought maybe i should try cooking my own. and it’s not really expensive at all, only 9 dhs (abt rm7.50).

don’t you just love the japanese design on the cover? :P

 

so i’m one step closer to my claypot chicken rice, with salted fish! now to search for a simple recipe that i can manage. i think the hardest ingredient to find would be salted fish. i mean, i’ve seen salted fish being sold in the minimarts here, but they’re mostly from india. not that i’m practicing racial discrimination, but i don’t think i’d wanna put something from the waters of india into my mouth…

and hope my cheap claypot would not crack when used on my electric stove!

ginseng herbal soup…

cooked this a few weeks ago, but forgot to post. it’s another shortcut soup! hehehe…

soup pack brought over from m’sia…

used chicken wings to sweeten the soup and cooked it in my rice cooker. added some mihun to complete the meal…

fried tom yum mihun…

first of all, i'm not sure if anyone noticed, but my posts for the past month or so have been without any photos. that was because i've been typing out those posts during my breaks in the office and posting them via e-mails. not sure why, but i can't seem to post directly on blogger from the office. must be some firewall in the server or something kua... and only texts are allowed for postings via e-mail.

ok, now back to the subject of the day...

ingredients:
1. garlic
2. mihun
3. prawns - i found out that i'm not icky when touching raw prawns.
4. kangkong - the only vege i can recognized from all the foreign looking vege at the minimart.
5. button mushrooms - canned ones.
6. tom yum paste - was so excited when i found it at the supermarket the other day.

don’t look so bad, right? :P

this is my first time trying to cook this, so it was a bit haphazard. and i was afraid of jumping hot oil splashing onto my face/hands/body! but overall, i think it went well. only glitch was that, after frying the mihun for sometime and i was just turning to get a plate to dish it out from the pan, i spotted my washed kangkong still sitting by the sink. oh sh*t! i forgot to put in my vege! so i quickly threw in the kangkong and continued frying for another 2-3 minutes. that explains the slightly burnt look of the mihun, as well as the mihun being no longer longish, but broken into small pieces. hehe...

overall, other than it being slightly dry and the prawns being not entirely fresh (it's frozen prawns that came in a bag), it still tasted ok lar... ok for a first attempt! :P

time taken to prepare the ingredients: 20 min (like i said, a bit haphazard)
time taken to cook the dish: 10 min
time taken to consume the dish: 7 min

if you see the time taken to prepare and to cook, as compared to the time taken to eat it, u'll feel that it's totally not worth the effort, right? but then we have to take into consideration the satisfaction from tasting a nice tom yum dish. so totally worth it! next, i may try making some tom yum soup. so stay tuned! :)

home cooked…

since all my meals are taken care of by the company, i’ve not had much excuse to do any cooking. or rather, i have found the perfect excuse to not cook! :P anyway, my mom bought me a few of those herbal soup packs, that all i’ve to do is just dump the whole pack into the rice cooker and let it cook by itself. so here’s my first attempt at cooking in sandland.

pat-tin/pat-chen herbal soup, also known as period soup… i guess only chinese daughters can related to this :)

i know biow would go “eewww” right about now… :) anyway, mon gave me the idea of putting in some vermicelli and eating it like mihun soup, instead of just drinking it as we would normally. i didn’t put in any chicken (still hate touching raw meat!), so would have to be content with just an egg… :)

bento #26: the one with the homemade sushi...

last sunday, i woke up craving for sushi... so i decided to cook some, since i still have 2 bags of sushi rice in my kitchen. so here's my sunday dinner (woke up too late to be cooking for lunch lar! :P)...

rice turned out a bit hard... *note to self: to put more water next time.

ta-da! sushi rice laced with some egg furikake and seaweed...

as the minimum quantity of rice my rice cooker can cook is 2 cups of rice, i decided to separate out half for my bento lunch the next day. i used some furikake again in the middle of these rolled up sushi... here, you can see very clearly that the rice is so dry that it's not sticky at all!

my lunch bento of homemade sushi...

read also:

1. bento #18: the one with all the shapes

when life gives you lemons...

...you freeze them! hehe... ok, lame joke, i know :P

anyway, this is a trick biow taught me, so just wish to share it with everyone. you see, it's quite difficult preparing food for one person. there're so much wastage! for example, when a recipe requires some lemon, we can't possibly just squeeze out a tiny bit of the lemon, then keep the rest. ok, we can cut up the lemon in 1/2, use one 1/2 and wrap the other 1/2 in cling film to be used later. but sometimes 1/2 a lemon is still too much, and we end up just using like 1/3 of it, with the rest being thrown away.

so what do we do? we freeze them, of course! seems like i'm freezing a lot of stuff lately, huh? anyway, even though biow's reason for freezing them is slightly different from mine, but i find this a good idea...

2 lemons will give us one tray of ice cubes (1/2 cubes)... i used 2 cubes before i remembered to take a photo! :P

this way, the next time we need to use lemon juice, we just need to pop out a cube or two (or more!). so far, i've only used it to make hot honey lemon (hence the 2 missing cubes in the pic), so it melts easily. now i'm wondering what should i do if i need them for my guacamole or other things not involving hot water... thaw them out in a cup? nuke them? crush them up with a spoon? any suggestions, people?

bento #25: the one with the 8 treasures herbal soup rice...

i made soup yesterday! of course, chi would not consider it as soup, as i made it from those packet sachets and that crazy gal made her soup from scratch!

anyway, so i made a pot of 8 treasures herbal soup yesterday, with only some chicken fillet and salt. (i know, i know, i should use boned meat for boiling soup, but i hate touching raw meat! and fillets are the easiest to manage... :P) but after having 1 big bowl, i still had lots more in the pot... so that gave me an idea for my bento for today: how about cooking rice with that soup? so that's how the name of this post came about... rice cooked from soup!

so that's what i did... boiled down the soup to thicken it a bit more, soaked and chopped up some chinese mushrooms and dried shrimps, dump mushrooms, dried shrimps, washed rice and soup into the rice cooker and set the timer to finish cooking at 7.30am this morning.

voila! today's lunch...

woke up to the pungent smell of herbs... had to open up all the windows and glass doors to let it out! and the taste? really nice! a bit like yam rice, actually... and the chicken bits have a really strong herbal taste to it.

i packed along some garlic peri-peri sauce and my fav pickled szechuan vege, just in case the rice is too bland. no, they're not bland at all, but i still finished up the vege and sauce! :)

read also:
1. bento #23: the one with the pumpkin porridge
2. bento #14: the one with the experimental porridge
3. bento #8: the one with the yellow vege
4. bento #7: express bento
5. bento #6: sushi breakfast and home-cooked lunch

smoothies galore!

have been having a lot of smoothies lately... everyday! and i've been buying many kinds of fruits for my smoothie experiments, but being the only one consuming them, they can go a very long way. and as everyone knows, some fruits perish quite fast, so what do we do? a trick i learnt from the internet is to freeze them! dice them up and store them in individual plastic containers in the fridge. and this way, we don't have to use up the whole fruit (eg. a whole banana) and end up with too thick smoothie. just throw in a few pieces of this fruit and that fruit and we're good to go. also with frozen fruits, we don't need to add in ice-cubes. anyway, here are a few to share...

 kiwi + pear + orange (all fresh): this is quite yummy... but a bit on the sour side. blended with natural yogurt and fresh milk...

dragon fruit + mango (all frozen): yummy! again, blended with natural yogurt and fresh milk...

 banana (frozen) + mango (frozen) + pear (fresh) + orange (fresh): from previous experience, i learnt to use only a few pieces of banana to avoid the banana taste dominating the smoothie. and it worked! here i tried using strawberry flavoured milk... not too bad! quite nice, but i think i used too much milk and not enough fruit pieces, so this is a bit diluted.

dragon fruit (frozen) + mango (frozen) + pear (fresh): ok, i reckon everyone would be bored with the same photo layout for all my smoothies by now, so i've changed it a bit for this... this was before i added in the usual yogurt and milk.

result from the fruit combination above... nice bubble gum colour, huh? yummy too! :)

read also:

1. smoothie feast!

2. avo milk smoothie

avo milk smoothie...

this recipe was introduced to me by biow. apparently it's very popular in singapore. it's just so simple, yet so yummy!

yums...

ingredients:

1. 1 average sized avocado

2. 1/2 glass of milk (depending on the mug/glass you plan to use for your smoothie - to make sure you get exactly one glass!)

3. gula melaka (palm sugar) - i didn't have any, so i used honey

method:

1. dice up the avo (click here to learn how!), chuck them into the blender

2. pour in the milk

3. blend until smooth

4. add in some ice cubes

5. continue blending until smooth

6. pour out mixture into mug/glass

7. add in as much honey as your heart desires!

will do an update if i can get my hands on some gula melaka! ;)

smoothie feast!

i bought a new blender recently, and have been experimenting with fruit smoothies... experimenting as in trying out the different fruits combination. so far, i've tried:
1. banana + dragon fruit = *blergh* too banana! and i hate bananas, actually!
2. dragon fruit + green apple = ok, but green apple too strong. can't really taste the dragon fruit
3. green apple + mango + pear = nice, with a slight hint of pear. but again, green apple is too strong!
4. avocado + green apple + mango = creamy and nice! best combination so far, but green apple still too strong!

a very creamy smoothie of 1 avocado + 1/2 mango + 1 small green apple

hmm... seems like those small green apples are dominating all the taste! must reduce it to 1/2 an apple and more of the other fruits in my next try...

oh, and i always add in two big blobs of natural yogurt and a dash of fresh milk into my smoothie... love the creamy and milky taste! yums...

on an overdose of avocados!

last week, i was at the pasar malam (night market) getting dinner when i came across this vendor selling avocados at a steal! 20 avos for Rm5!!! crazy or what?

i straight away bought RM5's worth... it was only after i've arrived home that i stopped to think, "what do i do with 20 avos???" then i vaguely remembered eating tortillas with a kind of green avocado dip but for the life of me couldn't remember what it's called.

so i posted this up on my facebook status: "juz bought a big basketful of avocados at a steal and is wondering what to do with them! any idea anyone?" a mere ten minutes later, taty, a fellow bookcrosser, told me to make guacamole with it. guacamole! that's the word i was looking for! don't you just love facebook? hehe...

anyway, took me a few days to get all the ingredients. in the meantime, i ate a few by itself (just scooped out the creamy flesh with a spoon) and gave a few away to my colleagues in the office. even then, i was left with quite a bagful and was on a tortillas and guacamole diet the entire weekend and yesterday! 5 meals in total!

a healthy, creamy and fatty (natural avocado fat, which is
wholesome!) concoction. don't think the salty tortillas is so healthy, tho'.

anyway, i found out that there are many versions of guacamole, but here's mine.

ingredients:
- 2 ripe avocados
- 1 tomato
- 1 or 2 cloves of shallots
- half a lemon
- chili flakes (from dominos!)
- oregano
- salt

method:
- remove seeds from tomato, and dice it up
- chop up shallots
- cut open avocados, remove the pit and scoop out the flesh with a spoon (see here for a cool way to do it)
- mash up the avocados slightly in a glass/ceramic bowl (not metal, coz we'll be using lime juice and a metal bowl will react to the acid)
- add in tomatoes and shallots, mix everything up, keep mashing
- shake in some oregano, chili flakes and salt, mash some more
- squeeze in lemon and stir everything together
- serve with tortillas


originally i had wanted to put in some cilantro and garlic... but can't find cilantro in cold storage that day and forgot abt the garlic! hehe... still, it was yummy! ;)