3 posts tagged “cooking”

Me and my sis had a great time yesterday making pineapple tarts for the coming Chinese New Year celebration. Reliving the good ol’ days when both of us used to sit together to help mom with this particular chore. It has been such a long long time since mom bake any pineapple tarts or any other form of cookies. This year she decided to do it while enlisting help from both of us - one 'Tai-Kar-Che' and one 'Siew-Mui-Mui' (one big sister and one small sister).

Mom cooked the pineapple jam the day before and she was also the one who prepared the dough. Sis was assigned to wield the family heirloom cookie cutter (Hahaha. I thought since it has been with our family for such a long time – eversince our childhood till todate, it befits that title right). So, what’s my mission for the day? Me, I am honored with a spoon and a fork – not for eating with ok. Need to use both apparatus to gently and delicately lay that precious golden-brown-yummylicious jam on the cut-out cookies dough. Seems like easy enough job you say. Mind you, it can be quite tiresome after some time of trying to get that sticky-like-hell jam to stay on the dough and not on the ‘apparatus’ itself. Grrrr…

At least I had fun making teasing my Sis on her inconsistent cut-outs of cookies dough – some being too thick, some too thin and some with very faint patterns on it. LOL. I do not know why, but teasing her was really so much fun *cheeky grin*. Like the Chinese says, “The big bullies the small” (Tai Har Sai – in Cantonese).

For the grand finale… Sis and I suggested to fool around with the extra dough (cos’ we have long run out of jam to go with) and together we made a cute lil’ biscuit boy ala gingerbread man, a biscuit mama with skirt, a block of 916 gold bar, some peanut butter balls, a starfish which was supposed to be a star in the first place, a few other weird looking shapes and an obscene looking vagina like biscuit with generous spread of golden-brown pineapple jam in the center. Ahem… the latter was my sister’s idea and craftswomanship. It was really so much fun doing all this. We used to do the same thing when mom asks us to help her with the rolling of ‘Tong Yuan’ balls (A sweet desert made of glutinous rice flour rolled into balls).

Did anyone of you shares similar childhood fun?

Ingredients:
Dried Prawns (about one handful, or less)
Crab Meat Stick (5 sticks)
Ayamas Garlic Sausage (1 stick)
Chicken Egg (2 pcs)
Flour (sorry, I don’t know the measurement. As I go by my own judgment)
Butter (for the frying the pancakes)
Salt (to taste)
Sugar (to taste)
Soya Sauce (to taste)
Pepper (to taste)

The Batter
Put some flour into a pot/large mixing bowl and pour some water in it. Proceed to mix it up… thoroughly. Then crack two eggs into it and do more mixing. Try to get the mixture as smooth as possible, please. As for the consistency, I’ll just have to leave it to your own judgment. Oh yes, add in some salt, soya sauce, sugar (just a tea spoon or less as we are making salty pancakes not the sweet type) and a dash of pepper to taste.

The Extra Stuffs to be added into the Batter for that Extra Ohmmps!
Dice the soaked dry prawns and stir fried it until it turn into a yummy golden brown (see pix below).

Slice the Crab Meat and Sausage (as per pix below ok). You might want to make sure you slice it thin enough – cos’ it might not stick well in the pancakes when you fry it. Unless, you make the batter extra thick to support it – then, it will take ages to cook. Hahaha… I like my pancakes thin and crispy. Yum!

See pixs below (clockwise please):
The first top row of the four (4) pix is one of my first attempts for test run. Didn’t turn out well enough for my standard. Taste still not up to par (too bland), size is totally out (too small to be tantalizing due to the batter being too thick to be spread out any larger), wrong technique in adding the Extra Stuffs for Ommphs (I actually tried to stick em’ all on like pizza toppings after I pour the batter on the pan. Wrong move, cause the batter gets cooked and dried almost instantly before I even got the chance to lay em’ all on).

The remedy…
On second attempt, I pour the Extra Stuffs for Ommphs into my Batter at the advice of my “Kitchen-Goddess-Grandmama”. The end result was pretty good (see the large pix in the center and the other two small ones on the right hand side of it). How come I didn’t think of it in the first place? Sometimes, we tend to over complicate things in life hor.

Just for laugh....

As I was a little bit bored in the kitchen, all alone, dishing out one pancake at a time… albeit lovingly so. I decided then to have some fun while doing it hence, I did the “Frying Pan & Turner Dance”. Whoa... did I have fun. It was loads of fun actually *grin*. Hell, it was waaaaay…. too much fun that I had to video myself doing the moves.

Here’s my video clip. LOL.

Here’s my end results:

Oh yeah! don’t forget to use lotsa butter to fry your pancakes. Plus, it does goes well with Thai Cili Sos. YUM! Five stars. Hahaha….

Not bad.... not bad at all. I was actually given thumbs-up by Little Boy, Kitchen-Goddess-Grandmama and Stud-ly Bro you know. So, I am pretty smug about this now *grin*.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy this, cos’ I know I am not a very good cook and I am even suck writting about it.



Extra Bits: