Dining With Jewelle

I do not remember when was the first time I had bread pudding.

But I do know that it is the one dessert that I usually would try if I see it in any restaurant or cafe’s menu. In fact, I will take bread pudding over cakes any day.

When I bought a small carton of ready made custard the other day, I immediately made myself my quick version of bread pudding - a slice of bread cut into small pieces, sprinkled with raisins and currants, topped with custard, a dash of cinnamon sugar and baked for about 15 mins (or until I like the look of the top).

If you have never eaten bread pudding before, then it is a lovely dessert to have with a cup of black coffee to counter the sweetness.

Most of the recipes online are made using the traditional method i.e. no ready made custard, but any one of them would be a good introduction to how this dessert taste like.

Because I am not a fish lover, I am lousy at fish names and cooking fish dishes are limited to simple recipes. But since my kids take after their father who loves seafood, I do try to cook fish more often that I personally would do.

My kids prefer the steamed way of cooking as it is softer and juicier.

But when it comes to this kind of fish - which I think is called red snapper - steaming is a no-no for Eu. The smell and taste is too over-powering that she would not touch it.

A while ago I cooked them this fish deep fried before cooking it with some soy sauce gravy. Adding the small tomatoes was an afterthought but it was a good idea it gave the dish a salty and sourish combination that even I enjoyed it very much.

As for my girls verdict, they insist that I cook more next time!

Last night I happened to read a simple recipe for pancake and I thought I’ll give it a try this morning.

Although I’ve made pancakes before, I never really got them to look as fluffy as these and now I realized it’s because of the missing ingredients :

• baking powder
• bicarbonate soda (which I had to omit as I don’t have it in my kitchen) and
• oil in the batter (which I forgot as I only read the recipe last night and didn’t bother to print it out).

And the crucial preparation steps - let the batter stand at least until some bubbles formed.

The result was just as promised - beautiful and fluffy pancakes and even now, my dining room still has the lovely pancake smell.
 

On a typical school day, I have about 30 mins and once in a while close to an hour to prepare lunch before I need to leave the house and pick my daughter from school.

And most of the times, I usually would cook a type of soup and at least one other dish for the three of us.

We’d usually have white rice but once in a while, when I have some extra ingredient, I’ll fry left over rice with some left over dish and we’d get a soup, 2 dishes and one special rice!

Like a few days ago, I cooked pork and mixed vegetables stir-fry. The next day, I fried the leftover with some white rice and egg, seasoned only with a dash of fish sauce to get an extra new dish that is delicious that takes no time to prepare and so quick to cook.

So the next time you have a little bit of extra dish left over, “recycle” them.

I developed a love for herbal soup when I worked in Keningau and there was one restaurant which always serves bowls of ready-to-eat “tun tang“.

This was where I learn of ginseng soup, peanut soup and watercress soup.

Back in Sabah, as far as I know, watercress seems to be considered a low rank vegetable, not the kind you’d find at supermarkets. My mother used to get ours from those roadside stalls in Tambunan or sometimes Kundasang and I’ve grown up eating this vegetable cooked in soup and stir fried - the Kadazandusun way.

The funny thing is, my Kadazan family calls this “Sayur Hong Kong” or “Tan Choi“, names which my Chinese family found strange. In fact, my mother in law refers to it, to me, as “watercress” and until today, I don’t know its actual Chinese name!

But names aside, I get my stock from Supa Save which offers imported watercress, definitely not like those found on the Tambunan roadside.

And from my mother in law, I learn the proper way to cook this soup to get maximum taste and nutrients.

The taste actually comes from stalks so this is the part to slow cook with meat (either pork ribs or chicken) and dried red dates or Chinese wolfberries (salt to taste) for a few hours.

When its ready to be eaten, remove the stalks and put the watercress leaves for only few minutes (to retain its nutrients) and serve the soup!

This is a “cooling” soup so it’s perfect after a hot day.

If you have never eaten this vegetable, read its nutritional values or try this detox recipe and keep a look out for restaurants or food stalls which offers this soup.

I’m sure you’ll love it too.

One of the benefit of having native Iban family as one of our neighbour is that we get items that are not common for typical Chinese family.

Such as the homemade loofah - which was actually a new discovery for me too.

The most interesting “gift” was perhaps the wild boar meat which are commonly found in this part of Brunei and was given to us by our neighbour a few weeks ago.

Being exotic (read : not something my Chinese family would voluntarily buy from the market) my mother in law had quite a challenge figuring out how to cook it. She fried some with soy sauce, bean paste and garlic which turned out popular - until she announced its origin and even I felt a little squemish (for no reason!).

Then just the other day, she cooked a curry out of it.

Part of my parents in law Chinese New Year shopping routine was to get roast chicken and roast duck from across the border city for our reunion dinner.

But this decades old tradition was broken this year with news of an even stricter border checks and so for perhaps the first time after many years, we had home roasted chicken and duck for our recent reunion dinner.

My father in law decided to cook the duck this year and our kitchen sure smelled so good the whole afternoon as the duck was being roasted.

Since I have the double-barrelled reasons of being busy with the kids and having not much interest in the kitchen, the food was prepared by my in laws - single handedly.

Roast duck, roast chicken, roast pork, “mah kui” (our special family springrolls) were all prepared in addition to our steamboat - and you can imagine our table groaning under the weight of all those food!

Being an aspiring chef, my father in law even took the trouble to garnish all the dishes :

Even without the steamboat, the table was already full

So much meat!

I didn’t much of these meat as I was more into the steamboat - I could still taste how good my soup was with sliced cili padi that night…

The peanut soup is another favorite of Qi and me and I try to make this delicious and nutritious soup at least once a week.

The basic ingredients are of course, the peanut and some meat.

Then you can add variety and taste by including dates, dried scallop and carrots (which is the common addition for most of my soups because of the sweetness that carrots impart).

My mother in law usually cooks this soup with chicken feet but since I am not fond of chicken feet - despite my father’s long-held belief that it will make you travel - I usually cook my soup with either chicken thigh or pork ribs.

One tip that mother in law told me was that salt should not be added until the soup is nearly done. Otherwise the peanuts will never soften.

But I guess if you’re using a slow cooker, after 2 hours, anything is bound to be softer and like me, Qi loves to munch on the soft peanuts.