Spiral cookies

Hee, did I say I will stop at 1 cookie? I made 2! And yes, I skipped yoga class yesterday just to rush home to make all these cookies so that I can still sleep b4 12! hahaha...

There's tis website I adored for the food recipes and all related information. It's a Taiwan website and has a lot of information. Of course, its in Chinese. http://www.ytower.com.tw/

The recipe can be found here.

According to the recipe, the butter and the icing sugar has to be beaten till fluffy white. For info sake, below is my version of the butter and sugar connoction.

This is the output... Forgot that I don't have green tea powder, so I used cocoa powder instead. Let it sit in the fridge longer after you roll the pastry. The harder it is, the easier it is to cut. I left it inside the fridge for abt 2 hours. In between, I was preparing my chocolate biscotti and having dinner. :)

And the biscuits are ready to be given to my colleagues! Hope they like it... ;)

Chocolate Walnut Biscotti

Did I say I was soooo excited that I was able to be back in the kitchen??!! :D Am I glad to be back home and see all my famiiar kitchen tools again.
What's more exciting is that I found a reason to bake again! My colleagues from Thailand had came over to the SG office for a 2 day training. What's a better gift other than my own handmade cookies?
Searched a couple of blogs yesterday and came across this recipe and decided to give it a try...

First time doing biscotti, think not very successful, as u can see from the pictures...the shapes are not very uniformed. Also, I think I let the biscuit rest for too long before I cut them... they became too firm to cut properly, that's y in the end, the sides are not sharp... In fact some pieces even fell off when i cut them, as u can see from the pic below... :(

Taste wise, not bad. Instead of chocolate chips mentioned in the recipe, I took a bar of Meiji 86% dark chocolate, used the rolling pin to break into small pieces and added them in. Saved me the $ on buying choc chips... ;)

oh well, i am definitely going to try this again. Think ve to do a bit of research before rushing into it... Told W that I will prepare a new batch for him when he is back from his China trip.

Jarkata pictures - Emping

Emping, or Belingo, or 'Kor Pia' (Bitter biscuits) as we sometimes call it, its a fantastic snack in Indonesia. They come in all flavours: spicy, sweet, plain. They go really well with sambal. My auditee was so nice that she brought me few packets from Surabaya, which she claims produce even better emping. So below are some of the pics of the emping I took on the office floor... drool....:P


ok, other than the cooked or dried emping, have a look at the fresh one. Its used mostly in vegetable soups. It has an outer layer which needs to be removed, a internal hard husk, which literally has to be bitten off into 2... before u can see the nut inside. Somewhat looks similar to a peanut, doesnt it...

Jarkata business trip

Its 8.40pm now in Jarkata, one hour behind SG time. I am still in the office, slogging away, waiting for my Indian colleague to finish off his last audit comment before i can send off this damn long report to the auditee...

Urghhh!!! Tired, hungry.... xian...
I took some photos of my stay here, been waiting for a chance to blog, but I am in no mood to do it, as I still very stuck in work....

Shall upload my pics shortly and see what I can do about it...
Can't he write faster??!!!

Dinner for one

Dinner was for one last night, as W went to entertain his korean friends. I was tired of eating out and snacking on biscuits and junk food. In the end, decided to raid my fridge to make something to reward myself.

In my earlier China and Phuket trip, I manage to buy fresh edamame and fresh black fungus! I had never seen fresh fungus all my life! It was quite an eye-opener for me. Also managed to buy fresh straw mushrooms, going to cook that on friday for dinner... drooling already just thinking of it.

Anyway, whipped up a quick meal with the following ingredients:

• 1 small firm beancurd, sliced. I freezed it earlier, thus creating those 'holes' in the beancurd. In chinese, its called 'Dong Dou Fu' literally translated as 'frozen bean curd'.
• Black fungus
• Handful of edamame
• 1 stalk of Tang Oh vegetable (or any veg u have on hand)
• bamboo shoots
• 1 small piece of preserved radish, chopped (adjust accordingly to your preference)
• 2 pieces of galic, chopped
• some dried shrimps, chopped (adjust accordingly to your preference)
• Seasoning (fish sauce, pepper, chili powder, shao xing wine) to taste
• Water or stock if you have on hand

1. Fry the garlic in a heated oiled wok.
2. Add the preserved radish and dried shrimps and fry till fragant, about a min.
3. Add the beancurd, bamboo shoots and black fungus. Give a quick stir fry, add some water/stock, followed by fish sauce. As fish sauce is already salty, don't add salt in this dish.
4. Add the edamane and continue to stir fry over medium heat. These ingredients are generally quick to cook. But I ususally cook a little longer to get the flavours.
5. At this point, you can add the wine, and chili powder. Add more water if needed for the ingredients to simmer.
6. Lastly, add the Tang Oh, turn up the fire, quick stir fry till the veg stalk to soft enough to cut through with the fryer.
7. Add peper, turn off the fire and serve immediately.

Really liked this dish, regretted that I don't have a bowl of rice to go with it...haha
You can change any ingredients above, but the general idea is to have a good mix of crunchy and soft vegetables. :) think i will be recreating this dish on friday... yum yum... :P

Trip to Phuket 5th - 8th July

Was away to Phuket for a short break with my hubby, W. These are some snapshots during our 4D3N stay. The beach was fantastic, food was gorgeous. W and I literally screened every roadside stall which we walked past! From the stalls in the fresh markets to the waffle store in Robinsons supermarket, our eagle eyes are not letting go of any delicacy. From grilled bananas, bbq chicken liver, curry noodles, hokkien mee (yes, they have it there too!), som tom, mango with glutinuous rice... the list goes on and on...

As you can see, with all these food, I came back packed with a couple of pounds of extra baggage, guess I need to go back to my yoga class today and burn off the pad thai, and som tom which i had over the past few days... ;)

Shanghai trip, 17 to 30 June

Just came back from a business trip in Shanghai for 2 weeks. Well, a business trip means working from 8 to 5, dinner, work some more and more work during weekends... This means that I don't really have much time to eat, sightsee and take in the little bits and pieces of SHG.

And, the lunches at the factory doesn't help in any bit to make me feel better. The amount of oil and salt in their food makes me out to cry out for a bowl of hot water to wash all my food in! I did not do that, of cos, for fear that the plant manager and the operators will look at me in wierdest look in their eyes!

Hee, but I did do some shopping though.... cookbooks, snacks, kitchen supplies, things you find at YuHwa store at half the price in China.

Here are some pictures of the snacks bought in Carrefour, Parkson, snack shops in Nanjing Road...