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Cook Your Own Meals (3) - Curry Assam Fish

This is also a popular Penang dish. Nonya restaurants will serve this dish with silver pomfret (Tau Teh) but you can get it with ikan pari or black pomfret in most "economy rice" stalls in Penang.
The curry paste consists of chilli paste, shallots, kunyit (tumeric) and serai. Sometimes we add lengkuas and garlic also. For those of you overseas, it would be a good idea to bring some curry paste in sealed packets. But you can also use dry curry powder. Just mix the powder with chopped shallots before cooking.
Assam Curry fish does best with okra or ladies fingers and tomatoes. If you prefer Indian curry then you can add terung or brinjal (also called aubergine)For this version of curry fish, we use tamarind juice. And we add chopped bunga kantan. This is the traditional Penang nonya taste. Some people prefer the Indian style when cooking curry fish. You don't have to add tamarind juice and bunga kantan for Indian curry fish, just add a little santan. But actually it all happens on your taste, just experiment and see which is to your liking. Cooking is just like chemistry, you have to experiment and come out with something you like. Practise makes perfect.
First you heat some oil and fry the paste till fragrant. Add in the tamarind juice, tomatoes, ladies fingers and some bunga kantan. Add salt and sugar to taste. Let it cook for about 8 to 10 minutes. Check the taste, add in the fish and cook for a further 8 to 10 minutes. You have to try out the cooking time to know how long to cook depending on the size of your fish and ladies fingers. The skill in cooking can only come from experience. The fish should not be overcooked. This is where your technique comes in.

Cook Your Own Meals (2)- Fried Glass Noodles

When you have to cook your own meals, you'll love simple one dish meals where there is minimum preparation, not time consuming, tasty and balanced. Frying rice, instant noodles, rice vermicelli ( bihun) or spaghetti will be popular choices especially if you are eating alone or with only a few housemates. When you get bored with these, you can try this out. Fried Glass Noodles or Char Tang Hoon.
You just need some minced meat ( can be pork, chicken or beef) , some eggs, some tang hoon and some vegetables.
It's very simple. Soak some tang hoon, cut the vegetables, season the minced meat with pepper, soy sauce and corn flour. Fry some minced garlic until fragrant, add in the minced meat and stir fry till cooked. Add in the vegetables. Add some water and seasoning ( oyster sauce, soy sauce, dark soy sauce). Put in the tang hoon , mix and let it cook a short while. Add in the eggs , stir and it's ready. It only takes a short time. Remember to add in lots of pepper before serving. This dish tastes better with lots of pepper. If you have some sambal belacan, it would be even better.
For breakfast or supper, you can even try this "mee goreng" without actually frying. Just cook some instant noodles, discard the water and mix the cooked noodles with sesame oil, pepper and yeast extract Bovril or Marmite. It is very fragrant and tasty and tastes like fried noodles. You can also add some boiled vegetables and charsiew or some leftover roast chicken meat if you want to eat it for dinner.

Cook Your Own Meals (1) - my version of Chai Boey

In this series of posts I shall share some tips on preparing your own meals. Knowing how to cook some simple dishes will come in handy when you leave home and stay on your own. Firstly, it's very much cheaper. For those studying away from home and on a budget, you should learn up cooking. Secondly, when you get bored with the outside food, its a welcome change. Sometimes it may be troublesome to go looking for food especially during weekends when you don't feel like going out. Besides, it's healthier and and gives you a sense of achievement, too.
The first dish I'll introduce is the Penang favourite Chai Boey. If you google this, you'll find many blogs featuring this dish. In Wikipedia there is similar version which the westerners call Chop Suey but it is totally different from our tasty Penang Chai Boey (also called Kiam Chai Boey) Every Chinese in Penang probably loves Chai Boey. Many "economy rice" stalls serve this ever popular dish. The name actually means "leftovers". Usually most homes will prepare this dish after festivals like Chinese New Year when there are a lot of leftovers. But you don't need to have leftovers to prepare this easy and tasty dish. And when you cook this, you don't have to cook other dishes , just cook some rice and you have a balanced meal. This is what you need
Some roast pork or roast duck or roast chicken (for those of you overseas, you can easily get this from chinatown)
Some salted vegetables (not too much because it will make your dish too salty. You can omit these if you can't find it)
A few slices of dried tamarind (assam keping) a stalk of serai (lemon grass) some slices of ginger, a few stalks of dried chilli ( If you can't get these overseas just add a cube of Tom Yam cube but it won't be as nice)
One large onion, one carrot , some jagung shoots, some button mushrooms, some tomatoes ( This is to add variety to your chai boey because the authentic chaiboey will have lots of different dishes thrown in. If you can get some loh bak from the market, it will be even nicer)
For the main vegetables, we use Kai Choy. If you can't find these vegetables you can improvise with other vegetables.
The first step is to add a small amount of water into a pot, turn on the heat and add the ingredients one type at a time. I usually put in the roast pork first because it doesn't need any preparation. You'll need to add a cube of ikan bilis, other wise your chai boey won't taste nice. The original chaiboey has a lot of leftover tasty dishes so if you make it from scratch, you will need some tasty stock. You can add the serai, tamarind slices and dried chillies also because you only need to wash them and add them in. As the pot gets heated up, I'll prepare the other ingredients and add them in . Remember that you only need a small amount of water. Don't be tempted to start with too much water because the whole pot will overflow by the time you add everything. And the dish is not suppose to be a soup. As a guide, about 2 to 3 cm depth of water should be enough. By the time you add the jagung shoots, mushroom, carrots, tomatoes and onions, your pot should look like this. Note that the water barely covers the bottom layer. Later when the vegetables are cooked, the amount of water will increase. While this is cooking, you can wash and clean your vegetables thoroughly. Cut the stem into medium size pieces and add them in first. Then add in the leafy part. Don't be alarmed if you see your pot filled to the brim. It will all shrink when it is cooked. You won't see any water, but don't add anymore. It should look like this.
Cover the pot and let it cook a while. The vegetables will soften and shrink and the amount of water will increase. Mix in the vegetables and let it simmer for an hour. Check the taste and add any flavouring according to your taste. Usually I don't need to add any salt or sugar. The salted vegetables, ikan bilis cube, onions, carrots and roast pork, chilli and tamarind slices would have combined to give a very nice taste. By now your chai boey should look like this. The large pot of chai boey will be enough for a few people to share. Penang people can eat this alone with white rice without any other dishes. It is tasty, appetising, and quite a balanced meal, too. If you cannot finish it, keep it in the freezer or fridge and eat it later , maybe with other dishes like simple fried egg or omelettes.

Roti Jala and Curry Chicken

Anyone interested in making roti jala and curry chicken? The curry chicken is very easy to prepare. The roti jala might be a bit time consuming. First the ingredients:
Curry Chicken :
1 medium sized chicken, cut into pieces
curry paste (can be bought at the wet market, just ask for curry paste for one chicken)
100ml thick santan (I usually buy RM1.00 and use half for the chicken and half for the roti jala)
(can replace with milk)
2 or 3 potatoes cut into wedges
2 tomatoes cut into halves
2 big onions cut into quarters
some tomato sauce
salt and suger to taste
First, heat some oil and fry t he curry paste.The trick in making nice curry is to fry the curry paste well to bring out the aroma. Don't be in a hurry to add everything inside. If you want the curry to look nicer, you can also fry the chilli paste separately to bring out the red colour, remove it add add it back when the curry is almost ready. This version of curry chicken I made is slightly different from the usual one. It is a bit sweeter and a bit sourish, less milky and more suitable for roti jala.
After the curry paste is fragrant, add the chicken pieces and mix well. The potatoes, tomatoes and onions can also be added. Add water gardually while stirring. Add enough water to cover all the ingredients. Add some tomato sauce, salt and sugar.Cover the kuali and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. Check the taste and add salt or suger according to your taste. The skill in cooking is not just following the recipe but knowing how much flavouring to add. This is where your taste buds come into the picture. Just before simmering for 20 minutes, add the santan or milk. This will thicken the curry and give it a creamy feel. I do not like thick creamy curry, so this version is not so creamy diiferent from the usual taste.
Roti Jala
2 cups of flour (250ml X2)
2 eggs
100ml of santan (can replace with milk)
a bit of kunyit powder
a pinch of salt
1 and a half cups of water.
Mix the eggs and flour and add 1 cup of water to form a thick batter. The batter needs to be seived so that the gluten and egg white strands won't clog up the roti jala dispenser. This will take some time so I usually do this before starting to cook the curry. Use the remaining half cup of water to pour into the seive to aid the seiving process. After the batter is seived, add a pinch of salt and some tumeric (kunyit) powder to give the roti a yellowish colour. Add the santan and mix well.
To make the roti jala, you'll need a dispenser. This can be bought in supermarkets or markets. The bronze one is quite expensive, but the plastic one is very cheap about rm1. You'll also need a flat non-stick pan.
Heat the pan and oil the surface using a piece of cloth(or a paper towel) dipped in oil.
Pour some batter in the roti jala cup and make circular motion on the pan. You can try out various patterns and ways to do this. The speed you move and the height of the cup will determine the texture of the roti jala. This is where you have to figure out the best way to make nice roti jala. The first few pieces might be disastrous but once you can the hang of it, its quite simple. I usually let the batter cook until it is stiff enough for me to lift it on to a plate using a ladle of course. Then I'll pour the batter on the pan for the next piece. While the second piece is cooking, I'll fold the first piece into quaters. This way you save time. You don't need helpers if you plan your work. I made this curry chicken and roti jala all by myself in 2 hours, including all preparation like peeling poatoes, washing the chicken, seiving the flour. It is quite a lot of work and I'm quite lazy to do this wxcept for certain occasions like when my children come back for holidays.

Sherlock Holmes - a film worth watching

When you hear the name Sherlock Holmes, you would probably want to see the movie. Most of us would have probably read some Sherlock Holmes detective books. And we probably would have in our mind what Sherlock Holmes would be like. So Sherlock Holmes fans would not want to give this movies a miss. Although the Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson characters we see in this movie, directed by Guy Ritchie and produced by Lionel Wigram, are not like what we imagined them to be, we are not complaining. This version gives an interesting adaptation of the characters fromthe famous detective series by renowned author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The team of director and producers manages to satisfy the readers by keeping the basic background of the character, as well as the expected timeline, but giving it a new twist which would appeal to cinema goers these days. Holmes is portrayed as not only only a super-sleuth but also a super-brawler. He is not only an analytical and detail-oriented character but also a detective who uses his fists and fighting skills as effectively as he uses his analytical skills. He seems more at home in a boxing ring than in a drawing room amongst the upper-crust of society.
What is more interesting is instead of seeing Dr Watson as a side-kick, he is now not only a buddy or advisor, but sometimes also a protector. Both Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law contribute to make the movie worth watching.The movie has a busy plot, vivid locations, thorny relationships, fights, chases and explosions. There is also plenty of action, twist and turns with a few unexpected surprises along the way. Besides that, there is lierally plenty of olden day chemistry, which the director uses to provide the solutions to the mystery.
As expected of Sherlock Holmes stories, the pieces will fall together at the end but in the movie the explanations get revved up in fast-cut flashbacks cleverly done by director Guy Ritchie.
At the end of the movie, viewers walk out of the cinema satisfied looking forward to more future Sherlock Holmes movie as they realized that the villain in this movie, Dr. Moriarty, is revealed as a player in the mystery, and is not apprehended as the rest of the villains are.

活到老学到老- Life Long Learning

The direct translation for 活到老学到老 is "one is never too old to learn", but the term life-long learning is commonly used to mean this also. Learning is a life-long process, provided we open our minds to learn. As I said earlier in one of my earlier posts, if our mind is up to it there are a lot of things we can do and learn. Take for instance, computer knowledge and skills. Some older people are very much computer savvy (even more advanced than the younger people) but there are also people who just let the knowledge and technology pass them by and refuse to even bother to pick up some basic skills. Even though there are lots of opportunities for us to learn, these opportunities might not be forever with us waiting for us to take it up.
There are certain things best learned when we are young. Dr Mahathir once said in an interview that one of his greatest regrets is not having learned how to swim. The great man who can do so many mammoth tasks including running a country laments about not having learned a simple skill like swimming. At his age, it would be a bit inconvenient although not impossible to learn up swimming. It wouldn't be embarassing since he could probably engage a private instructor in a private pool all for his own use. Maybe at 84, and being a heart patient, it might not be advisable even though swimming can be a mild form of exercise. For people who are younger, they should pluck up their courage and learn while they can. The best time would be when you are still a child. But its never too late. The older you get the worse it gets. Swimming is skill which will definitely come handy. Even if you think you will never be in a situation which needs you to be able to swim, it is still a good form of exercise especially as you get older. And it is a sport you can do solo, not having to find company or partners. And when you go for beach holidays, it is a lot more fun if you know how to swim. When I was at Pulau Payar, I had a good time enjoying the underwater sights not having to restrict myself to just snorkelling. Those days, when Batu Ferringhi was still a nice beach we used to swim in the open sea from Rasa Sayang to Casuarina and further. Of course we can't do that anymore.
For me, skating, whether ice or roller, is one thing I regret not having learned. At my age it would be both ridiculous and dangerous to attempt it. I did have a chance to try out ski-ing during a trip to Korea, of course on a gentle and mild slope. It was quite fun actually once you get the hang of it. Moving, slowing down stopping or accelerating. But since it is something I would probably not do again, I just glided around the gentle slope just for the experience.
Besides swimming and working out at the gym, I don't engage in other forms of sports. During my school days, I was never a sportsman, but I did play some football with neighbourhood friends during younger days. I did try my hand at various games in college, like hockey, basketball, volleyball but was never good at it. When I started teaching Form 6, I played badminton, squash and tennis with the students but it doesn't last long because I keep getting new students every 2 years. So I stick to swimming and gym
I have always loved music since young. Coming from a poor family, I didn't have the opportunity to learn music when I was young. So when started working I bought an electronic organ and took up music lessons. I stopped learning when I was too busy studying for my degree. I used to be able to write the notes for a song I heard before and then play it on the organ. But my knowledge of music is quite elementary even though I did take some music courses as an option in the University. Music is something best learned when you are young. That is why we made sure our children had the opportunity to learn music when they were young. Both my children learned the piano and violin until Grade 8. So the saying "life-long learning" doesn't mean you can still learn when you are old. It means you don't stop learning even when you are old. But certain things should be learned while we are young. Don't let opportunities pass you by. Grab the chance to learn whether you are young or old.When people hear me sing in public, their first reaction is " wah so daring, dare to sing in front of people" Their next is " Eh how come you can sing Chinese songs?" Some people think I sing from romanised pinyin karaoke. But actually I don't look at the pinyin. I read the Mandarin characters. There are only limited very old songs in pinyin and some are not written correctly. I was totally educated in English, then how come I can speak and read Chinese. I can't write in Chinese but I can type in Chinese using the computer. With the internet, translating, writing, checking the pronunciation is not a problem. All you need is a willingness to learn. And also thick skin. If we are worried about people laughing at us we cannot learn anything. In other words we mustn't be inhibited if we want to learn. If you believe in 活到老学到老- Life Long Learning and have a mind set for learning, there are endless things to learn. Sometimes I also learn from my students. It doesn't have to be a one way direction.