Cooking Made Easy

Here are some suggestions on how to cook simple meals. They are suitable for busy families or students studying away from home. See my older posts for more recipes posted earlier.
1) Steamed Chicken. (Easy and healthy)
You can chicken thighs (with bones or boneless) or chicken wings or even chicken breast. If you use boneless meat the cooking time is about 10-15 minutes, and 5 minutes longer if not deboned.
There are many different types of seasoning you can use. Try different types so you won't get bored eating the same dish over and over again.
a) sesame oil and salt
b) black soy sauce, oyster sauce, pepper , sugar and salt
c) with mushroom and chinese sausage, oyster sauce, ginger and salt
d) salt, black fungus and dried lily bulbs
e) lime juice, tomyam paste (or cubes crushed and mixed with a little water)
f) chopped garlic, ginger, chilly, bean paste and sugar
If you have a multi-tiered steamer, you can even steam some vegetables together. The cooking time for vegetables varies so you ahve to add the vegetables at an appropriate time.

2. Stir-fry Chicken.
a) Stir fried Boneless Chicken Thighs With Black Pepper Sauce
Cut the chicken into bite size pieces and marinate with soy sauce, corn flour. Heat some oil in the wok, add some chopped garlic and fry till fragrant but not brown. Add the chicken and stir until cooked. Add the black pepper paste, mix well and dish out. You can use different paste, like sweet sour paste, lemon sauce or tomyam paste.
b) Gong Po Chicken
Cut the chicken meat into bite size pieces and marinate with soy sauce, black soy sauce and corn flour. Heat some oil in the wok, add some dried chilli, chopped garlic and fry till fragrant but not brown. Add the chicken and stir until cooked. Add a little water and stir untila thick gravy is formed.
c) Sesame Oil Chicken.
Marinate the chicken (boneless or with bone) with soy sauce and black sauce and oyster sauce. Heat some sesame oil in the wok. Add ginger slices or shreds and fry till fragrant then add chopped garlic and fry. Add the chicken and stir fry. Add water and simmer for 20 minutes for chicken with bones, 10 mins for boneless chicken.
d) Fried Chicken Thighs
Marinate the chicken (preferably boneless) with salt, sugar, sesame oil, pepper, a little black sauce and a dash of wine. Poke the chicken meat with a fork. Leave for an hour.
Pour some corn flour on a plate. Remove the chicken from the marinating bowl and put on the corn flour. Coat both sides and deep fry in oil. Heat the oil until bubbles form when a chopstick is dipped inside. Turn fire to medium or low and add the chicken. Boneless chicken easier to cook.
3. Curry Chicken
Just add water to ready made paste and boil the chicken pieces
4. Soy Sauce Chicken
marinate the chicken with 5 spice powder,black sauce, salt and sugar. Add garlic and heat the pot adding water and stirring occasionally until water just covers the chicken. Simmer for 20 minutes or until soft enough.
More fish dishes later.

Celebrities' Photos

That's me and Cecilia Cheung (fully clothed). If you want to see more of her, go visit Edison's blog (haha!)

That's me- charismatic and confident during my White House visit. (XD) After all who wouldn't be - with Clinton and Bush beside me. (Anyway I wouldn't advise you to have Bush standing beside you when you deliver a speech ! )

Guess you know where these photos are taken. You're right Madame Tussaud's in Hong Kong. More pictures. Recognise them?

I'm Back

Hi, I'm back. And I notice much less visits now that I seldom update my blog. Another thing I noticed is that people prefer to see photos rather than to read. After all, a picture says a thousand words. So, I'll dig out some old photos and recall the few times we were abroad. Take a look at the photos above. Guess where we went. France ? Now take a look at the photos below.

I'm sure you can recognise the Stonehenge. But did you notice that we're wearing the same clothes? Hopping from Paris to England in a day? Possible, but we were actually "all over the world" in half a day. These photos are taken during a visit to "Window of the World" in Shenzhen, China.

More replicas below. Recognise them?

From the photos you can see that this place is worth a visit. Even though it's all fake, it gives a chance to see the places up close. After all, I don't think we can afford to visit all these places. With budget flights direct from KL to Shenzhen, this trip is definitely cheap and worthwhile. We don't have to follow tours, it would be more enjoyable to just move around Shenzhen on your own.

And if you plan to go and want to know more, just drop a message in the chatbox.

Keeping In Touch

How time flies! It's already a month since my last post. There have been quite a few visits to my blog since I took a break. For those of you who want to see some photos, I'm afraid there won't be any this time. Ok, so what have I been doing this past month?
Besides the usual work, chores and some exercise, the most eventful thing that happened during this past month would be the 12th General Election. The results have been shocking, unbeleivable but not totally unexpected judging from the emails, sms's and vocal opinion we've been hearing prior to polling date. This Election was also a memorable one for me. Instead of just casting my vote s I usually do, this time I played quite an important role - ensuring a fair and transparent voting process (at least on my part I'm satisfied that the polling in my station was conducted fairly, transparent)
I was appointed as a presiding officer for one of the polling stations. The election process is fair and transparent, at least at our level. I don't know about other levels, but the results show that it has been fair. Earlier allegations of rigging are really uncalled for. Ok, enough of this boring stuff. More updates some other time.

Meet Casey

So this is Casey.

And these are Casey's Angels.

Some of my friends ask me what is nice about Gold Coast. Is it worth a visit? Well, it all depends on what you are looking for in a holiday. If you're looking for sceneries: mountains, streams, lush green forests, you may find it in Queensland but I didn't include those in my itinerary. My visit was more focussed on the fun aspect: theme-parks, beach, shopping and all. We had all that. The theme-parks in Gold Coast are very nice and enjoyable. If theme-parks are not your cup of tea then it's just too bad. The waves at the beach are simply awesome. Even though we had no time to learn surfing, just playing in those waves was something we couldn't find in Malaysia. These are some of my favourite pictures of the Gold Coast beach.

There are several theme-parks in Gold Coast. We only visited the Dreamworld (so many worlds in one) and the Warner Brothers Movieworld. If you want to visit only two, then go for these two. The Dreamworld is a must go - it has awesome rides, wild-life, farm tours, indoor surfingand also much more for the kids. Movieworld is interesting with all the movie characters- the Shrek 4D show, Scooby doo roller coaster and all

I'll take a break from now. Enough of the Australia trip. Next time I'll think of other things to blog about.