My fussy eater!

Do you have a child or children who are fussy eaters? My Zahra is such a fussy eater at the moment that dinner and lunch are getting to be really tedious for me! My problem or dilemma is having to cook dinner or lunch to satisfy everybody in the family. At the moment with Amin away things are not too complicated, but Fatin will always insist on having curry at least twice a week!! Once Amin comes back then "Mr sophisticated Jamie Oliver admirer" will either put up his nose at some dishes I have prepared and forces himself to eat them then he will proceed himself to whip something really fantastic to eat! Destroying my kitchen in the process!

Anyway for Zahra most of the time I have to have fried fish or fried chicken and stir fried brocolli on standby for as she will definately not touch the curry or even the soya chicken! Chips are one of her favourite and despite much cajoling when we serve it fish, she will not touch the fish and only eat the chips with tomato sauce and a bit of corn. Or if we are having roast chicken she would only eat 1 slice of chicken with 1 piece of potato!! Then later on she would insist on having her tuna sandwich!!! This is another favourite she loves Tuna sandwich and her most favourite food since she was a baby- Pasta - with or without sauce!!

My sister Maria has several Annabel Karmel books and I must admit the pictures and some recipes look really good. But I went through the book with Zahra just to get an idea what catches her eye and she was not impressed!! She simply said Ma I just want my pasta!!! That's Zahra for you I guess! Let's hope she will develop her taste buds soon and open up to try the other food served to the other members of the family!

Selamat Hari Raya Aidiladha

Today we had a family lunch to celebrate together Eid Al Adha. I did my normal fish curry which Babu taught to me to do and I am kind of an expert on producing it now! (Cheh!)Have to lah as the family are all curry lovers! Usu brought over Briyani Ayam and Soleha did Rendang daging and Kelupis. I also fried some crabs with curry powder and curry leaves, tried to do bhindi masala only for it to be rejected as the bhindi was too hard!!Obviously sudah tua!

Babu came along also and brought some lontong and sayur lodeh with the usual condiments. Pipi brought stir fried vegetables and in addition to this Yati insisted on frying some fish for the little ones which was very much welcomed by Yayah and Hariz! We had Poppadums as well. For desert I made Apple crumble which we ate with the vanilla ice cream Pipi brought along and also I had made banana cake as I always have frozen mashed bananas in the freezer for such an occaision!

Ofcourse during times like this I miss my parents who would have insisted that more dishes be cooked and a takbir be done before eating! and ofcourse I miss my Amin who would have insisted doing the apple crumble his way! Crumbles are so easy to do and I have provided the recipe below for those who want an easy desert.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Adha!

Apple Crumble:

To fit in a 8 x 5 heat proof casserole dish

8 apples ( 4 red and 4 green), peeled and sliced thinly

1/4 cup apple juice

2 tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspooon cinnamon powder

Mix all the above together and put into the dish.

14oz plain flour

7 oz butter

3 oz brown sugar

Pulse the above in a food processor until you get crumb like mixture

Pour crumb mix onto apples and put into oven for about 45 minutes. Serve warm with custard or Ice cream.

Haji Amin

Curry puff, bingka susu and The girls at the buffet

agar-agar from ernie

Tuesday was the Ukuf for all pilgrims going on the Haj including ofcourse my parents and my eldest son Amin. So he is officially now Haji Mohamed Fahamin bin Hj Feisal !! I am so proud of him! He called this morning at around 9 am out time which is about 4am Mecca time to say he had just completed the Tawaf ( circling of the Kaabah) and the Sai( running 7 times between the 2 hills). He was ready to collapse into bed but wanted to share the good news with us! Well done Amin. For the next 3 days he will now have to perform the stoning of the 3 rocks depicting the devil. We all pray for their safety ofcourse.

This was why we had special prayers Tuesday night at my parents house along with my cousins Ernie whose parents have also gone on the Haj. We had pur Ustaz Ansari lead the prayers. It was also Babu and Nini Ben's birhtday! so we said special prayers for them too. Badly sweetly handed out sedekah to everybody partly for her birthday and partly for her beloved cucu Amin!

As always after the prayers came the good food! I was not responsible for any of the cooking that day( just supplying the raw ingredients!) and left it mostly to Soleha. She cooked spareribs masak assam kedayan with bamboo shoots, Sayur Nangka masak lemak, ikan goreng, Sayur kacang tumis and sambal belacan. Usuh cooked samabl telur and Pipi bought drinks for the occaision! Ernie brought desert- various types of kuih which were all yummy. my Sis in law made curried prawns and babu did her famous curry puffs!

We missed Maria and Donncha and their brood who went of for their end of year holiday to Bangkok, but had the other kids to contend with! I attach the self explanatory food photos!!

Sarah and Nick's wedding

Today was the bersanding ceremony for Nick and Sarah at the Empire Hotel. The affair was really grand and was held at the Indera Kayangan Ballroom. We had the food which we tested and tried and commented on a few weeks earlier. The food was overall ok. The starter was a lot better and they did improve the dressing with the pomelo bits in the dressing. The soto ayam was nice too and not too heavy. I thought it was weird they had put sambal belacan on the table along with some sort of acar but no cucumbers on the side, plus this was not really on the menu. The fish was not as good as before I don't know why maybe because this time they cut it a bit too thin and fried it too long hence it was a bit dry and not as succulent. The curry was much better and thank god we saw no hairy bits of skin today! The rendang like before was excellent and beef was very tender, the prawn was nice although this is the first time I tasted buttermilk prawn which had mayo in it. The pakis I thought was a better substitute to the mixed veg we had last time but if I had my choice I would have preferred it as a sambal rather than with coconut milk, but our UK friends liked it and it tasted good. As for the desert - sago gula melaka and coconut cream was I thought better presented during the food testing session and they had more coconut cream , I couldn't finish it today as it was too sweet.

Nevertheless My sisters and I sat on the same table with 4 of Nick and Sarah's friends from the UK and we had a really good time in conversation with them and we didn't do too badly finishing off most of the dishes despite there being only 7 of us on the table!

Overall I was extremely proud of the lovely flower arrangements done by my staff of Reda Florist, so much so that I took pictures of the flowers and forgot to stand up and take pictures of the groom and bride when they came in to take their place on the dias..oh and even the cake had fresh flowers adorned on them too but since it was placed in the middle of the room I was too shy and felt awkward to go in front of it to take a shot! The hand bouquet was a bouquet of fresh orchids and Zimar also made some flower buttons using the same flowers for members of the same family.

Congratulations once again Sarah and Nick and here's wishing you both the best of luck for your ceremony in the UK this coming summer!

Steam boat

Last night we had a steam boat dinner with my in laws and Hanna and Maria's family. Actually Iman, Jack and Ayden left before dinner started so Maria was for once able to enjoy dinner without anybody on her lap!

We haven't had steamboat for quite some time simply because to have steam boat for just 4 persons is not fun nor economically viable! Amin if you are reading this from Mecca don't worry we'll do it again when you get back. This time I decided to try 2 soup base - 1 Tom Yam and the 2nd a chicken broth. We had prawns, squid, chicken, various types of tofus, mushrooms and greens as well as tang hoon noodles. Oh and for Zahra especially we had lots and lots of Crab sticks! The condiments as always were lots of cut chilli padi and sweet soya sauce with minced shallots and lime juice. Always adds extra kick to the soup!

We used Mum's old steam boat which had one of the dials missong but was still workable! I also bought another new steam boat for the occaision and although at first it did not seem to work Maria saved the day by changing the plug points! Soon the soup was bubbling away. I love the taste of hot steaming soup with the fresh ingredients, so filling yet refreshing.

For those who wish to make the soup bases here are the recipes :

Chicken broth:

Carcass or Chicken bones from two pieces of chicken breasts

1 thumb sized piece of ginger - bruised

1 large onion sliced

Additional chicken broth powder for taste( about 2 tablespoons)

Salt and pepper

Water - about 4 to 5 litres

Simply boil everything for about 30 minutes and season to taste.

Tom Yam broth:

Prawn shell peelings

4 pieces lemongrass - bruised

1 thumb sized piece of ginger - bruised

1 thumb sized piece of galangal or lengkuas - bruised

Coriander leaves and coriander root- torn up roughly

7 pieces Kaffir Lime leaves -chopped up roughly

4 Tomatoes roughly chopped

4-5 tablespoons Tom Yam paste

Juice of about 8 green limes or 3 yellow lemons

Water - about 4-5 litres

Salt

Fish Sauce ( Optional ) - I left it out last night as I thought it might be too pungent for the steam boat.

Once again just boil everthing and allow to simmer for about 30 minutes. Season accordingly.

As for the stuff to put in the steam boat- you can put in anything from Chicken to beef, seafood and various vegetables and tofu.

The Joy of Baking

Ok my apologies I thought I had downloaded the right photos of my profiteroles for my last post but obviously not!! So here goes again - I am downloading 2 photos - one of the profiteroles already stuffed with ice cream but without the chocolate sauce and the other with the choc sauce. Oh by the way the finger pointing to the profiteroles belongs to Tina!! Oh today on AFC my favourite channel ofcourse, I saw an ingenious way of mixing the eggs into the flour mixture-using a cake mixer!! Why bother with all the elbow grease when we have these contraptions! Anyway it is always a joy to see your finished products after toiling in the kitchen.

Holiday time is here!

With the end of term comes concerts, class assemblies and with the start of the holiday season, at home it seems barbeque is gaining popularity! I am attaching pictures of Zahra she has complained that my blog is too full of food photos and not enough photos of herself like her Ma'Yah's blog! Yes anyway, before the end of term her class had a small class assembly and she ha to put on a chinese dress as they performed a chinese dance. She also performed with her tap class at the Studio Scene End of year party! Fatin performed a jazz ballet number too but Amin was holding the camera and we ended up not getting a single decent shot of her!

We had a barbeque last saturday night at Maria’s house and I did some chocolate covered profiteroles. I provided the recipe in my second blog. The last time I did this I forgot to take photos, any way I took load of photos of all the food that was on offer. Pipi brought the Fried Rice. Tina brought the baked Tuna Cheesy potatoes – which were really yummy! and I provided some chicken to BBQ and Fried noodles as well as the profiteroles. Oh and we had some really yummy beef sausages. Maria did Chicken and Lamb Kebabs but by the time they came to the table I forgot to take photos but I’m sure she will have photos on her blog!

Cute Cupcakes

I know I really should be more consisitent with my entries but as usual my laziness coupled with writer's block (ya perasaan!) has got the better of me. Now Zahra is ill yet again with sore throat and poor thing had to miss her class end of year party today and will miss the music competition tomorrow, she has been practising so hard singing KC and the Sunshine band's " That's the way I like It"!!

Last weekend was Fatin's bithday and even though we had celebrated earlier in the week together with my dad (hence 2 birthday cake photos) we did another party cum cousin's sleepover, actually come to think of it she had a really stretched out weekend birthday! We had a swimming party with all cousins, then Barbeque on the same night, the girl cousins slept over, then the next day we had lunch at Escapade followed by watching Enchanted at the Empire. With Amin away the girls took over his room and watched TV almost till dawn!Sorry Amin they didn't thrash your room I promise!

So as Fatin did not celebrate with her friends like she has been doing for the past 10 years! I made some cupcakes for her to share amongst her friends at school,and I had fun doing it too. I got the recipe from Nigella Lawson's book and I must say even though I did the cupcakes the night before and decorated in the morning, the cakes were still moist and yummy. 1 recipe in accordance to Nigella gets her 12 cupcakes, but I managed to get 20 cupcakes! Maybe my muffin tray or paper cases are smaller!If you guys go on to one of my favourite blogs Inawhiz, she makes really beautiful cupcakes.. I need to go on a course to get this good! For now just main-main lah..bejabih-jabih style!

Anyway here's the recipe :

Fairy Cakes or Cupcakes

125g butter softened

125g caster sugar

2 large eggs

125 selfraising flour

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

2-3 tbsp milk

Butter icing -

150g softened butter

300g icing sugar sifted

3tbsp milk

colouring of your choice

Instructions: put all ingredients except for milk in a food processor and whiz. Then add milk and pulse until you get soft dropping consistency. Drop about 1 tabvlspoon into cup

cake case. Put into oven for about 15-20 minutes. Once cool, ice to your liking. (Sanang Kan?)

Carrot Cake

Again it has been a busy few days for us as my son left for the Haj together with my parents today. The last few days we have had family dinners both at my parents house to celebrate my Dad's and Fatin's birthday albeit a litttle early. We had a lovely barbeque but again in the midst of my busy schedule I did not take photos... I know I have to be more prepared next time either that or employ one of my kids to take shots!

Last night my in laws came over for dinner at my house and my mum in law made a really nice fish curry, plus we had fried crabs - it must be in season there are so many at the market these days! and I did shepherds Pie for the kids. So there was a lot of cooking involved.

I did quite a few cakes to help cater for the many well wishers who came to mum's house to bid her farewell as well as for the small doa selamat we had this morning. Amongst one of the cakes I did was carrot cake. A close family friend today asked me how do I make my carrot cakes so nice and fluffy- Anty A this recipe is for you and it really is a tried and tested recipe that never fails for me - Selamat Mencoba!

Grease and line 10 inch tin, preheat oven to 150C.

For the cake:

6 oz plain flour

1.5 teaspoon baking powder

1.5 teaspoon bicarbonate powder

8 oz caster sugar

4 oz chopped almonds or walnuts

8 oz carrots grated ( About 2-3 medium sized carrots )

4 eggs

8 oz corn oil

0.5 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon powder

1 teaspoon vanilla essence.

For the icing:

1 packet cream cheese (225g)- at room temperature

0.5 cup icing sugar

2 tablespoon or 1 oz soft butter

( Beat all of the above until light and fluffy)

Method:

1. Sift flour with baking powder, bicarbonate soda, cinnamon powder and salt.

2. Beat sugar with oil using mixer, add eggs one at a time and vanilla essence.

3. Fold in grated carrots and chopped almonds or walnuts.

4. Fold in flour.

5. Pour into prepared cake tin and bake in oven for 40-60 minutes until cake is done.

6. Once cake is cool ice with cream cheese icing.

Food Tasting at the Empire

On Tuesday lunchtime, Maria and I joined Lisa and her mum - Aunty Ludwine, for a food tasting session at the Empire for Sarah's wedding in December. The food was mostly Ok and overall the started and the desert were the best dishes. I have upload all the photos so Sarah and Nick can see as they are in the UK at the moment.

Starter -The starter was like a prawn cocktail, the huge prawn was set on a bed of honeydew and rockmelon and there was a small or minute amount of lime dressing. Oh they put a breadstick on the top which was quite stale and soft! So we suggested that citrus fruits be included and the lime dressing needed a bit more oomph as it was quite bland. But I must say the prawn was very fresh.

Soup - the soup was Hot and sour soup but was very spicy and peppery as well as very sour. This would be ok for those who like spicy food and need to sweat! In the end the family decided to change the soup to a chicken noodle soup or soto ayam as this might be more palatable and not too spicy.

Main course - White rice, Rendang, Chicken curry, prawn masak tomato, Ikan masak tumis, mixed vegetables and mee mamak. This was all served in a huge hidang ( round foodwarmer).

Mee Mamak - I think this is Sarah's favourite dish and although I did not taste it as I am not into noodles, Maria and Lisa said it was excellent! So good choice Sarah!

The rendang - was excellent too as the beef pieces were very tender and spices just right and not too overbearing with that coconut taste.

The Chicken curry - I thought was a bit too bland and needed more curry powder and the sauce looked quite pale! We suggested that the skin of the chicken pieces be removed.

The fish dish - fish was very fresh and was quite succulent and meaty and had been fried prior to being sauteed with a spicy sauce that tasted more of turmeric. A decision was made to change this to sweet and sour fish instead.

The prawn dish - too tasted funny very sweet and tomato taste I suppose the name of the dish is tomato prawns. So I think in the end a decision was made to change the dish to buttermilk prawns instead.

Mixed Vegetables - this was the worst dish and I guess it always is at most weddings- the brocolli and cauliflower had been sitting in that hidang for probably an hour so were pretty soft when we ate them. There was also a burnt aftertaste- I cannot remeber what vegetable was chosen instead of this but I think it might have been Fiddlehead Ferns ( or Pakis!!!) masak lemak ( cooked in coconut milk). Hopefully this might turn out better on the day.

The desert was Sago Gula Melaka and this was excellent in terms of presentation as well as taste! Just enough gula melaka and coconut milk and the melon ball added that extra fresh taste to the dish. They also garnished the dish with a crunchy toffee cat's tongue ( I think it's called that!!) and that was very yummy indeed!

My involvement in this wedding is actually more to do with supplying the flowers but who can resist a free tasting meal!!I must admit I was rather full that afternoon and am not too akin to having such a heavy meal during the day.. still thanks Aunty Ludwine and Lisa for including me and Maria that day, I had a great time despite having to give marks for all the food! I am sure the food on the wedding day will turn out fantastic!

The Busy Weekend

barbie chocolate cake. Banana chocolate chip muffins

Ayden's M nM first birthday cake. Strawberry chocolate cake.

The weekend has been such a busy one – On Friday I had to do one birthday cake to be sent into school but ended up being sent to the house as the poor girl was down with Fever. Then in the afternoon I had the pleasure of wathching my son performing in the drum line at the annual JIS International Day which was a blast. Then back home to do some muffins for my Sister in Law’s open house for Saturday afternoon and with Zahra down with fever for the past 6 days on and off, I was feeling quite exhausted come Sunday but..no real time to relax as I had yet another birthday cake to prepare, this time for a friend’s daughter. She wanted a Barbie doll cake. It was quite difficult at first to get the doll to stay upright after being wrapped up in foil but my son and I sellotaped 4 satay sticks onto the doll and stuck it through a piece of cardboard this in turn helped to stabilize the doll when I finally stuck it into the cake! The last time I did a barbie cake I stuck the barbie in an oval shaped ckae then put it onto the square chocolate base. But I could not be bothered to do that this time! We just stuck foil around the doll before icing it. Decorating the doll was quite fun although as usual I panicked when it came to adding the right amount of colouring to the icing!! Amin came to the rescue and I think we got quite close to the right colour! My new resolution is to attend a cake decorating class sometime to help improve future cake designs .I must say I was quite pleased with the outcome and the real pleasure is that the cake is pure chocolate, no additives and no spongy taste like what we normally get at most local bakeries which would charge an arm and a leg for a cake this size and style! Maybe I should start charging more!! Still decorating these cakes are quite fun although sometimes there are hits and misses..like running out of space when doing the writing or mispelling a word, but I guess that's part and parcel of decorating as a novice!! Happy Birthday again Maya and Shuih Lin and I hope you feel better Shuih Lin. I've uploaded the pictures of the various cakes I've had to do recently including the no 1 cake for Ayden's birthday that was last month. Also a picture of the chocolate chip banana muffins. Muffins are so easy to do and the only tedious part was putting the spoonfuls of mixture into the paper cases. Anyway lets hope next weekend will not be so busy, but I doubt it what with Amin's impending Haj trip coming up, I guess I'll be busy packing all his things!

Yummy Profiteroles

Last night we had our normal Thursday night prayers and mum decided to have extra prayers for their upcoming Haj. So there were more people than usual. As always Soleha was doing all the cooking and she did quite an impressive spread of Nasi Briyani ayam, Dalca, Nangka masak lemak, ikan goreng and sambal telur. With Zahra still down with fever I could not really go down there to help out. So I brought along a chocolate cake and a long time favorite dish..(something which Hanna used to prepare a lot before she got married!!! along with her homemade chocolate ice cream!!) – profiteroles stuffed with vanilla ice cream covered in chocolate sauce. Unfortunately being the novice blogger I forgot to bring my camera with me to take a photo of the finished product and although I got Donncha to bring along their camera, we all forgot to take photos until most of the profiteroles were gone! Never mind…I might be doing another batch soon and will try to post the photo then. This recipe is so easy to do and only requires a bit of elbow grease when mixing in the egg which is the trickiest part as you must mix quickly or the mixture could end up looking like scrambled eggs! In which case you have no choice but to start all over again. Still the taste of hot chocolate sauce mixed with the cold ice cream in the crunchy profiteroles is quite decadent! So give the recipe a go..

Makes 15 small profiteroles
2 eggs beaten slightly
2 oz butter
2.5 oz plain flour
125ml water

1 Tub of chocolate or vanilla ice cream
1 packet thickened cream (250ml)
250 gm dark cooking chocolate

Method
Heat oven to 150°C, prepare baking tray by greasing and flouring pan.
Put butter in water and melt over slow heat and allow mixture to boil.
Switch of heat and pour in flour stirring in one direction.
Once mixture comes together and comes off the sides of the pan, pour in beaten eggs, beat vigorously until mixture is well glazed and eggs incorporated.
Spoon mixture into ping pong size balls onto tray and cook in oven for about 30 minutes. Leave to cool in oven for a further 30 minutes.
Once cool, slit profiteroles in half and spoon or pipe in vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Arrange in dish and freeze until ready to eat.
For sauce, heat cream till almost boiling, take off heat and stir in chocolate pieces. Stir until mixture thickens – when ready to eat pour over profiteroles.

First foodie thoughts! Bamia recipe

Wow I finally get down to doing a blog at last!! About bloody time I can here my sisters shouting!! So I 'm going to base this blog on my thoughts and some recipes I want to share in the hope that you guys can enjoy the food that we eat on our family table from time to time.. Oh yeah there are times when we are really scraping the barrel for ideas of what shall we have for dinner today!!! But I guess that's every mummy's daily headache. It's hard to please everybody in my family especially my youngest Zahra, she has been getting better but is still a fussy eater. I always insist that she needs to eat her carbs(rice or potatoes) and Veg )normally limited to brocolli if she had her way), I also try to reduce on the chicken as I find that this meat is really a meat of convenience these days and god knows how much hormones are pumped into these birds!! So we have an alround menu throughout the weeks consisting of beef, fish, prawns, squid, crabs, veg, yes chicken. As for carbs we eat ofcourse mainly rice, potatoes occaisionally, noodles and we try and have pasta at least once a week. When it comes to family gathering ofcourse the food of choice for my beloved Mother In Law would be ambuyat but some of the kids don't really enjoy this..but that's another blog topic I guess.

However.... today we are having Lamb shanks bamia..sometimes Supasave has these lamb shanks but most of the times they are already marinated or chopped up..so it's best to ask and reserve I guess.

Bamia is the middle eastern name for Okra or Ladies Fingers and it is used to make stew with meat and vegetables. The Ladies Fingers help to thicken the stew's gravy hence the name of the dish Bamia. There are many varieties of how to cook this dish and you can substitute the lamb shanks for other lamb parts such as shoulder or cut up lamb leg. Alternatively beef can also be used. Whatever meat you are using, like in other stew recipes it is slow cooking to allow for the meat to tenderize. The dish is normally eaten with french bread but rice is fine too. If eating with mashed potatoes then omit potatoes and you can substitute with carrots instead. Or eat with couscous.

This was a real success for all in the family as the dish is not too spicy and not too bland. We all devoured it except for Zahra who did not have anything except for the potatoes!! Thank goodness for the vegetable soup we had prepared earlier. Ok hope you guys enjoy preparing this.


Bamia:


Serves 6 people (4 if you are hungry!!)


Ingredients:


1 large onion chopped


3 cloves of garlic smashed then chopped finely


2 shallots sliced


2 inches of ginger bruised


5-6 cardamom pods


1 cinnamon stick


1 star of anise


1 teaspoon fennel powder


1 teaspoon coriander powder


1 teaspoon turmeric powder


2 tablespoons tomato puree


3 lamb shanks ( about 1kg)


15pcs okra or ladies fingers - tops cut


3 -4 potatoes cut into 4


2-3 tablespoons ghee


Salt, sugar and pepper to taste


Enough water to cover lamb.





Method:


1.Melt Ghee in a large pot


2.Add spices, onions and powsered spice and fry till fragrant


3. Add tomato puree


4. Add Lamb pieces and fry just to brown


5. Pour water until lamb is totally submerged, and allow to come to the boil.


6. Lower down heat and let simmer for at least 2 hours until lamb is soft and comes off the bone when pricked with a fork. During the simmering stage if water has reduced keep adding more liquid.


7. Add potatoes and boil for a further 15 minutes till potatoes are soft.


8. Lastly add okra and allow to simmer for another 10 minutes until okra is soft and gravy has thickened. Season to your taste.