Asian Food

I was craving for Japanese food last week. Sadly, there is no good Japanese restaurant here. They offer decent sushi, but hot food wise? It's terrible.
So, I browsed the internet (thank God, for internet), and found the recipe for what I want.

Hambaagu (Japanese hamburger)

Recipe from Just hungry
I didn't really follow the recipe to the dot because I was out of several items. But it still turned out decent, and quick dinner.

Croquette

Basically coat leftover mashed potato with flour, egg, and panko bread. And fry it.
Really awesome use of leftover mashed potato. It's a very versatile recipe. You can put veggies, meat or herbs, curry in the mashed potato before you turn it into croquette. I put veggies (carrot, corn and peas) and ground beef in the mashed potato.

Kwetiau Sirem

Surprisingly quick to make.

Somewhat of a direction to make:

1. Boil kwetiaw til soft (2-3 min). Put into a bowl, add about 1 Tbs of oil, oyster sauce, and sesame oil.
2. Heat cooking oil in a wok. Add minced shallot, minced garlic til fragrant. Add meat. Cook til cooked through. Add in vegetables.
   
3. Ad water about 1.5-2 cups. After the water boil, add in salt, pepper, and a bit sugar. Stir.
   
4. In a small bowl, mix 1Tbs cornstarch with a bit of water
5. Add the cornstarch mix to the wok. After the sauce thickens, add in 1 egg. Immediately stir it. Turn heat off.
6. Prepare bowl/plate with kwetiaw. Pour the sauce on top.
   

By the way, kwetiaw is he fen.

Playing with hair wax

I bought a tube of hair wax for the Monkey King. I tried to convince him that it'll make his hair better looking, not like an overgrown chi chi chia. So, I slather some wax on my hair, and the kids. We had fun creating funny hairstyles.

There's something about Mary JD



Wind-swept hair

Kai: "Waaa...stop playing with my hair, I just wanna take a bath"

Future Professor



This is not a product of hair wax. This is what happens when you put mashed bananas on your hair. It sticks out even after I wiped scrubbed it with wet towel. Nice to know that bananas is a good substitute for hair gel/wax. Good experiment, Professor!

Gong Xi Fa Cai and Happy Valentine!

In this Valentine, I'd like to declare my love for my.... cast iron pan. Heh heh heh...

I acquired a used pan sometime in the fall at a flea market for almost nothing. Just recently I managed to properly season it, used it, and fell in love with it. If you owned one, you know what I'm talking about.

Things you can make with the pan:

Apple cake

Recipe: Apple cake in iron skillet
Verdict: Really yummy, but next time I would use 1 more apple, and reduce the butter used in cooking the apples

Pork chops

Recipe: mine. But it's basically pork seasoned with salt n' pepper, dredge with flour and fried.
Please overlook the blackness of the pork. It's not that burned, just a little bit :)

Potato skillet

Recipe: improvised.
Finally I can eat a proper skillet like the ones at Denny's. There's no Denny's or potato skillets here, so I'm quite excited.

And finally...Fried Chicken!!!!

Pretend there's a fried chicken pic here

I completely forgot taking pictures of it. We're so excited in having fried chicken for dinner, that we forgot to take a pic until there were just piles of bones left.
The chicken is really really good. The Monkey King said that it's comparable to Kentucky's. Mwahaha....that's good. Coz there's no Kentucky here either.
Man...remind me why we move here again?

Anywho...last but not least...

Homemade pizza

I know it's not made from the iron pan. But, it's so good that I just have to post :)

Happy Valentine everyone!
And Happy Chinese New Year too! Wish you all the best in the Year of Tiger.
Gong Xi Fa Cai! I'm off to make dinner. Hopefully I won't burn my duck :P

Basara Restaurant

We ate lunch at the Basara some time ago. (Ma, if you read this, it's over at the meat shop. We ate carrot cake there 2 years ago). The restaurant is situated inside a market hall. The restaurant/cafe on one side, and the market on the other side. They have butcher, fish stall, cheese and coffee stall, and green produce. It was quite fun for the kids to eat there because they don't get bored waiting for the food to come. They can walk around looking at the live lobster, crabs, and scallops in the aquariums.

We ordered margherita pizza (tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, with freshly grated parmesan and ruccula on top)


Appetizer of the day (meatball, roast potato and dijon mayonaise, grill salmon, bread with herbed butter)


Raw Scallop
We choose the scallops from the aquarium, and prepared fresh. It's drizzled with olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper.

This was our first time eating raw scallop. I kinda like the texture, and the sweetness of it. But I think the olive oil overpowered the whole thing.




The brave kid trying the scallop. (She didn't like it though)

A Day at the Mall

This ride is fun, just make sure don't put money in it or I'll be scared.

Bread stuff

Sorry bout the crappy pics. Hard to get sunlight at this time.



Recipe: Pear Bread
Verdict: Quite good. But I couldn't taste the pear at all. It mostly taste like cinnamon quick bread.

I know this is not baking. But this waffle came out smelling like newly baked bread :)


Recipe: Yeasted waffles
Verdict: this waffle tastes and smells like bread. It's crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Pretty good. And easy to make too.

Halsen

JD's been begging for a halsen for weeks. I was going to buy it at HM for 40 NOK (roughly U$6-7) until the monkey king said don't be lazy and knit it for her :)
So I did.
I present to you:

JD Halsen


The messy back view


Lined it with fleece to make it warmer, and tame the curling


Pattern: DROPS neckwarmer
Modi: Lots. Added hearts fair isle. Knit it in st st instead of garter, and added 2 sts for selvage. Knit the ribbing neck longer, so it can be folded. Sew fleece to the back for added warmth. Added single crotchet for the edge.
Verdict: JD loves it. And she asked for 5 more halsen :P
Ravelled here