Tried & True | A Woman's Weekly

Archive for the ‘Tried & True’ Category

Introducing Tried and True

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Everybody loves a good tip. A solution to life’s little complexities. Especially when the recommended tips have actually been carried out and found to fulfill the exact expectations it promises.

As such, I am introducing to you my very own Tried and True posts where I will share tips and solutions to everyday matters that I’ve tried and found to be true. Woohoo! *bows to everybody’s applause. thankyou, thankyou.*

Tried and True postings will take many forms. Some days it will be a recipe I tried. (There’ll be lots of these in the coming days because y’all know how I love culinary experiments) Others times, it will probably be a home and office organisational solution I’ve successfully implemented, maybe a fashion solution or two that works for me and perhaps even a tip on parenting that gave me good-enough-for-me results. (I love all good tips on parenting!)

I am working on geting a button up soon to cool-ify T&T posts. *fingers crossed* garlic_oil

For today, I will leave you with a Bottle of Garlic in Oil.

This is a tip that is hardly new. Chinese restaurant chefs have been using it for eons. It’s how they can keep cooking all those fabulous stir-fries throughout the typical restaurant hour that otherwise is a home cook’s chore when it comes to prep time. I was reminded of this tip when the Bff talked about a friend who whips up flavorful stir-fries in a matter of minutes. Her friend gave a peek into her fridge and proceeded to take out a bottle of this wonder-worker.

I chopped and minced two heads of garlic for my jar with my kitchen knife. Now in fact, I could’ve used my food processor to speed things up. After which I topped the garlic with vegetable oil. Easy peasy!

When needed, just scoop a tablespoon of chopped garlic together with the oil that comes with, pour into a hot steaming wok and stir-fry away! Cool no?

There are variations of this type of cooking concoction too. Chili, herbs and lemon to name a few. And, they keep the same way ordinary oils do. That is, on your kitchen counter.

Fuss free and speedy. Love it!

When you have tried some of the tips I’ve posted here do leave a comment to tell me how you went, so we can ALL learn together.

Incidentally, these posts here and here are also tried and true. Check it out if you haven’t already.

Tags: life solutions
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I Cheat

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

At a discussion on recipes with a friend some time ago, she commented that my cooking repertoire was unusual. It is neither Chinese in its truest sense nor is it the ‘western’ that she’s familiar with. I told her that just like the fact that my family is of mixed cultural heritage, my cooking tend to fuse the best of both worlds. I have made whole chicken roast on a bed of ‘western’ staple root veges (carrots, celery, onion) that I’ve rubbed with the Chinese 5-spice. Sounds unusual I know, but the taste is just the right blend of sweet, savoury and spicy, and the aroma is mouthwatering. My family loves it!

I am a fan of western dishes. I find them to be less cumbersome and simple as opposed to all the chopping and shredding of chinese stir-fries. And then I married a born and bred Chinese-Native man who is more accustomed with his chinese tastebud than his native one. So what’s a girl to do but learn the rule and rigour of chinese cooking, and then bend it!

When I first served my Roast Chicken to the Man he said, “Is this Crispy Chicken, Roast Chicken, err… what Chicken?” I told him to first taste it and then tell me how he liked it. After that first bite, this dish has made a regular appearance on the dinner table ever since.

Back to being a cheat.

I’ve been known to use the method of using CANNED TOMATOES, to cook local dishes. Ha!

cannedtomatoes

According to Chef Michael Smith of the Chef at Home fame on Asian Food Channel, canned tomatoes are picked at its ripest prior to canning, therefore retaining their juiciest flavor. I remembered this when I was happily preparing to cook Assam Fish only to discover that my tomatoes were nowhere in sight. I thought I had them, but I didn’t. That was when I decided to put that canned tomatoes idea to the test.

Well, it worked.

The Hubby was slurping away at his Assam Fish with no thought of where the ingredients came from, and said that it was a wonderful dish. (HIS words.)

tomato-egg-stir-fry So Wonder Women, when you are out of freshly picked tomatoes, cheat there’s always the freshly picked CANNED ones. Just remember to add a bit more sugar (I use brown sugar in all my cooking) as some of these tomatoes, like freshly picked ones, can be a tad more sour than we like. And always use the best that you can find.

Thought of anymore dishes that you can use canned tomatoes with?

Share in the Comments!

Tags: Food, recipe
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My Tiramisu

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Was doing pantry inventory recently and discovered that my Savoiardi Ladyfingers is expiring by month’s end. Exclaiming this over the kitchen counter, Hubby quips, “So quick. Make me your Tiramisu!”

Mmmkay.

Hence I present my Tiramisu.

mytiramisu

I first asked for this recipe from the Mommy of my daughter’s friend when I had it at her little Girl’s birthday party. “Oh, I got it from this month’s Astro Magazine!” said she. “Really?? I must go rip mine out too then.” said me.

Coming home, that magazine was the first thing I dug around for and behold, I finally laid my hand on a Tiramisu recipe. Yay! I had wanted one for the longest time, but as in all things, life tends to move along and you just forget about the inquiries for the day as it passes. Read: old.

Here’s what I used (and didn’t use) for this recipe:

For the whipping cream, I used non-dairy Anchor Bakers Mix.
I used Nutriplus Eggs, you know the one with Omega 3.
The rum is Captain Morgan Black Label Jamaican Rum.
I didn’t use chocolate shavings because, well, I had one bar of chocolate but that’s to save for the triple chocolate sinful indulgence I am producing for an upcoming company dinner. *wink*
I forgot to use my springform pan and put all that yummy goodness in the usual casserole bowl. Would’ve looked prettier when cut had it come out of that cake pan. Next one lah.

Once again, happy is the pastry chef when her Husband comments, “Mmmm… This is good.”

Here’s that elusive tried and true recipe if you too want to impress your Love. Try it and let me know how you went.

p.s I also make a mean Orange Tiramisu that’s a hit with my ‘eaters’. That, for another post.

Tags: Food, recipe
Posted in Recipes, Tried & True | 3 Comments »

Melinsung Beach is beautiful…

Monday, October 11th, 2004

And what fun the children had at the Church’s Family Fun Day!

We arrived late, about 10.40 am, when the program was supposed to begin at 9 am, and we speculated that we would already miss the games. We were pleasantly surprised that when we arrived that the praise-aerobics had only just started. So we weren’t too late after all!

And Jude was there with a book to study! Amazing! Poor guy had an exam paper to do the very next day. Hope you did okay bro!

Once the children saw the beach and the sand, mom was kept on her toes all day just keeping up with their adventures and making sure they drink enough water and didn’t get too much sun! They both love the beach so much! Still, Miss D woke up with a red nose that was sensitive to the touch so mom had to gently apply aloe vera to soothe it.

In the meantime, Cool Dad and I also tried to catch on with the activities of the day. We thought the teambuilding games were great. I managed to observe just one of the activities in which the group held hands and tried, without letting go of each others’ hand, to untangle themselves and form a complete circle again. I gave a big applause when that mission was accomplished! It’s a great feeling accomplishing something together with the team!

Then it was back to watching the chidren and accompanying them in THEIR family fun day!

After the beach, Miss Mel insisted on going to the swing at the playground and naturally, Miss D wholeheartedly complied as well! So poor daddy who was so concerned about the scorching sun, reluctantly went with his favorite girls, albeit insisting that they kept drinking water!

Seeing that the group had started to play beach football, mom went and relieved daddy’s duty and took the girls to the swimming pool. This was when the sky clouded up a little, so the sun wasn’t as hot as it had half an hour earlier.

And did Miss D love the water! The water was chest deep for the toddlers so initially Miss Mel was scared to venture in. I was proud of Miss D cos after a while she overcame her fear and was happily walking all over the pool and even tried to persuade Aaron and Alex to join her!

Miss Mel would only be coaxed into the pool when mom helped her into a floatie. After that, Miss Dan had fun pushing Miss Mel in her floatie round and round the pool. I told Cool Dad that Miss D is ready for the pool. We should start thinking about getting her to a pool for swim lessons!

All in all it was really the children’s day out and it was nice to see them enjoying themselves.

When we finally went home, ALL of us were exhausted, and after showers, ALL of us fell into deep slumber!

By the way…

have learnt a lot from Bernard’s and Brian’s blogs. Thanks for calling up on my birthday Bernard. It was a nice surprise. Did you get my text that I had initially panicked cos I thot you were in some sort of trouble cos you never call me from there?!

having said that, I have a question to ask all you, young upcoming, tech savvy people out there… how do I post pictures on the blog? Pictures tell a thousand words, so that would cut down on a lot of words on my Weekly!

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