My collection of Bentos

My collection of Bentos

Hainanese Chicken Rice

My very first attempt in trying to cook Hainanese Chicken Rice turned out pretty successful. Though I had to struggle abit with the chopping of the whole chicken.. but it was fun! OF COURSE it can’t be compared to the many famous chicken rice stalls back home. Ha.

I had really bad photos and I made a huge mess over the kitchen table so I did a collage of “my work-in-progress” instead. Pardon the scribbles.

These are just part of the recipe. I think I missed out a bunch of scallions.

Come to think of it.. it’s actually quite easy. Don’t ask me how. I basically googled and went through recipes and later decided to refer from group recipes and MasterChef Australia (No. I don’t follow the show.)

This is my end result :)

I’ve not been cooking much lately. First it was having Housemate G’s mum over.. and of course the kitchen was hers for the week. Then everyone got lazy and nobody could be bothered to cook or get groceries. Everything that was left in the fridge was probably rotting away. Even the sweet potatoes sprouted! Awesome.

I’ve not been cooking much lately. First it was having Housemate G’s mum over.. and of course the kitchen was hers for the week. Then everyone got lazy and nobody could be bothered to cook or get groceries. Everything that was left in the fridge was probably rotting away. Even the sweet potatoes sprouted! Awesome.

Beer Battered Fish & No Chips

Over the week I tried Jamie Oliver’s Beer Battered Fish and Chips. Only the fish. It was super easy. All you need for the batter is flour, baking powder, and good cold beer. I used Carlton Draught. For the first time, I went with small pieces of basa fillet because I had already seasoned them. It was alright, for my first attempt. On my second try, I used bigger pieces and it was awesome. I guess the fish just taste different. And of course, size matters. Ha.

Here’s my mountainous load of Beer Battered Fish. Feeds 4. :)

Homemade Dumplings; Won ton

Or rather In Mandarin, 馄饨 hún tūn; roughly meaning “irregularly shaped dumpling”. In Cantonese, 雲吞 or 云吞 yún tūn; is a popular variant written form that literally means “swallowing clouds”.

I was a little hesitant at first because I know that the pork in Australia smells. Still, I wanted to try something new. Surprisingly this time round the minced pork doesn’t smell and it turned out okay actually. I probably need to add corn flour and pound/mince it more so that the meat would be more tender. Which reminds me; I’ve yet to google.

Anyhows.. here I present to you, my pretty dumplings :D


Oh and with regards to the coconut rice that I mentioned earlier, it failed miserably. I’m still doing a trial and error of sorts and of course, having coconut rice for days.

Lemon Thyme Chicken

I’ve been cooking almost everyday and its becoming a routine that resulted in my recent food adventures. I started out with the Jamie Oliver book I have and slowly I started asking google all my queries. One thing I didn’t get answers to was the difference between canola oil, sunflower oil, and vegetable oil. But.. whatevs.

After going through recipes after recipes, I kind of stopped using Oyster Sauce, Soya Sauce and fish sauce, which is the shortcut norm for any asian dude. Thyme and salt works just fine or maybe along with just a tad bit of soya sauce. Oh and not forgetting truck loads of extra virgin olive oil.

These are the wings which I marinated for a day+ before dumping it into the oven.

Likewise, I tried it on some chicken thigh pieces as well, but used lemon thyme instead and added slices of lemon all over. This was what I started out with but had forgotten to snap the end result. 

My next adventure/experiment would probably be coconut rice/nasi lemak. Wish me luck! :)

Roast Chicken with Lemon and Rosemary Potatoes

Photo by David Loftus via Jamie Oliver

A couple of days back, I tried to roast a chicken with Jamie Oliver’s recipe from the book Jamie’s Dinners. Actually I did the roast chicken twice.

For the first time, I did not season the chicken before hand and just went ahead to roast which resulted in a really salted skin/top layer kinda thing. But the potatoes were really good. Not that I’m good but seriously anyone can do it. Just follow the recipe. PS: Boiling the potatoes together with the lemon really helped.

As for the second time, I seasoned the chicken overnight. It turned out alright but I still sense something missing. Sad to say, I missed the step where I have to toss the potatoes in a pan before roasting, so the potatoes weren’t crispy. Boohoo.

It was fun experimenting though :)

If you’d like to know; this is my version, which of course is very badly taken.