This is it

Just came home from catching the Michael Jackson's flick "This is it". It showcases all the footage they caught during his preparation for the concert. Its really entertaining and I must say I felt depressed again while watching it. This is someone that shouldn't have died!!! He is so multi talented and there is no one out there that can ever beat him or do what he has done for the entire music industry.

I won't consider myself a Michael Jackson hardcore fan, I mean I know the guy, I admire his moves, I probably have a few of his CDs and my dad has Thriller on Laser Disc.. but I just can't help to feel that he shouldn't have gone so fast. If I was to use 1 word to describe how I felt during the entire film, it was wasted.

The concert would have been epic.

Back to the movie. I think they did a good job in showing quite a number of songs and we had plenty of MJ footage. It almost felt like we were shown the entire concert (keyword: almost). He was so energetic for his age and you could really tell he knew his moves and his music sooo well, it was in his blood.

Kudos to u MJ!! RIP.

As long as you kinda like MJ, catch this movie and support him!

Meanwhile, just some life updates...we've been settling down in our new house, building it up bit by bit. I really really want to get an oven so I can bake bake and bake. That is my next i-really-want item..!

Oh I also started to cook at home, in fact I made dinner for my guys 1 Sunday night. Some pics courtesy of Chang,

As you can see, it was quite a spread! I actually cooked from morning to night for this. Really have new found respect for ppl who do this often lol! The braised pork belly I marinated over night. Its actually quite easy. Heres some simple recipes if you want to make your own.

Braised Pork Belly:

Ingredients:

- Pork Belly (buy any amount you want)

- Soft Bone (not necessary but I bought some of these as they are leaner cuts... meant for ppl that don't take fats like me)

- Gao luk (chestnuts)

- Mushrooms (any kind you want, you can use shitake, but I used button)

For the marinate:

- Hua Tiao Chiu

- Sesame Oil

- Oyster Sauce

- Soya Sauce

- Dark Sauce

- Pinch of salt

As you can see, I don't list measurements. This is because I didn't measure anything and just added based on what I feel is right. It is not that difficult, the above ingredients won't go wrong. The only thing is you want to go easy on the salty sauces. You can always add more when you cook it if you don't feel it is seasoned well enough. Plenty of time for that. Anyways, I marinated it overnight and threw it in the fridge.

To cook it:

Because it is braised, the whole idea is for you to put it in a big enough pot and let it stew for long hours. This will make the pork extremely tender.

I poured the entire thing into a pot, added 1 Star Anise, 1 Cinnamon stick and 1 cup of water. I also added gao luk (chestnuts) and button mushrooms because they taste heavenly when soaked in the sauce. Then put the lid on and let it stew. Note, you need to stir it once in awhile to make sure that it cooks evenly. I stir once every 30 minutes and left it on for around 3hrs for the perfect texture and consistency to the pork.

After the pork is pretty much cooked, do taste the sauce to see if its to your liking. Otherwise just add more dark sauce and soya sauce to taste. :)

Cheers and enjoy your braised pork belly!! I knew my guys loved it and even though I cooked so much, they finished everything lol.!

Cream corn with shredded chicken soup

This is my mom's recipe, its damn easy to make and tastes good too. Heres what you need:

(serves about 8-10 ppl, you can increase or decrease based on your own judgement)

Ingredients

3 cans of Creamed Corn

5 Chicken breasts

about 200g of lean bacon

Cooking method:

I have a fantastic grandmom who makes fantastic soup. The one thing she taught us was that we gotta let the soup boil down for a long period of time.. don't make soup if you're in a rush or need to cook a quick meal.. because then you'll just need to add chicken stock but you won't get a really good authentic soup.

Take a huge pot (make sure its big enough), fill it up with water and dunk the 5 chicken breasts into it. How do you measure the amount of water you need? What I did was to use the actual bowl that I would be serving the soup in to measure. If I wanted to make 8 bowls of soup, i'll pour in roughly 10 bowls of water. This is because it evaporates while cooking and you'll get less liquid than what you started out with.

After all 5 chicken breasts is cooked, take them out and let cool. This is when I dump the contents of the canned cream corn in and let it continue to boil. Shred the chicken into pieces and put them all back into the pot. Add some salt to your taste. NOTE, I do not know the reason why, but my grandmom says it is impt to use salt and not soya sauce to flavour it.

Just let it sit and boil at low heat. I did mine for about 4-5 hours.

Heat the bacon up, you can do so in a pan over the stove or use the microwave oven like what I did. Chop it up into small pieces.

Serve the soup, garnish with bacon bits and you're done!

Really nice n really simple , try it! :)