Old cucumber soup

Yesterday I was at Great World City catching 2012 with my hubby, Jeremy and Meiyi. The show is pretty alright, lots of effects.. alittle draggy at the start but it was ok. Worth the $ !

Because I was at Great World City, I couldn't help myself but to shop at the Cold storage there. I absolutely love Great World's supermarket (super fun self checkout!). Theres a few supermarkets I really like.. mainly all belonging to Cold storage such as Jasons, Marketplace etc. I know you pay abit more shopping there and things are at a premium, however I just find things so fresh and nice. You also can find stuff there that you won't be able to find at other supermarkets such as NTUC - Mascarpone cheese being one of them!

So I went to their produce section and saw some nicely wrapped Old cucumber. There and then I had this craving for old cucumber soup and so I started buying everything I needed to make the soup!

Heres the ingredients to make top quality as-good-as-grandmom's-old Cucumber soup,

Serves about 6 (with refills):

- 500g of Pork Soup Bones (less at about 300g is also ok but I like my soup sweet)

- 1 Standard Sized Old Cucumber (the ones I got from Cold Storage were alittle small and so I bought two instead. They were the size of my hand.)

- 10-15 Red Dates (up to you)

- Dried Oysters (I love dried oysters and so I added abt 15 of them lil small thingies)

- Dried scallops (optional, i did without them but you can add them in for added sweetness)

Steps:

Ok its really simple to make. My mom just sorta gave me instructions for it and I didn't need to call her like I normally would while cooking haha.

First of all, take the pot and fill it up with water. Just enough to cover the pork bones. Boil it. Add the pork bones in and wait awhile for the pork to cook. When you see that your pork is cooked, turn the stove off and drain the water away. This gets rid of the scum as well as the porky smell that I dont like.

Fill the pot back with water about 8 soup bowls full.

To prepare the Old Cucumber, I sliced it into half (lengthwise), chop it up into three pieces per slice and remove all the seeds. Please note that the seeds will make the soup bitter if left on so you need to remove them.

Then I throw everything into the pot and let it boil for about 2 hours. Add a pinch of salt to taste.

TADA! Homemade Old Cucumber soup ! Give it a try please and let me know what you think :)

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! :)

Hi! Long time no see... or write for that matter :P

Hi ! Havent blogged for a long long time. So many things going on what with our new house, our wedding.. but... its all over now and I can finally breathe!! On top of that, my previous firefox couldn't run the "create a post" script that this site requires.. for some reason. However, deli installed a new one for me and so now its working again!

So now I am staying with my hubby in our new house @ The Quartz. Its like a brand new chapter of our life. Lots to blog about over these next few days .... but first..

Two photos to put up:

Me and my favourite ppl on earth... my cousins + my sis! Love them to deathhh !!

A photo taken right after my wedding. Same night. Deli's buds came up for an after-party @ our suite and I had the most red wine i've ever drank in my life! Hahaaha. It was fun but the day after was a nightmare for me. I don't know if it is a hangover, but I was practically in bed the entire day! Couldn't do much, had the feeling of puking the entire day... couldn't even catch 4BIA with Justin and Thimo that night although tickets were already bought. HAha it was a disaster!

But definitely a night to remember!

Lots of ppl are asking me to put up our montage and the "gate crash" video of our wedding.. shall do it soon k!

Busy Los!

Hi all. Well, we've been really busy. Apart from our wow addiction we're having now (wow everyday, wow tcg on the day that server is down lol), we're really busy with the upcoming wedding preparations as well as our house.

Our house is coming along nicely. It has to be ready before our wedding and our Japan trip which makes things super hectic for us now. Seriously you don't really realize the amount of stuff that needs to be done till you're hands on. Kudos to our parents that practically do everything for us while we just wait to move-in and "settle".

Not only are there a ton of stuff to settle for the house, theres also alot of $ to fork out! Everyone is trying to earn your money and again, you don't realize it until you read through the first few pages of your cheque book. Curtains, lights, renovation, sofa, living table, mattresses, fridge etc etc.

That + my wedding = money flying out of our pockets ~!

But its all for a good thing. Once we've got this all settled, we can truly enjoy ourselves later on.. which is why we're postponing our honeymoon to next year instead of end this yr. Anyways we're going to Tokyo soon so we'll take that as our mini honeymoon together with Justin and Timmy. HEH =P

Tomorrow is Sunday, its family day which translates to baking/cooking day. My sis is gonna tackle the Okonomiyaki for it is Japan week for us, while I'm gonna try and bake some nice corn bread for tea. We'll see how that turns out tomorrow :o

Love ya all deep deep !

Cook cook and more cooking

Recently I have really taken on to cooking. I would just loooovveee to take up some cooking or baking classes but currently I am tied up with the manicure class. Perhaps after my manicure classes end.

Today I cooked for the family gathering (the one we have weekly with my cousins , aunts, uncles & grandma). My sister helped of course. Its alot of fun cooking together with her :o

We made Bacon Potatoes with Parmesan cheese as well as caramelized onions to go along with it.

 *Disclaimer, I do not have recipes for these.. i season to taste. But I will try to outline the steps for anyone that wants to try!

Bacon Potatoes

 Ingredients:

1) 4-5 Baking Potatoes (russets, idaho potatoes, etc)

2) Bacon Strips, about 600g worth. I used the really really lean kind of bacon although the streaky bacon will work alot better and will also taste much better. Everyone knows fat > tasty. So if you're not health conscious or not on a diet... buy the streaky kinds!

3) Parmesan cheese

Steps:

Take a baking tray or a pan, 9" will do. Line it with parchment paper. Bacon strips go from middle of the pan and leave half or 3/4 of it out of the pan. Rinse and repeat till the bacon strips totally cover the pan as much as possible.

Slice potatoes and lay them ontop of the bacon slices, layer by layer. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add grated parmesan cheese and then fold the bacon slices *the 3/4 part of the bacon thats left outside of the pan* back over the potatoes. If you use the long streaky kinds, it should be able to go back into the centre, over the potatoes! This way it keeps the potatoes nice and snug while baking in the oven.

Bake in the oven @ 180 degrees for 2 hours or till potatoes are nice and tender with bacon crispy.

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Caramelised Onions

These are really really delicious and goes well with anything, really!

Ingredients:

1) White or Yellow Onions.

Steps:

Chop the onions into half, peel them and then slice them. Heat olive oil into a pan and wait till the oil is heated up. Throw the onions in and just keep stiring till the onions get soft and brown. Do note that you will need to keep stiring or risk burning them. Add a pinch of salt and black pepper to taste.

PS, do not use a non-stick pan as you want the brown slightly-burnt bits at the bottom. That'll help to brown the onions more.. although do becareful to keep stiring every 30seconds just to make sure the onions don't stick and burn.

So there you goooooooo...do try at home yourselves. Easy Peasy! :))

Awwwwww

Awwww the blog is alittle abandoned right now. Just an update of whats going on with Deli and I! First and foremost, we're really busy with the wedding. Its just about 2 months from now and theres still so much to do. I guess we are kinda procrastinating right now but soon we'll get into a good rhythm.

We're heading to Tokyo this September for TGS09 (Tokyo Game Show 09), its rather last minute but because we're going to exhibit in this year's AFA 09 (http://www.afa09.com/).. we thought we'll go over and get some inspirations.

As for our house, we're in the midst of finalizing all the renovation details. The actual renovation itself will take about 1 month and the house will be ready by September. Can't wait to see how it turns out. :)

As for Gamescore, we're also going to implement alot of changes. Our membership scheme will change and we have some plans for the shop. Our annual party was very successful and instead of the large-scale catering that I used to do every year, I decided to buy a ton of pastries & cakes instead. Theres always sooo much left-over food from the catering that I didn't want to waste food again. Pat and Felcor did quite a good job with the pastries. I ordered so many different types and most were good! Will consider them again when we have a party.

ALrighty, going to go sleep now (3:45am already!!).. shall pester Deli to post more updates for the both of us. Afterall this blog is meant for us to look back upon.. maybe say...10 yrs later =D

MORE UPDATES PLZ DEAR~

Our Photoshoot

My Photoshoot is tomorrow. Wooo and its 2am now, I should be getting some slp righttt? But i'm a latebird. I can't sleep right now unless i'm really really tired.

Hopefully tomorrow will not be so tiring! My gown is really heavy and I dread having to walk around in public wearing it. omg.

Both my sis and jiefu are gonna accompany us tomorrow - luv you guys deep deep. Gonna get Eugene to take some sneak peEk photos.

Till then!

Update on Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 9:33PM by Jaclyn

Sneak PeEk!

My crazy durian crave

There are 2 things I crave for always. Chocolates and Durians. The former more than the latter.

I don't eat alot of them, but I just want the taste. I'll buy a bar of chocolate, take 1-3 squares, and give the rest to Deli. Same for Durians where I'll get 1 durian, eat a couple (3-4) and Deli can finish it off.

LIke today! We were having a porridge dinner at Chinatown and because I saw a durian stall while walking to dinner from the carpark, I knew I had to have durians for dessert! So we ate lesser for dinner and headed back to the durian stall. We got ourselves 1 nice Mao Shan Wang for $20. Deli wanted to buy 2, heng I stopped him because I know Maoshaowang has alot of yield to it. Meaning it is quite value for money where you'll get the whole thing full of seeds.

In the end, I could barely stomach 4 pieces and Deli had to eat the rest (at least 4 rows of 3-4 seeds in that 1 durian).

However, I was thoroughly satisfied!

For chocolates, I would splurge and buy a pack of SINS or Godiva premium truffles and take 1 a day when I feel like it. I find that Chocolates make me feel happy!! My mom agrees as well that chocolates can perk you up if you're feeling down, or if you're struggling with the "pain of the month".

So guys, next time you want to cheer your girls up, chocolates really are a good idea. Trust me. Don't need to get those expensive ones, a bar of Twix or a few ferrero rochers will definitely do the job!

Happy Dad's Day!

Hi folks!

Been meaning to blog lately but seems like theres nothing much to say!!! Life has been the same for the past few weeks lol. Not saying that its boring, I think we're really enjoying ourselves playing games everyday + hanging out with friends playing card games!

Today is daddeee's day so this post is dedicated to my dad that i <3 so much!

May you stay healthy, stay young (at heart :D) and stay happy always!

PS, we're catching Transformers 2 on Tuesday, can't wait :)

Patience is a virtue

Last week, we got the keys to our house. Yippee! Now to check the defects and report to the developer. Before that, we need to confirm our interior designer first, so right now we're waiting (with much patience) on our ID to get back to us.

Meanwhile we've bought lots of stuff for the house, our new comforters, plates/spoons etc, brand new wmf cutlery set are all sitting in my house waiting as well (with much patience).

http://thequartz.com.sg/

(any neighbours?)

So all we're doing now is to wait wait and wait.

Another update, I just booked tickets to Las Vegas next year. My whole family is going (Dad, Mom, Sis, bro In Law, Deli and I). We're going to attend CES together. Can't wait! So kiasu to book tickets now for next year right? But from past experiences with CES, tickets get more and more expensive later and later. Whats more, SQ now only has 1 flight to LAX instead of 2. Better to be kiasu than sorry! :)

Before all that, I have a wedding photo shoot in July, and a wedding dinner in October. So much things to look foward to.........CANT WAIT!