Steamed Ginger Garlic Pomfret

When I was pregnant with Andrew, I often ate this dish. My mom thought me how to cook this very simple dish. Since we moved to the US, I haven’t been cooking any fish at all. Per Rina, my good friend’s request, today, I am posting my first fish dish in the US to add up to my recipes’ collection. Andrew loves this dish so much that he ate almost the whole one side of the fish.

Tempeh Orek Miss Cen Cen

Tempeh, one of the most popular food in Indonesia, is the main ingredient of my recipe today. The original recipe came from a good girlfriend of mine, Cen Cen, the most stylish and smart young mommy with two most fashionable sons. Thanks for emailing this recipe to me. When I first introduced this dish to Andrew, he loves it so much. As expected by Cen Cen, I have modified the recipe a bit, since I don’t have some of the ingredients here. I have also modified the wording of tempe to tempeh as listed on Wikipedia.

Al’s Devilled Eggs

My good friend in San Francisco, Al, likes to make this yummy Devilled Eggs. He brought them once to my Graduation BBQ Picnic at the Golden Gate Park and within a few minutes they were all gone. They are so good that I begged him to share me the recipe. Now, I don’t have to fly down to San Francisco to taste your famous Devilled Egg. Thank you, Al! I copied and pasted the instructions from Al’s email. See below:

Stir Fry Udon

The original idea of this dish came from Shinta (Cerita Dari Dapur Amatir). She made this delicious looking Stir Fry Seafood Udon that lead me to make one myself. I eliminated some of the ingredients and substituted some. Andrew loves it just like he always does with all type of noodles. Thanks for the idea, Shinta!

INGREDIENTS:

2 pack of udon

5 pieces of beef meatballs - cut into 8 pieces each

10 pieces of medium size shrimps - peel of the skin

1.5 teaspoon of butter

1/2 teaspoon of minced garlic

1 stem of scallions - cut into 3 cm length

2 teaspoons of oyster sauce

2 teaspoons of sweet soy sauce

2 teaspoons of soy sauce

INSTRUCTIONS:

Heat up a pan, put in the butter, then add in the minced garlic, stir fry for about 30 seconds, then put in the shrimp, stir until cook. Then put in the beef meatballs and the scallions, stir until all mixed well. Then put in the udon, oyster sauce, sweet soy sauce and soy sauce. Stir fry again until all ingredients well blended. Then ready to serve. Enjoy!

Phi Pha Tofu with Enoki Gravy

When I was in San Francisco, I often went with either my siblings or friends to one Chinese restaurant on Taraval street called 8 Immortal. It’s a medium size restaurant with 2 levels. The owner of the restaurant is an old man who just never seemed to look older. When I first went to this restaurant, it was back in 1997 and I can clearly remember how he looked back then which is exactly the same as how he look when I last visited the restaurant in 2007. We would go there for birthdays, graduation celebration or just having a lunch or dinner.

Anyway, I think everything that they serve are delicious. But most of all, I always order the Phi Pha Tofu. It is not on the menu, but somehow people just know that they have this dish. So today, I decided that I am going to try making my own Phi Pha Tofu. The result is really similar. Now I am glad that I can make it myself. I don’t have to wait for my next trip to San Francisco anymore.

Homemade Chicken Nugget Stick

I am sure if you have a kid, they must love chicken nugget. Instead of buying a frozen one, you can actually make one yourself. It’s not hard to make, but does consume more time. My friend and my blog reader, Ellen, gave me this nugget recipe when we chatted a while back. I never got to make it because I always forgot to buy the bread crumb. Finally, today I tried this recipe minus the chicken essence and deep fried shallots, plus I added more tapioca starch. It is really good, thanks for sharing, Ellen!

Restaurant Review: Rod-Ded

Early this month, one of my blog reader, Christie, emailed me back with list of some restaurants of her recommendation. Rod-Ded is one of them and she highly recommended the Duck Noodle. So, yesterday, we finally made it there.

Restaurant Review: Siam Chan

We’ve been wanting to go to Din Tai Fung per Mel’s recommendation, but due to our tight schedule this weekend, we decided to go to nearby restaurant for our dinner. So this time, we choose to try my friend, Orn’s, recommendation, a Thai restaurant called Siam Chan. The restaurant is very small and there were 2 waitresses, one is extra nice but the other one seems is just the opposite. They decorate the restaurant by hanging the Thailand Elephant embroidered clothing and use the Batik clothing as the tablecloth.

Andrew was so hungry at that time, seemed like he wanted to swallow the spoon before our orders came. We ordered Tom Yum Koong ($4.75), Beef Salad ($6.25), Pad See-ew ($5.25), Thai BBQ Chicken ($5.75) and 2 Steam Rice ($2). We didn’t intend to order the Pad See-ew but since I already promised Andrew that we are going to eat noodle (’cause I thought that we would go to Din Tai Fung at first), I decided to order it for him anyway.

Potato Yummy

This recipe originally came from my friend, Frida. Similar to my previous recipes, this one has been modified as well.

Restaurant Review: Dumpling Inn

Still from our San Diego trip, this time we asked a friend who lives in San Diego for her restaurant’s recommendation. One of many that she recommended was the Dumpling Inn. At first, we didn’t intend to go to this restaurant, just because it wasn’t nearby the hotel that we stayed at. After our long day in the San Diego Zoo, we thought that we should just tried nearby restaurant.

My friend, Heru, told me to try Phil’s BBQ, but we failed to do so, because the line was so long and we were starving. So we thought, we better hurry up and go to Dumpling Inn instead. After a 15 minutes drive, we got to Dumpling Inn, there was a line in front of the restaurant but it wasn’t as long as Phil’s. I put my name down and waited for 40 minutes. Yup, I never waited this long for a restaurant, but everything that people ordered in the restaurant looked so good, that we decided to stay.

The restaurant is really small. Close by the restaurant there is a Korean Market. We finally got our seats 20 minutes before the restaurant closed. We were very hungry and ordered a lot of food. Unfortunately, I failed to write down the price for each one of them. We asked for 2 orders of Xiao Lung Bao (Steam Pork Bun), 1 bowl of Lo Mien Noodle with 4 Ingredients (it comes with shrimp, pork, beef and chicken meat), 1 order of Jelly Fish and 1 order of Salt and Pepper Fried Calamari.