The Original Roast Chicken

One of the simplest dishes...EVER. Slather chicken pieces with salt, pepper and some chicken stock. Pop into the oven at 180 C for about 45 minutes, and you're done. Yes, Hadi was feeling lazy. Oh well, he just had his exam this afternoon, so I suppose that is understandable. And yes, he burnt the chicken slightly :P

In fact, this was one of my first exposures to roast chicken. Back home in Brunei, we would take a nice and tender whole chicken, marinate in salt, pepper and chicken stock for a while and pop it into the griller. Soooo nice. :D Of course, there are other more complicated recipes out there, but sometimes, the simplest ones are one of the best. The crispy skin...the tender meat.... *drool* ;)

Chicken Noodle Soup

This was one of the first things I cooked for dinner this year. Nice and simple and easy and tasty. Similar to Justin's chicken and onion soup last time. With a good base, you can vary it endlessly to get all sorts of yummy dishes :D

This doesn't actually have a proper recipe, since this was again an Ihsan original :P But I'll try, so here you go. Sorry if it is a bit incoherent :P

What you need:
Chicken pieces, legs or breasts
Onions, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
Cabbage, sliced
Noodles, cooked according to directions

What you do:

1. To make a good soup base, either boil some chicken pieces (legs, or the bones) in some water seasoned with some salt and pepper until the meat is tender and is practically falling of the bones, or just add some chicken pieces into water with some chicken stock added.
2. Season with a lot of pepper and some garlic powder.
3. Add the carrots together with the chicken.
4. Fry the onions in some butter, and add into the soup.
5. Simmer for about half an hour, or until the chicken is cooked.
6. The whole thing might be a bit oily if you used thighs, so remove any oil that floats to the top of the pot if you want :P Otherwise, it'll be a bit too oily.
7. Add the cabbage and simmer for about 5 minutes until it is tender.

And its done! Just add some noodles and some of the soup into a bowl and you have yummy and nutritious chicken soup. One of the few dishes I cook that actually has vegetables that I eat :P Muahaha.

As for which type of noodles to use, people typically use egg noodles, I think. But since I don't really like egg noodles and we had a lot of udon noodles left over from last time, I used those instead. They turned out quite nice, since they were supposed to be used in soups anyway.

Breaded Honey Chicken

Hadi once again took what seemed to be a simple recipe and turned it into something extra ;) What he initially wanted to do was a sweeter version of the rosemary roast chicken from last time. However, because of a careless mistake, he ended up with something quite different.

The intial marinade for the roast chicken was only supposed to be made up of honey and some seasonings, but he put in too much water and made it too runny. After a hasty discussion with me and Justin, he decided to put in some cornflour in to make it thicker. So it turned into a kind of batter instead. So the simple roast chicken essentially got converted into an oven-fried chicken instead. Oh, and in case you're wondering, for seasoning, he put in salt, chicken stock, rosemary and some chicken seasoning powder. I would suggest you add in some black pepper as well. :) A lot of it :P For added presentation, Hadi also sprinkled golden breadcrumbs before popping it into the oven.

In the end, the chicken turned out quite ok. A bit too sweet for my taste, but Hadi and Justin complained it wasn't sweet enough. They also said that the whole thing was lacking in flavour, needed more salt, Hadi says. It was fine with me though. And I'm usually the one who has high salt tolerance, haha. Oh well. Just adjust the thing to your taste, I suppose :D

Chicken and Onion Soup

As exam week is already here for him (and Hadi), Justin feels more and more lazy to cook. Which is paradoxical, really, coz aren't we supposed to eat better now that exams are here? Oh well, too much effort to be done when he can study, I suppose.

Anyways, today's dinner was quite tasty, although it was a very simple dish. He tossed some chicken legs in boiling water, along with some chicken stock and some herbs (mixed). To that, he added sliced onions that had been sauteed in some butter then covered with a bit of flour. He didn't use enough flour though, coz the soup didn't turn out thick enough. Oh well.

So here's the result. Not very pretty, I know. but believe me, it was quite yummy :D The boys, of course, added more seasonings, in the form of pepper, chilli and who knows what else. I just had it plain. :P This is our standard "lazy fare" since the beginning of this year when we all started cooking together, and the reason its been kept is that is tastes nice and is veeeeerrrrryyyy easy to make. Emphasis on the very. :P

Fried Chicken Rice

I was quite impressed with Hadi's dish today. I thought he would do another lazy dish and do a roast chicken or something. And initially, he did want to do that. But somehow or other, it runed into Nasi Ayam instead.

And not just any normal chicken rice. First, he boiled the chicken in water (along with a cube of chicken stock) until it was cooked, resefving the boiling water. After taking of the meat off the bones, he took the chicken, covered it in flour and (shallow) fried it in plain flour seasoned with salt. Doiung this made the chicken turn out nice and tender and crispy. The chicken stock water from earlier he used to cook the rice.

In the end, it turned out quite salty, though I didn't really mind that, haha. The rice was slightly salty, and the chicken pieces even more so. Unfortunately, it wasn't to poor Hadi's taste, who prefers things sweet, but Justin and I both agreed that it was Hadi's best dish. He seemed a little dejected at that, hahaha. But its a nice and easy dish (with just a little bit more effort than usual) and tastes wonderful as well. :D Although presentation-wise, it wasn't perfect looking, the taste more than made up for it. Only ... his methods of frying the chicken leaves a lot to be desired -_-; I have no idea where all the oil went >.<

Beef Soup with Chinese Spices

To be honest, I didn't really know what to call this, since Justin got reaaaaaallly lazy and cooked soup from a packet -_-; And yes, for once, we had beef :P Apparently, the soup goes better with chicken, but he decided to go for beef...

The soup...well, it tasted ok. Salty, very salty. But that was much better than a similar soup he made last time, which was more bitter. Apparently, they're different types of Chinese soups, so yeah...

I'm not really a big fan of beef, actually. Plus, it's so expensive :P So we only got to eat very little each (mixed blessing, I suppose) Thankfully, I wasn't very hungry today ^^ Oh well, I suppose Hadi and Justin deserve beef after being bombarded with chicken all this while, haha.

Teriyaki Chicken and Udon Noodles

Today's dinner was yet another Japanese dish (in case you can't tell :P) We've only ever had this a couple of times, mostly of the price of udon noodles (white Japanese noodles made out of wheat flour) :P But I've recently 'discovered' an Oriental market near our house, up on Gloucester road (or somewhere near there...Cheltanham road maybe? Well, you wouldn't care anyhow :P) and they sell oriental noodles that look like udon noodles, so I hazarded a guess that they would taste the same as well. What do you know...they do! XD *yey* They were cheaper, as well. Much much cheaper. That's always a good thing. Out interest, the shop also had a hairdressing salon at the back. Now that is a weird combination o.0 Reminds me of Brunei, haha. The salon looked quite nice actually, haha. Empty of customers though. Anyway...out of topic...back to dinner :D

What you need:
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 1/2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1/3 cup light soy sauce
1/4 cup kecap manis
450g chicken breast fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces (I used thighs, as usual)
400g fresh udon noodles (I used the dried variety)
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 onion, cut into thin wedges
2 teaspoons sugar
6 spring onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal

What you do:

1. Combine the garlic, ginger, soy sauce and kecap manis in a large non-metallic bowl. Add the chicken and toss until well coaed. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and marinate in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, cook noodles in a saucepan of boiling water (according to directions) until tender. Drain thoroughly.
3. Drain the chicken, reserving the marinade. Combine the peanut and sesame oils. Heat a wok over high heat, add half the oil mixture and swirl to coat the side of the wok. Stir-fry the chicken in batches until nicely browned. Remove from heat. Heat the remaining oil in the wok over medium heat, then add the onion and stir-fry until softened.
4. Meanwhile, pour the reserved marinade and the sugar into a small saucepan. Bring to boil, the reduce the heat and simmer until slightly syrupy, stirring occasionally. Remove the pan from heat and keep warm.
5. Return the chicken to the wok, along with the spring onion and udon noodle, tossing well to combine. Cook for 2 minutes before pouring in the reserved heated marinade. Stir thoroughly so that everything is coated in the mixture and heated through.
6. Serve immediately.

In case you're wondering what udon noodles taste like, they're yummy :D They're nice and thick and soft and slightly salty as well. They feel...I dunno, silky somehow. For dishes with them, the noodles taste better than the chicken, haha. Coz the noodles just absorb the sauce and taste so nice! Not that the chicken doesn't taste nice. The ginger and garlic is definitely a must. Adds a nice flavour. I used the powdered version, as usual. I also increased the amount of marinade, simply because we used so much more noodles than recommended. >.<>

Oh, and Syukri said that there are udon noodles being sold in the Mall (in the supermarket, I forget what its called >.<) so you can get them in Brunei as well. Isn't that nice? :D

Even though they're both called teriyaki, the chicken doesn't taste much like the other teriyaki chicken that I made last time. They both have soy sauce, but that's about it. The one last time was much sweeter and...thicker, somehow. This tastes a bit like ayam kecap, though the garlic and ginger definitely made a difference. Plus this one has noodles, muahaha :P It' s nice to have a change from rice ^^ This definitely doesn't taste like normal mee goreng, by the way. The noodles are much much different. Seriously, try it :D

Honey Chicken

This is one of the few sweet chicken dishes that I actually like. We first tried it out in Brunei last summer, experimenting different methods and materials. I think I have the (almost) perfect recipe now! ;)

What you need:
500g of chicken (I don't actually measure this out, just use what I want :P)
1/2 cup cornflour
Ginger, 1 cm slice
oil

Chicken mix:
2 teaspoons chicken stock (powder)
Pepper, to taste

Sauce:
2 teaspoons chicken stock
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon cornflour

What you do:

1. Season chicken in chicken stock powder and pepper. Set aside for at least 10 minutes.
2. Roll chicken in cornflour to coat. I usually season the cornflour some more with chicken stock powder and pepper. Heat oil and deepfry chicken until golden brown.
3. Heat 2 teaspoons of oil in wok. Fry ginger for about 1 minute. Since we are (still) out of ginger, I substituted it with ginger powder again, and just added it to the sauce ingredients, without frying it.
4. Add sauce ingredients. Cook until thickened.
5. Return chicken to pan and mix well. Serve immediately.

The secret to getting this right is the chicken coating. It MUST be crisp and flavoursome. I've tried baking this (trying to get a healthier method :P) but it didn't turn out crisp enough, though it did turn out ok. We've also tried using boneless skinless breast fillets cut into strips, but again, that wasn't too nice. It didn't turn out crispy enough, and I suppose chicken breast isn't as flavoursome as the thighs :P

What I usually use is chicken legs (drumstick + thigh) cut into about 4 smaller pieces. Unless your chicken legs are already small, like they are back in Brunei :D Spring chicken what, hahaha. Since we don't actually have enough oil to deepfry the chicken, what I did was first to shallow fry them until they were golden brown, and then pop them into the oven for further cooking. This actually drained off more oil, so it might actually be marginally healthier than just frying it :P You can also do it the other way round if you wish (bake, and then fry briefly ) So long you get the crispy outside :D

Like some of my other dishes, the crispy coating under a thick sauce does wonders. The sauce is sweet, but the chicken stock complements it perfectly (in my opinion :P) The ginger is also essential. Just a slight hint of ginger makes the flavour so much deeper. What you can also do (what I did anyway :P) is make a second batch of the sauce, and once you've mixed the chicken in the thickened first batch, just pour the second batch over the chicken, and heat for awhile to let it thicken. The chicken is practically glossy after this! And it adds more flavour, definitely. :D *sticky fingers, licky licky*

Hadi's suggestion for this was to make it sweeter (typical...) as well as add some veggies like onions or carrots. I'm not sure exactly how that would work, perhaps fry the onion with the ginger initially? So long as you can figure out a way, feel free to add anything you want :D This dish is definitely a stay-er in our house ;)

Tandoori Chicken (ft The Indian Mobile)

We have weird neighbours. There is this one group who live right next to our house who we are very fascinated with. They always go past in a big red van, playing blaring Indian music. We can't help but peek out the window everytime they do that. So much so that we've even given them a nickname: The Indian Mobile. For some inexplicible reason, they always ALWAYS bring a couple of buckets with them whenever they come. We've been itching to find out what's inside! Is it food?!! Concrete?! (It looks like a pail you use in construction -_-;) Who knows? Can you help us figure it out? ;)

Anyway, back to dinner. Today, Hadi cooked Tandoori chicken. He marinated the chicken in the marinade since yesterday, so it was quite flavoursome. Once upon a time, he would just dump anything and everything into the marinade, but following the advice of one of our uncles, this time, he just used plain yoghurt and garam masala. I think there was probably a bit too much yoghurt though. Oh well. You should use at least a grill for this, but since ours isn't working very well, we roasted it instead. Turned out quite well, except that the bottom was not crisp, as it should be.

Not that I am an expert in Tandoori chicken. This is only my second time eating it, since I'm not really fond of the taste. Never ate it in Brunei, since there was always other dishes :P So I have no idea what makes a good Tandoori chicken. All I know is, it tastes like Tandoori :P

And the people from the Indian mobile, if you happen to read this by some weird coincidence, do stop by and tell us what IS in those buckets :P

Chocolate Chip Cookies v1

Almost nothing, I think, smells as good as cookies baking in the oven. The smell just wafts through the house, drifting here and there, always catching the attention of...well, of your nose :P I had been wanting to bake cookies for awhile for some reason, so today, I decided to relax a bit on the revision, and bake some cookies! :D Great exam de-stresser, hehe.

Last year, I fell in love with Sainsbury's Taste The Difference Bakery cookies. They were SOOOOOOOOOO good. Slightly chewy, VERY chocolatey (get the triple chocolate one, *drool*) and oh so yummy! So when I got back Brunei, I searched around for a chewy cookie recipe. The one I got wasn't the same, doesn't even compare :P But its more than good enough to satisfy any cookie cravings you might have :D So here you go!

What you need:
1 cup softened butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar (I cut down on the sugar some more, they were still plenty sweet)
2 eggs
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 12-ounce bags of semi-sweet chocolate chips

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 175 C
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla.
3. In another bowl, mix together the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda.
4. Combine the wet and dry ingredients.
5. Stir in the chocolate chips.
6. Place golf-ball sized dough portions 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 10-12 minutes or just until the edges are light brown.

We had to cream the butter and sugar with a (manual) balloon whisk. Miss the electric mixer back in Brunei, hahaha. Though last year, Hadi and Justin once managed to cream egg white and sugar until it was stiff ... with FORK! o.0 Seriously....that is very impressive. Its hard enough with a whisk, but a freaking fork?! We all had to take turns, since our arms were BURNING! I had to help as well -_-; If they had told me, I could've brought my whisk, but noooo....

Anyway, back to the cookies....almost as soon as they were out of the oven, Hadi and Justin were grabbing some and wolfing them down :P They smelled good, they tasted reaaaallly nice as well!

One note, since the chocolate chips here in the UK are stupidly expensive, I decided to use baking chocolate instead, and just mash it up into small pieces (with a rolling pin. yes, I have one.). Best decision I ever made :D The chocolate chunks tasted soooooo much better than chips. And when the cookies were fresh out of the oven, they were warm and melty and tasted sooooo good. For some weird reason, the chocolate stayed quite melted, even after the cookies were cool. Not that we care :P It makes it taste so much better! I fully recommend!

Also, apart from the Sainsbury's cookies, I generally like my cookies a bit crunchy. So I baked the cookies until they were more than slightly brown. Seriously yummy... *drool* It was really really sweet though, with the added chocolate, so if I ever make this again, I'll cut down the sugar some more :P

Can you gain weight just by breathing in the amazing smell of baking chocolate chip cookies? o.0

Oyako-donburi

This is another Japanese dish that I made a couple of times before. For some reason, each time I make it, I use a slightly different recipe... Very weird... The english translation of this dish is a mouthful, chicken and egg over rice, where a donburi (don for short) is basically a dish with topping served over rice.

Anyway, the word oyako in the name of this dish basically means parent-and-child (oya = parent, ko = child), taking into account the fact that both chicken and egg are brought together in one dish. Very poetic, hehe. That's what attracted me to the dish in the first place ;) So here's the recipe!

What you need:
500g chicken thigh fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 yellow onion, sliced
1 shallot, sliced
Ginger and garlic (to taste, I used powdered forms)
3 spring onions, sliced into 1 inch pieces
3 eggs, beaten

For the sauce:
1 1/2 cups of dashi (fish stock, substitute with chicken stock if you cannot find it)
2 tablespoons light soy sauce (to taste)
2 tablespoons sugar (to taste)
Just a dash of dark soy sauce for color

What you do:

1. Add the sauce ingredients into a saucepan (with a lid) over medium heat. Add onion, shallot, ginger and garlic. Simmer for a few minutes, until the onion is slightly softened.
2. Add chicken and spring onions. Cover with the lid, and simmer until the chicken is cooked.
3. Lower heat, and pour the eggs over the chicken. Allow to cook for about a minute or two. Remove from heat and allow to cook some more. They should be cooked, but still be slightly runny.
4. Serve over rice in a bowl, if you want to go for the Japanese feeling :D

This one turned out better than expected. Hadi said that he preferred the ones before, since apparently, I used more soy sauce than this time, but Justin preferred this one. I must say, this one actually turned out better. The dashi (fish stock) definitely added a certain taste. I would recommend using it if you can get it. The eggs were properly cooked this time, as well. Cooked, but still creamy. The first time, the whole thing sort of disintegrated into the sauce, while the second time, it kinda made an omelette instead, haha. Today's one was just right! :D So that was nice.

We had more ice cream for dessert, this time LIGHT vanilla ice cream. This one had even less calories than the one yesterday. Hadi claimed that it was not ice cream, just icy milk, hahahahaha. And again, Justin was lamenting about the lost calories. My housemates are weird :P

Creamy Mushroom Chicken

Justin claimed (with an evil laugh, no less) that I wouldn't like this dish, since it has a lot of mushrooms, and I am known to be not a very big fan of mushrooms. But it turned out fairly ok, actually. As long as I didn't eat the mushrooms, muahaha :P It was quite creamy, with just a hint of mushroom. In fact, he was the one who complained, saying that it was too salty. Hadi's first comment, on the other hand, was "Delicious!"

Not only did he stir fry a whole box of mushrooms (sliced), Justin also added half a can of cream of mushroom soup -_-; Wonderful. In addition to that and sliced chicken breasts, he also added pepper and mixed herbs, with a couple of sliced spring onions as a garnish. By accident, he dropped in a whole load of UNGROUND black pepper into the pot, so throughout dinner, he kept on spitting out peppercorns, hahaha. Hadi, apparently, just ate them. Since I was just picking off the chicken, I didn't get any, muahaha.

Oh, and Justin went to Tesco's today, and brought back some more ice cream :D Two tubs. We ate half a tub for dessert today, of Greek Yoghurt and Honey. Hadi was already salivating at the thought. He was the one who chose, in fact. They both really liked it. I thought it was a bit too sweet though, plus I really don't like the taste of honey. Because it was so sweet, we figured that we were taking in at least 400 calories, but upon checking the nutrition information, it appears that we only ate about 180 calories worth. Must've been the yoghurt, haha. Justin said that he felt cheated - calorie-wise, that is :P Some people have their own problems.

Honey Chicken Stir-fry

I had some doubts cooking this, as the sauce was made up of an obscene amount of honey. I don't really like the taste of honey anyway, and sweet chicken is not really my taste. But Hadi insisted. So here it is:

What you need:
500g chicken thigh fillets, cubed
1/2 cup cornflour
2 onions, thinly sliced
1 green pepper, cubed
2 carrots, cut into batons
75g snow peas (mangetouts)
1/4 cup honey
vegetable oil, for cooking

What you do:

1. Lightly dust the chicken with the cornflour, shaking off any excess.
2. Heat a wok over high heat, add 1 and a 1/2 tablespoons of oil, and swirl it around to coat the side of the wok. Add the chicken, stir fry in batches until the chicken is golden brown and just cooked. Remove chicken and drain on paper towels.
3. Reheat the wok over high heat, add 1 tablespoon of oil and stir fry the sliced onion until slightly softened. Add the green pepper and carrots and cook, tossing constantly, until tender. Stir in the sliced snow peas and cook for about 2 minutes.
4. Ensure that the wok is still very hot, then pour in the honey and toss with the vegetables until well coated. Return all the chicken to the wok and toss thoroughly until it is heated through and well coated with the honey.
5. Remove the wok from heat and season well with salt and black pepper. Serve immediately.

The whole dish didn't turn out as bad as I thought. The added salt really helped balance the sweetness, and the the black pepper made it taste much nicer. I didn't like the look of all the vegetables in the pot though, *sigh* Need to eat more healthier >.<

What I would've done though, would be to shallow fry the chicken in oil, instead of stir frying it. I think the added crispiness would've have made the chicken taste much better. Crisp chicken under a thick sauce always tastes very good :D I didn't have time to do this though, since I was already running late :( And maybe season the honey with some chicken stock, instead of salt. Gives slightly more flavour, I think. I would've liked it more salty :P

Hadi and Justin seemed to like it well enough though. Hadi, more likely than not, liked it because it was sweet. Justin said that it was really very nice, and that if it was slightly more crisp and sweeter, it would've been similar to something served in a restaurant! Muahahaha :D

However, I much prefer this other chicken dish using honey, which I will be making sometime soon, haha. Look out for it!

Pancakes

I don't usually make entries for breakfast, but this was a special request from an enthusiastic reader , muahaha. ;)

Now that exams are almost here, classes are over and I have more time to spend on cooking breakfast. To celebrate, I decided to make pancakes! :D I remember the first time we tried making pancakes. I must've been about 7 or 8 years old. Following the 'recipe' we obtained from the book about a giant pancake that did not want to be eaten (o.0) Ka Anum actually managed to make a pretty decent batter, with eggs, flour, butter and salt.

Our main mistake, however, was in cooking the pancake. The book said that the pancake was cooked until it was golden brown on one side, then flipped over. We waited patiently for the whole thing to turn golden brown. We saw brown lines on it, but we figured that wasn't enough. So we waited and waited. Next thing we knew...the whole thing was black on one side, but still creamy on the other! A complete disaster. We fed it to our pets, hahaha.

Now, more than 10 years on, we've become smarter, muahaha. We know how to make pretty decent pancakes ;) I never would've guessed that there were so many different kinds. I, myself, prefer crepes (very thin slightly salty pancakes) , coz I'm a salty kinda girl :P That was most likely the one in the book we got the pancake idea from. They don't turn golden brown so easily. But today, I decided to make *real* pancakes. Sweet and thick.

They turned out ok. Hadi certainly loved them, since he has a major sweet tooth. But considering the amount of sugar in them, I don't think I would be making them so often. Crepes are certainly a bit healthier, I would think. The recipe I used was also a bit weird, it used buttermilk instead of milk ... In the end, I had to modify it considerably to get a workable batter. It tasted nice enough though, so that's good. And the whole thing definitely tasted good with a lot of butter *drool* I won't be posting the recipe though, since I had no idea how much stuff I added to modify it. There are plenty of good pancake recipes on the Internet though. Have fun cooking!

Szechuan Pepper Stirfry

I don't like egg noodles. Not only do they taste a bit funny, but it is hard to cook a dish for three people with them as well. Especially stirfries. Nonetheless, I tried anyway with this dish. It wasn't my best dish. Oh, it looked nice enough, all colourful with the vegetables, but it tasted a bit plain. The chicken was really yummy though, very flavoursome, though that was a mistake on my part, since I added too much ginger powder. Oh well, here's the recipe, in case you want to try it:

What you need:
3 teaspoons black peppercorns
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 clove garlic, crushed (I used garlic powder)
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger (I used ginger powder)
3 teaspoons cornflour
500g chicken breast fillets, sliced
100g thin dried egg noodles
oil, for cooking
2 onions, sliced
1 yellow pepper, cut into thin strips
1 red pepper, cut into this strips
75g sugar snap peas
1/4 cup chicken stock (if you want, just dissolve some chicken stock powder in 1/4 cup water)

What you do:

1. Crush the peppercorns in a pepper mill or with a mortar and pestle if you have one.
2. Combine the soy suce, garlic, ginger, cornflour and pepper in a large bowl. Add chicken and toss to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
3. Cook the egg noodles according to instructions, until firm. Drizzle with a little sesame oil to prevent them from sticking together.
4. Heat your wok over high heat, add 1 tablespoon of the oil (I used peanut oil here, smells nice :D) and swirl it around to coat the side. Stir-fry the chicken in batches over medium-high heat until golden brown and cooked, adding more oil when necassary. Remove from wok.
5. Reheat the wok over high heat, add 1 tablespoon of the oil ad stir-fry the onions, peppers and sugar snap peas until the vegetables are tender. Add the chicken stock and bring to boil.
6. Return the chicken and egg noodles to the wok and toss over high heat until well combined. Serve immediately.

The boys' main complain for this dish was was that there wasn't enough of it -_-; We are all big eaters in this house, so I cooked much more than 100g of egg noodles. This was probably my first mistake, as this most likely led to the noodles being not flavoursome enough. In the end, we had to add a little bit more soy sauce to our bowls. Even that wasn't enough to satisfy them though.

My second mistake was probably by not using Szechuan peppercorns. *cough*tooexpensive*cough* Szechuan peppercorns is a special Chinese spice that smells and tastes considerably different from normal pepper, as I witnessed last year when I sampled my flatmate's cooking :P Dry fry it in a pan before grinding to bring out the flavour. :D Use them if you can get them. I completely recommend it.

And although the recipe didn't call for it, I probably should've added more seasonings to the noodles. More chicken stock maybe, since there was so much more of it than was called for. Some more pepper maybe, and a dash of soy sauce and sesame oil? And maybe add in a sprinkling of chilli powder, or perhaps dried chillies, because although this dish has the name "Szechuan" I couldn't taste the spiciness at all -_-; Could have been because of the large amount of noodles, but peppers (capsicums, to those of you who know it by this name) are not that spicy anyway.

But, all in all, today's dinner was edible, most certainly. It just could've been better, is all. And I've certainly cooked better, definitely. Oh well, live and learn :D

Oh, and I'd like to send out congratulations and a BIIIIIIIIIIGGGG hug to my cousin, Kaka Nonie and her husband Abg Ady, whose nikah ceremony (wedding) was held today (well, yesterday, Brunei time). May you two have a super happy life together! :D :D :D

Hadi's Curry of Life

In (fillers of) the Naruto anime, the "Curry of Life" is this super-awesome curry made by this obaa-chan (old lady) in a curry shop near the mountains. The curry was so powerful that it was able to make Rock Lee (guy with ugly eyebrows) who was training nearby with Gai-sensei (another guy with ugly eyebrows) regain consciousness when he collapsed due to the intensive training.

Hadi has never seen the Naruto anime, and since it was a filler episode, he never read it in the manga either (which he *does* read). I just named it as such, as when I got a whiff of Hadi's curry, it was so strong that it was enough to make my eyes tear. It seems, however, that its bark is worse than its bite. The curry wasn't actually all that hot, though it was hot enough to make me down a tall glass of water during the meal. Hadi and Justin ate it without any sign of having too much spiciness though, although Justin did complain that it was a bit too salty for him.

So you want to make Naruto's curry of life? Too bad, I don't have the recipe, but it seems that the obaa-chan just dumped in random stuff in, like an octopus... o.0 and some black tar-looking thing. I can tell you what Hadi put in HIS curry of life though. :P Including the chicken, he put in random amounts of curry paste, cumin, chinese-five-spice, turmeric, chicken stock, peas, chopped dried chillies and a couple of cloves, all mixed in water. He probably didn't add that much curry paste though, since it wasn't that hot, plus....well, it had only a slight hint of curry. Okay, more than a slight hint, but not all that much really. For sure, it was a variation on the chicken curry he usually makes. I think its the cumin, he just discovered that a couple of weeks ago :P It smells good - almost like curry! muahaha. Its definitely an essential ingredient :D But go easy on the chicken stock (or salt, if you prefer). I think the curry paste is salty enough already.

Tex's Chicken

Anyways, today, we had one of my favourite dishes, Tex's chicken :D I usually have this on Wednesdays when Justin and Hadi have Tae Kwon Do, but haven't had it recently, since they've been studying for exams...

Tex's chicken, is basically a chicken coating, like ayam goreng (fried chicken) punya flour, only well, its not. Instead of deep frying it, you just pop it into the oven to bake. I like to think that its healthier than chicken goreng because of this, but I don't think it is, really. Mainly because that the Tex's chicken (that is the name of the brand, by the way) is SO flavoursome that it MUST have a whole load of MSG and salt in it. In fact, the instructions say that for best results, do not use with salt. They probably don't want people to get a salt overdose :P

I think that almost anyone would like Tex's chicken. It is VERY yummy, almost as yummy as fast food chicken (and probably marginally healthier). I think that you should defnitely use chicken with skin for this one. The coating + skin = drooly happiness XD Even Justin (our resident health freak) admitted that he was "forced" to eat the skin for this one, coz it...was...just...too...flavoursome! Seriously, the best part is the outside.

I usually debone the chicken before coating it in the flour, but since I had to do it for three people this time, I couldn't be bothered. The end result wasn't too bad. The insides of the chicken were slightly....well, they just tasted like chicken, but the whole thing was more than edible. If you look carefully at the picture, at the left side behind the plate, you'll be able to see the Tex's chicken coating box, haha. Thought you might be curious to see how it looks like ;) Just look at how perfect it looks...all that crispy brown skin... It looks SO much liek fast food chicken! XD

Barbecue Chicken

Justin accused Hadi of not being innovative for making BBQ chicken (for who know the how many-eth time) but today's chicken actually tasted quite different. I call it BBQ, but we didn't actually BBQ grill, we use d an oven. It was just BBQ flavoured :P Hadi didn't have time to marinate it, but he actually managed to make it very flavoursome.

We followed some tips from Ka Anum (my cookery adviser, haha):
1. Boil the chicken for a few seconds before putting it in the marinade
2. Add some kunyit (turmeric). This helps the flavour go in.
3. Marinate for as long as you can :P Didn't manage to do this, haha.
Some tips from our house:
4. Always always always have skin on the chicken. Keeps it nice and juicy, plus that's where most of the flavour goes :P Its the BEST part! *drool* I know, i know...unhealthy... :P

Anyways, for the marinade, Hadi tried to stretch it coz we were almost out of BBQ sauce (man, we need to go buy stuff..). In addition to the BBQ sauce, he added garlic powder, white pepper, tomato sauce, chicken seasoning (from Sainsbury's), turmeric, BBQ powder (from Tesco's) and chicken stock. All amounts added according to taste :P Don't forget to add the chicken! haha. Pop it into the oven (180C) and wait for it to cook ^_^ Hadi added some quartered onions into the roasting pan as a side as well. The whole thing turned out really nice, like I said. The main flavour was from the BBQ sauce and kunyit (Hadi put in a LOT :P) and the other seasonings kinda blended in. The chicken was just nicely cooked as well. Very yummy....

For dessert, we had mini cones! EIGHT of them! Wah! It was so yummy. They were alternating white chocolate coating (with chocolate ice cream) and milk chocolate coating (with vanilla ice cream). They were tiny, about half the size of my fist , but even so, eight was a bit too much for me :P Managed to finish them though, hahaha. *burp* They were cheap as well! 30 cones for 2 pounds! o.0 I don't think we'll be getting any more though.... Justin thinks we've been eating too much junk the last few days :P Oh well....

Fried Chicken with Eggs

Last night's dish was surprisingly yummy....and unhealthy. Justin got lazy again and decided to make just fried chicken. What was impressive was that he made the coating from scratch. And it was very flavoursome, so it was nice... *drool*

He used chicken breasts, cut into cubes. For the powder, he used selfraising flour with more baking powder added (no idea why. Use cornflour if you want it to be crispier, but we were out :P) with a lot of pepper, a bit of chicken stock and chinese five spice powder. Dip the chicken in egg and coat with the powder, and fry! Justin shallow fried in a mix of sesame oil and sunflower oil, just to give some taste, I suppose. As for the eggs, he added a whole load of white pepper and just a dash soy sauce and sesame oil for colour. Mix it all together and you have a simple but delicious meal. I would've used thighs though :P They're juicier, hahaha. Justin also made some kind of sauce, with mayo, tomato ketchup and chilli sauce. I didn't taste this (I like my chicken goreng PURE :P) but the boys liked it, so yeah...

And we had ice cream for dessert! Bounty icecream, which had vanilla ice cream and mango puree covered in a mango and passionfruit sorbet. It was quite ok...except that being Bounty, it had dessicated coconut in the vanilla ice cream. >.<>

Fish and Chips

Justin was lazy today and decided to make fish and chips for dinner. This is only our 2nd time this year having fish and chips for dinner, since fish is a bit pricey :P Today wasn't so bad though. He got the fish from Iceland, which is apparently a very cheap place to get food. We got ice cream as well! Nice, hehehehe. The fish was yummy, particularly since I was hungry practically the whole day. I have no idea why. I even had nasi goreng for brunch, but that wasn't enough, apparently. Dinner was more than enough though. I am stuffed now. But, like I was saying, the fish was yummy, better than yesterday's. And it was cheaper as well! The batter was crisp and flavoursome, and the fish wasn't ... well, too fishy, which was nice. The chips weren't baked long enough though, so it wasn't that nice. The other two didn't want to wait any longer for them to cook. Oh well.

Oh, and I found out what the boys had for dinner last night. Hadi wanted to make Buttermilk Chicken again. This time, however, the condensed milk he got was a bit bad... -_-; Apparently, it was darkish in colour, not creamy. Not only that, the chicken they used was a bit bad as well -_-; Why they used it, I'll never know... Hadi apparently managed to mask the taste of the chicken by frying it, but nothing could be done about the sauce. But...well, they just ate it anyway.... Lucky I wasn't there... I would've refused to eat it >.<>

Hungry :(

I haven't had dinner today :( How sad. I'm not gonna bore you with the details of my life *ahem*, but I went to Cambridge for a visit today (the town so pretty!), and was too lazy to cook when I got back. Plus it was too late to have a proper dinner by then anyway. I didn't even get to have breakfast, since we left so early. :( I did have fish and chips (super horrible overpriced fish and chips!) for lunch in Cambridge though, It was...ok lah. Not the best I've had. The fish batter was oily (though crisp, *drool*) and the chips were slightly sweet (though still quite nice, considering). The whole set was 5 pounds! Super mahal for the amount! And....it made for a meagre meal. I am still hungry >.<

As for the boys....well...in Hadi's text message "Food was vile. We're disposing of the evidence" Haha, spoken like a true lawyer. I have no idea what they had for dinner. They won't tell me. But from past experiences, it is either too sweet (knowing Hadi), too salty (knowing Justin) or too oily (knowing both of them, har-de-har-har). Or they could exceed my expectations and create an entirely new ... "delicacy" like hadi's egg on pizza. o.0 Not a good idea, trust me on this.

Omu-Raisu

Omu-raisu, or omelette rice, is a Japan-ised version of Western cuisine. I first came across it in an anime I was watching (Canvas 2, horrible! Don't ever watch!). The characters in there were gushing so much about it, so I got curious. Omu-raisu is just basically nasi tomato, wrapped in an egg omelette.

There are about as many different recipes for omu-raisu as there are people who cook them, so the recipe below is adapted from the many different recipes that I found.

What you need:
Rice mix:
Vegetable oil
Boneless chicken, thinly sliced
1 onion, sliced
1 sausage, diced
1 mushrooms, sliced
3 cups cooked rice
1 tablespoon butter
salt and pepper

Flavouring:
1/2 cup tomato puree
2 tablespoons tomato ketchup
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
salt and pepper

Omelette:
4 tablespoons butter
8 eggs

What to do:

1. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add onion and stir until soft.
2. Add chicken, and season with salt and pepper. Once chicken is cooked, add sausage and mushrooms, and stir. Then, add the flavouring mix.
3. Simmer on medium heat for 5-6 minutes. Add cooked rice and butter and stir occasionally while cooking eggs. Season with some salt and pepper. I added a bit of garlic powder, as well. Just to give it some more taste. When it is heated through, turn off heat.
4. In a second (large! very large!) pan, add 1 tablespoon of butter. Add 2 eggs (beaten, seasoned with salt and white pepper).
5. When half-cooked (top is still creamy), add some of rice mix in the middle of the omelette.
6. The next bit is a bit tricky. Fold over the omelette over the rice, like you're wrapping a present. :P Careful not to tear the egg, it'll be very thin.
7. Then, carefully carefully, flip the egg 'package' over on a plate. Tuck the top and bottom of the omelette under the package as well.
8. Repeat for the other 6 eggs.

This sounds tricky, I know. But its quite easy once you get the hang of it. And it looks so pretty. :P There was supposed to be a sauce drizzled over the egg package, but we ran out of tomato ketchup, sigh. Its basically just tomato sauce mixed with worcestershire, if you're interested :D We also had some rice left over, since I couldn't fit that much into the omelette. So we just had that on its own :P

I would suggest you go easy on the tomato puree for the rice. The tomato taste isn't for everyone. I certainly don't like it all that much. :P And today was one of the rare times that Justin actually had to force down the last bits of his share, as he found it too tomato-ey as well. Hadi? Well, he thought it wasn't strong enough. Ah well. It all depends on taste, I suppose.

Speaking of Japanese stuff, me and Hadi found something very interesting in the chinese supermarket near our place. You guys familiar with Doraemon's favourite food, dorayaki? Here you go! The real life version, muahahaha.

Hadi also made some onigiri as...well, as an after-dinner snack, I suppose. (We are eating SO much, GAH >.<) Those are rice balls, to those of you who aren't Japan-o-philes. They looked very pretty, hehe. so here's a picture to treat you as well! ;) The stuff stuck on the rice is furikake, seasoning basically. Hadi took the unhealthier option. Though there was one with just nori and sesame, the one he bought has salt, sugar and MSG. Oh well. As long as its not everyday, I guess.

Szechuan Chicken

Despite the mysterious appearance of this sign on our fridge, my dear housemates Hadi and Justin have been coming to me to take pictures of "beautiful" food. Hadi, in particular, has been trying hard to improve the presentation of his meals.

On Tuesday, Hadi cooked the Buttermilk Chicken...again. AND he wants to do it .... again. He really really likes it. Here's how his version looks like. It was quite ok, except it was a bit too spicy for me. He added more dried chillies, and more milk (just normal one) to increase the amount of the gravy.

Justin, on the other hand, was very proud of his dinner last night. It was an European-style breakfast, so....its a bit out. But it looked quite good, I admit. What did me and Hadi have? Tex's chicken, but more about that next week, heheh. ;)

Anyway, that's just past news. Today's meal was Szechuan chicken. It was deceiving. Szechuan cuisine is usually very spicy, but for this recipe, the spiciness was barely noticeable. It was nevertheless yummy though (and the not-so-spicy makes it perfect for me! :P) so here's the recipe! ^^

What you need:
450g chicken fillet, sliced and seasoned with chicken stock (powder)
oil for frying
corn flour
1/2 tsp chinese five-spice powder
4 dried chillies. wiped clean
1 large onion, quartered
2 slices young ginger - I used ginger powder instead, since we're out of ginger
1 stalk spring onion, sliced

For spicy sauce (mix well):
2 teaspoon chicken stock
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoon sugar
ground black peppercorn - use Szechuan peppercorns if you can find them

For thickening sauce (mix well):
1/2 tablespoon cornflour
1 tablespoon water
1-3 drops sesame oil

What to do:

1. Heat oil in pan over a high heat. COmbine cornflour and five-spice powder. Coat marinated chicken in the flour micture and fry (deep or shallow fry, as before) until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.
2. In the remaining oil, deep-fry dried chillies for 1/2 minute. Careful not to burn! Remove and leave 3 tablespoons of oil in the wok/pan.
3. Stirfry ginger and onion until onion is soft. Add ginger with the sauces if using ginger powder instead of fresh. Add both spicy sauce and thickening sauce. Bring to a boil.
4. Once it thickens, add chicken, dried chillies and spring onions. Although it doesn't say, I sliced up the chillies (after frying) to give the dish more flavour. Mix well. Stir fry for 30 seconds and dish out. Serve with rice.

And you're done :D The boys seemed to like this dish, so everything's good. Hadi said that it had a certain taste that was quite de-lish! For him, it was plate-lickin' good, haha. ;) The fact that the chicken was crunchy under the sauce was really nice as well. I should do that more often :P I actually got this recipe for the back of Knorr's Chicken Stock (with no added MSG! *gasp*), and I find it quite surprising that this kind of recipe actually tastes yummy, considering the source, haha :P Oh well, as long as it works, yea? ;)

Sticky Hoisin Chicken

Despite not liking the fact that he is Chinese, I think most of the dishes Justin cooks has a Chinese basis. Today's dinner was a prime example, I think.

Hoisin sauce tastes....strange (but not unpleasant), though Hadi and Justin seem to like it. Apparently, it has a lot of oil and MSG, so today's dinner wasn't out healthiest. Justin stirfried the strips of boneless chicken in sesame oil together with shallots and dried chillies EXACTLY like yesterday, but this time he added cornflour (to make it sticky-ish), hoisin sauce and some oyster sauce. After chopping up some spring onions for garnishing, the dish is ready! And it looks much better than yesterday's one!

And I'm not gonna bother making an entry for tomorrow....Hadi says he wants to copy the Friday's Buttermilk Chicken since he liked it so much. XD yey for my recipe :P

Chicken with Bread Sauce

I tried. I really did. I really tried to make this dish look good on camera, but frankly, it looks like...well, like vomit >.<>First, he stirfried some shallots with a LOT of sesame oil (apparently) until they were brown. Then, he added in some boneless chicken breasts, sliced. For seasoning, he put in salt, pepper and mixed herbs. It was the bread sauce that was supposed to be the focus. Apparently, he just snitched the recipe off a Sainsbury's product somewhere. It has something to do with milk, double cream, butter, nutmeg, chicken stock, a single clove and, of course, bread crumbs. It tasted quite ok, though the nutmeg didn't mix properly and was present in little unpleasant flavour "bombs". It tasted...a lot like bread actually, hahaha. Big surprise. This sauce was poured over the chicken and served. We ate it with rice :P I think it tasted a lot like Justin's past dinners, except for the bread sauce. That was a new...development.

Tori Teriyaki

Whenever I go to a Japanese restaurant, I always go for the chicken teriyaki....with a bowl of rice. A fan of sushi, I am not. It is, however, super overpriced (like everything in the restaurant >.<) Though I think Kaizen Sushi makes a very good teriyaki, much better than Excapades, and its cheaper too! :D

But anyway, since I've had it, I've always wanted to make it at home. My first attempt made it all dry and burnt, so I gave up on it. This year, however, I found a reaaaaallly good recipe for it. Its now a favorite in my flat! And its so easy!

Ingredients:
4 pieces boneless chicken (breasts or thigh), with skin
4 tablespoons fruit juice (any, but apple is recommended, maybe orange, never tried with others)
3 tablespoons caster sugar
4 tablespoons rice vinegar
5 tablespooons dark soy sauce

What to do:

1. Heat a non-stick frying pan over very high heat. Add chicken, skin-side down, until fats start to run. This will make it really nice and crisp. Fry until golden brown. Turn over and fry until golden brown. Discard fat and set aside chicken.
2. In a saucepan, add fruit juice, vinegar and sugar and bring to boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Add chicken, cover and simmer for about 2 minutes.
3. Add soy sauce and bring back to boil. Cover and cook over high heat for 6 minutes, turning the chicken occasionally, until sauce thickens.
4. Transfer chicken onto a plate and cut into slices.
5. Extra sauce can be used as a dip, or drizzled over chicken

So yummy! Seriously! Feel free to adjust the amounts of the ingredients to follow your taste. Just don't forget to put in the soy sauce, like someone I know did :P Oh, and rice vinegar can be pretty strong, so make sure you simmer the sauce until the smell of the vinegar isn't so strong anymore.

Eat with chopsticks and rice to get the atmosphere, hahahaha. And since Japanese feel that food should be beautifully presented, do what you can (with veggies and whatnot - another thing I'm not a fan of) to make it look pretty :D

Buttermilk Chicken, TPH-Style!

Last week, one of the recipes I used for dinner was really really bad. So bad, that Justin thought that I made up the recipe myself, that I really can't cook! Hadi agreed also... o.0 Meanies!

Well, in order to prove them wrong, I declared that the first dinner I cook this week would be a totally original one, made up by Ihsan Nazurah. Although...I *was* a bit worried, since I never did it before...

Taking my inspiration from TPH's popular Nyonya Chicken (buttermilk/butter chicken to some), I decided to try and replicate that. Many attempts to do so in the past ahd always resulted in failure. Today, however, was different. Lo and behold! It turned out good!!!! The chicken was crisp, under a creamy sweetish spicy-ish sauce. Very close to the original! I am *so* proud of myself :D

I know some people have been looking for this recipe, so here it is! I don't claim that it is 100% the same, but I would say its pretty close. Enjoy! (PS It IS a bit unhealthy though... o.0) The amounts are just approximations, since I just made this recipe up. 'Sides, the greatest chefs don't use measurements, hehehe ;)

Ingredients:
500g boneless chicken, cut into cubes/strips
Cornflour
Butter or margarine, 4-5 tablespoons
1 stalk curry leaves
Dried chillies, chopped, to taste (you can use fresh cili padi, if you want)
Evaporated milk, 150ml (susu cair)
2 tablespoons white sugar, 1 tablespoon brown sugar (adjust as you like)
Salt and pepper, maybe some chicken stock

What to do:

1. Season chicken with salt, pepper and chicken stock. Coat with corn flour and fry. (deep fry or shallow, I just used shallow frying) Try and get it golden brown. Set aside.
2. Melt butter over a gentle heat and fry chopped chillies and curry leaves until it starts to smell good *drool*
3. Add evaporated milk and sugar. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Keep the pan on the heat until the sauce is nice and thick. (Butter should be combined with milk - just like white sauce!)
4. Add in fried chicken. Mix well to cover in the sauce. Serve!

Ta-dah! And you get buttermilk chicken almost as good as that from TPH! And the other two have acknowledged by greatness! Muahahaha! By the way, Hadi thinks that it might be better if you just use condensed milk (susu manis) instead of evaporated (susu cair). If you use that, dilute with water and don't add sugar. This would be buttermilk chicken v2, by the way. :)

Rosemary Roast Chicken

This is one of Hadi's favorite dishes, particularly when he's feeling lazy. We first came across the recipe when we wanted to make a whole roast chicken for a relatively special dinner. Hadi liked it a lot, so he uses the recipe quite often now.

Its quite simple really. Just marinate the chicken with some paprika and rosemary, drizzle a bit of olive oil, oh and don't forget some salt and pepper, and you're set! Just pop the chicken in the oven and wait for it to cook.

The main flavour of the chicken probably comes from the rosemary. Its quite strong, so use sparingly. I prefer only a slight hint of rosemary, but others (Hadi and Justin included) like it quite strong. Its all up to personal taste, really. The paprika gives only a slight taste, it is more to give the chicken colour than anything else.

If you really want to, you can recreate the original whole roast chicken. If done properly, it tastes quite nice really, though its a bit too herby for me. We also added some stuffing into the whole chicken, making it really nice and fat :P The juices of the chicken soak into the stuffing (which is primarily bread, fried in a bit of butter with some onions, carrots, peas and sausages) making it quite yummy! *drool* The resulting dish looks really impressive! Add in some small-ish potatoes and onions into the roasting tin, and you've got something that looks really really really good. Not that I like roast potatoes or onions :P

Jam Doughnuts

Today, I want to highlight the humble jam doughnut. For now, I think Sainsbury's (in Bristol - London one is BAD) makes the best jam doughnuts. And at 11p per piece, they are sooooooo worth it!

I think you definitely get your money's worth! The doughnuts are so scrumptious!!! They are so soft, they practically melt in your mouth! There's usually quite a bit of jam as well *drool* Its sometimes quite messy to eat one, what with the sugary outside and the jam oozing out from the inside. I always end up with sticky fingers. *licky licky* :P

Hadi discovered one great thing about them though (well,I think its great :P) Jam doughnuts taste even BETTER if you....toast them. You'll need a toaster oven though, not a simple toaster. When you bake it for a bit, the sugar caramelises and the bread gets reaaaaalllly soft and warm, making the outside slightly crisp but the inside oh-so-fluffy!The jam is even meltier and is easier to get on your fingers.

Just be careful not to burn it like Hadi did. :P

Stir-Fried Tofu

This was one of our few vegetarian dishes so far. For not being chicken, it wasn't too bad really, though tofu is definitely not for me :P The whole taste overall was...salty...particularly the vegetable sauce that Hadi made. He definitely used the soy sauce and oyster sauce haphazardly. I don't mind so much, but I think I have higher than average salt tolerance o.0

Some of the tofu was stir-fried with more soy sauce, while some more of it was just pan-fried. because it was tofu, the soy-sauced flavoured one was much much better :P

Oh! And Hadi got fortune cookies to go along with it, hehehe. Mine said... "True generosity is doing something so that no one will find out." Whoa! Deep... o.0