Happy Chinese New Year 2009!!!

Happy Chinese New Year. This year will be the year whereby I will be celebrating Chinese New Year as a bachelor which also means it's the final year I'm eligible to receive angpows. Hehe... It's a strange feeling and I guess things will be different once I'm married.

Anyway, it's the time of the year whereby I will tend to gain weight as I will be eating non-stop from breakfast up to supper. Hehe... And what more visiting relative's houses, munching away all the delicious cookies, peeling and stuffing myself up with mandarin oranges and pouring down tons of sugar into my body makes matters worse. But it's once a year. So I tend not to bother and only worry about it once the celebration ends. *lol*

Cookies.... Mmmmm....

Pomelo, mine mine mine....

Mandarin Oranges which in Cantonese means *gold*... more gold for me. *lol*

Pretty plants

More Decorations!!!

My stomach is going to be really busy for the next 15 days. Anyway, have a Happy & Prosperous New Year. Let's all welcome the year of the Ox.

Sausage Platter

I know I haven't been updating my blog often. Have been busy with work and classes and now with the Chinese New Year around the corner, isn't making things any easier. Anyway, time really flies when you are busy. But I'm so looking forward to Chinese New Year to collect all the angpows. *lol* This is going to be my last year I'm eligible to collect angpows. Darn! I must make sure I make an effort to collect as many as I could. Yes yes, I'm finally getting married. And it's really soon. When? Will announce when the time comes.

Anyway, I have not finish talking about my Christmas dinner. Last Christmas, I wanted a change. Instead of the usual roast chicken, I decided to make a sausage platter for him. It’s actually indeed much simpler compared to making roast chicken as I’m not making my own sausages. I was very tempted to learn but then again I’m wondering how to put the meat into the sausage skin without the machine.... Anyway, to make my life easier, I decided to buy all different types of sausages. *lazy me*



I can’t actually remembered what I bought. I believe there were lamb with rosemary(absolutely delicious), chicken cheese, bratwurst, chicken paprika, chicken with mushrooms and etc.



I prepared onion sauce to go with the sausages. Basically I cook the onions, add some chicken stock and cook for about 20-30 minutes till the onion are soften. It taste really delicious and it goes well with the sausage platter.

Of course, sausages have to go with mustard sauce. As I’m not a fan of mustard due to the strong taste, I decided to make cheese mustard sauce instead. Basically the mustard is mix with cream cheese and butter. Than finally sprinkle some paprika on top. I absolutely love this
combination. You can also add a bit of tomato sauce to make the mustard taste slightly milder.



The sausage platter also goes together with the mashed potato which are topped with bacon. *slurp*

It was one of those beautiful nights whereby Doink and I spend precious time together. Oh, Christmas is just so far away and definitely something I look forward to every year.

Anyway, Happy Chinese New Year and have a great week.... Will blog about more Chinese New Year food later.

Having Fun Making Mistakes

I had difficult time figuring out what to prepare for dessert for Christmas dinner last year. But thanks to Jason that I did not have to crack my head to think. He told me why not try making sticky toffee pudding. I had never thought about this dessert before and this is actually a challenge for me as I had never prepare or tasted it before although I have heard a lot about it.

I started searching for the recipe in making this dessert. I'm kinda lazy to follow exactly the ingrediants and the steps, and thus ended up making a muffin instead of a pudding. *lol*



Yes, these are the consequencecs of not following instructions. But I kinda like these muffins. Taste kinda nice and it actually it tasted a bit like scones.

Anyway, I try making it again, this time following the recipe quite closely with some alteration.



Tadah, my toffee pudding with success. Oh ya, I actually did not have any dates, so I replace it with raisins. And either way, I love it a lot. Most importantly my beloved Doink loves it too.




Than I prepared the sauce which was another challenge for me. The first round of making the sauce, I ended up making the sauce that tasted like condensed milk. *clumsy me* It was a total failure. But I definitely had a good time although it came as a failure. Hey, thinking positively, I actually figured out how to make a sauce that tasted like condensed milk. *hehe*

Anyway, having tried again, I managed to make the correct toffee sauce to be served together with the pudding. *thank god!!!*

And I couldn't believe how beautiful toffee sauce is. I actually made it again to serve it together with ice cream. Gosh, it is so delicious. *yummy*

I think this is the first time I bake something with so much mistakes. I ended up making something else. *lol* Anyway, gotta thanks Jason for giving me such a brilliant idea. Will prepare this again when I ran out of idea of what to make for desserts. Hehe...

Scotch Eggs

Happy New Year 2009 to everyone! Hope everyone is ready to go back to work or school tomorrow. I'm definitely not in the mood for work and am looking forward to my Chinese New Year holidays. Hehe....

Anyway, the first time I ever had scotch eggs was when I was in the UK. It's actually a cold hard-boiled egg removed from its shell, wrapped with minced meat mixture, coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried. It's usually eaten cold. This is not something that most Asians will like as they are not used to eating cold meat. But I actually fell in love with it when I first tasted it. It was really tasty and of course sinful. I remembered Doink used to have to stop me from buying all these eggs as I was addicted to them. *lol*

So here I am trying to prepare scotch eggs for the first time. The last time I ever tasted it was quite a while back so wasn't exactly sure how the texture should be and how to prepare it. So I did some research finding out the methods in preparing scotch eggs.



I used normal chicken eggs and quail eggs to see which one of them will taste better. And I would have to say that chicken eggs make better scotch eggs. I guess that's because you have more to eat compared to quail eggs. And for the meat mixture, I used pork and chicken, seasoned it with salt and pepper and added some herbs into it.



I would say it's partially successful for my first time preparing it. The only thing that I was disappointed about was that for some of the eggs, the minced meat did not actually remain intact to the egg when I was frying it. I think I did not add enough bread crumbs to the meat mixture.



I like my scotch eggs but I guess there are plenty of room for improvements. Can't be thinking of ways improving it as I better go sleep now as tomorrow will be a long day after my beautiful weekend.

So I guess I will wish everyone happy working, happy schooling, or happy holidaying to those who are still enjoying their holidays.