Homemade turmeric rice { Nasi kunyit }

Sticky rice or Glutinous Rice is commonly featured in SE Asian cuisine. It could be used in both sweet and savoury dishes. As the rice could be quite rich, we consume only in small quantity, and even on special occasions.
I followed the easy instructions given in the video below. I think I added too much water; hence, a bit too sticky. Since I didn't have a proper steamer, the result is satisfactory for now.

Yellow Sticky Rice

For soaking overnight :-
Glutinous rice
turmeric powder, to taste
tamarind pieces (sub. with lemon juice)

Seasoning
white pepper corns (sub. with white pepper powder)
coconut milk (see video)

1) Clean and soak rice in soaking ingredients with enough water to cover rice, overnight.
2) Drain rice, place rice on steaming dish. Heat up steamer.
3) Cook rice as per video instructions.

Caramelised red cabbage

I have tried cooking caramelised red cabbage a number of times but was never satisfied with the result until this recipe!

Caramelised Red Cabbage
adapted from No Salty

Ingredients
1 medium head red cabbage
1 apple
100g butter (reduced to 50g + vegetable oil)
50-60gm sugar (adjusted to taste)
50ml balsamic vinegar (adjusted to taste)
2 pinches of cumin seeds
salt & pepper, to taste

Method
1) Thinly slice red cabbage and apple, about 1cm width.
2) Heat a heavy duty sauce pan, melt butter (and vegetable oil), sprinkle in the sugar and stir until sugar dissolved.
3) Sauté cumin seed a bit before adding in red cabbage and apple.
4) Season with salt and pepper and dashes of balsamic vinegar, stir well. Put on the lid and let it braise for 30 mins.
5) After 30 mins. remove lid and let it continue to simmer to thicken the sauce. Check seasoning and it is ready to serve.

Poppy seeds bread pudding

Okay, I know this looks strange..haha. If you like poppy seed desserts you will like this.
After many years living in Hungary, strangely I haven't tried Mákos Guba before this. Perhaps because I am still getting use to poppy seeds. Slowly, I got used to it, but only in poppy seeds pie! Well, I think it is time to  add another dessert which feature this ingredient into my limited experience.
Poppy seeds bread pudding {Mákos Guba}
adapted from I like Baking

Ingredients for 6 servings:

6 pcs stale crescent rolls (you could also use sweet bread, baguette)

450 ml milk

1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped (or sub. with vanilla sugar)

40 g unsalted butter

75 g ground poppy seed (I used much more for 3 pax)

75 g castor sugar (or to taste)

4 tbsp honey

1 finely grated lemon rind

1 pinch of ground clove (sub. with ground cinnamon)

Method (for pictorial, check out the link provided!)
1) Pre-heat oven at 180°c. Lightly grease baking pan (26x17cm)
2) Slice up  the rolls/bread and set aside.
3) Add vanilla seeds, honey and butter into milk and bring it to boil.
4) Pour boiled milk over the rolls/bread prep. earlier.
5) Mix together poppy seeds, lemon zest, ground cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle all over rolls/bread. Mix well. Be careful not to mush up the bread.
6) Pour the mixture onto the greased baking dish, prep earlier and let it bake in the pre-heated oven for 15 mins. or until the edges of bread are crispy.
7) Serve warm. To serve, you could sprinkle with icing sugar and drizzle over some custard.

No bake chocolate hearts

Recipe same as this .

Stir-fried rice

Fried rice is best from left over rice; so, when you have plain rice left over from Chinese take-outs, keep it in the fridge and use it to cook fried rice. In the case where you would like to try this using fresh rice, then before cooking store your cooked plain rice, uncovered, in the fridge for at least 2 hours to dry it out a little.

Chinese-style Fried rice
Ingredients
Day-old cooked Rice or freshly cooked, quantity according to portions you need
1 shallot or red onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced

1 cm ginger, minced or slice
1-2 tsp sesame seeds
mix vegetable, according to portions you need
few dashes of oyster sauce
few dashes of light soy sauce
white/black pepper , to taste

Method
1) Heat oil in a wok, put in minced onion and ginger. Cook until fragrant. Then add-in minced garlic & sesame seeds, cook until browned. Be careful not to burn garlic or it will taste bitter.
2) When aromatics are fragrant, add in mix vegetables. Stir-fry for a few minutes.
3) Add in rice, seasoning and mix everything well. Stir fry until rice is "jumping" in the wok because you want to achieve the "char" (not burn) flavour in the rice.
4) Serve hot as side dish or main.

Oat meal cookies without butter

When clearing the pantry, I found a jar of oat meal unused for quite some time. I thought using it to bake would be a nice change. Since I normally do not stock-up on butter, I needed a cookie recipe that doesn't include butter and what a great recipe I found on A Foodie Loves Company .!
I am pasting the whole recipe here. The only tweak I did was totally eliminate the  1 1/2 cups of sugar from the recipe and the result is definitely sweet enough for me .
No Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Adapted from: All Recipes

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder 3/4 tsp salt
cinnamon, to taste  1/2 to 1 cup white or brown sugar 1 c brown sugar
1 1/2 cup oats
3/4 cup canola oil
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 350  2. Stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, sugar, brown sugar, and oats.   3. Make a well in the center and add canola oil, eggs, and vanilla   4. Mix together with a spatula. Form the dough into balls and place on cookie sheet slightly flattening them out   5. Bake 10-12 minutes

Chinese style Angel Hair Pasta

Fried vermicelli rice noodles is comfort food for the Cantonese. We eat them in the morning, afternoon, night and sometimes even during parties as the noodles could be pair with endless flavours. Since it is harder to get vermicelli made of rice flour in my area, I have learned to substitute with angel hair pasta whenever I crave the Cantonese staple.

I will not be including a recipe in this post. What I do is I toast the pasta first either on a skillet or in the oven for maximum 10 mins. on medium heat or until pasta is browned. Next you simply cook the pasta per package's instructions, once cooked to al-dente, you toss it in Asian-inspired aromatics and you're good.