我的试验室 My Lab

Today, we went out the whole day, so decided to 'da bao' KFC. Oops, run out of chili sauce. It was such a coincident, I just visited a website last night about Thai Chili Sauce and decided to give it a try.


Ingredients:

• 3 large cloves of garlic (I used 8 large cloves)
• 2 red Jalapeno (I used 4 medium size red chili, add more if you want it hot)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup vinegar(I used 1/3 cup)
• 1/2 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp corn starch
• 2 tbsp water

Procedure:

1. Blend first 6 ingredients in blender.
2. Pour the mixture into saucepan to simmer it at medium heat until garlic & chili are slightly soften, it took me about 5 minutes.
3. Add 2 tbsp of water to 1 tbsp of corn starch and mix until no lump.
4. Mix corn flour mixture into the chili sauce and stir briskly to avoid forming lumps. Once the chili sauce starts boiling again, continue stirring(avoid burning) and simmer for another minute. The chili sauce is ready.
5. Let it cool down completely. Store in a glass jar and refrigerate it.
6. Let the chili sauce rest/settle for 2 days before using it.

Note/tips :
Use clean and dry spoon to scoop chili sauce from the bottle can prevent
contamination, so can keep the chili sauce longer.

OMG, Jia asks me not to get store bought Thai chili sauce again!!

I sincerely think that the original writer is a genius.

Suddenly, there is this crave to eat Laksa, but, don't know why? I just can't produce my mum's Laksa even though after getting all the tips from her weeks ago. So, I decided to think out of the box. What about having something similar to Laksa then? Emm, Tom Yam paste may help. There starts my experiment again.

Ingredients:
A. Noodle
1 Packet of Angel Hair(the thinnest spaghetti)

B. Soup
1 kg salmon frame
2 L water
2 tbsp Tom Yam paste(add more will increase the kick)
2 Onions(diced)
5 cloves Garlic(diced)
2 big tomatoes(diced)
2 stalk lemon grass/ 1 tsp dried lemon grass powder
1 tsp galangal powder
2 tbsp lemon juice(more if u like it sour)
2 tbsp shrimp paste
2 red chili(optional)
salt to taste

C. Garnish
Shredded cucumber
Thinly sliced salad onion

Procedure
1. Cook Angel Hair as stated on the packet. Set aside.
2. Put all ingredients for soup in the pot and let it boil for 20 min.
3. Drain salmon frame and make sure that all the bones are removed. Pour all salmon flesh back to the soup.
4. Bring to boil for another 5 min, the soup is ready.
5. Add about 1/4 bowlful of cooked angel hair, garnish with shredded cucumber and salad onion, add about 3 ladle of boiling hot soup.

You should try it if you are a Laksa lover.

Now that at the age of nearly 40s, we have become more and more health conscious. So, I start to look for wholemeal flour rather than pure plain flour. Wow, just realised that the price of wholemeal flour is almost doubled (some even more than doubled) of ordinary plain flour. Hence, I go through the ingedient of the wholemeal flour. Surprisingly, there are only 2 ingredients inside there. They are :

• Plain flour
• Natural bran

However, what is the ratio? Curiousity always gets better of me. I start mixing.... and the most optimum ratio I found out is :

• 2 portion plain flour : 1 portion of natural bran,

e.g. add 2 tbsp plain flour, then add 1 tbsp of natural bran and mix well. Ta da... homemixed wholemeal flour is ready.
The best thing about homemixed wholemeal flour is that, you can actually change the ratio according to your own preference. So, it is pretty flexible. Try it out, it is interesting!!

Frankly, I have looked for tortilla wrap recipe through internet for years, and I have gone through so many failure too. Finally, I managed to find one which is good enough last year. However, after advised by a Chinese friend of mine, whom I regard her as 'kitchen veteran' (厨房老将), I decided to try out this new recipe for tortilla wrap, and it works.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups self raising flour (can substitute by plain flour too, then it will become plainflour wrap)
• 1 cup boiling water (it has to be boiling hot, otherwise, you will go through the same failure as I do)
• 1 tbsp butter(optional)

Procedure:

1. Pour hot water to the flour.
2. Stir quickly with chopstick, the half cooked flour will resemble into chunky pieces of dough.
3. Now, add cold water bit by bit, knead dough until it form a ball. It shouldn't be sticky at this stage.
4. Cover the dough and rest dough for ~30min.
5. Divide dough into 15pcs (depends on the size/thickness you like it to be).
6. Use rolling pin to flatten them.
7. Start frying using a pan. (Note: Must not use oil, otherwise it won't puff up nicely).
8. Fry one side until you see some 'bubbles' puffing up and the dough slightly change to translucent, lift the dough to confirm there are a few brown patches/dots at the down side, flip them over. Fry for another 30 sec, again, lift the dough to check for a few brown patches/dots, then, it is done.
9. Repeat for the rest of the dough.

Reminder

1. Must use boiling water.
2. Do not use oil when frying.
3. Stack up all the tortilla wraps to maintain the moiture in the wrap so that it will remain soft.

Tips:
Flour to water ratio is 3 : 1 , so you can actually vary the quantity of wraps you are going to make easily.

Try to substitute SR flour by plain flour, then it will become a plain flour wrap.  It will have different texture.  Tell me which one you like best.

Blog is finally created. It is amazing!!

I have never thought that I will be able to write a blog by myself. Really have to thank to See Ming for guiding me here.

Actually it is so easy to create a blog.

Procedure:

• Go to http://www.blogger.com/start/
• Sign up.
• Set a name for your blog site.
• Think of a blog title.
• Choose one fine layout. You can actually find lots of interesting free blog templates at http://btemplates.com/

You are pretty much done!!

What you have to do now is just keep exploring & posting.