Kailan with Pork and Mushroom Gravy

Kailan is Chinese Kale.

My mom used to do kailan almost this way. I added in shitake mushroom slices this time.
You can do the gravy in advance and pour it on the blanched kailan just before serving.

This portion is enough for 4 persons. It's too much if you're feeding carnivores and too little if feeding herbivores.

Kailan with Pork and Mushroom Gravy Recipe
300gm Hong Kong Kailan
Bring a pot of water (about3L), add in ½ tsp salt and ½ tsp sugar and 1 tsp oil. Blanch kale for 30 seconds. Drain well.

Gravy
1/3 cup pork, cut into thin strips, matching the mushrooms (Chicken breast strips may be substituted)
3 pcs large dried shitake, soaked and sliced
2 tbsp oil
2 shallots (sliced thinly)
1 clove garlic (chopped finely)

Seasoning (combine together)
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
1 Tbsp light soy sauce
½ tsp sugar
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp cornstarch
½ cup water or slightly more.

1. Heat wok and put in oil. Saute shallots until fragrant, add in garlic. Fry until both are lightly golden.
2. Put in pork strips and stir fry until meat is cooked.
3. Put in mushrooms and toss for 30 seconds.
4. Put in seasoning mixture and bring to a boil, adding more water if its too thick.
5. Let it simmer for 30 seconds and pour gravy on blanched kailan. Serve.

Making Dulce De Leche from Sweetened Condensed Milk

Pronounced, Dool-say De Leshay. It’s in Spanish and it means, milk caramel. You might have heard about it (U can't have missed it if u read my Dulce de Leche cake post) or you might have not. It’s not a common ingredient in the local baking scene.

So, how to make it? Few methods I’ve listed them here

Method (A)
Milk , sugar, baking soda and maybe some flavourings like vanilla or cinnamon.
1. Traditional simmering
http://www.uruguayuruguay.com/dulce-de-leche-recipes.htm
2. Slow Cooker
http://www.glutenfreeturtle.com/2008/01/09/slow-cooker-dulce-de-leche-cajeta-gluten-free/

Method (B)
Opened can of condensed milk:
1. Bake in oven: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2005/11/dulce_de_lechec.html
2. Microwaving : http://southamericanfood.about.com/b/2010/01/31/microwave-dulce-de-leche.htm
3. Double Boiler: http://southamericanfood.about.com/b/2009/01/16/easier-dulce-de-leche.htm

Method(C)
Unopened can of condensed milk.
-I don’t see how dangerous this as, as canning is also done with unopened jars/cans in heated in boiling water for an amount of time. Just don’t leave the pot dry and the heat on. Read: http://www.mykitchensnippets.com/2008/05/dulce-de-leceh-cheesecake.html
1. Simmering a can of sweetened condensed milk for 2-3 hours http://notwithoutsalt.com/2009/09/12/dulce-de-leche/
2. Pressure Cooker : cook a can of unopened sweetened condensed milk for 30-40 minutes, everywhere on the internet.
3. Simmering in slow cooker/crockpot: http://www.mangiodasola.com/2010/01/crockpot-dulce-de-leche.html

I tried out method (C)1. Simmering the can unopened.
I’m not sure if this will work with Malaysian “palm oil based” sweetened creamers.. I might experiment making this with full cream evaporated milk and sugar next time, cos I don’t get these real milk goo everytime from Singapore.

Updated 7/3/12: There is Sweetened Condensed FILLED milk (take not it's not full cream, and it's partially made with palm oil) on the supermarket shelves in Malaysia (after this post came out). Comes in 3 brands, Teapot, Marigold and F&N. Results are acceptable, I've made DDL using these few times before, not as fragrant, but texture is there. Better than nothing, right?

My dear Malaysian friends, you can't find "FULL CREAM SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK" on the shelves anymore. There is Milkmaid, yes, but it's Sweetened Creamer. Please scold the government for price controls which forced the manufacturers to sell us palm kernel oil creamers. Palm kernel oil is not the same as palm oil. Palm oil is the oil from the mesocarp(the outer flesh), whereas palm kernel oil is from the "nut", just like coconut oil. Oh ya, non dairy topping creams are made using palm kernel oil too. I saw that on the labels. So, I do try to use dairy or buttercream now, unless I can't avoid it but use non dairy topping cream.

Actually I prefer the non High Calcium version of this milk. Having more added calcium to it gives it a metallic taste, just like any other Hi-Calcium drinks, something that I will avoid if possible. But since this milk is a gift from Lydia's Nanny, I have no choice lor. After making it into DDL, the metallic taste is not obvious anymore.

I put it in a pot, on an overturned steaming rack. Brought it to a boil (lid on) and lowered it to a simmer. I had the water 1.5 inches above the can. I simmered the can for almost 4 hours, cos I forgot about it. I was doing my blog. I was supposed to do it for 3 hours only.

Don't worry, my the pot didn't lose much water and there was still 1 cm of water over the can. As long as the pot didn't dry up, you'll be alright.

I let the can of milk cool down in the pot until the water is warm. Then I fished it out and let the can COOL COMPLETELY before opening it. Do not attempt to open a hot or warm can!!!!

Tadaah!!! Pretty caramelly goo... Taste so good. You can use it to spread on your toast or make something with it, like what I did with my Dulce de Leche Cake. I'll do something else later, stay tuned.

I read from the internet that the best Dulce De Leche are made from Goat’s Milk and.. they’re from Argentina. If only someone would send me some… I won’t mind if it’s from somewhere else other than Argentina , as long as it’s dulce de leche. Canned ones like Nestle are gladly welcomed too 
I’ll send u something in return.

Finally 100,000 hits and a Dulce De Leche Cake to clelebrate

100 000 hits.. took me almost two and half years to get this. Sometimes I do feel embarassed. There are so many newer blogs than mine that have long ago achieved this, and some few month old blogs are already half of where I am.

I admit,
1. I had been lazy, not updating my blog as often as I should, making my bank of drafts getting bigger and bigger by the day. Facebook's Restaurant City took up much of my 2009.
2. I've been very passive. Haven't been reading much blogs, only the handful, and when I do read blogs , I rarely comment. Guess it's a two way thing. People won't know I exist unless I tell them that I do. Well, not that I'm insincere with what I say about their food, I am very sincere, just that if it's good, tell them. Now, I no longer keep the "Good job, Well done, Thumbs up" in my heart, but I will really tell them through comments.

Since I changed my blog's interface(after Surprise Egg), it definately changed my reader's perspectives to stay on. I got a lot lot more hits than before. Maybe due to the bigger pictures (errr... lots of blogs have much smaller pics and they get lots f hits), or maybe due to the pinkish theme now.. makes things seems sweeter :)
But the real fact is that, I've got a lot more linkups to blogs than few months back, and now my 2/3 of my traffic comes from referring sites, compared to 2009 where 60% came from direct traffic.

Statistics based on Mac1-Mac31 2010 and Nov29-Dec-28 2009
Daily visitors on average : 92-256 (now), 30-80 (2009)
Returning visitors per month: 2863 (now), 1098 (2009)

See the difference?? It's just a matter of 3 months and I'm very surprised and at the same time very happy.
Here, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank

(in no special order)

Happy Home Baking
Nasi Lemak Lover
Blessed Homemaker
Excuse Me, Are U a Nurse
Happy Flour
Cherry Potato
HomeKreation
Testedandtasted
Full-timed Housefly
RachelHei
Simply Annes -she's the first food blogger to link me to her blog :)
ChVoon
Sze-Min
Sakura-love baking
Sweetaeration
My Kitchen Snippets
Mylivemylife
bake4fun
wombatmama -Not a public blog
sugabakes-inc
ibakewhoeats
kymkymthelittlebear
jesbakewithlove ----Not a public blog too.  To both private blogs, I know both of you have been following my blog for quite long, I would love to pay your blog a visit, unfortunately I can't access your blog.
findingquietwaters
ladybird8738
ttxy
chengyeelee
cookingmemos
charlotte0107

And not forgetting my dear followers (I won't repeat your name if you have my blogs listed above)
1. Sarah Naveen
2. Leeling Lai
3. Pete
4. Dante
5. Jonathan Ho
6. Doria Robert Kawen
7. Foong Mun Yeong
8. Bear with Me
9. Kavitha
10. Charissa Ho
11. Joanne
12. Shy Kitchen
13. Tony
14. Sing Yin@ Sherene
15. Jo Chiak
16. Maxivelasco
17. My Coach Bags
18. Mia
19. Oilai
20. Tan Wei Hong (Derek)
21. Roy Erol
22. Ellis
23. Michael C.. my husband :)
24. Luke
25. Jenn
26. Khim
27. Heide
28. Greenapple4sale
29. Goofy
30. S L Wong
31. 鬼首
32. Melody
33. WC Chuen
34. Kristy of My Little Space
35. Chuah Zong Yuan
36. Sam Sam
37. Jeffery Chin
38. Haslina Abd. Majid
39. Lisa Rodney
40. Whee Teck
41. ctzm
42. Grace Yip
43. Janei Chong
44. Daniel
45. JC
46. Totoro
47. Sherli Wong
48. Cheryl Lee
49. Emi
50. Esthermation
51. Cheryl Lim
52. Shirley Goh or Kokken69
53. Tracie Moo of Bitter Sweet Flavours
54. Angie of Angie's Recipes


And  also to my anonymous readers. Thank you, thank you.
Did I miss anyone??? Sorry, but I would like to thank you too.

I can't make it to 100 000 without all your support. I might have left out some others, I just derived this information from my google analytics for March 2010.

Thank you everyone!!!!

And with this, Mike asked me to make a cake to celebrate 100 000 hits.

Dulce de Leche... oh what????? Do say the leceh (Do say about the troublesome, leceh is troublesome in Malay)... hahahaha.. nola..joking.
I'll write another post regarding this DDL.

I wanted to do a special cake, not anything fruit related, something exotic(Oh yes from South America, how exotic that is!!!), something not usually seen in our local baking scene. I bumped into the cake while searching for something to do with my almost expiring can of milk goo from Singapore.

Initially I wanted to do a wavy look frosting on this cake, the mound it with chocolate shavings. But do u know how hard it is to make pretty uneveness???? Making it ulgy and uneven is easy peasy, but not pretty and wavy. In the end, I gave up and chuck the cake into the freezer for 10 minutes and did a comb effect on it. My first time using a comb on the surface.... love it. Will use it again.

Recipe from this blog. I reduced the portion size and cut down on the sweetness. You should go there and see ALLLLLL her stuff. Mouthwatering indeed, and they make me want to make them all. Will I be hitting 80kg soon??? I hope not :)

Sponge Cake

6 eggs

170gm brown sugar

170gm cake flour

45gm butter, melted

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 tsp cinnamon powder (Mike hates cinnamon, so I just put some... original recipe called for 1tsp)

1. Preheat oven at 180C. Prepare an 8 or 9 inch baking pan. Line the bottom.

2. Beat egss and sugar over hot water until light and pale, for 12 minutes (hand mixer, stand mixer will take less)

3. Sift cake flour and cinnamon powder. Fold into (1) in 3 additions.

4. Mix vanilla with butter. Take a few tablespoons of batter and put into butter mixture. Stir to combine, no need to be gentle.

5. Pour (3) into main batter and fold.

6. Pour into prepared pan and once the pan goes into the oven, close the door and adjust temperature to 160C. Bake for 35 minutes or until done.
7. Remove from oven and let it cool down totally.
8. Remove from pan and slice cake into 3 layers and chill (wrapped) until time of use.


Dulce De Leche Cream
350ml whipping cream, cold
140gm dulce de leche (about ½ cup), cold
2/3tsp gelatin
1 Tbsp water

1. Double boil gelatin and water until melted. Or u can use microwave. Leave to cool.
2. Freeze mixing bowl and beaters for 5 minutes.
3. Put dulce de leche into mixing bowl and put in a bit of cream. On low speed, mix to combine, adding more gradually. When all the whipping cream has been added in, turn to high speed and beat until soft peaks.
4. Turn to low speed. Add in gelatin mixture slowly while beating, and beat until stiff.
5. Use immediately to frost cake.
Please keep everything cold while you do the cream, freeze bowl and beaters before you start, and if the day is too hot, keep the bowl (used to whip the cream) in a basin of ice water to keep the temperature low. This applies to all cream made with dairy whipping cream in our tropical room temp. It should take no longer than 5 minutes to prepare this whip this cream.

Syrup:
30gm brown sugar
70ml hot water
Dissolve brown sugar in hot water. Leave to cool down.

Assembly:
1. Slice cake into 3 layers.
2. Place 1 layer onto cake board/plate. Brush on syrup. Spread with 2/3 cup of DDL cream. Brush the topping layer of cake with syrup and place the surface with syrup onto cream. Repeat with another layer.
3. Top with final piece of cake. Brush with syrup. Spread DDL cream all over cake. I used a serrated comb to create the effects on my cake. Top with shaved dark chocolate in the center.

This cake is heavenly!!! The DDL cream was so so good. It has a whiff of coconuttiness(like coconut candy) in it, but it doesn't contain any, could be due to the caramelised milk. If I were to make this again, I'll put in some baking powder to the sponge, so that I can have slightly more fluffy cake. This one is fine.. but I'd like to be be fluffier. One regret tho, I used regular dark eating chocolate for the shavings. If I used Lindt 90% dark on it.... Wooohooo!!! Super Yummy!!!

Oh yeah, and I didn't put in enough DDL cream for the fillings, cos I was worried it won't be enough for the covering. And now I have an extra 2/3 cup of DDL cream in my fridge. Any regrets about that, yeah....... :(

My wish for today:

May I have more and more thousands .. not Ringgit or Dollars, but hits and visitors please :)

*this cake was made few days in advance to anticipate my 100 000 hits.

8/4/10- Neighbour Maria told me that she kept on thinking about this cake after she has eaten this. She commented that the cream was incredible. She thought so much about it that she ordered a DDL Cake for this friday.
So, blogger friends, to try out DDL.

Eggs for Me and You

Oh.. why so this surprise egg again???? And why the same pictures again?
Well, I didn't do anything special for this special day. To gastronomically celebrate this special day, a simple food is all that is needed, no big feast, no roasts.

Eggs. Usually hardboiled. But you can do them anyway as you wish. Just that when hardboiled, it's easier to distribute.
So why eggs?

Eggs are a symbol of new life.
The new life that God gave us after He arose from the grave.

Let me share with you my favourite Easter Hymn, sang at almost every Easter Morning Service

He Arose (Low in the Grave, He Lay)

Low in the grave he lay, Jesus my Savior,
waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord!


Refrain:
Up from the grave he arose;
with a mighty triumph o'er his foes;
he arose a victor from the dark domain,
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!


2. Vainly they watch his bed, Jesus my Savior,
vainly they seal the dead, Jesus my Lord!
(Refrain)


3. Death cannot keep its prey, Jesus my Savior;
he tore the bars away, Jesus my Lord



And the church, Kampar Wesley where I grew up in, had this tradition of making a huge frangipanni cross.

It's one of the awaited events of the year. One day before Easter, in the afternoon, each of us will get our bicycles or motorbikes, and scout around town for frangipanni trees. And with permission, we will pick whatever is on the floor, or that we can reach with the trees.
The flowers are then brought back to the church compound, cleaned, and poked through with a toothpick, acting like a pin.
We then prepare a bamboo cross, wrapped up with weeds, the weeds act like a base to poke the flowers in.
Then we arrange all the frangpannis in, sometimes with some added alamandas, or roses. And we're all geared up for Easter Morning Service.

I don't have any pictures to show you how the cross looks like, but this blog has http://cheerioet.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/easter/
The easter flower cross is larger than a regular human. Almost 10 feet tall. 

Lastly,

I want to wish all of my readers,

Happy Easter!!!!

Strawberry Vanilla Custard Cream Eclairs

I love choux pastries. They don't make u feel sick even when u eat a lot. I don't know about you, but I don't.
Maybe if they are filled with whipping cream they will, but not with custard creams, they are much lighter.

I made these eclairs with my usual choux recipe.
And I filled them with strawberry slices and real vanilla bean custard cream. Simply divine.
Can you believe that this is my first time using the real thing??? It's so good, but it leave the custard with specks of black dust, but that's ok, cos it shows that it's the real thing.

Vanilla Custard Cream Recipe:
500ml milk
1 vanilla pod, splitted and seeds scraped
2 large eggs
150gm sugar
2 Tbsp custard powder
2 Tbsp flour

1. Beat eggs with sugar until pale. Put in custard powder and flour, and mix until smooth.
2. Bring milk and vanilla seeds and pod to a boil.
3. Strain 1/3 of milk into (1) and stir.
4. Strain the balance of milk into the eggs. Stir well.
5. Return custard to saucepan and cook on low heat until it boils and no longer taste floury.
6. Put custard into a bowl and cover the custard surface with cling film.
7. Chill until use.

Choux Eclairs:
250ml water
90gm butter (salted)
150gm flour
10gm sugar
4 large eggs
Enough strawberry slices for filling

1. Sift flour to remove clumps and mix with sugar, set aside.
2. Bring water and butter to a boil on low heat.
3. When butter has fully melted, dump (1) in at one go. Stir immediately with a wooden spoon, and continue to stir until a dough is formed, and it leaves the sides of the pot.
4. Remove pot from heat and leave to cool for 5 minutes.
5. Beat in eggs one by one, making sure each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next. Beat mixture until it is smooth and glossy.
6. Pipe batter into long pieces onto non stick baking paper
7. Bake for 190/200C for 10 minutes and 170/180 for another 15 minutes.
8. Prick the eclairs to let the steam escape.
9. Cool eclairs totally before filling with strawberry slices and vanilla custard cream.