Hainanese Chicken Rice

My mum and I cooked Hainanese Chicken Rice yesterday. It was decided during my last trip back to Ipoh. I am the only cook during weekday, so it was quite fun when there was companion in the kitchen although we always quarrel over trivial stuffs. :)

We started with preparing the dipping sauce, ginger sauce and chili sauce.


Ingredients: young ginger, red chili, bird eye's chili and garlic


Left: blended young ginger
Right: blended red chili, red bird's chili and red chili


Brought the blended young ginger to boil with some oil(we used chicken oil) and seasoned with salt


Mixed with spring onion


And for the chili sauce, seasoned with salt, sugar, calamansi juice and oil(I used chicken oil).


For the chicken, soaked the whole chicken into boiling water with minimum heat for 20 minutes. Then, removed the chicken and soaked it into iced water for 5 minutes.


Placed cucumber slices on the plate as base.
My mum complained about my cutting and decoration.
She said it was too ugly. :)


Chicken on a bed of cucumber.
My mum knows that I blog, so she placed the chicken head, wings and drums at the correct position.


Then, it was time to cook rice.
Stir fried some garlic and ginger with oil


The normal water was substituted with chicken stock(result from cooking the chicken).
The above garlic and ginger, together with the oil were added in.
We also added pandan leaves and salt.


chicken rice


When serving, the chicken would be covered by chinese coriander. :)
My family loves chinese coriander.


We made use of the remaining chicken stock for meat ball soup.
(recipe for meat balls)

I would say it was not the perfect Hainanese Chicken Rice. But I enjoyed every bite of it.

Simple Home Cooked Lunch

I was on "vegetarian" diets for the past 6 days. How could I not mentioning it in my blog. It was my first time, and might be my last time. My "vegetarian" is vege plus fish. Instead I had done it for the weekend before my Phuket trip and I am going to share one of the meal I had that weekend.


Bought erringi mushroom, some vege and a piece of codfish from jusco.
This small piece of codfish was rather expensive, RM11.
If you know a cheaper source in Penang, do drop me a message.
So after an hour in kitchen, I had 3 simple dishes for lunch.


blanched vege topped with crispy garlic
Tips: add some oil(i used garlic oil) and sugar in the boiling water so that the vege look greener


braised mushroom in oyster sauce


steamed codfish, chinese coriander was a must for me.

It was Unagi day and two piece of unagi were sold at RM29.90(vs RM26.90 per piece on normal day). I quickly grabbed one and headed to the cashier. I was going to have unagi for dinner again. :)

Caesar Salad

Last night, I decided to have something light, which meant something easier to prepare. Having in mind that I need some spare time to try out the Boot's spa products I bought from Phuket, I thought of Caesar Salad. Romaine lettuce. Croutons. Parmesan cheese. Ok. Set.

I had been using this Classic Caesar Salad recipe for a few times, and I like it very much. It had taught me all the details to prepare the perfect Caesar Salad. Another good point with this recipe was there were substitutions for some of the ingredients, like coddled egg.


close up


I had grilled a piece of salmon, hoping that this could be my dinner.

But the Caesar salad was too appetizing that I was looking forward to the main dish of the night which I did not prepare any.

Fish and Chip

I was away for phuket sunshine last week and today is my first day back in office. More photos and stories will be shared in my travel blog which I need more time to filter the photos. Gosh! I had taken a total of 1050 photos! After first round of filtering the over exposed or under exposed images, there is still a total of 800 photos. :p

Meanwhile, let me share my last Sunday lunch.

Bought two fresh fish fillet from jusco. Washed, drained and wiped with some salt and pepper.


The nearer one was homemade tartar sauce, which I combined mayonnaise, yogurt, minced dill relish, salt and pepper. The bigger plate was a very simple batter for fish. It had 100g flour, 2 tbps corn flour, 1/2 tbs baking soda, 1/2 tbs baking powder, 1 tbs salt, 1 tbs pepper and about 125ml water.


Frying some french fries...



Hot and crispy Fish 'n' Chip served with lemon slice, tartar sauce and chili sauce. Bon appetit!

Fish paste/Meat paste

Today is first day of the month. Let me post something very very useful. With this meat paste(you could also call it fish paste), you could easily prepare stuffed bitter gourd and any kind of hakka yong tau fu, or simply add in few spoons when you cook noodles, porridge or soup. It is so convinient and yet so tasty that it has now become my secret weapon. ;)


One pack of half fat pork, minced. I think it is about 600g.


4 pack of fish paste. This size. Of course you could also prepare fresh fish paste instead of using a ready pack.


You would need a big mixing bowl. Place the seasonings in the bowl. Seasonings are salt, pepper, corn flour and sugar. Chicken stock and MSG are optional.


Add in the minced pork.


Mix well with seasonings. You should mix in the same direction until the meat is slightly sticky.

Take out the meat paste and put it in a container.


Repeat the same for fish paste in the same mixing bowl.


Now you could add in the meat paste.


Mix well.




Here is the tricky part. You need to take out the whole mixture and smash into the mixing bowl. Repeat for many times(10 times or more) until the mixture becomes firm and springy.


This is how the end product looks like.


Keep it in few containers at different sizes for different usages and store it in the freezer.