itchy fingers

i never imagined i would say this.... but...

I MISS MY PIANO!!

i wanna play out a nice melody
i wanna have somewhere to vent my emotions
whether it's happy or sad
frustrations or fear
i just wanna lose myself in the music from my heart...

Penang Hokkian Mee Recipe

Taken from rasamalaysia.com...

Recipe: Penang Hokkien Mee (Prawn Noodle / Har Meen / Mee Yoke / 福建虾面)

Stock ingredients:

1 ziploc bag of shrimp heads and shells (I used Ziplock Easy Zipper Bag)
15 cups of water (reduced to about 12-13 cups of water after hours of boiling and simmering)
2-3 pieces of rock sugar (about the size of a small ping pong ball) or to taste
1.5 lbs of pork ribs (cut into pieces)
Salt to taste (or fish sauce to taste if you want stronger flavor)

Chili Paste:

30 dried chilies (deseeded and soaked to soften)
10 shallots (peeled)
5 cloves garlic (peeled)
2 tablespoons of water
6 tablespoons of cooking oil

1 pound of yellow noodles (scalded)
1 pack of rice vermicelli (scalded)
Some kangkong or water convolvulus (scalded)
Some bean sprouts (scalded)

Toppings:

1/2 pound of lean pork meat (boiled and sliced thinly)
1/2 pound shrimp (shelled and deveined)
6 hard-boiled eggs (shelled and quartered)
Some fried shallot crisps (store-bought)

Blend the chili paste ingredients with a mini food processor until finely ground and well blended. Heat up the wok and add cooking oil. Stir fry the chili paste for 5 minutes. Dish up and set aside. On the same wok (unwashed), add in a little oil and cook the shrimp topping. Add in a little chili paste, sugar, and salt. Pan-fried the shrimp until they are slightly burned. Dish up, let cool and sliced them into halves.

Method:

1. Add 15 cups of water into a pot and bring it to bowl. Add in all the shrimp heads and shell and simmer on low heat for about 2 hours or longer until the stock becomes cloudy and tastes really prawny.
2. Strain the stock through sieve and transfer the stock into another pot. Discard the prawn heads and shells. Scoop up and discard the orange "foam" forming at the top of the stock.
3. Bring the stock to boil again and add in half of the chili paste. You can add more chili paste if you like it spicier.
4. Add in the pork ribs and continue to boil in low heat for another 1-1.5 hour until the pork ribs are thoroughly cooked.
5. Add rock sugar and salt/fish sauce to taste.
6. To serve, place a portion of yellow noodles, rice vermicelli, water convolvulus and bean sprouts in a bowl. Ladle hot stock over. If desired, add a few pieces of pork ribs. Top with meat slices, sliced shrimp, egg quarters, and sprinkle with shallot crisps.
7. Serve immediately with more chili paste to taste.

Cook's notes:

1. Traditionally, the shrimp heads and shells are stir-fried with oil until aromatic before adding them into the boiling water. I tried this step before and found that my "cheated" method works equally well.
2. The hawkers in Penang also blended the shrimp heads and shells after they are briefly boiled to extract all the flavors from the shell. Again, I tried this step before and found that my method works as well if you have plenty of shrimp heads and shells.

Recipe can also be found on precious pea.

Somebody please tie me to a chair and not go shopping...

But first, let me share with you a look of the scrumptious mark&spencer cheese cake. totally love it! the biscuit is nice, the cheese creamy and yet not too 'zai'. totally the best i've tasted so far.


now look where all my money's gone...

jerseys...

blouses...

jackets... dress...

... and i was actually planning to save money for italy trip. haha..

i'm actually freaking out about the video exam, coz if i pass my degree at 50 marks, i'll only have 35%. since i failed class test 2, i will have to get 15% from my hospital presentation and video exam. hmmm... stress!! hope i can pass and give the correct medication or advice. hope i can do all that before the bus comes.;]

Indulgences after exemption exam ~

After PP3 exemption exam, we gave ourselves a treat and cooked up SATAY! to be eaten together with nasi lemak...

How?

Satay: marinate the chicken breast overnight with satay sauce, grill, eat with satay sauce.

Nasi lemak: rice - cook with santan, ginger, salt.

Fearing that our satay wasn't enough, we also fried some celery to eat together in this weird but nice combo. the cucumber is super nice, as always. and i love de-shelling the eggs.;p


On the next day, we cooked tomyam to be eaten with our rice and fried egg. i love my egg best when it's fried with lots of soy sauce and pepper in the 'lala' style, and left in the hot pan for a while after being cooked to have that little burnt lining at the sides of the egg. yum yum.. like it coz that's the way my grandma used to fry for me when i was still very young. =]

tomyam: boil water, add chicken stock, add meat, onions, cauliflower, carrot.. then add 4-5 big dollops of Mae Ploy Tom Yam Paste. when soup is done, add some tomatoes last, and lots of pepper. are you licking your lips now? hehe.. only if you like spicy stuff i guess.


Due to my excessive love for the fajita spice mix, today we fried spaghetti with fajita spice. first we fried garlic, onions, dried shrimps, sausages (2 types), with some pepper and soy sauce using normal oil and a little of sesame oil. then we added straw mushrooms, spaghetti, the spices, and lastly some lettuce. it tasted like dried curry mee. the spaghetti tasted surprisingly like the yellow mee in malaysia. nice!


I have found the nicest sausages in Glasgow. Bratwurst - recommended by Angeline. not only is it tasty, it doesn't break up into mush when it is cut, unlike all the other types of sausages. it can be bought from Aldi for 1.69pounds for 6 gigantic sausages. worth a try. i think i'll stick to this brand while i'm still here. it's so nice!! it tastes like the meat balls in the pan mee at sri petaling pasar malam.


Who likes ice cream? Ben & Jerry is having promotion, selling each tub for 1.99 pounds. i tried the vanilla one. it's very nice coz it's creamy enough, and is interspersed with cookies and chocolate chips. there's another type, the chocolate ice cream with bits of chocolate fishes, caramel and marshmellows. i'll try that the next time. I'm actually waiting for haagen daz to have promotion. ;p

fajita!

To celebrate the end of our FMT modules, we decided to have a nicer meal for dinner today. so, instead of spending tonnes of money to eat not-so-nice-yet-expensive food outside, we just bought a fajita kit from tesco! hehe..

with 4 servings - 2.4 pounds

we cooked chicken fajita after painstakingly deboning the drumsticks (top). the smell of the red pepper is so fragrant. we really should incorporate it more into our meals. salsa dip was included in the kit (bottom)

just in case the fajitas weren't filling enough, we also made our cheese-baked potato-egg salad... not sure whether it is still a salad, since we didn't put in any mayo. but tastes nice though.

finally! tastes really good. especially with the salsa sauce. should really try it one day. i'm in love with the fajita spice mix.;p

Evicted!

It started raining indoors today. so we had no choice but to move to block E instead. the apartment is much nicer in block E, but we had to go through all the hassle of moving our stuff, clearing our fridge, plus we have exams coming. hopefully we don't have to move back until after the exams are over. sigh..

ate salmon and lettuce for dinner today. it was nice, especially the salmon. i felt a bit like a rabbit eating all the vege though. we had a plate full each. ;p

after dinner, we found out that our bulbs weren't working, so we walked all the way to V.O. to have them changed, only to come home and find out that they still weren't working. we were almost about to bring our whole lamp to V.O. when we suddenly realised that it has an extra switch to turn it on. cheh.. i think most probably that our first bulb was working fine. oh well.. haha..

BimBim BangBang

Today, we finally tried cooking v co's bimbimbangbang. how did we do it?

1. cook rice

2. bake salmon in teriyaki sauce

3. fry a bull's eye each

4. boil long beans with some salt, then mix with sesame oil and a little sugar.

5. dish out the korean chilli sauce into a bowl and add some hot water until it has the viscosity of chilli sauce.

and voila! here is the finished masterpiece.

the rice with all it's ingredients, unmixed yet.

i walked all the way to chung ying in search of this special ingredient. nice!^^

seaweed soup with onions, chicken stock, chinese cabbage, seaweed. very nice! still got half a pot waiting for us, since we cooked TWO pots! hehe..

after everything is mixed. ready to eat!

Thanx to v co, we have found a new delicious recipe, simple and nice. now i feel so bloated.;p

18; 29

“爱的呼唤”
一个很不错的韩剧。

29岁。。。
回到18岁的她
失去记忆
才记起当初的梦想
才寻回已忘记的幸福

失去了记忆
虽然充满误会
两个人最终还是相爱
因为内心依然不变

令我联想到，
很多时候，
我们往往因为现实的生活，
因为时间的流逝，
而忘了起初的梦想，
起初的爱。

Cute

Best lecturer award...

... goes to Ian Towle!! wins hands down. he's...

- cute
- has a sexy voice
- plus.. OMG!! he's so nice!! i'll remember him forever for what he did in the class test today.

gosh.. hope i didn't get anything major wrong. i managed to finish on time since i didn't have to refer to the prescriber for every prescription. but that just worries me even more. but i can't line up to smile at the prescriber just to take away my worries right? i have already realised that i forgot to put the reference number on my label!! argh!! it was a private prescription. what's more, it was my last, and i still had so much time. i was like scrutinising it for mistakes, but couldn't see any. so i went to dispense it. gosh.. hope there's no more mistakes... especially MAJOR ones!