My version of D-cake

Once a while when I suddenly have food craving especially on something that cannot or hardly be obtainable in the UK, I will refer to my mum for the recipes.

Few weeks ago my mum referred to a well-known food blog by Lily Ng, and one recipe that really caught my eyes was the 'Apam Balik', a type of pancake that I quite like when I was still young.

So today, I made this pancake for the first time.

Everything was done from scratch including the roasted peanuts. As suggested by Lily, I had the batter done yesterday and left it overnight ready for today's lunch.

Using my Tefal non-stick pan I scooped in the batter and spreaded evenly across the pan and then added in the sugar, butter and peanuts. The process was quite easy actually.



The pancake was ready within minutes and I felt very happy because my pancake was crispy!

When I was young I didn't know what to call this so I created the name 'D-cake', simply because it has the shape of D when folded. It has become our household name for this pancake ever since.

So here is my version of D-cake....


Doesn't it look tasty to you??!!

Nonetheless there is still room for improvement because I found that my D-cake was rather too crispy making it a bit dried.

However, for this time I am happy to rate it as 7 out of 10!

My 30th birthday

My birthday has passed about two weeks ago. There was nothing special about it and I was reluctant but to accept the fact that I am entering into another decade of life.

Having said so, I was still looking forward for my pre-agreed birthday present from Frankie... ha! As this was a pre-agreed gift so no surprise at all although sometime I was still secretly hoping to receive an unexpected surprise, but on a second thought I would better be proactive a bit to avoid being given something that really disappointed 'surprised' me later...

So, here is my birthday gift... an iPod Nano, which has been in my wish-list for quite some times. I chose the red colour among many other colours, as this is a special edition exclusively to Apple store only. Furthermore, with the red iPod Apple will give a portion of our purchase to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. Good that I have done some charity during my birthday, although strictly speaking it was Frankie :)

There is also another exclusive treat buying the iPod directly from the Apple store, that is they include for the free of charge engraving service to make your iPod your very own way.

I have mine birthday wish engraved on the back of the iPod.

To give credit to Frankie, he had thought more than the basic. He bought me a better earphone with a noise isolating function and has three different sizes of ear adapters so that I can choose the one that suit to my ears. He also bought me a nicely fitted leather case and not forgetting the travel charger.

I have been using my new gadget for two weeks now and I am loving it. It makes my journey to and back from work more enjoyable.

While I am enjoying the good times, what is left for Frankie is picking up the credit card bill at the end of the month and burn a big hole in his pocket. I am sure he has no complaint to make.

'Lou Sang' or 'Lou Hei'

Yesterday we had a party, with the same group of friends gathered at Mak & Siew Ling's house but minus Chorng Shan this time.

The main reason of this gathering is to toss the 'lou sang' 捞生 or 'lou hei' 捞起 (in Cantonese), a Chinese style raw salad, courtesy of Lau & Joanne (brought back from their recent trip back to Malaysia).

Tossing lou sang is usually done during Chinese New Year where families and friends gather together around the table and toss the shredded ingredients on a big plate into the air using chopsticks and at the same time saying all the good words out loudly to mark the start of the prosperous new year.

Even though now that the Chinese New year has passed we were still very much looking forward for the event.

We became the host and hostess for the night and prepared our usual em... steamboat meal for all. We can't be just eating lou sang right?

So Cecilia, Joanne and Siew Ling started putting together all the packed ingredients, nicely, on the big plates, while Lau stood there watching and... ehem...supervising, of course.

Ok... let's check how it compared to the picture...

"Oh no... the gingers suppose to be beside the carrots and not the chili...Nevermind no one is going to find out!"

With much of the teamwork from the ladies and man the lou sang was finally prepared.

~ dang ~ dang ~ dang ~ dang ~

Our lou sang without raw salmon fishes

Everything was ready, except that Chong and Jane have not arrived yet... well to be fair to them the dinner was planned for 5pm, and they still have 15 minutes to go.

So everybody waited patiently.

At last they showed up, merely on time. So wasting no more time we made a start and gathered together around the table.

And being a supervisor, he has the duty to make sure that the easiest most important task should be done correctly and that the sauces should be poured onto the ingredients equally, so the best person to do this was of course Lau himself. Everyone got ready with a pair of chopsticks on hands and all the nice words in minds.

And 1, 2, 3 we tossed the ingredients highly into the air and mixed all the ingredients together, and saying all the good wishes to everyone.

One was not enough so we continued with the second plate.

Ready?

Go!

I quite like the pickled taste actually. Within minutes we finished all the lou sang and tidied up for the next steamboat meal.

I was too busy cencentrating on photographying so didn't actually listen to their conversation but when I now look back the next few photos taken, I can't help but start thinking and imagining.....

Before dinner...

After dinner...



Only now I realise I can sometimes be very imaginative as well....

The night was still young so the entertainment after dinner... was gambling of course, but not in any kind of monetary term. We only played cards - the famous 'Chou Dai-D' 除大-D, while enjoying tea we bought from Taiwan.

I haven't been playing 'Chou Dai-D' for a long time and I was excited that I won couple of rounds easily (hee hee hee...)