Saturday, July 21, 2012

HOW TO COOK BAMBOO SHOOTS DIFFERENTLY


Let's cook something different from others!




Written by Little Money's Mom





If you cook, then let’s cook something different from what people usually did or else I think life will be too dull with the same routine, same people and same foods eaten.


It is very rare to find very brave open minded and innovative Foo Chow women in the Foo Chow circle, only very recently I came across my son classmate Marcus’s grandma who is really a very innovative lady, she would brew Foo Chow red wine in a sweet version using Tian Bin, and she also made Ang Chow (Red wine sendiment, sweet but without adding sugar) sauce, my dad said that’s the best ang chow that he ever tasted when I braised it with a big duck.






 You can buy ready-to-cook bamboo shoots from vegetable hawker in Stutong market. Or you can choose a more interesting version by keeping yourself busy, dig some fresh bamboo shoots up from the ground, peel and cook the shoots for two hours, after that soak the shoots in water for two days (keep changing water), only 48 hours later you can prepare to fry the shoots.



Kimball ketup and chili-garlic sauce takaus will be very happy to hear that their red sauce is one of the most important ingredients that I used to fry bamboo shoots.



Ingredients:

(1) A kg of bamboo (cut whatever you wish, Foo Chow loves it big, Taiwanese shredded it, West Msians housewives cut it smaller than Foo Chow Jun nern nern)

(2) Extra virgin black sesame oil (use generously, good for older men)

(3) Ketup and chili-garlic sauce (use generously)

(4) Minced dried prawn

(5) Minced garlic, young ginger and onion + salt

(6) Cut belly part pork into small pieces, marinated with vinegar, wine, garlic and spring onion 

(7) Soy sauce

(8) Shredded Chilies (Optional if only your chili-garlic sauce is not hot enough) and add petai, please read note on the last line)



In a wok, add sesame oil fry 4, 5 and 6 until golden brown, add bamboo shoots fry until almost dry up, then add 3, 7 or optional 8,  if too dry can add some water. Garnish with spring onion.



Special note:
If you add petai to fry with bamboo shoots, the petai will taste "sweet" instead of a peculiar bitter taste.






Friday, July 20, 2012

HOW TO COOK DURIAN FLOWERS


LAZY LITTLE MONEY'S MOM FRIED DURIAN FLOWERS AND BRAISED PORK
As a poor but "versatile mom", I would cook anything that reached my hands!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian
http://durianon.tripod.com/id41.html
http://dqfarm.blogspirit.com/archive/2009/04/19/rare-receipes-durian-flowers.html


Written by Little Money's Mom






I am scared to walk in the pork or fish monger’s stall, “Come buy my fish (pork)! When I approached nearer, “Take all, I will give you discount!” Sometimes I would carry home white pomfret fish that could last me a month, like this morning I carried home a big pork leg and a RM50 big Ma Giu Fish.



My son's classmate mom gave me a bag of durian flowers, I accepted with great appreciation. The fresh flowers smelt a bit like chrysanthemum. Soak the flower in cold water for a while before cooking it or you can boil it quickly before frying it. It would be nice to stir fry with marinated meat (always marinated with black vinegar, wine, minced garlic, ginger and onion), with minced dried prawn with garlic (chili will be optional) or with sea foods. Garnish with pasley and chives will be nice.



 Second harvest of lima beans, the seeds were given by Money Tai Tai blogspot friend Jerry a year ago, then on Jan  ... took me with quite a surprise, his daughter now is my daughter's classmate.


 Only my west Malaysian friend likes this lima bean young pot, the rest of my Kuching friend asked me, "How to eat it?"


 "How to eat it?" I also didn't know, I planted it again all because the white flowers on the fence looked gorgous! Very often I let the beans dropped to the ground, only this morning, a great idea came to my mind when I was cooking the pork.


 I bought this pork leg from Country Village Unaco, you have to walk toward the back inside the Unaco store. The pig was slaughtered only during early morning, so it wouldn't carry a pecular bad odour that deterred people from approaching the stall. The lady who sells the pork is quite nice, if she was free she would even chat with me, she told me these slaughtered pigs from her stall were rearing by her brother-in-law. She started to sell the pork as early as 6:30am and would usually finished before 10:00am.


I don't really like pork that much, but if the lady twisted my arm to buy pork leg, I would sometimes entertain her. She told me her pork legs were all very well cleaned and chopped into pieces ready to cook.

Note: I notice that Chinese from mainland China would usually cook the meat in the water first (use it to prepare soup later) before it was used for braising. Our Chinese-Malaysians are so lucky, we have plentiful of porks available, we used "first hand" fresh pork for every dish, thus our pork dishes always tasted "sweeter" compared to mainland-Chinese operated restaurants, that's one of the reasons why their business are not as good as local Chinese operated restaurants.


The following was how this lazy little money's mom cooked her pork:

(1) Wash the pork with vinegar, salt and water
(2) Put the pork in a big pot
(3) Two big garlic, get rid of garlic skin, dump in the pot
(4) Pluck two fresh basil shoots wash and dump in the pot
(5) Four cardamom seeds, wash and dump in the pot
(6) Sprinkle in some good Ang Mo wine vinegar or Chinese black vinegar
(6) Sprinkle in Chinese soy sauce
(7) Sprinkle in Foo Chow wine (if you can produce sweet one is even better)
(8) Sprinkle in hawthorn vinegar
(9) Sprinkle in extra virgin black sesame oil
(10) Sprinkle in oyster sauce
(11) Sprinkle in some black pepper corns


Let it cooks for two hours, only add in hot water when the sauce begins to dry up. Then with hot water together add the fresh LIMA BEANS from your garden. Simmer for another 30 minutes before serving.



Note: I share with you this recipe, all because my son's tuition teacher Ms. Chai said the smell released from the pot was really good!

Sunday, July 15, 2012

MY CHILDHOOD IN KUCHING I


Somehow my mommy could talk for my subconscious mind!




Nagged by Little Money’s Mom





When my younger sister quarreled with me, usually I would be lazy to response, as she always wanted to win for everything, e.g. she said she wanted mommy’s 100% love and demanded mom that she could only lavish me 30% love or else she would get very angry like the angry bird, she asked mommy to give her 10 kisses but didn’t allow me to kiss mommy.
  
   My little sister is very childish; I would usually reply her, “Meow!” That mean I treated her like a puppy, as I noticed that the little puppy always loves to bark at the cat for attention!



My mom said those boys in my classmates talk like adults; they are almost as tall as my dad and could talk to her more mature than my dad! She also said that they could become a father without a problem; I wonder what she was talking.

   Then Aunty Annie came to scene, she told my mom, ‘Don’t get disappointed of your childish son, he is very smart, you don’t know what those moms fed their boys, do you notice that these days amongst the most talented, most artistic, most eligible bachelors are mostly not straight? You notice that our old days boys only started to know what is called studying until form 5 or form 6?’

   Anyhow my mum still think that I am stupid, she said those teachers and friends of hers whoever said that I was smart must be as smart as me, so don’t you think she was hinting to me that those teachers and her friends are stupid like me?



You know I hate to memorize those BM compositions, Chinese compositions, luckily there is no English composition yet.

   During exam, I hated to keep writing those repeated A to Z letters composition, instead I chose to draw cartoons or turn those ABC into different fond, which were a lot more fun.

   My Ann EE’s graphic designer friends all thought that I am a genius, I love to hear it but my mum’s face turning black whenever she thought I would become a “go bald headed” advertising executive, she said if anything goes wrong that I don’t want to have a girlfriend then my “Chinaman” dad will curse her even she goes to live in 11th dimensional hyperspace.



Anyhow, my life was changed completely after I moved to Kuching 4 years ago, my mom used to be a career woman, she didn’t need to worry if my dad didn’t send her our monthly expenses in the middle of a month, but now I often heard her cursing at "someone looks like me" at weird hours in the morning when something went wrong especially when she couldn’t get help from anyone.

   Mom didn’t allow us to mess up the house, she would wipe the floor four times a day, so whenever I spitted something on the floor, usually I would secretly wipe it off, but she still found it out, because of stickiness.

   She said if I wanted to cheat, better cheat and tell lies smartly of not being caught, she said my cheating and lies reminded her of "someone looks like me", don’t you think she meant that’s the person who contributed me the Y-chromosome?

   After four years studying in Chinese primary school, finally I can speak Mandarin better than those banana-cousins of mine in NZ, Australia and USA, and I can read Chinese comics and newspapers too, but during exam, my Chinese is still the last in class like the rest of my subjects, my mum said except my English was a bit better than the rest or else for sure I would sure score the last in class.

   She said that's why she regretted to get married, she was slow, she only started to know what was called studying when she was 18 years old, and she met an as equally slow dad except his mouth was always faster than his brain and his eyes, that's why she got unlucky and hooked, I wonder what mom was talking.

   Anyhow, she concluded that that's why I am an ultra slow person as the result of the slow biproducts, she told my dad, "Don't expect yourself to become a grandpa when you are 70 years old! The average age for your son likely to get married will be at 38, that's the added and divided result of our marriage age!"





My favorite task is always catching grasshoppers after school inside the school compound and my classmates always complained to my mum, 'Aye, he is catching grasshoppers again!' Anyhow, my mom never forbid me, she would come late to pick me up after school that gave me suffficient time to catch the grasshoppers, she said I was merely looking like her, because she was a "grasshoppers-catcher king" when she was a child.



I caught the grasshopper-brother and its little sister too

 
One night right after 9pm, when mom flickered her fingers softly over the 88 keys, suddenly we heard pebbles dropping sound and followed by loud curses that we all couldn't hear clearly, anyhow mom said luckily we didn't hear clearly so that we didn't need to get angry at childish people. Then the following night when there was no dog's barking, mom told us to expect the annoying alarm sound, true enough, mom was like a witch she could tell what would happen! She said in life, when people thought that you were not threatening enough to them, they would bully you, but she said sometimes it is not neccessary to retaliate, as dog barked at cat, dog would be harrassed by naughty kids, naughty kids would be scolded by their parents, weren't she hint me not to make fun of my Teacher Yu's Hu Lee Dog?

 
Mom got angry, she said this was the SILENT LANGUAGE of how my classmates OSTRICIZED me in class. She said this is usually happened in Chinese school as they placed academic results as the most important of all activities. She said if I was not the top three counting from the bottom then I wouldn't be treated this way. She said this picture will be an evident, if I turn into somebody in the future, then the whole Malaysian education system has to change its instructional methods, but if I turn into a nobody, that must be caused by the overdosing of antipressant when I was in her tummy, she said that's the most regretful thing she did in her life was to swallow antidepressant when she was not depressed, she said usually pregnancy makes women more stupid and indecisive, I wonder she was talking senses or not, only one day if I become a scientist to figure it out!
Note: One day I peeked my classmate Megan's Chinese composition, she said she wished that I would be transferred to other school!

 
Mom said every morning after sending us to school, she would be caught in traffic jam where no police would come to regulate the heavily jammed traffic along this poor men street, she said jams in rich men streets or other lane would usually move fast except on this poor men lane!

Mom said this lane is like the little China, to proof this is the poor men lane, she said just needed to observe if the motocycles are more than cars!

She said rich men never could fathom how poor men live, rich men would think that they are born to be superior and they would usually think poor people are stupid and lazy thus why they deserve to be poor! She said not many people would realize that rich men would keep an eye on poor men to make sure they don't get rich to gain a new rival to them. She said big fish eats small fish to get fat, but never small fish gets fat by eating big fish but small fish would eat smaller fish to get bigger!

 
Mom said it is just a few kilometers lane, but the jam would usually take her twenty minutes to reach home

 
She wondered why police never would come to regulate traffic jam in the poor men lane.

 
She said just a little way up from the poor men lane to Jalan Alwi, the road was named after one of the richest man, I heard that he was once my grandpa's classmte who once owed the most lands in Kuching, thus she called that as rich men lane, where Lodge International School is along the way.

 
Mom said all these cyclists wish that they have cars too, look at the way they risked their lives to ride in between the double lane! Amongst all those mom's nags, I still really don't understand what mom was talking!


Thursday, July 12, 2012

HARVEST OF SOUR SOP


 (LOCAL FOO CHOO-MALAYSIANS CALLED IT ANGMO DURIAN)


A kilogram sweet species soursop



Written by Miss Yellow





Sour sop but not sour? Yes, my old classmate Au Au ordered by his as wonderful wife to bring along these “not sour” special Ang Mo durian seedlings from Sarikei for me, also thanks to Au Au’s parents who always have some rare species fruit-seedlings, so if the wonderful couple planted two sweet Angmo durian trees, I also wanted the seedlings at the same time, in short I took the full advantage of .... "this is what the friends are for!!!"




Three years old soursop tree, which is more than eight foot tall now


 
First fruit ripen on the tree, skin turned slightly yellowish. If Angela and Au Au here in Kuching, this first fruit I actually intended to give them, so glad they are not in town so I "eat" it for them!

A big surprise for me, there weren't many seeds like the old angmo durian species. The fresh was not  watery that would end up driping on the chopping board, when you took a bite, it was sweet yet juicy!


I didn't bluff, just to cut to show you that this rare sweet species with few seeds can be cultivated for make soursop juice!

Monday, July 9, 2012

HOW TO PROPAGATE TARRAGON SUCCESSFULLY IN KUCHING!






Written by Miss Yellow





I have tried many times to propagate tarragon unsuccessfully, this time round I finally see shoots emerged, so I share this good news to all my friends who also plant tarragon at home.


You use tarragon to cook shell kind of sea foods, it is especially nice if you use tarragon and Genovese basil blend with extra virgin olive oil as a dip for French bread accompanied by “snails”.



Cut a strong stem from an existing tarragon plant.




Get rid of all leaves.

 
Insert the stem in the soil and place it under a cooler shady place.

Spread it daily with cold energized water.

Shoots begin to appear in a week time.


Good luck to all of you!

Sunday, July 8, 2012

HOW TO TRAIN “ONE-DIMENTIONAL BRAIN" KIDS TO BECOME CREATIVE?


Written by Miss Yellow





Long time ago, my sister asked me to fetch her eldest son from a tuition center, I stopped my flashy coupe right in front of him but he didn’t see me, then I called him he still didn’t “detect” I was right in front of him, at last one of his classmate padded his shoulder to ask him looking at me with just two feet away from him!

When he got into my car, this famous tigress EE started to roar, ‘My goodness sake, is it your eyes can only detect your mom’s car but all other cars become invisible?’

‘How about if your mom was inside my car just now and we got robbed just right in front of your nose, would you be able to witness what happen, how the robbers look like, what ‘s car plate number?’

‘Next time if I come to fetch you, if I stop the car right in front of you for more than one minute without your notice, I will leave!’

‘Always look and be alert of what’s around you!’

He learned, from that day onwards, he immediately noticed me when my car entered the driveway to his tuition center.


Yesterday, my son asked me when we were standing in the garden, ‘Mommy, what’s this brown thing on the ground?’

‘Look around, figure out yourself!’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Why you looked just that brown thing spot? If you look sideways if you couldn’t figure out, then you should look up, if upwards you still couldn’t find out anything, you look in lateral angle!’

He looked at me in blank, he didn’t know what I was talking until I showed him, ‘Now look up, do you see the pencil pine leaves? So this brown thing is the dead pine leaves dropped to the ground.’

Again I told him, ‘When you want to solve a problem or a clue, you shouldn’t look at a spot only, you should figure out from all possible directions, this will also make you a very creative person!’





My daughter would bring back her art class homework, e.g. a landscape painting, I would tell her to give additional colors to the ground; instead of just brown or green, also the sky can be more than blue and white depending on the time of a day.

It is important to open children’s perception of “other possibilities” to make them creative, training their brain to solve and figure out things. It will be our Malaysian parents’ additional job to integrate creative education to our kids when our education system is based on memorizing and spoon-feeding knowledge.