Bubur Cha Cha

Bubur Cha Cha (Bobo Chacha) is a popular Nyonya dessert in Malaysia. Nyonya refers to the descendents from early Chinese-Malay marriage. Extracted from www.knowledgerush.com;

“Peranakan, Baba-Nyonya (娘惹) and Straits Chinese (after the Straits of Malacca) (土生華人) are terms used for the culture of the early Chinese immigrants to Malacca on the Malay Peninsula, who intermarried with the Malay population, and later spread throughout the British Straits Settlements to Singapore and Penang. The Peranakan have taken elements from both cultures, for instance from their Malay origin a unique (and very tasty) cuisine has developed making use of the abundant spices found in Malaysia (examples are Chicken Kapitan, a dry chicken curry, and Inchi Kabin, a Nyonya version of fried chicken). The women (Nyonyas) have taken to wearing the baju kebaya (a Malay dress, seen most notably as the uniform of Malaysia Airlines' female flight attendants). However, the Peranakan eschewed Islam, preferring the ancestral worship of the Chinese, although some have now converted to Christianity. The wedding ceremony of the Peranakan is mostly Chinese, and is one of the most fascinating wedding ceremonies in Malaysia. Their language, Baba Malay, is a dialect of the Malay language, which contains many Hokkien words. However, only members of the older generation still use it in daily life.”

Now back to Bubur ChaCha….this dessert can be eaten warm or cold and is enjoyed by many Malaysians and Singaporeans. If you are watching your waist line or your calorie intake, this is not the dessert for you! This dessert is super duper rich with thick coconut cream as base and contain pieces of sweet potatoes, yam, tapioca, banana and sometimes black eye pea bean. There is a slight variation from one Bubur Chacha to another, but the key ingredients are usually the same; sweet potatoes, yam and tapioca!

I made some last week using sweet potatoes, purple potatoes, yam, and large tapioca pearls (colored pink) cooked those in a thick rich coconut cream flavored with pandaneus leaves. Sugar and a pinch of salt were added to the dessert right before serving.   Mmm… I wish I had some bananas to add in the dessert; that would have been perfect! The large tapioca pearls (dry) took a while to cook, so next time I might resort to either making my own tapioca pieces or just use the small tapioca pearls.Remember, my posting about how Malaysian and Filipino desserts are similar? Well, this is another similar dessert that we share! It is known as “Ginataang Halo Halo” in the Filipino community. Again, I found this out last year at Chris’s nephew’s birthday party. His family member made some of this dessert and boy was I pleased to see it coz I love Bubur Chacha! The taste and ingredients were almost spot on like how we have it in Malaysia except they added Jackfruit pieces which was equally yummy! 

I did not follow any specific recipe to make this dessert and just eyeballed everything myself. So if you’re interested to make a batch of this dessert, I suggest for you to refer to Lily’s Wai Sek Hong for the Bubur Chacha recipe. I have not tried this recipe of hers, but am sure it’s as wonderful as other recipes that I’ve tried from her! 

COFFEE CAKE

This Coffee Cake recipe is another trial run for my friend’s wedding cupcakes! A success! Yay! I made this cupcake on Wednesday and 1- 2 days later it’s still moist. Plus, these are mini cupcakes and they usually dry out quicker than bigger cupcakes! I am gonna reattempt the Lemon Early Grey cupcakes and make some adjustments to it and see how it held up 2 days later! I am gonna pour some hot syrup on the hot cakes to make sure the moisture is still there after 2 days!

You must be wondering why do I want to keep the cupcakes till 2 days later….Well, I’m planning to bake 50-60 mini cupcakes and decorate them with fondant on Friday. Saturday morning, fly off to Chicago with them and Sunday afternoon, present them during the wedding luncheon as wedding cupcakes!! Did I mention that the wedding is March 29? =). I’ve somewhat made the cupcake stand which I will use to stack the cupcakes and hopefully make a wonderful presentation out of it. I still need to neatly wrap up the stands and ship it to Chicago in advance! I am truly excited about the whole project, especially the chance of making wedding cupcakes for a dear friend! =)

Here’s the recipe!

COFFEE CAKE RECIPE

Ingredients:

• 1/4 Cup Butter (Softened at room temperature)
• 1/2 Cup + 2 Tbsp Sugar
• 1 Large Egg
• 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
• 3/4 Cup All Purpose Flour (Sifted)
• 3/4 Tsp + 1/8 Tsp Baking Powder
• 1/4 Cup Milk
• 1 Tbsp Instant Coffee Powder
• 2 Tbsp Coffee Yogurt (**Look for Dannon)

Method:

Preheat oven at 350F. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Beat in egg. Then add vanilla extract and coffee powder into mixture. Combine flour and baking powder into mixture and stir well. Finally mix in milk and yogurt. Combine batter. Pour batter into baking pan (lined with parchment paper) or cupcake pan lined with cupcake liners. For cupcakes, pour batter till about 3/4 cup full. Bake @ 350F for 20-25 minutes till testing skewer comes out clean or cupcakes are slightly brown! This gave me about 28 mini cupcakes!

Liking Sichuan Food…

I’ve never been fond of Sichuan food as the signature dishes are often too spicy for me to handle. My previous dining experiences with my Chinese national friends leave me either eating just rice, or hosing my burning mouth with glasses after glasses of ice water! Don’t get me wrong, I do like spicy food, but I think Sichuan food has a different kind of spice than what I’m able to handle. Husband knows how much I abhor Sichuan food and that I would never look forward to dining at Sichuan restaurants. However, my recent dining experience at a Sichuan Restaurant changed my perception on dishes from the Sichuan Province of China that not all Sichuan food are spicy crazy!

Hubby’s friend treated us to some Sichuan food for lunch, a bribe advance thank you gesture for helping him and his girlfriend move. Lunch was at Sichuan Palace located in Chelmsford, MA. We let the friend order the dishes for us since he’s a little more familiar with the food.The food was overall tasty. This is my first time actually enjoying eating Sichuan food, though some of you might say what I had are not signature Sichuan dishes such as Boiled Sliced Fish Fillet in Hot Chili Sauce (“Sui Zhu Yu Pian”.., my best Mandarin translation!). Did not take picture of the food we ate as I did not want to scare hubby’s friend…just yet! Let me share with you what was ordered at the restaurant :

1) Herb Spiced Pork Tongue (Wu Xiang Zhu Se) @ $6.95 : I did not try this… It looked interesting, thinly sliced and if you don’t know any better, it looked just like meat.

2) Beef & Tomato Soup (Fan Qie Niu Rou Tang) @ $8.95 / 2pp : This was quite tasty,not that spicy. The beef was surprisingly delicious and I don’t usually take beef. It looked and tasted like pork to me…. The soup tasted like it had some Chinese pickled cabbage in it.

3) Fish Fillet in Spicy Bean Sauce (Dou Pan Yu Pian) @ $13.95 : Not too spicy, well at least I can take it. This is pretty yummy.

4) Rice Vermicelli With Spicy Ground Pork (Ma Yi Sang Su) @ $8.95 : Although it said rice vermicelli on the menu, I think they actually serve bean thread vermicelli. I don’t mind ask I love both kinds of vermicelli. This dish was fairly simply yet yummy. Not too spicy for me either.

5) Stewed Duck In Beer (Pi Jiu Ya) @ $15.95 : The duck meat was a little gamey. The sauce wasn’t that bad and it also had some mushroom and tofu. I might not order this again! I prefer my duck, roasted……mmm crispy roasted duck!..Yums!

6) Chef Shao’s Tofu with Shrimp & Vegetables (Sichuan Kou Tai Tou Fu) @ $12.95 : MUST ORDER!!!!! MUST ORDER!!!! Have I stressed it enough?? This was the highlight dish of the day and the best Sichuan dish I had ever tasted!! It was so yummiliious. The tofu was mixed with shrimp and vege, then fried…it was so soft and fragrant. The special tofu was stir fried with some other vegetables. 2 thumbs up for this dish!!! I’ll definitely be back for more!

After a satisfying meal at Sichuan Palace (and before we started helping our friend move), we stopped by a pet store a few shops down from the restaurant to hunt for premium dog food for Brady. Isn’t he a lucky pooch? =P. We’re trying to feed him better quality food than what is offered at our local Petco/Petsmart. My friend Caroline who has done extensive research on premium dog food recommended for me to feed Brady Evo brand dry dog food. Evo dog food has one of the highest protein content among all other dog food. We got a small bag @ $15/6.6 lb for Brady to try and this should be able to last him about 15 days or so.  If he likes it and is able to handle the high protein diet, his mom and pop will continue feeding him Evo brand dog food.

We Dreamt Of Brady……

….long before we had him in our lives! We bought the framed picture of a Brady look a like from Ikea 3-4 yrs ago. The picture has been placed on a shelf above our tv at our home for 2 years now and we never realized the resemblance to Brady until Kelvin’s friend, Chen brought it up today! The patch patterns on his head are almost identical like in the picture. Though the dog in the picture has black patches, we could just assume it’s a black and white portrait of Brady.. Hehe!No wonder we unconsciously fell in love with Brady at the shelter. I guess we have longed for Brady years before we met! Is this destiny? A dream come true? Coincidence?

Celebration For Brady?

I invited Seyda, Rob and Chris over for dinner yesterday to “celebrate” Brady’s first week in his FOREVER home. The truth is, it was just a reason for me to cook up some food to serve my close friends….. Chris was thoughtful to get Brady some gift; another squeaky toy and some Scooby Snacks! And Brady loved his new toy!!!

Well, Brady’s “1 week anniversary” marked a few milestones for Brady and us! We found out that Brady can really really hold his pee and poop! We brought him out the night before, just before midnight for him to pee, which he did. The next morning like every mornings, it was hubby’s routine to take Brady out for Brady to ease himself except he refused to pee this time! I took him out in the afternoon hoping that he will pee, and again he refused too…… I checked the house to make sure no accidents…..NOTHING… When hubby got home, he took Brady out for his evening “session”….Boy, he sure maximized this session as he pooped and peed all over the neighborhood marking his territories! We suspect this little rascal must be holding his bladder the whole day just to make sure other canines know WHO’S DA MAN!!!! BRADY’S DA MAN!!!!

Anyway, when my friends arrived……we heard something we never heard before..BRADY BARKED! he woofed twice, a low deep woof not those high pitch annoying ones at Seyda when she was chasing him around the house wanting to pick him up. Now we know who sure Brady is capable of barking! We’re hoping he won’t make a habit out of it and will only be an occasional barker! Hehe

So, for our little party… I made some New England Clam Chowder to start with. I’m convinced that canned chopped clams are as good as fresh ones but more affordable! =) . I can add a whole lot more clams without breaking the bank! I used red skin potatoes for the chowder which I thought was the best choice of potato compared to the other ones we had used. We have been cooking clam chowder based on this recipe we found online following it roughly and doing slight changes to it; i.e. adding some chopped celery. As we like the clam chowder think and creamy, a tablespoon or two of all purpose flour is always added to the soup! Here’s a lousy picture of the Clam Chowdah!The whole dinner was somewhat international with different kind of dishes. First up; Spanakopita. The recipe was from food network and I followed the basic ingredients and mix them up! Instead of the fresh spinach used in the recipe, I just used frozen ones which worked out well. Spanakopita is a savory Greek pastry with Phyllo dough on the outside and the filling is made from spinach and feta cheese. It is sometimes served in a lasagna style or in individual triangle package like what I did and prefer! As I did not measure, I thought my Spinach to Feta ratio was a little off. A little too much Spinach perhaps. And the filling was bursting out from the Phyllo….I either did not use enough Phyllo sheets or somehow overfilled it! =P. None the less, it’s still good!Next international meal was pan fried polenta topped with sautéed mushroom. I think Polenta is originally from Italy and is basically cooked cornmeal. The polenta was store bought from Trader Joe’s @ $2.99, or was it $1.99? This was inspired by Giada who topped pan fried polenta with something i-forgot-what-it-was. I browsed my vegetarian recipe book and found an idea quite similar to what Giada De Laurentiis of Food Network made a couple weeks ago. Used the recipe I found as a rough guide again and combined a few different ingredients for the mushroom topping. For my meat eaters, I browned some party meatballs from Trader Joe’s. It’s a good deal for a decent bag of tasty meatballs @ less than $4! I dunked the meatballs in a homemade sauce made from canned tomatoes, onion and green pepper and let the meatballs soak up some of the sauce. My green pepper sauce reminded me of the Italian Sausages with Green pepper and onions I ate over the summer… Mmmm….. I love the meatball and the sauce combo. Hubby on the other hand preferred a crispier meatball. I have half a bag left, so I’ll make him some crispier ones next time! And for some starch in the meal, I made some Gemelli and Fish pasta, baked with some Mozzarella, Cheddar Cheese and Panko crumbs for some crunch! This dish was inspired by one of America’s favorite dish; Mac & Cheese! I thought the pasta could use a little more cream and maybe some Parmesan. Well, have a wonderful weekend. Yet another busy weekend coming up for the household! I wonder what time will I fall asleep tonight. I’m hearing squeaky squeaks from Brady playing his new toy from Chris!! =D