siu yoke [roasted belly pork ]

 I discovered these pork belly roasts in vacuum sealed packs at coles.  They're really convenient sold this way, as they keep longer in the fridge than if they were just glad wrapped on a Styrofoam tray.
sorry for the bad photos again! i just dont have the time to read through the camera manual properly so i just point and shoot like the amatuer i am.

this is a simple way to cook it from a Chinese Malaysian cookbook - just dry the skin well, make slits in the underside and stuff with garlic cloves, and sprinkle underside with 5 spice powder. leave in fridge a few hours or overnight to dry out.

then, sprinkle and rub a TON of salt on the skin, and put into the oven on a rack with a dish of water underneath at 180C for an hour, then remove all the salt [i just scraped it with a butter knife and wiped it as much as I could with a paper towel] and shove it back into the oven at 240C for 45 minutes or until skin crackles.
let rest before slicing.

i didn't bother with the traditional nam yue [fermented tofu] or rice wine, just used salt, 5 spice powder and garlic for flavouring - and it worked very well.

traditionally its eaten with rice and some raw cucumber and tomato slices to counteract the fattiness but in my opinion it'll take more than that to "negate" its health effects. Perhaps some oatmeal and omega 3 tablets will help! and uh...a few hours working out on the treadmill? 

wok tossed noodles and rice

Sawak's offshoot stall at the Moonah Island market - has the best char kueh teow and fried rice in the state! not that we've had that many outside of Hobart but these 2 dishes were as good as any good ones in Malaysia - perhaps better than some bad ones there [like in shopping mall food courts...] At $7.50 a plate, with substantially sized prawns, not bad! the fried rice came with a nice crispy oily fried egg on top, which i found very satisfying. and both had significant amounts of "browned bits" [from a really hot wok flame!]

I'd definitely come here again and order these same dishes often, provided the same chef cooks them... 

the curry puffs were only so-so though. 

open on market days only - Thurs-Sundays. 

been..VERY busy!

i havent been able to log in to this blog /or any blog! in ages because i've been tied up with this:

yep - becoming a parent is ... indescribable. people told me lots of things about it before he was born but it never registered how extremely EXHAUSTING it would be. will this turn into a parenting blog? i dont know.. but, as we go along in life passing through its different stages - different things take up our attention and time and we can't hold on to the past... 

getting only 1-2 hours of sleep every day [im not joking!] for months is no fun at all. in fact i wonder if sleep deprivation were used as a form of torture in war? i thought babies slept most of the day but mine slept even less than most adults i know! those first 3 months were like a blur to me - completely and utter brain fog/exhaustion/brain dead and i cant quite remember much from that time. it just passed by in a blink of an eye but felt like years and years....

but of course, seeing his face and smile makes it all worth it... perhaps that's why God made babies so cute. if they weren't, we wouldn't go through this torture for them..

anyway. if i feel that some parenting posts would be interesting, they might find their way in here but it's something not everyone's interested in [unlike food...] and i always zoned out whenever someone talked about their kids [before i had one] because i couldn't relate. so i can totally understand if people can't relate to this aspect of my life now. 

for months i was unable to cook/bake anything as i had to hold him 24/7. but, it's still one of my passions!

so i've resorted to ëasy, instant foods like pita pizzas. 

this avocado, cheese and bacon pizza i made was yummy - and so easy to make too! [not much more work than a sandwich really]

 the hubby took the baby this afternoon promising to let me have some time to myself so I made this ricotta cheesecake from Belinda Jeffrey's book. unfortunately my photography skills haven't improved much so this photo is wrong on so many levels. anyway, i enjoyed finally baking something, after months of not having baked anything.
even more fun was going to the neighbour's homes to give them some....