Rempah Udand aka Pulut Panggang

Another Malaysian snack which is one of my favourite - rempah udang. It's made of steamed fragrant glutinous rice cooked with coconut milk, with prawns/shredded coconut/lemon grass fillings and wrapped in banana leaves. It is then pan fried or grilled. I have been put off by making this in the past as I imagined it would be very complicated and time consuming. It does take time as it involves a few processes - steaming the rice, making the prawns/coconut filling, wrapping then pan frying but the ingredients are actually not too difficult to make and the result is rewarding. I must admit it's not going to be something I'll make on an average weekend but only special occasion motivates me to do it, in this case it was the girls cooking/get together party.

Chinese Pumpkin Cake (Steamed & Pan Fried)

Pumpkin is in season, only $0.99 per kg in a green grocer. I have wanted to make chinese pumpkin cake for awhile, first time tempted was when my friend Sarah tried it out in a care group. I finally stop procrastinating and gave it a go, following Florence's recipe for both the steamed and pan fried version.


I find the pumpkin taste not as strong as i would like it to be, might try to modify a bit next time. Red bean paste does go well with the pumpkin cake. I used the ready made red bean paste from chinese shop but it is a bit sweet. But then i can't really complain too much because I am too lazy to make my own red bean paste from scratch :)

Radish Cake (蘿蔔糕)

Chinese Radish cake is one of my favourite yum cha item. It is usually steamed and then pan fried before being served in chinese restaurant, but I like the steamed version. Eventhough the pan fried version is yummy (especially if it's a little bit burnt) but the steamed version is full of unpretentious radish flavour, I just love it!

What is even better is it's actually quite easy to make and only involved a few simple ingredients: radish, rice flour, chinese mushrooms, dried shrimps and chinese sausages (I used pork meat instead of chinese sausage as it is healthier and taste good too). Using 2.5kg of radish i was able to fill 6 small aluminium round trays to share with friends and family.

Taro puff pastry - 芋茸酥

Yam or Taro is one my favourite - Taro buns, Taro bread, Taro milk tea, Taro sponge cake, Taro paste (called "Or Nee" in Teochew), Taro pastry, Steamed Chinese Taro Cake, Taro fried rice, the list goes on and on and on ......!


Have been thinking of making something with Taro for a long time, mainly to satisfy my own cravings. After watching an online video on Taro puffs, I decided to give this a go. When Esther came over last Sat I "convinced" her into helping me making the pastry together. We broke the process into 2 sessions, preparing the pastry and Taro filling then went out for yummy japanese dinner and came back to do the fun part of rolling and wrapping the taro. However for some reasons we are yet to figure out, the pastry wasn't as elastic as it supposed to be hence it took us quite awhile to wrap (or rather force) the taro into the pastry and sealed it.

The baking temperature instruction given in the recipe was a bit confusing and we had to re-adjust the temperature to bake the puffs. It has upper and lower temperature (maybe because it's different type of oven?).

We are quite happy with the result in general, maybe I will try modifying and make green tea puffs next time.

Mango 'Loh Mai Zhi' 糯米糍

Mango is a really nice summer fruit, and one of the best ways to enjoy this fruit is to make Mango'Loh Mai Zhi'. You can subsitute the mango with crushed peanuts and black sesame paste, red bean paste, lotus paste etc or can even be creative and come up with something new. It also refrigerates well, up to 4-5 days.

Chinese Radish Cake 蘿蔔絲餅

After 2 weeks of baking overdose (baked 3 batches of cookies and 4 cakes in the last 3 weeks), I have had enough of baking and decided to switch gear and go back to chinese cooking =)

Not that I haven't been cooking chinese food, I mean I make chinese dishes for dinner most of the time. Steamed fish, stir fry vegies, wonton noodle soup and all that but I want to make something new, something I love to eat and a special treat. I stumbled across a cooking demo video clip on youtube last week, teaching people how to make Chinese Radish Cake 蘿蔔絲餅 which makes me mouth watering. I cannot even recall how I got to the link, I was simply surfing the net visiting many inspiring food blogs and then just like a poor man discovering treasures, I was captivated by this demo. For some talented cooks, making a new dish straight from a recipe book is so easy and they achieve the ideal result on first attempt. As for me I learn better from watching how people cook so this video demo is perfect for me.

The timing can’t be better too, hubby was away on a photoshoot helping a friend to capture precious moments of ballet dancers in Frankston all day. And as if it was fated to be, we reached the internet bandwidth and the speed dropped to a snaily pace in the evening. Reluctantly I have to press the "pause" button on watching my current "must-see" Taiwanese series (fated to love you). But this gave me the incentive to get up from my chair and leave my laptop and I quickly sprung into action in the kitchen.



The challenge of this dish for me lies in making the "skin". The filling is very yummy, can be be served as a dish on its own too. As it was getting a bit late I only used up half of the filling and freeze the other half for next time. not sure if it will freeze well, will tell ya next time.
Hubby finally came home at about 11:30pm. To reward his hard work taking photos today I fed him the freshly fried radish cake, hot from the pan ^_^