Girls Cooking Party - Gourmet Salad

Green Papaya Salad

The quarterly girls cooking party is on again, with the perfect weather for our theme - Gourmet Salad. The bar has increased since the previous challenge, and everyone seems to put in more thoughts and efforts into this.

No one actually made any common salad such as ceasar salad or coleslaw, which is good to see. Out of the two I have short listed (Japanese and Thai), I finally decided on the Thai Green Papaya Salad. I like the hot/sour/sweet taste and also thought this would be refeshing for warmer weather. Never bought and seen a green papaya before but nowadays the Chinese grocery store is so well stocked, it wasn't difficult to source this. At $8.99 per Kg, I suspect it is imported.

Other salads brought by the girls include mouth watering salads such as 'Chicken Rissoles with Beetroot Relish and Warm Potato Salad', 'Thai Beef Salad', 'Warm salad of Kipfler potato, cabbage and bacon', 'Thai Cold Noodle Salad', 'Szechuan Ma La 麻辣 tofu', 'Coronation Chicken Salad', a sweet salad 'Sweet Salad - Orange marinated with lime juice and honey, topped with shaved chocolates and coconut' and also some Sri Lankan treats - Milk Toffees. Now I have more ideas for salad now for this coming summer!

Thai Beef Salad (prepared by Christie)

The winning dish - Chicken Rissoles with Beetroot Relish and Warm Potato Salad', a Masterchef recipe

Sweet Salad - Orange marinated with lime juice and honey, topped with shaved chocolates and coconut - prepared by Esther.

Szechuan "Ma Lak" (麻辣 — "numb and spicy") shreded tofu prepared by Sarah Lim

Coronation Chicken Salad prepared by Tania, ingredients include chicken in creamy curry sauce, walnuts, grapes topped with alfalfa sprouts

Thai cold noodle salad - glassnoodles, chienses mushroom, fungus, apples, pork slices, shredded carrots and topped with nuts, served with speciallyh made fish sauce - created by Nga.
Milk Tofee - Sri Lankan treats made by Suleka

My Green Papaya Salad

Lunch Box Challenge

My lunch box

After some brainsotrming and ideas from Tania on the theme for the next girls cooking session, we finally decided on Lunch Box Challenge. Each is to bring 2 set of lunch boxes prepared at home and judging is based on taste, presentation and theme. It was awesome to see everyone put in so much effort despite busy work schedule. The result is lots of variety of good food for the tummy as well as and feast for the eyes.

I love taking opportunity like this to make somehting I would otherwise find too much hassle to make. one particular dishes I miss a lot is Lobak. After some google search I found a "ngoh hiang" recipe (different to the hawker stall lobak) which uses yam (my eyes lit up as soon as I saw yam in the recipe, it's one of my favourite ingredients). I decided to give it a try :)
To add more interest to the lunch box, I also made some Kuih Ubi Bingka as a dessert to go with the lunch box. Though my lunch box missed out on winning the prize, I was very pleased with the lobak, it sure satisfied my cravings and brought back some memories of good old days in hometown Penang.


The winner of the lunch box challenge is Tania, her 'picnic lunch box' stole the lime light with its presentation and creativity. But it wasn't easy doing the scoring as each dish is so tasty, and we could't help wishing if only our daily lunch boxes look like these ones! Pictures of a selection of the lunch boxes:

Tania's picnic lunchbox

Sarah's bread roll sushi and puddings with chocolate flakes toppings

Nga's pandan waffles

Maggie's sushi bento

Esther's sushi bread rolls

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.

Another cake .... but I can't remember what cake it was!

Made this cake some time last year for my MIL and forgot to post the picture now I can't even remember what cake I made! Silly silly Lisa!

Bread Rolls

Ever since "Bread Top" sprung up in Melbourne, I have seriously put on some weight. Walking past the bakery on my way to work in the city, i can't help but drawn to the fragrant of the freshly baked rolls. I love their fluffy, soft and fresh baked rolls. There's endless variety too from savoury to sweet bread rolls, not to mention the cakes! I found a few foodblogs with bread roll recipe and thought "hmm why don't I try making bread rolls myself, it's probably healthier and will save me some money too". The main effort is in the kneading, that's hard work but the rest are fun! Especially decorating and deciding what toppings to use.

Curry Chickpeas

This is a super quick and simple chickpeas recipe. All it takes is 5 minutes:

1 can of chickpeas, drained
2 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 ripe tomato, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoon white sesame seeds
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon of curry powder
1 teaspoon of coriander powder
1/2 teaspoon tumeric powder

Heat oil, add mustard seeds. When mustard seeds start to pop, add tomato pieces, curry and tumeric powder. Cook a couple of minutes then add remaining ingresients. Stir and cook 2-3 minutes. Turn off heat and scoop to a plate. Easy isn't it? Nice when serve with fresh coriander and as a side dish to rendang beef.

Pancakes with strawberries and bananas

There's a saying 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day'. Well this might be true but somehow in our household breakfast is something you eat on the run, at the office ....

I have been wanting to make pancake for breakfast, and to have a proper sit down breakfast after my last attempt in cooking a proper big breakfast. Last weekend I finally did and using a very simple pancake recipe.

1 cup self raising flour
1.25 cup milk
pinch of salt
1 egg

Method: Sift flour and salt in a bowl, make a well and add egg and milk (I added the milk slowly instead of one go), whisk till all combined and the mixture is smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and leave for atleast 0.5 hour to 1 hour before cooking. When cooking the pancake, it's easier to put the pancake mixture into a jug, this way it is easier to control the pouring into the pan. Make sure the pan is hot before pouring ther mixture for cooking especially if using a non stick pan. When bubles start to form, the pancake is ready to be turned. Serve with honey or maple syrup with your favourite fruit or drizzle with strawberry sauce or melted chocolate, Yum!