Lightly Braised Bitter Gourd With Salted Black Beans

This is our family favourite dish and I will cook this very often . My Piggies love bitter gourd or bitter melon which is a surprising thing for bitter gourd may not be a youngster's cup of tea so to say as it has a slightly bitterish aftertaste. They started to like eating this only after they entered their teens. Bitter gourd has a lot of nutrients and bitter gourd is often used in Chinese cooking for its bitter flavor, typically in stir-fries , soup and also as tea.  My mom used to boil them as tea for me when I was a teenager, 16 to be precise...it is believe to purify our blood as at that time pimples were blooming all over my face :(  but thanks to all those bitter gourd tea I drank during my teens that today I have a smoother complexion :p  Seriously and today my Piggies were given the same treatment when they had pimples on their face.  They love bitter gourd in stir fries but not as a tea.....but wanting to have a smoother complexion overcomes everything :)

Red Wine Honey And Sesame Roasted Drumstick

esame seeds are good for health and I love to add them to my salad , buns and roasts. They contain sesamin and sesamolin, substances that is believed to prevent high blood pressure and protect the liver against damage. They are rich in Vitamin E that helps to strengthen the heart and nervous system.  Good news for us women....sesame oil can help removes wrinkles !  I just discovered that half cup of sesame seeds contains 3 times more calcium than half cup of whole milk. Whoa...... calcium helps prevent osteoporisis ...I can use them generously for my cooking from now on....:)

Scad ( Ikan Selar ) In Papilotte

Back to home cooking again after eating out the last few days....Piggy gal missed Ipoh food ,we took her to some of her favourite haunts for dinners thus for the absence of homecooked food posts :)  She has been drooling on my past posts on  'fish on papilotte' and has been salivating over them so I decided to make this for her. She likes fishes of any kind as long as they are fresh. Scad is one of her favourites. This recipe is from the Flavour Magazine ( past issue ) . I love fish cooked in papilotte...it helps seal in the flavors and keep the the fish moist and juicy......mmmm delicious !

A Toast To Jo @ Jogoya, Starhill, KL - Part 2

There were so much to choose from the dessert section and here are some sweet indulgence I took after those oysters and scallops ( I took so much of those arteries clogging stuff that I think my arteries will suffer after this indulgent )...there were lots of mouth-watering cakes too  - cheesecake, moist chocolate cake and lots more but we just drool at them coz our stomach really can't hold anymore of those delectable cakes so we just took a few pieces of red bean pudding cake and some wolfberry jellies and some Haagen Dazs and NZ Natural Yoghurt ice cream of different fruit flavors.  Saw this  Puff Mushroom Soup when I went to pick up some yoghurt ice cream...couldn't resist it eventhough I can't hold  anymore  LOL! Gosh... it's creamy rich fresh mushroom flavor was enough to make me want to make them myself.  I told Jo, I want to make this..........LOL!  She just rolled her eyes :p

A Toast To Jo @ Jogoya, Starhill, KL - Part 1

We went to Jogoya Starhill, KL  to have our dinner - a graduation celebration for Jo and a valid excuse for me to indulge * wink wink .  It was our first time there and Jo's second . In fact she was the one who suggested that we have the celebration there since our hotel was just a stone's throw away . It doesn't matter where or what we eat as long as we are together again and it is the fellowship that is most important :) Family get together is always fun :)

Here are some of the food we took for the night and I wished that I had a bigger stomach for I realised I was already full and I have not even sampled their steamboat and dim sum at the far end of the room :(   Seriously, there were so much to eat and sample but unfortunately my stomach is so tiny :p

Welcome Home Piggy Jo !!!

My Piggy Jo is back !  I am glad that she has finally graduated with a 1st Class Honours in Materials & Manufacturing Engineering  :)  Daddy had a business appointment at Parkroyal , so only Josh and myself took the KLIA Express to the airport to welcome her back and you can guess how much we all miss her and now I can have 3 months with her before she continues her studies again...in pursuing her PhD  :)  Welcome home Piggy gal :)

We celebrated her graduation in Jogoya, Starhill, KL and shall post up the food we had in my next post :)

For now...it is about the welcoming home for Jo :)