Asian Cooking Spices

There are a lot of cooking spices range from either Western, Asian Chinese, Indian, Malay, Thai and etc. Each culture has their own signature use of spice. Eg. Thai people will like to use Lemongrass and Lime, where Western will fancy basil and parsley. No matter which group you belong to, there is always a some nice spices that you will pick up with.

"Cinnamon Stick - 肉桂棒" is one of the common recipe found in Nonya, Malay and Chinese Cuisine to be use in making curry, meat roll and even soy sauce duck. While in western country, you might find cinnamon powder being use in making apple pies or use in coffee or tea and etc.

"Cloves - 丁香" can be use in baking, or cooking some of the Indian cuisine and it is usually paired with together with cumin and cinnamon. You can find this commonly use in Biryani and it is normally added whole to enhance the presentation and flavor of the rice.

"Cardamom - 豆冠子" can be use to prevent indigestion and relieve flatulence while some even say that it can sweeten your breath. But no matter what function it has, Cardamom spice is a highly aromatic spice which is most commonly used in Eastern and Arab cuisines. Its unique slightly sweet and savory flavor allows it to be combined with both sweet and savory dishes.

Come across this "Fish Seasoning" spice which caught my attention. I have not seen something like this before which consists of a few types of spices which I am unfamiliar with. From the packaging, I only recognise Black Peppercorns and Cummin, and Fennel Seeds. If you are familiar with this seasoning or you have use this before, do drop me a note so that I can learn and share with the rest of the readers too :)

Fu Gui Cai

Saw this very interesting leafy vegetable from the wet market. It seems to look like a bunch of blooming flower with a lot of small leaves attached to it. According to the stall owner, this is called "Fu Gui Cai - 富贵菜". To me it seems like those mini "Xiao Bai Cai" that stick together to form a bouquet of flower. The stall owner told me that, to consume, just remove the individual leaf then clean them as usual and you can stir-fry with either minced garlic or prawns. And this plant, usually can only be found during Chinese New Year season.

So if you happen to see this vegetable, or you already have some ideas about this. Do share your tips and experience with us so that we can learn more about this interesting vegetable.

Little Garden

Have you seen this the blue pea flower that is also known as Bunga Telang or Clitoria flower which is usually found in the blue colouring of the Nyonya Kueh such as Pulut Tai Tai and Pulut Inti which is shown in the photo below. These flowers are used as natural food dye and the blue colour looks really lovely in foods.

As you can see from the photo, Pulut Tai Tai is the steam Glutinous Rice (colour with the blue peas flower) and serves with Nyonya Kaya. While Pulut Inti is serves with cooked shredded coconut with gula malak(coconut sugar). They actually soak the dried flowers in water to get the blue colour then soak the glutinous rice with it and steam together with coconut milk to get that blue marble effect.

Recently, one of my mum's neighbour just bought a pot of this local grown Passion fruit Plant at around S$36.00 which young passion fruits attached to it. Passion fruit is a small egg-shaped tropical fruit, which contains several seeds and has wrinkled purple brown rind on maturing. The seeds and the pulp inside, both are edible, making it easier to consume the fruit. Although nowadays we can easily get Passion fruits from local supermarket or fruit stalls, but it is still an interesting sight to look at the real fruit attached on the plant itself.

I have also used this fruit in some of my dishes as shown below, so do take a look if you want to know more about them :-

1. Banana & Passion Fruit Chiffon Cake
2. Homemade Banana & Passion Fruit Jam
3. PassionMisu
4. Salmon With Passionfruit Sauce

Gaint Avocado

Guess what is this! A friend of mine just came back from her Taiwan trip and she actually bought my favourite fruit all the way back to Singapore from Taiwan. When she handed me the goodies bag, I was so shock to see the "Green" fruit. At first glance, I thought it is some Taiwan Mango or Papaya. But to my surprised, my friend told me it was actually "Avocado". When I heard that, I was so shock as I have never seen such a huge fruit before in our local fruit stalls or supermarkets. As you can see from the picture, it is about two/three times the size of the normal avocado that we used to see/find in supermarket.

Avocados are a wonderful fruit containing a mass of vital nutrients needed for a healthy body. It is low in sugar, contain fibre, and are salt free. So if you are interested to know more about this fruit and some wonder recipes that you can follow, do click on the link (HERE) for more details.

Wilton Bear Silicone Baking Cups

I am being aiming for these cute little Wilton Bear Cupcake moulds for a long long time. It first caught my sight when I was blog hopping for cute cupcake recipes and Rey was very excited about these mould. We have also discuss on the things that we can make with it. So after some seek and find time, I managed to get hold a set(12 cupcake case) of this through my friend who is working in a baking schoo. This set cost about S$14.00 after member discount.

This set come with 12 dual colour silicone baking cups that enable you to scoop in the batter and bake in oven and serve it within the cups or you can use it to make jelly or pudding for kids' party.

Wilton Concentrated Colour Gel

Wilton concentrated gel helps to achieve the exact shade and at the same time without watering down your icing. They come in either individual 1 oz. bottle or in box of 8 or 12 colour set of 1/2 oz bottle of icing colors which is in: Christmas Red, Lemon Yellow, Leaf Green, Sky Blue, Brown, Orange, Pink and Violet.

Scallop Shell Madeleine Tin

I have being searching High and Low for this Scallop Shell Madeleine Tin in Singapore until I gave up my search. As my dear son loves the Chocolate Chip Kueh Balu from Prima Deli which comes in this Scallop Shapes. I have always wanted to make it for him at home. After some long research, finally I managed to ask my friend to get it for us in Japan(if you are interested, click on the link for details). Till then, stay tune while I will try to try out on this tin soon......

Bento Food Cutter III

This is another cute Mini Ham & Cheese Cutters that Elizabeth bought for me from Japan. It will be handy when preparing bento for cutting carrots, ham or cheese...... Em.. maybe I can consider using it for mini cookies too......

6-in-1 Chick and Rabbit Cutters from Daiso which come in handy if you want to prepare window layer sandwiches or assorted size cookies. For eg: Click on this link and take a look at the heart shape sandwich.

6-in-1 Star Shapes Cutter from Daiso which comes in this new packing with a transparent box instead of the old packing which is pink in colour. I prefer this bright yellow colour and the new packing with the box :)

Origini Wrappers

Got this cute little Assorted Animals Food Wrapper from CP @ bentomarket. This really come in handy when you want to prepare some cute onigiri for kid's bento or party. It comes in 4 different designs with 3 sheets each design.

Assorted Miffy & Friends Cookies

I am sure most of us will be familiar with this cartoon character called "Miffy". She is a small female rabbit in a picture book drawn by Dick Bruna. It's so kind of my blogpal, Elizabeth who gave a pack of this assorted Miffy & Friends cookies to Reyon. This pack consists of 12 individual packets of 2 different designs and Reyon love them very much, he even take a few packets to school to share with his best friends.

Pooh & Friends 3D Ice Cube Tray

Elizabeth who just got back to Singapore from Japan, get this Pooh & Friends 3D Ice-tray for Reyon. It comes in a tray of 6 cute designs of Pooh, Pigglet and Tigger. You can use it as normal ice tray or you can even make colourful jelly or food using this.

For Sale

Recently one of my friend just bought me an extra set of this above with the "h" design in the middle(which I already have in stock :p ). So if anyone is interested in buying this, do email for more detail.

~ Price @ style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">SG$18.00 for Multi-face Puncher. SOLD

This set of also another extra set of Pooh Vegetable cutter that I have for sale which come in two different design.

~ Price @ SG$10.00 for the Pooh Vegetable Cutter



*Note: All prices here including normal postage in Singapore ONLY. If you are interested in any of thea bove item, do e-mail me for more detail.

Multi-Face Shoe Punchers

Finally got my Multi-face shoe puncher, these two design have being out of stock for a few months and most of the Bento makers have both of these collection. This design focus more on facial expression where you can really make very "KAWAI" design for your bento.

So far I notice that this design is not very commonly used. It actually can do a face block-up using that two " ( ) " that acts as a shape of the face.

Baking & Tea-Snack Collection

Browsing through bookstores is always one of my past-time hobby which in the end will make me end up with all kinds of books in my mini library at home. I can resists the temptation of buying clothes, shoes, bag and etc. But I can't resists the temptation of buying books and enjoying food.

Both me and my dear son loves to eat bread, I can have bread for breakfast, tea-break and even lunch. I will packed bread for tea-bread or lunch at least twice a week, so when i saw this interesting toast book, I immediately add it to my shopping cart.

I have two different pancake/waffle books which I purchased due to the "Kawai" presentation of the food. Look at the pancake which they fold into the shape of a fish, isn't that cute? Sometime looking at all these will make my days even more meaningful rather than eating it.

Look at this, I didn't know that we can actually used pancake or waffle flour to make cakes, muffins, cookies and etc other than pancake itself. Although I am not sure of the end products and how they taste compare to the normal ingredients that we used to make cake. But by looking at those photos already makes me adding the book into the shopping carts again :)

This is one of Alex Goh Baking book which consists of a lot of beautiful cakes which I think I can never master it. Because I am not those person that is into cake making but then I still add this book into my collect... *Faint*

Homecook Meal Collection

These are some of the Cookery Books that I had purchased over the past few months. Some of it I have read from the public Library and I find that it is a good keeper as future reference.

Grab at outside one of the NTUC store @ S$9.00 and it consists a lot of wonderful soup that I would like to give it a try when I am free. They have pretty good explanation of the ingredients used too. This book is written by one of the famous TV chef, "FANG TAI".

Other than the above "FANG TAI" soup book, I also grab another one which force more of using Chinese Herbs to neutralise our body health.

Personally I love this book which consists of a lot of attractive photos which is the main consideration for me when purchasing a cookery book. The steps are pretty easy to follow and they have all kinds of dishes with different kind of fish as the main ingredient.

This book come together as the same publisher as the one fish book above. They have interesting western dishes that required short baking time and each dish has their unique taste and presentation.

I have never tried using our normal rice cooker to whip up other dishes other than the Yam & Cabbage Pork Belly Rice which my dad used to make for us when we are young. So when I saw this cookbook, I am very keen and interested to try out those dishes using rice cooker.

Bought this at the Popular book clearance for S$5.00. I love the presentation of the dishes and their nutrition value of the grain rice but then I find it a bit difficult to find some of those special grain mentioned in Singapore stores.

Gadget @ Daiso

I am so happy and suprised to see this cute "CIAO" design foil from IMM Daiso and immediately I grab one colour each of the design from the shelf. I have being looking for it high and low and finally, managed to grab hold of this. There are also other cute and nice disney design available from ebay. (take a look here)

My boy grab this cute Donut Print Paper bag which he wanted to use it to pack snack for his bento or picnic.