dccokinn

Recent months, I've been intrigued by Thai desserts, especially the traditional ones that are served to the Thai Royalty since ancient times. I had wanted to go to BKK to attend classes but couldn't find the time. Then, last weekend I happened to be at northern Chonburi and took the opportunity to visit a Thai Traditional Dessert Cafe called Hom's House at the Bang Saen area. Totally fell in love with the cafe, as well as the desserts served there! My desire to make these intricate and pretty looking desserts was so strong and after watching several YouTube videos and researching in online recipes, I thought I would start with this Khanom Chor Muang as out of all the desserts I tried, I love this the most, as it's both sweet and savoury. It's basically a chicken dumpling but palm sugar is added to the chicken filling so it's sweet. I thought it's more apt as an appetiser but the Thais categorised it as a dessert. Anyways, bought ingredients, tools and even ...

I have not baked these Cream Cheese Buns for ages! In Singapore they are known as "Ah Bian" originating from the homegrown bakery chain BreadTalk. I often wonder why these cream cheese buns are baked flat instead of other shapes like round or longish? Vaguely recall that it was introduced many years back during the Taiwan Presidential Elections and the bun was named after former President Chen Shui-Bian (who is affectionately called Ah Bian by her people). My memory might be wrong. I digress. Anyways, 4 years ago, I baked the Cranberry Cream Cheese version which is the original version using the Tangzhong (water-roux) method. This time I tried the Yudane method which is a method created by Japanese bakers to achieve super fluffy bread texture and remains soft even the next few days. In fact I've been baking buns with filling all along using this method or a similar Yukone method. Frankly I'm not so sure what's the difference between the two (didn't have time ...

My kiddo and hb love Chwee Kueh very much and the kiddo has been bugging me to make it for him. Both of them used to eat it at the hawker centres at least once or twice a week! We used to go to Ghim Moh market for the chwee kueh; the kueh is excellent, but my kiddo doesn't like their savoury type of chai poh. Alternatively, we would go to Clementi or West Coast markets where their chai poh are the sweet type. Well, now they can only get to eat this when they request and if I feel like making it :p Frankly I've never make this in SG before because it's simply too convenient and much quicker if we were to eat it at hawker centres. For a batch like this, it took me around 1.5hrs! But now that we are in Thailand, cravings could only be satisfied by homemade I guess, which means OT for me in the kitchen -_-" I like to make my chwee kueh mini size because I can literally put the whole piece in the mouth and munch away without the chai poh falling all over the place =D T...

[ Collaboration with Dancing Chef and Singapore Home Cooks ] Dish 1 - Laksa Yong Tau Foo Dish 2 - Curry Puff / Karipap "Curry pok! Curry pok!" I remember during the 80s when I was in Primary School, every afternoon around 3pm, a Malay boy would carry a basket of freshly fried karipap and make his rounds in my block peddling his wares. There were two flavours, curry potato and sardine, differentiated with a red dot. This is one of my favourite Malay kuih and needless to say, I would buy one of each flavour as my afternoon snack every other day. I cannot remember how much it cost, I think one piece was 10 cents? I recall savouring the puffs while they were still warm, eating the rounded part with filling first and the crispy edges to the last or sometimes I would do the other way round :p It's a very simple snack, but it's one of those simple pleasures we enjoyed in our childhood, isn't it? This type of homemade karipap has a very nostalgic old-school taste, with...

[ Collaboration with Dancing Chef and Singapore Home Cooks ] Dish 1 - Laksa Yong Tau Foo How time flies, next week is already Singapore's National Day and my family has been away for almost 8 months! As true blue Singaporeans who love to makan, we tend to miss local food from time to time. Premix pastes like Dancing Chef really comes in handy whenever we have cravings. Sometimes it's too much hassle to cook from scratch or there are certain ingredients not readily available. I always stock up on our favourite pastes whenever we return to SG for visits; it's great that the packs are small and doesn't take up too much luggage space. One of the SG local dish that we miss is Yong Tau Foo! Here in Thailand, there's no YTF stall where you can pick and choose the various ingredients like beancurd, bitter gourd, vegetables, fishballs etc... Back in SG, we used to eat YTF at least once a week, and we always ended up ordering laksa gravy as the pairing is simply shiokalicio...

Boat noodles is a very popular street food in Thailand ???? In fact, noodles is a very big part of the food culture.  I learnt that all types of noodles (whether rice noodles, glass noodles, egg noodles), they are all called Guay Tiew (same pronunciation) unlike in SG where Kuay Tiao means thick rice noodles. I still remember when I ordered my very first bowl of Guay Tiew, thinking that it's thick rice noodles, the hawker gave me "Sen Lek" which is very thin and slightly chewy. Sen Lek is somewhat like the default type of noodle hawkers would serve if you don't specify, or some stalls just serve "Sen Lek" only. Anyways, there's a whole lot of jargon to learn about ordering noodles, such as the type of noodles, soup or dry, type of broth, and we're not even talking about the fried ones. Well, I guess the same goes for SG where we have so many type of noodles as well. I digress. Anyways, Guay Tiew means noodles and Reua means Boat, so literally transla...