KookyCulinary

Once in a blue moon, I get this craving for mango pudding. When that happens, I head over to the Asian grocery store and get this . . . .

It’s super easy and takes only about 5 minutes to make. Just bring 2 cups milk + 1 cup water to a boil, add in the mango pudding mix. Pour into molds & let it set & cool for another hour. Once it’s cooled, remove from mold and serve with evaporated milk and some fresh mango cubes.

The best part of this instant mix is that you can eat to your heart’s content. A box of mix only cost USD1.70 and makes about 5 rice bowls. If you order one of this mango pudding at the dim sum place, it costs at least USD3 for a measly little bowl!!

Do you like my mold? I used my new agar-agar mooncake mold to make the mango pudding. My gal thought it was the cutest fish ever! Hehe…

From the previous post, Looks like everyone is very familiar with bird’s nest! Hehehe… And no, Miche, I didn’t get it from the caves. It is actually from my hometown. In the recent years, my hometown in Sitiawan, Perak has been invaded by the swiflets. So “swiftlets hotels” started sprouting all over town to welcome the birds. Tall buildings like the one below which used to be a shoplot are the ones being converted. If you look carefully, you can see little rows of little dots on the building. Those are actually little opening for the birds to enter the building. Then they will play recorded bird sounds to attract the birds to enter & make their home inside and of course, hope that the birds will build their precious bird’s nests. Some of these buildings even have air-conditioners in there to make the birds comfortable!!

Not only are existing buildings being coverted, new buildings are built specially for these swiftlets like this one that looks like an abandoned building.

The cons about having all the birds in town are that it gets very noisy especially in the evening when the birds are returning home. Everyone plays their recorded bird sounds & it really gets irritating sometimes. Also there’s the danger of getting hit by bird poop as they fly by!!

However since almost everyone that we know are in this bird nest business, we get freebies quite often. Unfortunately we get the unclean ones since they are straight from the source. So whoever wants to eat them has to do the tedious task of cleaning them! And boy, was it tedious!!! According to a relative, a seasoned hand will only need about 1 hour to clean each nest. My sister & I took almost the whole day to clean 2!!! Hahaha…. 

Tough job!!!

Besides eating and visiting family during my trip, I was very busy with this thing. Do you know what this is?

Usually when I go back to Malaysia & Singapore, I will fall sick because I am very sensitive to the weather change. That means I always end up NOT eating a lot of the local food. But this year, thank God that I didn’t fall sick. So I was able to eat a lot! Even Lil’ C too!

In Singapore, a cousin whom I haven’t met in almost 20 years took us out to dinner. Suggestions of eating at restaurants were immediately rejected by my sister & I. Hehehe… We wanted local food, so we ended up at East Coast Hawker Center.

Some of the things we ate:

Satay

Oyster Omelette

Rojak

Grilled Chicken Wings

Yummy!! Give me local food anytime!!

Since I am still not back in my kitchen yet, I thought I would share some of the food that I have been eating out.

One of my favorite place to wander about in Seattle is the Pike Place Market. It’s one of the oldest farmer’s market in the country. Unfortunately since it is a tourist attraction, it gets very crowded on the weekends. There is just so much to see & eat at Pike Place Market. From antiques to flying fishes, it has it all. Even the first Starbucks is there. For me, the biggest attraction is definitely the food.

One of the shops that I usually try to drop by is the Pike Place Chowder. A cup of their famous clam chowder and a Dungeness Crab Roll is a great way to fill the hunger before the shopping begins.

Everytime I go back to Malaysia, I never plan to buy anything back but somehow goodies always managed to make itself into my luggage!! Hehe…. I guess I just couldn’t resist the temptation! These are some of the goodies that came back with me……

#1: Lots of paste/sauces all for those lazy days when I don’t feel like cooking.

#2: Lemang & ketupat (This is the 1st time I saw lemang. I loved the lemang that we usually buy on the way to Genting. So I bought 1 to try.) The pink package is my favorite biscuit - Heong Peah. This is one cookie that I know I will never be able to duplicate unless I get myself a tandoori oven!! Did you know that it is baked in one of those clay oven over fire just like a tandoori oven?

#3: Lots of molds, hopefully to put into good use soon.

Sorry for being missing in action!!! We’re back from our short vacation in Malaysia & Singapore. In between jetlag and exhaustion from the 20 hour flight, both the little one and I are down with a nasty bug!! During the 2 weeks while we were away, almost everyone we knew were struck with the bug, even my husband who normally doesn’t get sick was out of commission for a few days. I was hoping that we would avoid the bug but it seems that we caught the tail-end of it…. sigh……

Sorry I haven’t been answering comments and requests for recipes. I will get back to it slowly as soon as I get my head and body out of this blurry state. If I miss any requests, do email me again. Thanks!!