I was shopping in Costco few weeks back and saw they sell beef ribs! First time ever and I have been shopping there for a couple of years. I am not sure I am just unlucky in missing them or they only just started as we get more choice to to Restaurants not doing business during lockdown.

I sincerely hope they will continue selling as both my boy and I love them especially show cooked in Sousvide.

Some pics on how I cook ours today.

Beef ribs cooked this way maintain the tastiness and the meat will be melt in the mouth cottony soft.

You can cook the gravy in anyway you chose. I used bone marrow sauce today from the supermarket. It was not bad. I added a beef OXO cube and freshly ground Sarawak pepper.

You can marinate your beef ribs with anything you like. I am partial to using wholegrain Dijon mustard too.

p/s if you do not have an industrial blow torch you can pan sear in a hot wok, preferably cast iron with butter but do not forget to add any residue to your gravy pot.

p/s You can also thicken your jus/gravy with a lump of beurre manié – “kneaded butter” – dough, consisting of equal parts by volume of soft butter and flour if you are not serving with mashed potatoes.

The possibilities are endless – kekekekeke

Beef Stroganoff is originally a Russian dish of sautéed pieces of beef served in a sauce made with sour cream. From its origins in mid-19th-century Russia, it has become a very popular dish around the world, with considerable variation from the original recipe.

It is a very easy dish to cook and pleasantly nice to eat especially if you add a more liberal dash of brandy. I have not made it for a long time but recently I am so lazy I just want to cook dishes that takes less than an hour from start to finishing cleaning my kitchen.

Hubby loved it and had 2 bowls for his lunch! That mean I passed. He can have 2 bowls but no more bread.

Remember you can add more mushrooms, onions etc. When I could I love to add whole small onions. it is entirely up to you. As there is so many variation of this dish make it your own by cooking it to suit yourself.

It had been a long time since I made Pea & Ham soup so I was very happy to see some freshly roasted ham hogs for sale from the supermarket. I quickly grabbed 2 last week but I was not able to make use of them until today. There were just too much food in the house curtesy of daughter from work.

The daughter has been bringing home, sandwiches, breads, jackets potatoes and beef slices. So I have not the need to do much cooking this week. On top of it I have an eye stye that annoys me a lot. I have never had it in my life for half a century and I have to experience one now. I have planned to go to the garden centre this coming weekend but now not sure. I am still vain enough not to want to be seen with a swollen eyelid.

We did have a lot of fun and laugh, me wearing a hot eye-patch compressor and singing ‘Like a Virgin’ and explaining to hubby all the old wives’ tales of pantang-larang (superstitions) aka, tying red string on middle finger, using 7 husks to poke the eye stye and chuck them behind you etc. If you heard of any more please do not hesitate to comment. kekekekeke

Surprisingly when I told my MIL she told me the English people have superstitious in this area too!!! It’s to rub your eye stye with a gold ring! She mentioned this morning there was a ‘gold ointment’ too in the old days! Amazing!

Anyway back to this soup. When I was making it I shed a few tears (not into the soup) mind you but this soup reminded me of my FIL. I really missed him but I knew he would be so proud of me. He would laugh at my plating but he would be beaming with pride. He had taught me well.

This soup also reminded me of the time when I bought a new stick blender for him and when we were rinsing and washing it my mother-in-law suddenly shouted at him “It’s electric” She was having a blonde moment and thought of the old adage ‘never mix electric with water’ However in this case we all looked at her and laugh till tears in our eyes.

Happy memories. Treasured memories.

p/s 1 – When frying the onions, garlic and potatoes make sure they do not colour or else your soup will look meh with brown or black bits.

p/s 2 – Turn the heat off as soon as it’s boiling after you add peas. Boil any longer and you will not have a beautiful green colour.

When my son was young I used to make lunch boxes for him daily as he doesn’t like the food from his school canteen. I actually wanted him to try more different kinds of food so I joined him to the school meals list. It only lasted a couple of weeks!

However the school actually has a menu of what is being served daily. Once a week we were given a menu and the boy and I have to tick what he wanted for 5 days (weekly). Typical English food like fish fingers, spaghetti Bolognese and such. As my son was not too keen on a lot of the food offered and also he wanted to gobble up his lunch quickly just so he could play footie, he much preferred to have lunch boxes.

There was a year when I forced him to join the school Christmas lunch with all the other students before the school Christmas pantomime. When I went to the school to collect him that day one of the canteen lady told me, “Mrs Olive your son said our gravy is like brown drain water” I was so embarrassed, extremely embarrassed that I did not know where to put my face or how to begin to apologize! We still reminiscent about it to this day with a chuckle. I think he was 8 or 9 years old then.

Anyway one of his favourite lunch box food is my savoury muffins and of course his favourite is none other than cheese and bacon muffins. Sometimes I add in a bit of sweet corn or grated carrots. You do the basic mix and add anything you like within reason. If course common sense is not to overload with vegetables. Let children enjoy a bit.

Use this basic ingredients and adjust add or minus stuff to suits your taste.

The only one golden rule is mix the wet ingredient to the dry and do not over mix the mixture!

Remember when you scope onto your tin, make sure it’s like a mound in the middle and not flat. This si so that your muffins baked like a round ball, prettier.

I would have added chives to today’s bake but I have non at home so I decided to add some larger pieces of bacon on top.

Enjoy and don’t forget to tag me or post your pics here.

This is a very rich cake. Read up about it from wiki here -> kek lapis

Kek lapis Sarawak or Sarawak Layer Cake is what is known to me when I was growing up in Kuching. It is a cake normally reserved for serving during Chinese New Year for us Chinese. However I remembered being offered them when I visited my kawan Melayu (Malay friends) during Hari Raya time and they always have a lot of choices. In Sarawak during all special celebrations and occasions you will see a lot of kek lapis being served. They are of amazing ‘batik’ designs and some are multi coloured and of many flavours.

Kek Lapis Legit main original ingredients is the spice mix known as – Spekkoek, which is a mixture of spices consisting of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and cardamom

Historically the Sarawak layer cake has its origin in a form of layer cake with various spices found in Indonesia called lapis legit or kek lapis Betawi or Batavia, the old name of Jakarta. This spiced cake is thought to have derived from a form of European spit cake which was made by the wives of Dutch administrators in Batavia during the colonial period and served during evening tea. It is believed that this type of spiced layer cake was introduced to Sarawak in the 1970s and 1980s by people from Jakarta. The Sarawak people then added new ingredients, flavour and colour that resulted in a new version of the layer cake being introduced and named as Sarawak layer cake. In addition, modern Sarawak layered cakes were inspired by Western cake-making in the early 1980s, later modern design to the traditional layer cake, along with new flavours were introduced.

Interestingly only in my research for this post I learned that in Malaysia, kek lapis Sarawak (Sarawak layer cake) has been a protected geographical indication since 2010. This means that any product may only be called “kek lapis Sarawak/Sarawak layer cake” if it is manufactured in Sarawak according to the specifications of the Sarawak Layer Cake Manufacturers Association. It is illegal to label a similarly-manufactured cake “kek lapis Sarawak/Sarawak layer cake” if it is not actually made in Sarawak, and strictly speaking, producers outside the state may only legally name their products “Sarawak-style” layer cake.

A standard 8 x 8-inch cake Sarawak styled layer cake may contain up to 30 egg yolks, copious amount of butter and sugar and condense milk not to mentioned the special spice that gives it the unique aroma.

Not only does the cake uses an amazing amount of these few ingredients, it also takes up a lot of time as one needs to stand next to the oven and not move away, adding the batter in each and grilling each layer by layer. I used a half cup for each layer. The pics showed the steps by steps.