Today we are still in lockdown in the UK due to Covid-19. This morning I woke up in a cooking mood. At first I wanted to cook 3 meals for today, breakfast, lunch and dinner.

However I ended up only cooking 2 meals. Brunch of roast chicken with noodles and dinner is traditional old British stew.

So early in the morning I phoned my mother in law and went over with her the steps for cooking this dish. I have watched her enough time cooking it but it’s nice to hear her instructions kekekekekeke She did give me a very crucial information that I did not know before!!! Then I realised why I don’t like cooking stews. It sticks to the bottom of my pan and I need to soak overnight to wash!

However due to my mother in law’s tip I cooked the best stew ever and nothing stuck to the bottom of my pan. My son woofed down 5 dumplings when he came back from. I will definitely cook this for him again! His ‘so good mum’ makes me so happy.

It is seldom that I cook stew because I am also not a big fan of stew but today I cook for my son as I know he loves a good stew with dumplings, lots of my special dumplings. Also when he last went out to do shopping with his Dad a fortnight ago he bought a stew pack – a packet from the supermarket containing the root vegetables for stew. I think that is a big HINT!

I have a few potatoes left so I decided to add them in too to bulk it up a bit. Both the hubby and the son were really happy!

Note – Traditionally you can serve this with mashed potatoes but I prefer to stew the potatoes as well. One step of work less.

As I am going to cook spaghetti bolognese today I just realised that my recipe in my old blog is still missing from this new blog. So I have decided it’s time I update it here in this new blog.

My boy asked for his comfort food and I made the bolognese sauce today so he has a few meals as his tapau.

There are many ways of making a bolognese sauce and almost every household has their own secret recipes. This humble origin from the Italy city of Bologna is now a household staple here in England. The French add in bouquet garni, some uses a touch of cream and in UK children from baby to the elderly love spaghetti bolognese. It is fed to baby like rice porridge in Malaysia. Of course the Italian purist would say we have corrupted their dish.

This take about 30 minutes of cooking, an hour of simmering and after that it is a very flexible and versatile sauce with many usage.

I have been hankering for chicken wings for the past month. I have eaten twice outside but they left me wanting.

I did not want the fried ones thickly coated with batter nor do I want the Korean type smothered with sickly sweet sticky sauce. I didn’t feel like the KFC spicy ones either as they seems to make me very thirsty.

Bought a packet of chicken wings yesterday for only 2.70 (pounds) and decided to make my own. However I am torn between roast or fried as I recently bought the smallest deep fat fryer of 1.5L oil only. There is a special reason for buying it. Watch this space!

So I decided to split my chicken wings 50/50 and cook them roast and fried. The roasted wings have an extra touch of maple syrup and the fried ones are just dusted with tapioca and baking powder just before frying.

TIP – I dropped a handful of king prawns into my zip-lock bag, utilizing the marinate already in there and re-dusted with some tapioca flour before deep frying them lastly.

Shepherd Pie brings back a lot of memories. This is because I have to make a potato mash for it.

Two and twenty years ago my ex boyfriend went to Malaysia to meet me. The very first Western dish I made for him is mash potatoes. He was telling me how to make it nice as he finds the ones in Malaysia, funny tasting. I still remembered he said taste like chicken?

He was mashing the boiled potatoes but for some reason I can’t remember why, he had to pop to the sundry shop and left me to continue. So like a true Malaysian I sat on the floor and mash the boiled potatoes adding in butter slowly, alternating with a milk, a pinch of salt, some freshly ground pepper like I was told.

When he came back from the shop I had finished and he was shocked to discovered I added in the entire 250g of butter Well I was not told how much to add in! I was tasting as I was adding and it tasted better and better with more butter and so I added more and more butter until the whole block was gone!

The silly things we do that now seems so funny. Nowadays I am only using half a block but I have moved from using milk to cream for that really rich taste.

Just for some extra information –

If you use lamb mince it’s Shepherd Pie

If you make with mince beef and red wine it is Cottage Pie.