Butter Crumb Sweet Buns with Kaya 加央酥松粒面包 (Featured in Group Recipes)

This recipe is similar to my previous sweet loaf which also extracted from my one and only one bakery book - Baking made easy by Agnes Chang. This is actually sweet sesame seeds buns recipe, but since my boy does not like sesame seeds and I have leftover butter crumb so the sesame sweet buns transformed into butter crumb sweet buns instead J

I started to make the dough on Saturday night, 9pm hoping to be able to bake the bread by following day for our picnic trip. It took me more than 30 minutes to massage the dough before it ready to be left to proof. No wonder, recently I started to notice my arms getting more muscular than ever. J As I explained in my bread story before, I don't have any bread maker and dough mixer to help me in bread making, I hand knead all my breads.

To me, the only frustrating thing about home making bread is the long proofing time. I have a very impatient boy at home that keeps on asking me every now and then whether the bread is ready or not? Over here, it takes ages to proof! I never managed to proof the bread in less than 2 hours in room temperature, even when the weather is getting warmer. I suppose I can only do that when I'm back to Malaysia.

Currently, our room temperature is still less than 20 degree at night. I left the dough sit overnight in the oven, hoping to achieve slower rising, which promote more flavorful to the dough. While, the dough was resting, time for me to rest too by enjoying Halloween scary movie.

The next morning at 7.30a.m when I checked on the dough, it turned out to be nicely proof. I lightly punched down and let it rest for another 15 minutes before I shaped the dough into 9 rolls of 60g each buns with kaya (Coconut Egg jam) filling and 3 plain (Hubby does not like jam) and a small toast bread loaf.

To speed up the second proofing time, I placed the dough back in the oven and switch on oven to set minimun heat  at 30 degree and placed a bowl of hot water in the lower shelf of the oven. I left it there for about 2 hours while I went for my grocery shopping. By the time, I came back from my errand, the second rise was just right, for me to start baking. I managed to get the bread nicely baked in time for our lunch time.

I think this batch of bread was so far my best bread, the texture was so soft and wholesome with butter crumb added the buttery flavor.

Butter Crumb Kaya Sweet Buns - Featured in Group Recieps 05/11/2010

Butter Crumb Toast bread 酥松粒吐司面包

The following slideshow demostrates the making process.

Spiced Beef Shin 卤牛展/牛腱 - (Featured in Group Recipes)

"Staying in Kiwi land, how can you not eat more beef or lamb where we are one of the biggest meats producers! " This statement was made by one of my computing classmate when she shared her lunch box with me. After testing her juicy spiced beef, I came home and happen to notice one of the cook books I borrowed from local library has this recipe which I can try on.

Frankly, the reason I seldom cook beef is because I'm not good at cooking beef, my food critic always X me out when I served beef. This was my first time cooking beef shin/shank; thankfully the dish turnout to be pretty good and I got a tick this time J

Spiced Beef Shin 卤牛展/牛腱 - Featured in Group Recipes dated 3 November 2010

Asparagus Thai Style with Squids 泰式芦笋炒花枝

Sawadika, let's do Thai tonight!
Eat and cook with the season, that what I learn when doing my vegetables shopping in NZ. I was taught always choose vegetables that are at their seasonal best and that are the freshest. Asparagus is in season now, so that's what going to be regular on our dinner table for the coming weeks J

Instead of normal Chinese stir-frying with oyster sauce, I switch to Thai style using Nam Pla (fish sauce) for a change. Other than Chinese cuisine, Thai Cuisine is my favourite I can never have enough of them!

Stir- Fry Asparagus with Squids 芦笋炒花枝

Pork Belly with Dong Cai 冬菜扣肉

Once a while, I will attempt to prepare some tedious and time consuming dish and this is one of them. Hubby has been asking for it for some time, so being the main Chef in the house, when you get the order you need to serve it right?

DongCai 冬菜 in Chinese literally means winter vegetable, this is Chinese traditional pickles, made of preserved dried cabbage or mustard greens. There are two famous types in China, one is Sichuan preserved vegetable another is Tianjin preserved vegetable. This preserved veggie commonly use in soup or stir-fry with meat. For this recipe, I'm using Tianjin five spices preserved vegetable

I understand with current trend of healthy eating this recipe might be a big X to some especially to weight watchers but on contrary this dish is one of our family favorite. The man in my family, his motto of eating is whatever delicious and meaty J

I adapted this recipe from one of my favourite Malaysia's Chinese best-seller cookbook by Chef Alan Kok Ho Ho Jiak! Hawkers' Fair .

Pork Belly with Dong Cai 冬菜扣肉

Pork belly that melt in your mouth

Cockles, cockles more cockles 蚶/蛤蜊

Cockles again?

26^th October Monday
The story with cockles continues, I was still left with a bag of cockles and they had been brine in buckets over night. They were still kicking alive when hubby checked on them in the morning. How to get rid of them?

Some for lunch.

Cockles Har Mee

 and some for dinner

STIR FRY COCKLES WITH CHILI, TOMATOES AND CURRY SAUCE

(Featured in Group Recipes website)

Stir-fry Cockles with Chili, tomatoes and Curry sauce

After 2 days of cockles, I suppose I'm done with them for a while. :-P

INSTANT NOODLES WITH COCKLES Har Mee Instant Noodles with Cockles INGREDIENTS: Handful Cockles 4 packets of Instant Noodles Coriander for garnishing METHOD: Place cockles in saucepan and bring water to boil until the shells of the cockles open. Take out the cooked cockles and set aside. Prepare noodles per packet instructions and added in cooked cockles. Garnish with coriander and serve.

STIR FRY COCKLES WITH CHILI, TOMATOES AND CURRY SAUCE 辣椒，番茄酱和咖喱粉炒鲜蚶 INGREDIENTS: 1kg Cockles 2tbsp chili sauce 2 tbsp tomatoes sauce 1tsp mild curry powder 1tbsp chopped garlic Slices of ginger 1tbsp cooking wine/white wine 200ml water Coriander for garnishing METHOD: Heat up wok with oil, sauté ginger and garlic until fragrant Add in cockles, chili sauce, tomatoes sauce, curry powder and water stir fry a while and covered to bring to boil. Once Cockles shell open indicates cockles cooked and ready to dish up. Garnish with coriander 辣椒，番茄酱和咖喱粉炒鲜蚶 材料： 1公斤蚶 2汤匙辣椒酱 2汤匙番茄酱 1茶匙咖喱粉 1汤匙蒜末生姜片 1汤匙料酒 200毫升水 香菜为配料方法： 烧热油，爆香姜，蒜 加入蚶，辣椒酱，番茄酱，咖喱粉和水翻炒一会儿，覆盖以煮沸。一旦蚶壳打开表示蛤熟了，准备上碟。撒上芫荽。

BBQ Cockles 烧烤蚶/蛤蜊

BBQ Seafood Part 2 – Cockles

 25th October Sunday
After the episode one with mussels, the following day, we had another round of sun, sea and beach with climax on cockle-picking! However, this time we ventured a bit further by driving 45 minutes north from Auckland to Okoromai Bay at Shakespear Regional Park.

We did plan for cockle-picking as part of itinerary of the day but we were also prepared to be empty handed and just spend our day picnic at the beach. But to our surprise we ended up with stomach and bucket full of cockles. I have never seen so many live cockles in my life before not to mention to be able to harvest so many of them. J

But to get to them, we had to wait for low tide that was when the highlight began! When the sea waters subside, we had to trudge in icky mud all the way and it was quite a distance out from the beach. The further we went the larger the cockles would be. But, everyone is only allowed to pick up to maximum 50 cockles and we had 4 families with headcounts of 16 persons, so do your calculation and guess how many we picked for that day J

At first, we planned to bring the cockles back to brine for a day to allow the cockles to spit out the sand before we can consume them. But, when I saw others just wash them using tap water and barbecue on the spot. I was curious and checked out with one of the picnickers and they even offered me to taste the BBQ cockle and it was so fresh and no sandy taste at all.

So, when we saw one of the parks wood-burning BBQ was vacant, we quickly occupied it. We were lucky that there was still fire in, which saved us a great hassle to start a fire again. We continued our barbeque by adding dried tree twigs and branches collected from the ground. Later only we realized we had violated the rules that we were not allowed to use any dried branches and twigs in the park for the BBQ:-P

Nevertheless, I must say these were the best cockles I ever tasted, they were so fresh with its own salty flavor, of course it would be even better if we had brought lemons and squeeze on them, yum, yum, yum! Thank god neither of us have suffered any shellfish poisoning which we were so worried about after consuming that many of cockles.

So, here to share our BBQ highlight.

Cockle picking

BBQ cockles

 

Wood burning BBQ Cockles

 

Cooked Cockles



Delicious fresh cockles

Even though we had tried hard to consume as many cockles as we could on the spot, we still had a bag full to bring back. So, what to do with all these cockles?

BBQ Hot plate Mussels with Onions and Garlic 烧烤洋葱蒜末青口

BBQ Seafood Part 1 –Mussels

I'm feeling so worn out today after having two consecutives BBQ outings over a weekend. I was really thankful we were blessed with superb sunny spells for us to enjoy sun, sea and beach outings. It has been long overdue since we had miserable wet winter for months. This winter was exceptionally wet we suffered really bad winter flu. In fact I still have not fully recovered from coughing. I'm really looking forward for the warm weather to come.

Last Friday, hubby told me the weather forecast for the weekend was going to be sunny for the entire Labour day long weekend implying we should plan some outings. Well, in Kiwi culture nobody stays home when the sun is out J.

24^th October Saturday morning, Hubby came to me and suggested an impromptu afternoon tea at nearby park Little Shoal Bay, 10 minutes away from our house. After making a few phone calls we had another two families to join us. When I asked what to prepare? Hubby said "I misses mussels and mussels are on sales at $1.99 per kg, so why not BBQ mussels for afternoon tea?"

Frankly, only in NZ, we can enjoy mussels the way like this, back home in Malaysia these will be delicacy and only be available in fancy buffet meals.

So, we had grilled mussels on BBQ hotplate for adult

Mussels with Onions and Garlic     

onions sausages for kids J

BBQ HOTPLATE MUSSELS WITH ONION AND GARLIC INGREDIENTS: 2kg Mussels 2 cloves of finely chopped garlic 1 sliced Onions 2 Lemons for juice 1 roll of aluminium foil Chopped Chili (optional) White Wine/Cooking wine METHODS: Scrub and de-beard mussels. (I spent more than 30 minutes to scrub and wash 2 kg of mussels) Heat BBQ hot plate. (The park provides a free button pressed BBQ hotplate J) Make a few rectangles aluminium foil and place 8-10 mussels on each. Spread chopped garlic, slices of onions, chili and drizzle some white wine or cooking wine and wrapped the foil. Place the foils on the hot BBQ plate for 5-8 minutes or until the foils puff up. Open the foils to check if mussels are open, squeeze in lemon and serve.   烧烤洋葱蒜末青口 材料2公斤青口 2瓣蒜头切碎 1粒洋葱切片 2粒柠檬 （挤汁） 1卷铝箔 辣椒（可选） 白葡萄酒/料酒 方法： 清洗青口和去胡子。 （我花了30多分钟，洗擦2公斤的青口） 热烧烧烤炉。 （公园提供了一个免费的按钮烧烤炉具） 用铝箔做成方包裹，每个放进8-10 粒青口。 撒上切片洋葱，切碎的蒜头辣椒，和一些白葡萄酒或料酒。 烧烤5-8分钟，或直至铝箔膨胀。 打开铝箔，检查是否青口已打开表示熟了就可挤柠檬汁调味。