Hi!

My name is Boris, and I am approximately 1 month old. I am a cheeky regular hamster and I live with this fat couple and a black cat called Tetley.

My day consist of sleeping in my cozy little cage curled up with my bedding, food and shit.In the night, I like to keep the fat couple awake by running round and round on my wheel and gnawing my cage wires. Hur hur. I also like teasing the cat..as long as I’m in my cage he can’t get me even though he’s tried. Guess his gnawing skills are not as good as mine!His pawing skills are quite good though,but not fast enough for me!

I also love chasing tetley around the house when the fat couple puts me in a contained ball. He’s such a big scarey cat, he runs away from me. Who’s the boss now huh? Y’want a piece of me hah?!He sometimes gets so afraid at this big huge ball heading towards him that he goes to a different room.Hah! I WIN!

I like to eat popcorn and hammy chocolate. I wee on my wheel, which subsequently drips on the floor. The fat couple gets really mad at me but they can’t do anything. hur hur. They tried to stop me from going to my wheel by taking off my ladder, but I am too clever for them – I don’t need my ladder, I can get to it with my strong arms! Comming down proves to be a slight problem though,i usually just brace myself and do a free fall without a parachute.

If you ever come around to visit, please don’t forget that I like popcorn, all sort of crunchy fresh veggies and lentil/beany stuff.It sometimes gives me wind eating all that beans but it keeps the cat away from me!

bye for now!

Unlike my cheena-wannabe self, I adore desserts. I have an extremely sweet tooth, and will only stop when my teeth cries out in pain from the attack of sugars. However, chinese meals are seldom ended on a sweet note, unless you are off for a full sit-down 8 course meal – which happens on Chinese New Years and wedding dinners.

Chinese dessert usually have strange and wonderful names. It is usually some auspicious-sounding name – like four seasons ect. So I have decided to name my self-conccoted desset as well – presenting Growing Treasures.

Ingredients:

Dried white fungus. Be VERY prudent
6 red chinese dates
2-3 pandan leaves (pandanus leaves/ screwpine leaves) tied in a knot
100g of pak kor/ peh kueh (gingko nuts)
a couple of quail’s egg
wonton skin (optional)
rock sugar – according to taste

Soak the white fungus in warm water for a couple of hours. The reason this dish is called growing treasures is because the fungus grows and expands and nearly pop! It is HUGE. A fistfull will grow into a huge potful if you are not careful, and you won’t be able to fit anything else in it.

After the fungus is semi-soft, pop it into the pot and start boiling. You can now put those in:

rock sugar and tied pandan leaves.

Let it boil away merrily for an hour, and then add the dates. In the meantime, crack open the gingko nuts. Make sure YOU REMOVE THE HEART OF THE NUT with a toothpick…if you do not do that you will be very,very sorry when you bite into the extremely bitter centre. Me, in emulating the year of the golden pig, got some pre-cracked, de-hearted gingko nuts. Cheating, my mother laughed at me.

Depending on how long you’ve soaked your white fungus, you might only need to cook it for 2 hours, or like me, you might need more than that. Gingko nuts need at least an hour in the pot, so time it carefully.

When you are satisfied that the fungus is completely cooked, add the wonton skins and the quails’ egg for a quick boil to heat through,should not take more than 5 minutes.

mmmmmmmm…the sweet taste of home cooked thong sui.

It has been snowing again. I really dislike winter, the dry cold wind, the need to wrap up in endless items of clothings and the general greyness of the weather and the shorter days. Armed with a full supply of adapexin, we are well ready for the warmer weather in the days to come….which will hopefully come very soon. But at days like today, it is hard to imagine the onset of summer!

I sometimes feel I’ve been bitten by the chinky bug..my past couple of posts have all been ‘in the spirit of chinese new year’. Maybe I’m trying to prove to myself I can do happy canto techno…

Chinese New Year in my family starts with a buffet at some 5 starred hotel. Chinese New Year in my small family now starts with a mad dash to my local chinese supermarket) for some steamboat foodstuff. So last Friday, I rushed down to Wing Lee Hong after work to stock up on fishballs, prawns, noodles, wonton skin, bok choy,fish tofu, tofu and some quails’ eggs. I also bought a pot of hotpot bean sauce, just to see how it tasted like. Being in the rush of the hoardes of chinese people preparing for their new year as well made me feel, if only for a moment, part of a community preparing for the same celebration – just like christmas.

Saturday afternoon started with making the stock for the steam boat to go happily boiling in. It was a simple stock made out of 3 good-sized pork ribs and a couple of cracked peppercorns. It is then left merrily boiling for a good 3-4 hours to get the full flavour out of the marrow and the flesh.

For wonton filling:

1 pound minced pork
2 finely minced water chestunts
A dash or two of Lea & Perrins sauce
A dash of good-quality soy sauce (I import mine from Penang,so sue me)
some dried shitaake mushrooms, finely minced
pepper
some cornflour

In the meantime, defrost all the frozen foodstuff. Make sure that wonton skins, if frozen, are left out for a good 12 hours before you need it – it is NOT usable unfrozen.

Wontons are very easy to make, and much fun as well. Mix the inggredients for the filling well,coating all of the meat with the seasonings. With your fingers, wet two corners of the wonton skin. Scoop a spoonful of stuffing and place it right in the middle, close the corners up so it forms a triangle. Apologies for lack of pictures – it was then that my camera decided to tell me that I am running out of pictures, so I had to be selective.

Its so easy even Bacon can make it .

Oh, don’t forget to hard boil your quail’s eggs as well. I once saw some kwai lous drop the whole egg in shell and all in the steamboat’s stock – DO NOT DO THAT! Imagine all the chicken shit that you would be slurping in addition to your delicious stock.Gross.

Boil the eggs separately, and peel the shell off – that way all the bird crap on the shells are boiled and removed separate from your stock.Quail’s eggs are pretty small, I tend to just boil it for 3 mins and turn the gas off whilst it continues cooking.

ta-da!

Start dropping whatever you want to eat into the boiling stock. Trick is, anything that is floating is cooked and ready to eat, so tuck in! Most people like rice or noodles to go with it as well, but seeing that me and bacon weren’t that hungry we gave that a miss.

Hmm…what’s for dessert?