Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and is looking forward to the new year!! I know I am!!!

We had a lovely Christmas Day with lots of good food and surrounded by friends. In fact, we even had two Christmas meals in a day!!! Christmas lunch at our friend's place and Christmas dinner at our place!! I'm sure all of us were in some sort of food coma that night!!!

Anyway, for the first time ever, I've decided to cook a traditional Christmas meal, sort of. This was our menu:

• Christmas Honey and Marmalade Glazed Ham
• Bread Rolls
• Coleslaw
• Potato Bake (cooked by my dearest friend)

I actually bought the leg of ham from Woolworths just a few days before Christmas and was frantically looking for recipes on how to glazed a ham as I've never done it before. I think I was a little bit too ambitious and was stressing myself at the same time with "What if it doesn't turn out ok?", "What if it taste yuck", and so on. Did I tell you I've never made bread rolls before too? I was trying to do a lot of things from scratch with my new Thermomix and I'm just glad everything turn out ok!!!

Also, all three of the dishes that I prepared were all made with my Thermomix. I must say, it has been used quite a lot lately and I'm absolutely loving it. It definitely has to be one of my best purchases for the year 2014.

Last but not least, happy new year to all of you!!! Wishing you lots of love and happiness. Thank you Lord for blessing me with a wonderful husband, my lovely daughter Sabina and another baby on the way. Can't wait to start the new year as a family of four.

Food Friday: Home Cooked Char Kuey Teow

If you ever speak to any Malaysian/Singaporean, one of our favourite street hawker food is Char Kuey Teow. After years of ordering this particular dish from restaurants, I've finally decided to try and give it a go at cooking this dish at home.

I've followed the recipe from Rasa Malaysia but I must admit that I did not make the chilli paste myself. I just used store bought sambal belacan (and I forgot to include it in the picture below) which is good enough in my opinion. Another ingredient that I've omitted is the bloody cockles as I'm not a fan of them at all!!! My Mum and Dad loves it with their Char Kuey Teow but I'll always ordered mine without.

So what's my verdict of this recipe? Taste wise, I actually think it's pretty authentic!!! Only mistake I made was I poured hot boiling water to the fresh flat rice noodles I bought and soaked it for 20-30 seconds, even though I was following the packet instructions!! The noodles ended up soggy. If I were to cook this dish again, I'll definitely not pour hot water over the noodles but will just separate the noodles using my hands instead.

Have you ever tried any recipes that didn't quite turn out ok the very first time? Or are you just a brilliant cook where every single dish you cook turn out perfect? :)