2013 New Year Eve Dinner

This is how we celebrate New Year with family..

greek salad

in order: greek salad, homemade fries, kibbeh with beef fatayer, spinach and cheese fatayer

yumm...

Dinner for two

This is very simple dinner for two. Easy to make and light, for those whose watching for their weight it will be great. 

Chicken finger 

Potato and Tomato baked

Tuna Salad

Ingredients:

Chicken finger

chicken ( cut into strips)

buttermilk

flour

breadcrumbs season with salt n pepper

egg

oil for frying

Method: Marinade chicken in buttermilk for 15mins, then dip in flour, then in egg and into the breadcrumbs. You can fried or baked in oven as preferred.

Tuna salad

Bell Peper (red and yellow or as desired)

can of Tuna in water 

cherry tomato

kalamata olive

onion

lettuce 

cucumber

dressing: lemon juice, olive oil, salt n pepper

Method: Chop everything as desired and toss in with dressing.

Potato and tomato baked

Tomato

Potato

mozarella cheese

Parmesan cheese

olive oil

salt n pepper

Method: Thinly slice tomato and potato, then season with salt and pepper. Oil the bottom of baking dish with little oil. Arrange potato and tomato single layer. spread grated mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese on top. season with salt n pepper. cover with foil and bake on pre-heated oven 190 degree Celsius for 20 mins then remove cover and baked another 10mins until top browned.

Baron Empain Palace, Cairo

This is Baron Empain palace a Belgian wealthy engineer, entrepreneur, industrialist and egyptologist..many thing about him. Anyway he was responsible for the development of electric railway in cairo and many other things. This palace is located next to Baron Hotel, Heliopolis in Cairo. It has hindu influence in its design. It is said to be inspired by the Angkor Watt. For me its look antique and unique. 

Front view of the palace

Palace lawn

Couldn't enter inside the palace so just pose outside

Hindu motif on the front gate

Pass by this site few times, it was sad to see that its not in used for touristic purpose or maintain as heritage site. It such a great palace.

Nestum Layer Cheese Cake

 I don’t know what it is with the cheese cake. Recently, I’m keeping on imagining having a creamy and gooey cheese cake and the thought always comes to my mind. So for the Chinese New Year celebration (not that I celebrate it, but there will be a long weekend plus 2 days of public holiday), I’m planning to bake a cheese cake to satisfy my craving.

So I Google a simple recipe non baked cheese cake. I found one – Nestum Layer Cheese Cake. It’s so easy to make that I almost can’t believe I made it.   

Ingredients

500g cream cheese

1 ½ cup of condense milk

Digestive cracker

1 tbs lemon juice

1 cup of fresh milk

Nestum 

Steps;

1.  Beat cream cheese with condense milk & lemon juice until smooth.
2.  Line the cake pan with baking paper. Dip the digestive cracker into fresh milk.
3. Line the first layer with the cracker, second the cheese and nestum.
4. Repeat the process until finish.
5. Chill the cake in a fridge overnight.  

lahme biajin

Homemade lahme biajin (beef pie). Usually this dish is made rounded shape in middle east. But i love the boat shape that turkish version have so made mine like it. 

Beef cannelloni

This recipe is tried out of blue. I never tasted cannelloni before and was requested to make it. I was like what??? So i googled it out and found out few recipe. I bought no cook cannelloni shell and some minced beef. There are 3 part for this recipe. 

Filling (beef and Béchamel sauce)

Tomato Sauce

Assembly

For the Filing ( Beef and béchamel): 

Heat some oil and add minced beef. cook till no longer pink and the water juices evaporated. Then set aside. In another sauce pan melt butter then add some flour mix well until smooth. After that slowly add milk to it while stir continuously to avoid any lumps. once the sauce is smooth and lump free. Add to it grated parmesan cheese and season with salt and pepper, stir until cheese is melted. Once done mix the béchamel to the beef cooked earlier.

Tomato Sauce:

Saute thinly slice onion in olive oil till transparent. Then add minced garlic, chopped tomato (skinned and cored), dried thyme, dried oregano, salt and pepper. Stir and add stock. Bring to boil and let simmer for about 15mins

Assembly:

Filled the cannelloni tube with the beef mixture. Place single layer on heatproof dish. Poured some tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish. On top of the cannelloni pour the tomato sauce. Layer some mozzarella and Parmesan or Cheddar cheese on top. Add some herbs, salt and pepper. 

Cover with foil and cook according to package instruction. Once cook uncover and put under broil to brown the top.

 I serve with simple salad with bread crouton.

Shell Pasta with Pesto Chicken and Sun Dried Tomato

This recipe i recreate after eating pesto pasta at one of husband friend home. It was my first time eating pesto pasta. I immediately fell in love with strong basil flavor in olive oil and enhanced with the taste of parmesan cheese. I straight away asked the wife how she made the sauce. i dont have any paper and pen so i try to remember it.

When return home i was thinking about it but then i realize i dont have food processor to minced all the ingredient. So i do some cheat. i bought Basil Pesto and Sun Dried tomato. So here it is Pasta with pesto chicken and sun dried tomato.

To do the pasta, just boiled the pasta according to package instruction. 

While thats boiling slice some chicken breast into small cube. Then stir fry with minced garlic and season with salt and pepper till cook throughly. I like it till little brown.

Then slice thinly sun dried tomato and put into a saucepan together with a tablespoon or two oil from the sun dried tomato bottle. i love the oil taste. warm just a little and add pesto to it mix and add chicken mix throughly. There is no need to cook the pesto sauce it can be serve in room temperature. But for me i like it a little bit warm.

When the pasta is cooked. Drain and mix with the pesto sauce and serve. Its that simple added you bought the ready made pesto sauce. I will make my own sauce once i buy my own food processor.

As the side dish, i make greek salad. Its easy to make salad. Slice some tomato, cucumber, green or colored capsicum,  tear some lettuce leave and thinly slice onion. Mix together and put some kalamata olives to it.

For the dressing just  squeeze a lemon, put into small jar. The add minced garlic, salt, pepper, dried oregano and olive oil. Shake shake shake done...

To serve crumble some feta cheese and put on top of the salad, pour the dressing and mix well. Done

Nasi Lemak without sambal

As promise this blog is about food and travel. So am gonna start with my first recipe. My version of Nasi Lemak, popular Malaysian food. I used to eat this for breakfast almost every week while i was working at Intel Penang. They serve very nice Nasi Lemak. But i am having one problem with normal Nasi Lemak, I dont like the spicy sambal. Always i ask the store owner to saperate the sambal from the rice so i can enjoy the rice and just dip once a while the chicken in the sambal just to give it kick.

I know those who love spicy food will laugh at my Nasi Lemak because what is Nasi Lemak without sambal? Anyway this is how i like it :)

For the rice i use a cup of basmati rice washed and saute little bit with onion chopped finely, garlic mined and ginger thinly sliced. Then add 2 cup of water with coconut milk and i put few drop of pandan flavor and some salt. There is no real pandan leave around so i use the extract instead. Then when cook i serve with some ginger fried chicken, roasted ground nut, hard boiled egg and cucumber slices.

Card box cat house

As i mention earlier this is my another DIY project. We have more then 10 cats at home. I lost count cause the number is changing, new cats coming in others going for adoption and so on. Anyway since few boxes laying around why not make something for them to play with.

Initially i create for my white cat.

Complete house but after this i made little changes to the entrance. I cut out an arch instead of original triangle shape.

 Look how interested he is in it. 

fell asleep while i cut the roof.

This is double storey house for the kitten at in laws house. Its made of four box of mineral water.

This third one is for one of the oldest cat that we have. He is sick and getting cold so this house is for him to chilled in. Sadly he passed away few days after, been sick for more then a week.

There is another fourth house for the handicap cat that we have but i havent take any picture of it yet. will do soon. The house especially decorated not like those in the picture. As for now i have bought more decorating item for the house. Still some on the way to finish.

enjoy!

My DIY at home

Recently i have been so into DIY things. Been looking online for some DIY other people made make me want to make my own creative. I am not that bad am creative too, thats what i am thinking to myself. I got some old stuff thats not in use anymore so why not start something from it. So I have two project in mind. Cat card box house and macbook sleeve. Those fancy sleeve are sold very expensive, i will do my own.

First, here is my macbook sleeve made from old wool pullover.

The little flower is made of black button and grey string.

 From the left over of the clothes i made little pillow for my cat. Originally i was thinking to make small pouched for the macbook charger but the cat was sleeping on the sleeve as i knit it so i made pillow instead. The writing was made from the same material with some knitting around it.

Everything is knit by hand.