Life After the Covid-19 Pandemic

When I stopped cooking after we started the bike shop in 2012, we used to go out as a family for breakfast and dinner.  It was a great time to bond and the children enjoyed eating out.  I started cooking again when the Covid-19 Pandemic was reported in 2020.

To avoid the crowd I started buying my groceries online from Tesco.  I continue to shop there after it was taken over by Lotus. My family members like thier coffee buns (Roti Kopi) and Cheese Onion Buns. So I buy them on a weekly basis for breakfast.  They are available in packs of 4. 

Since last November I have not been able to buy their Cheese Onion Buns online. I found out from Hafiz, a very friendly Store Manager at its Kajang branch where I collect my orders, that not all outlets sell this bun.  That is why it is no longer listed online. Most of the time the Cheese Onion Buns will have been sold out when I get there to collect my order.

So, that started my quest to look for Cheese Onion Bun recipe to bake in my breadmaker.  I bought it from Cosway during the pandemic, when they had a promotion running.

My favourite bread to make is the Milky Loaf.  

This is the recipe for it. 

As you can see, I can choose the "dough setting" on my breadmaker to make the dinner rolls with the same ingredients.  If I make dinner rolls, I can top them with onion and cheese to bake in the oven.  But I prefer the lazy way.  Once my loaf is baked, I cut it in half horizontally.  I then slice the top half of it 3/4 way through so that I can slip in my fried sliced onion and cheese to airfry.  If you watch this video, you will get an idea of what I did.  You will also discover from it other ingredients you can shove into the cuts to flavour your bread or buns.

Did that but I still prefer the ones from Lotus as it did not turn out cheesy enough.  

Then I found this Cheese Bread recipe. 

It requires 1 cup of sredded cheese which is 120g.  I used a 200g pack of Emborg Shredded Mozzarella Cheese to bake it.   But I am still not happy at how it turned out and decided to modify the recipe. I used the ingredients for the Milky Loaf and added 125g pack of shredded Parmesan cheese, as it was on offer at Lotus. I like it better baked this way as it tasted cheesier.  

However, eating it with peanut butter, which I like eating, will kill the cheese flavour.

After all my trouble, I found out recently from Hafiz that if I call Lotus with the number he gave me, the staff at their "Self Collect" counter will keep the Cheese Onion Buns for my next collection.

The other bakery that I will buy from Lotus is their Croissant which is also available in packs of 4 pieces.

I usually serve it with sardine which I have cooked and stored in the fridge.  This is the recipe for cooking it:

I am usually wary about buying house brand food item but I am happy with the canned Sardine with Tomato supplied by Lotus.  

Other than the airfryer, bread and sardine kept in the fridge can also be heated up with a sandwich toaster.

I have a reason for cutting my loaf in half horizontally. The containers I have, large enough to store my bread are shallow. After I cut it up horizontally, I will slice it to store in the fridge. This is the top half section of my Milky Cheese Loaf with 2 peices of Milky Loaf leftover from an earlier bake.

This is the bottom half section of my Milky Cheese Loaf.  Though I chose "light" colour setting, it turned out darker than my Milky Loaf baked at "medium" colour setting.

Shortcuts for cooking a curry dish

The easiest way to make a coconut curry dish is to buy ready made chilli paste for curry. That will eliminate the process of pounding chillies with the many other ingredients that will make the curry flavourful. However, check the packaging to see that it has cooking instruction for making the curry dish. I used to get my homemade chillie paste from my aunt.

Whenever I am not sure about how to use a ready made sauce or paste at the sundry shop I usually go to, I will check with the store owner. If the store owner cannot help me, I can check out the brand online. When I shopped online at TESCO before it became Lotus, I noticed that they usually include the cooking instruction for the paste I am interested in, which they had extracted from the packaging itself. 

Once you are able to find the chillie paste you like, all you need to add to it is the curry powder for meat or fish, based on what you are cooking, and santan (coconut milk). This is the curry powder I use for cooking fish curry.  It is from my cousin's factory in Melaka.

You can also add to your curry dish any of the following ingredients:

-potato (our family’s favourite choice)

-lady’s finger

-long beans

-cabbage

-tomato

For the santan, I prefer to buy the packet version.  It can keep longer so that I can cook my curry dish anytime I want to as long as I have curry powder and chillie paste in the fridge.

Recently, I discovered an even easier way to make curry. These are the ingredients noted on the packaging:

As you can see from the list, coconut milk is already included in the paste. This is how you can use the curry paste to cook chicken curry.

This is how the Brahim’s chicken curry sauce should look like after it is cooked but I prefer it with more sauce. So, I usually add extra water or santan to the pot. If it is not salty enough, instead of salt, I add soya sauce.

However, I prefer to eat their MRE (meal ready to eat) version which is even easier to prepare. I just put the packet into a pot of boiling water and wait for 3 minutes. I am drawn to this brand because I found out that their rice and dishes are served to airlines passengers too.

I usually serve it in a glass bowl so that if there are any leftovers, I can keep it covered in the fridge. As my glass bowl is microwave safe, the following day, I can just pop it in the microwave oven to heat up for about 2 to 3 minutes. 

As I am not an adventurous eater aka fussy, whenever my family travel overseas for a holiday I usually bring along a mini cooker, instant noodles and some of Brahim’s MREs. I also bring along metal containers to store the food heated up to eat. They are great for days when we do not feel like eating the local food over there or when we have hunger pangs because of the time difference.

MREs with curry or chilli sauce were the best dishes we travelled overseas with as we could also eat it with bread which we could easily pinched from the buffet spread of the hotels we stayed at. 

If you cannot buy ready made curry paste, this is how you can make your own.

Once your curry paste is ready, you can start cooking your curry dish. I prefer to use chicken and potato in the dish. *Note that you only need 2 stalks of lemongrass cut in half. The white portion for making the curry paste while the green portion is for cooking the curry. However, if you are able to buy the curry paste, you can omit adding it to cook this curry dish.

I found this recipe from The Burning Kitchen. Check it out. The mother and daughter team, Bee Leng and Melissa, provides lots of photos and tips which you will find useful.

DIFFERENT WAYS TO COOK WITH GREEN, RED AND YELLOW PEPPERS

I cook green, red and yellow peppers almost every week, so, I need to discover different ways to serve them. 

So far, I have used them to cook:

-Sweet and Sour Pork dish
-four different stir fry dishes by changing the sauces used  
-add celery to leftover stir fry dishes to change the flavour
-use any leftovers to make Korean Street Toast or as toppings for my pizza 

This is my latest discovery. I add any leftovers from my Sweet and Sour Pork dish to leftovers from my Ayam Percik dish. They blend in very well in flavour. 

I discovered Brahim's Percik sauce from TESCO (now known as Lotus). When it was sold under TESCO, their site was very informative as it included ingredients in the paste and cooking instruction, which you can also read off its packaging as follows.  

I usually make my decision to buy prepacked paste based on the ingredients used and whether it is easy  to cook with. By looking at the table I have created based on the above packaging instruction, you can see that it takes only 3 steps and 2 ingredients to cook this dish:

If you are going to use Brahim's method, it is best to keep the remaining sauce in the fridge till it is ready to be used. 

That was how I cooked it till I discovered that I can cook it with my airfyer. I marinate my chicken tighs with the whole packet of sauce in a round metal container and keep it covered overnight in the freezer. The following day, I removed the cover and placed the container, without thawing it, in my air fryer to cook for 15 minutes. Then turn the chicken over to cook for another 15 minutes. I then pour the chicken in a pot or wok and add just enough water to make sure that there is enough liquid in it to simmer till the chicken is tender. It is ready when you see that the sauce has reduced and thickened. 

You can read my cooking instruction more clearly from this table.

Should I use drumsticks to cook this dish, I will cut each drumstick into 3 sections. I use the middle portion for the Ayam Percik dish and the bony ends for making soup.

When I bring some Ayam Percik dish to the bike shop to eat, I usually pack it in a metal container because I can heat it up by steaming it in a mini electric pot. 

Don't throw away the sauce as you can add it to your rice to eat.  It is very flavourful. Sometimes I mixed the sauce into my rice to reheat in a mini rice cooker.

If I served Ayam Percik dish for lunch and there is some leftover for dinner, I can change its flavour by adding it to my Sweet and Sour Pork dish.  I can enhance the flavour further by adding BBQ and black pepper sauce to it. 

I was inspired to do this after checking out how chicken fajitas dish is cooked.

If I am to use pork to cook a version of it, I will most likely just be cooking the Sweet and Sour dish with strips of the meat and add the Percik sauce to taste.

So, if the peppers I bought are large enough, I will prepare all three different dishes on the same day. They are:

1) Sweet and Sour Pork
2) Stir fry dish
3) Korean style toppings for toast or pizza

The Korean style toppings can be served for breakfast while one will be served for lunch and the other for dinner or stored in the fridge to be served the following day. 

MAKEOVER WITH LEFTOVERS: SWEET AND SOUR PORK DISH

Have you ever purchase green, red and yellow peppers at the market?  It is very difficult to find them in similar sizes. So you are likely going to have more of one than the other to cook in your dish.

I used to get my source of peppers in similar sizes from TESCO till Lotus took over. For a family of small eaters, I can cook two different dishes with them. One of them will be Sweet and Sour Pork. If you cut peppers the way I do, you will notice that their curved ends are usually thicker in porpotion. These are the parts that I used to cook this dish. 

 

I tried cooking it with a ready made pack of MasFood Sour Sweet Paste but I did not like how it turned out.

I still prefer it cooked with the following liquid/sauces:

-Mahsuri Spicy Sweet & Sour
-Tomato Ketchup
-Plum Sauce
-Juice from canned Pineapple Slices 
-soya sauce to taste
-*Worcester sauce (only if the sauce is not sour enough after cooking) 

I usually buy pork tenderloin as the meat is tender. The pork used in this dish should be deep fried but I do not like the idea of using lots of oil.  So I sliced the tenderloin into 1 finger thick cutlets and pound it flat with my meat mallet. I discovered from watching how Koreans cook in their restaurants that it will be less messy if you place a plastic over the meat or add corn starch to it before pounding.

I then marinate it piece by piece in my magic sauce:

1) Garlic Oil
2) Soya Sauce and/or Oyster Sauce
3) Sugar

I add cornstarch to the meat once it is thoroughly mixed with the sauces.  The marinated meat can be stored in the freezer till it is time to be used.  

As the meat has been pounded thinly, it does not require a lot of oil or time to cook. For the sweet and sour dish, I only need 3 peices of pan fried cutlets but I usually fry more so that it can be eaten like pork chop for lunch. 

For dinner, I will use a pair of scissors to cut each cutlet into 1-2cm strips. 

When it is time to heat them up to be served, I can break an egg over the meat to fry before serving, thus changing its flavour. 

I tend to cook more sauce than is required for the dish.  

I can use it to add flavour to my:

-leftover rice and prevent it from drying out when I reheat it.
-pork cutlets
-deep fried chicken
-fried fish.

-fried rice.

If I do not have the time to prepare the pork to go with this dish, I will use stored bought chicken nuggets. I air fry a small portion of them with garlic oil in a round metal container until both sides are crispy, which is for about nine minutes. Crispy Chicken Finger is our favourite choice to go with it. 

As I do not like the idea of serving the same dish for lunch and then dinner, I sometimes use the ingredients as toppings for the Four Cheese Pizza 285g that I bought from TESCO/Lotus. I quarter it up air fry two slices at a time for seven minutes in the air fryer.

You can see 2 methods for preparing the crispy pork for the sweet and sour dish in the following table.

You can see how the cutlets are prepared and deep fried for cooking "Crispy Sweet and Sour Pork" from this video.

These are the ingredients the chef used to cook the sweet and sour sauce.

This is how the Sweet and Sour Pork dish with bell peppers, pineapple and onion should be cooked.  The deep fried pork should be the last ingredient to be added to the sauce to prevent it from becoming soggy.

Other ingredients I have added to cook it are:

-1 cucumber deseeded and cubed
-1 tomato deseeded and cubed