Baked Pasta & Baby Portebello Mushrooms

It's been a long time since greenhoihoi has been over to my place (due to lack of transport). So I was thrilled to have her & her 2 boys over for our usualy Friday chit-chat & playgroup meet. I decided to whip up a Baked Pasta.
Ingredients
1 Bottle Leggo's Baked Pasta Sauce

300g Minced pork/beef/chicken
2 Saugages
4 Crab sticks
1/2 Carrot - chopped finely (to get my son to eat his veggies mainly)
1 Red Onion
1 Tbsp Garlic = chopped
3 Cups of uncooked pasta - to be cooked as instructed
Grated cheese

Method
1. Preheat oven at 180'C

2. Cook pasta as directed on the package and let it drain.

3. Use Olive oil to stir fry chopped garlic, onions, carrots, mince meat, & crab sticks. Then add the Pasta Bake Sauce & stirring occasionally until meat is cooked.

4. Layer your pasta in an oven proof bowl (Pyrex) with the sauce mix. When you reach the top, pour in all the sauce mix and decorate the top with the sausages. Sprinkle as much cheese as you like.

5. Put in your pasta & allow it to bake at 180'C for 20 minutes or till the cheese turns a bit brown.

Half eaten already :)

The other dish I decided to whip up was Baked Baby Portebello Mushrooms! I just couldn't resist buying them from Cold Storage when I was doing my grocery shopping.



1 punnet of Portebello Mushrooms - remove the stems & give it a quick rinse. Lay them on your oven proof dish. Sprinkle Olive Oil, crab stick shreds, diced sausages & loads of grated cheese (whatever toppings you like).

I baked them together with the Pasta at 180'C but only for 5-10mins... the mushrooms would be cooked by then.

Pope's Housewarming Tea Party

Popes & SRM invited over to their house for a Tea Party last Sunday. The main purpose for the little get-together was "Housewarming". They have moved into their own place not too long ago. The bunch of close friends that we are decided to have a Pot-Luck do so not to burden Popes too much.

Look at our spread! Simply delicious & satisfying time we had eating & catching up :)

L-R:Green bean Thong Sui (Charbo), Acar + Cocktail Sausages + Fried Mee Hoon + Cucumber & Tomato salad (LSM), Bread pudding Sandwich (Popes), Chocolate Raisin Brownies (yours truly ;p)... and Pulut Inti [SRM - he can cook? ;)]

Another closer shot... the late entry... Mini Quiches (LFN & fiance)... we thought our dearest career woman that hardly cooks did this herself (she tried very hard to convince us actually.. but pecah lubang herself! hahaha! Typical LFN ~ really) These were really yummy & made by her fiance's Aunt who is a caterer & professional cook!

Shanghai Siew Long Pau

Fantastic Siew Long Pau in Shanghai. Each level you go up in this Restaurant, the minimum amount spent per head increase. As the saying goes, "You get what you pay for" . My dearest hubby was nice to belanja me to the highest level for the best Siew Long Pau in the restaurant.

He's actually pointing at Goose Liver Siew Long Pau ;). We ordered a mixture too which consisted of Sharks Fin, Mushroom & Crab Roe. The one with the Straw is actually soup inside.. & also has Crab Meat & Roe. The brown colour appetiser is a cold radish pickled.

These are the Fried delicacies. The round one is covered with small bread pieces and contains Crab Meat, Prawn & Fish paste. The triangular one has Crab Roe included. I liked this the best, even when eated cold. :)

Dinner combination ... # 35?

Tuesday's menu :

Baked Beans with Egg & Fresh Tomatoes

Fried Baby Bawal

Stir Fried Spinach (Bayam) with Anchiovies (Ikan Bilis)

Fried Soft Tofu with Minced Meat Special

Pizza shortcut

This was one of the snacks I whipped up with greenhoihoi during one of our Friday girly meetings with our kids running havoc ;)

We used Lebanese Bread as our Pizza base. Bought some Pizza sauce by Del Monte (not bad), sprinkled chopped ham, pineapple, cherry tomatoes & grated cheese.

Toast it in the oven until just cheese is melted & it looks just about right. The kids enjoyed themselves eating :)

Brownie Cookies

After my successful 1st attempt in doing Chocolate Brownies.. thought of doing Brownie Cookies from the same recipe book "Brownies, Fudges & Toppings" by family circle mini cookbooks

Sheer happiness in being involved & "helping" :)

from this photo you can tell something isn't really right ... :p

hahaha! see? It really didn't turn out like the recipe book's photo at all even though I followed every word of the recipe :p

Sweet November ~ Tau Fu ... Take # 4?

It's the 1st Tuesday of the month of Nov'08 & am on Chef Duty yet again. I've sort of reduced my initiative to really put my thinking cap on to decide what shall I cook for this family of 8 adults (including myself)... the reason being was :-

1) MIL somehow still likes to contribute to the dinner menu

2) Inlaws not used to non-Chinese cuisine ;)

Hence, this is MIL's suggestion for tonight's menu :-

• Stir Fried Tau Fu with Leek/Spring Onions with Siew Yuk ("roast pork")
• Stir Fried Japanese Cucumber with Har Mai & Egg
• Stir Fried Spinach
• Stir Fried Fish with Ham Choi ("salted veggie")

Ok-ok, Chinese home cooking is mostly Stir Fried or Steamed or Deep Fried. Today everything seems to be stir fried.

Stir Fried Tau Fu with Leek/Spring Onions with Siew Yuk ("roast pork")

This is my special impromptu dish. Wanted to do a simple sambal but there was no chilli giling (grinded) in the hse. So I dug out curry paste instead & fried it with carrots, big onion & red capsicum. Not bad :p