Another lala recipe? Forgive me but I am quite a fan of lala clams and since the lala clams were looking really fresh in the wet market, I couldn’t resist getting my hands on 1 kg of these sweet tasting clams. Initially, I had wanted to whip up a kamheong lala dish but later realised that I’d forgotten to get two of the essential kamheong lala ingredients : curry powder and curry leaves. Without those two ingredients, kamheong lala just won’t be kamheong lala. I’ll kamheong another day then.

Thankfully, as I rummaged through my kitchen, I found some lemongrass and ginger as well as freshly grown bird’s eye chillis. Mum recently moved to my old apartment and I am now babysitting two of her prized bird’s eye chilli plants. In case you are still wondering what is bird’s eye chilli, it is also known as cili padi – probably the hottest local chilli available in this region.

This recipe uses simple but aromatic ingredients which help to lend the dish a sweet and fragrant taste whilst masking any potential “fishy” smell – which is unlikely unless your lala clams are not fresh. Read this post to find out how to prepare lala clams before cooking. Now, though this recipe looks like a stirfry dish, with a little bit of imagination, you can turn this into a sweat inducing and appetising soup. Just add more of the ingredients and water

This is my recipe for Stir Fried Lala with LemonGrass and Bird’s Eye Chilli

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This is a delicious and easy vegetable side dish, easy to cook and tastes really good. I used kailan (aka jie lan, Chinese broccoli, Chinese kale) – which is a popular vegetable in Chinese cooking. It is highly nutritious and has an inherently slight bitter taste (hence sugar is added during boiling to neutralize the slight bitterness).

As a result of brief boiling to cook the kailan, the vegetable is nicely cooked and retains its crunchiness while the dried scallops (kan bei) jazzes up the dish by making it sweeter and more interesting. I learnt this recipe from watching the local (Singapore) variety show三菜一汤and this was one of the dishes whipped up by Mediacorp artiste Michelle Chong. I was impressed with both her culinary skills and her recipe. I tried the recipe soon after watching the show and I really love it, so yummy. I made this from memory after watching the show so I am probably not following her recipe 100% but the end result is still good. Hope you like the recipe too.

This is the recipe for Kailan with Shredded Scallops

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When I was an undergraduate studying in the UK, you will always find me buying chicken wings almost on a weekly basis because it’s one of the cheapest chicken parts available. Apparently, for non-Asians, chicken wings are mainly for the grill rather than stir-fries. So, it has lesser demand compared to the chicken breast or drumstick.

Here in Kuala Lumpur, and probably other parts of Malaysia, grilled chicken wings are commonly found in Chinese coffeeshop eateries. Amongst the most famous is Wong Ah Wah Grilled Chicken Wings located at Jalan Alor Peel. But today’s post is not about Wong Ah Wah’s Grilled Chicken Wings. Today’s post is about how I finally started to use my brand new oven to cook something for myself whilst looking forward to sharing the same with all of you.

As always, I prefer something  simple and doable. So, this oven-grilled chicken wings recipe only requires ingredients which you can easily find and are likely to be sitting in your kitchen and fridge right now.  Feel free to experiment with the marinade as each person’s taste buds vary. Cooking time needs to be adjusted depending on the size of the chicken wings used and the portions to be cooked. A peek into the oven every 10 minutes to check for doneness would be recommended.

This is my recipe for Oven-Grilled Chicken Wings

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It has been a hectic past 3 months and I have not been able to update this blog with more delicious asian food. I will be moving to a new house soon (with a new kitchen fitted with an oven!) and you can expect more recipes to come your way once I settle down.

Anyway, I was back in Kuching early March and my mother-in-law cooked this dish which I found most interesting indeed. Here, we have the bitter gourd (some find it bitter, some insists that it is bitter sweet) given a stir fry and coated with salted egg to give it a unique light salted taste. The other interesting thing I found about this dish is that the bitter gourd is not sliced diagonally or sliced across but rather, the bitter gourd is sliced length-wise, not unlike the satayman who deftly slices cucumber to pair with satay. Basically, you hold the bitter gourd and slice away from you and slowly turning the bitter gourd clockwise or anti clockwise as you continue slicing through. The seed is discarded.

This recipe is easy to cook though I must confess that I did not taste it at all. In case you forgot, I am not partial to bitter gourd. Nevertheless, my wife loved it and there were no leftovers. If you are a fan of bitter gourd and you are bored with the usual bitter gourd chicken recipe, why don’t you give this recipe a try?

This is my mother-in-law’s recipe for Fried Bitter Gourd with Salted Egg

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