Fulfilling indeed is Food Blogging. For those of us who love to cook and blog, it is indeed a fulfilling hobby and I have been enjoying this “double-treat” hobby for the past 1 1/2 years. Of late, this hobby has also been paying off financially in the form of advertisements which appear on this blog. The monthly income from this blog is more than sufficient for me to pay for one whole year’s hosting and blog-related fees (and also subscription to internet broadband at home).

What I have discovered is that apart from the recipes or text in each post, food photography plays an important part in the success of the food blog. Hence, I have been hard at work trying to improve on my food photography lately. If you have a food blog, pay as much attention to your food photography as to your blog contents. As they say, a new reader might fall in love with your blog at first sight!

Going back to advertisements – you will notice that I have this longish vertical advertisement on the sidebar from Foodbuzz. I am honoured to be a Featured Publisher of Foodbuzz as that entitles me to special privileges and earnings from their advertisement network. I am not allowed to reveal the terms of payment by reason of the confidentiality agreement but suffice to say, it is one of the best advertising programmes out there in terms of payout. To sign up, you will need to complete a survey (which I also did) and await their approval. Only food bloggers qualify. If you are a food blogger and have not joined Foodbuzz, you are missing out a lot!

As for me, I think I am really going to enjoy the following months of food blogging and I hope you will enjoy this asian recipe blog too

The year 2007 has been a record of sorts as far as this site is concerned. I bought this domain and moved servers from Blogger to my own hosting sometime in early January. At that point of time, traffic was still relatively low and I was getting about 40 readers subscribing to this site. Today, thanks to your support and continued reading, traffic has leapt to no less than 10 fold and I currently have 191 loyal readers who subscribe to this site and continue to receive the latest posts I put here. This site would not be here today without your visits and I must thank you for that. Special mention goes out to Tigerfish, Rasa Malaysia, Lilian, Simcooks, Melting Wok, Reese and Babe_KL for being supporting this site and leaving lots of comments around to keep this cyber kitchen of mine lively.

This site has undergone a couple of facelifts and I am quite happy with the current look. For 2008, I hope I would be able to afford a customised web site design and to double my subscribers (if you have not subscribed, why don’t you subscribe to this site through RSS or email? It’s free and you will be notified of all the latest posts here). I am also looking forward to putting up some traditional recipes including bak chang and popiah over here. It should be an exciting year ahead. If there are anything you would like to see featured here or any suggestions for this site, do leave me your thoughts at the end of this post.

There are about 80 or so recipes posted in the year 2007 and some of you have been tried some of the recipes and informed me that the recipe works and that you it will feature in your family recipes from then onwards. Some of the recipes are my favourites too and today, I will feature the Best of Delicious Asian Food 2007. Definitely Hochiak!

January

Sambal Ikan Bilis with Tang Hoon

A simple no-frills sambal which is cooked by mum at home quite regularly. Good to serve with plain white rice or as a condiment to nasi lemak.

February

Pork Ribs in Plum Sauce

My very first using of the slow cooker to cook pork ribs without the adding of water. The cooking made the meat so tender that it literally slips off the rib once you place it in your month. An absolutely simple to cook dish and very appetising indeed.

March

Kolok Mee

A famous dish from Sarawak. It has made itself up into the 2nd most popular recipe on this site. Amazingly easy to get the taste right.

April

Pork Leg Hoi Sin Stew

Can be sinfully delicious especially when you consider the melting bits of pork leg. This is one of my mother-in-law’s specialty and it is now enjoyed by a couple of readers across the globe. Read the rest of this entry »

The Delicious Asian Food Fest has ended and though I am a little disappointed that there were only 3 submissions, nevertheless, I must say that the 3 submissions were of high quality and I must thank them for taking part. In fact, the 3 submissions are all some of my favourite chinese snacks and if you see the sample pictures here, you will know why.

The first to submit was Jo, the author of *~Riceballz~*. She shared her family recipe for Bak Chang (triangular shaped rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves). It is not a recipe for beginners and it can be a labourious task making these but the effort usually pays off when you dig into these lovely dumplings.

The next to submit was Takfenglili of Life is Beautiful; Life is Love. Takfenglili generously shared with me their (yes, Takfenglili is actually Tak Feng and Lili) recipe for Chai Kueh which is Vegetable Rice Noodle. A mixture of vegetable and prawns are wrapped in a rice noodle sheet before steaming to make this delicious looking parcel. Great for afternoon tea, I must say.

Finally, Elaine of A Series of Kitchen Experiments came up with her recipe for oblong looking Har Gows (Shrimp Dumplings) which is a favourite in Dim Sum restaurants. Reading the recipe makes one realise that these dainty treats take lots of effort to make. No wonder they are so delicious!

Most of the recipes here at Hochiak! Delicious Asian Food are Chinese as I am Chinese. However, there are thousands of recipes out there which represent Asian food which I’ve yet to discover or learn how to cook them.

I think it is about time to create some kind of promotion for Delicious Asian Food here. Not from my recipes but from you! I would like to invite all of you to participate in the Delicious Asian Food Fest by submitting to me a recipe which you have posted in your blog. Only one recipe submission per person and it must be an authentic Asian recipe, or at the very least, heavily influenced by ingredients found in Asia. Read the rest of this entry »