The always hungry SoRMuiJAi: A weekend of cooking and a birthday

After last week's conference, I needed this weekend to recover. So I spent the weekend at home watching TV and cooking:

Spaghetti mutated bolognese

I also got to try out a recipe I've kept hidden up my sleeve for awhile. "Braised Pork with egg and coconut juice - Thit Heo Kho". Its a recipe I saw on "Food Safari" awhile back, and instead of looking up the recipe before making it, I decided to make it from memory. Luckily, I have a really good memory! I'm not going to write the recipe since I don't exactly follow the quantities anyway.

Firstly I marinated the pork for a few hours:

Marinated pork belly

Then I defrosted some young coconut juice and removed the flesh to stew the meat in:

Young coconut juice

I added a few hard boiled eggs after simmering the meat for an hour:

Add boiled eggs to the stew

The finished product

I couldn't believe how good this turned out!! (Especially since I didn't follow the recipe) The meat melts in your mouth and the egg is flavoured with the delicious sauce that is sweet with a subtle taste of coconut juice. I will definitely be making this dish again and again! Even my family loved it! The only complaint I got was from my nephew, and that there wasn't enough eggs for him to eat!

It's also my nephew's 10th birthday on Tuesday, but since I've got volleyball on Monday nights, I wouldn't be able to get home in time to bake him a cake for Tuesday. So instead, I offered to bake him a cake for tonight. And since I was baking a cake, we decided to have dinner and celebrate his birthday as well.

Stir fried mixed vegetables with fish cake and pork tongue

This sounds a bit gross, but if no one told you what was in it, you would be asking what is that beautiful meat in the stir fry? Its so tender and....porky...My mum cooked it awhile back, and I've been requesting that she makes it again and again! Its too nice! Oh, and the fish cake was hand made by my sister. Not bad for her first attempt.

Black pepper lamb and chicken casserole

This is one of our family favourites. Its probably more Asian than its casserole considering its seasoned with soya sauce and oyster sauce, but its sooo good! My mum loads the dish up with heaps of coarsely ground black pepper giving the dish a nice heat to the tongue. Usually I always have this dish with a big bowl of instant noodles (No sauce or seasoning) to soak up the sauce.

Pipi in XO sauce on a bed of rice noodles

Pork trotters in vinegar

And of course, there was the cake. Since I didn't decide to make the cake until late last night, I was a bit low on ingredients, but found just enough stuff to whip up two cakes: