After revisiting Yip Kitchen’s kon low meen, or dried wonton noodles, I’ve been craving it like crazy. Of course I can’t be driving to Sunway Pyramid every time I want to eat kon low, right? And I hate going to coffee shops and hawker stalls because they’re so dirty.

At any rate, the hawker version only has wonton and char siew, or barbecued pork. But I like it with siew yoke, or roast pork with the crispy skin. So what to do? Make my own premium version at home with char siew, siew yoke and wonton. How about that ?

I buy the char siew, siew yoke, choy sum or Chinese leafy greens, and loose wonton noodle from the market. They come in, what I call, swirls. If you eat at the hawker’s, one swirl makes one plate of noodles.

For the wontons, you need wonton skins and ground pork seasoned with a dash of salt and pepper. To wrap the wonton, simply plop a teaspoon of meat into a wonton skin and fold up the sides to make a small bundle, giving the sides a squeeze to ensure the bundle doesn’t split open.

I usually have half a wok of water on the boil while I’m working on the other stuff. Once the wontons are wrapped, blanch them in the boiling water for 5 minutes till they’re cook through. Then blanch the choy sum which has been cut into 1-inch lengths. Leave aside.

For the sauce for one swirl of noodles, you need to lay these ingredients out on each plate (and you can vary the amounts depending on your own preference):

• 1+ teaspoon of dark, thick soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons of soy sauce
• 1 dessertspoon of oil
• 1 dessertspoon of oyster sauce

Place one swirl of noodles into boiling water. Use chopsticks to stir the noodles to prevent them from sticking together. It’s just like cooking spaghetti. But wonton noodles are finer and softer so you need to cook them for 3 minutes or less.

Then you need to kor lang hor which means scoop out the noodles and run them through cold water for 1 minute to cool them down. Then put them back into the boiling water and cook for another 1 minute. This process makes the noodles crisp.

Scoop out the noodles and place in the plate which has been readied with the sauce. Add in a few wontons and some choy sum. Use chopsticks to mix everything on the plate well into the sauce. Top with slices of char siew and siew yoke. For garnishing, sprinkle on some chopped spring (green) onions and Chinese parsley.

That’s it, you’re ready to dig in. Oops, almost forgot the pickled green chillies. If you don’t have those on hand, you can just cut up some raw red or green chillies. I eat mine with both pickled green chillies and raw birds’ eye chillies.

If you liked this post, subscribe to our RSS feed for more recipes, restaurant reviews and mouth-watering updates. If you've tried this recipe or restaurant, drop us your comment or feedback.

I used to have lunch at a chicken rice restaurant in Sunway Pyramid years ago. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant, only that they had some seriously delicious char siew (barbecued pork) and siew yoke (roast pork) dishes.

Strangely I haven’t been able to find that restaurant until a couple of weeks back. Well, this time I was determined to find it because I’ve been craving their roast pork noodles for such a long time . So I dragged my kids from floor to floor looking for familiar stores that would lead me to this place.

At this point, it should be noted that I’m not the sort of person who’d go out of my way to track down good food, no matter how highly recommended. But this restaurant has left such yummy memories with me that I just had to find it!!!

And I did. It’s on the ground floor near the skating rink. It’s called Yip’s Kitchen now with an upgraded look and even a guitar-playing waiter singing out front to entertain and tempt shoppers to step inside.

If there was any doubt in my mind about whether this was the right restaurant, the siew yoke noodles confirmed it for me! Its crispy, crackling skin is all too familiar and brought back a rush of lunchtime memories. Yes, it’s still as yummy as I remember it.

My younger daughter had the char siew rice. Still good.

My older daughter had the curry chicken rice, which I presume is a new menu item as I don’t remember them having this back then.

I made a very simple Thanksgiving dinner, with a difference, since I couldn’t find any frozen turkeys selling at my regular grocery stores.

I bought 9 slices of frozen Australian lamb chops and decided to grill them. I marinated them with salt, pepper, half a cup of ginger juice and 1+ cup of barbecue sauce for about an hour. That’s it.

My oven has 3 built-in functions - microwave, grill and bake. I chucked the whole pan in and grilled the chops, sliced parboiled potatoes and sliced onion rings for an hour.

Meantime, I prepared the tropical salsa. I diced one onion, one tomato and a few sprigs of parsley. I opened a can of cubed pineapples and added that to my bowl with a few tablespoons of the syrup. A quick squeeze of lemon and I’m done .

This simple grilled lamb chop is a nice change from the black pepper lamb chops which I sometimes buy pre-marinated from the store. This is non-spicy that even younger kids can eat.

I had two cans of mushroom carbonara sauce sitting around. They came free when I bought two bottles of Prego pasta sauce.

The last time I used sauce from a can, my kids didn’t care for the taste. So what was I supposed to do with these two cans? Cook ‘em, of course .

I used:

• 2 cans of Prego mushroom carbonara sauce
• 1 large onion, diced
• 6 slices of back bacon, sliced long
• spaghetti
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• dried parsley

Boil the spaghetti till al dente. In a non-stick pan, lightly fry the bacon in olive oil for about two minutes. Then add the onions and saute till they become translucent.

Pour in the carbonara sauce. Use a little water to rinse out the cans and pour that in as well. Bring to a simmer and add the spaghetti to the sauce. Mix well. Serve with a sprinkle of parsley.

I prefer mixing the spaghetti in the sauce while it’s still in the pan to spooning the sauce over the spaghetti because I find the sauce is more evenly distributed and sticks better.

Linguine or fettucine would’ve gone better with this sauce but I was fresh out of those so I used spaghetti instead. You can be really flexi with this and use any pasta you like or happen to have sitting around. Enjoy!

We had dinner twice at TGI Friday’s last month, and it typically sets us back by over rm250 each time. Although my kids love the food there, I’m sure there must be a more homey, less expensive option.

How about this? A sumptuous homemade meal of black pepper lamb chops, soft potatoes and mesclun salad for a fraction of the price. Sound good?

I bought 5 large slices of black pepper lamb chops from Jusco for rm20+. Besides the price, the other thing I love is that they’re pre-marinated and ready to pop on the pan when I get home.

Hey, tell me, what’s not to love about someone having done your homework, eh ?

So all I do is cut one large onion into rings. I heat up my non-stick pan on high, and add a fairly big drizzle of olive oil. First I throw in some of the onions and leave for a minute before layering on the first batch of lamb chops.

I lower the heat to medium and cook each side of the meat for about 5 minutes before turning over. In fact, I add two tablespoons water into the pan to make absolutely sure the meat is cooked through.

Once the water evaporates completely and the oil sizzles again, the lamb chop goes on a plate with the parboiled potatoes, lightly sauteed in olive oil.

I use a bag of prepacked fresh mesclun salad that comes with lots of rocket (aragula) and lettuce. To that, I add whole baby carrots and cut celery with a generous squeeze of thousand island dressing.

That’s it! This whole meal costs me about rm40 for the four of us. And yummy doesn’t even begin to describe the taste of this homemade Western meal. My kids booked me for an encore right there .

I bought some taupok, or tofu puffs from the market because I was thinking of trying my hand at making my own vegetarian curry. But I changed my mind when my neighbor said she’d get me a tub of vegetarian curry from the temple.

So I decided to stuff the taupok with some meat and fry it. I think some restaurants serve this as an appetizer or hors d’oeuvres. Taupok is a roughly 2-inch square tofu puff that’s hollow inside.

So what you need is:

• 10-15 taupok, cut into half
• 100 grams of ground pork
• 2 cups of cooking oil
• salt and pepper to taste

The first thing I do is to season the ground pork with some salt and pepper, and leave aside while I cut the tofu puffs into halves.

Using a teaspoon, I stuff the ground pork into the hollow of each taupok half. Then I heat up the cooking oil on high heat and drop the taupok in, one by one.

I kept my stuffed taupok very basic as I was in a bit of a rush. But if you’re planning to serve these as hors d’oeuvres, you can pretty up the stuffing with shredded carrots and green (spring) onions.

I serve these hot from the wok with chilli sauce and ketchup right out of the bottle, provided there’s still any left after the kids are done pinching .

Porridge is a great comfort food for days when you’re feeling under the weather or have no appetite. I start out with 1 cup of rice in double the amount of water. Boil on low heat so the grains get a chance to slowly open up. Add more water if it starts drying up before the rice turns soft.

I cut up a bit of pork into thin slices and season with salt and pepper, and a light drizzle of cooking oil. Meantime I have a handful of dried oysters soaking in a bowl of water. Later I have to carefully rinse out the oysters because there’s usually bits of sand caught in it.

When the rice comes to a boil, I add the dried oysters, pork slices and a handful of dried scallops, washed. Keep adding water and keep the heat low to give the porridge time to soften and a chance for the sweetness of the pork and seafood to be infused into the porridge.

When you’re satisfied with the consistency of the porridge, season to taste with salt, pepper, sesame oil and a sprinkle of chopped spring onions. That’s it, simple. You’ll notice I didn’t add a lot of oil. I like to kinda keep it plain.

Incidentally McDonald’s has a chicken porridge (below). What’s interesting about this porridge is that it’s garnished with chopped spring onions and chilies for that spicy kick (I can’t complain, they seem to know my taste ).

We eat entirely too much chicken these days. So it’s nice to have a bit of pork now and then, nothing too chunky though. I like pork ribs because they’re not too meaty, not fatty at all.

This is the five-spice pork rib dish for our Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner. This is special because, like I said, we don’t eat pork very often.

It’s simple, you just need:

• 4-5 sticks of pork ribs, cut into 2-inch lengths (put on your best smile and get your kindly butcher to do this for you )
• 1 tablespoon 5-spice powder
• salt
• pepper
• sugar

Wash and pat dry the ribs. Marinate with pepper and 5 spice powder. Cover and chuck into the fridge overnight or for a few hours for the flavors to be sink in.

When you’re ready to deep-fry, heat up a fair amount of oil in your wok or pan till hot. You can test by throwing a small loose piece of pork into the oil, and if it bubbles and sizzles, the oil should be hot enough.

Meantime, season the ribs with salt to taste. Throw in some sugar to get the ribs to caramelize to a nice golden color. When done, drain excess oil on kitchen roll.

These pork ribs make great finger food, so they’re a really nice idea for something nice but simple for birthdays, potlucks or Super Bowl nights too.

I had to keep shoo-ing the kids away lest they pinch every last rib before I could get the rest of dinner ready. We had our pork ribs with rice. Nice !