Well, I wished for rain and I got rain. So I have to cook some rainy weather food to warm up our tummies and to chase away the sniffles caused by the alternating cool and hot weather.

Chicken curry is the best thing ever and my kids love it. They’ve been trained to eat spicy food from young. It’s a gradual process. Just expose them to spicy food and pretty soon, their tastebuds will be conditioned.

It’s not too difficult to cook chicken curry at home. The end-result is really worth the effort. You need:

• 1 large chicken about 1.5kg, chopped
• 6 ladies’ fingers, cut into half lengths
• 4 large potatoes, quartered

• 3 teaspoons mixed spices, usually consisting of fennel and mustard seeds, coriander
• 4 tablespoons curry powder mix (use the prepacked mix for meat)
• santan, or coconut milk from 1 coconut
• 4 stalks lemon grass, crushed
• 4 stalks curry leaves

• 6-8 cups water
• cooking oil
• salt to taste

First thing I do is to heat up some oil in the wok, or pan. Throw in the mixed spices and leave to pop for a few minutes to flavor the oil.

Add the curry powder mix, then the stalks of lemon grass and curry leaves. Fry all together till the spicy fragrance fills your kitchen and gets your neighbors drooling with envy .

Add chicken pieces, then the potatoes. Fry for a few minutes before adding water to the mixture. Season with salt to taste. Cover the wok and allow to simmer till the chicken and potatoes are softened.

Add the ladies’ fingers followed by the coconut milk. Simmer till ladies’ fingers are softened. Use medium heat throughout the cooking process.

Chicken curry can be a one-dish meal if you’re in a rush, We typically eat it with rice and papadam. Papadams are round crackers made from chickpea flour and Indian spices. Very tasty, I tell ya!

They’re sold in packaged sheets at the Indian store and I fry them myself at home. They make a delicious accompaniment to any meal of curry. My kids sometimes eat it on its own as a snack or with a topping, sort of like a nacho.

Some of my Australian friends have developed a routine of eating Indian curry rice on Fridays. They would run to the nearby Indian restaurant to buy back a mountain of Indian curry and rice.

When they come to KL, they will insist I take them out for spicy Indian food. Who says Caucasians can’t take the heat? Some of them are even better than me and I’m supposed to be the resident Chili Queen!

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’ve been eating kuay teow (or flat rice noodles) soup with fishballs almost every other weekend. Of all the hawker food, I guess I could call this my all-time favorite.

Most weekends, my neighbor will very kindly help me buy from the coffee shop near the market that she goes to. It’s quite tasty and the soup is not too salty unlike some where the soup is like salt water with practically no flavor at all.

Of course, nothing beats the fishball soup I make at home. Just look at this - it’s got tons more ingredients than the hawker version so much so you can’t even see the rice noodles .

I brew the soup overnight and I add 2, sometimes 3 different types of fishball - the white comma-shaped ones, the round white ones and the large fried ones. I’ve also added some foopay, or flat beancurd sheets, and a generous helping of shredded chicken, chopped cilantro and Chinese lettuce (you can’t see it because it’s at the bottom of the bowl).

The hawker only gives you 3 or 4 fishballs, a few shreds of chicken meat and if you’re lucky, a few strands of Chinese lettuce and cilantro. That’s all you get and its taste is nothing compared to the homemade version. I prefer to homecook my own hawker food because the coffee shops and hawker stalls are generally quite dirty. I’m spoilt that way .

I’m not a big fan of rice to start with so when the weather is stifling warm like it is these days, I find rice even less palatable. So sometimes I opt to cook porridge instead. It’s nice and soft and so much easier to swallow. Served with a few simple savory dishes, it makes a very rustic meal.

In the old days, the working class Chinese survived on these sorts of meals. This was considered a poor man’s meal because the plain porridge and savory dishes are the simplest and least elaborate of meals.

We have salted egg which you boil and de-shell just like a normal egg.

As for the anchovies, just fry in a little oil till crispy. They don’t smell fishy and they’re very rich in calcium with the bones intact. In fact, when my kids were just getting into solids, I used to crush up the anchovies into a coarse powder and sprinkle into their porridge.

Then we have the main dish which is mooi choy, a sweetened preserved vegetable, finely chopped. Just fry it with some oil, finely chopped pork and fresh red chillies and a drizzle of dark, thick soy sauce. No need to add salt as the mooi choy is sweetly saltish.

The plain porridge combined with the sweetness of the mooi choy and the savory of the other 2 dishes makes this one of my favorite meals for a hot day!

Since we’re all poorer for rising fuel prices, this is quite an appropriate meal . But actually if you were to have this meal outside, it can be quite costly these days.

This?

Or this

with its heaps of ginger flower buds, onions, cucumbers, lettuce and mint leaves?

Once in a while, I get a craving for Penang laksa, not very often but when I see someone eating it, I can’t resist.

Laksa is a thick round noodle served in a tamarind (assam) fish stock soup with a variety of fragrant herbs and veggies. The laksa we get from the hawker stalls, even the ones that claim to be Penang laksa, which is the best, is not the best.

Very diluted soup. In fact, all I can taste is the sourness, not the fragrance of the herbs. And very diluted ha ko, the shrimp paste that’s unique to laksa, and not nearly enough to add to the oomph.

No Chinese lettuce, hardly any shredded cucumbers or ginger flower buds (bunga kantan), and only a few random pieces of fish floating about if you’re lucky.

So once in a while, when our cravings get the better of us, we’re forced to roll up our sleeves and cook our own with plenty of fish, sliced onions, shredded cucumbers, ginger flower buds, Chinese lettuce, mint leaves and ha ko.

You can see in the second photo how robust the soup is. If you could just smell it … yep, it’s “just too good to be true, can’t take my nose off you” .

We usually cook a huge, big pot of it and stuff ourselves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Mmmm, truly nothing like homecooked Penang laksa.

At wedding dinners, the second or third to the last course is usually fried rice or hor yip fan, fried glutinous rice wrapped in lotus leaves. But at the wedding we went to recently, they served spicy fried rice. What a twist!

I was going to give this course a miss like I usually do. I’m not much of a rice person though most people assume that being Chinese, I should love rice by default .

At any rate, my kids convinced me to try this. They say it’s different and it’s tasty. In fact, they liked it so much (my kids? rice?) they made me conjure my own recipe for it. The verdict: “it’s the same as the one we ate that night, Mom”. So I guess I didn’t do too badly, eh .

A simple twist to the same old fried rice. You need:

• a large bowl of cooked rice (leftovers would be great)
• a handful of medium-sized shrimp, deveined and cut into 2 or 3 smaller pieces
• French beans, diced
• carrot, diced
• fresh red chillies, finely chopped
• a tablespoon of chilli powder
• garlic, finely chopped

I’m using the ’simply grab and go’ method of measurement here, just like my grandma used to do it. Proportions depend entirely on your own preference and those you’re cooking for.

I like it hot with lots of veggies but my kids can’t take too much heat and “we hate veggies!”. So I try to strike a happy medium.

First of all, I heat up some cooking oil in my wok and flavor it with the garlic. Then I add the carrot, French beans, chillies and chilli powder and saute till fragrant.

The shrimps go in next. Stir that around for a bit so it absorbs the flavors before you add the rice. Season to taste and you’ve got yourself a one-dish meal with carb, veggies and seafood. Goes great with a hot cup of Chinese tea afterwards.

I’ve been cooking lunch this entire school week. No kiddin’! I used to cheat by buying the kids’ lunch like once or twice a week. But you know the thing with gas prices these days so hell, we gotta try and cut cost.

I made my kids’ favorite pan-fried fish fillet today and paired it with rice simply because we haven’t had rice for lunch all week! Wha-at, no rice and we call ourselves Asians? Shame on us !

I’m using dory fillets here. If you’ve ever eaten fish at a restaurant, you know it’s darned expensive and you walk out still hungry because the servings are so small. Well, that’s me anyways .

The fillets I buy come frozen in packs of 4 or 5 pieces each and cost less than 10 bucks. I heat up some olive oil in a pan and chuck in a handful of chopped garlic and fresh chillies to flavor the oil.

The fillets go in next to be pan-fried till they’re cooked through on both sides. If the fish is flaky when you cut through it, then it’s cooked. A sprinkle of salt and pepper to taste, and we’re done.

Meantime, my rice is in the rice cooker bubbling away. I blanch 1 carrot and a handful of French beans, both finely cubed, to soften them up a bit. I melt some butter in my pan and add the carrot, French beans and 1 tomato, also finely cubed. Fry them for a minute.

The rice goes in last. Give it a good toss with the veggies in there. Add salt and pepper to taste. And we’ve got a healthy lunch with veggies, fish, carb and a spicy kick to boot.

My neighbor, and then my aunt, came over yesterday with some bachang for me. Yippee!! What can I say, I have two wonderful women who spoil me to the max with their yummy food ?

Bachang or joong in Cantonese is made of glutinous rice and wrapped in dried leaves. I get my free supply of rice dumplings, courtesy of my neighbor and my aunt, every year for the Dumpling Festival (which is today).

I wish I could teach you how to make them but I’m pretty clueless myself. Sadly, wrapping the dumpling is an art I’ve never mastered. It looks easy but it takes a lot of patience and skill to get it right!

I’ve helped my aunt wrap the dumplings many times. Try getting the rice and fillings packed (yes, without spilling a drop) and folded into dried leaves shaped into triangles!

Yes, they must be wrapped just tight enough so they won’t break apart when you boil them but not so tight that they lose their triangular shape. I’m definitely dumpling-challenged !

So I have to rely on these nice women to spoil me with their delicious homemade bachang. Er, I’ve almost never bought the commercial ones. Too much scary news about some being tested and found to contain excessive amounts of boric acid and who knows what else!

Fresh, homemade ones always taste better and are generously packed with filling. Like these ones here are filled with small pieces of pork, Chinese mushrooms, chestnuts and salted egg yolk.

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 ).

Japanese snacks hold a special attraction for me. You know why? Because they always come in such irresistibly colorful packaging and the snacks themselves are so interesting that I just feel like I’ve got to try them .

Another thing I love about Japanese snacks is they come in individual packs. It’s so easy to grab a bunch and throw them into my handbag to crunch as I run my errands.

I usually buy the plain oblong-shaped rice crackers from Jusco for my kids to take to school for recess. These ones here (below) from DH’s trip to Japan are bigger and more fancy with bits of seaweed. They have a stronger, more vivid taste that I really like.

These bite-sized crackers (below), also from DH’s trip though I’m pretty sure you can find them at most Japanese stores, are even more interesting. They’re topped with cheese and a whole almond. The cracker is sweet and crispy, the cheese is soft and salty and the almond packs a great overall crunch.

Can you imagine how the different tastes and textures will come together in your mouth? Be warned, once you start, you can’t stop with these. My kids can finish off the whole pack in no time .

I got my first taste of Vietnamese beefball noodles at a restaurant called the Vietnam House in California. It isn’t exactly Chinese food but it was close enough to curb my occasional craving for anything that even vaguely resembles the Chinese noodles I used to have back home.

Besides I’m a sucker for rice noodles. Vietnamese rice noodles tend to be flat though (just like linguine) while Chinese rice noodles are thin (just like vermicelli or angel hair pasta). Me, I’m not picky .

Flat noodles tend to have more of a bite so it goes well with a more robust soup like this Vietnamese beef ball soup (above). Lean a little closer and you’ll find this soup has a really strong pungent fragrance from the finely chopped cilantro, spring onions and a bunch of other exotic herbs.

Fresh bean sprouts, a sprig of fresh basil and chopped chillies come on a separate dish to be added to the steaming hot soup for that herbilicious freshness. By adding the bean sprouts just before you dig in, it’ll be lightly blanched to keep its wonderful crunchiness.

You also get three kinds of sauces to go with your noodles at Vietnam Kitchen. The spicy chilly paste on the right side of the little dish is the bit that spices it all up for me. The sweet and chilly sauces on the left of the dish are for dipping the beef balls.

The soup at the Vietnam Kitchen here is way too salty for my liking. Their service is not the friendliest either. Also at our last visit, we noticed they had new menus which can only mean they’ve increased the prices. They’ve also upgraded their crockery and changed some of the items on the menu.

Even though we’re regulars and they know we usually order one of the other set meals, the waitress served us the ala carte instead and charged us the ala carte price as per their new menu. Kinda makes you wonder if that’s how they really want to be treating their regular customers, eh?