Jungle Fern (Midin) Stir Fry

Midin stir fry

Excited to share a wonderful wild jungle vegetable. It’s a fern and locally known as ’midin, milin or bilin‘. This special wild jungle fern stir fry is one of the only 2 dishes that I cooked during my recent holiday back to Malaysia. The other dish was Bitter Gourd And Egg Stir Fry. These are just a couple of my favourite local vegetables. Midin stir fry is one dish that everyone who visits Sarawak must try. It has a crispy texture and tastes very good.

Fresh midin

Midin is very popular in Sarawak. It is a common dish in restaurants. It’s a creepy plant and grows wild in the forest. It’s regarded as a delicious and nutritious wild vegetable. Apparently this particular fern only grows on the island of Borneo. I’m interested to know where else they grow. The natives would pluck the top section of the fern and sell them at the local jungle produce market. I heard that these days people plant them for sale.
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Chicken Stir Fry with Coriander, Ginger And Onion

chicken with coriander, ginger and onions stir fry

This chicken dish is my new favourite which I cooked for dinner yesterday. My children love ginger and coriander, also known as cilantro. They always ask me to add more….weird huh. I always wonder where did they get that huge liking from. I remember when I was young, I hated ginger and coriander but now I like it very much, too. Now I think I’m weird too….haha. Must have been influenced by my children. Well, coriander, ginger and onions have lots of health benefits so it’s good to like them.

I thought I would just make this chicken dish really simple with ginger, coriander and red onions and hope it turned out delicious. There was no elaborate seasoning except for the sea salt to marinate the chicken. The flavour has to come from the ginger, coriander and onions. I stir fried this dish under quite high heat so that the dish is fragrant and dry. I’m really so happy it turned out very delicious. We even enjoyed eating the ginger strips. The red onions were very tasty to as they taste sweet.
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Healthy Thunder Tea Rice (Lei Cha)

Thunder tea rice

I would love to share this wonderful dish, very healthy, nutritious and delicious. With so many herbs and vegetables, it’s one that is very good for health. It is high in fibre too.I usually cook it once a week, during the weekend. My children always help with the herbs and cutting up the vegetables. This dish came from the Hakka people, one of the many Chinese ethnic groups. It is called ‘lei cha‘ in their dialect. Translated, it’s called ‘thunder tea‘. How interesting! I was told that the Hakka people cook this after Chinese New Year to clean out the system after all the eating and drinking.
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Brandy Chocolate Pudding

Brandy chocolate pudding

Dessert can be quite an antidote for stress. The sweetness just melts the stress away and brings back sweet smiles. I just know that desserts always bring smiles on people’s faces. I think my life has been on the fast lane since I came back from my holiday and has been a little stressed up. I have been trying to do too many things. I should slow down and make more desserts!

Arnold, whose blog is called Ba-Bootie (cute name!), actually made my day by posting his interesting and easy Chocolate Pudding. The only pudding that I know is Christmas pudding where you have to steam it for many hours! I don’t really quite like it because it’s too sweet for me.
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Malaysian Assam Prawns (Tamarind Prawns)

Spicy assam prawns

It seems quite a while that I have not cooked prawns, one of my top favourites. I had some big prawns when on holiday back in Malaysia recently. That was really delicious….mmmm. I can’t get those fresh prawns here but I’m thankful to have nice ready cooked king prawns and raw tiger prawns.

I have been craving for something spicy and sourish and just thought assam prawns would do the trick. It did! I used the ready Assam Fish Paste which makes cooking very easy and quick. I love this brand of paste, Tean’s. I had used its Curry Laksa Paste to cook Malaysian Curry Fish Laksa, Chicken Curry Paste to cook Fast And Easy Malaysian Chicken Curry and Prawn Noodle Paste to cook Malaysian Prawn Soup Noodles. All of them are very delicious and very easy to cook with the pastes. 
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Pandan Yoghurt Cake

Pandan yoghurt cake

A new way to eat yogurt….in a cake! Cakes made with yoghurt are very delicious and make great desserts for any time. When I made the Chocolate Yoghurt Cake recently I only used 300g of yoghurt but this time I was more adventurous. I added more. I used 500g! I also used a lamington tin instead of a deeper cake tin to bake it. It turned out very soft and moist and tasted very delicious. I made to share with friends and all of them liked it very much.
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Bitter Gourd And Egg Stir Fry

Bitter gourd and egg stir fry

Here’s another post about my holiday back in Malaysia. In my short trip back home, I only cooked 2 dishes. My sweet mother-in-law cooked almost the whole time. We actually ate out most of the time until I fell ill with high fever. Sadly my enjoyable food adventure ended there. By the time I recovered I had to leave.

The best of all are all the local fruits as I shared in my previous post, Best Local Fruits Of Malaysia. Next on the list are the local vegetables. There are a few that I really like and we ate a lot. They are the ’sweet vegetables’, ‘kangkong’ which is also commonly known as ‘water spinach’ and the local fern. On top of that I also like bitter gourd, a bitter vegetable, which is difficult to get here. It is also known as bitter melon.
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Pepsi Chicken

Pepsi chicken

I’ll take a brief break from my holiday posts to share a very simple, easy and quick recipe with you. After a wonderful time away in Hong Kong and Malaysia, I have to admit getting back to normal, practical life here is quite a struggle. I don’t feel like cooking since I came back. I must have been too pampered by my family members and friends with all the good food and fun around. The jet lag is not helping me either. I was hungry, sleepy and awake all at the wrong time! Past couple of days, I had to resort to more coffee to help. Finally….finally….it worked!
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