Okay, these are just hard-boiled chicken eggs – I know I can’t fool ya! They look cute, aren’t they? Kids would probably like them. These hard-boiled eggs were shaped in a rabbit mold, which my best friend L gave me as a souvenir from her trip to Taiwan. Asian cities are filled with these cute stuff. Every time I visit Asia I would discover something new. These egg molds are one of their latest hot items:

In addition to rabbits, these molds also come in Teddy bears, fishes etc, you get the idea. I wanted to have some fun for Easter and now besides painting or dying eggs, I can also make them into animal shapes. Thanks to you L

The steps of making these eggs are relatively simple. After the eggs have been cooked and while they are still warm, I remove the shells, put them into the molds, let the molds sit in a bowl of cold water and viola, they are now rabbits.

Happy Easter, everyone!

After I wrote the egg trio post, quite a few friends asked me for the recipe to make the over-easy fried egg.

Besides my husband, I have a brother who is also an egg freak. This is a recipe which he created when he was less than 10 years old. Yes, when my brother was still a kid, he would skillfully cook a perfect over-easy egg for himself as a snack. His recipe is almost always foolproof: the yolk is always runny and the best thing is only little oil is used for frying.

Since I bake from time to time, I always get 3 dozen eggs from Costco when my fridge is out of eggs.

In a pan, put in 1 tsp of oil. Heat the pan until the oil gets very hot.

When the oil is hot, crack in the egg. If you got the temperature of the oil right, then the egg will immediately sizzle. I love listening to the sizzling sound. It’s the best sound to wake up someone special in a weekend morning.

Closely watch the colour of the egg’s rim. Cook the egg until the edge just turns golden brown. As soon as the edge becomes golden brown, cover the pan and turn off the heat. Leave the egg covered for 1 minute. During this time, don’t touch the egg – don’t open the cover, don’t move the pan, don’t do anything!

After one minute, open the pan and using a wooden spoon, gently slide the egg from the pan onto the plate.

ET likes eggs ALOT. He’s the only person I know who would eat eggs after dinner; it’s like a dessert for him. He likes eggs prepared in almost any way. I’ve cooked eggs for him in many ways and the most time consuming recipe involves poaching an egg so that the yolk is just partly cooked, then the egg is dipped carefully into panko, and lastly deep fried. The panko gives the egg a nice crust and the yolk remains runny when you eat it.

The deep fried poach egg is fun to make only on days when I have nothing to do. I usually prepare eggs in the ordinary ways: soft boil, over-easy or scrambled.

The soft-boiled egg is drizzled with soy sauce, sesame oil and maggi sauce. This is how my husband always eats his eggs as he grows up.

The over-easy is eaten with ketchup and hot sauce.

The black truffle scrambled egg is scrambled with truffle sauce, then drizzled with truffle oil and truffle sauce.

Being a Chinese girl raised in a family where rice must be eaten for every meal, I didn’t grow up trying many different cuisines besides Chinese food. Sometimes though, my mom would be in her creative mood and cook her own version of pasta. I still remember those mornings when I woke up to a hot bowl of pork rib and little shell pastas swimming in black bean sauce. As I reluctantly force the little shells down my throat, all I could think of was why would anyone like this kind of noodles? My mom’s pasta was purely disgusting. Since then I have learned and will always remember that black bean sauce is not the most suitable sauce for pasta. Although discouraged by the pasta experience, I never gave up wondering what other non Chinese dishes would taste like. I knew something out there would taste better than pasta in black bean sauce. I knew something out there would taste amazing. As I was 6, I was waiting for my next opportunity to try something different.

Such an opportunity came when I started living on campus. In my first year of university, I lived in a complex where all students ate their meals at a nearby cafeteria. The same items were always served for breakfasts – eggs, bacon, pancakes, toasts and different kinds of cereal. Lunch was also always the same – pizzas, chicken strips, pastas (luckily never in black bean sauce) and made-to-order sandwiches. Dinners were somewhat more interesting as each day had a different theme – Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Greek etc. Everyone complained about cafeteria food: “That beef is disgusting; I’m now a vegetarian.”. “Oh, that greasy pizza I had for lunch made me sick! I was in the bathroom all afternoon!”. I was complaining along too. But deep inside me, I was glad that besides rice, I had chicken strips, pizzas, sushis or sandwiches to choose from. However, after having chicken strips, pizzas and sandwiches for three months, I wanted to try something different. At 17, I was constantly finding excuses to eat off campus.

Then I met ET. Having a Singaporean background, he and I went on an endless gastronomic exploration of Southeast Asian cuisine. We found ourselves eating at Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesia restaurants. One day he brought me to Phnom Penh, “It’s voted as the BEST Southeast Asian restaurant in town”, he said. After entering the restaurant, we were greeted by a wall fully hung with awards, newspaper and magazine interviews. On our way to our table, we noticed every table ordered a bowl (or multiple bowls) of tossed noodles and a plate of chicken wings:

Unlike the Vietnamese pho, the tossed noodles are served dry along with minced pork, pork slices and shrimps. The noodles are tossed in soy sauce, oil (I highly suspect it is lard which explains why the noodles are so tasty) and green scallion. Bean sprouts, chili and lime are also provided for you to mix into the noodles. The best noodles are sitting in the bottom of the bowl because that is where all the minced pork, scallion, chili and soy sauce hide. There are different versions of tossed noodles on the menu, I recommend you to try item #4.

I love the tossed noodles at Phnom Penh. However, my favourite is item 78 on the menu, the buttery deep fried chicken wings:

Fried in an extremely light and airy batter, the chicken wings are cripsy with a hint of buttery flavour. Lime juice mixed with freshly ground pepper is served as the dipping sauce. Every time I eat these wings, I can’t help but think that if KFC’s chicken are finger-licking-good, then these wings are just finger-licking-fantastically-the-best!

Another item which we always ordered is the Vietnamese spring rolls. The spring rolls at Phnom Penh are smaller, shorter but somewhat more flavourful than those that I’ve eaten at other Vietnamese restaurants.

Last night we visited Phnom Penh again with foodies Ben and Suanne from ChowTimes. Since there were more people, we ordered the a pot of chicken curry in addition to the noodles and chicken wings:

The chicken curry had a mild curry flavour. What’s most interesting about this curry is we saw something that looked like potatoes and they turned out to be taro root. Baguettes are recommended to be eaten with the curry, which we used to quickly soak up all the curry sauce.

Ben and Suanne are very knowledgeable about Southeast Asian cuisine. When they learned there is a dessert with durian on the menu, they were excited to try it:

It was a plate of glutinous rice submerged in coconut milk and topped with a few pieces of durian. Although the durian smelt strong, I was disappointed by how thin the slices were and I almost couldn’t taste the fruit at all. When I looked at the slices closely, I realized they were not durian flesh but rather a pile of durian mousse. All in all the glutinous rice tasted yummy with the slightly sweetened coconut milk.

Now in my late twenties, I have tried a lot different cuisines besides Chinese food. I have learned that pastas are very delicious in a tomato or cream sauce, or even simply mixed in a good extra virgin oil. My mom is very good at cooking Chinese food. But because I never learn cooking from her, I never learn how to cook Chinese food properly. Once in awhile, I miss a meal in which rice is served with many home style Chinese dishes like the ones that my mom made. Now I’m trying to recreate familiar home style Chinese dishes that I grew up with as well as waiting to try dishes that I have not yet tried.