Little Joy Factory

Stir-fried chicken with cashew nuts is a timeless classic dish with gorgeous colors and tastes - it's quick and easy to make,  perfect for a weeknight dinner.  This dish is popular among Chinese people also because of its symbolic meaning.  It means "a bumper grain harvest" -  wǔ gǔ fēng dēng (五谷丰登) in Chinese. Another saying is, cashew nut (腰果) resembles gold because the nut's shape symbolises the ingot of ancient times. So, we cook this dish during Chinese New Year in a bid to get wealthy.

I accidentally created these crunchy and fragrant peanut cookies last week.  It's not the traditional melt-in-the-mouth peanut cookies,  nor the peanut butter cookies made with peanut butter spread. It's made of real butter, ground peanut, and peanut oil. These are taste-bud-pleasing peanut cookies. By combining butter and oil, you end up with cookies that have the great buttery flavor and the soft crumbly texture that you ever could with pure butter or pure peanut oil.  I call them my "happy little surprise". Brought some to the office, everyone loved them and requested for more. Before I tell you how I came up with the recipe,  I have to say I don't like the cookies with peanut butter spread. With its added emulsifiers, sweeteners, and hydrogenated oils,  they are too artificial to me.  I don't like shortening and margarine either. Did I tell you what happened to the can...

爱上了烘焙，就好象在我原有的生活空间里打开了一扇明亮的窗。透过它，我看到了外面色彩斑斓的美食世界。也是透过它，我才知道马来西亚有这么多擅长烹饪的高手。 这源于马来西亚是东南亚风味美食的聚集地，传统美食在当地得到了很好的传承。尤其是槟城和怡保，无论是当地人还是游客，说起那里的美食都啧啧称赞。 食物，还是旧时的美味啊。