Wok With Lin

Mom , I burn the kitchen down!!!   Kidding! I am happy to tell you that after years and years of practise I have mastered the art not of cooking but not to burn the kitchen down by controlling the stove!

Mind you,  I did almost burn the kitchen down. oooh it happen in the not far future (acutally last October)  I forgot that I was boiling  a few instant rice packets and the water had dried up! I really thought that I had enough time to turn off the stove to get a nice cube like rice pack . I was slugging  down the stairs when I smelt something foul. I quickly galloped down and was greeted by black smoke coming from the kitchen. The fire on the stove was slowly burning a hole in my pan! Quickly I turn of the stove and in lightning speed put the pan into the sink and drench the small fire with full blast water from the pipe. By this time everybody in the house had been on red alert as the black smoke had floated upstairs and there was an unmistaken  strong smell of something burning.

 "What happen ? What's buring?" Mom, dad and my brothers plus sister-in-law and kids in tho rushed into the kitchen whereby I had this sorry face and showed the big hole in the pan the fire had burn into......


But that was last year. This is 2013....March..... and I was itching to cook again. So today's menu was fish curry, fried soybean with chili paste (sambal) and fried veggie.

First the ingredients:

Ok just if your wondering how come there's no fish.......there is a fish but I was too busy (busy crying from cutting the onions and garlic) to take the fish picture.

Ehhhhmmm...... so I will be your chef for today. For the fish curry , I used pomfret fish. I blended the red onions, garlic and ginger along with the chilie, until everything is beautifully mixed together. I heated the pan with oil and aniseed to give that nice smell (wow I do sound like a chef) . I didn't put the mixture yet , because you have to put the secret ingredients which is ..........curry of course, but for this I mix meat curry and fish curry together with the mixture (trust me it taste nice!).

T

hen I fried curry mixture in a pan, quite sometime as you want the chilli and curry to be really cook, normally  I would stir untill it's slightly brown or the oil that the mixture absorb earlier emerge (follow me so far, no? so do I)

Anyway when you see any of these signs, you pour in tamarind water ( I don't use coconut milk in my curry , more healthy like that but make sure you don't put too much water) To avoid it from being too sour, add a little water but not too much. I mean curry is only garnishing on the rice , you  don't drown your rice with curry do you? Boil the curry for a while before putting in the fish, if not your fish will be overcook and might break into pieces (hey take it from someone who has done this mistake sooooo many times) add salt (up to your  taste but don't make it too salty!)

 

after you put in the fish let it simmer a low fire  for ooooh five minutes (I think) then you add the yummy ladies finger. :)

 

Waaaaaaalaaah the end result, again  the fish is hidden in the curry.

 

 

 

Ooooooh I can't help it here's a picture of my spicy fried soybean and fried veggie.

 

 

That's alll from Wok with Lin. I would have been bursting with pride had I not broken the mop and a

bucket while cleaning the kitchen :P

 

Oh well at least I didn't burn down the kitchen this time right ?

 

 

 

 

 

Where's the Car?

Dear Diary, 

I don't deny that I am a disoriented , dis coordinated (if there is such a word) and disorganized person.

If I have an alter ego in the comic universe, my nemesis would be the GPS.

With the hundreds of 'redirecting' that I had caused I would  not be surprised if the GPS came alive and smack me on the head.

But GPS also has  its  shortfalls by all the near accidents it caused, seriously shouldn't a GPS tells you beforehand to turn right and not immediately after ordering you to go to the far left side of a three lane road! , causing
 A) for you to miss your turning and
B) nearly colliding with a car when you are too absorb in listening to the directions!

And what is it with satellite undetected?!

Anyhow back to my story. I have a tendency to get lost ,getting on the wrong bus is not uncommon to me but it sure gives an awesome story to tell.  Little did I know that my family and I have a lot in common.

Normally on my day off , I would go to Seremban, Lake Garden to jog. Occasionally, my parents and little brother would follow and after an hour and a half of sweating and puffing (lack of oxygen, lack of oxygen)we would go to search for breakfast.

One fine morning , after going our rounds, my parents and I decided to eat breakfast at an Indian Restaurant (which makes the nicest Rawa Tosei :).

There were not many people at the restaurant on a Sunday morning. We ordered our food and  ate.

After breakfast, we went to the car.

 I could hear dad pressing the car key to unlock the car,

CLICK CLOCK!

 I pulled the door handle........It wouldn't open ! Puzzled I pulled again , still it would not open! I looked at my mom and dad and noticed that they were facing the same problem......Mom was still trying to open the door  while Dad was franticaly pushing the button on the car keys ....CLICK CLOCK CLICK CLOCK.

Why wouldn't the doors open.

The three of us backed away from the car. It was correct, metalic silver.

I was still scratching my head when my dad gave a loud guffaw laugh and pointed.

THERE, beside the car that we were trying to get in was our metallic silver Proton Perdana waiting patiently for us .
The one that we were trying to open was a metallic silver Honda!

 If the Perdana had feelings it would have said OUCH! All of us were laughing so hard we could hardly stand. I mean if it was only me , understandable ........but this was all THREE of us, the two voice of reasons trying to pry open a strange car. We thank our lucky stars that :

1. That Honda's alarm system wasn't working. It will be pretty awkward explaining to the owner what we were doing.
2. There's no CCTV there, imagine what the police would think if they saw a family trying to break into a car!

We were still laughing all the way back home.

 Hey , it was a harmless mistake, I'm happy that I finally know where my absent mindedness comes from but seriously, if you notice the picture above , come on they do look similar from the side.

 Right ?  
That was not the end of the story. I had another mistaken car incident  which happen a few years back, when I just started working.

It was late night, around 11  pm and we forgot  to buy bread for breakfast. Dad and I went to the 7 Eleven near our house. At that time we had a green proton wira. We were the only car at the parking lot. Dad waited in the car while I went inside to buy the  bread.

I seriously do not remember what I was thinking about , but I'm sure my mind was somewhere else.OBVIOUSLY.

Anyway, I bought the bread and went out of the store. I did not look left and right.
My dad's car was there just in front of me. The parking lot was dark, the only light was coming from the row of shophouses itself.

I opened the door to the passenger seat.... Got in.
Closed the door ...

I just looked out the window, not looking at my dad..
One minute...
Two minute....

I was curious, why were we not moving?

 'Abah, why aren't we .........Yikes!!!'

There...... At the driver's seat, was a lady. She was looking at me in horror ( If you watch horror movies such as Halloween , when the killer was going to strike and they zoom to the victims face frozen in terror, yup it was exactly like that!) Her handphone was at her ear,her eyes were big and her mouth was wide open,  but no sound came out.

One minute.....Both of us were staring at each other.

I collected my composure.

" SORRY,SORRY, SOOOO SORRY" I quickly jumped out of the car and rushed to my dad's car ,which,was beside the lady's car.


Trembling I got into the car.

'Why so late? 'Asked dad, oblivious to the whole incident.

I didn't DARE to say anything.

Boy , I must have given that lady a scare.

Moral of the story people , always lock your doors...


You never know who might jump in ! Whether innocently or not!

My drawings :) Syazlin's Mini Art galery :)

Trip to Bath 2011

Inspired during my family vacation in Langkawi 2012. This is the first time I experimented with oil pastel.Not bad for a beginner :)

Daydreaming  that I was a princess in a magical castle which floats in between land and sky :) Watch too much fantasy movies :)

We went island hopping during my stay at Langkawi in 2012. There was an eagle island that we stopped at and the boatman fed them fish but alas this was not taken from that event. We did see eagles circling above us . They swooped and dived down to get food but it was too fast  to capture so I had to settle for a website photo instead as my reference :(

OOh adapted this from a website photograph

I love my village in Tg Rambutan, Rembau. Before changes came that is. We were watching our cousins , racing , using palm leaves as chariots. One cousin was sitting at one end of the palm leaf and another was pulling on the leafy end acting as a horse rushing to beat my two brothers at the finishing line.

Now the old dried up sawah padi is gone  and in its place is a corn field.

So sad, we used to run wild through the muddy padi field, and screamed when we thought we saw snakes, which we never did! 

We even flew our own hand-made kites at that field.

 I was 9years old in this painting, and that baby is my cousin, she's 24 now! Good old times :)

Took this from a photograph

Hehe I would like to describe this picture as a symbol of a hopeless romantic drowning in despair :P Story of my life :) Initially I just wanted to draw a rose but one thing led to another and UREKA !

Misty mountain,  remind me of the Hobbit song Misty mountain cold

Picasso :)

Enlightenment

This drawing was inspired  from two photographs. The clouds and sea was inspired by a picture I took from a trip to Pangkor. The ship , was adapted from a magazine photo.

I have my head in the  clouds :)Totally had no idea what I was doing when I painted this but hey before I knew it , it formed something!

My friend went to Switzerland and he took loads of pictures. I particularly like a photo where it was used as reference to this drawing 

Storm is coming!

Aaaaah fresh calm , waterfall.

My very first try at acrylic!

Oooh tried to do a video which you can view at this link :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SawYg777FUQ

Lasagna :)

Hi ho ,
New adventure! Been a while haven't written anything I actually forgotten how to write ! Oooooh tried to make lasagna today and I'm proud to say after years of practice from my muffin escapade I have finally able to bake without smoke coming out of the microwave (plus this is a brand new high tech microwave design to accommodate to the most handycap baker aka bakers who do not know how to use the microwave) plus it comes with its own safety precaution measures for toddlers (yeah right as if toddlers can bake I scoffed at the manual until my mom says what it meant by toddlers is new beginners) ooooooohhhh.....With the confidence of an experience cook (hehehe three times a year cooking ya) I diced the garlic, onions, and fried the meat to let out the juice (waaah I should be in master chef until I nearly burned it......but the main point was NEARLY) chucked in tomato, tomato spaghetti paste, mixed veggie into the wok.Yes you heard of Wok with Yan this is Wok with Lin. trash some oregano, parsley and black pepper. I had the smell right!! Then comes the white sauce, butter, mixed with flour (now I was struggling here cause the ingredients didn't say which flour, I contemplated corn flour, baking , herb flour , plain flour or pulut flour. In the end what the heck I put two tbspoon of plain flour some milk (I snitch my dad's low fat milk, hey at least we're health conscience !) and melted the cheese for that cheesy goodness.
White sauce done, put a little salt and black paper so that it won't be too cheesy. I was about to spread the lasagna sheet on the casserole when it dawn on me, man the sheets were too hard.....will it cook? I tried to call my lifeline (which are my friends who normally cook!) but alas none of them could give an answer, so it is up to Wok with Lin to make the call. So I put the sheets in hot water to loosen it up (I know, sheets are also stress you know!) and spread it in the baking pan Haha! bet you think I forgot.... I greased the pan with butter first!!!!! So it won't burn...then pop into the microwave for 35 minutes . Ate it for lunch , dad loved it but I think the white sauce wasn't that thick ....oh well this Picasso is going back to the drawing boards....... nite nite. till then....ok i'm gettting hype up. 
(Ps : Dad totally wolf up the remaining lasagna.....Pretty proud of myself :) pat pat pat......