Happy food!

Back in the days of toiling in the hospital, whenever me and my friends were suffering from work-related-blues, we will try and cheer ourselves up with "happy food". Sometimes it will be something small, like a pastry or cake from Delifrance. And when we are feeling adventurous enough (or depressed enough), we may even venture out of the hospital compounds. Never mind the taxi fare that we have to pay so that we can come back in time for work again. Other times we planned to go somewhere nice for "happy food" after work, so that we could all look forward to that while we were slaving away in the pharmacy.

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This weekend, we had the fortune of going to Praveen's house to eat Ban Mien. He found the recipe online, and prepared all the ingredients. The soup stock, meat and mushroom, and fried anchovies were really tasty! Unfortunately, the Ban Mien dough was a little problematic. It took very long to cook, and we had to abandon the dough. Thankfully, Praveen had backup premade noodles, so we still managed to enjoy a tasty Kopitiam style Ban Mien after all. Mmmm... happy food....

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I have been craving for curry puff for the longest time... I miss my Old Chang Kee and houseman canteen curry puffs! But there is no way I can find any curry puffs here unless I make some myself. And hence our first attempt at making curry puffs begin!

The spices, the eggs, and the dough, which is simply a combination of flour, margarine, salt and water. As I found out, kneading the dough is very much like wedging clay. So I did not have too much problem there.


The filling! It is made up of onion, chicken and potato, plus the spices and seasoning of course. Just need to fry it for a while... pretty easy, even I can do it.

Hehe, I left the difficult part to the man. Here he is rolling out the dough using a glass bottle filled with water for extra weight...

And here are the circles of dough he cut out using a plastic cap from a container. Have to use make-shift tools coz we did not have proper tools in the house. Then I had to do the wrapping, which is more difficult than I thought! Initially I thought just put the filling in, fold the dough into half, and just press to seal the sides... But somehow, my dough keeps on shrinking. Hence, after putting the filling onto the dough, the sides will shrink away, leaving me very little "edge" left to seal the sides... Anyhow, I just sealed it the best that I could, and crimped the sides with a fork.

And here is hubby frying the curry puffs...

... while I had fun rearranging them and taking photos... :P

And of course, we had casualties. These curry puffs did not survive the frying. The sides opened up and the filling went into the oil... we had to discard them... *sobz*

We had 17 curry puffs remaining. We gave away some to our fellow SG friends, and ate a few up. Now we have only three puffs left! Sigh... I thought I will make enough puffs to last for a week or so...

As for the taste, it was better than I expected! Not really like Old Chang Kee, but more like the Malay style curry puffs... MmmMmmmm.... Next time, we shall try to make the sardine curry puffs... Teehee...