After putting it in soup and then in an omelette, now it is just cabbage cooked the usual Chinese way, stir fried and yes, you get it, healthy. No, I am not obsessed with healthy food. Whatever made you think that?

Now, cabbage can be eaten raw but where’s the fun in that when you can dress it up and stir fry it with minimal oil and loads of other vegetables too. Like this…

Cabbage Recipe: Easy Stir fried Cabbage

Ingredientss

What’s left of your wilted cabbage…errr…figuratively speaking of course…I meant about 1 cup of cabbage

or 10 leaves of cabbage, roughly chopped

1 large carrot, sliced thinly

1 large tomato, sliced

2 tbsp dried shrimps, soaked, rinsed and drained

4 button mushrooms, sliced thinly

2 tbsp light soy sauce

2 pods of garlic

Instructions

1. Heat up some cooking oil (about a tablespoon) and then sautee the garlic (whole) till it is browned. Then add the dried shrimps.

2. Add in the carrots and mushrooms and stir fry till fragrant.

3. Add the cabbage and tomato and soy sauce. Also about 4 tbsp water. Stir fry till cooked. That should take a few minutes over medium heat. At most 5 minutes. Just don’t overcook it. Soft mushy cabbage are just, urrghh…but if you like soft, mushy cabbage….be my guest.

4. Serve it hot from the stove!

So, why did I add the tomato? Well, it gave the quite, quite bland dish a unique twist of flavours. Tomatoes are just so flavourful. They are salty, sweet and sour all at the same time. So, it really jazz up this dish from plain stir fried cabbage into something really tasty and even palatable for those who hates cooked cabbage.

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Still, this year, I got a pleasant surprise when he came back with a plainly wrapped bouquet of white calla lilies and gruffly gave it to me (yes, The Food Critic gets very gruff when it comes to sweet, romantic stuff). Now, calla lilies may not seem romantic to some people but it is quite meaningful to us because I had a bunch of ribbon-tied white calla lilies as my wedding bouquet many years ago.

In return, I gave him roses and a heart. Edible ones, of course.

If you look closely, the edges of the ‘cake’ are sorta cracked and that’s because it’s the first time I was working with pliable chocolate (recipe below) to form the heart-shape and also the roses. Let me tell you, the recipe seemed simple enough but I probably added too much liquid glucose. Or maybe I left it out to cool for too long. Whatever it is, I didn’t have time to re-do since I already made a first attempt and failed (the chocolate hardened to a rock-like consistency). Besides, it will still end up being eaten SO I didn’t really go crazy into wanting to perfect it. Maybe I’ll try making it again next time and really perfect it.

I got the recipe from a set of Chocolate wipeable recipe cards I bought a while back:

Here are the recipes for the pliable chocolate and the chocolate mousse filling for the chocolate heart.

Chocolate Roses

Ingredients

115g plain chocolate

2 tbsp liquid glucose

icing sugar

cocoa powder

Instructions

1. Either cut or break the chocolate into smaller pieces

2. Melt the chocolate by placing it on a bowl over a pan of simmering water

3. Remove the melted chocolate from heat and add the liquid glucose

4. Stir the mixture until it became a smooth paste and it comes away from the sides of the bowl. Then place it on a plastic bag and cool till firm but pliable.  Then, lightly knead the paste till smooth.

6. Roll the paste out with a rolling pin (but remember to dust the work surface with icing sugar first)

7. Use a round cookie cutter and cut out circles from the paste

8. Then you fold the first small circle into a tight roll to form the centre of the rose. After that, you add the petals around it.

As you can see, my rose petals are too thick because I didn’t roll out the paste thinly enough. Since I already formed the roses, it was a bit too late for me to redo (and I was in a rush to do it before The Food Critic gets back from work so that I could surprise him with it).

So, a bit of advice on working with these:

1. Do not add too much glucose.

2. Do not leave it in the fridge to cool for too long or else it will harden

3. Roll it out as thinly as possible.

After forming the roses, I dust it lightly with some cocoa powder. The balance of the paste, I use to form the heart shape.

Now, on to the chocolate mousse filling:

Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients

200g dark chocolate, broken into pieces

90ml double cream

4 eggs, separated

70g organic brown molasses (you can use plain fine sugar too)

4 tbsp rum

Instructions

2. Place the egg yolks and molasses in a bowl and beat till creamy

3. Add the melted chocolate to the creamy egg mixture

4. Transfer the mixture into a pan and cook over low heat but do not bring to a boil. Remove from heat and leave to cool. Then add the rum and stir till combined.

5. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites till stiff peaks form.

6. Fold the egg white into the chocolate mixture

7. Pour the mixture into the heart shaped chocolate. Dust with cocoa powder and decorate as you like it. Ready to serve!

It may not be as pretty as it was supposed to be but fortunately The Food Critic loved it! He normally doesn’t like chocolate so I used extra dark chocolate (the only kind of chocolate he likes) for all the recipes and so, he finished the mousse and didn’t have the heart to eat the roses….heheheh…so Mr Picky ate part of the roses and The Food Critic shared some of it with me.

So, how was your Valentine?

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Then I got invited to be one of their food publishers. It sounded good to me so I immediately signed up. Look what I received for being so buzzed about Foodbuzz:

A gift from Foodbuzz

A Foodbuzz cloth shopping bag to save the environment and it comes with two cute badges too. And that’s not all…

Another gift from Foodbuzz

I got my pack of moo minicards which are absolutely beautiful and it sure do comes in handy to promote my blog!

So, I continued buzzing over at..

Foodbuzz

And tried to take part in the wonderful 24, 24, 24 event but did not succeed…still, I will try to take part again when I have it all planned out!

Then, I discovered that some Foodbuzzers are also stumblers and thus, began another journey of buzzing AND stumbling.

Suddenly, I received this…

I am absolutely touched, not to say wordless for once in my life. It is the sweetest thing ever by Jessie, The Hungry Mouse.

Since, I don’t have an award to give out yet, I’ll just mention some other fabulous food blogger I’ve ‘met’ through Foodbuzz and StumbleUpon which you should really check out. Here it is (in no particular order)…

Of course, there is The Hungry Mouse. She has a really great food blog with wonderful recipes and very detailed instructions complete with pictures. I especially LOVE her bitter triple chocolate bread!

Next…

Megan’s Munchies who posts quite a few great munchies especially the peanut butter balls!

There’s also Kang of LondonEater whose recent market post with such beautiful pictures left me feeling as if I should take a flight up there right now just to go to that market.

From there, you can have some kitchen adventures with Jo at The Adventures of Kitchen Girl who is giving out a seafood cookbook to a lucky winner for this month.

After the adventures, you can check out this great mushroom and potatoes soup from Grumpy’s Honeybunch.

From there, we should add some zest into our lives so head on over to Canada’s ZestyCook. Just look at his delicious homemade pizza!

Ah, then we come to Sweetsfoods where this mouthwatering post made me wish I had a tub of dulce de leche with me!

Not forgetting April, The Hungry Engineer whose Fig and Prosciutto Pizza had me salivating on my laptop…

I learnt a lot about pasta thanks to Hugging The Coast:

I absolutely must not leave out fellow local food bloggers…

CK Lam of What2SeeOnline who is not a Foodbuzz FP or a stumbler but still…she’s a food blogger with absolutely beautiful pictures of places she reviewed.

Then, there’s the four Penangites who eats their way all over Penang and calls themselves PenangTuaPui.

And the list kept going on and on and on….

I know I have at least a few dozen more EXCEPTIONAL food bloggers on my list but I could not possibly name them all in one post. Or else this post will be too draggy. It is already SO lengthy now.

So, to all of you whom I’ve listed here:

GREAT job fellas. Do keep it up.

To all those whom I’ve not enough space to list here:

GREAT job too! Keep it up and I promise, I will mention you when I next write a post like this!

Also a great big THANK YOU to all of you blog readers and food bloggers for all your support and comments in my blog.

Let’s all keep buzzing at Foodbuzz and stumbling around to share more recipes, experiences and anything to do with food!

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