Throw it all away…

I don’t know if it’s the same over at your place but here, when we buy char siew (barbecued pork) or roast pork…

*Archive photo*

…home, they would give you the char siew sauce or the roast pork sauce respectively. Usually when you eat in, they may pour the sauces over the meat and serve. My daughter loves the one they have for roast duck – if I’m not mistaken, they have sour plum in that one.

Anyway, when we buy home the char siew or the roast pork, we would just eat the meat like that and never bother about the sauce and usually, my missus would just throw it all away. I have heard of people using the char siew sauce to fry meat for the filling in their own homemade steamed paos (buns) but whatever one does with it,- is fine by me – I think it is such a waste to simply discard it like that. Well, we bought some roast pork ourselves the other day and when I opened the little plastic bag of the sauce, I could smell its fragrance, bursting with flavours – if I’m not mistaken, I think I could detect the use of five-spice powder in it. I just chucked it in the fridge in the hope that I might put it to good use on a later date.

A couple of days later, we had some leftover rice and I decided to fry that using the sauce and this was what I dished out in the end…

Nothing fancy, more or the less the usual – frying the sliced shallots and garlic in a little bit of oil, adding the slices of fish cake and chili followed by the rice and the thinly-sliced French beans, pouring in the sauce and mixing it altogether well and last but not least, throwing in the eggs and sprinkling the chopped spring onions all over it. It would be nice if we had some roast pork left but unfortunately, we had eaten all of it and that was why I used the fish cake instead…and normally, peas would be nice when frying rice this way but my daughter does not like green peas and anyway, I did not have those in the freezer so I added the French beans instead for a little bit of green.

So was it nice?

Well, I would say it tasted really great and I certainly would not mind frying rice with the sauce again should we happen to have any at hand…and I certainly would save a bit of the roast pork for that the next time around.

Moving away from the post proper, I stopped by one of my favourite bakeries in town and I could not resist getting one of these…

…to try. They called it “German pudding” which I thought was a not-so-glamorous name and it looked like a cross between an egg tart and a Portuguese egg tart with the torched bits on top like that.

The filling turned out to be…

…something like a cross between egg custard and cheesecake – the type that you chill to set. Probably there was cheese in it and hence, the name, “German”, I wouldn’t know. Well, I thought it was quite nice though personally, I would prefer plain ol’ egg custard…and anyway, at RM2.90 each, I would much sooner go for my plate of kampua noodles which would be a whole lot more filling and I probably would enjoy it a lot more.

I also bought their Japanese baked cotton cheesecake…

…which was RM14.00 each when my blogger-friend from Malacca/Penang came to town and she bought one to try and she loved it a lot! I remember it was less sometime ago, around RM10.00…but now, it is RM15.00 each. A Bintangor friend, currently teaching in Banting, Selangor, bought one too when she was here and she said it was very nice, just as nice as those she could get in the peninsula…and a whole lot cheaper! In fact, Mamakucing and the rest had one when they were here and they thought it was really good too!

Well, Melissa loves it and even though she can bake her own, she would hardly have time for much else on working days as she is the type that is so very serious and conscientious in her work. So, I decided to get one for her to take to her jungle school to enjoy and to share with her friends there. Sigh!!! Which parent wouldn’t do the same? You would too, wouldn’t you?