She and I…

She’s my ex-student’s wife and I saw on Facebook that she was making some ang koo (red tortoise cake)…

…and of course, that got me wishing that I could give her gorgeous-looking ones a try.

The thing is, here in Sibu, you may be able to buy some but they are all very small and flat which is a clear indication that there is hardly any filling inside, maybe just a thin line of it, so little that you can barely taste it. As if that is not bad enough, the skin is usually very tough and rubbery, very hard to bite and chew. To get really good ones, I would have to buy the ones in KL…or better still, those in Kuching. They really make very nice ones there.

In response to my comment, she said that she would give me some to try if she made anymore which she did…the very next day and she even went through the trouble of sending them over to my house! Now, just look at this beauty…

– so big and so “fat”. It was pretty obvious that she was very generous with the filling. They were yellowish orange instead of the regular red colour but that is in, fact, a good thing. If I am not mistaken, the red colour results from the use of colouring whereas if it is this colour, sweet potatoes are used in the making of the skin. If purple, that would be yam and if it is green, then that is because of the use of the green colour of pandan leaves.

The skin was absolutely perfect – sticky and chewy but it had a smell not found in the regular ang koo. According to my ex-student’s wife, that was because she used corn oil. Yes, there was a lot of the mung bean filling…

…inside and I think she also reduced the sugar so it was not as sweet. I sure enjoyed the ones she gave me to the max!

On my part, I did do a bit of cooking myself too. My girl was around as she had something she had to attend here for two days so she had dinner at home. That was why I decided to finish off the mussels…

…that I had in the freezer, what was left from our steamboat dinner, the fried instant noodles that I dished out and also the so-called Sarawak laksa that I cooked.

I pounded one leek, the white part, with one shallot and three cloves of garlic, peeled before adding some thyme followed by mayonnaise and cheese and I used a spoon to fill the shells of the mussels with the mixture before sprinkling some salt and pepper all over them…

…and putting them in the oven to bake.

They sure looked good…

…once done and taken out of the oven but of course, the test of the pudding would be in the eating. Yes, my girl loved it very much and she ate quite a lot of it! Needless to say, I was immensely pleased… Wink! Wink!

I did not manage to finish all of them though – I still had three left and that would be in tomorrow’s post. Stick around!