Malaysian cooking part 3

My final cooking tutorial was again led by my friend Wade, a local chef, we decided to prepare a few dishes and then have some friends round to enjoy the finished product, we wanted to add a new dimension to our cooking so we studied some online websites such as fried-dumplings we played with some of the flavours we read about in on the online websites. This enabled us to balance flavours to suit our individual tastes. We have found that in many of the recipes the amount of chilli that people put in is rather mild for our flavours and we experimented with adding some curry powder which brought a new dimension. For this session we made spring rolls and some more dumplings.

For the dumplings we used

Pork mince 500g
Coriander
Chinese spring onion
Onion 1 big one
Carrot 1 decent sized one(grated)
Sesame oil
Soy sauce
Ginger
Garlic
Oyster sauce
Fish sauce
Birds eye chillies
Wonton Pasterys
chicken stock

Method

Add mince to a bowl, chop and add coriander, spring onion, garlic, onion,carrot, ginger, chillies. I found the best result for adding the chilli, ginger and garlic is to think what you normally cook with when preparing other dishes. Next add the sauces be brave with the oyster and fish sauces really adds depth to the results. Fold all ingredients together using your hands(Wade suggested using one so you have a clean one). Next is the fun part making the dumplings place meat mix into centre of pastry.  We used two cooking methods first we baked some and then we boiled some in a soup we made from the chicken stock, some garlic, lots of ginger, and some chillies.

For the spring rolls we used

spring roll mix  (Source Janine Emmott 2012)

Pork mince 500g
Coriander
Garlic
Ginger
Grated carrot
Bean thread noodles
Onion Oyster sauce
Fish sauce
Soy sauce
Chillies
Curry powder
Spring roll pastrys
Sweet chilli sauce to serve

Method

Soak bean noodles in warm water, place dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together add around a table spoon of curry powder, add the wet ingredients be brave to get good results, don’t put too much soy in other wide the mix becomes quite salty. Place mix in middle of the spring roll pastries and fold.  We baked the rolls and tried shallow frying we were divided on which tasted better. Serve with sweet chilli sauce

More social interaction(Source Janine Emmott 2012)

Then we ate them and they were some of the nicest dumpling and spring rolls, I have ever eaten, I feel with all the guidance I have developed a new skill and have become a better cook. I have enjoyed the social aspect of the meals as well I had no idea that Malaysian style cooking would be so popular amongst my friends, it proved popular in taste and in preparation with everyone lending a hand. It has being a great learning curve for me and an introduction into a new culture. Gaining new friends and building stronger bonds with old ones.

Malaysian cooking part 2

normally when I cook the kithcen resembles a bomb site

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since my first experience of Malaysian cooking went so well, I have decided to experiment with the flavours and skills I learnt. I held another gathering at our house and enlisted the help of a friend who is a chef to guide me and keep me from giving my guests food poisoning. We made the same dumplings as we did in the first session but used chicken mince as well as pork mince, we also decided to try make a cheese and chilli dumpling. We adjusted some of the flavours in the meat dumplings by adding some chilli to the mix but not too much that masked the other flavours or set fire to the our mouths. For the cheese dumplings (which I’m sure doesn’t belong to Malay style dumplings, but tastes good) we made a cheese sauce from: 

2 tbsp butter or margarine
2 tbsp plain flour
1 cup of milk
¼ tsp salt

½ cup grated cheese

 Melt the butter or margarine in a saucepan.

Add the flour and salt and stir until it is bubbly.

Add one-third of the milk and stir all the time until the sauce boils and thickens, repeat this twice until all the milk is added.

If you keep stirring the sauce constantly until it boils, you should get a smooth creamy sauce, add the ½ cup of grated cheddar cheese after you have taken the saucepan off the heat, or the sauce will become stringy. Add the chilli’s till you get the flavour you want. At this stage I added some corn flour to get the right thickness for the dumplings the thicker the better as it will be easier to work with when making the dumplings.

I again found that everybody wanted to be around the food and be involved in its preparation. It was quite sociable and we all had involvement in stuffing the dumplings bringing a sense of belonging to the people involved.

everyone helping out (source: Janine Emmott 2012

 The thing I have found with this experience is that cooking is fun. Whilst shopping for the ingredients, which is from local Asian supermarket, I am chatting and getting more knowledge from experienced shoppers, one of these shoppers told me to try making spring rolls I will write about this in my next blog. I feel that my culinary skills are growing and I am becoming a more rounded (in both senses of the word) cook.

Malaysian cooking part 1

My tutor May Tan    (Source: Janine Emmott 2012)

 I’m proud to say that I survived my first Malay cooking experience as did all my guests and my fingers. My tutor arrived ready to guide me with my first session, on the menu was pork dumplings, steamed vegetables and fried rice.  She explained that Malay cooking was quite often a lot of preparation and then a frenzied cooking sequence and boy she was right. I was put to work chopping mixing and cooking. I noticed that whilst doing all the prep work the kitchen was the place to be in the house, it got turned into the main hangout area for everyone proving that cooking can be really sociable, when it came time to prepare the dumplings everyone wanted to help out. We then all got fed as we watched the rugby together and had far too many dumplings washed down by a refreshing larger.

First we started with prepping the dumplings.

If you want to make these dumplings that are really really good, here is what you need:

700g Minced pork

1 tsp cornflour

½  tsp oyster sauce

Pepper to season

Chinese spring onion

Onion

Coriander

1 tsp Sesame oil

1 tbsp Soya sauce

1 tbsp Fish sauce

Won tong pastries

My willing participant         (Source: Janine Emmott 2012

Mixing the ingredients (Source: Janine Emmott 2012

I started by adding the mince to a large bowl next chopped the spring onion, onion and coriander finely after that added all the wet mixtures and the pepper. Then it’s a case of getting your hands dirty, that or you find a willing volunteer to mix it all together. At this point I thought that this was easy, then we started to wrap the wonton, in doing this you need to make sure it’s going to stick together you can use any method to, to help do this a trick is to wet your fingers to help push down the edges. Then you can either shallow fry them in oil, boil them in an soup of ginger, garlic, chicken stock and whatever you feel like adding, you could also steam them using the same soup mixture or you can spray them with oil and bake them till golden brown. Serve them with sweet chilli or anything thing you think will go well with them.

We also made a steam vegetable stir-fry using a wok and some rice wine, oyster sauce and fish sauce. To do this get pan really hot, add liquids get hot again then add veggies and find a lid to cover.

Tip is to keep all veggies same size to cook evenly.

The fried rice is pretty easy, cook rice the day before and put it in an ice cream container, refrigerate.  Next day add soy sauce, fish sauce and oyster sauce to ice cream container with rice then add that to hot wok, keep rice moving till heated through, once done add some spring onion and serve.

Our finished product after we got hungry and ate most of it  (Source: Janine Emmott 2012

Participation in Occupation 2

Malaysian Cooking

As part of this semester we have been required to participate in a new occupation. This will bring insight on how easy/difficult it is to pick up new skills and the many different components of those skills. Because of my great love of food and flavours I have decided on Malaysian style cooking. Malay food has been greatly influenced by the long-ago traders from neighboring countries, such as Indonesia, India, the Middle East, and China. Malay food is often described as spicy and flavorful as it utilizes a melting pot of spices and herbs (MariMari.com, n.d).

We are required to Journal and document our progress, so I have decided to use my skills that I have learnt in previous semesters and fire up the blog site again, so in the next couple of weeks there will be additions based around my cooking adventures, and I say adventures as when I’m in the kitchen anything can happen and I do mean anything. So for my progress, recipes and a comedy of errors keep an eye on this blog site.

MariMari. Com. (n.d). Malay food.  Retrieved from http://www.marimari.com/content/malaysia/food/malay/malay.html

Assistive technology

 

Cook, 2000 see’s assistive technologies as any item, piece of equipment or product system whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized that is used to increase or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities.

In other words an Occupational therapist can utilise their knowledge and knowledge of experts of equipment (such as the staff at star mobility )  to find ways of enabling an individual who has impairment but as this may come at an expense, the OT can use their skill to develop the existing equipment to suit the individual needs of clients.

Cook, A.M., & Hussey, S.M. (2000). Assistive technologies: principles and practice. St Louis: Mosby 

The iPad. 

There are many great pieces of equipment that star mobility(click the link) provide, the range that they have and knowledge they can offer a person is invaluable to a developing OT student.

The apple iPad has been with us for a few years now and offers individuals with a great way to pass time. But more importantly it is used in the rehabilitation of people. It allows for an increase in dexterity and there are apps like Proloquo2Go that allows the user to use commands such as “I need to go to the bathroom” with the touch of an icon.

The iPad has been modified to be smaller lighter and faster than when it was first launched in 2010, it now weighs in at between 652 g - 662 g it’s about 24cm high and 18.5 cm wide its paper thin just less than 1cm thick. The price starts at $730 and goes up to $1230 depending on size of the hard drive. Because of the iPad touch sensitive screen, apps are easy to open and manipulate, computer keyboards and mice can prove difficult to use, and limit the users.

The New York Times reports that the iPad has drawn support from several sectors of health care this link (iPadnewsdaily. 2010), shows some of the many apps that allow people whose disabilities hamper their communication abilities, to have a voice. 

This you tube clip shows how the iPad has helped over come occupational deprivation

And this you tube clip shows how the iPad helps a stroke patient on the way to recovery helping him with occupational transition.

References:

Cook, A.M., & Hussey, S.M. (2000). Assistive technologies: principles and practice. St Louis: Mosby 

iPadnewsdaily. (2010, May 21). Best iPad Health Care Apps Retrieved from http://www.ipadnewsdaily.com/74-best-ipad-health-care-apps.html  

Linking to blogs of interest and exchanging comments

Here are five great blogs of interest, they have great information on technology and mental health, included is one of my fellow students, have a look at his videos and find the young boy blasting round on a wheelchair, it shows what people are capable of, enjoy. 

http://www.homeschoolconvention.com/blog/the-therapeutic-benefits-of-equine-friends

 

http://wiihabtherapy.blogspot.co.nz/

 

http://wheelchairstrap.livejournal.com/8381.html

 

http://psychcentral.com/blog/

 

http://daveoisoccupied.blogspot.co.nz/

I posted a comment onto the therapeutic benefits of horse therapy, as I have previously worked as a care giver I had take residents to the local RDA  I often saw the children on the horses but never understood the hidden benifits.

I had a comment on one of my blog post’s, this was a nice surprise as I realised my blog was being used by my peers.