Grocery shopping that fills me with joy.

I love going to my local Chinese grocery shop. It brings back all the memories of home for me. It is the only grocery shopping that fills me with joy.

I go there with a list or I would come back with the entire store. It doesn't really help to be honest but
I like to pretend.

Today, I wanted to make a special fried rice called 'Nasi Ulam'. Nasi is rice in Malay. This is a Malaysian/Straits Chinese dish made with fried shrimps and the leaves from the garden. Now, I do have leaves in my garden but I don't think holly and hebe leaves would do!

Nasi Ulam is a rice and herb dish. The recipe is easy. See http://rasamalaysia.com/ and search for Nasi Ulam. Not quite store ingredients as you do need dried shrimps and desiccated coconut. But you can make do with any herbs - as I didn't follow the recipe to the t. I used spring onions, coriander and chives.

To go with this - it can be eaten on it's own with a spicy sauce - I made the boys favourite lemon chicken.

 The other thing I made was carrot cake. Chinese carrot cake made with turnip! Char Tow Kway in Teochew (Chinese dialect). I found the turnip 'cake' - this is steamed turnip in the frozen section of the shop. Thawed it and fried it with 3 beaten eggs and fermented radish. Delicious. This is a breakfast and/snack in Singapore. Again I uses my rasamalaysia.com website for the recipe.





It doesn't matter that I am thousands of miles away from the 'real' food - I can make it my own kitchen in cold, rainy Edinburgh!