Quick and Easy Chicken Rice and Pickled cucumber

Pickled cucumber

 Chicken rice

Living overseas, I have to cook most of our home delicacies myself as we get very limited Malaysian restaurants.  So I experimented and look at some of the ingredients on the bottled chicken rice so here's quick and easy chicken rice.

Chicken Rice Ingredients

2 cups rice

500 ml chicken broth

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1/2 teaspoon minced ginger

2 tablespoon cooking oil

salt to your own taste (my daughter likes it salty!)

Instructions

Put all the ingredients into an electric rice cooker.  Stir it until it is all mixed up well and cook.

I am sure most of you will have very good recipes for roast chicken or steamed chicken as I do not have the time to roast chicken and normally just buy one from the supermarket!

But I love fresh pickled cucumber and experimented and come up with my own pickled cucumber which I love to eat together with my chicken rice.

  

Pickled Cucumber

Ingredients

1 medium size cucumber or half a telegraph cucumber

1 red chilli (optional)

1 lemon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

Instructions

Slice cucumber thinly.  Deseed the chilli and cut into thin strips.  Put in a bowl together with the salt and sugar and squeezed the lemon juice into the mixture.  Allow to sit for at least one hour for the pickling process.

Enjoy!

Malacca, World Heritage Site

View of Malacca Straits from outside the chapel at ST. Francis Hill with the Taming Sari and the Eye on Malaysia in the foreground

Statue of St.  Francis Xavier who preached and died in Malacca and was briefly buried there before he was exhumed and moved.    

The remains of a chapel with numerous memorials to Dutch, Portugese and English parishioners of the past.

The bright and colourful trishaws available to transport tourists around Malacca town.

The only movable large ferris wheel in Malaysia which will make a tour across all the states in Malaysia starting with Malacca.

On our recent trip back to Malaysia, my close friend, Shirley invited us to visit her in Malacca.  I have not been to Malacca for almost 10 years so decided to take her up on her offer.  My two other close friends based in Kuala Lumpur drove down with us and we stayed overnight.

It is quite a change from when I visited last.  Going on a Sunday was also a no - no as there was traffic jam all over town as I understand the Singaporeans love to drive up to Malacca for the weekend.

We did a few tourist attractions including taking a ride on the Eye on Malaysia ferris wheel which is visiting Malacca for the year after being in KL for 2 years.  We did it at night and I must admit I do not advise a night ride as there was not too much to see in Malacca in terms of night lights.

We had a great stay catching up with friends and tasting the local delicacies including chicken rice balls, now everywhere in Malacca.  

What I missed was the trademark bullock cart pulled by buffaloes where we once took a ride around the padang as in place is now a shopping centre and no water buffaloes in sight.  The price we pay for modernisation!

International Air Travel

I have just got back from travelling back to Malaysia for about 3 weeks.  What I discovered was the inconvenience of air travel these days.  

First, Air NZ has restriction on amount of check in luggage, i.e. one piece per passenger and not more than 25 Kg.  And they worry about people breaking their backs carrying heavy bags!  Hand luggage is not more than 7 kg.

Next my girl decided she wanted to bring her skates and that she was going to hand carry them but nooooo!  At the boarding gate, we were told we had to check in the skates so I had to fork out NZ$15 for the extra piece of luggage as we had already checked in 2 pieces of bags.

When we got to the international airport in Auckland, we had to repack everything (because fo the skates) only to find out about the liquids in hand luggage limitations and at the last minute I had to open up our luggage  (we were checking in at the same time) to squeezed all the manuka honey jars into one of our bags.

Even then I missed out a half full bottle of shampoo which was still in the hand luggage so I told security he can chuck it out.  It just seems ridiculous the liquid rule only applies for international but not the domestic which means to say it is alright to bomb the domestic flights but not the international ones???!

As we were passing through security towards boarding our flight back to NZ, I saw a couple in front who got pulled over for having several big bottles of lotion and perfume in the lady's hand luggage.  Boy!  Did I feel sorry for her as I know that she will loose them all as I doubt they will check them in for her as everyone was already boarding the plane.  Even with all the notices at the check in counter people still do not read or following instructions and get caught up and lose money in the process.