Oh My DaRLiNg PiNeAppLe

Pineapple is something I'm mad about - I love to eat them and one of friends teases me all the time about it and even nicknamed me Pineapple before as a joke in the office. I love to eat them freshly cut with a sprinkling of those sour fruits powder you get at the fruits stall or with black soya sauce mixed with some sugar. Besides that I love pineapple jam tarts - especially the ones my mum makes called pineapple balls as they melt in your mouth.

Pineapples are grown in Malaysia where the varieties are either for canning or the table. Popular table varieties are the Morris, Sarawak and Josapine which is the fruitition of our local agricultural board, Mardi. Besides the local varieties, the Thai pineapple is also extremely popular as it is sweeter and has less fibre. Eating pineapple is great when you have flu as it has loads of Vitamin C. It also helps your digestive system and can reduce inflamation of your wounds. However, if you are pregnant, eating pineapple is taboo as it is believed to induce abortion.

This is a decorative pineapple plant we have in the garden. It sprouts these mini pineapples that are so cute but unfortunately not edible.



I made some Pineapple Chicken recently - it's like sweet and sour chicken except they add pineapple in the dish. Simple stuff to serve up. It looks extremely pretty if you have the "traffic light" colours i.e. the green capsicum, red tomato and yellow pineapple but my dish turned out a bit too sunshine yellow as I used yellow capsicum. Some fried chicken bits of mine were more brown than the others as I got slightly interrupted when I was frying them. I also omitted the fresh pineapple since I only had the canned variety.

Pineapple Chicken(from Hawkers Fair)

500g chicken breast or thigh, thinly sliced
4 pieces of pineapple rings from the can, cubed
150g fresh pineapple, diced
1 capsicum, sliced and preferably green
1 tomato, cut into wedges
cornflour for coating the chicken

Marinade
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 egg
1 tsp curry powder
1 tbsp corn flour

Sauce
1 tbsp Thai Chili Sauce
1 tbsp tomato sauce
1 tbsp chili sauce
3 tbsps pineapple juice
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Mix the marinade ingredients and combine it with the sliced chicken. Leave it for 30 minutes. Coat with corn flour and shake the excess flour out. Deep fry in hot oil till golden brown. Ladle out and drain the oil away. Leave 1 tbsp of oil in the wok, put in pineapple, capsicum, tomato and stir well. Add the sauce and cook until thick. Add in the fried chicken and stir well. Dish up and serve with hot rice.