Cooking at MAGGI Celebrity Potluck with Belinda Chee!

cooking belinda

I had the awesome opportunity to cook with Belinda Chee a couple of days ago! She created a hearty Fish and Vegetable Soup recipe and I helped her create the dish. It’s a contest called Celebrity Potluck organized by MAGGI and we were the second team to present a dish.

maggi celebrity cooking

I asked Belinda about why she choose this recipe – it’s something that she cooks herself at home and it’s easy to cook but tastes delicious at the same time.

maggi kitchen

The first team came up with a Seafood/Vegetable Tom Yam Soup. Peter Davis (of Mixed Martial Arts fame) cooked the first one and Sazzy Falak cooked the vegetarian version. It’s basically the same thing, except one has more protein in it, had a nice chat with Peter about MMA competitions and weights categories too.

belinda chee

Anyway, I actually cooked twice in this MAGGI Celebrity Potluck event. The first was helping Belinda out with her recipe and it goes like this:

fish vege soup recipe

Yup! I didn’t realize that the walls of MAGGI Masak-Masak Kitchen was actually hand-written with the 3 recipes from the 3 different teams. It was so nicely done I thought it was the décor!

sixthseal belinda

The trick to Belinda’s Fish and Vegetable soup is to stir-fry the thinly sliced shallots with a bit of oil in the pot first before anything else. Chopped garlic and ginger was added to the mix and sautéed for a while for that extra bit in taste.

chef muluk

The item that makes this really fast and easy are the MAGGI Ikan Bilis Stock Cubes. These are soup cubes (ikan bilis is the local word for anchovies) that produces the wonderful flavor and aroma. It’s really very versatile as I came to find out later.

tasting

I tasted it while we were cooking and it’s delicious! You just need 2 MAGGI Ikan Bilis Stock Cubes for 1 litre of water – it’s a standard, convenient pre-measure that makes it easy to scale up or down.

sarawakians

That makes it really convenient to cook delicious and fast dishes! Two MAGGI stock cubes for each liter of water, it can’t get any easier than that. It’s also surprisingly tasty since the ingredients they use basically concentrates the flavors so you get instant stock/soup/topping/whatever you can think of.

cooking belinda chee

The Fish and Vege Soup was left to simmer for 15 minutes and served to the audience afterwards. I didn’t get to eat this one coz it was all gone by the time I got down from the kitchen on the stage. Haha!

mystery ingredient cookoff

No worries though coz there’s a second cooking competition! I was paired with Belinda again and 4 other members of the media joined us for the MAGGI Mystery Ingredient team challenge to create a dish with the following:

  • 1 mystery ingredient
  • MAGGI Stock Cubes
  • Ingredients from the table
  • 30 minutes for everything

mystery ingredient

It felt like a I was in one of the popular cooking shows on TV. Heh. We got “Dory Fish Fillet” from the mystery box and there was a mad rush to grab items from the table.

ingredients table

We could only use those and some of them were nicked by other teams and once it’s taken, it’s gone, we had to make do with what’s left!

masak masak kitchen

Our well equipped kitchen island!

dory fish fillets

We wanted to make something a little different so we went fusion and decided to bake the fish fillets. We’ll just use ginger, garlic, shallots, button mushrooms and celery (I know, a lot of people went “Celery?” too, but it worked out well) to pile on top of the dory fish fillets.

baking

The fillets were sliced and then marinated – the most important part of the cooking. It was a quick marinade (more of a topping) made with MAGGI Tom Yam Stock Cubes. We crushed two of the cubes into 2 tablespoons of water (it’s very versatile – you can use it like this too) and then realized we didn’t have starch to thicken the mixture (!!!).

cooking contest

Luckily, there was custard powder on the table. It’s flavor neutral e.g. not sweet, and it coagulates the tom yam topping to the texture we wanted, so that’s perfect! We dissolved that into the hot water with 2 MAGGI Tom Yam Stock Cubes and poured the mixture on top of the fish fillets before adding MAGGI Thai Chilli Sauce and MAGGI Concentrated Chicken Stock and chucking it into the preheated oven (220 Celsius) for 5 minutes.

siamese fish fillets

We were running out of time and we thought 5 minutes wasn’t enough but that’s all the time we had in the 30 minute cooking challenge. It turned out fine coz dory fish fillets cooks really fast! We all tasted it and concluded it was delicious!

judges

I ate a lot of it myself coz it was so good! There were a couple of fish fillets left after we plated 3 of them for the judges (Siew Ling, the Brand Manager was one of them) and everyone came in and ate some. We didn’t have enough to serve everyone – it’s my fault guys, sorry, I was the one who ate the rest of the fish fillets. I evaded the question at the time, but it was me who ate it all. I apologize. It was tooooo good! smirk

team belinda

Our dish was presented to the judges and we didn’t win but we all got a consolation prize anyway! It was a large senduk (a kitchen utensil used for scooping stuff from liquids) which was perfect! I cook a lot more nowadays since it’s a common hobby I share with my girlfriend. I cook for her sometimes, she cooks for me sometimes. The MAGGI stock cubes will really come in handy here. I want to try out Awal’s recipe for Golden Braised Chicken with Fresh Mushrooms. It was the winner and a well deserved one! It’s so tasty that I must cook it at home – I shall be using the recipe add to my kitchen accomplishments! Haha! 🙂

maggi stock

It was a really fun session! Thanks for helping with the photos Sue Ann! 🙂 I got to cook in a nice kitchen (the MAGGI Masak-Masak Kitchen is really something) and got great tips from the MAGGI Executive Chef (Chef Muluk) and I learned the versatility that comes with MAGGI Stock Cubes. The sky is the limit, it’s not just for soup, but can be used for practically anything! I can’t wait to try it in my kitchen. I’m planning to cook a nice dinner as a surprise for my girlfriend during our anniversary and I bet she’ll love the golden braised chicken. It’s always better to cook than to eat out, I believe – cooking comes from the heart.

maggi celebrity potluck

We named our dish Siamese Fish Fillets. The crunchy texture of the shallots and ginger goes really well with the baked dory fish fillets topped with MAGGI Tom Yam Stock Cubes. I’ll share the recipe we used if anyone is interested! 🙂

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30 thoughts on “Cooking at MAGGI Celebrity Potluck with Belinda Chee!”

    • I plan to cook for an important upcoming event soon! 🙂

      Sure thing, I’ll keep you updated. It’s fun to cook – we both enjoy it and although Ling can cook a lot better than me, we both likes to take turns to be the chef sometimes (or even better – cook together).

      Cheers Eve! 😀

      Reply
  1. well done! you cook like a pro la.. but that’s coz you actually cook at home too, frequently! Keep it up… i hope u cook for us one day.. haha 😛

    Reply
    • Thanks Mei! 😀

      Yeah, it’s always fun to cook, it’s something we both enjoy! We’ve been doing a lot of cooking together lately too – did lunch just now!

      Sure thing, I’ve got something coming up soon that’s important, will keep you updated!

      Reply
    • Yup, it was a lot of fun! 🙂

      I especially liked the Siamese Baked Fish that we made in the 30 minute challenge – good stuff. I ate so much that we didn’t have enough to serve to the guests, only the judges. Haha!

      Reply
    • Yeah, it was an awesome event! 🙂

      Loved the 30 minute cooking challenge in particular – it’s a lot of fun, coz once the ingredients are snapped up by another team, you don’t have it anymore and you have to make to with the stuff that’s left.

      Reply
    • Yup, I find myself cooking with my girlfriend a lot more now! 😀

      Indeed, the senduk would be useful for soup. I usually use a spatula for that. Haha!

      Reply
    • I’m happy to take the load off you dear! 🙂

      It’s my pleasure, I’ll be glad to do that all the time. I love you dear! <3

      Reply
    • Yeah, it’s a lot of fun, that cooking event and challenge! 🙂

      Haha! We did that recipe on the fly, but it turned out good! Thanks Mel!

      Reply
    • Haha! No la, just kind of them to invite me for the event. 🙂

      I had fun though and the embroidered apron (it says “SixthSeal”) certainly is a great souvenir that I’ll keep for my kitchen adventures.

      Reply
  2. Looks good!! Can i have the recipe for the Golden Braised Chicken with Fresh Mushrooms too??? Would like to try it since you said it was so good. ^^

    Reply
    • Thanks Tammy! 🙂

      Hmm…I don’t know the recipe for Awal’s dish but let me go back and see if I took a photo of it. It should be written on the wall. I’ll get back to you on that!

      Cheers!

      Reply
    • Haha! The important thing is that we all had fun. 🙂

      I loved the teamwork that our team had for the 30 minute challenge, everyone was putting max effort in, that counts for a lot even if our dish wasn’t the best.

      Reply
  3. Aha! You are always having fun when cooking is concerned. Looked so easy to follow your tips to marinate the fish with Tom Yam cubes! I will try that as I have never baked any fish in my life.

    My crystal ball says you will become a celebrity chef very soon! Good luck!

    Reply
    • Yup, it’s always fun to cook! 🙂

      That Siamese Baked Fish was really fun to do too. It had to be done within 30 minutes as it was a mystery ingredient challenge so I think we only baked it for a couple of minutes.

      Good thing dory fish fillets cook fast. Haha!

      Thanks buddy!

      Reply
    • Thanks Rose! 🙂

      It’s a lot of fun to cook! I love to cook when I have the time.

      I guess it’s a hobby that I’ve had since I was a kid – used to bug my dad to get gourmet sausages and bacon from KL (imported goods weren’t available easily in the late 80’s) and I’ll cook them myself. 😀

      Reply
    • Hello Kiare! 🙂

      Nope, this is a private kitchen for guests of Maggi – as far as I know, it’s not open to the public.

      They do feature cooking here and filming is done here too.

      Reply
    • Thanks Eiling! 🙂

      Yup, it was a lot of fun to cook there – especially the 30 minute cooking challenge. I thought that was awesome, with everyone chipping in to help.

      Reply

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