Claypot Chicken without the claypot

First try, and my hubby thinks it's too rich and addictive. I think I could tell by the amount of water my son drank lol. But it was good first try!

Things to modify:

• Add more rice (1 more cup perhaps) or
• Reduce the rich sauces, especially soy
• Have boneless chicken thighs with skin as when I cut it the bones becomes a choking hazard

I am really liking this website from rasamalaysia and was surprised that it's american owned! They do have real authentic simple ingredients to follow and convenient steps to get to where I want so far. Plus they do nice giveaways. Bummer that I don't live in the USA.

Anyhoo, recipe for me to take note

Makes enough for 4 adults to eat or just about

Curious? Click here for more...

Tau Yew Bak

Courtesy of my MIL's tips and tricks plus its my MOH's favourite so I tried it with the pressure cooker again.

What I was just nervous is how the meat turns out and how long to pressure cook it. The longer the better apparently for pork belly and ribs.

I have yet to figure out which part of the pig's body we don't cook too long and which we do. Looks like we do for all parts of the body so far.




It's a bit of work so I used the weekend to take the chance of time.

Curious? Click here for more...

Beef Stew with Pressure Cooker

Just to save time! And it turned out tastier than it looks. And the meat is tender too~

Does pay to learn the type of beef cuts for this =)

My referred recipe sites were foodinaminute 
And from thesaltymarshmallow for pressure cooking tips

As well as I read 10 tips about using the pressure cooker too to learn more about the time saved when cooking various things.

Important thing to take away using pressure cooker:

• Need to add more gravy as it keeps moisture
• Must release valve slowly after cooking and before even touching any parts of the pressure cooker
• Bring to high heat, until it starts sizzling then bring the heat down slightly
• Have to empty the dish and wash immediately after using

Time saved:
Instead of cooking 1.5-2 hours, I cooked for 35 mins, then left it on off for another 10 minutes.


See below for more steps that I use for cooking :)

Curious? Click here for more...

Chicken Cordon Bleu

Felt like making it and cooking dinner for the family as a favour. I actually based my ingredients and steps around this recipe and a video clip but I ended up tweaking it more on my own. And I made too much for my family haha. 3 chicken breasts is enough as it was very filling.

Anyway didn't manage to take a decent photo just coz I was a little shy doing it in front of the in laws but here is the ingredients and method. I would have tried the white wine next time as it would bring sauce to the dish and mom in law's clever idea of combining cauliflower to the dish adds balance of vegetables for dinner.

Curious? Click here for more...

Beef Stew

Made it for the first time, the meat turned out a little dry but the sauce was really good!

I could have done a few more things, but the recipe was solely followed in Jamie Oliver's book.

I could have added capsicum, mushrooms to taste and baked it at a lower temperature or put it in a slow cooker to save electricity. But it's all edible!


Here are the steps. Courtesy from Jamie Oliver's beef stew recipe

Curious? Click here for more...

Chicken Split Lentils

Aka chicken 'rice' for our little E. He's still on a GAPS diet so we are trying to avoid rice for him, no matter how much he adores and wants to eat with us (sigh). It was initially made by his grand aunty, so I asked her the steps.

This was the first time I cooked it and it was yummylicious. It can lasts for perhaps 3-4 days for a toddler like him? (he's just shy of 3)

The first mouth I took it really tasted like chicken rice! Just sorta 'mashed' rice texture or mashed potato.

Curious? Click here for more...

Lamb shank muffins

Just because it tastes like one to me! Although I have another leg lamb piece, steamed kale and brussel sprouts added not to mention sweet potato and carrots that was baked with the lamb.

Mmmm

All because my kiddo can't bite at the moment and muffins are the easiest for grabbing and poking and ensuring he gets good food in him.

Yes, ALL the stuff I'm cooking is now organic....and I'm glad he is the only one taking it coz it really bites on the price.

Follow this recipe to bake the lamb shanks. I just add the sweet potato and carrots at the bottom and sprinkled olive oil and salt for flavour before placing the lamb shanks on top.

All the top dishes dissaminated

No, this is the VITAL ingredient for him. GREENS~~

Makes about 15 large muffins

Curious? Click here for more...

Vegetarian Nuggets round 2

This time with a little more structure and prediction hahaha.

 

Well, I got carried away by trying to add one more vege to the mince but the bowl was too full and I didn't want to go beyond the tray, and squares were easier to semi circle.

Exactly the same process as my previous post but I change the veges instead.

 

This time I used:

• 2 x Carrots (for sweetness)
• 2 x Sweet potatoes (for sweetness)
• 1 x Broccoli
• A bag of Long Beans (About 350 grams)
• A bag of Brussel Sprouts
• Spinach steamed by my MIL
• A spoonful of LSA

Made 90 nuggets

Carrot & Sweet potato hash

What do you do when you saw a video clip cooking hash and your kiddo loves carrots?

Make carrot and sweet potato hash!

Didn't realised I made a lot but it's so yummy when first eaten! Could do well reheating in the oven or on a sandwich maker for the crisp.

I stole the idea from the video clip below:

And you can get the recipe from here

Makes about 5-6 x 5" pieces

Curious? Click here for more...

Salmon & Coriander Fish Cakes

Mmmmm...

I wana try this next!

Ingredients

• 250 g salmon fillets, cooked, cooled and flaked
• 250 g potato, peeled, cooked and grated
• 2 spring onions, choppes
• 1/2 cup coriander, chopped
• 1 tsp grated ginger
• 1 red chilli, chopped finely
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• 1/4 cup Homebrand flour
• 1 cup dried bread crumbs or panko crumbs
• 2 tsp sesame seeds
• 1/2 cup natural yoghurt
• 1/4 cup chopped coriander
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp oil, for cooking
• egg plus 1 Tbsp water
• zest of half a lemon

Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 10 minutes

Serves 18

Method

In a large bowl add the flaked cooked salmon, grated potato, spring onions, ½ cup of coriander, lemon zest, ginger, chilli, salt and pepper. Combine well.

With wet hands, form the mixture into small balls, flattening slightly with the palm of your hand.

Whisk the egg with the water.

Combine the breadcrumbs and sesame seeds.

Roll the fish cakes into the flour, then dip in the egg and water mixture, then finally into the bread crumb and sesame seed mixture. Cover the formed and coated fish cakes and place in the fridge until you’re ready to cook.

Heat the oil in a medium sized frying pan. Cook in batches for 3-4 minutes on each side. Alternatively, cook on the BBQ for 3-4 minutes each side.

To make the dipping sauce, combine yoghurt, juice of ½ a lemon and ¼ cup coriander, stir to combine, adding salt and pepper to taste.

Serve hot with dipping sauce.

Tip: These could also be made larger and served with a salad as a light meal.

Chicken Schnitzel aka chicken chop

Everybody knows that I am not the best when it comes to cooking (I have no idea why it is much easier process) but I have been wanting to make chicken chop ever since I was in Singapore planning to come back here.

So here is my first attempt!

Not bad eh?

I pretty much saw this on tv and went (ooooh, I wanna make that!) coz all these while the chicken I bake doesn't give a nice crisp as well as I don't need to deep fry this recipe (yay).



 Recipe from allrecipes asia website or if you want to follow how I did it, check further but this time I didn't use much measurements, so the below are just estimates :)

Curious? Click here for more...

Smoke Salmon Muffin

So I had leftover baby that needs finishing and I have been wanting to make this ever since I saw it on facebook.

Smoke Salmon and spinach! Hope I didn't go overboard with the salt....

I added an extra egg but it kinda spilled abit in the oven, heh.

Simple recipe here! Or you can skip below and just watch this video where I got it from

Muffin Tin Omelets
Batch Cook Breakfast!
Posted by Tip Hero on Friday, 25 September 2015

Curious? Click here for more...

Crustless Salmon Spinach Quiche!

Yes she is back! Since there is an oven in the Kitchen once more....previous one had to go just because I think I 'over cleaned' it to the point that rust was forming =(. Always use an oven spray peeps! Not attempt natural ingredients like baking soda. Either that I think it needs to be washed and dried cleanly

Anyway I was craving for quiche so I made this (as well as was planning for lunch and dinner ahead)

Packed with goodness of protein, yuuummm

Savouries are somehow the easiest to bake/cook than the desserts due to the fact that sugar is not in it! There is a whole new ball game to sugar and science so I pretty much whipped this dish in less than an hour.

Makes one 8" dish minus the crust

Curious? Click here for more...

Bak Kwa aka Pork Jerky

My first attempt!!

And it wasn’t as hard as I thought…fun bit was flattening out the meat. I can’t believe how over rated and expensive it has become to buy these things and they are also too chewy to bite.

Then again, it is meant to be a jerky…I like my texture softer and tender though. The moment I pop it into my mouth, it was yummier than I thought from the way I cook it!

I initially used this recipe for the ingredients but stumbled across another which has a bit more ingredients and will attempt to use it in the next round. In terms of the baking process, it all depends on one’s oven but the more you ‘dry’ the meat, the closer the meat will form into ‘jerky’ like texture.

Courtesy of My Kitchen Snippit's post and soyandpepper's post)

Makes about 450g of jerky

Curious? Click here for more...

Herbal Chicken Soup

Mmmmm, another great alternative instead of soup. This time, cooking this way instead of the usual soup mix is much better in the sense that all flavours essentially do not escape through vapour because the aluminium foil actually keeps the flavour in.

The thing about making this dish is that if you thoroughly want to fully utilise the flavours and herbs, you need to keep the meat marinated for longer, and the cooking process more than an hour. But I did mine in 45 minutes.

This is hot off the pot that the camera lense started steaming up hehe

And like soup, you can always refrigerate the dish if unfinish and it typically tastes even better the next day :)

Usually this dish is accompanied by a simple green vegetable dish such as kailan.

I found the dish a tad on the sweeter side and the herbs are abit too strong for the number of chickens I used. I shall attempt to make this dish again!


makes a dish for 2 people

(Courtesy of Noobcook's herbal chicken post)

Curious? Click here for more...

Lo Mai Kai (aka glutinous chicken rice)

Must be some temporary phase that I'm going through, either that I am in the midst of using the same ingredients for different dishes heh. The best part of this is that you can actually freeze the dish for about a month! It is also quite simple to make but of course the more pre-preperations you do, the tastier it'll get ;).

This dish is also seen when you go to a yum cha restaurant, where they serve it in lotus leaves. I wanted to get those but they were selling it in bulk :S. Also, my dear d suggested chestnuts, not water chestnuts because he thought that it was part of the ingredients but it wasn't!Haha, but it did taste rather good with it, so no harm trying it ;)

My ever ready steaming devices...

*kvt27 is going through some tim sum / yam cha phase*

Curious? Click here for more...

Chinese Tea Eggs

The ultimate easy and healthy dish to make! Okai, lemme begin by the history of tea eggssssss...

"Fragrant and flavorful tea eggs are a traditional Chinese treat. The original recipe uses various spices, soy sauce, and black tea leaves in the recipe. A commonly used spice for flavoring tea eggs is Chinese five-spice powder, which contains ground cinnamon, star anise, fennel seeds, cloves and Szechuan peppercorns. Some recipes do not use tea leaves, but they are still called "tea eggs". In the traditional method of preparation, eggs are boiled until they reach a hardened cooked state. The boiled eggs are removed from the water and the entire shell of each egg is gently cracked all around. Smaller cracks produce more marbling when the egg is peeled for eating. The extra water from the boiling should be allow to seep out of the eggs on its own. After about ten minutes, the cracked eggs are ready to be put into the prepared spiced-tea liquid and simmered at medium heat. The simmering allows the spiced fluid to seep into the cracks and marinate the eggs inside their shells. After about 20 minutes, the eggs and the spiced-tea liquid should be transferred to a glass or ceramic container for further steeping in the fridge. For best results, the eggs should be allowed to steep for two days. The dark color of the spiced tea gives the egg a marbled effect when it is peeled to be eaten..."click here if you want to know more

What brings the flavour most out of these eggs is the soy sauce I think. It's one of my childhood dish as I was growing up. And I think if you love green tea cupcakes, loves to try out new herbs, is addicted to chai lattes then there's no harm in trying these eggs out!

As for making them, I used a ready made sachet but there are ingredients available if you want to do it from scratch =). Check out a recipe here. And it's super ultimately easy because all you do is just dump them into a pot and let it simmer.

As well as I learnt something new: The chinese 5-spice flavour or powder. What's amazing is that it encompasses 5 different flavours all in one - sweet, sour, bitter, pungent and salty. And I can't believe that I grew up being expose to this all these while. What's even more amazing is that the ingredients are so healthy and is also used in Chai mixes - peppercorns, star anise, cloves, cinammon and fennel seeds.

Talk about relation in food...they all share the same thing yet give out different flavorsome dishes

Curious? Click here for more...

Getting there...

I can conclude that gyoza = half fried, half steamed wonton, heh

Gyoza - Attempt no.1

 

First attempt! Looks like plain soupy wonton to me =(

Couple of mistakes to learn from:

• Buy RounD wonton wraps, not square!

Had to come up with an alternative 'shape(s)'.Tortellini and Rustic styleeee

• Over filled the frying pan with too much water :S
• Turned the wrong side of the stove on....what a start

Yes, it kinda turned out seriously tasty, as the flavours were all there but the texture wasn't there as yet. I shall try it again as I bought myself enough pork to practice on...

Curious? Click here for more...

Lasagna

This is also a great dish to make and can last you for a few days if you make it in large portions.I remembered that it took me 3 times before I actually manage to bake one that hold all the layers up, i.e not watery. Simple as it sounds, I just had to leave the lasagna to cool for 10minutes before cutting into it. Haha, can't believe that took 3 attempts :P

Anyhoo, this is my simple version of making a lasagna. Thanks to D, he loves lasagna so I get to keep practicing!

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 2 garlic cloves, chopped into fine pieces
• 1/4 onion, chopped into fine pieces
  
• 250g mince beef
• 250g Mozzarella
• 1 bowl grated Parmesan
• 170g - 1 packet dolmio brand tomato and basil sauce
• 150g baby button mushrooms
• Italian herb for spice
• Dried Basil for spice
• 1/2 tbsp dried parsley
  
• 1/2 tbsp Salt plus extra for taste
• 250g of Sainsbury white sauce / béchamel sauce mix with sprinkled parsley
• 3 Layers of lasagne sheets (ones that you don't need to dip in water)
  

Method

1. Cook the garlic and onions in a pot/pan together. Add the mushrooms and 2 tbsp of water and cook until the mushrooms shrink. 
2. Add the mince and fry until 3/4 cooked before adding the tomatoe sauces. This can be seen when the meat colour turne from red to brown.
3. Add seasoning to the mix and let it simmer for a bit. Add cornflour if mixture is too watery. Allow the mixture to cool.
   
4. Preheat oven to 200degC. Prep up a square 25cm x 25cm square pan.
5. Add dried parsley to the white / bechamel sauce and mix. Set aside.
6. Layers consist of (starting from the bottom): 

• 1/2 Beef and mushroom mixture
• Lasagna sheets (break it to cover the tin entirely. Don't overlap the sheets on top of each other.)
  
• 1/2 White sauce
• 1/2 Mozzarella & Parmesan cheese
• Lasagna sheets
• 1/2 Beef and mushroom mixture
• Lasagna sheets
  
• 1/2 White sauce
  
• 1/2 Mozzarella & Parmesan cheese (gives a nice chewy top)

Cover the tin with an aluminum foil and bake for 20 mins. Remove the foil and bake for another 15-20 mins or until the top layer browns to your suit.

Here's a nice video clip as well by Kraft if you're more of a visual person: