Saturday, September 27, 2008

Pineapple chicken

Bought the chicken breast to do something else but forgotten that the time had been scheduled to do other things. So decided to cook it for dinner instead. Recipe from Hawkers' Fair Simplified. I modified the recipe a little to make it less spicy.


Ingredients:
1 piece chicken breast, thinly sliced
4 pcs canned pineapple rings, diced
2 green chillies, remove seed and diced – original recipe uses 1 green capsicum
2 red chillies, remove seed and diced - not in original recipe
1 tomato, cut into wedges
½ cucumber, remove seed and cut into wedges –not in the original recipe
1 small onion, diced – not in original recipe
cornflour for coating chicken
oil for deep frying

Marinade:
1tsp salt,
½ tsp sugar
1 egg white
1tbsp corn flour
1tsp cooking wine

Sauce:
1tbsp thai chilli sauce
1tbsp tomato sauce
3tbsp canned pineapple juice
1tsp lemon juice
1tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt

Method:
1. Combine chicken breast with marinade and season for 2hours in fridge. Then coat with corn flour and deep fry in hot oil until cooked. Dish and drain.

2. Leave 1 tbsp oil in wok, put in onion fry till fragrant, add in pineapple, chillies, cucumber, tomato and stir well. Pour in sauce and cook until thick.

3. Add in fried chicken breast, stir well and dish up.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Randal's Birthday Cake

Randal requested to have a cake after seeing Trenyce cake, he wants almost the same design except with his favourite toys, we bought the toys together last month, all the ben10 toys were quite big for the cake, so I suggest mix with a few pokemon toys. I try to create the cake with ben10 main colors. I did encounter some problem while doing the cake, glad that he didn't mind at all.


Thursday, September 18, 2008

Sweet Pancakes

I remember my mum used to make this snack for the family when we were kids, her recipe was very simple, just add water, sugar and an egg to flour and mix into a thin batter, spread a layer of the batter into a greased wok and fry it. I saw this recipe from a book, this pancake is thinner than the american style type.


Ingredients:
250g plain flour
pinch of salt
4 tbsp sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
500ml milk
4tbsp melted butter or oil
oil or butter for greasing the pan

Method:
1. Put the flour, salt and sugar into a bowl and make a well in the centre. Pour the egg and a little of the milk into the well. Whisk the liquid, gradually incorporating the flour to make a smooth paste. Whisk in the butter or oil, then the remaining milk until smooth. Allow to rest, if liked.

2. Put 1 tbsp oil or butter in a heavy based frying pan and heat until it starts to smoke. Use a ladle to scoop the batter into the pan, tilting the pan until the base is coated in a thin layer. Cook for 1-2 min until the underside is turning golden.

3. Flip the pancake and cook for a further 30-45 seconds until golden on the second side. Remove the pancake out of pan and make the remaining pancakes, greasing the pan as necessary. Serve plain or any sauce per individual preference.

Pulut Hitam

Was busy making mooncake last Saturday afternoon, have no time to make other snacks for tea so I use pressure cooker to cook some pulut hitam. Its was done on rough estimation, bought 1 pack of black glutinous rice from market, soak it for a few hours, rinse and cook it in pressure cooker with a handful of glutinous rice and a few pandan leaves plus more water than usual in order to avoid the water being soak up while cooking. When the needle of the cooker pop up, cook a further 20min, after the pressure was release, I remove excess water then pour the rice in another pot and reheat it and add rock sugar to taste. Serve it with coconut milk.



Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Mid Autumn Festival (中秋节)

This year I made mooncakes at very last minute over the weekend, take some pictures today as it nicer to be eaten at least two days after baking it.


These are single yolk traditional mooncake. I prefer to do the lotus paste from scratch as its less sweet than those bought from store. Kenny helped to do the glaze on all the mooncakes as he's better at it...LOL.

There were lots of mooncake pastry left over, so Kenny suggest to use it to wrap the mango paste that I bought couple of weeks back. He helped to add some walnut into the paste, surprisingly the mooncakes taste quite pleasant.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Orange with Walnut Snowskin Mooncake

Came across some fruity taste paste and thought that it will be nice to made into snowskin mooncake. For the filling, I mixed the orange paste with some chopped walnut. As for the skin, I use the snowskin mooncake recipe from my friend and add in some sunquick orange syrup and orange emulco into the ice water. This mooncake is not sweet and taste rather refreshing.



Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Thai Style Tofu

I like the taste of this dish after eating it at a chicken rice shop last weekend. I did it for Sunday's dinner. Its not difficult to duplicate the dish, the shop uses soft tofu, I change it to firm tofu or tau kua because its easier to fry with lesser oil, replace the lime with lemon cos I only have lemon at home and I used chilli padi as I prefer this dish to be more spicy.




Ingredients:
3 pieces of firm tofu or tau kwa – cut into small pieces
½ cucumber – shredded

Sauce:
2 chilli padi – chopped
Juice from half orange
Juice from half lemon
1 tbsp of chopped garlic
½ tsp sugar
½ tsp fish sauce

Method:
1) Deep fried tofu till chrispy. Dished and set aside.

2) Place cucumber on top of tofu. Mix sauce ingredients in a bowl. Pour the sauce on the top of cucumber.

Monday, September 1, 2008

Roti John

Bought two baguette while shopping at carrefour on Saturday, used it to make roti john for Sunday breakfast. I used canned tuna in stead of minced meat because its more convenient...



Ingredients:

2 slim baguette

1 can of tuna fish (170g)

1/2 onion --diced

5 eggs

1/2 tsp salt

dash of black pepper


Method:

1) Cut bread into about 10-12inch length. Slice baguette lenghthwise from the side into 2 pieces.

2) Heat 1 tbsp oil in frying pan, stir fry onion till fragrant. Remove and set aside.

3) Pour away water in the canned tuna fish, pour fish into a mixing bowl, add in beated eggs and onion. Add in salt and pepper, mix the ingredients till well combined. Make sure the fish is broken into smaller pieces if using canned chunk tuna.

4) Heat frying pan with 3 tbsp oil, scoop some egg mixture onto frying pan, quickly place bread face down sticking onto egg, press the bread while frying inorder to let the egg stick to bread. Turn the bread while frying, fry till the egg side is crispy and brown.

5) Repeat the process for the rest of the bread. Serve warm with chilly sauce or ketchup.