Stir fry rice cake with Seafood

Bought a pack of korean rice cake from korean supermarket at Burlington square, initially wanted to cook it as a spicy dish but later change my mind, just stir fry it with garlic, fish fillet, shrimps and some vegetables, season it with chicken powder and simmer a few min with a little water and its done. The rice cake texture is a little more on the springy side compare to those dries ones that we usual bought..quite nice.

Herb and Walnut Bread

Try one recipe from the new bought breadmachine recipe book, but I adjust it a little by replacing the fresh herbs with dried ones(I use what's available in my kitchen). As I can't get hold of fresh rosemary that day so I sprinkle some dried rosemary on top of the loaf when the bread was baking half way in the machine. The bread still linger the rosemary fragrant when I reheat the balance bread from freezer after a few days, the fragrant brought out nice appetite...

Ingredients:


185ml/ 3/4 cup milk

105ml/1/2 cup water

3tbsp extra virgin olive oil

450g/ 3 cups bread flour

50g/1/2 cup chopped walnut

1tsp garlic powder

2 tsp dried mix herbs

11/2 tsp salt

2 tsp sugar

1tsp instant yeast



1. Pour the milk,water and olive oil into the bread machine pan. If the instruction for your machine specify that the yeast is to be placed in the pan first, reverse the order in which you add the liquid and dry ingredients.

2. Set the bread machine to basic/normal setting, medium crust, then press Start.

3. About 1 hour before the cycle end, sprinkle a little salt and dried rosemary on top of the loaf(I like the smell of rosemary on baking bread, I think the fragrant will help increase the appetite)

4. Remove the bread at the end of the cycle and turn out on to a wire rack to cool.

Salad

Thought that a western style roast chicken should go with salad instead of the usual stir fry vegetables, never did a salad for meals before, also tried created a simple salad dressing than to use bottle ones.

1 lettuce

Some cherry tomatoes

1 small Carrot – sliced thinly



Sauce:

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp chopped sage

1 tsp chopped mint

Ground black pepper

½ tsp salt

2tbsp sugar

1 tbsp honey

A little stock or water

Juice of half lemon

1 tsp vinegar



Method:

1. Rinse lettuce and break into big piece with hand, place all vegetables in a big bowl. Mix the sauce together. Chilled the vegetable and sauce in fridge separately.

2. Just before dinner, mix sauce and vegetable till will combined, serve.

Roast Chicken

Watched Jamie Oliver did the roast turkey on tv and it looks delicious and easy to do, so I tried putting the herb butter mixture on chicken for christmas day dinner, the chicken tasted quite nice and we finish the whole chicken....

Ingredients:

1 chicken (approx. 1.5kg)


2 tbsp butter (soften)

2 tsp chopped sage leaves

Black Pepper

1 tsp salt



3 stalk of celery-chopped

3 small carrot – cut into big piece

1 onion- cut into chunks

1 tsp Salt and 1 tsp black pepper

2 tbsp olive oil



Method:

1. Rinse chicken, chopped off chicken legs and neck of chicken. Leave aside to let it dry a little. Meanwhile chopped up the vegetables and mix together with salt, black pepper and olive oil.

2. Apply butter herb mixture on chicken and chicken cavity. Place marinated vegetable on foil lined tray, place chicken on top.

3. Place chicken in preheated 180 deg C fan oven, baked for 45min then turn to 200 deg C to bake a further 10-15 min to make the chicken skin more brown.

4. Poke the thick section of chicken (thigh) with a satay stick to check the chicken is cooked. If clearn liquid flow out then is done. Remove chicken from oven, remove chicken on plate, let it cool down a little before serve.

Quick Honey Wings

The was suppose to be grilled dish, but tried cooking it in wok...

Ingredients:

Appx. 500g chicken wings

Sauce:

2tbsp honey

1tbsp cooking wine/sherry

1/2 tsp dark soy sauce

1/2 cup water

Marinade:

salt

black pepper

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tsp paprika

Method:

1. Rinse chicken wing, marinate it the the marinade, place in fridge for at least 2 hours.

2. Heat up wok with 2 tbsp oil over medium fire, pan fry till wings are evenly brown on both sides.

3. Combined sauce ingredients together, add sauce to wings, make sure all the wings are cover by the water, lower the fire and let the wings cooked till water dried up. Remove the wings and serve

Taipei Trip'09

This trip was quite good, Taipei is a nice place, the people are very friendly and polite, there are lots of variety of food, the attractions are rather easy to locate given that we visited all the places on our own, not difficult to find places as the public transports reaches almost everwhere. Manage to cover most of the places that we wanted to visit.

This first few days was cold, kept raining...

On the second day, after visited Sun Yat Sun Memorial Hall...

We went to Hello Kitty Resturant for lunch, which was only one mrt station away from the memorial hall...

this burger was very big...

Even the toilet looks so sweet...

the cakes and pastries looks so cute and sweet...

Braised Pork Belly with Mushrooms and Eggs

There were some pre-cut pork belly laying in my mum's freezer, so I suggested to braise it with some eggs since we haven't ate braised pork dishes for a while. I like to cook the meat a bit longer so as to make sure its tender, thou it doesn't look nice but the taste was...

Ingredients:

1 kg pork belly - sliced

a few chinese mushrooms (soaked)

a few hard boiled eggs

1 star anise

1-2 cloves of galic (smashed slightly)

800ml water

Seasoning:

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1/2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp chinese cooking wine

1 tsp dark soy sauce

Method:

1. Rinse pork belly and place in pot. Place in mushroom. Pour in water, add in star anise, seasoning and stir well. Bring to boil, lower the heat and braise for 30 min, add in hard boiled eggs, boil for another 15 min then off fire.

2. Half and hour before dinner, turn on the heat and let it braise till gravy thickens. Dish and serve.