Do you prefer the Black or White?

Breakfast is getting very boring over here in jakarta! It will be cornflakes, breads or biscuits!!
I will always be pamper will all the choices whenever I'm in singapore!! Miss all my vegetarian mifen, kueh chap, luo mee, fishball noodles, laksa, mee siam, fried carrot cakes and etc.

So yesterday I decided to cook a singapore style breakfast! And that is Fried Carrot Cakes!
This is not my favourite dish but certainely is Mr Alfred's favourite! He will never fail to eat this whenever he is in Sg.

I made Carrot cake before but is those with alot of ingredients. This is the first time I made the plain carrot cake and fried it after that. I did 2 version, Black and White. So which do you prefer?!

Fried Radish Cake (菜头粿) Recipe
Ingredients:
Part 1 – Making the Radish Cake1 medium radish (about 700g when grated) + 50ml water
200g rice flour
250ml water
1/4 tsp salt
Method:
1. Over a very low flame, steam grated radish + 50ml water in a thick stainless steel pot (or non-stick pot). About 30 mins, or until radish turns translucent. Remove cover and allow to cool.
2. Combine rice flour, salt and water. Mix well to combine.
3. Add rice flour solution to cooled grated radish. Stir and mix before pouring into a metal cake tin for steaming. The final mixture should resemble a somewhat watery coleslaw.
4. Steam on high for 40 mins. Leave it until completely cool (best overnight in the refrigerator), so that the radish cake firms up. It will be easier to handle too, as it will not stick to the knife when you’re cutting.

Part 2 – Frying the Radish Cake
Use half of the steamed radish cake above (enough for 1 or 2 persons)
1 to 2 tbsp chai poh (preserved radish/turnip)
2 to 3 eggs, lightly beaten
3 cloves minced garlic
About 2 tsp fish sauce* (or slightly more, if you like)
3 tbsp oil (vegetable oil or lard oil)
Dash of white pepper
Chilli sauce (optional, as much as you like)
About 1 tbsp Rose Brand Thick Sweet Sauce (omit this if you are frying the white version)
3 stalks chopped spring onion
Coriander leaves for garnishing
(Teochew cuisine is one of the few which makes use of fish sauce due to Chaoshan’s coastal land.)
Method:
1. Cut up steamed radish cake into small chunks. Smaller chunks will crisp better, and the result is a more delicious plate of Chai Tow Kway. You want a contrast in texture – a crisp exterior and a soft interior. And those really small, charred, crispy crumbs? Heaven.
2. In a non-stick skillet, heat oil and fry radish cake chunks till lightly browned and slightly crisp. Heat should be medium high.
3. Add minced garlic and chai poh. Fry till aromatic. Drizzle a little more oil if it is too dry.
4. Add fish sauce, pepper (and lashings of chilli sauce, if you like it spicy). Fry to coat evenly with seasoning.
5. Pour beaten eggs all over radish cake. Allow the eggs to set slightly before flipping over in sections. It’s OK if it starts breaking up when you flip over; you don’t need to have a perfect whole. At this stage, you can dish up and serve with spring onions if you are making the white version.
6. Drizzle Rose Brand Thick Sweet Sauce and stir fry to mix well. Dish up and sprinkle liberally with spring onions. Garnish with coriander leaves

Recipe from Rasamalaysia.com

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Hi people, sorry for not updating the blog for so long!

I'm just so busy!!

Busy chasing my korean dramas!! =P

But no worries, I'm back! At least back till I start another new drama!! keekee

I have alot of backdated entries to update!! Arragh, so bear with me awhile and I will post them up one by one!

For a start, let me post a short entry!

This is not the first time I cooked chicken rice! But this time, I tried a different recipe and it turned up pretty yummy! The only thing my tester aka Alfred can say is the rice is not salty enough! The rest are given "got standard"!

Recipe as shown below:- (Those in red are what I amended)

Ingredients for Chicken:

• 1 Chicken, preferably Kampong Chicken (I used 3 chicken legs instead)
• 8 clove Garlic, lightly smashed with skin intact
• 5 slices Ginger
• 1 - 2 teaspoon Salt
• Water
• I added more chicken bones to make it tastier

How to do it:

1. Stuff garlic and ginger in chicken and seal with toothpick. (Since I can't stuff these into the chichen, I just throw it into the water with the chicken Legs)
2. Blanch chicken.
3. Boil a pot of water and add salt.
4. Simmer the chicken for about 20 - 25 minutes or till cooked.
5. Retain broth for use on rice, chilli sauce and soup.
6. Plunge chicken in ice water for about 15 minutes or till chicken is no longer hot.
7. Remove from water and drip dry.
8. Cut chicken into pieces.

Ingredients for Rice:

• 3 cup Long Grain Rice, (I cooked 1.5 cups of rice)
• Broth from cooking chicken
• 4 slices Ginger
• 5 glove Garlic, lightly smashed with skin intact
• Added some shallots
• 8 Pandan leaves, tied in a knot
• Salt to taste

How to do it:

1. In a wok, add 2 teaspoon oil, preferably oil from frying chicken skin or the congealed fats you get when you refrigerate your chicken broth. Otherwise, vegetable oil is fine.
2. Saute ginger and garlic till fragrant. (And shallots)
3. Add in washed rice and saute till rice is coated well with the oil.
4. Add salt to taste (about 1 teaspoon is enough).
5. Stir to mix well.
6. Pour rice with ginger and garlic to your rice cooker.
7. Add in broth from chicken you cooked earlier instead of your usual water.
8. Add in the pandan leaves.
9. Let your rice cooker do the cooking. ;)

Soup:

1. Some long cabbage and let it boil till it soft
2. Add some salt and is ready to be serve!

Ingredients for chilli:

• 3 Chillies, top and seeds removed (I used about 10 chillies with seeds)
• 1 slice Ginger
• 4 glove Garlic, skin removed
• Juice of 3 limes
• 5 tablespoon of chicken broth

How to do it:

1. Blend all ingredients together, till smooth.
2. That's all!

Note:

• Add more chilli if you prefer it to be more spicy.
• Add less broth if you prefer it to be thicker.

Ingredients for Ginger sauce:

• Ginger
• Sesame Seed Oil
• Salt to taste

How to do it:

1. Blend ginger till very fine.
2. Add salt to taste and sesame seed oil.
3. Mix well

Recipe taken from http://wokkingmum.blogspot.com/.

Is actually not much skill to cook this, just the chopping and blending that requires more time! So if you are interested, do try this and hope you like it!

杂菜

"杂菜" is a pretty common dish in my house. But cooking it, yesterday is the first time. Since this is one of Dear's favourite dish, I cannot throw my "杨家的脸" so before cooking, I called back to ask my personal Shifu, My Mum!! =P

It was a pretty easy dish, so do try it as it taste very nice!!

Don't you feel like eating it just by looking at my pictures?!?!

Ingredients:

Cabbage

Mu Er (Soak in water)

Chicken wings

Dong Fen

Dou Jiang (Smash the dou Jiang)

Garlic

Method:

1) Marinate the chicken with soya sauce, pepper and oyster sauce. Leave in the fridge for 1hr if time allows

2)Heat some oil in the pan and fried with some garlics.

3) Once the garlics smell is out, put about 1 tbsp to 2 tbsp of dou Jiang in. (Depends on the quantity and how salty you want it to be). Fry together with the garlic.

4) Put the chickens wings in and fry till almost cook. Put cabbage in and mix them before putting the mu er.

5) Put some water in. (Chicken stock will be better. I don't have so i put chicken cube)

6) Put in the dong fen

7) Let it boil until the cabbage and meat is really soft. (Add more water if you like more sauce)

8) Seasonings will really depend on individual. If you want it more salty add oyster sauce and soya sauce.

9) We really like our cabbage soft so I boil them for about 1 hour

Easy right?? Enjoy the dish!

Banana & Chocolate Muffins Recipe

As per requsted by my lovely Da jie, here is the recipe:-

Banana & Chocolate Muffins
Ingredients:(makes 10 ~ 12 muffins)
275g plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large bananas,
about 450g100g brown sugar (original recipe calls for 125g brown caster sugar)
1 large egg, lightly beaten
50ml semi-skimmed milk (I used low fat fresh milk)
75g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
50g chocolate chips
Method:
Pre-heat oven to 180degC (350 degF).
Line muffin pans with paper muffin cases.
Sieve together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a mixing bowl. Mix in the chocolate chips. Set aside.
Peel the bananas and mash with a fork in a bowl. Add in brown sugar, egg, milk and melted butter. Mix until well combined.
Pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients.
With a wooden spoon or a spatula, gently fold all the ingredients to form a wet batter. Stir gently, using only a few strokes and mix until the flour are incorporate into the batter. DO NOT Over mix. The batter should appear lumpy.
Spoon batter into paper muffin cases. Bake for 20mins until muffins turn golden brown or a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Let cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or cold.

Recipe For Chicken Katsu

Actually no special recipe for this Chicken Katsu.
I just do the normal marination for the chicken overnight.
Then i coat the chicken with flour than egg than the bread crumbs.
Next will be off to deep fry the chicken.

Tip is the fire cannot be too big if not the coating will be burnt and the meat might not be cooked! After the chicken is cooked, remember to turn the fire big then put the chicken back to fry for awhile more. (This is to force the oil out so is not so oily!)

This way you will get your chicken cripsy and not so oily!

Sunny Egg Toast

Running out of ideas what to eat for breakfast? Getting bored with Peanut Butter or Kaya Bread. Let me teach you all an easy way to make your breakfast something different!

Place some cheese at the sides of a bread.

I add some ham on it as well. (Can do without it if you want)

Cut a square shape out of another slice of bread. If you have a cookie cutter of other shape, even better. (Something interesting for the kids)

Then, placed the bread onto the cheese bread

Press the middle part with your fingers

Beat an egg at the middle.

Bake in a toaster or oven till the egg is set.

Sprinkle some salt and pepper and serve.

*Put some butter at the side of the bread to prevent it from getting browned faster than the egg.

Actually i did 2 method. The other is i put the cheese in the square, press it with my fingers before i beat the egg in it.

Tadah...this is the end result

I bake abit too long and the egg is no longer sunny egg and the bread is just like biscuits. Arragh.

Shall try again next time.

Alfred Ratings:

3 *

Reason:Too crispy like eating biscuits.

Longan Muffins

This afternoon i baked some Longan Muffins for snack. It suppose to be Lychee Muffins but i do not have lychee so i used longan instead. The taste is good but i think Lychee with be even better.

The Recipe i used is as shown below:

Luciously Moist Lychee Muffins
Ingredients:
80g unsalted butter
120g cake flour
1/2 tsp salt(do not put if using salted butter)
1 tsp baking powder
130g canned lychees
1 egg
90g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
4 tbsp lychee juice (syrup from canned lychees)
Method:
1) Slice butter and melt it in microwave oven for a few seconds. Or melt over low heat on the stove.
Remove butter from the heat source when half of it has melted (Do not overheat). Mash remaining lumps of butter. Set aside to cool.
2) Sift flour, salt (if use unsalted butter) and baking powder. Mix well.
3) Cut lychees into small pieces. Use a paper tower to pat them dry. Add 3/4 lychees to the flour mixture. Toss lightly to coat. Leave the lychees in the flour mixture.
4) Beat egg and sugar in a mixer at medium high speed for three minutes till pale-coloured and triple its volume. Add essence, juice and melted butter. Stir gently with a spoon.

*I don't have a electric mixer so i used a hand whisk*

5) Fold flour mixture (together with the lychees) into egg mixture gently with a spatula.

6) Set mixture aside for 30 mins to allow it to thicken.

7) Preheat oven to 170deg. Line muffin tray with paper cases.

8) Fill the paper cases with as much mixture as you can without it spilling to the sides (I filled up to the ream of my paper cups). Sprinkle some lychee pieces on top.

9) Bake for about 25 mins till golden brown / when inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Special Notes:

* Do not overheat the butter as its flavour will be altered.

* Do not replace lychee juice with milk or water as lychee juice intensifies the lychee flavour in these muffins.

* Patting the lychees dry and tossing them in flour prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the muffins during baking.

Do give it a try as is very easy!!

Alfred Ratings:

3.5 *

Reasons: The taste is nice but abit sweet!