My husband is and will always be a big fan of Hainanese Chicken Rice. When we went to Singapore few years ago, we ate Chicken rice almost every day, and he never got sick of them. We tried them almost in every food courts. I lost count on how many chicken rice have we eat.
I tried making Hainanese Chicken Rice so many times. They always turned out like bloody in the center, despite the fact that I always boiled them longer than the recommended time. I steamed them like an hour and they were still blood in between the flesh and bone. So we ended up having Fried Hainanese Chicken Rice instead. I almost give up making this dish, which is supposed to be a simple dish.
This is my latest attempt on making Hainanese Chicken Rice. They turned out OK, not as great as I expected them to be. I still could found some blood in the middle, but after steaming, they were fine. Now, I wonder whether the main factor of failing is the kind of chicken used. I used free range chicken for this recipe, last time I used ordinary chicken. If you would like the recipe, click here.
Culinary tradition: Chinese, Singaporean
Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!
My official invitation to Santa Claus: “Remember to stop by our home. We got a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. We will find nice bunches of green grass for Rudolf and friends. Don’t you worry, they won’t be left out.”
I have been searching for a genuine choc chip cookies recipe for ages, and finally I found one (Thanks Dorie). We have always been a great fan of Subway choc chip cookies because of their softness and chewiness. I have been wanting to make the same thing at home so I could mass produce them and store it in a cookie jar. Now I can mass produce them. However, the thing is that they won’t last longer in the cookie jar, not because they are easily spoiled but because the member of the house couldn’t resist themselves from hugging the jar.
Probably you are wondering why I am cutting back so much sugar. I always cut 50 percent of the sugar from original recipe most of the time. I love desserts, cakes and sweets, but I couldn’t stand the sweetness, or probably my tooth isn’t that sweet. Even with this cookie recipe, with all the cutting sugar amount, I still found that they are really sweet. I should probably skip the sugar next time I am making these and just stick with brown sugar.
From this one batch recipe, you will got a lot of cookies. This was the reason why I turned some of the dough into a log and store it in the fridge. I couldn’t stand any longer standing in the kitchen hearing my toddler calling me. For those of you who want to try these, here’s the steps:
- Cut some baking paper, about 25-30 cm.
- Fill it with left over cookie dough.
- Try to squeeze them gently so there are no empty space in the middle.
- Tied both ends with rubber bands.
- Wrap them with clings wrap.
- Recommended to be stored for up to 3 days in the fridge or months in the freezer.
If you are storing them in the fridge, cut them with a serrated knife into certain thickness. Don’t worry with the uneven or crack slices, you could fix them later by hand. If you are frosting them, let them sit for 5-10 minutes, and them do the same things as you do with the fridge one.
This is another variation of my fried rice, Nasi Goreng Teri Medan. My first fried rice post is Pineapple Fried Rice (October post). Literally, Nasi means rice, Goreng means fried, Teri means small fish, Medan is an Indonesian’s province in Sumatran island. The difference of this fried rice compare to the usual Indonesia Fried Rice is that this fried rice doesn’t use a sweet soy sauce, also known as Kecap Manis, and it uses teri as its main feature.
I believe that some of you might think that this particular fried rice is too much hassle, because the fish need to be washed, patted dry, and then fried. Not only that, if you live in a small apartment, the fried smell will last for at least two days. Ehmm what was I thinking posted this recipe? Encouraging people not to cook this particular fried rice. To be honest, I actually got the fried teri from my friend, because we got a lot of left over from our charity market. I felt sorry to the fish and then decided to turn them into fried rice dishes. However, I still need to do the frying all over again because they weren’t cooked and crunchy enough.
My tips before you start:
- It is best to have an overnight rice for fried rice (mine wasn’t).
- Always use a generous amount of oil to stir fry the rice so that your rice stays dry and eah grain doesn’t stick to each other.
- Although the fish has been washed before they are deep fried, they are still salty. Be careful on the amount of salt used. The taste of the rice should be mild in terms of saltiness, so that when they are combined with the fish, they are kind of balancing each other.
I have been craving for a spicy and sour tom yum for some time. We had been eating out in Thai restaurant and I always ordered Tom Yum most of the time. Why are they serve the soup in a very tiny super small size… I wonder. So off I went to the fish market to buy a kg of Australian banana prawns (they were so expensive $24/kg). I also went to my favorite Thai’s grocery store to buy some of the ingredients. I had been wondering the store quite sometime and smelling all the unknown herbs, so I decided to ask the staff. Without any clue what so ever, I asked the staff:
Me: (holding a bunch of herbs) Is this Thai’s basil leaves?
Staff: No, that’s Vianemit mit. (No offense to Thai’s people.. that was what really happened)
Me: ??? What? Pardon me ???
Staff: Vietnemit mit (keep repeating the same things again and again)
Me: (then I get it) Ohhh Vietnamese mint leaves. What do you use to make Tom Yum soup? Basil leaves?
Staff: No leaves.
Me: Oh OK
Here’s how my Tom Yum soup looks like. The tom yum paste really helps to give an intense tom yum flavour, but most importantly don’t forget your chilli pure for the heat and tamarind for the sourness.
This is another alternative on how to serve Tom Yum Soup, with egg noodles and poached egg.
One of my favourite’s easy and light dinner, steam fish. This time, barramundi was my choice. The flesh is light and sweet, although it smelled fishier than flounder. If you would like to try steam fish recipe, you could find it under August archive.
Preparation time (duration): 15
Culinary tradition: Chinese
Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!
What can I say about this simple linguine. It tasted simple, refreshing, fulfilling and healthy. I love the lemon zest flavour. Remember not to squeeze too much lemon because those lemon could taste really sour. My another suggestion is to add a small can of tuna. They could add much flavour and fill you up.
This is one of Indonesian Chinese culinary dish as far as I know (anyone knows what the story behind this dish, please feel free to comment). Literally, “Nasi” means rice, “Tim” means steam, “Ayam” means chicken. I have never been a big fan of this dish and never taste it. It is not that I don’t want to try them but there are too many appetizing dishes in Indonesia that I crave that this is never be one of them. I became aware of its existence because my sister in law fond them so much.
Anyway, why did I make this this? Simple. A different menu variety for my toddler and family. Because I never make them before, I started to surf the web finding out how others make them. It turned out that people making them in few different ways. Some actually did as mine, however they didn’t steam them again before serving. Some put the sweet soy chicken in a bowl together with an uncooked rice and chicken stock, then steam them. I found the second way quite tricky, because there are lots of rice variety so that you can’t really follow others recipe in terms of chicken stock amount to cook the rice. So, I just did them my way and wouldn’t be bothered as long as it looks like how it is supposed to be and tastes great or at least eatable.
Before you start, here are few tips that might help:
- The longer you simmer the soup, the nicer and deeper the soup taste. So I suggest that you to prepare them ahead of time.
- When you wash the rice, drain them thoroughly so that when you sauteed them with garlic and ginger, they really could absorb the fragrant of the spices.
- Do not peek while the rice is cooking, at least not before 15 minutes, so that the rice could cook evenly.
- Taste the rice after cook, they should have rich taste and slight saltiness on them. Not salty but you could taste the salt, if you understand what I mean. If you find that you can not taste the saltiness, add some fish sauce to the rice and stir until well combined.
- Press the rice into the bowl, so that after steaming you could have the nice bowl shape rice like mine.
- Sometimes it is hard to take the rice out of the bowl after steaming. Just place them up side down on the plate and let the bowl cool off slightly. Or you could try pushing the rice on one side using the back of the spoon, and gently squeeze them out.
It has been a long time due for me to try Paula Deen’s fried chicken recipe. I watched her on OPRAH years ago telling her stories of success doing her cooking business. If I am not mistaken she also cooked few dishes including the fried chicken, however I am not sure whether this Southern Fried Chicken was one of them. Anyway, this is one of her great recipe. Easy and quick to make and everyone craves its crunchiness, after all they are deep fried 
Anyway before you start, I have few tips of my own:
- I almost ruined the dinner by not reading the recipe properly. I doubted my self for a while looking at 1 cup of salt as House Seasoning to mix to the chicken pieces. Instead I put 3 tsp of salt and it was so salty (I test fried them) that I had to cut another whole chicken in the fridge (Thank God I had another whole chicken stored, but it was for Hainanese Chicken). So my point is to read to your recipe properly (*-*)
- Try to trim the fat as much as you could, so you will feel less guilty. I think it tastes much better.
- Mix 2 eggs first with the hot sauce, ans add another one if you really need it. As I only needs 4 eggs for 2 whole chickens.
- Same as the eggs, just use your flour half the recommended portion and add more if you need more.
- If you have the leftover chickens and they went cold, heat them again in the oven. All of the oil came from chicken fats and oils will be released and your chicken will taste crunchy and crispy again, with less fat of course.
The price of banana in the supermarket has been crazy lately. Could you imagine $4.95 – @5.95/kg? I am better of having a luxury of eating Kensington Pride Mangoes at $19.99/box. So, you are wondering what in the world was I thinking to make a banana cake. This was how it all begins. I went to Harris Farm to buy a box of Mangoes, passed by banana stand and wasn’t intended to buy any of them. Then I passed by discounted stand where they have buckets of over ripe fruits, and there they were… bananas. A small bucket full of bananas for $2.95. I got 5 bananas on my bucket. Yipeee.. it’s banana cake time.
My husband ordered me this great book from Amazon called “Baking: From My Home to Yours” by Dorie Greenspan that I have been longing to have. When a delivery guy ringed me through my unit phone telling that he was downstairs, I just rushed through the lift carrying my 2 years old toddler. I was so excited receiving this book that I can’t wait to try her recipe. This banana cake is one of her great collection that she got from her friend Ellen Einstein who owns Sweet Sixteenth Bakery in Nashville.
Anyway, my tips before you bake this banana cake are:
- Wait until the bananas are very ripe. When they are ripe, store them in the refrigerator until their skins are blackened. I know it is disgusting to see the blackened banana’s skins, but to tell you the truth, the banana cake taste even better and sweeter. Because they are sweeter, I don’t need to use so much sugar. If you are following my sugar quantity, just keep in mind though that I don’t have a sweet tooth, so you might add more from my recommendation (the one highlighted in red).
- If the top of the cake browns too quickly, place an aluminium foil on top of the cake.
This is how my banana cake looks like straight from the oven. Why the top cracks? I have no idea. But it tastes so goooooood and fluffy and yummy. I never taste the banana cake this good. This is definitely a winner recipe of banana cake for me.
I had some left over batter that I turned into muffins. I added some dark choc chips to the batter before baking them. For me, they are too sweet. Next time, I will decrease the amount of sugar if I want to turn them into choc chip muffins.
It has been a long time that I said to myself that I have to start searching for a genuine home-made roast chicken recipe since my husband seems to have a love affair with those Coles roast chickens. He keeps buying them once a week, and sometime he bought two roast chickens at once and told me that he would bring some of those to work for his lunch. So now it is time get revenge to those roast chicken and make him fall in love with my roast chicken (*-* reads wink).
I bumped into Jamie Oliver recipe few days ago, and decided to give it a go since he have so many great reviews. To find out the recipes, click here.
These are few things that I did, I hope they are helping:
- When he says rub a generous amount of salt all over the chicken, in and out. He really means GENEROUS amount. I don’t think my amount is generous enough as I couldn’t really taste the saltiness. I should just rub the sea salt all over its body instead of cracking the sea salt over the chicken.
- I didn’t leave the chicken long enough in the fridge so I guess they are not really marinated with the salt and the salt is not absorbed thoroughly into the meat. I only left them in the fridge for about 30 minutes, because I was waiting for my brother coming back from buying lemon.
- The recipe states that the potatoes skin has to be peeled. I didn’t peel the potato skin because I was worried that boiling them for 12 minutes would make them well done and thus turn them into mash potato. However today (few days after I made them), I find out that you actually have to peel the potato skin and boil them for about 5 minutes (not 12 minutes, or probably it is depend of what potatoes you are using).
- My steam potatoes couldn’t get chuffed up and fluffy when they were toasted on the pan, and they didn’t turn crispy when roasted. I probably really need to peel those skin
- I tossed butternut pumpkin in the pan with some fresh crack sea salt and olive oil for about 10 minutes. Then I placed them together with potatoes in the roasting pan (the last 45 minutes of cooking process).
- A handful of thyme was a bit too much for me. The smell of the herb was so strong that I felt like smelling a menthol balm.
- The roasted garlic was so good.
- The overall recipe is great and easy to follow.
So, here are some pictures of my roasted chicken fresh from the oven. The above picture was taken using a table lamp, and the below picture was simply on the manual mode. They should look better when are taken on daytime, but what can I say it was our dinner.
Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!
This is another complimentary dish for Nasi Tumpeng/Kuning (will post Nasi Kuning recipe as soon as I have time to style their presentation). There are few things that I left out in making this dish, such as fried peanut, fried potato chips, and fried white bait (Indonesian calls them ikan teri, and Malaysian calls them ikan bilis). Anyway, either of the combination will do, as I did only fried peanut and white bait for my son’s birthday party.
Tempe is now widely available in groceries stores like Coles and Woolworths. They are great for vegetarian as they are high in protein. However, I am using the plain natural tempe product bought in Asian/Indonesian groceries, as the types of tempe sold in Coles and Woolworths has been either marinated or flavoured. Or at least I think they are, as they have a black brownish fluid on them. To find out more about tempe, click here.
Few tips before you start cooking them:
- Make sure to slice the tempe thinly and deep fried them until crispy. Mine was a bit to thick because I was worried that they would be too fragile to be handle.
- When cooking the chilli mixture, watch the bubbles appeared on the oil, when they start to decrease and almost stop bubbling, then it is time to put salt, vinegar, tomato sauce. According to my mom, it will decrease the spiciness of the chilli as Indonesian chillies are really hit. Once you put the sugar in, you have to work quickly as the sugar will burned off and made the chilli mixture darken in colour.
- Store them in an airtight container to retain freshness, in case you have any leftover.
I did orange cupcakes before and posted in October archives, however this time I followed the original recipe all the way through except for the vanilla beans and the type of sugar (this one accidentally …ooppssss). I almost panicked because of using the normal white sugar instead of caster sugar. I can hear the sound of sugar while they were being beat together with butter, and finally I gave up trying to smooth them after 15 minutes and continued with the next step. FYI, I made three batches of the recipes in one go, so it was making me nervous that the cupcakes would fail. It was 11 at night and I was intended to give the cupcakes to my neighbor’s daughter second birthday party the morning after. Thank God the cupcakes turned out just fine.
I was researching for so many cupcakes decorations and alternatives. I was thinking of making elmo’s and cookie monster’s cupcake. However, I am afraid that the frosting would taste so chemically because of excessive using of food coloring. So I decided to make butterfly decoration instead. Actually it is easier to use royal icing in making those butterflies, but I try to make my cupcake kid’s friendly, that was the reason why I use dark chocolate and white chocolate tinted pink.
I found so many difficulty in making these butterflies:
- The antennas are completely useless. They were too fragile despite of sticking them together by using melted chocolate. It is better off to draw the antennas using melted chocolate after you finish combining both of butterfly wings. However, drawing the antennas mean that you don’t get the three dimensional effect. Oh well… nobody noticed the antennas in the party
- The white chocolate is really hard to work with. They need to be stirred all the time and you can’t left them or do it in the microwave like the dark chocolate. When they are melted and combined together with the coloring, do not over mix them or otherwise the white chocolate will be ruined and too thick to work with.
- The white chocolate doesn’t seem to be harden at the room temperature, so I need to put them in the freezer for 5 minutes or so. However, you need to work quickly as they are fragile and prone to heat.
Next time, I will just do all of the butterflies wings with the dark chocolate and add some dots as the pattern on the wings.
This is one of my quick and healthy sandwich for lunch. It is simple, easy and convenience, especially if you have a little one around the house.
You could add grated vegetable like carrot or zucchini in the mince mixture or some chopped mushrooms is great as well for those extra flavor. I don’t have all those ingredients handy in my fridge, so I mix everything I had.
My little tips to retain your burger patties shape are:
- Try to squeeze the mince mixture gently while shaping them. Patting both sides with palm of your hands could help as well.
- Refrigerate the burger patties in the fridge for at least half an hour before cooking them, so that they could sit for a while.
- When cooking the patties, do not do so many toss and turn. Let them cook at least 5 minutes on each sides. When they are more sturdy, you could then turning them on the other side.
- When making a thicker burger patties like mine, just keep in mind that the inside of the patties might still be medium rare. You could bake them in the oven for a while to make sure it is well done.
I made this cake last year for my husband birthday, so my memory is kinda blur on how the baking process was going. Sorry I couldn’t share little important details to help you baking this cake. However, as far as I remember this cake was really easy to bake and there is a very little chance that you fail in baking this cake.
The only thing that I could remember is how to make a dressed up strawberry. Here’s how:
- Wash the strawberries and patted dry with paper towel.
- Melt the white chocolate and dark chocolate separately. Fill saucepan with water and let it simmers. Using a bowl that could fit snuggly in a saucepan (make sure that the water doesn’t reach the bowl), stir in chocolate buttons or chopped chocolate chunks. Stir it using metal spoon. Avoid wooden or plastic spoons – these retain moisture that makes chocolate seize (harden).
- Dip the strawberries into white chocolate and set aside to cool. Sometimes it is hard to cool and dry the white chocolate. You could place them in the freezer for 1-2 minutes until they hardened.
- Then dip strawberries sideways diagonally on both sides until you achieved like so in the pictures.
- Using a toothpick, draw a bow and buttons on them.
Because of the copyright infringement thing, I am afraid I could not post the recipe in my blog, however you could get the recipe from here. There are lots of tips and feed backs that could help you. Good Luck !
Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!
This is one of the easiest and quick dinner meal to serve. Just need to slice, season, dip, coat and fry, and they are ready to be served. If you prefer the healthier version, simply bake them in the oven instead of frying. However, every fried stuffs taste so much better than baked ones
If you notice the way I double coat the chicken in flour and egg, it is just the way I prefer them to be. However you could just do them once each. There was a story though behind all the double coated and double dipped. I and my mum were running the catering business before. In order to get more chicken katsu pieces, we double coated and double dipped everything, so that the chicken katsu also looks thicker in appearance ;p It was all “business trick”. However, the habit still lives on.
