Cashew & Prawn Rice

Its a slow week for posting despite my resolve to blog more about Faith. Unfortunately, my mom hasn't been feeling too well. She thinks its rheumatism and its affecting her lower back, causing her some pain when she walks. My mom insisted on making the daily trip to my house even though I repeatedly told her to stay at home and rest. Said she would go crazy cooped up at home and besides, the trip here will give her some much needed exercise and therapy for her rheumatism.

To ensure that she doesn't over strain herself, I've been taking Faith out after her lunch this week. We would usually take a slow stroll to AMK Hub, spending some two hours there before we head home for her to nurse and take an afternoon nap. While at the supermarket today, I decided to buy some ingredients to make some Indian food.

I've cooked a number of recipes from Vicky Bhogal's "A Year of Cooking Like Mummyji", all of them turning out great. Louis has been enthusiastic about the dishes that I've churned out thus far and today's Cashew & Prawn Rice was no exception. Vicky is a 2nd generation Punjabi, born and raised in London.

While my picture of the rice does not do justice to it, rest assured that its a simple dish to whip up in a very short time, yet scrumptious enough to guarantee that you will want to repeat the effort over and over again.

In fact, Louis loved it so much that he's declared that we should cook this the next time we have a dinner gathering :) I've accompanied it with a cabbage and moong dal dish to make it a wholesome meal. Unfortunately, NTUC ran out of curry leaves, so the cabbage and moong dal seemed to lack something at the end of it.

Cashew & Prawn Rice

Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 tbsp oil

1 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 onion, sliced thinly

250g cooked and peeled prawns

2 tomatoes, diced

handful of chopped coriander

1/2 cup cashew nuts

1/2 tsp dried red chilli flakes

1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)

1/2 cup basmati rice, rinsed with cold water

1 cup water

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a pan and add the cumin seeds.

2. When sizzling, add the onion and fry until translucent.

3. Add the prawns, tomatoes, coriander, cashews, chilli, salt and stir-fry for 30 seconds.

4. Add the rice and stir-fry for a further 30 seconds.

5. Add the water and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat to very low, cover and steam for 15 minutes.

Hmmm... just typing this makes me wanna cook this again for tomorrow night. Hahaha... I wouldn't although its really tempting :)

Bon appetit!

Food Glorious Food!

Frankly, I don't know what I do with my time. The days just seem to pass so very quickly and one week has gone by and another has started. Before you know it, I'm so behind my blog entries for the last few weeks.

I haven't exactly been lazing around. The days flew by becos I think I was busier. Busy with cooking/baking mainly. I had my first "order" of muffins, albeit it was from my cousin, to bake 20 muffins for her school's event and I charged only at cost :) Still, its nice to have some reaffirmation that these home-baked muffins are yummy enough and not the often polite but encouraging comments meant to spur me to greater culinary aspirations. For the occasion, I decided to bake two varieties of muffins;- blueberry muffins and chocolate banana mascarpone muffin.

As for my other passion-of-the-month, I've also cooked 2 more Korean dishes, Sundubu Chigae and Jab-Chae. In one of my earlier postings, I've mentioned about Sundubu Chigae and how this little humble soup of tofu in a spicy broth made me a Korean cuisine convert. Thus, it is only natural that I should attempt to learn to make this dish on my own.

Surprisingly, it was a relatively easy dish to make and again, you don't really need any special Korean condiments. In order to make an "authentic" bowl of Sundubu, I'd convinced myself that I need to use the right equipment i.e. an earthen bowl. I'd procure my little "find" at the Korean grocery stall, Sol, located at the basement of Orchard Cineleisure. While there, I was very very tempted to buy another stone bowl to make Dosul Bibimbap but sanity and caution prevailed.

The verdict according to my dear hubby was that it tasted as good as the ones we had in Woo Jong, the Korean restaurant in Paris, as well as other Korean restaurants. The total cost of it (minus the cost of the earthen bowl) was only at a fraction of the ghastly amount these restaurants charged. Additionally, it taste better than the bland versions served up in many of the local foodcourts too.

Jab-chae, a festive noodle dish made of sweet potato noodle wasn't as successful. While final output was passable, the proportion of sesame oil used in the recipe had resulted in a rather oily plate of noodles. I figured that I would just need to tweak the proportion of sesame oil used the next time to get it right. Till then, here's the recipe for Sundubu Chigae.

Sundubu Chigae

Ingredients

1 tbsp red chilli oil

2 cloves crushed garlic

1 tbsp chilli powder

1 tsp light soy suace

1/2 onion, peeled and sliced

30g kimchi, roughly chopped

100g minced beef

1/2 beef or chicken stock cube

300ml water

1 tube silken tofu, sliced into rounds

1 egg

1 leek, sliced

Method

1. Heat the earthen bowl or a clay pot until hot. Reduce heat and add in chilli oil, garlic, chilli powder, soy sauce, onion, stock cube, kimchi and minced beef. Stir fry for 5 minutes.

2. Pour in the water and bring to a boil. Add the tofu rounds and simmer over low heat for about 10-15 minutes.

3. Crack the egg into the soup and remove from the heat. Sprinkle the leek slices and serve.

Korean Noodle Salad (Salad-Guksu)

Louis and I are still hooked onto our Korean dramas via cable Channel 55. Right now, we are catching Jumong, Prince of the Legend and The Song of Prince every weekday nights. Unfortunately for Louis, his Korean drama addiction is causing him to sleep much later cos The Song of Prince is airing at 11.40 pm to 12.40 pm, Mondays to Fridays.

Seeing that I have bid farewell to my cupcakes baking, I thought I should dedicate something to Korean food to match our addition. Korean cuisine is one which I only discovered when I was in France. A Korean friend of ours once organised a class get-together at a Korean restaurant, Woo Jung, in Paris. Woo Jung is located in the 16th arrondissement (Metro: Passy), very near to the Eiffel Tower. In fact, you can see the tower while standing on the sidewalk of the restaurant. We tried to return to the restaurant again last year when we were in Paris. Alas... it was closed and the staff were on vacation. Sigh...

Prior to that, my knowledge of Korean food was limited to what was sold in our local food courts. Quite frankly speaking, most weren't authentic and the repertoire were limited to different types of stir-fry hot plates such as Bulgogi. In Woo-Jung, I was exposed to the many different side dishes, many of which were deliciously prepared and were quickly gobbled up. And it was where I tasted my first tureen of Soondubu Chigae, a kind of spicy soft bean curd stew, that started me on my obsession on my return to Singapore to find chigae with exactly the same taste as those served in Woo Jung.

And I slowly learnt that there are many other Korean dishes that I was totally ignorant of, but once my eyes were opened to this "new" cuisine, I quickly lapped them all up. I especially love the bean sprout salad (kong-na-mul-mu-chim), seasoned spinach (si-geum-chi-mu-chim), stuff cucumber kimchi (o-e-so-bae-gi), sweet potato noodles (jab-chae), braised short ribs (gal-bi-jjim), spring onion and seafood pancake (pa-jeon) and a whole lot more. Most often than not, I just love the little side dishes that are served at the table and can never get enough of them.

So, I started perusing my Korean cookbook by Lee MinJung, as I watched my Korean dramas every night, pondering and deciding which of the dishes shall I attempt next. Since I had lots of soba on hand in the fridge and the list of other ingredients and condiments were easily found in the compartments of my fridge and kitchen, I decided to make Salad Guksu, a cold noodle dish mixed with vegetables in a spicy sweet sauce.

The recipe called for soba noodles but I had some spare cha soba, so I used that instead. For the vinegar, I used Japanese Mizkan grain flavoured distilled vinegar, but you can use any white vinegar The recipe for the salad noodles is as follows:

Salad Guksu
Adapted from Feast of Flavours from the Korean Kitchen by Lee MinJung

Ingredients
2 bundles Cha soba or soba noodles
5 leaves lettuce, julienned
1 medium cucumber, julienned
1/2 carrot, julienned
4 sticks crab stick, shredded

Sauce
3 tbsp light soya sauce
3 tbsp vinegar
2 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
1 tsp wasabi
1 tbsp chilli powder
1 tbsp sesame oil

Method
1. Combine the ingredients for sauce and blend well. Refrigerate.

2. Blanch noodles in boiling water until al dente, then wash under cold running water. Drain well.

3. Remove the smashed garlic from the sauce. Mix noodles with chilled sauce and some vegetables and crab stick.

4. Garnish with remaining vegetables and crab stick and serve.

I find that if you put the noodles back in the fridge and let it sit for a while, the noodles will absorb the flavour of the sauce better. I like that the sauce is a little sweet and spicy, interspersed with the flavour of sesame oil, giving it an uplifting fragrance. Perhaps the next time when I make it, I would add some sesame seeds into the mixture to give a slightly crunch.

Raspberries & Chocolate Chip Muffins

Raspberries and chocolate chips seems like a nice combination for a muffin, wouldn't you? That's what I thought would be a perfect mix, although Louis seemed a little puzzled by my choice of ingredients for the muffins at the beginning. However, he soon changed his mind when he sank his teeth into one. *grin*

Imagine the tartness of raspberry, combined with the sweet, velvety smoothness of chocolates. Mmmmhhh.... and that was exactly how my raspberries and chocolate chip muffins turned out. Lovely with its cake-like texture, each bite into the muffin might give a sudden burst of the slight sourness of cooked raspberry, mingled with the bitter-sweet taste of chocolate.

This time around, I actually bought raspberries with the intention to make a raspberry and chocolate cake from Clothilde Dusoulier's Chocolate and Zucchini cookbook. However, the ingredients seemed altogether rather sinful and rich, as it was almost like a flourless fully-cook fondant au chocolat (aka warm chocolate cake), except that it has mashed raspberry added. Plus, I wasn't feeling too good for the last week on account of restless nights looking after a sick Faith, and that I myself was recovering from my bout of gastric/stomach flu.

Rather than letting the raspberries go to waste, I decided to use them for muffins, with the addition of some bitter-sweet chocolate chips. The recipe for the muffins were the same as my blueberries and apple muffins posted earlier, but replaced this time around with the 2 other ingredients.

Raspberries and Chocolate Chips Muffins

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients:

250g plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp

180ml milk

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

113g butter, at room temperature,

190g sugar

1 punnet raspberries (approx 170g, I think)

50g chocolate chips (approx cos I forgot to measure. I just threw in what seemed to be a good amount)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Shift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and set aside.

2. In a separate bowl, blend milk, egg and vanilla extract.

3. In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, cream together the butter and sugar until light and smooth in texture. Add the flour mixture in 3 separate additions, alternating with the wet ingredients in Pt (2). Then, increase speed to medium and mix until the batter is very smooth.

4. Fold the raspberries and chocolate chips into the batter, working gently and just long enough to distribute the ingredients evenly.

5. Divide the batter evenly amongst 12 muffins cups/moulds. Bake for about 18-20 minutes. Let muffins cool in the pans on a wire rack for 5 minutes before removing.

This time around, I poured some of the muffins into little disposable muffin cups. I think they looked cute! Between these and the blueberries and apple muffins, Louis like my latest muffins better. So do I, actually :)

Easy guacamole

I've currently into eating avocados. I love the creamy, rich texture that on its own seemed rather tasteless. But it absorbs beautifully the flavours of whatever dressings that goes with it. Of course, the other reason for my enthusiastic eating of said fruit these days is that I would like Faith to eat avocado when she starts weaning. I figured that the more I eat, she might get a taste of it through the milk and hence develop a taste of it herself *grin*.

Since I've been hankering after some not-so-healthy junk food like chips, I thought it would be a good idea to pair some junk food with health food by making an avocado dip to go along with my organic tortilla chips. That ought to balance things out a little.

So, here's my version of guacamole:

Ingredients

2 ripe avocados
1/4 onion, roughly chopped
Juice from about 1/4 of a lemon juice
1 tomato, diced
Salt, to taste

Method

1) Cut and scope avocado into a blender, along with the onions.

2) Squeeze the lemon juice in, add salt and blitz everything until smooth. If you like, you could pulse the blender so that the avocados don't get too mashed up and you have some rough bits for a different texture.

3) Scope pureed mixture into a container that can be refrigerated. Add in the diced tomato and mix well. Refrigerate it and eat with tortilla chips whenever you like *Slurp* :)

Personally, I don't like the strong taste of raw onions, therefore, I only use 1/4 onion. For onion lovers, you could even add in some chopped onions along with the tomatoes at the end for a nice crunch.

Next week, I think I shall make avocado salad. Hmmm.... Yummy!

Pumpkin Soup

My first taste of pumpkin soup was back when Louis and I were honeymooning in Europe. It was winter and the weather in Brugge, this little quaint town in Belgium, was so chilly and cold that a tureen of soup sounded really heartening and warming. Although I must say that I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about pumpkin soup at that time -- actually, I've never eaten pumpkin anything prior to that. That was an experience that changed my perspective on pumpkin and pumpkin soup. I came back a convert on pumpkin soup and googled many a sites before I stumbled onto a pumpkin recipe that is now my favourite.

It was only a few years later that I come to learn that pumpkin contains high levels of antioxidants and carotene, notably vitamin C and E and therefore may lower cancer risk, heart disease, cataracts and strokes. So, I'm always congratulating myself for being unwittingly discerning whenever I make pumpkin soup. Hahaha...

Anyways, I've decided to put up this post becos Jean has requested for me to share my pumpkin soup recipe. Unfortunately, I've lost that recipe and even though it was found on BBC's Good Food website, I've since been unable to find that same recipe again. Nonetheless, I've made it enough times to remember the ingredients, although not necessarily the proportions. To the best of memory, the below portions are guesstimate, so you might need to add or reduce some ingredients to adjust the taste a little.

Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients:
400-500g pumpkin or butternut squash, diced
1 medium carrot, diced
2 small-medium size potatoes, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, deseed and diced
2-3 stripes of streaky bacon, diced (optional)
8-10 cherry tomatoes
1.5L chicken stock (good if its home-made, otherwise Knorr's clear chicken broth with no MSG is also good)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Method:
1) Sautee the streaky bacon in a pot big enough to cook the soup until the fat oozes out. If you like, can add a little olive oil too. Next, add in the diced pumpkin, carrot, potatoes and bell pepper and mix well, about 2-3 minutes.

2) At this point, I usually reduce the heat, cover the pot and let the vegetables sweat in the pot for about 5-8 minutes. Thereafter, add in the chicken stock and cherry tomatoes. Bring it to a boil. Lower the heat and let the vegetables simmered covered until tender, about 20-25 minutes.

3) Puree the mixture (be careful there!) and then transfer it back to the pot again. Bring the soup back to a boil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve it hot with crusty bread if you like :)

This sounds like a lot of ingredients to chop and dice but I really like it a lot. The other way to make pumpkin soup is to cube the pumpkin into about 3 cm pieces, lay them on a single layer in a baking dish. Drizzle generously with olive oil and put into the oven to bake for about 30-45 minutes (depending on size) until tender. Puree the roasted pumpkin, transfer the pureed pumpkin into a pot and add chicken stock. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Personally, I prefer the recipe for the first pumpkin soup. Even though it involves a lot more work chopping and dicing, the end result is well worth the effort :)

Happy cooking!

Snack & Dessert Recipes

Right... so, I've said that I'm a fruits dessert person. And today, watching Giada's Everyday Italian show, I'm again going to list down 2 of her recipes. They are really simple ideas and I think great for parties, dinners or even something cozy for 1-2 persons. The best part? Just a few simple ingredients.

Recipe #1 - Sauteed Pineapple with Honey & Pine Nuts

Ingredients:
1 cup cubed pineapple, fresh or canned
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
1 teaspoon rum
2 tablespoons mascarpone cheese

Method:
Drain the pineapple cubes in a strainer. Lay the pineapple cubes on a paper towel and pat dry. Put the butter in a medium saute pan over medium heat. Make brown butter by heating the butter until melted and just starting to brown around the edges. Add the pineapple and toss to coat in the butter. Add the honey and toss to coat the pineapple with the honey. Cook until the pineapple is golden, about 5 to 7 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in the pine nuts.

In a small bowl mix together the rum and the mascarpone. Place the pineapple mixture in a serving dish and top it with a dollop of the cheese mixture. Serve immediately.


Recipe #2 - Proscuitto & Carrot Bundles

Ingredients:
2 carrots, shredded, about 1/2 cup
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Pinch salt
Pinch freshly ground black pepper
4 slices prosciutto
4 whole fresh basil leaves

Method:
In a medium bowl, toss together the carrots, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Lay out the 4 slices of prosciutto. Top each with 1/4 of the carrot mixture. Place a basil leaf on top of each and roll the prosciutto up and around the basil and carrots. Secure the bundles with toothpicks and serve.

Hmmm... a colleague of mine was telling me that he's looking for ideas for a division Christmas party. So, maybe he would be interested in this?

Source: Food Network (http://www.foodnetworks.com), Giada De Laurentiis' Everyday Italian.

Recipe for Roasted Pears with Brown Sugar & Vanilla Ice-cream

Did I say that I love fruit desserts of most kind? I'm less of a chocolate person than a fruit person when it comes to dessert. Hence, the types of desserts that I love to make usually are fruit based e.g. cherry crumble, banane flambee, apple galette, poached pears etc.

Watching Giada De Laurentils' Everyday Italian show today, I just couldn't resist putting down this recipe so that I can try it when I'm back at home. Its roasted pears with brown sugar and vanilla ice-cream. So, here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1/3 cup (75ml) apple juice
1/3 cup (75g) firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons (45g) unsalted butter
3 firm Bosc pears, peeled, halved, cored (about 1 pound)
Vanilla ice cream, for serving

Method
1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200C).

2) Arrange the pears cut side up in an 8-inch square glass baking dish. Whisk the apple juice and sugar in a small heavy saucepan over medium-high heat until the sugar dissolves. Whisk in the butter. Pour the sauce over the pears. Bake until the pears are crisp-tender and beginning to brown, basting occasionally with the juices, about 35 minutes.

3) Spoon the pears onto plates. Top with ice cream. Drizzle with any juices and serve.

4) The pears can also be served frozen. To do so, cool the pears, then place them in the freezer until frozen solid, about 8 hours.

Source: Giada De Laurentils' Everyday Italian Show from www.foodnetwork.com (http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_29418,00.html)