Char Kway Teow

A popular fried noodle dish in Asia and can be found in almost every hawker centre/ food court. One of the reasons why I love this is because its skewed towards the sweeter side of a savory dish. It's not particularly a healthy dish when you eat them outside because of the tons of lard / oil they use to fry. So here's a healthier version of my mum's recipe which I emulated. 

Ingredients:
-garlic, 2-3 cloves minced
-half chinese sausage, sliced thinly
-1 cup beansprout
-sweet black sauce ( to taste) depends on how sweet you want your noodles to turn out
- 2eggs,beaten
-1 cup chye sim
-1 lb Kway teow or flat rice noodles
-sugar (to taste)
-oil for frying (abt 2 tbsp)


Steps:
1) Heat oil in a wok. Add garlic and stir fry 30sec.
2) Add the chinese sausage next and fry until almost cooked
3)Reduce heat and add bean sprout and chye sim. Fry until about cooked then add in noodles.
4) Add in sauce till the sweetness/blackness desired.
5) Scrap noodles to the sides of the pan and add in egg in the middle to cook.
6) When egg has just set, fry noodles together with egg.

Chicken Cordon Bleu with Mushroom Onion Gravy

What's life without cheese? It's like the basic ingredient in every western meal. Well almost :) Few days ago I whipped up a dish I couldn't possibly forget. The juiciness of the chicken, smoothh melted cheese, ham and thick creamy mushroom gravy just lingered in my mouth.  Everything just felt so right. SO what's for dinner tonight?? If you guessed Chicken Cordon Bleu. You're absolutely spot on.. 

Chicken Cordon Bleu is basically a french inspired dish consisting of chicken, ham and cheese all rolled up in a bundle of goodness, drenched in breadcrumbs and then deep fried. 

Recipe adapted from Blake Royer, posted in serious eats. This particular recipe called for sauerkraut to be incorporated together with the 3 main components however I couldnt find sauerkraut anywhere so just had to do w/o. ;[. I can only imagine how good that dish would have tasted if I had some on hand and how it adds a little tangy-ness to the flavor!!

Ingredients: 

6 boneless, skinless chicken cutlets (about 1 1/4 pounds total)
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 egg whites
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
2 teaspoons minced garlic
Dijon mustard, as needed
1 1/2 ounces provolone cheese (1 1/2 thin slices)
1 1/2 ounces ham (1 1/2 thin slices)
3 tablespoons sauerkraut, packed ( left this out)
3/8 teaspoon caraway seeds ( left this out)
2 cups plain bread crumbs
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, for frying.

Procedure

1. If the chicken cutlets are not of uniform thickness, place them between two sheets of plastic wrap and pound gently, aiming to make 3 pairs of approximately the same shape. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

2. In a bowl, whisk the egg whites, cornstarch, parsley, and garlic, until the egg whites begin to turn foamy.

Foamy egg white mixture with parsley (  DIE! I think of you clar everytime I see parsley ) .. 

3. Paint one side of each chicken cutlet with mustard, then layer the ham and cheese on three of the cutlets. Spread a tablespoon of sauerkraut on top of the ham and cheese, then lay the second half of each pair, mustard side in, to make a sandwich. Seal the edges as best you can. ( I follow the traditional way of using toothpicks to secure the edges. works perfect but just it gets a little tedious to remove them after frying.But anyway it's better to secure rather than have cheese oozing out into the hot oil)

4. Dip the cutlet sandwiches in the egg white mixture, then dredge in the bread crumbs. If needed, they can be refrigerated for several hours at this point.

5. Heat the oil in a skillet with plenty of room for all the chicken (if not, cook them in batches) over medium-high heat until a breadcrumb tossed into the pan sizzles vigorously. Fry until dark golden brown, 2-3 minutes/side. Drain on paper towels momentarily, then serve immediately, with more sauerkraut, if desired, or a tart salad.

I made a corn salad to go with it. 

Ingredients:

2 corn on the cob

lemon

salt and pepper to taste

butter

italian dressing

cherry tomatoes

portobello mushrooms

Steps:

1) Heat butter in pan and saute corn and mushrooms

2) add salt and pepper to taste

3) Remove from pan add in tomatoes for color and sprinkle some lemon for the zesty taste and italian dressing 

and a Mushroom onion gravy to accompany the chicken. 

Ingredients:

Onions ( one) sliced not too finely

portobello mushrooms ( as much as you like)

mushroom cream sauce ( I bought the prego can)

corn oil/olive oil

Steps:

1) Heat oil in pan and fry onions till fragrant and caramelized. 

2) add mushrooms

3) Add in canned mushroom sauce 

4) Add a little water if gravy is too thick to the consistency you desire. 

5) Pour generous amount over chicken and serve hot. 

Bon appetit!

Prawn Crackers

also called our dear and fav Keropok has beeen invading my home every now and then. It all started from my aunt who bought us a packet of prawn crackers from Brunei. She said it was famous, couldn't be bought from the stores and must be ordered. We tried it once and lo and behold we were hookedd..

The prawn Cracker substitute we tried after the ones from Brunei were gone.. They could be bought at Parkway Parade shopping centre.

This is how they looked before being fried. Raw and totally unappetising.

After being fried: NICE, and crunchy.

Tried some betel nut cracker too.. These were the bitter ones.

Could be eaten w/o chilli or with. We didn't have the chilli paste one hand so we just made do with the plain ones.

Chinese Radish Cake

or law Bak Gou whatever they call it seems to be the dish we always order whenever we eat dim sum. Although there's no carrots in this recipe, I'm so used to calling it fried carrot cake.. Anyway while scouring the net for good food as usual, I chanced upon this blog called tastehongkong.com with amazingly good local dishes. That brought me on a quest to test out this Turnip cake with the addition of chinese sausage or Lap Chiong ;))) Mmh the taste of chinese sausage is just heavenly.. Bring it together with its fellow brother the " black liver sausage" and you have a harmony of flavors..

You can get the recipe from here.  I love how the cake turned out but I was a little lazy to fry them thus I just made do with the steam version. Obviously, I would recommend pan frying them cuz they will definitely taste better crispy..

You'll need the following:

• Ingredients
• 2kg turnip/ white radish ( Well, I bought 2 big oness about 2kg. But when I shredded them, they only turned out to be about 800g) Must have lost loads in the process of shredding them. Thus I half ed the subsequent amounts
• 300g rice flour (150g)
• 50g corn starch (25g)
• 2 pcs Chinese sausages (~100g) - I didn't half the ingredients..
• 6 pcs dried black mushroom
• 4 pcs dried scallop
• 30g dried shrimps
• 2 each shallots, finely sliced 

• Marinades
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp wine

• Seasonings
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 tbsp oil

Well if you don't have a shredder machine like me, you just gotta do it the hard way. Works the arm muscles totally. The faster you shred the radish the easier it is.. so don't go so gentle on it. hahaaa

THERE! 

1) Turnips: Peel, rinse, shred  Rest all the turnip strips in a colander above a basin to drain and collect its juice. Draining the turnips is to prepare it for stir-frying as well as to reserve its juice for combining with the rice flour and corn starch.

dried scallops – rinse, soak in 1/2 cup of water for at least an hour, tear them into strips, reserve water

dried shrimps – rinse, soak in 1/2 cup of water for 10 minutes, discard water

Chinese sausages – rinse, coarsely chopped

dried mushrooms – rinse, soak in 1 cup of water for at least an hour or until soft, squeeze water in them and coarsely chopped, reserve water

Marinade the reconstituted, chopped mushrooms, scallops and shrimps for about 10 minutes.

3) Combine the corn starch and rice flour with 2 1/2 cups of water (inclusive of those collected from draining the turnip, soaking the mushrooms and scallops). Stir and mix well until smooth. Set aside.

4) Heat 3 table spoons of oil in wok over medium heat, sauté shallots till fragrant followed by chopped sausages, stir fry till they are also fragrant, then add in shrimps, mushrooms and scallops, keep stir frying. As all of them turn golden, about 3 minutes, toss in the turnip strips, add seasonings, and stir well. In about another 5 minutes, the strips will be softened and juice will exude from them.

5) Turn to low heat, slowly stir in flour mixture into the turnips (give the mixture a good stir before pouring in to avoid flour settling at the bottom). Turn and mix well until all incorporated well like a soft batter. Turn off heat.

6) Grease dish for steaming Transfer the turnip batter into the pan, flatten it into same height. Steam the turnip cake over high heat for 40 minutes. Check doneness by inserting a toothpick to see if it comes out clean.

 and we're good to go!! :)

       

Enjoy! xoxo

Spicy Honey Glazed Chicken drumlets

These are the kind of snacks that could keep me entertained throughout an entire movie. ( Though the ones I did for dinner were slightly bigger than the one I was talking about) .. When I think about spicy drumlets/wings, I think about pizza hut or Mcwings. The really flaming hot ones are the ones that really make my day.

If you're looking for a sticky, spicy sweet chicken wing recipe, you should probably try this one out. I got all excited to try these, especially after how mouthwatering those pictures from her blog turned out.

Recipe adapted from: MyYummyLife.


I only baked 4 juicy drumlets that day. My family's a small eater... sometimess..

I only marinated the chicken for 1 plus hour. The taste was there but it was subtle. Maybe, next time I would try marinating the drumlets longer.

mmhh.. with lottas garlic

Recipe:



1/4 c honey
2 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp sriracha ( I use 3.5 tbsp Sriracha and 1 tbsp ketchup, cuz I like it hot)
2 tbsp orange juice concentrate
2 tbsp dark Asian Sesame Oil
1 tsp ground ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 pounds chicken wings cut in half at joint
Green Onions, thinly sliced, optional ( left that out)


Preheat oven to 450degrees. Combine the first seven ingredients in a large bowl. Add the wings and toss to coat. Pour the wings and sauce in a large non-stick or lined broiling pan. Bake for 25 minutes until the wings are browned, turning occasionally. When the wings are browned, turn on the broil and broil the wings, again turning occasionally, until the sauce has thickened. This could take up to 8 minutes.


and then serve
With much love!
xoxo