Miso Chicken

Miso chicken

2 boneless chicken thighs
1 Tbsp white miso
1 Tbsp sake or sweet sherry (can omit)
1/3 to 1/2 tsp brown sugar



You can use skinned or unskinned chicken. I like unskinned as I like the crispy skin. If you are marinating it overnight, use a zip lock bag and mix the marinating ingredients and spread over the meat. let marinate in If you don’t have time for this, let it marinate at least 10-15 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to 200 deg C and place the marinated chicken on a baking tray covered with foil (makes it easier to wash later) for 15 mins on 1 side. Then bake for 15 mins on the other side and it's done!

Yellow mee

Home made Fresh Hokkien Mee

This is another thing that I have been wanting to make and since I was sort of craving to have laksa and too lazy to go to the supermarket to get some yellow noodles, I thought that this was as good a time as any to try any make my noodles and see if I can get to have my laksa!

Ingredients (makes about 600 gm)
250 gm plain (all-purpose) flour
250 gm bread flour
1½ tbsp alkai water
1½ tsp salt
500 ml/2 cups water - add slowly as water is dependent on absorption of flour

Method:

Using a noodle extruder, such as for making string hoppers




Add plain flour,bread flour and salt together in a bowl.

Using a wooden spoon, quickly add in the boiling water and stir the flour mixture to form a thick paste. At this stage add alkali water.

Form paste into a lump. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and set aside to cool. When cool enough to handle but still warm, knead into a smooth dough. Cover and rest dough for 30 minutes.

To make noodles, bring a large pot of water to the boil. Fill extruder with dough and extrude noodles into boiling water in long continuous strands until extruder is empty. When water returns to the boil and noodles float, scoop noodles out and drop into another pot filled with cold water (or put into a colander and run cold water over noodles). Stir some oil into noodles to keep them separated. Repeat until dough is used up.

Note: I used only 100 gm of plain and 100 gm of bread flour and 200 ml of water and got about 2 1/2 bowls of noodles.



If you do not have an extruder, then roll out the dough thinly and cut finely into noodles or use a pasta machine if you have one.

Spagetti Napolitan aka Japanese mee goreng

Spagetti Napolitan

Liana is now trying to learn to cook, so whenever she wants to cook her favourite foods and although the receipes are here, she will still message me to get more detailed instructions.

So far, she has made her 3 favourite Japanese dishes and her bf is saying that they taste good!

So Liana, here is another of your favourite recipes.

According to Wikipedia, Naporitan or Napolitan (ナポリタン) is the name of a pasta dish, which is popular in Japan. The dish consists of spaghetti, tomato ketchup or a tomato-based sauce, onion, button mushrooms, green peppers, sausage, bacon and Tabasco sauce. Naporitan is claimed to be from Yokohama.

It was created by Shigetada Irie (入江茂忠),[1], the general chef of the New Grand Hotel in Yokohama, when he was inspired by one of the military rationing of GHQ, which was spaghetti mixed with tomato ketchup.

The chef named the dish after Naples, Italy (hence "napoli"). However, no dish similar to the Japanese Naporitan is known to originate from Naples. Phonetically, the Japanese language does not contain the western "L" sound. Spellings in the Roman alphabet can vary. The spelling Naporitan is derived from the usual romanization of Japanese, while the spelling Napolitan takes the origin of the name into account#

I learnt to make this dish from a friend who used to own a coffee shop in Hakodate and this was one of the dishes on her menu!

Ingredients
Spaghetti - boiled till al dente
Onions (cut into wedges)
Mushrooms (sliced)
Sausages (cut on the slant)
Prawns
Tomato ketchup
worchester sauce
Some white wine or sake or water
Bell peppers (I left out because I didn't have any)

Method:

1. Heat a little oil in the pan and when hot, add onions and stir fry for a couple of minutes. Then add the sausages, mushrooms and what ever else you intend to add.
2. Add in your cooked spaghetti and tomato ketchup, wine or water and worchester sauce and stir till well mixed.
3. Add in the prawns and season.

Food pictures

Food pictures

You know sometimes when the mood just isn't there? That's me now. My mind's a blank and so I thought I'd just post some of the food that I have cooked during the last few weeks.

Yong Tau Fu


Turkey Kitsune


Liver and spring onions


Steamed seabass


Nasi Lemak


Oyako Don


Stir fried chicken livers


Chicken with Szechuan veg (preserved veg)


Angled loofah/Ketola/Kak kueh


Angled loofah omelette

Sambal chilli and hae bee hiam

Sambal chilli and hae bee hiam (Dried prawn sambal
Everytime I go back to Singapore, I will get my mum to buy me a few packets of this chilli which I will then freeze and when I run out of my sambal chilli, I will make.

Not very difficult to do and you can use this chilli for all sorts of things, eg, nasi lemak chilli, mee siam chilli - you get my drift!

Ingredients:
1 packet of chilli paste
a couple of shallots

Method:
1. Slice shallots finely. Heat oil in pan and when hot fry shallots. Sweat the shallots but do not let it brown. Then add the chilli paste and slowly fry till it changes colour. Add sugar to taste. Shiokadooo!

Chilli paste


Sambal


The other thing that I like to make and store (although it does not last me a week)is my ration of hae bee hiam or in English - dried prawn sambal.



Sambal Hey Bee

Ingredients:
1 cup hey bee (dried prawns) – soaked and finely ground
6 – 8 fresh chillies )
10 small onions ) pound together
a knob of blachan (optional) )
salt to taste
sugar to taste

Method:
1. Heat a tbsp of oil in a fry pan and fry the pounded ingredients for 2 minutes.
2. Add the dried prawns and continue frying till quite dry.
3. Add a little salt and sugar to taste.

Beef Yakiniku

Beef Yakiniku

Tofu Seafood Patties

Tofu Seafood Patties

Lamb & Spinach Curry

Lamb & Spinach Curry

Tamago Yaki - Japanese egg roll

Tamago Yaki - Japanese Egg Roll
I thought it would be nice to do a step by step tutorial for making Tamago yaki.

Ingredients:
4 eggs - lightly beaten
6 tbsp dashi stock
1 tbsp sugar
2/3 tsp soy sauce

Method:
Mix all ingredients together. Grease pan with some oil.

Pour egg mixture to cover bottom of pan.


Roll egg to the bottom of pan.


Push egg back to the top of the pan and pour in another tablespoon or 2 to cover pan again. As you push the egg, try to shape it into an oblong.


Repeat process till all the egg is used up.

Lor Ark - Stewed Duck

Lor Ark - Stewed Duck

Another craving by Liana! This time it is stewed duck.

Yong Tau Fu

Yong Tau Fu

Liana wanted to eat some yong tau fu, so bought some bitter gourd, aubergines, green chillies and tau pok. The fish paste is ready made from the Chinese supermarket. Cut and stuffed the vegs and tau pok with the fish paste and shallow fried them after which I braised them in yellow bean sauce. Unfortunately I ran out of the yellow bean sauce so added in black bean sauce as well.

Easy peasy summer Salads


When it is really hot, we only want to eat salads, so here are a couple of what have.

Prawn, avocado and mango salad


Ingredients: - for 2 persons
16 Cooked prawns
1 Avocado – cut into cubes (mixed with lemon juice to prevent it darkening)
1 Mango – cut into cubes
Salad leaves
½ lemon

Dressing
2 tbsp Low fat mayo )
2 tbsp Tomato ketchup ) Mixed together
1 tsp sweet chilli sauce (optional) )

Method:
1. Lay salad leaves on plate. Then layer with the prawns, avocado and mango.
2. Pour dressing over and serve.

Parma ham, avocado and Melon salad


Ingredients – for 2 persons
8 slices parma ham – tear into bite size portions
1 avocado – cubed and sprinked with lemon joice to prevent discolouration
½ cantaloupe melon – cubed
Salad leaves

Your favourite dressing.

Method:
Same as the prawn avocado salad.

Prawn avocado salad

Prawn Avocado salad

Ingredients
Mixed salad leaves
6 large cooked king prawns
2 hard boiled eggs - cut into wedges
2 avocadoes
½ lemon, juice only
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
½ tsp extra virgin olive oil

For the dressing
150ml/5¼ fl oz mayonnaise
50ml/1¾ fl oz ketchup
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1 dash Tabasco sauce
½ lemon, juice only

Method:
1. Arrange salad at bottom of plate
2. Cut the avocados in half, removing the skin and stone. Slice into four lengthways and arrange on a plate.
3. Scatter eggs on top.
4. Toss the cooked, cold prawns in the lemon juice, salt, black pepper, and olive oil and place on top of the avocados.
5. Mix all the ingredients for the dressing in a bowl and drizzle over salad.
4. Serve immediately.

Satay

Satay

Saturday was a beautiful spring day, about 20 deg C. Weather forecast for Sunday and Monday was windy and cloudy but being ever the optimist, I planned then to have satay today. I thought even if we couldn't BBQ the satays outside I could do them indoors and that is what I ended up doing! Weather yesterday and today was windy, cloudy and overall not so nice. Hmmm... why does it always happen on a bank holiday? Never mind... such is life. Prior to marinating my satays, had to put my ingredients into the breadmaker to make bread for Pat and Liana to take to work tomorrow. Am making curry buns for them. Will post pics of them tomorrow, (if I remember to take pics)

So anyways back to my satays, made beef and pork and pineapple satay. For veg, cut up some sweet potato and baked them and also grilled some asparagus.

Japanese Curry Rice

Japanese Curry Rice

Simple fare tonight, but I thought I'd make a face! Do you like it?

Chirashi sushi

Chirashi Sushi

It's Friday and it's fish day for us. As we haven't had chirashi sushi in a long time, bought sashimi from Japan Centre this afternoon and then cooked rice and tada -chirashi sushi!

Braised beef & Daikon

Braised Beef and Daikon


Braised Beef and Daikon

Ingredients:
1 kg stewing beef – cut into cubes
1 daikon – cut into quarters and then into ½ inch slices
3 spring onions – cut into 1 inch slices
3 slices ginger
salt, sugar
1 tbsp rice wine
3 tbsp soy sauce

Method:
1, Marinate beef cubes with rice wine and 1 tbsp soy sauce,
2. Heat oil in wok, and when hot add ½ of the spring onions and ginger and fry till fragrant. Add beef and fry until colour changes.
3. add 3 cups water, daikon and the remaining soy sauce. Bring to boil and then reduce heat and simmer for about 1 – 1 ½ hours until beef is tender. Season with salt and sugar. Add remain spring onions and serve.

Ikan Chuan Chuan

The fish dish is a peranakan dish called Ikan chuan chuan. But I don't think I've seen it in restaurants before. Must be a home dish. Anyway, my mum used pomfret and fries it till crispy then adds the sauce over. Trying to be healthy, so instead of frying and because the pomfrets here are frozen and secondly, my darling hubby doesn't like fish with bones... haha ... I digress.. but anyway to continue... I steam the fish with the sauce instead.



Ingredients:
Pomfret or fish fillets
2 tsp tau cheo (Preserved salted soy beans)
2 slices ginger - julienned

Method:
1. Steam fish.
2. Heat a little oil in a fry pan. When hot, add sliced ginger and tau cheo. Add a little water and simmer for 2 mins.
3. When it sauce is ready, pour over the fish.

Fried bean curd puff with mixed mushrooms

Gyozas

Gyoza
Thought I'd make gyoza tonight as we haven't had it in some time. So in the afternoon, called Liana to take out the gyoza skin from the freezer to defrost. Came back to find that instead of gyoza skin, she'd taken out wanton skins to defrost instead. Oops... Gyoza skins are round while the wanton skins are square. How? No choice, had to use what was already defrosted.

But looking at the finished product and the pictures, I would say they look ok. Whew.. lucky!



Gyoza

Ingredients:
1 pack gyoza skin
250 gm minced pork
250 gm minced beef
4-5 pcs Chinese cabbage – can be substituted for cabbage
2 sprigs - chopped spring onions
1 tsp minced garlic
salt
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
splash of sesame oil
1 tsp corn flour mixed with a little water

Dipping Sauce:
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
1 tsp sesame oil
dash of la yu – chilli oil


Method:
1. Boil some water in pan and when boiling, add cabbage into pan until wilted. Remove from pan and dunk in cold water. Remove from water and squeeze out the water from the cabbage and chop finely.
2. In a bowl, add the 2 different kinds of minced meat, spring onions, cabbage and ginger.
Add the salt, soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil. Mix well.
3. Take a tbsp of the mixture and place on a gyoza skin. Dab a little of the corn flour slurry on the top half of the skin and fold into half. Pleat the skin. Repeat till all the meat has been used up.
4. Heat a little oil in a flat base frying pan. When hot, place the gyozas in the pan and leave for bottoms of gyozas to get brown. After 5 mins, add 150 ml water. Cover. Leave lid on for about 7 mins for gyoza to steam/fry. Remove lid and check to see that skin has become translucent. If not ready, add a little more water and cover for another 2 mins.
5. When gyozas are cooked, remove and place on plate with bottoms facing upwards.
6. Serve and eat with dipping sauce.

Fried Shirataki

Fried Shirataki

Decided to go slow on carbs for the next 2 weeks, so made Fried Shiratki with mixed vegetables for dinner.

Shirataki in itself has no calories and no taste but like a sponge takes up whatever taste you cook it in. So cooked in soy sauce and mirin and then added vegetables for crunch.