Refrigerator soup

So I bought a whole clump of celery for oxtail stew I made that day (which I forgot to photograph and when I had remembered, everything was eaten)  The problem is that I don't like celery.  Not on it's own at least.  But considering there are about 10 sticks of celery in a bag at least, I had to come up with a way to consume!  So I made a whole lot of different soups. (I know I could make vegetable stock and freeze but I like my food fresh when I can help it.  Plus if I'm going to have to boil something, I might as well cook it as a meal.)

Digging around in my various archives, I tried to find the article I had come across about how to cook a soup from scratch without a recipe and couldn't find it so I decided to wing it.  Afterall, it can't be that difficult, right?  And you know what?  It really wasn't that difficult!

Refriderator soup

Ingredients

1 yellow onion chopped up

1/2 red onion chopped up

1 rib of celery chopped up 

2 large carrots chopped up

3oz dried porcini mushrooms

2 cloves of garlic minced

4 cups of chicken stock

1/2 tsp mixed herbs (Masterfood)

1/4 tsp peppercorn

2 bay leaves

1/4 cup red wine

2 tbs tomato paste

Method

1. Place poricini mushrooms in 1 cup of hot water for 10 minutes
2. Sautee the garlic and onions in olive oil until translucent
3. Add carrots and celery and sautee until tender.
4. Pour in poricni mushroom and stock and bring to a boil.
5. Add herbs and tomato paste and simmer the soup.
6. Add red wine towards the end of the cooking.

Tips

1. If you don't have much time and don't like the sharp taste of celery, use a blending wand and blitz it up for a thicker soup or keep it overnight for the celery to absorb all the flavors.  Alternatively, boil to a mush.
2. Adjust herbs and wine according to taste.  Be adventurous.

Asian Granola

I'm not a huge breakfast fan.  Perhaps it's because I'm terrible at waking up in the morning.  So I'm always in a rush.  So I figured if I could prepare something healthy to eat and yet store for extended periods of time at work, I may actually be able to work this breakfast thing into my daily routine.

Granola seemed like a fairly yummy option and fit into the above criteria.  So I gave it a shot and asianised it with sesame seeds and dried Goji berries.  A great yummy snack which can be taken as a breakfast.  Perfect!

Asian Granola

Ingredients

5 cups oats

175g sugar

1 3/4 cup slivered almonds

3/4 cup dessicated coconut

3/4 cup black sesame seeds

1 3/4 cup cashew nuts

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Wet ingredients

60g melted butter

1/3 cup maple syrup

3/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce

1/4 cup honey

Method

1. Preheat oven to 165 degrees celsius
2. Line pan with greaseproof paper
3. Mix all the dry ingredients together
4. Mix all the wet ingredients together
5. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ones and stir well
6. Spread mixture evenly onto pan
7. Bake 35 - 40 minutes until golden brown.

Tips

1. Rotate and shake the pan every 10 minutes for even roasting
2. Allow the granola to cool before storing
3. Can be stored in the fridge if it lasts long enough!

Cheddar Cheese Biscuits

That day, I made a very big mistake.  I thought it would be a great idea to involve the tot in making some biscuits to bring to school.  Afterall, he's helped his aunt bake muffins before and I had not heard any complaints from her.  But I didn't realise one thing at that point - biscuits are DIFFERENT from muffins.

Muffins you scoop into muffin trays.  Biscuits you roll out and cut out.  Muffins look like gloop and biscuit dough, like play dough.

The dough is easy enough to make.  Took me all of 10 minutes.  But once I tried to roll out the dough for cutting, the kid thought it was play dough and proceeded to make a huge mess.  Add the fact that it is always above 30 degrees Celsius in Singapore, my table top was a mess of melted butter and flour.  And the floor littered with bits of dough and what nots.  I was about to cry.

Thank goodness for fantastic husbands!  My husband plucked him (the tot) up and took him for a bath, promising freshly baked biscuits if I were to be left alone to finish making them.  Then he cleaned the floor for me.

What started off as a disaster turned out great.  Scroll down to the tips for a relatively stress-free making process.  Without the kid's help, I made 180 biscuits (1" across) in about 1/2 hour.  The tot and his dad finished it in about the same amount of time.

Cheddar Cheese Biscuits
Ingredients
1.5 cup of shredded Cheddar Cheese
3/4 cup of All Purpose Flour
50g of butter

Method
1. Place all ingredients in a food processor and blitz until a dough is formed
2. Pick up all the crumbs to form a dough ball and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius
4. Roll out the dough to 1/8" thickness and use a cookie cutter to cut out biscuits.
5. Place on baking tray lined with baking paper.
6. Bake biscuits for about 10 minutes until puffed up and golden brown.
6. Take out to cool on a rack and store in an airtight container.

Tips
1. Instead of 1 big ball of dough, I make several small balls of dough.  They get put in the freezer and I rotate them.  When the ball of dough I'm rolling out gets a bit too soft for handling, I toss it back into the freezer and take the next ball out to work.
2. Instead of a cookie rack, I use a metal sieve to cool the biscuits.  I avoid having to place the biscuits properly to avoid slipping through the gaps.
3.  Watch your first batch of biscuits like a hawk.  They burn relatively easily.

One Bowl Brownies

I have a very sweet tooth.  Perhaps it's coz I was brought up by my grandmother who had an equally sweet tooth. But as the years go by, I'm starting to like my sweets less sweet.

I still remember being bewildered as a child why anyone would want to eat BITTER chocolate?  But now, I totally appreciate how the bitterness brings another dimension to the chocolate.  Brownies are no exception.

That day I decided to whip up a batch of brownies while waiting for the hubby to come home.  Coz these brownies are dead easy to bake and only really need 1 bowl (measuring cups and weighing scales not included!)

As usual, I assumed I had all the ingredients and started without checking.  Until I reached the point of - add the nuts.  The hubs had eaten us out of nuts in the entire house!

So I proceeded without any nuts and it was still great!

One-bowl Brownies
Ingredients

150 g bittersweet chocolate chopped
113 g unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 tbs Milo powder
200 g granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 large eggs

95 g all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and place the rack in the center of the oven.
2. Line bottom of tray with aluminium foil.
3. Melt the chocolate and butter in a large stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. 
4. Remove from heat and stir in the Milo powder and sugar.
5. Whisk in the vanilla extract and eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. 
6. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 25-30 minutes.
7. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Tips

1. Make sure the equipment used to melt the chocolate is dry and avoid splashing water from the saucepan as this would cause the chocolate to "seize" and not be useable.
2. I couldn't find baking cocoa and substituted Milo.  Just as good.
3. If baking brownies for the first time, watch it carefully.  It is very easy to overbake.  Overbaked brownies become cakey.

Frog leg porridge

I know to many people, the thought of eating frogs is EWWW!!!  But trust me, when it is done well, it is a true delicacy.

As a child, my mum used to make frog leg porridge for us to eat.  It was supposed to be good for "cleansing the blood" or something like that.  Basically good for little children.  I remember it to be stringy and chicken-like.  Not fantastic but I still enjoyed it.

Then we grew up and got to try the hawker style frog legs which were yummy.  Sichuan style frog legs, deep fried frog legs, frog legs with spring onions....  Slurp!  The texture of the meat was never stringy nor dry. It was clean tasting, springy and never got stuck between the teeth.

So what's the secret?  The duration of cooking!  Like all other meat, over cooking renders frog meat tough.  So I get the fish monger to chop the meat up into chunks that would cook quickly and blanch them in boiling soup.

Fresh frog legs can be obtained from select markets in Singapore where the fish monger butchers and skins the live frogs for you on the spot.  I get mine from Chinatown.

Do you have any exotic dishes to share?

Frog Leg Porridge
Serves 4
Ingredients
500ml of Chicken stock (I make mine from scratch)
4 freshly slaughtered frogs chopped into chunks
4 handful of vegetables
2 cups of rice
1 can of button mushrooms

Method

1. Cook the rice as you would ordinarily.
2. Bring the chicken stock to a rolling boil.
3. Blanch the frog legs in the stock until just turned white.
4. Add the vegetables and let simmer until the vegetables just wilt.
5. Strain the button mushrooms and put into the soup.
6. Salt and pepper to taste.
7. Pour soup over the rice and serve.

Quick and easy

We've been slowly breaking in the apartment.  Getting used to where the switches are.  Finding out what works and what doesn't.  Even the layout of the kitchen needs some getting used to.  So there's no time for fancy cooking for now.

Everyone likes a tasty soup but a good traditional Chinese soup usually needs time and ingredients - which I'm a little short on at the current moment.  Building up a good pantry needs time and planning.  At the same time, I'm extremely reluctant to resort to canned soups, monosodium glutamate (MSG) laden additives and such as a short cut.

Many people think that MSG is a bad word.  But did you know that MSG is naturally occurring?  It is that umami that one tastes when eating seafood and it's a great flavoring in small amounts.  I'm perfectly fine with naturally occurring MSG which is found in miso.  As long as no additional MSG is added.

Everything was easily available at NTUC.  Even the organic miso which doesn't contain MSG or preservatives.  I used a kelp based broth for a more "Japanese" taste and the additional minerals found in them.

Udon in Miso Soup
Ingredients
Japanese kelp
Fresh Shitake Mushrooms
Carrots, finely sliced
Egg tofu
Fresh Udon

Method

1. Clean the kelp and boil in water for 30 minutes.
2. Remove the kelp and cut them up into pieces and set aside.
3. Blanche the carrots, mushrooms and tofu in the kelp stock.
4. Take the kelp stock off the heat.
5. Place fresh udon in the serving bowl and all the blanched ingredients on the top.  Sprinkle the kelp over it.
6. Add miso (to taste) to the kelp stock and whisk it in.  Pour soup over noodles and serve immediately.

Notes

1. The best way to clean kelp is to use a clean damp cloth and wipe the pieces.
2. Enoki mushrooms can also be used for variety
3. You can add other vegetables like snow peas 
4. Fish cake is another ingredient that you can add.

Trying out gluten free

Thankfully, coeliac disease isn't very common in Singapore. But I've always been quite facinated by recipes which are gluten free because wheat flour is found in so many baked goods that it makes me wonder if “gluten free” would actually be any good.  Lemon, rosemary, polenta cake is just that and it definitely sounded yummy enough.  So I tried baking a batch.

My verdict? By jolly they ARE good! Every mouthful was a burst of lemon and a whole lotta bite. A little more crumbly then if it would have been if wheat flour was used but it meant that there was a slight grittiness that would only come with polenta.

The first batch was iced but that got devoured quite fast. People were coming back for seconds. By the 2^nd batch, I had run out of caster sugar so I only made a syrup. Both recipes have been included below. Icing is definitely a little sweeter but I concentrated the lemon by boiling so it wasn't all that sweet!

The only slight little thing that could have been better is less oil but it would affect the moistness of the cake. The lemon cut through the butter and made it an extremely palatable cake which made me come back for 2^nds and 3^rds (and would have been more if it weren't for the fact that there were none left!) Otherwise it was downright dreamy.

Lemon rosemary polenta cake

Adapted from Not Quite Nigella

Makes 14 cupcakes

Ingredients

110g almond meal

110g polenta

2 tbs chopped up fresh rosemary

Zest of 2 lemons

1 tsp baking powder

200g butter at room temperature

¾ cup caster sugar

3 eggs, beaten

1 tsp vanilla essence

3 lemon juice ice cubes melted (about 6 tbs)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius
2. In a mixing bowl, whisk the polenta with the lemon zest, rosemary, almond meal, and baking powder.
3. Cream the sugar with the butter until well combined.
4. Beat the vanilla essence into the eggs
5. Whisk in the eggs a little at a time until well combined.
6. Whisk in the lemon juice.
7. Slowly fold in the dry ingredients.
8. Pour cake mix into lined cupcake tins.
9. Bake at 180 degrees celsius for 30 minutes.

Notes

1. Mixing the eggs a little at a time ensures that it is easier to create a homogenous mixture.
2. Use finely milled polenta for a more refined finish.

Lemon polenta cake icing

Ingredients

2 lemon juice ice cubes (melted)

6 tbs of caster sugar

Method

1. Mix the caster sugar into the lemon juice.
2. Pour icing over cakes.

Notes

1. If you want a “dribbled effect” of icing over cake, increase the amount of lemon juice to sugar ratio.
2. If you want a more tart kind of icing, you can boil the lemon juice a bit to concentrate it. But that would mean using more lemon ice cubes. Play around until you get the exact texture and taste you want.

Lemon polenta cake syrup

Ingredients

5 lemon juice ice cubes

1 tbs chopped fresh rosemary

4 tbs caster sugar

Method

1. Boil lemon juice with rosemary until it just starts to bubble. Leave to stand until cool.
2. Pour lemon juice through sieve.
   Add caster sugar 1 tbs at a time until well dissolved.

Notes

1. The rosemary is great if the syrup is fresh. But the fragrance leeches out after I kept it overnight.
2. If you don't like the syrup too tart, substitute water instead.

Chocs ahoy!

It has been a dreadful week.  Never any good news when you open the newspapers.  It just seemed frivolous posting about my craft and cooking at that point.  But it was great to see so many people doing their best to help out and my prayers go out to all the war torn and disaster stricken countries.  We are indeed lucky in Singapore that we aren't plagued by disastrous natural disasters.

We all needed some cheering up so I whipped up a batch of double chocolate chip and nuts cookies. 

I love my chocolate. As a child, I loved it sweet and milk. But as with many things, as I got older, my tastes changed. Now I love my chocolate slightly bitter and dark. Too much sugar is a no-no and I feel that it spoils the taste. Which is why I tend to avoid buying commercial cookies unless they come highly recommended. DIY is always the best isn't it? You get to control what goes in and how much.

This recipe is modified from You Made That as I didn't have some of the required ingredients. I was also impatient and didn't want to wait 1 hour for the dough to chill so I scooped the cookie mixture and dumped it onto the baking tray directly. Still tasted fantastic.

Double chocolate chip and nuts cookies

Ingredients

125 g unsalted butter

3 large eggs

½ cup sugar

9 tbs cocoa powder

1/3 cup all purpose flour

½ tsp baking powder

100 g dark chocolate chips

1 cup chopped almonds

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Melt the butter over the stove – don't let it boil.
3. Whisk the eggs and sugar together until well mixed.
4. Sift the cocoa powder, all purpose flour and baking powder together.
5. Whisk the melted butter into the egg and sugar mixture.
6. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones.
7. Add the dark chocolate chips and almonds and mix well.
8. Place tablespoonfuls of cookie mixture onto a sheet of baking paper, leaving 2.5 cm in between.
9. Bake for 15 minutes.
10. Take cookies out of oven and cool on a baking rack.

Notes

1. Unsalted butter is more expensive than salted butter and with good reason. It contains less impurities and has a higher smoking point. But I'm cheap – I use salted butter. The family still can't tell the difference.
2. Let the butter cool – if it's too hot, it will cook the egg!
3. Leaving the space between cookies allow the cookies to expand – which they do! I was impatient and tried to cram more cookies in and ended up with a cookie sheet once!

Play dough on a dime.

The tot loves play dough.  Actually, I haven't met a child who didn't like playdough. The texture of something squishing in your hands, the endless possibilities of the lump of dough and the bright colors are definitely a draw.  I like the idea that it exercises the little fingers and improves fine motor skills, works the imagination and best of all, engages the kid so that I can have a little time to do all the this and thats!

One thing I don't like about playdough is how they end up mixing together and becoming an ugly lump of dough.  Not that the tot actually minds.  But the OCD in me gets really annoyed.  And it would be so wasteful chucking that out and buying a new lot too!

Also, dough does dry out eventually and get yucky with bits of this and that stuck in it.  And dough stuck on carpets or clothes are quite a pain to remove.  The biggest worry is the ingestion of the dough!

Which is why I LOVE homemade playdough.  Cheap enough to chuck when it's turned grotty, safe enough to be ingested and so many colors to choose from!   If it's stuck on clothes, soak the clothes and then the dough dissolves and you can rinse it out with no problems!

The sky is literally the limit with these things.  I bought a cheap rolling pin and a set of cookie cutters, added some plastic utensils and recycle some plastic food containers and the viola!  A cheap toy that entertains the little one for hours at a time.

One other thing that I have found playdough to be particularly useful is in training the little one in how to use the scissors. I bought him a safety scissors that is made of plastic.  Unfortunately, it actually takes more skill than a normal scissors to cut nicely through paper.  However, with the playdough, no problems at all!  And he doesn't get himself nicked.

I'm hoping to teach colors using playdough and mixing them up. But seeing how the tot can't even consistently identify basic colors, I may have to leave it to later!

I've tried many of the recipes online and find that the cream of tartar version the best.  The recipe using baking soda and cornstarch resulted in a rather slimy afterfeel which I didn't like at all.  The "no cook versions" are largely similar to cooked versions seeing how boiling water is used. I use the no cook version as that allows me to involve the tot in the mixing.  He mixes with a wooden spoon in a huge mixing bowl and only after I've mixed the mixture enough to not have any liquid in the bowl.  The boiled version tends to result in a salt crust on the dough after a while so I don't really fancy that method either.

There are a thousand and one recipes online and this is the base recipe.  A lot of people add flavors and such to the dough and yes, they smell delicious!  But I don't.  There really is no need to encourage my greedy tot to mouth the dough with the delicious smells even if it's safe.

Here's the recipe I use!  Do you have any non toxic recipes for crafts for children?  I would love to hear from you!

Playdough
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup boiling water
1 tbs of cooking oil
1/2 cup salt
4 tablespoons cream of tartar
food coloring

1. Combine the flour, salt and cream of tartar in a mixing bowl.
2. Mix the cooking oil with the boiling water.
3. Pour the boiling water over the dry ingredients and mix continuously until smooth.
4. Knead in your preferred food color.

Have fun!

Braised pork shoulder - ignore the fat

Do you like kong bak? The sinful layers of fat that melt in your mouth in a sweet yet savory sauce. Delicious! Just ignore what your doctor said about avoiding too much fat.

There are many recipes online for fancier versions that definitely do better in the looks department (think tying the meat chunks with pandan leaves to keep the shape) but also take a lot more time. However, being a mum (working or not) means there may be certain things one has to foresake for the sake (pun not intended) of sanity – so I am forced to choose ease over appearance.

The recipe I have is dead easy and a perfect 1 pot dish (minimal washing!) which makes me one happy camper. The meat is succulent and tender and the sauce goes great with rice too. The dish keeps well overnight and when I heated it up in the microwave the next day, the fat just melted in my mouth. I must say I now know what to blame for the expanding waistline!

Braised pork shoulder

Ingredients

0.5kg pork shoulder with skin intact

½ red onion diced

1 garlic bulb peeled

2 tbs Shaoxing wine

1 cup dark soya sauce

1 cup light soya sauce

4 pieces of rock sugar

1 tsp five spice powder

Method

1. Scald the pork shoulder with boiling water and blanch into ice cold water to stop the cooking process.
2. Remove the hair from the pork shoulder skin.
3. Using a pot that would fit the meat, sautee the garlic (whole cloves) and red onions gently until fragrant.
4. Add the rest of the ingredients into the pot including the chunk of pork shoulder.
5. Add enough water to cover the meat and bring to a boil. Once boiling turn the fire down and simmer for 1 – 2 hours.
6. Serve with green vegetables and rice (To assuage the guilt.)

Notes

1. Scalding helps to make the hairs more apparent and easier to remove. Furthermore, it is supposed to help remove some of the smell. (I can't really tell)
2. Avoid using a pot too big as it would require more water to cook the meat and dilute the flavors.
3. You can hard boil an egg (or eggs) and shell them. Then pop them in with the meat when simmering to get very tasty eggs that children love!

Weetabix clusters

I remember as a child, I was very facinated by cornflake clusters. Reason being that my mother never baked and it was a treat since they didn't really sell them commercially either. When I grew up, my cousin made very good ones chockablock full of nuts and sesame seeds. Each bite was a study in nutty fragrances, balanced by a slightly salty caramel and buttery aftertaste. YUM! But she only made it during Chinese New Year.

So that day I was craving cornflake clusters and decided that since I was an adult now, I'd make them myself. So quite unlike my usual self, I just started without even checking that I had cornflakes. Yup. I had the butter melting in the pot with the honey, the almonds toasted and chopped and no cornflakes. Sigh. My stomach had obviously ran ahead of the brain.

Digging around in the pantry resulted in some Weetabix which would have to do. The result was actually quite good! Unfortunately, the Weetabix tended to absorb all the caramel and didn't hold as well as cornflake clusters would. But that didn't really matter since everyone was popping the entire cluster into their mouths at a shot.  A big hit with the kiddy crowd too!

Do you have any snacks that just bring back all those childhood memories?

Weetabix clusters

Ingredients

7 pieces of Weetabix

75g butter

3 tbs sugar

3 tbs honey

1 cup almonds

1/3 cup sesame seeds

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Blitz weetabix, almonds and sesame seeds in a food processor until coarsely chopped.
3. Melt butter, sugar and honey in a saucepan and pour over the dry ingredients and mix.
4. Scoop mixture into small cupcake cases.
5. Bake for 5 minutes and take out to cool and set.
6. Keeps in an airtight container for about 1 week (provided greedy fingers don't get to it first!)

Notes

1. You can use other nuts if you like.
2. It's a great way to "freshen up" breakfast cereal that has lost it's punch.

For the tiny picky eaters - steamed egg custard

I'm sure those of you who have toddlers, finding the one dish that is both nutritious and pleasing to their palate can be quite a challenge.  Eggs are a wonderful source of nutrition especially the egg yolk.  But not all children like eating the yolk.  I know I didn't when I was a kid!  So this is a great way of getting both yolk and white into the mouth and it's so easy to do - once you know the trick!

Both Chinese and Japanese cuisines feature this dish with variations in the ingredients.  It is not so much the ingredients than the method (am I repeating myself too much here?) that gives the perfect smooth jello texture that is a great hit with the kids.

As with many of the "traditional" recipes I use, it's a pinch of this and a little bit of that.  So please bear with me!

Steamed egg custard
Ingredients
2 eggs
Water
2 pinches of salt.
Spring onions for garnishing

Method

1. Prepare steamer and boil the water.
2. Crack 2 eggs into a measuring cup and add 2x the amount of water.  Add the salt and beat the mixture until homogenous.  You can add pepper if you want.
3. Pour mixture through a sieve into container you want to steam the egg in.  Use a container that can be placed in a steamer.
4. Place egg into steamer and turn down the heat from the stove.  
5. Take the eggs off the stove once it turns a light yellow (from translucent yellow)
6. Garnish with spring onions.

Notes

1. I use a measuring cup to make it easy to gauge how much water to add.  It's a 1:2 ratio I use.  1:1 gives a firmer texture if you prefer that.
2. You can use chicken stock or dashi stock (for chawanmushi) instead of water.  But the kids don't seem to notice the difference.
3. You can add things like ginko nut, fish cake and such to make a more interesting dish.  I prefer not to as it increases the surface area where bubbles can form and ruin the smooth texture.  I'm anal like that.
4. Do NOT boil the egg mixture.  The idea is to get the egg to just cook.  I use a steamer with a clear lid so I can peek in to see if the egg has cooked.  I get the steamer to a boiling point and turn the fire down to the minimum so that the water simmers.  Once the egg sets, I turn off the fire and leave the egg in the steamer until it's time to serve.  
5. If you are using a hot plate, you will need to remove the entire steamer off the stove as the water can continue to boil.

Chocolate muffins with orange cream cheese

The internet has been a great place from which I draw my inspiration from, be it craft, food, child rearing or decorations.  But it has also meant that I've ended up buying things in the hope that one day, I'll find the time to create whatever it was that I was inspired to make.  As we all know, that may be almost never.  It's fine with craft materials but with food, there are expiry dates.

In order to assuage my conscience, I did a sweep of the pantry for any more food that needed to be consumed (This is becoming quite a habit, yes?  Remember the black sesame soup?)  Anyhow, I found a packet of cooking chocolate, baking cocoa powder, half consumed cream cheese and an orange.  Perfect to execute an idea that I've been having in my head for quite a while - Chocolate muffins with orange cream cheese.

I'm quite sure this is not a new idea - I'm not that imaginative in the food department yet.  And by yet, I mean that I expect to become more adventurous.  And by more adventurous, I mean buy more exotic ingredients... (Down that slippery slope yet again.) 

As a child, I'd always hated orange flavored chocolates.  Don't get me wrong - I LOVED chocolate and I LOVED oranges but put them together, it was just wierd.  I suppose part of the reason was the rather synthetic taste that those cheap boxes of chocolates tend to impart with this combination.  But now that I've grown up and I've actually tried some really nice combinations with fresh fruit and good quality chocolate, I'm quite partial towards it.

Do you have any combinations of food that you hated as a child but embraced it as an adult?

Chocolate muffins with orange cream cheese

Makes 18 muffins

Ingredients

Group A

2 3/4 cup all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup baking cocoa powder

0.5 cup caster sugar

Group B

2 tsp vanilla essence

80g milk chocolate chips / chocolate bar broken up into bits

2 large eggs

150g melted butter

1 3/4 cups of milk

Group C

125g cream cheese at room temperature

2 tbs caster sugar

3 tbs fresh orange juice

1.5 tbs orange zest

0.5 tsp vanilla essence

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Combine all the ingredients in Group A and whisk to mix.
3. Combine all the ingredients in Group B and whisk to mix.
4. Pour Group B ingredients into Group A ingredients and stir until just combined.
5. Combine all the ingredients in Group C and put in a food processor and blend until smooth.
6. Fill greased muffin tins until 1/2 full with the chocolate mixture.
7. Place a dollop of cream cheese mixture on top of the chocolate mixture.
8. Further top up the muffin tinx with the chocolate mixture to cover the cream cheese mixture.
9. Bake for 20 - 30 minutes.
10. Best eaten warm from the oven!

Note

1. I tend to use less sugar in my recipes as I dont' like it too sweet - you can vary the amount of sugar to your liking,
2. You may need less milk (or more) to get a consistency thicker than honey to allow for ease in filling the muffin tins.

Who? 芝麻糊 - Black Sesame Soup

While going through my pantry, I found a packet of black sesame seeds.  To be honest, I can't really remember why I bought it in the first place.  Perhaps I'll stick a post-it next time with my idea onto the food packets so that I'll remember! LOL!

Anyhow, I was talking to my grandmother the weekend before and she mentioned that 芝麻糊 was very easy to make and considering the ingredients, dirt cheap.  As with A LOT of recipes from the older folks, there aren't any precise measurements, just proportions.  

So I used one of those Chinese soup bowls as my measuring container.  I figured it would be just nice.  Afterall, it was a nice size.  Right.  The brain didn't think properly and I didn't add up ALL the bowls.  Ah well.  We had a whole pot full of 芝麻糊 which could feed a party of 10 or more. LOL!

Black sesame is supposed to be good for black hair (As with a lot of Chinese food believes, you treat like with like) and neutral for the body.  Scientifically, it has a tonne of vitamins and minerals along with some fibre.  Sounds like something that everyone can enjoy!

Black sesame paste 芝麻糊

Ingredients

1 cup of black sesame seeds

1 cup of jasmine rice

1 cup of yellow rock sugar

9 cups of water

Method

1. Soak the jasmine rice in some water after washing for 1 hour.
2. Toast the black sesame seeds in the oven at 160 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes.
3. Grind the sesame seeds to a fine powder in the food processor.
4. Strain the rice and grind that to a fine meal as well.
5. Add the sesame meal and rice meal to 9 cups of water.
6. Bring the pot to a simmer, stirring every now and then, ensuring that the rice doesn't stay at the bottom of the pot and burn.
7. Add the rock sugar and stir until it melts.
8. Using a food processing wand, blend the soup into a smooth creamy consistency.
9. Can be eaten cold or warm.

Note

1. The above gives you about 10 bowls of soup.  Cut down as necessary.
2. You can use plain rice flour instead of jasmine rice - this saves you 1 step.
3. This soup is best eaten fresh as the rice starch tends to congeal and may separate after some time.  If that happens, I'd heat up the soup and add a bowl of boiling water and blend again.

Freezer Pleasers

Do you ever get sick and tired of eating the food at work?  I know I do.  After a while, the food starts getting boring and I shudder to think of the true nutritional value or the lack there of.  But I regret to say that I already have enough difficulty waking up in time for work, much less to cook BEFORE going to work!

There are days where I bring the dinner left overs from the day before and there are days where I just force myself to eat what the food court offers.  So I figured, why not have something that can be easily prepared before I go to work if there are no left overs!  Congratulating myself on that brilliant idea, I went on a search for freezer friendly food.

If you are of the same generation as I am, you'd recall Garfield scarfing down pans of lasagne and it was a dish that always intrigued me as a child.  Mum never cooked "Western" food of this kind and when we ate out, fish and chips invariably was THE western food we'd order.  I also remembered reading of how bechamel sauces turned lumpy, how lagsane sheets would disintegrate and such - hardly encouraging to someone who felt an aversion to chucking food even if it turned out to be a disaster.

But curiosity got the better of me and I'm glad to say, I can make lasagne!  There are a few tricks which I learnt along the way (at the end of the recipe) which makes making lasagne and freezing it a breeze.  The hubs loves it, the bubs loves it even more and it freezes so well!  I've also done some tweaks - my bechamel sauce is made from wholemeal flour.  A great way to hide fibre in food if your kiddy is veggie and fruit adverse!

Lasagne

Meat sauce

1 tbs olive oil

2 cloves of garlic finely minced

1 medium sized onion finely chopped

700g minced pork (or beef)

2 cans (800g) of canned tomatoes

1 bay leaf

1 tsp dried oregano

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat olive oil in a saucepan and stir in the garlic until fragrant.  Add the onions and sautee until soft.
2. Add the minced meat and continue to stir, breaking up the meat.
3. Add the canned tomatoes, bay leaf and oregano when the meat is almost cooked.
4. Add salt and pepper to taste.  Remember that you'll be adding cheese later and so you will need to cut back accordingly on the salt.  (I omit salt here)

Bechamel sauce

80g wholemeal flour

120g butter

1 litre of warm milk

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp of salt

1. On low heat, melt the butter.
2. Using a whisk, slowly incorporate the flour until the mixture forms a ball.
3. Take it off the stove.
4. Using a ladle, add the milk one ladle at a time and continue whisking gently.  This ensures that lumps don't form.  I highly recommend patience.
5. Put back on the stove and bring to a gentle boil, stirring ever so often.
6. The sauce will thicken and reach a consistency that should coat the back of your spoon.

Others

Instant lasagne sheets 1 - 2 boxes

Grated mozarella cheese

Grated cheddar cheese

Assembly

1. Use aluminium foil to line your baking tray. (9x12 inches or so)
2. Preheat over to 180 degrees celsius.
3. Place a layer of instant lasagne sheets at the bottom.
4. Layer the lasagne sheets with a thin layer of meat sauce and then bechamel sauce.  Finally layer a mixture of mozarella and cheddar cheese on top.  The cheese serves to bind everything together.  Add according to your taste.
5. Layer another layer of lasagne sheets followed by meat sauce, bechamel sauce and cheese.
6. The final layer should be lasagne sheets followed by a thin layer of bechamel sauce and cheese.
7. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes at 180 degrees celsius.

Note

1. Instant lasagne sheets don't have to be pre-prepared and can be used as is.  This saves you having to fiddle around with fragile sheets.
2. To fit your pan better, you may have to break up the lasagne sheets and piece them together like a puzzle but keeping the sheets as a whole piece makes it easier to cut and transfer.
3. Don't worry if your meat sauce is a bit wet - the lasagne sheets soak up all that fluid well and need it.  Otherwise, you'll have very hard pieces of pasta!
4. When I run out of bechamel sauce by the last layer, I layer with more cheese and pour some milk over the top to cover and moisten the pasta.
5. To freeze, leave the lasagne to cool first - this improves the handling qualities of the pasta and it retains it shape without falling into a cheesy heap.