Butter Prawn (the one that failed!!!)

During my working days, dining out for business luncheon was enjoyable, as that was the opportunity to eat those expensive foods for free...hehehe

There was this famous Thai restaurant in Klang Valley that I love so much for their Thai cuisines especially their Butter Prawn. I love the cruncy shredded butter-egg combination. The prawns of course were superb!

Many years ago, I've tried once to cook on my own this butter prawn recipe. I used the recipe from a magazine. But I failed to get the crunchy shredded butter-egg. So I gave up trying and concluded that if I feel like eating, business luncheon is the time (for info, always being the only lady in the team work, I always been given the privilege to order....good eh?)

Now living abroad and have not so much money to spend to dine out, I made another attempt to cook this butter prawn. So I visited the famous cooking website in my list, but there were so many butter prawn recipes to look at, and I was so lazy to read all the reviews. So I picked one recipe that featured a nice-looking butter prawn photo and I thought 'this should be good'

But I ended up getting the scrambled-egg-looking of what supposed to be the fried-crunchy-shredded butter-egg (look at the above photo). Hmm...it was very dissappointing!!! Nonetheless the prawns itself tasted so good, so it wasn't a waste.

Later I had chatted with a friend of mine and mentioned about my butter prawn dissappointment. And she pointed that in order to get a crunchy-shredded butter-egg, I shoud be using a lot of oil (about two ladles) and make sure the oil is hot enough before I pour in the batter. And the batter must be stirred as quickly as possible to get the well shredded result.

No wonder!

How come the recipe says only two spoon of butter to be heated up? Huh!!!

Anyway, I'm not going to put the recipe of my failed butter prawn. Perhaps, I'll try again the butter prawn recipe and will see whether it will success.

Daging Masak Hitam ( Black Beef Recipe)

I found this recipe while browsing through Adabi website. I wanted to see what spices I could ask my family in Malaysia to buy for me and subsequently send it over to Germany. Then I saw this recipe and tried it.

Well, it's delicious and easy to cook. Anyway, mine didn't look as black as it should be. I guess the soy sauce I bought here doesn't give the black colour so much. I miss Kicap Kipas Udang!!!

Here is the recipe:



Ingredients :

1. packet of 26 gm Adabi Soup paste 600 gm ( I used Mak Siti's, as I don't have Adabi's)

2. beef (sliced and deep fried)

3. 10 dried chillies (grinded)

4. 3 big onions (cut rounded)

5. 8 shallots (finely sliced)

6. 1 inch ginger (pounded)

7. 10 tablespoons of soy sauce

8. 2 tablespoons vinegar/tamarind water

9. 10 tablespoons cooking oil

10. Sugar Salt to taste

I added potatoes in my cooking because my kids love to eat potato.



Cooking Method :

1. Heat the oil

2. Fry the Adabi Soup paste, dried chillies, shallots, ginger, soy sauce, vinegar, salt and sugar together.

3. Add beef and big onions (and potatoes, if you want to add)

4. Fry till everything blends in the meat (make sure the potatoes is well cooked)

5. Ready to be served

Breakfast Casserole

This is another variety of breakfast menu. I found this recipe from Simply Recipes. My family love this casserole as it has variety of ingredients. From protein (of sausage and eggs), calcium (of milk and cheese), cabohydrate (of bread) and lots of vegetables.

Before baked

After baked

The recipe:


Ingredients

6-10 eggs
2-3 cups grated cheddar cheese
6 slices bread, cut into cubes
2 cups milk
Salt
Pepper


Additions

1 cup corn (cooked or frozen)
1/2 cup chopped broccoli (cooked or raw, raw will turn out crunchier)
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup sliced green onions
1 cup cubed cooked Italian sausage
A few slices salami, chopped
1 teaspoon herbes de provence, or other dried herbs, or a Tbsp of fresh chopped herbs such as basil, rosemary, or thyme
13 x 9 inch casserole dish


Method

1 Preheat oven to 350°F. Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Mix in the milk and cheese. Add the bread and carefully stir until all pieces of bread are moistened (don't over mix or the bread may disintegrate). Add additions. Add salt and pepper to taste (if using Italian sausage, you won't need either.) Butter a 13 x 9 inch casserole dish. Pour mix into casserole dish.

2 Bake in oven for 50 minutes to an hour, until the top is browned and the center springs back when touched. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Note:

The ingredient proportions are estimates. The more eggs, the firmer, and less likely to deflate, the casserole will be. Mushrooms tend to hold a lot of moisture, so if you use a lot of them, you may want to sauté them first to release some of their water. Sausage should be browned and cooked through first. Can also uses spices such as curry and cumin.

Perfect Roast Chicken

Couple of weeks ago, I've tried this roasted chicken recipe from Jamie Oliver. Nay...it wasn't as perfect as the name with me roasting it but it's the simplest way of roasting chicken, yet the result is not disappointing.

In the original recipe, the whole chicken is used but in my case, I used 4 quarter of chickens and instead of lemon, I used orange (because I had no lemon at that time!).

The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

• 1 x approximately 1.6kg chicken, preferably free-range, organic or higher welfare

• 2 medium onions

• 2 carrots

• 2 potatoes

• 1 bulb of garlic

• olive oil

• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 1 lemon

* a small bunch of fresh thyme, rosemary, bay or sage, or a mixture (I used Petersillie, but I would suggest you follow accordingly)

To prepare your chicken

• Take your chicken out of the fridge 30 minutes before it goes into the oven

• Preheat your oven to 240°C/475°F/gas 9

• There’s no need to peel the vegetables – just give them a wash and roughly chop them

• Break the garlic bulb into cloves, leaving them unpeeled

• Pile all the veg and garlic into the middle of a large roasting tray and drizzle with olive oil

• Drizzle the chicken with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper, rubbing it all over the bird

• Carefully prick the lemon all over, using the tip of a sharp knife (if you have a microwave, you could pop the lemon in these for 40 seconds at this point as this will really bring out the flavour)

• Put the lemon inside the chicken’s cavity, with the bunch of herbs

To cook your chicken

• Place the chicken on top of the vegetables in the roasting tray and put it into the preheated oven

• Turn the heat down immediately to 200°C/400°F/gas 6 and cook the chicken for 1 hour and 20 minutes

• If you’re doing roast potatoes and veggies, this is the time to crack on with them – get them into the oven for the last hour of cooking

• Baste the chicken halfway through cooking and if the veg look dry, add a splash of water to the tray to stop them burning

• When cooked, take the tray out of the oven and transfer the chicken to a board to rest for 15 minutes or so

• Cover it with a layer of tinfoil and a tea towel and put aside. Now is the time to make your gravy

To carve your chicken

• Remove any string from the chicken and take off the wings (break them up and add to your gravy for mega flavour)

• Carefully cut down between the leg and the breast

• Cut through the joint and pull the leg off • Repeat on the other side, then cut each leg between the thigh and the drumstick so you end up with four portions of dark meat

• Place these on a serving platter

• You should now have a clear space to carve the rest of your chicken

• Angle the knife along the breastbone and carve one side off, then the other

• When you get down to the fussy bits, just use your fingers to pull all the meat off, and turn the chicken over to get all the tasty, juicy bits from underneath

• You should be left with a stripped carcass, and a platter full of lovely meat that you can serve with your piping hot gravy and gorgeous roast veg

Buttermilk Pancake

I always run out of idea what to cook for breakfast. And I'm sick of cooking the same type of Malay breakfast, nasi goreng, bihun goreng...bla..bla...Not that they don't taste good, they do!! But I'm looking for variety.

So I browsed the Internet and found this recipe: BUTTERMILK PANCAKE.

And since I had the leftover buttermilk from making chocolate cake before,hey...buttermilk pancake is a good idea, indeed.

The recipe is very easy to be prepared and delicious to taste. It is supposed to be eaten with maple syrup but since I don't have one, I substitude with chocolate syrup. Still tastes so good...

So here is the recipe:

1 cup (140 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons (28 grams) granulated white sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 cup (240 ml) buttermilk
3 tablespoons (40 grams) unsalted butter, melted
Plus extra melted butter for greasing the pan.

1. In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar.

2. In a separate bowl whisk together the egg, buttermilk, and melted butter. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture, all at once, and stir or whisk just until combined. The batter should have some small lumps. Make sure you do not over mix the batter or the pancakes will be tough.

3. Heat a frying pan or griddle over medium high heat until a few sprinkles of water dropped on the pan or griddle splatter. Using a pastry brush, brush the pan with a little melted butter.

4.Using a small ladle or scoop, pour about 1/4 cup of pancake batter onto the pan, spacing the pancakes a few inches from each other. When the bottoms of the pancakes are brown and bubbles start to appear on the top surfaces of the pancakes (2-3 minutes), turn over. Cook until lightly browned (about 1-2 minutes).

I tell you, it is so easy!!!!

The recipe is taken from Joy of Baking

My First Cooking Blog

Whoaa....I can't believe that I'm creating a cooking blog.

Anyway, I love cooking though I'm not a good cook. But who knows, with God's will, I would probably become the next Martha Stewart or the Malaysian famous chef, Chef Wan....hehehe.

This blog is meant to record down all the food that I have cooked, whether it's the new recipe taken from Internet or from friends. Whether the food cooked well or not, or how ugly does the final result would be, or how disastrous the taste is, I'm determined to put it here just to see how much things that I have cooked. And would be my reference in the future.

And I welcome all the comments from everyone! Let's cook, shall we?