In the end

I am in the midst of baking pound cheesecake when the mixer broke down. I had to use my own energy to beat them up. Not only that, I set the temperature too high and now the cake is burn!
My poor cake!

Yes I am a housewife again. But this time I figured I can not rely on other people who can only promise to make things better but didn't happen or work out in the end. I know I sounded bitter, because honestly I am. I was told I would be given some money if I quit but I foresee that it will not come true, looking at the current situation. Well words are just words. As much as I loathe them, that is just out of my control. Unless, I demand for my freedom which is.. let say give it sometimes. Like I use to say to people, if you are not happy about anything, do something about it.

Well, I am going to start something on my own. I am not sure whether or not it will turn out to be ok but I just have to try.

Ok, gotto check the cake.

Fatty Crab

At this moment, I am craving for chilli crabs from fatty crab. Oh my goodness, I can taste the succulent crab in my mouth already.

There are two branches of the restaurant that I know of but my favourite is in the mines. Reason being the ambiance, next to the lake and somehow my taste bud told me that the crabs that they served there are fresher than the other branch. It might be just me, still I prefer to come to the mines. Plus, the other branch seemed not to have asparagus and some other veggies much to my disappointment. I love their buttered asparagus, minus the scallops or whatever they offered to put in.

And oh, the gravy is so nice that you would not even want to waste even a small portion of it. Usually, I will order some bread to be dipped into the gravy. As I am writing this, I am trying my best not to salivate and it is almost impossible not to do so.

I think, I might just go there today. Hihi

Making pancakes

Since Phabmister has started working, I thought I want to be encourage him by becoming a good wife. First step, is to prepare him breakfast.

Hmm. Actually my choices were quite limited because ermm, my skill is limited? But since I love pancake I decided to try making some. Found a recipe and altered it to my taste.

Original Pancake

• 2 cups plain flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 1/2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 2 eggs
• 60g butter, melted, cooled
• extra melted butter, for cooking


Method

1. Sift flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Stir in sugar.
   



2. Whisk milk, eggs and butter together. Add to flour mixture. Use a wooden spoon to mix until well combined. Cover and stand batter for 15 minutes.
   



3. Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Brush pan with a little extra butter.
   



4. Pour 1/3 cup of batter into pan and use a spoon to spread batter out to a 12cm (diameter) circle. Reduce heat to low. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until bubbles start to appear on surface. Turn and cook for a further 2 minutes, or until cooked through.
   



5. Wrap pancake in a clean tea towel to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter, greasing pan in between pancakes.
   

Well, initially I did not melt the butter thus making the batter thick and uneven.I had to throw them away and make a second one, exactly according to the instruction.

I must say, it taste better than any pancake you can get from your nearest breakfast restaurant. The pancake goes well with butter and honey. I am thinking to use maple syrup next. Maybe marmalade for phabmister since he loves marmalade so much.

Anyway my point is, hello world, I now can cook pancake!

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Since today is Sunday, I decided to cook hainanese chicken rice based on a recipe that I found at recipezaar, but the recipe was improvised according to my instinct and my taste.

The recipe may look intricate but trust me , it's quite easy and not to mention delicious too.

Ingredients

For the rice

• 3 cups long grain rice
• 2 tablespoons chicken fat, with skin (I know..but it makes the rice taste really good)
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2-3 cm ginger, grated
• 3-4 garlic clove, grated
• 1-2 teaspoon salt (to taste)
• 3 1/2 cups chicken stock, according to rice package instructions (or more, reserved from chicken that you will boil)
• 2 screwpine leaves (optional..it will make the rice more fragrant)

Hainanese chicken

• 1 whole chicken
• Chicken feet or chicken bones
  
• water, enough for boiling chicken
• 1 piece thumb sized ginger, smashed
• 4-5 garlic clove, peeled and smashed slightly
• 1 teaspoon salt
• A bowl (small) of ground nuts.
  

Chilli garlic sauce for dipping

• 10 fresh red chilies
• 2 cm piece ginger
• 4 garlic clove
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon lime juice
• 2 tablespoons chicken stock (from the boiled chicken. This stock is essential for the chilli sauce)

Ginger sauce for dipping

• 75 g ginger
• 6 garlic clove
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon lime juice
• 2 tablespoons chicken stock (again stock from the boiled chicken)

Sauce for chicken

• 1 tablespoon garlic oil
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 5 tablespoons light soya sauce
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar (to taste)
• 3 tablespoons chicken broth (from boiled chicken)

Garnishing

• fresh coriander leaves
• sliced spring onion
• sliced cucumber

  
  

Directions

1. First of all wash the rice then place it on to a tea towel or colander to dry. Then, prepare the chicken.Bring enough water to boil in a large pot.Once boil, add in the salt, ginger,garlic, chicken feet and chicken. Lower the heat and cook chicken for about 20 - 25 minutes, uncovered. It is very important to boil the chicken very slowly over low flame.Turn of flame and cover the pot. Allow the chicken to steep inside for another 20-25 minutes. Remove chicken and immerse it into a basin of cold water for 5-6 minutes.Take chicken out and drain in a colander to drip dry before cutting it into serving pieces.




2. While the chicken is drip drying, prepare the rice.Heat up wok and add in the chicken fat and water.Bring to a low simmering boil until oil is released from the fat. Add in the ginger and garlic and fry well (without burning the garlic) Remove and discard the chicken fat and skin. Add in the rice that has been dried and salt and stir fry briskly about 1 - 2 minutes.Transfer rice into an electric rice cooker or pot. Add in the chicken broth from the boiled chicken together with the screwpine leaves if using.If cooking in a pot, cook over low flame stirring occasionally so as not to let the bottom of the rice burn.Boil until rice is cook. There remaining of the chicken stock could be made into soup, add the ground nuts and salt to taste.
   




3. While the rice is cooking, you can prepare the chilli garlic sauce. Just add all ingredients into a blender or food processor, and give it a good whizz, until ingredients are well blended. Adjust the seasoning with more salt or sugar to taste.The chili garlic sauce can be kept in the refrigerator for about 2-3 days only.




4. To prepare the ginger sauce is the same.give the ingredients a good whiz in the blender.What gives the extra oomph for the sauces is the stock from the chicken broth -- so, do not omit this ingredient.




5. Lastly combine all the ingredients for the chicken sauce and pour it all over the cut up chicken. You can add more soya sauce and chicken broth to the chicken if you prefer. Just adjust the taste of the sauce with soya sauce and chicken broth.If you do not have garlic oil,you can fry a few cloves of garlic in oil for few minutes then take out oil and garlic pour it into a jar, and let the garlic steep inside the oil.




6. Finally, garnish the chicken with the coriander leaves, spring onions and cucumbers. Serve the soup (without or without chicken feet).
   




7. Enjoy meal with the rice and dipping sauces!

You can serve salad with tomato and cucumber for vegetables. Or just fry mustard greens with garlic and oyster sauce.

If you love hainanese chicken rice, this is a must try. I love the simplicity of the taste yet so delicious. And it's easy to prepare even for a novice like me.

The result everyone was satisfied and help themselves with second serving.

I hope there will be enough for tonight.

Onion ring recipes

I am having a craving for onion rings. Especially adore the ones at a&w. The taste is simply yummy and addictive.


I even found the recipe for it.

Ingredients

* 1 cup McCormick Golden Dipt Tempura batter mix
* 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
* 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
* 1/2 cup water
* 1/4 cup beer
* 1 extra large white onion, sliced 3/8" thick
* 6 cups vegetable oil in your deep fryer

Directions

1. Preheat the deep fryer to 375F
2. Combine the tempura mix with the spices and liquid to make a
3. batter using a fork. There will be some small lumps; don't worry
4. about those.
5. Slice the onion, and separate all of the rings.
6. Dip the individual rings in the batter, and drop into the
7. preheated oil. Deep fry 3−5 minutes until golden brown. Remove
8. to a paper towel lined plate, salt lightly, and serve hot.

Taken from:grouprecipes.com

Now, the recipes look scrumptious but they two things that bothered me. I don't think McCormick Golden Dipt Tempura batter mix is available here and I don't know how to substitute it. Second, the recipes uses beer, which annulled everything.

So I looked for another recipe and found this

Home made onion ring

Ingredients
# 1 egg
# 1/4 cup vegetable oil
# 1 cup milk
# 1 cup flour
# 1/2 teaspoon salt
# 1 teaspoon baking powder
# 2 large sweet onion, sliced
# 1/2 cup flour (for coating onions)
# oil (for frying)

Directions

1. Mix egg, oil, and milk on low speed of mixer for 1 minute.

2. Add dry ingredients and mix until smooth.

3. Coat onions in flour.

4. Dip in batter.

5. Fry in hot oil 375* until desired shade of brown.

Taken from:RecipeZaar

Pretty simple isn't it? But the most important stuff, the ingredients are available here. Plus, this recipe received good reviews in the website. 5 stars!

I am going to try it soon to see whether or not it receive perfect stars.
And then I shall put my own review.

Why about you? Don't you want to try?

Fava Beans Recipe

Ok. I might not be an expert in cooking event the fact that I love food so much. But today I am going to write down a recipe for fava beans or also known as foul medammas. Bear in mind this is an Asian recipes with lots of spices.

First. How the hell does this fava beans look like?

Like this.



This is by kimball. Actually I didn't know that they sell fava beans in Malaysia because we always bought ours from Singapore but the other day phabmister found this at one of the local store. One can can serve up to 4 people.

Ok, ok enough of ramblings. Back to the recipe.

The Ingredients:

200g minced meat
2 spoons of blended chillies
2 spoons of chicken curry powder
6 shallots - blend
3 onions- blend
1 inch of ginger -blend

For Garnishing:

1 red onion, diced
1 tomato, diced
2 green chillies - cut into small pieces
2 red chillies - cut into small pieces

First, crush the beans into a coarse paste then put aside. Heat the pan with some oil. Add shallots, onion, ginger, curry powder and blended chillies together, mix well. When the mixture is ready, add minced meat and add little bit of water. Cook till the meat gets tender.

By this time, you can smell the delicious aroma made from the spices.Like yumm!

When the meat is ready, put the fava beans in and stir. Add some salt to taste. Then serve.

Now we come to the eggs. Break the eggs and fried them sunny side up. Later, put each egg on top of the serving plates.

For the rest of the garnishing, sautee or cooked them in a pan with olive oil. Make sure that they are not over cooked, or else they might not taste that nice. When done, put them on top of the egg, or just arranged them nicely on the plate.

For more idea on how it will look like.



Have them with baguette, two scoops will be enough to feed a hungry person. And it's good for diet too!