didally.com
Of Food and perhaps a little about me
October 30, 2007 at 6:00 pm · Filed under Bread, Recipes: Quick & Easy
Lazy brunch. How do you define lazy meals? It used to be instant noodles or packet lunch, and it’s always the same old stuffs, like chicken rice, laksa, fishball noodles, etc. Lazy meals to me would probably mean cooking with minimum fuss. There are days when you get sick of rice or noodles. That’s where you find other alternatives to get those carbohydrates you crave for.
During my usual grocery shopping, we saw packs of pita bread at the hams section and thought that we could make some really simple stuffed pita for brunch the next day. We grabbed a pack along with some bacons, fresh button mushrooms, bell peppers and green coral lettuce.
To prepare the stuffing for the pita bread, I just sautéed the bell peppers, mushroom and bacon with some olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. I also prepared some green salad with the green coral lettuce and tomatoes to go with the stuffed pita bread. I toasted the pita bread before stuffing in the ingredients. You can stuff whatever you like, really. If you prefer not to cook at all, just open a can of tuna with mayonnaise to eat with the bread. It will be lovely to just roast some vegetables like bell peppers, aubergine to go with my bread. Healthy and all full of goodness.
As you can see, I made a silly mistake of cutting the bread at the top instead of halving it. Thus, the stuffing made an ugly slit on my pita bread. Haha… To get more crunch, I stuffed in some of my salad as well.
For readers who have been following my blog for some time, you might have noticed that I like adding bell peppers to my pasta or roasting them. Bingo to those who have guessed correctly. It’s partly because of my hamsters. I’ve sometimes run out of ideas on what to feed them. At times, they can get so fussy over the fresh food I give them. So I have to get creative. B complains that he gets the leftovers instead. Oh well…
Bell peppers have a crunchy texture, ranging from green, red to yellow. Yes, they resemble the traffic light colors when packed together. Although termed as the peppers family, bell peppers are not hot at all. In fact, they are also called sweet peppers. They are a good source of vitamin C, vitamin A, beta carotene and folic acid. Yellow and red bell pepper have more time to mature, thus they are sweeter compared to the green bell peppers, providing more vitamin A and C and are full of cancer-fighting carotenoids. I learnt this only when I start researching on bell peppers. Green, yellow and red peppers are the same, being the green ones are the least mature. When the green peppers get matured, they become yellow, and then to red, being the most matured ones.
Preparing Bell Peppers
To prepare the bell peppers, wash and scrub them well. Cut them lengthwise and remove the seeds from the inner cavity (including the white spongy parts). Cut them in any way you like, diced, juliennes or chunks.
How to select and store them
Choose peppers that are vivid in colours and without any bruises, taut skin and firm to the touch. Their stems should look fresh and green. You can store them in your vegetable compartment in the refrigerator for up to a week.
You can try adding chopped bell peppers to your appetizers or salads. Other than the beneficial nutrients, simply stir-fry them with chicken or pork to liven up your dish with their beautiful colours. You can even purée roasted peppers to make a soup.
Share with me what are your favourite lazy meals. I would love to hear them!
October 30, 2007 at 3:51 pm · Filed under Misc
An Award? I’ve received the Rockin’ Girl Blogger Award from Ovenhaven some time back. Thanks, girl for passing me this virtual award. It’s a little surprise when I saw my blog mentioned in her post about this award. Ovenhaven’s bakes always make me excited. They look so delicious and sometimes I wish I could eat them off the screen.
I’ve no idea where this blog award came about. Haha… but still I’m passing this award to these fellow bloggers whom I’ve been hooked up with. Most of whom I’ve not met before.
Camemberu – Love her recommendations on where to find nice food in Singapore. She always gives her honest opinions on what’s good and what’s yucky out there.
NoobCook – Her nice step-by-step illustrated pictures for her recipes. They’re clear and easy to follow. I am so tempted to start my own herb garden, after seeing how she makes use of her edible plants for cooking.
Muck-a-Muck – Her gorgeous food pics and recipes! Very nice food styling too.
October 20, 2007 at 3:24 am · Filed under Recipes: Baking, Family
Chocolate is another love of mine, especially dark bitter chocolate. I like the initial bitterness, ending with a slightly sweet note. Absolutely divine. As mentioned in my earlier posts, chocolates are perfect companions with fruits like strawberries, orange, bananas and even durians. They go well with peppermint and various sorts of nuts like hazelnuts, almonds, peanuts, walnuts, etc. I like to try out different types of desserts, unique flavors, like spiced cakes. But ultimately, when there’s a choice, I still want my comfort food. Chocolate-flavoured desserts.
Two months back, on National Day, I promised the girls to having a baking session at my house. They love chocolate too and so I went in search of a simple chocolate chip cookie recipe. I found this recipe at Kitchen Capers Forum. The reviews from the members are that they tasted quite like Famous Amos cookies. The most important factor is that it’s a fairly easy recipe for the girls to handle.
The 2 girls were fussing over how they want to get involved. In a situation where one niece is older, you tend to let her do more, while the younger one watched. Then the young one complained that why she didn’t get to pour the flour and crack the eggs. But I am glad that she’s an understanding little girl as I assured her that the fun time was in shaping the cookies. Both of them sure had a great time singing while shaping the cookies. This recipe is different from the previous ones we made at AC’s house. It’s consists of a drier batter, thus the need to shape the cookies. They did a fantastic job preparing the cookies for baking.
Their patience did paid off. They were so proud of themselves, exclaiming that the cookies were crunchy and super duper delicious. It was a great bonding session with them. Missed the great times with them before I moved out. I’ve promised them another session in the coming school holidays.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe by Connie from Kitchen Capers Forum
Yields about 40 small cookies
125g Butter
70g Castor sugar
70g Brown sugar
½ tsp Vanilla essence
1 Egg
260g Self-raising flour
130g Chocolate chips (Add more if you like more choc chips)
- Pre-heat oven to 180C.
- Sift the flour, set aside.
- Beat butter, essence and sugars using mixer until smooth.
- Add egg and beat until well combined.
- Stir in sifted flour and the remaining ingredients.
- Take rounded teaspoons of mixture and roll into balls.
- Place balls about 4cm apart on slightly greased oven trays or line with baking sheet.
- Bake in pre heated oven for 15 minutes or until browned.
- Cool in trays for short while and transfer to wire rack for cooling.
Cooking and baking is something I want to do with my own children in time to come, apart from the other standard children activities. I want them not to only eat, but to enjoy cooking the food they eat. It’s fun and you can train them to be independent at the same time. And they learn about measurement, judgment and patience. Patience will yield good results. I want my children to be able to whip up simple dishes like fried rice or noodles, fried eggs, salads or sandwiches. Really hope that I can achieve that in the future.
October 17, 2007 at 1:40 am · Filed under Recipes: Seafood
There are times where you just want to shop for a particular ingredient at the market, but ends up getting a whole lot more ingredients after some persistent persuasion by the stall uncles. So when I was buying the prawns, I couldn’t resist bringing some squids home.
I thought of making calamari but detest the idea of having to clean up the kitchen. A dual seafood combi stir-fry will be perfect. And I had better finish up the bottle of teriyaki sauce before it hits its expiry date. The end result is a simple and flavorful dish. I wish there was more rice. Haha..
Seafood tends to get cooked very fast, so try not to overcook them, as the flesh will get tough.
Stir-fry Squid & Prawns with Teriyaki Sauce
Serves 2
1 medium squid
6 prawns, medium-sized
1 tbsp teriyaki sauce
⅓ white onion, thickly sliced
3 chilli padi, sliced, seeds removed
1 tbsp soya sauce
½ tbsp hua teow wine
½ cooking oil
cornstarch water (for thickening gravy)
Preparing the prawns
Remove shells from the prawns. Butterfly them. To butterfly the prawns, turn each one on its back and, with the point of a sharp knife, make a cut down the centre of each prawn, but do not cut through. Pry open with your thumb like a book and remove the brownish-black vein, scraping it away with the point of the knife – it should also come away easily. Wash and pat them dry with kitchen towel.
Preparing the squid
Pull the head out. Remove the guts and soft bone. Peel the skin(thin purplish membrane). The skin should comes off easily as you pull them off. Cut open the body as it lays flat on the cutting board. At this stage, it might be visually gross because the squid ink will flow out. (You may reserve the squid ink, if you’re interested in making squid ink pasta. Lol)
Wash the squid thoroughly until it’s clean. Next, makes diagonal light cuts(do not cut through) on the squid, with each cuts 0.5cm apart. Then do the same in the opposite direction (intersecting with the previous cuts). This makes the squid looks nicer when cooked, as it will curled inwards and creating a nice pattern. I made mine too far apart, so it didn’t curled nicely. Wash and pat them dry with kitchen towel. Slice the squid into small pieces (approx. 4cm by 2cm).
However, if you prefer to have your squid rings, you do not need to cut open the body. Just slice them into rings. It’s just a different presentation.
- Marinate prawns and squids with teriyaki sauce, soya sauce and hua teow wine for about 1 hour in the fridge.
- To cook, heat pan with oil. Fry onions and chilli until the onions are slightly translucent.
- Add in the prawns and squids, together with the marinade. Keep frying for about 2 to 3 mins.
- Add the cornstarch water slowly while frying the prawns and squids. Approx. 2mins.
- Once the gravy thickens, remove pan from heat.
- Serve hot with rice.
Enjoy!
October 13, 2007 at 10:46 pm · Filed under Bakes
A few months just after our first baking session of the year, we had the second one. This time, we have little Chevelle joining us. I had fun playing with her. I found it rather amusing that we were busy baking in the kitchen and she was in the living room stuffing her mouth full of potato chips. Haha…
As usual, we planned a list of goodies we wanted to bake and head to the supermarket to shop for the baking stuffs. We wanted to take it easy this time, so it’s just muffins and cakes. Since we made orange chocolate chip muffins in the first session, I suggested making savoury muffins instead. So we decided on Bacon and Cheese muffins. AC suggested that we make Marshmallow Cake. And I am glad we did. It was delicious!
Fret not, if you noticed that this savoury muffin recipe calls for more liquid than dry ingredients. It’s not the typical muffin batter where it’s lumpy. I learnt from Gina(Kitchen Capers Forum) that this one has less butter(fat) content and is healthier. Muffins that are made from lumpy batter have to be cooled to room temperature before you eat them. Whereas, muffins(like this one) made from watery batter, enjoy them fresh out from the oven. Once cooled, they don’t taste good. We were worried because the batter was so watery, and added more flour than required. I got the tips from Gina only after we did the muffins. The muffin texture didn’t turn out great, but taste wise, it’s not bad. Something different for a change from the usual sweet muffins.
You can start your day with some Bacon & Cheese Muffins and a glass of milk. I think it’s great for breakfast or tea. You can make some extra muffins and keep them in the freezer. When needed, just heat them up in the toaster.
The Marshmallow cake was buttery, moist and very tasty indeed. And the colourful marshmallows make the cake so pretty looking. Recipe is from AC’s cookbook, so I won’t be posting the recipe here.
I am glad our friendship is going on strong and I wish we could still do this often in our years to come.
Bacon & Cheese Muffins
Recipe Asia Cuisine, from Gina Choong (Kitchen Capers Forum)
Makes 12 muffins
375g self-raising flour
200ml milk
125g cheddar cheese, diced
8 pcs streaky bacon, cut into smaller pieces
60g butter, melted
1 egg
50g light brown sugar
1. In a mixing bowl, add butter and sugar to mix. Add egg and milk to mix together.
2. Add flour to fold in gently. Add diced cheese, stir to mix evenly.
3. Add bacon pieces on top of the batter.
4. Baked in preheated oven 180C for 20 minutes. Serve warm.
September 22, 2007 at 12:52 am · Filed under Recipes: Seafood
I LOVE crabs, cooked in any style. Chilli, black pepper, steamed, deep fried and cold crabs. And I love the nice soft creamy roe even more. Argh… I feel like having some right now.
When I was much younger, mum used to cook chilli crabs at home. The crabs were bought live, killed in the bathroom, chopped up into pieces and cooked immediately. As we grew older, mum didn’t cook live crabs anymore. She probably couldn’t bring herself to kill them. I won’t want to kill the crabs alive, thus I won’t attempt to make any chilli crabs or whatsoever at home. So when I spotted small tiny flower crabs in the market, I brought home half a kg for just $2. Yes, it’s that cheap cos they were small and already dead at the market. The intention was to steam them after dinner as a light supper.
Steamed Flower Crabs with Ginger and Wine
9 small flower crabs
1 to 2 tbsp hua teow wine (花雕酒)
4 to 5 slices of ginger, cut in thin strips
Wash and scrub the flower crabs clean. Prepare the wok for steaming. Bring water to boil. Meanwhile, place half the amount of ginger strips on a plate big enough to hold all the crabs. Then lay the flower crabs on the plate. Add the remaining ginger strips on top. Drizzle hua teow wine all over the crabs. When the water has boiled, put the plate of crabs into the wok and cover. Steam for 10 to 12 mins.
Add a splash of hua teow when you are feeling luxurious. In fact, I use them a lot in my cooking these days. I add some when I marinate my meat, or to add a more intense flavor to my eggs or prawns. You may have seen recipes calling for shaoxing wine(绍兴酒), which is in fact hua teow. Some get confused about which to buy without realizing that they are actually the same wine. Hua teow comes from a place in China, called Shao Xing. That’s precisely why people terms hua teow as shaoxing wine too.
While the flower crabs are steaming, I just stood by the wok, smelling the natural seafood sweetness that filled the whole kitchen. I couldn’t wait to dig in! Haha..
These crabs have thin shell and are easy to break them apart. Although they are small, with only tiny bit of flesh, I still enjoyed eating them cos they tasted really sweet. Other than the above method, you can also fry the flower crabs with chilli, just like the usual chilli crabs. They can also be cooked in soup. But just by simple steaming is really good cos you can taste the natural sweetness of the flesh. When I buy them again the next time, I will get the bigger ones. I’m sure they will have more flesh.
September 20, 2007 at 1:37 am · Filed under Food Reviews
One shiok week of their durian mousse cake, my pants became tight. It’s not hard to see it coming. That’s the price to pay for finishing off the whole 1.3kg worth of durian mousse cake with B. But it was SO good. Every mouthful is heavenly full of the durian flesh.
I want to order their other durian delicacies next year. I bought a box of their durian puffs too. When I was there to collect the cake, the other durian products on display overwhelmed me. Sitting on the display shelf are the durian crumble, durian dar dar, durian wafer, durian pudding, durian crepe and the back-by-popular-demand durian pandan & coconut cake. I wanna grab a bite of each!
Goodwood Park’s durian delights really live up to its name. BUT their durian snowskin mooncake is so disappointing. It’s also ridiculously expensive, not worth buying. My sis bought them at the Mooncake Fair at Takashimaya. I wonder if you get better quality ones at the hotel itself.
September 19, 2007 at 4:49 pm · Filed under Food Reviews
There are evenings where you just want to sit back and relax. You surf the net, play games, eat and drink while watching your favorite tv programs. And there are days when you don’t feeling like cooking, not even instant noodles or takeaways. You just want to be a couch potato clad in your comfy pyjamas while having your dinner.
I think of pizzas whenever I’m in such a mood. So I surf around the net for some untried pizza joints instead of the usual Pizza Hut. I wanted to try out Rite Pizza reviewed by Camemberu but ordered mine from Sarpino’s instead after reading some nice reviews about them. Took their 1 for 1, but there are limited choices. Will try out the rest some other time.
It’s a pity that the pizza didn’t came piping hot. The cheese has already harden abit. Taste is not bad, and just the right amount of cheese. I kinda like the Sorento Delight, which is just mozzarella, tomatoes, roasted garlic and basil leaves. San Remo is not too bad topped with my favorite bell pepper and chicken chunks. B says the crust by the side is too hard. But I thought they were ok and still crispy to the bite.
The pictures are not very well taken under the warm lighting. We were too hungry and can’t wait to dig in. Hehe..
Overall, pretty satisfied, but still not quite since the pizza didn’t come hot. I like my melted mozzarella cheese. One more thing is they only give a pack of chilli flakes and parmesan each for one pizza, which is definitely not enough for me. If you do call for their pizza deliveries, do let me know your experience with them, yah?
September 18, 2007 at 5:45 pm · Filed under Recipes: Soup
Feeling heaty? How about a bowl of hot piping watercress soup? Watercress Soup (西洋菜汤) is a cooling soup suitable for hot and dry months. It’s one of the soups I grew up with. And now I cook this quite often as watercress is easily available and is one of B’s favorite soups. Best of all, I can share the watercress with my syrian hamsters. Oh, and they like the red dates and wolfberries I add to the soup too.
Watercress is loaded with iron, calcium, folic acid, vitamins A & C. The westerners use watercress in their salads. So I thought they must have taste good raw. So while preparing food for my hamsters, I pick a stalk of leaves and stuff them into my mouth and munch. Eww.. it’s bitter and weird for my liking. I can take arugula(wild rocket), red coral leaves which are of peppery taste but not watercress. They probably taste better tossed with the right salad dressing. I guess I better not attempt to eat like my hamster. lol
Here’s a tip when using pork ribs for all your soups or dishes. You need to blanch them before hand for a good 5 to 10 mins. This will get rid of all the dirt and awful grey-colored foam which you will find floating on top of the water. Then you rinse the pork ribs before putting them into your soup.
If you do not like pork, you can replace them with chicken pieces with skin removed. Else the soup will be too oily with the chicken skin on. If you want to go meatless, then replace the water with chicken or vegetable stock. You may want to omit the salt then. And if you like your watercress crunchy like I do, follow the steps below. Else just throw in all the watercress in step 4.
Watercress Pork Rib Soup
Serves 2
Watercress (西洋菜), one bundle
800ml water
200 gm spareribs, rinsed and scalded with boiling water
½ tbsp dried wolfberries (枸杞)
6 dried red dates (红枣)
Salt to taste
- Wash and rinse watercress, cut off the stems and separate them from the leaves.
- Wash red dates and wolfberries.
- Pour water into a pot and bring to boil.
- Add red dates, wolfberries, pork ribs and watercress stems into the pot.
- Simmer over low heat for about 30 to 40mins.
- Add salt to taste
- Before serving, add the remaining watercress into the soup for about 5 to 10 mins.
- Serve hot with rice.
There will be MORE soup recipes coming up.
September 14, 2007 at 12:50 pm · Filed under Recipes: Baking
Wow, you did your first soufflé?
Yes. I did.
So did you succeed?
No, I failed badly.
Why?
It did rise beautifully in the oven. Read some tips that I should never open the oven while it’s still baking. But it’s way past the amount of time it’s supposed to be baked and it’s still not golden brown on top. And there are some who said, I can check if it’s done when the toothpick/skewer came out clean. So, I OPENED the oven. And, the soufflé starts to sink. And it sank all the way down.
A soufflé (soo-flay) is a light, fluffy dish baked with egg yolks and beaten egg whites with other ingredients. It can be served as a savory dish or as a sweet dessert. Made from 2 basic components, a base that gives the flavor and beaten egg whites to introduce air into the soufflé so that it will rise. In French, soufflé means “to blow up” or loosely “puff up”.
The common ingredients used for a dessert soufflé are chocolate, lemon, Grand Marnier and a lot more if you are creative enough to come up with your own flavors. Mos Burger fans might notice that Mos Burger previous promotions on Green Tea Soufflé with red beans compote which I thought was pretty unique. Green tea flavored desserts pairs up so perfectly with red beans. There’s another flavor, which I can’t remember.
The savory soufflés are usually made up of cheese, spinach, bacon, onions.. etc. I’ve yet to taste one. But it will be perfect for a morning brekkie, in another form instead of the usual bacon and scramble eggs. And you probably needs a big bowl of this, because it will be so light that you hardly feel full if you were to eat just a small serving.
Traditionally, soufflés are baked in ramekins (the bowl I used in the photo) which has flat bottoms for the soufflé to rise properly. You can also use cups, but make sure they are ovenproof.
I’ve heard so much about how intimidating it is to get a soufflé to rise nicely. And also how the egg whites have to be whipped to the right consistency to get it work. The commonly tested flavor is the chocolate soufflé, which is rich and at the same time light and fluffy. I tasted my first soufflé at Bakerzin served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and I really like it. So when I come across the lemon soufflé recipe in Donna Hay magazine, I gave it a try.
Sorry to tempt you to looking forward (if you are) to this post which is actually a flop. I just want to note down the experience. But fret not, I will attempt to succeed in making the chocolate ones or maybe even the savory ones. Somehow, the base for this lemon soufflé recipe seems too little to be mixed with the egg whites. It’s supposed to yield 8 servings and all I could get was just 2 servings. And it didn’t call for egg yolks for the base. And it’s a little too sweet, you might want to reduce the amt of sugar but I don’t know if it will affect the end result. Will any experienced baker help me try out this recipe and let me know the outcome?
It’s a pity that I didn’t take a photo of them rising in the oven. All I get was 2 ‘deflated’ bowls of unappetizing soufflés. Haha…
Lemon soufflé
Donna Hay Magazine Issue 32
Makes 8 servings
Unsalted butter, melted for greasing
Caster (superfine) sugar for dusting
1 tbsp cornflour (cornstarch)
1 tbsp water
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/3 cup (72⅔g / 2½oz) caster (superfine) sugar
2 egg whites
2 tbsp caster (superfine) sugar, extra
icing (confectioner’s) sugar to serve
- Lightly grease 8 x ½ cup (4 fl oz) capacity ceramic cups with butter and dust with sugar. Place the cups on a baking tray.
- Combine the cornflour with the water, mix to a smooth paste and set aside. Place the lemon juice and sugar in a small saucepan over low heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil, add the cornflour mixture and cook, stirring continuously, for 1 minutes or until thickened. Set aside to cool completely.
- Preheat the oven to 180ºC (355ºF). Place the eggwhites in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add the extra sugar and beat until glossy. Place the lemon mixture in a large bowl and gently fold through the eggwhite mixture. Spoon into the cups and bake for 5 – 7 minutes or until risen and golden. Dust with icing sugar and serve immediately.
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