Chicken Rice with Chilli

This dish has been one of my children's favourite! They can slurp up two bowls of chicken rice!

Basically, for this post, I will just teach you how to make the chicken rice as well as the chilli. As for the chicken, I only marinate with salt, sesame oil, ginger and steam it. Ater steaming, just ice bath it. So that one is quite simple.

Chicken Rice Recipe

1) Put margarine into a heated frying pan
2) Add sesame oil into frying pan
3) Add Chicken fat (get from the chicken you use to steam)
4) Add minced shallots, sliced ginger, minced garlic. Make sure it does not go brown
5) Put the washed rice into the frying pan and mix
6) Add light soya sauce
7) Transfer all into the rice cooker to cook

Chicken Rice Chilli Recipe

Ingredients:

4 Fresh big chilli - deseeded
5 Chilli Padi - leave the seeds on
Ginger - 1 thumbsize
Garlic - 4 cloves
Salt - 1 tsp
Sugar - 1 TB
Lime -  1

Blend the above ingredients and voila! You get your chilli to go with your chicken rice!

For the quantity, please feel free to adjust according to your taste and liking. So after blending, you just adjust accordingly.

Here's what I had for dinner! Enjoy!

Curry Puff

This has been one of my favourite snacks since young. But it has been growing increasingly expensive- from 40 cents to the present, $1.50.

Anyway, thank God my helper makes quite good curry puff and so it was a great opportunity learning from her so that in future, I can make for myself or even for parties. Definitely useful to learn!

Ingredients (for making 15)

4 potatoes
3 big red onions
7 shallots
curry leaves
3 packets of chicken thighs (can use breasts too or mixture)
5 eggs
Planta margarine
rice flour
plain flour
sugar
salt
water
meat curry powder

As you can see, the ingredients are quite straight forward and easy to get. If you cant find curry leaves, it is ok. Its just to make the filling more fragrant. And also if you are abroad and do not have the specific Planta brand margarine, it is also ok. Don't kick yourself or skip this recipe just because you cannot get those 2 items. As for the rest, I am confident you can get it!

Steps
1) Skin the potatoes and dice them. Then, put them in boiling water to cook. Drain them out after its cook

2) Then dice the shallots and big red onions

3) Put the chicken thighs in boiling water to cook them before dicing them up

4) Boil the eggs till they are hard boil. Then you cut them up in quarters, lengthwise.

5) Then pluck out the curry leaves and wash them.

Now, the tricky part is the dough. There are basically two layers of dough in curry puffs- the water dough and the oil dough.

6) Water dough - put 200g plain flour into a mixing bowl, together with 1 egg, 60ml of water, 1TB of rice flour and 1 tsp of salt. Mix and knead till its like that.

7) Oil dough- put 100g plain flour, 85g of planta margarine, 1 TB of rice flour, 1 tsp of salt. Mix and knead.

8) Then weight the water dough and roughly divide the weight to 15 portions so that you can cut it up and distribute evenly. Do the same for the oil dough and divide them into 15 equal portions. I used the weighing machine to be exact.

This will turn out to be a huge curry puff. If you prefer smaller size ones, then I suggest when splitting up the dough into equal portions, you can maybe divide them into 20-25 equal portions instead of 15.

9) Then take one water dough and flatten it with your hand, then put the oil dough in it.

10) Wrap the water dough over the oil dough before flattening both down.

11) Then use a rolling pin to flatten and roll it horizontally and vertically.Then just make it like a ball and put aside. Do for all 15 of them by placing the oil dough inside the water dough.

12) To cook the ingredients, have all this stand by

Diced onions, shallots, potatoes, chicken, curry leaves

13) With a little bit of oil in the frying pan, add the shallots first. Fry till its fragrant and then put in the red onions. Do it step by step.

14) After both shallots and onions are translucent, throw in the diced chicken and potatoes

15) Stir and mix it up before adding the curry powder. For the curry powder, put 1 TB of curry powder in a bowl first with a little water to dissolve the powder before pouring into the frying pan with the ingredients.

16) Add curry leaves, salt, sugar, white pepper to taste after stirring and mixing. If the colour looks too pale and you like spice, then add one more TB of curry powder. If you find that the potatoes is still quite sturdy looking, add a little water to the pan so that the potatoes can go mushy. Cook till the water/gravy has been absorbed by the ingredients.

potatoes still in blocks-straight edges

That is what you want to attain- mushiness with no gravy.

potatoes gone soft and edges are rounded and outcome is mushy

17) Once turned mushy, off the stove and leave it to cool for about 15 mins.

18) Then get ready to start wrapping

19) First roll the dough to a rough circle.  then place the egg and the ingredients on top before wrapping.

20) Then you just wrap them up. Twirl and pinch at the sides to seal. Do this for all your doughs.

21) I cut up plastic bags to wrap my curry puffs as I only wanted to fry these curry puffs the next day. So for storage, I wrap the curry puffs in plastic and put in the freezer.

22) The next day, when I open it up, it will look like this

23) To fry, I used peanut oil. Make sure when frying, the oil is enough to cover the curry puffs.

24) Fry till its golden brown

You can vary this recipe with whatever ingredients you like. Other variation can be sardines. You can just get the canned sardines and fry with shallots and onions. Main thing is to make the ingredients like a paste with no gravy so that it will not soak through the dough.

Enjoy this delicious snack! 

Croque Madame Muffins

Enjoy this simple, tasty breakfast or snack for the family!!

However, if you really love eggs that have runny yolk at the end of the day, use less time then what she said in the video as I followed accordingly and my yolk was still dried up after that.

Nevertheless, its still a very enjoyable food to prepare!

Nonya Achar

If you like spice, something sour and veggies, then you will like this dish. This dish is a great accompaniment for any meal or snack if you just want to munch on something in the afternoon.

Ingredients (look at the picture below for the quantity to make 2 bottles):
-toasted peanuts (crushed)/ just buy the cooked peanuts from the packet and crush it
- dried chilli (soaked in water first)
- normal big red chilli
- shallots
- normal ginger
- yellow ginger (tumeric)
- blue ginger (galangal)
- lemon grass (thinly sliced)
- garlic
- cucumber
- carrots
- cabbage (1/2 only)
- toasted white sesame seeds
- candle nuts (about 3-4) *not in picture
- one whole pineapple
- one bottle of white vinegar
- sugar
- salt

The ingredients (including the candle nuts and dried chilli) in the clear plastic plate on the right should be set aside to blend for the chilli paste. You will also need belachan (2 tsp) for blending. But before that, wrap the belachan in aluminium foil and throw in over together with your peanuts and white sesame seeds to toast. Do until the fragrance of the belachan is out. As for the peanuts and sesame seeds, put in over till it is lightly browned.

1) Start slicing up the vegetables. Cut it length wise in strips. Not too thin as you would like some crunch in the veggies when you eat. Remove the seeds in the cucumber. Keep the skin of the cucumber.

2) After slicing the cucumbers, carrots and cabbage, season it with a handful of salt and toss with your hands.

3) Then leave your veggies in the strainer, cover it with a cloth for an hour

4) Slice up your pineapple and big chillis

5) Pound your toasted peanuts

6) Start preparing your chilli paste by blending the ingredients found in the clear plastic plate in the first picture.

- lemon grass
- big chilli
- ginger
- yellow ginger (tumeric)
- blue ginger (galangal)
- garlic
- shallots
- belachan (slightly cooked already in oven)
- a bit of water

7) Fry the blended ingredients with a little oil in pan

Fry till you see the colour become slightly darker and the fragrance of the chilli is strong

8) Then at this stage, you add 6 TB of sugar, 100 ml of vinegar and 50ml of water to the pan

After adding sugar

After adding vinegar and water

9) Then leave it to cool for about 15 mins

10) Next, you take the rested veggies and squeeze dry all of them part by part, using a clean cloth.

11) Set up a pot of boiling water (400 ml of water), 150 ml of vinegar, 1 TB of sugar, 1 tsp of salt. Then, put the "squeeze-dried"  veggies into the pot for only about 8 seconds. Then off the fire and drain the water from veggies with a strainer. 

12) Then let the veggies cool down for 10 mins before putting the veggies into the pan with chill paste to mix

13) Throw in the cut pineapple and chilli in

14) Finally put in the chopped peanuts and white sesame seeds in as well

15) Mix it evenly and taste it! (*Tasting along the way is very important so that you can adjust the ingredients according to your liking)

16) Finally, just transfer to glass containers for storage in the fridge. You can eat this with chicken rice, for dinner, or just munch it as a snack when you are hungry!

Enjoy!

Sambal Belachan

My Indonesian helper, Wina makes really good sambal belachan. She would always whip it up on the spot, just before she cook the dish for dinner. So everytime she cooks sambal belachan with kang kong, long beans or sweet potato leaves, I would be happy just to take the whole plate of veggies and eat it all up!

Ingredients (for 2):

- 4 whole shallots
- 3 cloves of garlic
- dried prawns
- dried chilli
- 2 tsp of belachan

Blend the above ingredients. Then you fry it. Add salt and sugar to taste with the blended ingredients in the frying pan. Always prepare it fresh when you want to eat it. Don't store it in the fridge.

Here's what I had last night. So yummy!

Boiled Sweet Potato Leaves with Sambal Belachan

You can also use the basic sambal belachan recipe with seafood and meat. But the only difference with seafood and meat is that, its best to add assam. So if you want to cook with prawns or squid, you can slice onions and fry it with your sambal belachan. Then you add about 2 TB of assam in it to get the sourish taste.

My helper made this dish months ago.. definitely worth trying if you love spice!

Squid with Assam Sambal Belachan

Basic Pizza Dough Recipe

I have had numerous pizza dough recipes in my file and after reading so many of them and being so confused as to which one I should follow, I decided to take a bit of everything and construct my own which eventually tasted really good and crispy! *Phew

The following recipe will be to make 2 medium size pizzas- enough for a family of 4 adults

Ingredients:
- 3 cups of bread flour
- 1 cup of warm water
- 2 tsp of dried yeast
- 2 tsp of salt
- 3 tsp of olive oil
- dried oregano (optional)

Steps:
1) Place flour, yeast and salt in bowl and mix
2) Gradually add warm water and olive oil. Knead by hand for about 10 mins until the dough is smooth. Great activity for the children to help out and have some fun in the kitchen.

3) Place dough in lightly oiled bowl, cover with cling wrap or kitchen towel. Set in warm place. I placed mine in the oven. Let it rest for 1 hour.

4) After an hour, I sprinkled some plain flour on the working surface to knead the dough. Do it gently and divide them into 2 to get 2 medium pizzas.

That's it! Not difficult at all!

What I love about pizza making is that it is fun especially when dressing up your pizza to whatever ingredients you like. This is what I had.. white button mushrooms, ham, mussels, green bell peppers, onions, prawns, squid, garlic and tomato paste

For my son, he added tomato paste, garlic herb butter mushrooms, ham and cheese. This was his pizza!

My daughter simply preferred only tomato paste, ham and cheese...and cheese and more cheese!

The pizza came out to be crispy which was very enjoyable with the melted cheese!

As for the adult's pizza, I made one 2-way pizza which was garlic herbed butter mushrooms with raw garlic and lots of cheese on one side and the other side, I added tomato paste, onions, green bell peppers, ham first into the oven for a while. Then at a later part, I cracked in the egg and spread the cheese over. I was afraid to overcook the egg that's why. I always enjoy ham and egg pizza as its very refreshing and light. Would recommend you making that for breakfast!

The other pizza, I made seafood marinara which was basically, tomato paste, with mussels, squid, prawns, onions, raw chopped garlic and sprinkled dried oregano over it.

This turned out very tasty and expensive-looking as I love seafood especially when the mussels and prawns is presented as a whole and not all chopped up. Thee only criticism about this dish is that the pizza was a bit soggy due to the moisture from the seafood. So I would have left it longer in the oven to dry out a little bit more before serving

Overall, the pizzas turned out better than I expected. I would definitely not order pizza delivery ever, since this taste so much better and it's also cheaper! I would also think of doing this for a party! But remember to cook this and serve it when its straight from the oven- hot and crispy with the melted cheese!

I also grilled chicken wings for dinner. So, you can imagine how full we were after dinner!