Photo!

And it worked! Now testing the photo function...

Testing testing...

You know what I'm like with my gadgets... If I've got one I like to maximize it's capabilities and use all it's functions.

My iPhone is no different... I found a blogger app and I had to test it out! So this is my first entry using said app.

Wow what a boring post I nearly fell asleep writing it! Happy weekend everyone! X

Cassava chips!

Yum yum yum... I love cassava. Although I never knew that it was called cassava because in Malaysia, we just refer to them as tapioca. I'm not sure whether I have ever eaten tapioca as "hot chips" before, but I definitely used to enjoy the crispy "kacang puteh" tapioca chips which were either lightly salted or covered in a deliciously sweet, spicy and sticky sauce. My mouth is just salivating thinking about it!

Photo source

When I found out that cassava and tapioca were the same thing, I was esctactic because the local Chinese grocer sold frozen cassava. I figured that it wouldn't be that hard to replicate these delicious crunchies from my childhood, but boy was I wrong. First of all, freezing the cassava completely changes its texture. I couldn't slice it as thinly as I wanted to and they broke in the middle. My guests still ate it, BUT I knew that it was a complete failure.

But I was now left with about a kilo of cassava... what was I was going to do? I remembered reading that they made excellent hot chips, so as I do, I did some research...

I stumbled upon this video here (thanks mate!) and I followed it to a tee! And the result? PERFECT tapioca/cassava chips! I fried some fish and voila! Homemade fish and chips! :) Luke and I think that we don't ever have to go out for fish and chips ever again!

Hope you guys like it too! Make a change to cassava!

x

I'M BACK! (again!)

Sorry I have been away again! Work and home have been crazy busy, but I have resolved to set some time aside every week or so to update my blog! Not that anyone is reading, but hey, I like looking back at what I've done and it's nice to be inspired considering how often I lose my cooking/creative mojo!

A few little achievements (food wise) since I last blogged - I will list them and blog them in detail later:

a) I have successfully made macarons! Totally and completely estactic! I made a macaron cake for Nads' birthday even!
b) I have now got a fool proof recipe for onion rings... I was researching on the internet and I found a recipe, but I didn't have two of the main ingredients, so I substituted them and it worked well too! Extremely excited... will post about it when I make it next... with photos! and
c) Crunchiest and most delicious chips EVER! And they are not made of potatoes... and finally
d) SWEET AND SOUR PORK!!!! Like Mom used to make... and none of this BS thick battered, bright red, hard-as-nails Australian greasy Chinese takeaway stuff. I'm talking the real deal Sweet and Sour pork, juicy on the inside, crispy on the outside, with a beautiful tangy sauce that strikes the perfect balance of flavouring the pork without overpowering it.

Righty ho... I suppose it's bed time. Night peeps! :)

xoxo

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Food of the Gods - or at least I think so. :)

There are actually a few other things that I want to talk about, but I promised my colleague my secret chicken rice recipe, so I'm going to do that first. On another note, a big shout out to Craig! Yay!

I'm finding it particularly difficult to write this recipe though because I can't include any measurements. I watched my mother cook this heaps of times so when I cook, I just do what looks and feels right. The funny thing about this is that my Mom always said to me that she didn't know how to make the chicken (which was always delicious anyway). So I didn't learn to make the chicken from her - that I learnt from Food Safari.

Luke always seems astounded by the amount of chicken rice I consume. I eat it by the platefuls. And when he gives me that "Another plate??" look, my defence each and every time is "I'm Hainanese! It's in my BLOOD". :) Plus, it was my father's favourite meal and he could eat this every day. I would hope that if I was ever lucky enough to have children, it would be something that I could pass on to them.

Anyway, enough rambling - here we go...

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Chicken stock

There are a few ways to make the chicken stock and you can use as many or as few ingredients as you want, depending on what you have in the kitchen. Usually when Luke and I have roast chicken at home, I debone the chicken and keep the roasted chicken frame to make stock. I would just store this in the freezer and use it when I have collected two or three of them. However, sometimes I just buy some chicken frames from the supermarket. This is good because you have the added bonus of using the chicken fat on the frames.

What you will need:

a) roast chicken bones or raw chicken frames from the supermarket, or even a mixture of both
b) water
c) onions (optional)
d) spring onions (optional)
e) ginger (optional)

How to:

• Cut the excess fat off the chicken and keep aside - you will need this for the rice
• Fill a stock pot with water and pop the chicken frames (and all the other optional things if you are going to use them) in and bring to the boil. Keep boiling for approximately two hours.
• Season well with salt (I don't usually bother with pepper)
• Leave overnight for the flavours to develop (I sometimes don't bother with this step because I'm too impatient and want to eat chicken rice NOW!)

Chicken stock.... DONE.

This is liquid gold - it doesn't look like much (a bit oily and scummy) BUT, it is the BEST stock I've made so far! 

Chicken rice rice

**I think that you will need a rice cooker to make the rice, but if you don't have one, the microwave is fine too.

Ingredients:

White rice - washed and sitting in a fine colander to drip dry (obviously you don't need it perfectly dry, but this method will ensure that it is dry enough)
1 or 2 onions chopped
3 cloves of garlic chopped (less or more depending what you like)
Chicken fat
Chicken stock

In a frying pan (or wok - whichever one you prefer to use - I like the frying pan in this instance), cook the chicken fat until the fat is rendered.
Once that happens, add the onions and garlic and cook til fragrant.

Add the rice and fry for approximately 5-10 minutes. Season with salt.

Put the mixture into the rice cooker and follow the instructions for cooking the rice. The only difference would be to replace the water with the chicken stock (does that make sense?)
Let the rice cooker do the rest.

Chicken rice chicken

You would think that this was the most difficult part of the ensemble, but it isn't.

All you need is:

a) a whole chicken
b) the prepared chicken stock

Bring the chicken stock to a boil.
Once the stock is boiling, put the whole chicken in and turn off the heat (but still leave the stock pot on the same hot plate) and leave to poach for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, bring the stock to boil again and turn it off again and leave it for another half hour.

After an hour in the stock, the chicken should be perfectly poached! :)

And there you have it, chicken rice! This is usually served with a few condiments - the most popular one being the homemade chili sauce (which I don't make - sorry to disappoint! ONly because I haven't been able to get cheap chilis since learning how to make this recipe. My mother also cooks minced ginger and soy sauce to eat with poached chicken. For those who are not used to eating chicken rice, the poached chicken may seem bland but this dish is meant to celebrate the delicate clean flavours of the chicken, and if you ask me, the rice is really the star of the dish.

Now tuck in and enjoy!!!

 A few notes to wrap up:

a) please forgive any typos - I have one eye on the football, as USUAL and
b) as I explained before, I always made this recipe by FEEL, so if you are confused and want to ask any questions, just comment below or send me an email!

Alrighty then - I'm done for the night - back to this match which looks like it's shaping up to be a ripper! Happy weekend!!!

x

The Macaron Chronicles... Part 1

So the macaron scene is blowing up. Cupcakes are so yesterday.

Whatever, I always like a challenge. Apparently they are really hard to make. Challenge accepted.

Yvonne told me that she attempted it 16 times and failed 16 times. That kinda scared me from making it and I resisted for a bit. But then I promised to make Miss Anna Banana a farewell cake and it was a cake for her and Josh. And therefore, it had to be (well, should be unisex). Her words to me were "If all fails, make a pink cake".

I came across this cake, from make-fabulous-cakes.com and I thought that it was amazing! While it was pink and girly, I thought that it was elegant and fabulous enough to get me over the line. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to attempt macarons. No time like the present though!

Photo credit

So first, as with most things, I did my research. I watched some "How to make macarons" videos on youtube, and went looking for a recipe. I finally found some for some chocolate macarons (I decided to make a pink cake with chocolate macarons as I didn't have any pink food colouring) and I found this recipe from David Lebowitz's website. The taste of the batter was delicious! And the end taste was delicious as well. Unfortunately, the macarons failed because:

a) I could not follow a simple instruction; and
b) I adopted the Australian "She'll be right" approach.

The result was an epic fail. They were starting to show some feet though - so I must try again.

Cracks and the tiniest sign of feet - hmmmm....

So why does my macaron have this shape? It was because I only had the swirly nozzle, so I thought that it would be fine to use. As you can see from the photo, it was NOT.

I liked the taste though.

My second attempt was thwarted by a rogue oven, who refused to work (but if I wanted to tell the truth, I stuffed up the timer). All I got were rock hard chocolate buttons and I nearly took out a tooth tasting it!

Hard. As. Rocks.

So is third time the charm? Sort of. Once again, the stupid nozzle got the better of me. I had the tiniest nozzle and I had massive problems trying to squeeze the batter out (which could be an indication of crap batter, but this was the same recipe as the first one - and it was delicious!). So my patience got the better of me, so I ditched the piping bag and grabbed a couple of spoons ( I don't actually know why I think that my method would be better than proven tried and tested methods!!!) and plonked them on the baking tray. And behold. They failed too.

Although two of them (which I piped with great difficulty through a stupid tiny nozzle) grew feet! Looks like I have to attempt it one more time!!!

Photographic evidence:

Feet! They have feet!!!

It better work on my fourth try.

Oh, and in case you guys are wondering - this was the farewell cake I ended up making (sorry Josh, but I did put a blue ribbon for you!)





Meatball sub!

Joey: This place makes the best sandwich in the world.

Gary: Hey, Joey, does it have meatballs on it?

Joey: Oh yeah.

Gary: Does it have melted cheese and marinara sauce?

Joey: Yep.

Gary: Yeah. You can't eat that in my car.

Joey: Yeah, okay. Even though my tax dollars paid for this car.

Chandler: Your tax dollars?

Ever since I watched this episode, I wanted to eat a meatball sub. I imagined that it would be THE (as Joey so aptly put it) best sandwich in the world! When I tried the meatball sub AT Subway (yes, that was the first place that I found that sold meatball subs, so don't judge me) I was somewhat disappointed.

Cut to today - I woke up with  5 hours of sleep ( I was up attempting macarons, but that's another story altogether - and also attempting to make a farewell cake for Anna Banana) and staggered to the supermarket to get some more butter and chocolate for the fudge mixture. While I was there I thought that I would grab some stuff for lunch. I have never been so uninspired at the supermarket before. It could be because I was groggy and still had sleep in my eyes, or my lack of sleep (which for me always equals to lack of appetite) but I had to get something for lunch. My first thought was to get some minute steaks and make cheese steak sandwiches. WTF. They didn't carry minute steaks. Then, inspiration hit me as a stray ray of white light shone on the meatball offer - buy two packets of pre-made meatballs for $ 10. Done. I was going to get some mince and make meatballs from scratch, so so CBF right now. Luke and I have had these meatballs before and they are delish, so it's not a problem. Even the baguette and the tomato puree was on sale. Sold and sold.

First thing I thought I would tackle would be the marinara sauce. I was going to google and find a great marinara sauce recipe, but I remembered that I had the barbeque sauce leftover from the night before (when I made those ribs again) and I didn't want to waste it. So this time, I think I'll make my version of a marinara sauce.

The end product was delicious. It was a massive sandwich though, I managed half of mine and I was DONE. But very satisfying - take that Subway!

NESSIE'S MEATBALL SUB

 Ingredients

• fresh baguette
• meatballs - homemade or storebought - which ever takes your fancy. This time I just bought it from the supermarket - the Woolies brand meatballs are delish!
• processed cheese (yes, plastic cheese - but that's how it's done in the States, I'm given to understand!)

For the marinara sauce:

• leftover BBQ sauce (from my ribs recipe here)
• 1 can of tomato puree
• half a can of red wine
• dried oregano

Method:

• Heat up the frying pan and put all the ingredients for the marinara sauce into another pot. Heat up the ingredients and try to reduce the sauce (not too much - the sauce should be nice and thick anyway).
• In the frying pan, cook the meatballs - just brown the outside, no need to cook it right through.
• Once the meatballs are sufficiently browned, pop the meatballs into the sauce and heat through.

Sorry for the messy pot - it was bubbling!

• In the mean time, cut the baguette in half and hollow out the insides (I do it because it would be easier to fill with meatballs and eat with no mess, but at the same time, the pictures are not as pretty)

See how pretty its sitting - no mess! Even though there was heaps of sauce!!!

• Once the meatballs are cooked through, fill the baguette with the meatballs, and layer the cheese over it. The heat of the meatballs will heat up the cheese - don't you worry!

• Tuck in an ENJOY!

Definitely going to photograph without hollowing out the inside next time- and probably won't use the poppy seed bun either!

I definitely did and I think Luke did too, which is great. I don't even think that I'm going to bother learning the recipe for the marinara sauce - this one works. :)