Easy Peasy Cooking

Chicken Posole

2011-04-09T23:42:00.000-07:00

Chicken Posole (soup)

1 whole chicken put in pot, put in water enough to cover all the chicken. Boil with one whole clove
garlic. Take chicken out once it’s cooked. Shred the meat when cooled and return bones to the stock.

In a frying pan, put in 1 tbsp olive oil and fry one medium sized big onion, thinly sliced until golden brown with some salt and black pepper. Once the onion is done, pour into your soup stock.

Put in one chicken cube, 1 can of stewed tomato (you can use Del Monte) pulped, 1 box of tomato puree, 1 tin of Leggo's tomato puree, 2 tins of Kimball chickpeas, 1 bottle of mixed vegetables (I normally get this from Carrefour and it costs around 7.90-9.90 (or you can substitute with cubed carrots, green peas, French beans, radish). Add 1 ½ tbsp coarse chilli powder to the stock. Put in some of your shredded chicken.

If you have the powdered version, you don't need to grind jintan manis/ cumin , and ketumbar/ coriander, add to paprika powder and black pepper. (1tbsp of each to 3 bowls of water). Season with salt and sugar.

Garnish with grated cheddar cheese, shredded chicken, lettuce sliced thinly, cucumber julienned, onion sliced thinly, mint, tomato deseeded and cubed. Serve with tobasco sauce and lime wedges for extra heat and sourness.

Corn Muffins

2010-12-16T15:26:00.000-08:00

My friend Mona told me Kenny Roger's muffins are corn meal muffins. I bought some recently and had forgotten what I had wanted to do with it. So, I searched for "Kenny Rogers Muffins recipe" and lo and behold, stumbled upon this site where the top secret recipe is shared.

I absolutely love these muffins. They were so delicious! Not exactly like Kenny Rogers but much better than the 1st recipe I found. So if you come across corn meal, go buy it so that you can make these lovely muffins. I reduced the sugar content to 1/3 cup but not the honey. If you still think that's still a little too sweet for your liking, I'd suggest you reduce the sugar to 1/4 cup coz next time I make these, I'll use 1/4 cup sugar.

Ingredients [ View Metric ]
1/2 c Butter
2/3 c Sugar
1/4 c Honey
2 Eggs
1/2 ts Salt
1 1/2 c All-purpose flour
3/4 c Yellow cornmeal
1/2 ts Baking powder
1/2 c Milk
3/4 c Frozen yellow corn
Preparation

He knows when to hold em, and he knows when to fold em. He also knows how to make awesome corn muffins that come with the meals served at his chain of fire-roasted chicken restaurants. When Kenny Rogers isnt singing "Ruby," hes out promoting his fast-growing chicken chain. And its working out pretty good. Already there are 203 stores in the chain, and when Kenny cant do the promotion himself, the chaps over at the TV show Seinfeld help out by featuring the restaurant in one of their popular episodes. Now, with the help of this Top Secret Recipe, you can make some sweet corn muffins of your own that taste just like Kennys. 1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 2. Cream together butter, sugar, honey, eggs and salt in a large bowl. 3. Add flour, cornmeal and baking powder and blend thoroughly. Add milk while mixing. 4. Add corn to mixture and combine by hand until corn is worked in. 5. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan and fill each cup with batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until muffins begin to turn brown on top. Makes 12 muffins. (http://www.topsecretrecipes.com) Posted to recipelu-digest Volume 01 Number 438 by eyesopen@ix.netcom.com (linda /tennessee) on Jan 03, 1998

Chicken Briyani Burmese Style (seriously easy)

2010-12-16T15:25:00.001-08:00

This was a recipe I stumbled upon. I had one and a half big tubs of yogurt and went into Jamie Oliver's website. I found this: Cucumber yogurt. I had cucumber, I had yogurt, I had cilantro. But no salmon for the tikka recipe. It didn't matter coz I was only interested in the cucumber salad recipe. Here goes:

Peel and halve your cucumber lengthways, then use a spoon to scoop out and discard the seeds
• Roughly chop the cucumber and put most of it into a bowl
• Halve your lemon and squeeze the juice from one half into the bowl
• Add the yoghurt, a pinch of salt and pepper and half the chopped chilli
• Pick the coriander leaves and put to one side

Then I googled for Burmese Briyani. I thought the cucumber salad would be a nice accompaniment for that. So why Burmese Briyani? When my Burmese friend got married many many years ago, we had a very memorable briyani but it was different from the usual kind we eat at weddings. It had loads of caramelized onions that gave the rice an extra but natural sweetness. And it was so nice that even though I wasn't a big fan of briyani that I had two helpings and resisted a third helping. Here's the recipe: Danpauk
Ingredients:
300g Basmati rice (2 cups Ecobrown brown rice/ Jati Basmati brown rice)
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
4 tbsp margarine (1 tbsp and 2 tbsp canola/ sunflower/ vege oil)
250ml plain yogurt
1 tsp salt
900g chicken, chopped into large pieces (1 whole chicken, a bit larger than bite sized pieces, marinated with salt, paprika powder, a bit of pepper, a bit of oil)
80ml cooking oil (canola oil)
2 tbsp ghee (1 tbsp margarine/ butter)
5cm cinnamon stick, lightly smashed to break up

(A)
4 slices ginger
10 shallots, thinly sliced
3/4 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp coriander powder

(B)
5 cloves garlic
1 star anise
5 cardamoms, lightly smashed
1 tsp ground fennel
1 tsp poppy seeds

Garnishing
10–15 cashew nuts, deep-fried
50g raisins
1–2 tbsp shallots crisps

Method:

1. Wash and soak Basmati rice in water mixed with turmeric powder for 30–35 minutes. Drain rice in a colander. (yup, I did this first too. How much water to cook? At the bag of the rice packet, it says for every one cup add two cups water. So it should be 4 cups water, except some I substituted with the "gravy?" from the chicken and also added a chicken cube. Anyway, while the rice is soaking, I'd prepare the chicken coz I wanted to use the excess gravy as stock to cook the rice. So if I had 1 1/2 cup of chicken gravy, I'd top up with 2 1/12 cup of water, so it becomes 4 cups water.)
2. Heat margarine and fry ingredients (A) until fragrant. Add 2 tablespoons yogurt and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Mix in (B) and chicken. Fry well, then add in another 2 tablespoons yogurt and remaining salt. Continue to fry until chicken is tender. (You will realise at this point that you have loads of gravy from the chicken, later you'd only be putting the chicken in, so the gravy seems wasted, so I decided to pour out the excess gravy and use it as stock. Continue to fry chicken till the chicken browns.) Leave aside till it's time to put it into the about-to-cook rice.

To cook rice:
3. Heat oil and ghee (I use margarine) in a clean wok. Put in cinnamon stick and fry until fragrant. Add the remaining yogurt to mix. Toss in rice to mix, then transfer the well-mixed ingredients into a rice cooker.
4. Add sufficient water to a level that is 2cm above the rice (As mentioned, I substituted some water with the chicken gravy and added a chicken cube, add salt and a bit of sugar to taste). Cook rice for 20 minutes.
5. Open the rice cooker and add in the precooked chicken and continue to cook until rice is done.
Remember I said the wedding briyani I ate had caramelised big onions? Anyway, I browned some thinly sliced onions and put them in when i put in the chicken. I fried this separately.)
Add garnishing before serving.

I have made this 3 times now. It's nice...Really!

Bread and Butter Pudding

2009-07-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

This recipe is actually a combination of two different recipes. The original bread and butter pudding recipe is from Halwafy and the crust comes from an apricot cobbler recipe taken from a magazine. The recipe below is basically adapted for those who like sweet stuff but don't want it too sweet.

INGREDIENTS:

6 slices day-old bread

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1/2 cup raisins/ mixed fruit

4 eggs, beaten

2 cups milk

1/4 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C.Cut bread into triangles and arrange first layer of bread in an 8 inch square baking pan. Drizzle melted butter or margarine over bread. Sprinkle half the raisins. Then arrange 2nd layer of bread and drizzle butter over the bread. Sprinkle the rest of the raisins.In a medium mixing bowl, combine eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla. Beat until well mixed. Pour over bread, and lightly push down with a fork until bread is covered and soaking up the egg mixture. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until the top springs back when lightly tapped.

Above is the basic recipe for bread pudding. If you want a cake crust on top, before baking, mix the following ingredients:
TOPPING
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar (I usually reduce this to 1/4 cup.)
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter, softened

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add egg and butter; mix well. spoon over pudding and put in oven.

Good luck baking. I've had it from friends that the added crust on the bread pudding gives it extra oomph. Also I'd like to say thanks to Tricia for dropping me a line. Well, I'd just like to say that where credit is due, credit should be given. Thank you to your mom for spreading so much joy through her cooking.

Tried and Tested Baked Cheesecake

2009-07-07T06:22:00.000-07:00

Been wanting to post this in this blog for ages but never had the time. Now I am making the time as I am waiting for my cheesecake to bake in the oven.

Today, I baked my cheesecake a little differently.
Instead of using Digestive or Marie, I used 14 pieces of IKO biscuits - a mixture of the oatmeal biscuits and the ones that have pumpkin seeds in them. Used also about a third of a 250gm butter and 1 tbsp brown sugar as base.

500gm Philadelphia Cream Cheese + 1/3 cup and 1 extra spoon of sugar, still 2 eggs, 150ml apple yogurt (Dutch lady) and 3 spoons of lemon juice.

I reduced the sugar coz this yogurt is sweeter and increased the lemon juice coz the yogurt's not as sour as the original flavored one.

Had to improvise coz my plain yogurt has expired and I didn't want people having stomach ache or worse just because I wanted to save the yogurt.

Anyway, here's the original recipe:
Here are the ingredients:
Biscuit base:
1 cup crushed Marie biscuits (that's about 12-13 pieces) OR you can use digestive biscuits and reduce the sugar
1/3 to 1/2 cup melted butter
1 tbsp brown sugar

250 gm x 2 Philadelphia Cream Cheese + 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 container plain yogurt (150 ml)
1 tbsp lemon juice

For the base, crush 12 to 13 pieces of Marie biscuits, they don't have to be very fine. Then add melted butter and 1 tbsp brown sugar to the biscuit crumbs. Mix well, then press evenly in a 7 in" cake tin with a fork.Then, cream the cream cheese with 1/2 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the egg one by one, then the yogurt and lastly the lemon juice. Pour onto biscuit base and put into a preheated oven at 180 deg C for 45 minutes. Then cover with foil paper and bake for another 15 to 30 minutes.

Try it. It's my hubby's fave cheesecake

Creme Caramel

2008-06-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

Creme Caramel

In a mixing bowl, beat 6-7 eggs (depending on the size) with 3/4 cup sugar. Then add in 1 tin of evaporated milk (475 ml). In the empty tin, put in 1 tbsp custard powder to 3/4 tin of water. Pour custard mixture into the mixing bowl.

In a glass bowl, or whatever else you can use that's about 4 inch high and 10 inches in diameter, spoon in Lyle's golden syrup, enough to cover the surface of the bowl. If you don't have that, then you gotta make your own caramel. Just pour 1 cup sugar into a saucepan and stir till sugar dissolves and turns golden yellow. Quickly pour the caramel into the mould/ glass bowl before it sets. Then pour in very very slowly and gently the egg mixture over the caramel/ syrup. Steam for about 20 minutes or bake it if you prefer it that way.

Simple Fried Chicken

2007-01-11T01:15:00.000-08:00

Lazy to pound tumeric with shallots? Fret not, here is a simple Fried Chicken recipe.

Simply marinade half a chicken cut to your desired size. About 1 inch to 2 inches is good. Then deep fry the chicken over medium heat until chicken pieces are cooked and the skin, crispy. The colour of the chicken would be a dark brown colour.

Ingredients for marinade

1 1/2 dsp curry powder
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 dsp dark soy sauce
pinch of salt to taste
pinch of sugar to taste
1 tbsp cooking oil

Che Mek Molek & Potato Balls

2007-01-04T22:15:00.000-08:00

The other day, I had a hankering for Che Mek Molek. So I bought 2 sweet potatoes weighing about 650gms.

There are 3 things that you can make from these potatoes. The first is sweet potato drink. The second is Che Mek Molek and the last is sweet potato balls.

To make Sweet Potato Drink, you need to wash and peel potatoes. To shorten cooking time, cut the potatoes into managable chunks and boil in water. When the potatoes are soft and cooked, remove potatoes from water, and add in a chunk of ginger which you've cracked beforehand. Add sugar to taste, and there you have, sweet potato drink.

For Che Mek Molek, you need to mash the potatoes while they are still hot and put in a pinch of salt and about 1/4 cup of all purpose flour and 3 dsp of rice flour. The dough shouldn't stick to your hands when you roll it. The size should be about the size of a small lime. Then flatten the dough and in the middle, put 1/2 tsp of sugar before you shape the dough, closing the sugar in. Inside, it's hollow. (Please refer to the pictures below.) Then it's ready for frying. When the oil is hot, fry the Che Mek Molek until golden brown.

The sweet potatoes I used were purple in colour. I made about 9. That's about half the dough. The remainder dough was used to make potato balls which Mika absolutely loves.

Sweet Potato Balls
To the leftover dough add 3 tsps of sugar and 1 dsp of rice flour. Mix well and start rolling in 20 sen sized balls and they are ready to be fried. Deep fry until golden brown. You can also get creative like we did (Inez and I) and made star shapes, heart shapes, a car shape, snowman. flowers, paw prints. It's like playing with Play Doh except that it's edible and yummy.

Spaghetti Bolognaise (the short cut way)

2006-12-28T21:58:00.000-08:00

My hubby loves spaghetti. So does Inez (but she only eats it with plain sauce). Mika has his moods. He prefers mac and cheese.

If I make my own sauce, it's usually a lot and I could also make lasagna with the leftover sauce.

This recipe is for when I want to whip up a meal in a short time. I usually stock my kitchen with a few tins of spaghetti sauce at a time. In Kuantan, the place to get Prego very cheap is at Eng Hong. A tin costs about RM3.90. Standard retail price is RM4.30. One tin of sauce is enough for 2-4 adults depending on their appetite and hunger level.

First of all in a pot of hot water, boil about half of the 250gm packet of spaghetti. That should be enough for 2-4 ppl. Inez likes to help me, so I let her break the spaghetti in half before throwing it into the pot. Ideally, one should put some salt and pour some olive oil into the hot water, but it's okay if you don't do that. FYI, I like to buy the really thin spaghetti, the same way I like to buy the tiniest sized macaroni. They cook faster. When it's boiled, you can either wash it or not. Jamie Oliver doesn't. His spaghetti goes directly to the plate.

In the meantime, prepare the stuff for the Bolognaise sauce.

Ingredients
1 tin of Prego Spaghetti sauce (the orange tin, with basil)
1 big onion, diced finely
1 big tomato, diced finely
Mushrooms (sometimes I even use oyster mushrooms) finely or roughly diced (My hubby isn't allergic to mushrooms but if he can see it, he sets the mushroom aside)
Green pepper, diced finely (optional)
1 - 2 pips garlic, crushed
Oregano (I usually get oregano from the bakery for under RM3)
Minced meat or chicken
Kurma powder

In your pot, heat some olive oil, throw in the garlic and some oregano (abt 1 dsp) until you can smell the delicious aroma of garlic and oregano. Then put in the diced onions. Stir until the onions go soft, then put in the mushrooms, until they too go soft. Then you throw in the green pepper if you like and tomatoes. Next, put in the meat abt 3 handfuls. Pour some kurma powder over it and stir until meat is cooked. Lastly stir in the Prego sauce and wait for the sauce to boil. Then it's ready. Serve with grated parmesan or grated cheddar cheese and garnish with parsley. Mmmmmm, I like a lot of parsley on my spaghetti.

Simple Cupcakes

2006-12-28T17:48:00.000-08:00

I promised Inez that I'd make cupcakes with her for her birthday. Though somewhat belated and amateurish, we were quite happy with the outcome.

I bought all the stuff I needed to make Inez's cupcakes. I got myself disposable plastic piping bags, an icing nozzle, some red ladybirds (made out of sugar and damned sweet). Everything else, I figured I already have at home. I wanted something light and maybe spongy for the cake and used this lemon roll cake recipe, which thankfully has no lemon in the cake, only lemon in the filling. I wasn't sure if Inez would eat lemon cake. Since the cake is easy to make, I thought, "Perfect!"

So here's the cake recipe:

Ingredients

3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
3 tbsp cold water
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder

Icing
Whipping Cream
Green colouring

First, in a mixing bowl, beat sugar and eggs until creamy. Then add in cold water and stir. After that, add in flour, salt and baking powder mixture and stir. Spoon batter until it fills half of the paper cups and bake in a heated oven for about 10 - 12 minutes, or until cake springs back. It makes about 10 cupcakes.

For the icing, I simply whipped some whipping cream until it's stiff. I didn't add any sugar as it was already sweet and divided it into 2 portions: one of which I added about 2 drops of dark green colouring to. In my mind, my ladybugs will be nestled in some green leaves on white background. So using my creativity, I spread some white icing over the cakes and piped some green icing over it. Voila! 3 ladybugs on some leaves, 1 ladybug on a green heart and 1 ladybug in a green circle of 'leaves', which don't look like leaves. Still need some practice I think.

Apricot Peach Cobbler

2006-12-28T17:42:00.001-08:00

This recipe is actually courtesy of Tobi Breternitz of Bay Port, Michigan who sent in her recipe for Apricot Peach Cobbler to Tastes of Home's Recipe Card Collection Magazine (volume 5, 2004 issue). I actually first tasted this simply scrumptious dessert when my friend made it for Berbuka last Ramadhan. However, it's a little on the sweet side for me. So I usually reduce the sugar. My kids on the other hand only ate the cake topping that I just make the topping on its own sometimes in a tiny rectangular cake tin abt 3 x 5 inches. It takes about 5 minutes to mix it up and half an hour to bake. You don't even need a mixer. My kids love it. I will give the original recipe given by Toni and comment on the side the changes made.

Apricot Peach Cobbler
1 can (29 ounces) sliced peaches (I only use the Peach, hence, Peach Cobbler.)
1 can (15 ounces) apricot halves (Didn't put in apricots)
1/2 cup sugar (Give the syrup a taste, if you think it's not sweet enough, add just enough, even 1/4 cup is still very sweet for me and my family)
2 tablespoons cornstarch (abt 1 tbsp)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon butter (I like butter, but you can reduce this to 1/2 tbsp)

TOPPING
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar (I usually reduce this to 1/4 cup.)
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter, softened

HONEY CREAM
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons honey (I usually put in a tsp of honey and 1/4 tsp of cinnamon)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Drain peaches, reserving 1/2 cup syrup. Drain apricots, reserving 1/2 cup syrup. Cut apricots in half; set fruit aside. In a saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg,and reserved syrups until smooth. Bring to boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat; stir in butter until melted. Stir in peaches and apricots. Transfer to a greased 8-in, square baking dish. For topping, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add egg and butter; mix well. spoon over fruit. Bake at 350 deg for 40-45 minutes or until golden brown. In a mixing bowl, beat cream, honey and cinnamon until stiff peaks form. serve with warm cobbler. Yield: 6-8 servings.
By the way, the picture above is not my own, but it's from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Peach-Cobbler-VI/Detail.aspx and it's the closest pix that resembles what the recipe above yields. You can also click on the link and try the other recipe. It doesn't use apricots either.

Miu Choy Fried with Garlic

2006-12-27T00:50:00.000-08:00

This is another really easy recipe. In fact, it is very similar to the fried lettuce recipe but instead of using shallots or onions, you use garlic. I am not sure at the moment what the English name for miu choy is, but it could be baby green bean sprouts. It is NOT taugeh aka bean sprouts. I will post a pix of what miu choy looks like soon.

Ingredients

Miu Choy
Garlic
Cooking Oil
Soy Sauce
Oyster Sauce
Salt, Pepper & Sugar

Method
Again, it's up to you how much of this vege you want to cook. For every 1 handful of miu choy, you crush and chop 1 garlic. So say you are cooking 4 handfuls, then slice or chop 4 cloves of garlic. You can throw in an extra clove, it's okay.
Heat oil in wok, and dump in the garlic. Fry until lightly brown, then throw in the vege. Stir in a dash of soy sauce, a drop of oyster sauce, salt, pepper and sugar to taste. Voila, it's ready. You can add some water if you want the sauce to be thinner, have a soupy like quality.

Fried Lettuce in Soy Sauce

2006-12-27T00:16:00.000-08:00

This is one of my favourite dishes and it's one of the easiest to prepare. In fact, I only had it last night and the night before that.

Ingredients
Lettuce
Shallots
Cooking Oil
Soy Sauce
Oyster Sauce

Method
If I am cooking for 2 to 3 people, I'd use half a lettuce.
Wash and drain your lettuce leaves in a collander.
Slice shallots thinly. How many depends on how much fried shallots you like with your lettuce. I usually cut 2 to 3 medium sized shallots for 1/2 a lettuce.
Then heat wok, put in enough cooking oil to fry shallots evenly until golden brown. Take out the fried shallots but leave oil in. Put in lettuce and stir. Do not overfry. Remember you can even eat lettuce raw. Then pour in about 1 tbsp of soy sauce (I use Popo brand or Lee Kum Kee) and I dollop of Lee Kum Kee oyster sauce. Turn off heat and sprinkle fried shallots over lettuce before serving. It's absolutely yummy.

I'll upload pix next time.

Welcome to my cooking blog!

2006-12-26T23:59:00.000-08:00

I call this blog easy peasy cooking because cooking is actually easy. This blog is also for lazy people like me who take short cuts when it comes to cooking. Over time, you'll be introduced to recipes like lettuce in soy sauce, and mui choy fried with garlic, spaghetti bolognaise, Cek mek molek and sweet potato balls, prawn mee et cetera. You will also realise pretty soon that when it comes to cooking, I can be quite vague, basically because I'm the 'pincha cook'. You know, a pinch of this, a pinch of that. But hey, that shouldn't dissuade you from cooking because it's YOU who is in control. YOU decide how much salt, YOU decide how much sugar, YOU tweak your own cooking until it tastes the way YOU like it. So there you have it. Feel free to comment and criticise and tell me if you have a better recipe. I love cooking, and am always game to try new recipes.