Basil Chicken Wantan Soup

Assamualaikum and ramadan mubarak to all Muslims particularly my Muslim friends.

I am posting here this recipe due to to a friend's request. She says this style of cooking is not the typical wantan and it's refreshing. This is the most fuss-free wantan I have ever made and it is good for berbuka and sahur, and of course way after Ramadan.

I say fuss-free because when I made these I only had minced chicken and wantan skins. I did not even have carrots or water chestnuts or Japanese mushrooms which I would normally add to my minced chicken if I make wantans. For greens, I asked my daughter to go to the garden and pick me some Thai basil and you can also use the sweet basil. FYI, it's very easy to grow basil, I bought some from the night market and planted the basil stalks in soil and watered them every day. The same goes for mint leaves and daun kesom. However, mint leaves always die on me. In the end I bought a pot from the nursery. They seem to be surviving. So now I have mint leaves in my garden as well.

Okay, enough digressing.

I marinated the chicken with olive oil, light soya sauce and oyster sauce, pepper, a little ginger powder (optional) and corn flour.

To make the soup, I simply boiled water, enough to cover the number of wantans I'd like to eat.

While the water is boiling, I took a fat pinch of chicken, placed it in the middle of the wantan skin, added a basil leave and pushed the skin inward to close. I made about 9 fat ones and kept the rest for next time. Then I just dump the chicken wantans into the boiling water. And some basil leaves. I seasoned the soup with a little oyster sauce, fish sauce and pepper. The moment the meat is cooked (you can see the white through the wantan skin), turn off the heat and serve. Super easy and super fuss-free.

Churros!

This is the last of the churros that I made. I had to stop the kids from eating in order to snap this pic. This I made before Ramadan. I just want to share that churros are actually pretty easy to make and they are supposed to be dipped in hot chocolate sauce but I was not that adventurous and so I didn't make the sauce. You can get the recipe here. Remember to fry the churros for about 4 minutes. My first few churros shrank the moment they came out of the pan even though they were gorgeous in the pan. So I reduced the heat and cooked them longer and they retained their shape. I also sprinkled cinnamon onto the churros (see the brown specks). Yum. Maybe will make churros again but this time will try the recipe from this website which uses vege oil instead of butter.

Chicken Posole

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

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)

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

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

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