19 Jul 20 (Sun) - Pan-fry Salmon on Rosti with Chicken Ham Spring Onion Egg Roll

Craved for salmon so cooking it again. Have potato and chicken ham to clear so squeezed my brain for ideas. In the end, decided to just have fun with whatever ingredients I have on hand. Turned the potato into rosti, pan-fry the salmon and cooked the chicken ham with spring onion and egg to make into egg roll.

12 Jul 20 (Sun) - Teriyaki Salmon, Roast Eggplant and Egg with Sesame Sauce

Have not cooked salmon for a while. Bought a big piece recently and decided to cook it with teriyaki sauce. Bought some mini eggplants too but have never cooked them before. Googled on how to cook eggplants and most of the recipes were on steaming them with garlic and soy sauce. Searched further and found a couple on roasting eggplants.

Gave one of the roasting recipes a shot but the eggplants did not turn out as expected. Instead of becoming crispy, they were soft even though I flipped them over half way through cooking as instructed in the recipe. Fortunately, they were not soggy so it was not too bad. Taste-wise, I guess I can develop a taste for eggplants now.

30 Sep 18 (Sun) - Baked Orange Honey Salmon

It has been a busy year so far and not much time for serious or experimental cooking. Little big sis tagged me to a couple of FB posts few weeks ago, one on Grilled Chipotle-orange Salmon and another on Cilantro Lime Salmon. We wanted to give them a go but unfortunately, there simply wasn't any right time to try.

So today I finally found time to try the recipes out on my own. Looked through both of them, googled a few more and came up with my own version. Took some time to decorate the plate since it has been a long while since I put in effort to do cooking.

Ingredients:

1 piece 340g salmon fillet 1/2 cup fresh orange juice orange zest from 2 oranges 1 tbsp light soy sauce (optional) salt and pepper

2 orange slices                    2 tbsp honey                    1/2-1 tbsp olive oil/butter                    1/2 tsp ground ginger                    corn starch for thickening

Method:
1.  Marinate salmon with salt and pepper and set aside.
2.  Preheat the oven to 190 degree Celsius.
3.  Combine orange juice, orange zest, honey, olive oil/butter, light soy sauce (if using), ground ginger in a sauce pan over medium heat.
4.  Stir constantly till well combined and smooth.
5.  Add corn starch to thicken the mixture.
6.  Line a baking tray with aluminium foil.
7.  Pour some sauce on the foil, place the salmon skin up on the foil and pour remaining sauce over it.
8.  Bake for 4 minutes and turn the salmon over.
9.  Spoon some sauce over it and place the orange slices on top of the salmon.
10. Bake for another 8-10 minutes.
For a job well-done, I rewarded myself with a glass of orange beer from Don Don Donki. 

26 Aug 17 (Sat) - Salmon Wellington

Recently, my little big sis tagged me in a Facebook video post by 'Spring Home' recently. The video showed the various ways to use their frozen pratha. Saved that video and went on to their FB page to see if they posted the recipes on their page or on their website. Found a few of the recipes on their photo section and downloaded them for reference. Since I love eating salmon, decided to try their salmon wellington recipe today.

Went to get their frozen plain pratha, a piece of salmon and a box of cream cheese. The recipe also calls for spinach but I replaced it with dou miao because I didn't want to get one big bunch of spinach. Followed the recipe closely and baked the balance of the beaten egg, in half a red capsicum together with the salmon wellington.

Took it out after the time was up and plated them up on my new blue plate. The final product of the salmon wellington looked very close to the picture on 'Spring Home' recipe except for the top part. It didn't seem to brown as well as that on the picture. Didn't know what sauce was used in the picture so I made do with some sesame sauce and mayonnaise which spoiled the presentation somewhat. Taste-wise, it was quite tasty and I believed would tasted better with the Japanese plum sauce.

Maybe the next time I try, I will apply some oil to the salmon wellington before baking and maybe baked it either at a slightly higher temperature or slightly longer to brown the pratha.

22 Jul 17 (Sat) - Jalapeno Poppers

Had some leftover cream cheese, want to use it up but didn't want to make desserts with it so searched the Internet for savory recipes that make use of cream cheese. Saw a few but this Jalapeno Poppers recipe on Food Network caught my attention because of its simplicity. Followed the steps in the recipe with a little modification. Instead of the regular streaky bacon, I used back bacon which is wider in size compared to regular streaky bacon and then I halved each slide length-wise. Instead of just wrapping the cream cheese-filled jalapeno in the middle, I wrapped the whole thing for some halves, covering the cream cheese.

Popped them into the oven and set them to bake at 140 degree Celsius for 1 hour and 15 minutes as stated. Fortunately, I checked on them on and off and quickly turned off the oven after 1 hour because the bacon was starting to char on the edges. The recipe actually asked for 135 degree Celsius but my oven doesn't do interval of 5 so guessed that was why the bacon started to char after 1 hour.

These jalapeno poppers tasted great and really easy to make. Ideal as quick bites for parties.

31 Oct 16 (Mon) - Baked Chicken and Brie with Steamed Sweet Potato and Honey Dew

Had some mini brie leftover from the previous experimental cooking couple of months back. So thought I had better finished them up before they expire. Googled for recipe that make use of brie and found this "Baked Chicken and Brie" that seemed easy enough.

The recipe asked for a cup of light beer or dry white wine. Didn't have either so went to get a can of Tiger beer after work. After cooking for the stated amount of time, there was still a lot of beer left in the baking dish. Hahaha... Think I should have taken the effort to measure one cup of beer instead of pouring the whole can of beer into the baking dish.

The end result didn't look like the photo posted on the website. Oh well... since I also had some sweet potatoes left, so steamed them to go with the chicken. Added some honey dew to eat as dessert too. Hehe...

23 Oct 16 (Sun) - Buttery Sour Cream Muffins

Had some leftover sour cream and wondered what to do with it. Googled for recipes that use sour cream and self-rising flour and this "Buttery Sour Cream Muffins" by Taste of Home popped out. Tried the recipe and made two muffins. This was the first time that I made savory muffins. I think it will be better if they were in bite-size instead of muffin size because it was very filling. And because it was so buttery, I ate it with a dollop of sour cream to balance the taste and I ate it as a meal.

15 Oct 16 (Sat) - Baked Sweet Potato & Pumpkin with Sour Cream

It had been a long time since the last post back in mid-June. My kitchen underwent a revamp after that for a few months and now it is back in "business". Bought a Panasonic Combi-oven (Model: NN-DS592B) and decided to try recipes that I had never been able to do before. As this is my very first combi-oven (I have been using microwave oven all this while), I had to read the manual very carefully before using it for cooking.

Today I attempted something simple, baked sweet potato and pumpkin. Modified the "Quick Baked Potatoes" recipe that I found on "She Wears Many Hat" by Amy and the result was pretty good. First look at the dish, I think one would think that it was meant to be some sort of a dessert, with sweet potatoes and pumpkin as ingredients. However, it was actually a savory dish which I ate as lunch. Heh.

Ingredients:

1-2 tbsp olive oil (I used lemon-infused oilve oil)

2 Japanese sweet potatoes, washed
1 wedge of pumpkin, rinsed
some salt (I used himalayan salt)
some mixed herbs
a dash of cinnamon powder

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 180 degree celsius
2.  Line metal tray with baking paper
3.  Drizzle the lined baking paper with olive oil
4.  Cut sweet potatoes in half length wise and pumpkin into big chunks
5.  Coat sweet potatoes and pumpkin evenly with the olive oil on the baking paper
6.  Place sweet potatoes cut side down and pumpkin skin side down on lined baking paper
7.  Sprinkle sweet potatoes and pumpkin with salt, mixed herbs and cinnamon powder
8.  Bake at 180 degree celsius for 20-25 mins and check with fork for doneness
9.  Serve with sour cream and some spring onions

14 Feb 16 (Sun) - Laksa Fried Pasta with Blue Mussels Meat

Found this pack of laksa fried rice sauce in the pantry and decided to cook it with some pasta for a quick meal. Just needed to add four teaspoons of water to the sauce, add to the already cooked pasta and stir to mix well before adding other ingredients which in this case, I added some blue mussels meat.

7 Jul 13 (Sun) - Cream of Pumpkin, Pan-fried Steak and Sweet Mash Pumpkin

Saw a picture of a dish called “Chilled Cream of Pumpkin with Sweet Potato” by a local chef from a well-known restaurant last Thursday and it looked really nice. It had the purple sweet potato twirled on a plate of yellow cream of pumpkin soup. Was motivated to replicate the dish and so went on to search for recipes online. Found a few recipes on cream of pumpkin and saw one that was really simple to do so copied that down in my notebook. Went on to search for recipes on mashed sweet potato but I did not have time to study them in details therefore settled to try out only the cream of pumpkin this weekend. Went marketing on Friday and bought a small portion of Japanese pumpkin, a piece of top rump and a few other stuff. My plan was to cook beef noodle on Saturday and use the balance to cook stir-fry beef on Sunday as well as to try out the cream of pumpkin on Sunday.

Japanese Pumpkin

Unfortunately, my plan was messed up due to some unforeseen circumstances, hence had to rearrange my meal plans. In the end, I came up with a 3-course meal consisting of Cream of Pumpkin, Pan-fried Steak and Sweet Mash Pumpkin. The second was a change to my original beef noodle and because I did not want to buy a broccoli just to use a small portion of it, I used choy sum instead. And since the cream of pumpkin called for potato as one of the ingredients, boiled the balance to go with the steak. The last dish, which was a dessert, was really something that came up impromptu.

Cream of Pumpkin

Pan-fried Steak

Bought the other ingredients called for in the cream of pumpkin from the market and started cooking after breakfast about 9:30am. I thought I was going to take a long time to finish the cooking but I was done by 11:15am, including washing and photo taking. Whee! Was pretty proud of the cream of pumpkin because that turned out really well even though I modified the recipe a little by sauteing the onion with some olive oil, pre-boiling the pumpkin to separate the flesh from the skin and replacing thick cream with milk. Since I had some boiled pumpkin left, mashed them with a packet of MacDonald’s fine sugar and surprisingly I got a very smooth consistency so used that as my dessert.

Sweet Mash Pumpkin

Overall, the 3-course meal turned out quite well and presentable given that I was improvising with limited resources. Heh…

My 3-course Meal

Cream of Pumpkin (Serves 1-2)

Adapted from Bestrecipes website

Ingredients:

160g Japanese pumpkin, after boiling and skinned

50g potatoes, diced

1/2 medium yellow onion, diced

1/2 chicken stock cube, crumbled

160ml water

40ml milk

Olive oil

Salt

Method:

1.  Sauté onion with some olive oil in a saucepan

2.  Place all other ingredients, except milk and pumpkin, in the saucepan

3.  Simmer until vegetables are tender

4.  Add pumpkin and mash while boiling for another 3 minutes

5.  Remove from heat and add salt to taste

6.  Blend until smooth

7.  Add milk and stir through

8.  Garnish with chopped pistachio nuts

Note: The balance of the boiled pumpkin can be mashed with castor sugar while still hot/warm to be made into a dessert on its own.

Recipe for Cream of Pumpkin submitted to Munch Ministry

6 Oct 12 (Sat) - Pasta in Cream Sauce with Ham and Scrambled Eggs and Creamy Pumpkin Paste with Rice Balls

Have been browsing the Internet a lot lately and saw many recipes by different bloggers. Some were rather interesting and simple to follow while some were really creative. Compiled those recipes that I'm interested in and planned to try them out over the next couple of weekends starting with this weekend and maybe add some of my modifications to those recipes.

Today's main course was Pasta in Cream Sauce with Ham and Scrambled Eggs. Then there was Creamy Pumpkin Paste with Rice Balls as dessert. The idea for the main course came from Anncoo Journal's Linguine in Cream Sauce with Poached Eggs & Bacon while the idea for the dessert came from evan's kitchen ramblings' Purple Sweet Potato Dessert.

Replaced linguine with angel hair since I have that at home, replaced bacon with ham because I didn't want to do any major frying and finally I replaced poached eggs with scrambled eggs since I have tried making poached eggs before and failed miserably.

Since this month is October, the time for Halloween, I thought it would be fun to do something related to pumpkin and that blue rice balls would make a nice contrast against the orange pumpkin paste.

From these... A closer look

... to this A close-up

Pasta in Cream Sauce with Ham and Scrambled Eggs (Serves 1)

Ingredients:

Some angel hair pasta 65ml cooking cream 65ml milk salt and pepper

40g ham                                                         2 eggs                                                         2 tbsp milk                                                         2 tsp butter

Method:
1.  Cut the ham into small pieces and set aside
2.  Cook the angel hair pasta in lightly salted water till al dente and arrange on a serving plate
3.  Combine cooking cream, 65ml milk and ham in a sauce pan and cook over low heat
4.  Let the mixture simmer for a while then add salt and pepper to taste
5.  Off the heat and pour sauce over the angel hair pasta
6.  Break two eggs into a bowl, add 2 tbsp milk, salt and pepper to taste
7.  Whisk the egg mixture till foamy
8.  Heat butter in a frying pan on medium heat and swirl it around so that it coats the entire pan
9.  Flick a few drops of tap water into the pan to test the heat
10.  If water sizzles and evaporate, lower the heat and pour in the egg mixture
11.  When egg begin to set, gently pull and egg across the pan to form large soft curds
12.  Continue cooking - pulling, lifting and folding eggs while tilting the pan to let liquid egg flow out - until thickened and no visible liquid egg remains
13.  Off the heat, remove the egg from the pan before losing the moist appearance and arrange on the angel hair pasta

1/4 of a pumpkin Nice combination

Some blue rice balls What a contrast

Creamy Pumpkin Paste with Rice Balls (Serves 4)

Ingredients (Creamy Pumpkin Paste): 500g pumpkin, seeds remove 50ml cooking cream 2 tbsp milk 4 tbsp sugar

Ingredients (12 Blue Rice Balls):                                   25g glutinous rice flour                                   1 tsp sugar                                    hot water                                    a drop of blue food coloring

Method:
1.  Cut pumpkin into chunks and steam till soften
2.  Once pumpkin is cooled enough to handle, remove the skin
3.  Combine the soft pumpkin pieces and cooking cream in a blender and blend till smooth
4.  Pour pumpkin mixture, milk and sugar into a sauce pan and cook over low heat*
5.  Stir constantly till sugar dissolved
6.  Off the heat and pour the mixture into serving bowls
7.  Mix glutinous rice flour with sugar
8.  Add a drop of blue food coloring to the hot water to make a light blue solution
9.  Add the hot blue solution little by little to the mixture and knead the dough with hands
10.  Tear out some dough and roll it between the palms to make rice balls
11.  Bring some water to a boil in a pot and add in the rice balls
12.  When the rice balls float, remove them from pot and arrange them on the pumpkin paste

* You can adjust the amount of milk and sugar to the level of consistency and taste that you like

16 Sep 12 (Sun) - Swedish Meatballs in MacDonald's Curry Sauce and Reduced-fat & Calorie Coleslaw

Once in a while I will crave for the IKEA's meatballs and then I will have to make a trip to the Alexandra IKEA just to satisfy the craving. Have been curious about how to go about cooking these meatballs and hence prompted me to google for the recipe. Found one by IKEA Hackers and decided to give it a try. A couple of the ingredients were giving me headaches, such as the rusk flour and white flour.

After some research, I decided to substitute rusk flour with panko and white flour with corn flour. A visit to a colleague's workstation last Friday and saw stacks of MacDonald's curry sauce, she offered them to me saying that they will go to the bin when they expire so why not I take them and see if I have any use for them. Then the picture of the Meatball in Japanese Curry Sauce by Mmmm! Meats Marinates & Much More came to mind. Excellent! I don't have to cook the cream sauce then.

Got up early to start the cooking and what should be a short preparation time became unexpectedly long due to a stubborn potato that simply refuse to get much softer after boiling it for so long. In the end, my mash potatoes contained a few big pieces of potatoes.

Then instead of the 250g minced beef and 250g minced pork that the recipe called for, I only had 200g each. Added 200ml milk and water to the mixture and turned out that the mixture was a bit too wet such that I had problem shaping the mixture into round balls. When I was frying them, instead of being round shape, they became slightly flat.

After I was done frying the meatballs, opened three packs of the MacDonald's curry sauce, added a bit of water to dilute it so that it would not be too thick and then popped a few meatballs into the sauce. The result wasn't too bad but could have been better if I had added less milk and water. 

Swedish Meatballs +

MacDonald's Curry Sauce =

Swedish Meatballs in MacDonald's Curry Sauce

Then found a quarter of a round cabbage and a few baby carrots in the fridge and decided to make the coleslaw found in Dr. Oz's website with a couple of modifications such as omitting buttermilk and white vinegar since I don't have those.

Ingredients:

1/4 round cabbage, finely minced

1/2 big onion, finely minced

6 baby carrots, finely minced

1 tbsp plus 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp plus 1/2 tsp white sugar

1/4 cup low-fat milk

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/4 tsp salt

a dash of ground black pepper

a dash of lemon juice

Method:

1.  Combine mayonnaise, milk, sugar, vinegar, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a large bowl

2.  Whisk them well and until sugar dissolved

3.  Add cabbage, carrot and onion to the mixture and toss well

4.  Cover and chill for at least 2 hours before serving or chill overnight for better result

17 Jun 12 (Sun) - Aglio Olio 4-Cheese Ravioli and Black Glutinious Rice Porridge Ice Cream [Bubur Pulut Hitam Es Krim] (黑糯米粥冰淇淋)

While doing marketing at Carrefour last Friday, I bought a pack of ravioli. The packaging was in French so I could not read how to prepare the ravioli. Therefore, I had to cook it my own way by just boiling them. Since I didn't get any cream sauce or tomato sauce, hence had to just make the ravioli the aglio olio way. Hrm... I still miss the one I had from "Lavelle Street Café" in Advancetown, Brisbane.

  

Yesterday made bubur pulut hitam ice cream so today took it out from the freezer to try. It was very hard and I had to thaw it for about 10 minutes before it can be scoop easily. Taste wise, the bubur pulut hitam taste was not intense and I think it would have been better if I had put less of the glutinous rice and added the syrup instead because texture wise, I think it is tiring for the jaw to have to chew the glutinous rice. Did try to blend the mixture yesterday hoping to breakdown the glutinous rice to smaller bits but wasn't very successful. Hrm... Maybe I should have made them into popsicle instead just like the red bean potong.

Ingredients:
1 cup black glutinous rice porridge*
140ml evaporated milk
200ml coconut milk
6 tsp icing sugar

Method:

1.  Mix all ingredients together in a blender and blend for 3 minutes
2.  Pour into a container of your choice and put into the freezer
3.  Take out after 2 hours to churn
4.  Repeat for another 2-3 times and leave in the freezer to freeze overnight

* About 50g of black glutinous rice yield one cup

10 Jun 12 (Sun) - Rosti (Happycall Version #2)

About three months ago, I tried cooking rosti using the Happycall pan and commented that it was no difference from using normal non-stick pan coz I still had to put oil and flip the rosti using the usual method. Recently, while browsing the Munch Ministry website, I saw a rosti recipe cooked using the Happycall pan posted by a member. The recipe states that potatoes don't have to be cooked beforehand and no oil is added. So I tried it out today and the result?

The rosti was was very soft and there were a lot of water droplets on the cover of the pan when I opened it after four minutes. Tried to flip the rosti over by flipping the pan and the rosti was still stuck to the top side of the pan. So had to flip the pan back and try to unstick the rosti from the pan. Then drizzled some oil over the rosti before flipping the pan over and cooked with the cover open. It took quite a while for the rosti to be crispy and the end result was not the same as those from my own recipe.

Also after I was done with the first rosti,  when I wanted to add the rest of the shredded potatoes into the pan, I saw brown liquid collected at the base of the pot where I put the shredded potatoes. I wonder what has caused that to happen. Could it be due to the types of potatoes used or coz of the fact that they were raw? Overall, the method of cooking didn't differ much from my own. I would prefer to cook the potatoes beforehand coz I find that the resulted rostis have a lighter texture instead of being compact and dense.

Shredded Potatoes

First Rosti

Second Rosti

12 May 12 (Sat) - Capcicum Eggs with Sausages and Celery Salad, Japanese Sweet Potato and Butternut Pumpkin Paste

Saw the link on bell pepper egg posted by the Munch Ministry a few days ago and decided to try it over this weekend. Met up with a friend on Thursday for the movie, The Avengers, and told her about the recipe. She suggested doing it as scrambled egg with toppings rather than sunny side up. Wanted to try cooking celery for sometime so figured that I could add celery bits as part of the recipe.

While doing marketing in NTUC last evening, I saw a packed quartered butternut pumpkin and bought that without knowing how to cook it. Googled for recipes on how to cook butternut pumpkin and most of them were either roasting or making it into soup. In the end, I decided to cook it as a dessert with the Japanese sweet potatoes in the fridge.

Set off to work after eating breakfast this morning, cut the capcicum into 1/2" rings, diced some of the leftover capcicum, carrot and celery. Then heat up the Happycall Pan and started cooking. My cutting skill wasn't fantastic and so the sides of the capcicum ring were not really even, hence, when I poured the beaten egg into the rings, it leaked and spread across the pan. Fortunately, as the base started to get cooked, I could continue to top up the rings.

Conitnued with the cooking of the sausages and salad, then arranged everything on a serving plate to take some photos.

From these...

... to this.

Capcicum Egg with Sausages and Celery Salad

Ingredients:
2 eggs
2 sausages
1 red capcicum
2 tsp olive oil
salt and pepper
sliced celery
diced carrot and red capcicum
some finely diced celery, red capcicum and carrot

Method:
1.  Slice red capcicum into two 1/2" thick rings and remove the inner part
2.  Crack eggs into a bowl, season with salt and pepper
3.  Add the finely diced celery, red capcicum and carrot to the egg and beat together
4.  Heat 2 tsp olive oil in the Happycall pan over low heat and cook the red capcicum rings for 2 minutes on one side
5.  Flip the rings over and pour the beaten eggs very slowly into the middle of the rings till full
6.  Cover and lock the pan to cook for 4-5 minutes
7.  Open the cover to check that the egg is firm
8.  Flip the egg rings over, add the 2 sausages into the pan and cook for another 2-3 minutes
9.  Remove egg rings and sausages from pan, arrange onto a serving plate and wipe the pan clean with a kitchen towel
10.  Add the sliced celery, diced carrot and red capcicum into the pan and sprinkle some salt over them
11.  Cover and lock the pan to cook for 1-2 minutes
12.  Remove the vegetables from the pan, arrange them onto the side of the same serving plate and drizzle some mayonnaise

After that, I went on to peel and cut the Japanese sweet potatoes and the butternut pumpkin. Boiled them in a pot of water till they became very tender. Took them out, mashed them, added some sugar before using the Happycall pan to fry them with some oil.

Butternut Pumpkin also known as Butternut Squash

Butternut Pumpkin Paste

Japanese Sweet Potato Paste

The ultimate combination!

Japanese Sweet Potato and Butternut Pumpkin Paste

Ingredients:
2 Japanese sweet potatoes - skinned and cut into cubes
1/4 butternut pumpkin - skinned and cut into cubes
2 heap tbsp sugar
4 tbsp oil
some sliced shallots

Method:
1.  Boil the sweet potatoes and butternut pumpkin cubes in a pot of water till tender
2.  Remove the cubes from the water and separate them into two bowls
3.  Mash the sweet potatoes with a fork and fold in 1 heap tbsp sugar*
4.  Do likewise for the butternut pumpkin
5.  Heat up the oil in Happycall pan to fry the shallots till they turn brown
6.  Separate the fried shallots from the oil
7.  Add the mashed sweet potatoes into the oil and start stirring with the spatula till it absorbs all the oil and forms a smooth paste**
8.  Remove the paste from the pan and set aside
9.  Add the mashed butternut pumpkin into the pan and stir for a few minutes till it thicken slightly into a paste
10.  Remove the paste and set aside
11.  Scoop some sweet potato paste and pumpkin paste into a serving bowl and garnish with fried shallots

*  You can adjust the amount of sugar according to your taste
** You can add more oil if it still doesn't form a smooth paste

Recipe for Japanese Sweet Potato and Butternut Pumpkin Paste submitted to Munch Ministry

10 Mar 12 (Sat) - Poached Pear with White Fungus in Osmanthus Syrup and Buttermilk Cereal Chicken Wings

Still crazy about Happycall Pan and so planned the dishes since mid-week. As I was also going to visit a friend, LL, with another friend, TS, hence made dessert to bring along. LL has very weak stomach and so I had to be very careful with the dessert selection. Finally recalled the poached pear recipe that I used to make for my parents. However, ST requested not to add Korean ginseng powder and so I substituted it with Osmanthus flowers instead.

From this...

... to this.

Ingredients (Serves 4):

1 bowl of pre-soaked white fungus
1 yellow-skinned Chinese pear
1.5 tsp osmanthus flowers*
10 seedless red dates
1 tsp rice wine
1/2 cup sugar
250ml water

Method:
1.  Peel the pear and rinse it in water and lemon juice to prevent browning
2.  Cut the pear into quarters, remove the core and set aside
3.  Put water, sugar and osmanthus flowers in a pot and heat till sugar dissolves
4.  Add in red dates, white fungus and rice wine and bring to a boil
5.  Place the cut pear into the pot and simmer on low heat
6.  Turn off the heat when fruit feels tender when prodded with a fork
6.  Serve warm or chill**

*  Remove any small stalks and rinse the osmanthus flowers using a strainer
** Chill in the fridge for a few hours or overnight

Done with dessert and I went on to do the buttermilk cereal chicken, a recipe I found in Cuisine Paradise and also found in Munch Ministry. As I didn't want to buy a whole pack of buttermilk, I decided to make my own. Didn't want to get a big pack of plain flour, I ran out of cornflour and so had to use self-rising flour instead. The result? Oh well... The winglets weren't as nice as those featured in the Cuisine Paradise website coz the skins dropped off from a couple of the winglets.

Buttermilk Cereal Chicken

Ingredients:
6 mid-joint chicken wings
1.5 cups cornflakes
1/2 cup buttermilk*
1/4 cup self-rising flour
Salt and pepper
Cooking oil

Method:
1.  Crush cornflakes into crumbs using hand
2.  Add in salt and pepper and stir till well combined
3.  Place self-rising flour and buttermilk in separate shallow dishes
4.  Coat chicken winglets one at a time with flour then buttermilk then cornflake crumbs
5.  Lightly oil Happycall Pan and preheat on low heat for 30 secs
6.  Place winglets in the pan, lock and cook for 5 mins before flipping over and cook for another 5 mins
7.  Repeat a few times for a total of 20 mins or untill golden and cooked through
8.  Turn off the heat and arrange on a plate to serve with chili sauce and mayonnaise

* 1/2 tbsp lemon juice with 7.5 tbsp milk and let it stand for 15 minutes

Recipe for Poached Pear with White Fungus in Osmanthus Syrup submitted to Munch Ministry