25 Nov 19 (Mon) - Caramel Bread Pudding

Saw this video recipe in a Facebook group and decided to try. As usual, I played around with it. Swapped the milk with chocolate milk and replaced custard powder with cornstarch and vanilla extract.

I should have reduced the amount of sugar since the chocolate milk is sweet. Don't know why but I can't blend the bread into fine powder like those in the video. Wonder if it was because the bread I used was three days old.

24 Nov 19 (Sun) - Korean Ginseng Black Chicken Soup

Bought some fresh Korean ginseng from recent trip to Busan and my little big sis used it to cook Korean Ginseng Chicken Soup using the recipe from The Burning Kitchen.

We used two Korean ginseng roots instead of one because the ones I bought were rather skinny. Not sure if we had added too much water or the ginseng roots I bought were not good enough, the ginseng taste wasn't strong.

Not satisfied with the result, so decided to try again today but with a twist and some tweaks. Yes, I like to play with my food. Kekeke... Instead of large chicken, I used a small black chicken; instead of white glutinous rice, I used black glutinous rice; instead of ginger slices, I used ginger powder and I managed to get fresh chestnuts from the wet market.

Because of this recipe, I went to buy a new pot so that I can use it on the larger ring of my induction cooker. Hrm... I guess the pot width is too wide, I had to add a lot of water in order to cover the chicken and already I didn't cover the chicken in full.

Instead of cooking it for four hours as stated in the recipe, I cooked it for two hours, turning the chicken now and then to cook it all around. The smell from the soup was nice, however, the taste was rather bland and not much ginseng taste. Other than that, it was still good as chicken soup, all things considered.

In order not to make the soup cloudy with all the ingredients inside the chicken, took it out on a separate bowl to remove the ingredients.

Tada, the final product. Obviously, I need to improve on my presentation. Hahaha... Just nice for a rainy weather.

07 Apr 19 (Sun) - Mango Pineapple Ginger Ice Cream

Have not been doing special cooking nor blogging in a long while. Spring is the season and mango can be seen everywhere. Bought three Thai Honey mangoes for $3.80 from NTUC simply because I could not resist the temptation. However, three mangoes were too much for me to consume, therefore, decided to use some of them to make ice cream.

To make the three ingredients mango ice cream seems a bit boring, so googled the Internet on mango pairing. Turned out that mango goes well with passion fruit, pineapple and ginger to name a few. Since I have attempted mango passion fruit ice cream before, this round decided to try mango pineapple ginger ice cream instead.

Used the improved version of the mango ice cream recipe, adjusted the ingredients and method to this new recipe.

Ingredients:

200ml whipping cream

125g diced mango
125g diced pineapple

80g icing sugar

1 tsp ginger powder

Method:

1.  Place diced mango, pineapple and ginger powder in a sauce pan and cook over med-high heat for 8-10 minutes while stirring constantly
2.  Remove from heat and set aside to cool
3.  Pour the mixture, whipping cream and 1/3 of the icing sugar in a blender and pulse 2-3 times

4.  Add another 1/3 of the icing sugar and pulse 2-3 times

5.  Add the remaining icing sugar and blend the mixture for about 10-15 seconds
6.  Pour mixture into a container of your choice and put into the freezer

7.  Remove from freezer after 3 hours to churn* with a fork

8.  Repeat step (7) for another time before freezing it overnight

* Try to churn the mixture in a whisking manner to try to incorporate as much air into the mixture as possible

The result? Rather unique because it has a layering taste of mango, pineapple with the aftertaste of ginger lingering on the tongue.

And because I have not done any special cooking for a long time, I was in the mood to do plating. Since I bought some pickled sakura flowers from my recent Osaka trip, brain-stormed for plating ideas which I can make used of them. And ta-da!