Munch Ministry Homecooks Spotlight Interview

Was invited by Pauline Wong of the Munch Ministry to be featured in their Homecooks Spotlight back in late May shortly after I setup a Facebook page for my blog. Felt really happy to be invited and accepted the invitation immediately. Took me about a week to reply back and have been looking forward to the article since. Finally, saw it being featured in Munch Ministry website today and was really thrilled.

To read my interview with Munch Ministry, click here.

25 May 14 (Sun) - Jackfruit Ice Cream

Still on the ice cream bandwagon and this time I used jackfruit. I used the mango ice cream recipe but with slight modification. Jackfruit is not as juicy as mango so to make it into puree, I added some low fat milk in order to jump start the blending process. The end result was still fairly good, just that the texture of the ice cream was slightly icy but at least it didn't melt very fast. Decorated the ice cream with some jackfruit puree, orange rinds and glazed cherry and voila!

Ingredients:

200ml whipping cream

185g jackfruit puree*

85g icing sugar

Method:

1.  Whisk whipping cream till foamy for about 3 mins

2.  Add icing sugar in three batches and whisk the mixture after every addition

3.  Add jackfruit puree and whisk till well combined

4.  Pour mixture into a container of your choice and put into the freezer

5.  Remove from freezer after 2 hours to churn** with a fork

6.  Repeat step (5) for another two times before freezing it overnight

* Use about 130g-140g of jackfruit (seeds removed) with 4 tbsp low fat milk to blend into puree. Save any leftover puree for decoration

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

---------------- Edited on 27 May 2014 ----------------

Brought half of the ice cream to office for my group of food buddies to try and the feedback was that the creamy taste was not overpowering and jackfruit bits added texture to the ice cream.

Recipe featured in Munch Ministry's Homecooks Spotlight

18 May 14 (Sun) - Mango Ice Cream

Recently a friend posted a photo of the chocolate ice cream that she made and it reminded me that it has been quite a while since my last attempt on ice cream making. So after that day, I brainstormed on what ice cream I can try. Corn ice cream and matcha ice cream came to mind but they flew out of my head after I saw some nice rainbow mangoes from Thailand in NTUC selling at $1.20 each.

Bought two mangoes plus a packet of whipping cream and transformed them into mango ice cream. The end result turned out to be surprisingly good with the right texture and taste. And guess what? It's only using three ingredients!

Ingredients:

200ml whipping cream

150g mango puree

80g icing sugar

Method:

1.  Whisk whipping cream till foamy for about 3 mins

2.  Add icing sugar in three batches and whisk the mixture after every addition

3.  Add mango puree and whisk till well combined

4.  Pour mixture into a container of your choice and put into the freezer

5.  Remove from freezer after 2 hours to churn* with a fork

6.  Repeat step (5) for another two times 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

One thing I learn from this experience is that by churning the mixture in a whisking manner to incorporate as much air as possible into the mixture create a closer texture to the commercially made ice cream. Decorated the ice cream with some dice mango, orange rinds and glazed cherry and presto!

---------------- Edited on 19 May 2014 ----------------

Brought half of the ice cream to office for my group of food buddies to try and it received many positive reviews.

CC and TYY said “Yummy” while NYP exclaimed loudly over the panel that it was really "authentic" and "can really taste the mango". This goes to show that even simple ingredients can be transformed into delicious food.

Recipe submitted to Munch Ministry

5 Apr 14 (Sat) - Seafood Paella and Orange-Lemon-Honey Drink

Had this craving for seafood paella for quite a while and finally decided to make it today. Made some adjustments to the amount of ingredients that I had used previously and the result turned out to be much better.

I made the seafood broth using four mussels with shells and 400ml water. Brought the broth to a boil before simmering it for about 10-15 minutes. While simmering the broth, grated half of the yellow onion, one small tomato, minced two cloves of garlic, washed the mussels, scallops, cooked crab meat and rice. Previously I used 300g of rice so this time I reduced it to 200g and soaked it for about 10-15 minutes before using.

After the broth was done, I started the actual cooking using the Happycall Pan as a paella pan. Heated up the pan, pour in some olive oil, fried the grated onion till soft and brown before adding the tomato pulp, minced garlic and rice. Fried on high heat for a couple of minutes then spread the rice across the pan before adding in the broth. I used some broth to dissolve the seasoning before adding into the pan and then added the rest of the broth into the pan to cover the rice. Brought it to boil before lowering the heat to let it simmer and this time I didn’t shift the pan much during the cooking. So I was able to use the time to make the detox juice – Orange-Lemon-Honey drink.

Seafood Paella in Happycall Pan

Orange-Lemon-Honey Drink

When the rice was soften, arranged the scallops and mussels on the rice and cover the pan again to cook for a few more minutes. Finally added in the crab meat, covered the pan, cooked it for another minute before turning off the heat and let it stand.

Orange-Lemon-Honey Drink (Serves 2)

Ingredients:

2 Sunkist Cara Cara Oranges, peeled and cut into small pieces

Juice from 1/2 a lemon

2 tbsp honey

Method:

1.  Blend oranges and lemon juice together till smooth

2.  Add honey and blend for 1 minute before serving

The seafood paella looked good and tasted better than my previous attempt. Took some photos of the fruit of my labour before eating it together with my detox drink.

2 Mar 14 (Sun) - Cordyceps Flower Steamed Chicken Thigh and Orange Sunriser

Still on the cordyceps flower bandwagon and today I used it to steam chicken thigh. The end result was really good and I think maybe next time I can add a bit of Chinese wine towards the end of the steaming to make it more fragrant.

Again the recipe is based entirely on my own estimations.

Ingredients:

1 chicken thigh

8g cordyceps flower

4 red dates

1 tsp wolfberries

1 small ginseng, break to 3 parts

salt

Method:

1.  Clean the chicken thigh, remove all visible fats and marinate with some salt for 15 mins

2.  Soak cordyceps flower in hot water for 15 mins and drain

3.  Soak red dates for 15 mins and cut to 3 parts each

4.  Rinse wolfberries and ginseng parts

5.  Place chicken thigh on steaming dish, arrange cordyceps flower, red dates, wolfberries and ginseng on top and around the chicken thigh

6.  Steam chicken thigh over med-low heat for 15 mins or until meat is cooked

7.  Remove from heat and serve warm

Saw an interesting recipe called Orange Sunriser in a catalog featuring Philips electrical products and decided to give it a try since I have the necessary ingredients. The result didn't turn out the way I had imagined it to be. Perhaps I had added too much orange juice when I blended the frozen strawberries or my blender just wasn't meant for this. Though it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to be, fortunately the taste was good.

Ingredients (Serves 1):

2 sunkist 3107 oranges

5 frozen strawberries*

1 tsp sugar

Method:

1.  Juice the oranges and set aside

2.  Blend the frozen strawberries with sugar and 1 tbsp of orange juice until the consistency is that of a frozen slush

3.  Fill a glass with orange juice till 3/4 full and fill the remaining 1/4 with the strawberry frozen slush

4.  Serve with a straw

* Remove the leaves before freezing

1 Mar 14 (Sat) - Spare Ribs Cordyceps Flower Soup and Steamed Osmanthus Red Snapper

Saw Ellena Guan of Cuisine Paradise posting photos of dishes cooked using cordyceps flower and got curious about that ingredient. Happened to be in Chinatown for an excursion last Thursday and popped into a shop to check that out. Bought a small pack to try and then went on to check on the various recipes using cordyceps flower.

Cordyceps Flower

Found a few soup recipes that use chicken as the base so in the end decided to follow Cuisine Paradise' Double-boiled Cordyceps Flower Herbal Soup recipe. As I don't own a double-boiled pot nor a slow cooker and I didn't want to use chicken as base, I had to do some modifications to the recipe. So the end result was entirely based on my own estimations which fortunately didn't turn out too bad.

Ingredients:

$2 worth spare ribs

8g cordyceps flower

4 rice bowls of water

1 tsp wolfberries

8g dried longan

4 red dates

1 small ginseng, break into 3 parts

Method:

1.  Clean, rinse and blanch spare ribs in boiling water for 2 mins then rinse and set aside

2.  Rinse all the herbs and set aside

3.  Bring water to a boil and add in all the ingredients

4.  Boil the soup over med-low heat till left with two bowls of soup

5.  Season soup with salt according to taste and serve warm

Attempted the Steamed Osmanthus Cod Fish recipe from Cuisine Paradise again but this time I used red snapper fillet instead. Cooked some vegetables with oyster sauce and all these became my  meals for the day.

A little basic knowledge of cordyceps flower - Its actual name is called Cordyceps Militaris. It is not the flower of Cordyceps Sinensis but is a cultured mushroom fungus that has similar medicinal value as cordyceps. It is believed that this herb helps to strengthen the lung; kidneys and liver thus improve the body’s immune system as a whole.

Some said health benefits of the Cordyceps Flower:

• Improve respiratory function to treat asthma, cough, emphysema, bronchitis
• Improve kidney, boost energy and improve brain memory
• Improve liver function to treat hepatitis
• Reduce blood sugar, urine sugar
• Reduce blood pressure and ease hypertension, thrombus diseases
• Reduce heart disease risk, numbness of hands or feet
• Antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer
• Antioxidant and anti-aging
• Enhance overall immune system

9 Feb 14 (Sun) - Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Actually did the ice cream yesterday but have to freeze overnight for it to set. The recipe originated from Cuisine Paradise's Eggless Dark Chocolate Ice-Cream. I merely substituted two items because I didn't have them and added some chocolate chips into it.

The result is indeed very creamy like those commercial ones even without using egg. I guess the secret is the melted dark chocolate in the recipe that makes it creamy. However, the ice cream melts super fast and I wonder if it was because I substituted the brand of cocoa power and the type of chocolate.

From these...

... to this...

Creamy-but-melt-super-fast

Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Ingredients (Serves 4-6):

20g O'boy Cocoa Powder, sieved

90g Hershey's Mini Chips Semi-Sweet Chocolate

65g Castor Sugar 

200ml Whipping Cream

125ml Fresh Milk

A bunch of Hershey's Mini Chips Semi-Sweet Chocolate

Method:

1.  Add whipping cream, cocoa powder, sugar in a pot

2.  Whisk the mixture over medium heat till sugar melts and well combined

3.  Bring mixture to a gentle boil and stirring constantly

4.  Remove from heat and whisk in the mini chips till completely melted

5.  Whisk in fresh milk till mixture is glossy and set aside to cool

6.  Transfer the mixture to a container of your choice and put into the freezer

7.  Take out after four hours to add in the rest of the mini chips and churn with a spoon

8.  Return the mixture to the freezer and leave it to freeze overnight

8 Feb 14 (Sat) - Sunkist Orange Steamed Egg Custard (新奇士橙炖蛋)

First post in the year 2014 and in the year of the Horse! Today I made Sunkist Orange Steamed Egg Custard (新奇士橙炖蛋). Got the idea from one of the food item I saw on the River Hongbao 2014 website. According to the website, this dessert is a healthy dessert eaten by most Yunan women because it is rich in protein, amino acids, vitamin A and B, calcium, iron, etc. and is good for rheumatism, enhance immunity, soften blood vessels, promote digestion and absorption, etc. (sorry, unable to translate all of the explanation).

Finally, this!

Ingredients:

1 Sunkist Orange*

1 Egg

150ml Fresh Milk

20g Sugar

Method:

1.  Cut the top part of the orange to create an opening

2.  Remove the flesh of the orange and take care not to break the orange peel then set aside

3.  Beat the egg in a bowl

4.  Warm the milk in the microwave but do not boil it

5.  Add the warm milk into the beaten egg then add sugar and mix well with a fork

6.  Use a spoon to remove the foam on the surface of the egg mixture

7.  Pour the egg mixture into the empty orange peel** and cover the opening with the top part of the orange

8.  Steam it for 12mins in a pot with a lid on using medium heat

9.  Lift the lid up a bit to release some steam every 4mins

10.  Off the heat after 12mins and serve hot or chilled

*   Depending on the size of the orange, it may be necessary to use two oranges instead.

** Do not fill up to the brim because during the steaming, the egg mixture may overflow.

Recipe featured in Munch Ministry's Homecooks Spotlight

22 Dec 13 (Sun) - Rice Balls and Beef Noodle

Today marks the Arrival of Winter and so it is called the Dōngzhì Festival or Winter Solstice Festival. It usually falls three days before Christmas Day. One of the traditional activities is to make and eat tangyuan or rice balls. So to celebrate, I made rice balls in ginger soup. And to reward myself for the work done, I cooked beef noodle using the last packet of the beef powder I bought from Korea last year. Happy 冬至 everyone!

Some ingredients...

... that were used to make into these colorful balls...  

... which were then cooked in ginger soup to become tangyuan!

After the making and cooking of Tangyuan, rewarded myself with one of my comfort food, beef noodle.

And finally, I'm getting into the mood for Christmas!

A Review: A Noodle Story

Read about this ramen stall "A Noodle Story" when I was reading an article about ramen in MyPaper (page A17) today. So happened that I went to Amoy Street Food Centre for lunch with my colleague and I remembered about this stall. Managed to find it and both of us decided to give it a try. The price for a bowl of ramen range from $5-7.

Despite that it is classified under the category of ramen, the noodle was actually Chinese egg noodles. There were a lot of toppings such as Japanese char siew which was really soft and tender; hot-spring egg which was very soft and the yolk slightly runny; Hong Kong wonton with shrimps as fillings and finally the crispy potato-wrapped prawn.

The stall owner took pain to arrange the toppings and garnish very nicely which made the whole eating experience very enjoyable. The soup that came with the noodle was very tasty too. I was really very full after eating the $5 version. For those who are bigger eaters, can give the $6 and $7 versions a try. Recommended on the basis of its uniquely Singapore style.