Lotus Root Chicken Soup

My 3 kids they love to drink soup and will always ask me to cook them soup. Lotus Root Soup - one of my family's favourite and it was my elder daughter's favourite too. There is few methods to cook this soup. We can double-boiled it, cook it with the pressure cooker or just cook it the normal way. I love to cook the soup with double-boiled method as I found the soup won't dries up and manage to retained it's natural flavour. We can have very clear soup as well.

I cook this Lotus Root Soup with my pressure cooker. My kids love the peanuts to be soft and it takes longer time to cook it with normal method. I add some white radish to enhance the flavor and the soup taste sweeter too. Try it out!

Lotus Root Chicken Soup Recipe


Ingredients:

1 whole chicken, clean and cut into 4 piece
500 gm lotus root, skinned and sliced 1/2cm thick
1 white radish - about 200 gm, skinned and sliced
50g peanuts
10 red dates
1 tbsp wolfberries (optional)
some dried cuttlefish, wash and cut into smaller size
1500ml water

salt to taste


Method:

• When the water boils add in the chicken pieces, lotus roots & radish slices, peanuts, red dates, wolfberries and dried cuttlefish.
• Simmer the soup for 45 mins or till the peanuts reach our desire tenderness.
• Add salt to taste.
• Scope out the excessive oil on the soup surface and serve warm.
  

Note: If using pressure cooker, let the soup boils for 20 mins in the covered pressure cooker before turn off the fire, release it's pressure and make sure the pot really cold before open it.

AMY

Cream Puff With Fresh Strawberry

I always love to bake and cook. It has become part of my life and how I always wish that I can have more time to spent on experimenting new recipes everyday. I like to try out new recipes but my first choice of the recipe to try shall be something that my kids would enjoy eating. I have started baking cream puffs 10 years ago. It was a recipe shared by a friend of my mother in-law. I use to bake cream puffs with her recipe until recently I think I have found another great one from KITCHEN CORNER. Thank you so much Grace!!

At first I just attracted to the lovely pictures of her cream puffs, beautifully decorated with fresh berries and look so yummy. I feel like want to have a bite on it. I give her recipe a try and I think I will stick to her recipe for cream puffs now. The puff appear to be more in shape and the custard taste just nice, not too sweet and not too thick. It's just GREAT !! (*hope you know what I mean here =)

Cream Puff Recipe (Yields 20 puffs)

For the Pastry:

70g plain flour

3 beaten eggs

100g water

60g unsalted butter

Pinch of sugar and salt


Method:

• In a cooking pan bring to boil water, butter, pinch of sugar and salt. Off the heat, add in the plain flour and mix with a wooden spoon until well combine and become smooth dough.
• Add in half of the beaten eggs and keep stirring until the egg mix into the mixture. Once the eggs completely mix with the dough, you will find it quite dry and hardly to mix.
• Continue add the beaten eggs slowly, little by little into the dough and continue mixing. You might not finish using the beaten eggs.
• Control adding the eggs to get a smooth and silky consistency of the mixture. When you spoon up the mixture, it should drop back to the pan very slowly. *The mixture should not too dry or too wet
• Transfer it into a piping bag and pipe out about 20 dollops of mixture on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
  
• Dip your fingers with some water and gently touch the top of the mixture. This is to prevent it over burning while it's baking in the oven. Then spray some water on the mixture surface. (Not too much)
• Bake at 200'C preheated oven for 15 minutes until it puff up then turn the temperature to 170'C and bake for another 15 minutes. Transfer the puff on a wire rack to cool down.

For the Custard Filling:

3 egg yolks

200ml milk

60g castor sugar

20g plain flour

10g unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract/essense

Ways to cook it:

• Boil the milk with sugar in low heat until sugar dissolve but not boiling. Meanwhile, mix the egg yolks and flour into thick paste but no lumps in it. *Add two tablespoon of milk if you find it too dry to mix.

• Pour the dissolve warm sugar milk mixture into the egg yolks mixture. Pour slowly, little by little and mix with a hand whisk until everything well combine (*strain the mixture if necessary) Then, pour back the mixture into the cooking pan. Cook in very low heat and keep stirring until it thicken.

• Once the mixture thicken, remove from the heat and keep stirring until the heat slightly cool down but slightly warm. Then add in the butter and vanilla extract. Continue stirring until well combine. (*It look silky smooth at this time)

• Transfer the custard into a plate and cover with cling film. Make sure the cling film touch on the mixture, this is to prevent it from skin forming on its surface.

• To assemble the cream puffs: Spoon in some custard fillings then sandwich it with some strawberries. Chill the puffs in the fridge before serve.

p/s: This recipe needs a lot of stirring. A very good hand exercise... hahaha!


Happy Trying & Enjoy!

AMY

Double Chocolate Cupcakes

AMY

Easy Sardine Puff

I bought 3 packets of this frozen puff pastry the other day and decided to give it a try today. I made this Sardine Puff for teatime snack today. The puff turn out very crispy and flaky. I found it's a bit too oily but overall it's yummy!! Great to be eaten with a cup of hot coffee on raining day...hehe!!

I wrapped the puffs this way for a change, rather than wrapping it in the traditional pillow puff and surprisingly it turn out just great. I love to see how it cracked open on the top and show it's fillings.

Sardine Puffs Recipe

Ingredients:

1 packet of frozen puff pastry (I use Kawan brand, consist of 10 pieces)

1 big canned sardine in tomato sauce (remove bones, drained from the tomato sauce)
2 onion, diced
2 tsp minced garlic
1 lime, juiced
chili powder, to taste (optional)
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste

some cooking oil

Method:

• Heat a pan with oil and saute onion and garlic till fragrant. Add drained sardines in and 3 tbsp of the tomato sauce.
• Mash coarsely when cook it.
• Season with chilli powder, salt and pepper.
• Add lime juice and cook for 1 more minute or till it is dry.
• Set aside and let it cold.
• Preheat oven to 200c.
• Place some filling in the middle of each square skin (make some holes on the skin with fork) and fold the four edges to the center.
• Press the edges with our fingers to seal it.
• Glaze with some beaten egg and bake till puffed and golden in colour.

HAPPY BAKING!


AMY