Stir-Fry Garlic Shrimp - Thai Style

Whenever I cooked this, my son will finished up 2 plates of rice or finished up all the shrimps in one meal. He is just a BIG fan of seafood. He loves shirmps, just cooked it in anyway - dried tomyam shirmp, assam shrimp and curry shrimp etc, the list goes on & on. When I found out that he got no appetite for food recently, due to his over-packed schedule at school - extra classes after school everyday, tuition classes to attend, school outdoor activities like sports and various society he joined ~ oh gosh!!! that's tiring and I'm tired as his driver as well. Actually, I cook this shrimp specially just for him (shhh!!!...don't let my 2 girls hear this )

He "finished" up all the food - not even a single rice left, I bring for him that day. I filled in extra more rice, 6 garlic shrimps, stir-fried cabbage, some sweet and sour fish that my mom cook in the bento (lunchbox) for him and include a bottle of cultured milk drink - Vitagen as well. Ya, this dish really boost up his appetite (grinned happily..)

Sweet, yet mildly spicy and garlicky, it's the perfect dish. Here is recipe for this sumptuous & succulent garlic shirmp:

Ingredients:
15-20 medium shrimp/prawns, shelled-left only it's tail
2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
7-8 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp oil for stir-frying
1 fresh red chili, minced (optional) - i use 1/2

For Garnishing:

lime or lemon, wedges
handful of fresh coriander

What to do!

If the shrimp are shelled or raw, remove all of the shell up to the tail (leaving the tail on makes them easier to eat).

Devein the shrimp by running a sharp knife along the spine of the shrimp to remove the black "vein".

Marinade the shrimps with oyster sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar, minced garlic, lime juice and fresh chili (if using). Stir well to coat.

Heat some oil in a wok or frying pan. When it's hot, add the shrimp (with the marinade).

Stir-fry 2-3 minutes, or until shrimp are plump and turn pink (also lightly browned from the sauce). Do not overcook it, or the shrimps will turn rubbery.

Garnish shrimps with lime wedges, some red chilies stripes and coriander leaves. Served warm with rice.

Notes: Squeeze in more lime juice if prefer a more sourish taste and for those who loves spicy food, add in some "chili paddy" (small chilies) chunks in it. My recipe up there are suitable for kids, very mildly spicy. No salt are added because the fish sauce, soy sauce and oyster sauce used produce the salty taste to the dish already.

Happy Cooking! 

Chicken Pie

The chicken pie made by Fad Mom really makes me salivating, you can view it HERE ~ I love savoury pastry. Immediately, it drives me to DIY my own version of chicken pie as well. Recently I'm really into pastry making, it's really easy to prepare and the results never upsets me ☻ I always believe the recipe shared by Fad Mom, she just got the same taste buds as me and I just proceed with the DIY pastry recipe she use from Baking Mum. Ya, her recipe is SUPER EASY. I got the pie dough ready in less than 15mins and put it in the fridge before I started to work on the pie's filling.

As for the pie's filling I've followed Fad Mom using the chicken thigh's meat as it'll be more tender and delicious but I marinate & cook it my own way. You may marinate the chicken according to your preferred seasoning - it is flexible. I prefer the dry version of filling and using less ingredient on it. Simple is just as nice !!

"Look at those chicken pies" ~☻ It doesn't look like my work at all...hahaha!!! Yay, my kids offered to help me fill the pie filling and do the pattern on it. They are just creative right???

What you need for the pastry???

DIY pastry recipe from Baking Mum:
250 g plain/all purpose flour
200 g butter, softened
110 g plain yoghurt
1 egg yolk
1 tsp sugar (optional)
pinch of salt

What to do?

Put all the ingredients into the mixing bowl except yoghurt, and mix to a crumble. Add in yoghurt and mix to a dough. Dough will be very soft, so need to keep it refrigerated for at least 30 mins.

While the dough are in the fridge, we can start to get the chicken pie fillings ready. I marinate the chicken for the pie with some seasoning overnight. It's a very simple way of marinating and delicious pie fillings that you can try. I don't have any particular flavor for the chicken, just mix and match with some seasoning I have in my kitchen ☻

My recipe for the Chicken Pie's Filling:

400~500 g chicken thigh/chicken breast (boned in, skinned & diced)
1 carrot, skinned (diced)
1 large onion (diced)
120 g button mushroom (blanch & sliced)
*2 tbsp olive oil for stir-frying the chicken*

Marinade the chicken with:

1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp Knorr's Chicken Seasoning Powder
Few shakes Garlic salt (to taste)
Few shakes Parsley flakes
1 tsp sesame oil
some pepper

1 tbsp corn fllour mix with 3 tbsp of water (to thicken the gravy)

1 egg (beaten) - for glazing

What to do?

Heat a non-stick pan with olive oil. Saute diced onion till it's fragrant and soft.

Add the diced carrots and continue cook for a while. Stir in the chicken continue to cook till it's juices are sealed and in medium heat. I didn't add water because the onion, carrot and chicken will produce water when we cook them. Taste the chicken and see if it's up to your preferred taste.

Add in mushroom slices, stir to mix with the chicken. By this time, it'll be a bit dry. Pour in the cornflour mixture and give it a quick stir to thicken it. Voila~ the pie filling are ready.

Okay, the FUN part of making pie. All my kids offer themselves want to help me with this. It's just like another clay shaping session for them.

To assemble the pie:

1. Preheat oven at 180c.
2. The recipes above yield 5 pies of 4"/10cm mini mould I use.
3. Roll the pie dough on the floured marble surface about 1/4cm thick, as long as it won't tear when we lift them up.
4. Line it in the mould with extra hanging out. Slightly press lightly to the shape of the mould used.
5. Cut the excess dough with scissor followed the shape of the mould.
6. Fill in the pie fillings. Cover it with another rolled dough on top and cut the excessive dough follow the shape of the mould.
7. Press the edges of pie with the back of fork to stick them together and on top of the pie, make some holes using the fork. This is to let the steam released when we bake it.

Glaze the pie with beaten egg and baked it at 180c for 35~40mins or when the pie turns brown, it's done.

Note: The crust are nice... it's slightly crunchy on the top and soft at it's bottom. It's firm and won't breaks easily, that's the crust of chicken pie should...and I omit the teaspoon of sugar in the recipe. I make this for supper last night. The pies are all snapped up in 30 mins time. Guess what??? After finished doing all the washing, it's almost midnight ~ poor me!!!! ☻

Meat Frankfurter Rolls

Feeling lazy to cook?? The kids getting bored eating rice everyday??? This is what I cook for lunch today. Ya, I admit of being lazy ~ lol ☻ My kids sometimes get bored with rice and they're asking for something new. Bread?? yay~ it's their favourites!! But, I can't just let them eat the bread with peanut butter or jam alone. I have to make sure they got a proper meal even they are just having bread as lunch. What I do is, I make this meat and vegetables as the fillings for the bread, it's more healthy and the kids loves it lots.

It makes a perfect meal when served with baked potatoes and some french fries. We can have some vegetable salad as side dishes too.

Here is the recipe for this quick & easy meal.

What you need!

4 Gardenia Frankfurter Rolls/buns, cut a line at the center
1 tbsp butter


Ingredients for the fillings

200 g loin pork meat/chicken breast (diced)
1 medium onion (diced)
1 medium tomato (diced)
1/2 tsp or more ground black pepper (add more if u like more black pepper taste)
1 tbsp bean paste ("tao cheong")
1 tbsp sugar
few shakes of Italian herbs
salt to taste (if the bean paste are salty enough, just omit the salt)
1 tsp of corn flour mix with 1 tbsp of water
1 tbsp olive oil

What to do?

Marinate the diced loin meat with black pepper and italian herbs for at least 20 mins.
Heat the non-stick pan. Add some butter and heat the bread till it's slightly brown.
Add in the olive oil and stir fried the onion till it's soft. Stir in the diced loin meat. Cook for a while.
When the meat started to turn white colour, add in a tablespoon of bean paste. Continue to stir it till it's a bit dry.
Add in the diced tomato, continue to stir and add in all the seasoning - sugar & salt to taste.
Stir in the corn flour mix to thicken it.

Fill the meat fillings on the bread. Yay~ you can have a bite on it now!! ☻

Slurpssss...it's simply yummilicious!!

Notes: Becareful when adding the bean paste, try 1/2 tbsp first and taste the cooking before you add more of it. Different brand of bean paste have different saltiness taste. We can add cubed carrots, corns, mushrooms, green peas as well to your preference. I just cook this with what available in my fridge ☻

Egg Tarts

All my kids are a big fan of Egg Tarts, they just love it so much. Each of them can finished up to 3 tarts at one time and sometimes asking for more. One egg tart are selling at 80cents at the market, not to mentioned the one sold in the bakery and see how much I have to spent for just the egg tarts for them. Egg tarts are the must-learn recipe for me and when I came across this easy yet simple egg tart recipe at Let's Get Wokking!, I bookmarked it immediately☻ After getting all the ingredients and the egg tart's mould. I start working on the pastry in the morning and sit them on the fridge first before I sent the kids to the tuition classes.

The egg tarts turn out great apart from it's a bit too brown to compare with the one made by WokkingMum. I think I shall reduce the temperature to 160c next time. It taste extremely yummy, crunchy pastry with the jelly soft egg custard fillings...yumm!!! It taste heavenly when you took a bite on it when it's still warm. Taste wise, not too sweet to my liking. I add a tablespoon of custard powder in the egg mixture for the tart's filling and the tarts looked amazingly golden yellow in colour. I will definitely make this again very soon ☻

Let me share the recipe here:

What you need!

Ingredients For Crust

• 340 g Cake Flour/Plain Flour
• 230 g Butter, softened
• 70 g Caster Sugar
• 1/2 Egg, beaten

Ingredients For Custard Fillings

• 3 Eggs
• 80 g Caster Sugar
• 70 ml Milk
• 230 ml Water
• 1 tbsp Custard Powder

What to do!

1. Cream butter and sugar with mixer.
2. Add egg and mix till it's well combined.
3. Add flour and mix into dough.
4. Put the dough in a bowl, cover it with cling wrap and keep in the fridge for 30mins.
5. While the dough are refrigerated, whisk the eggs, sugar and custard powder for custard fillings until thick and creamy.
6. Add milk to the mixture and continue to whisk until well-combined.
7. Add water gradually and continue to whisk together. Set aside.
8. Now the crust shall be ready. Weight dough into 30g each (depend to the size of mould used).
9. Roll it into ball, flattened it with our palm and press it into egg tart's mould. It's about 1/2cm thick.
10. Spoon the custard fillings. Becareful not to drop the filling mixture at the side of the crust as it will turn brown when we bake it later.
11. Bake the tarts in preheat oven at 180c for 25 mins, till the crust slightly brown and the egg custard is set.
12. Wait till it's cool before turning the mould upside down to remove them.

Notes: I add one tablespoon of custard powder in the filling's mixture to get the more yellow colour of tarts. Don't worry if the filling are still soft when you finished baking the tarts, it'll set when the tarts are slight cool down. Make sure the tarts are cool already when you remove them from the mould. The tarts that's still hot breaks easily.

Makes approximately 18-20 tarts. I got 19 tarts using the 5cm size mould ☻

Happy Baking!

Sweet Potato Ondeh-Ondeh

Ondeh-Ondeh have been my favourite nyonya kuih since my younger days. I still remember I will buy this ondeh-ondeh in my school canteen almost everyday. At that time, they sell six ondeh-ondeh for only 20cent, that's really cheap!!! ☻ The ondeh-ondeh I used to eat is the one made from glutinous rice flour dough wrapped with chopped Gula Melaka which is totally different with the one I make today. I came through this special sweet potato ondeh-ondeh with coconut fried with gula melaka fillings recipe at Baking Mom and decided to give it a try.

I use the purple coloured potato to make my ondeh-ondeh. I always prefer the purple fleshed sweet potatoes, it's soft and sweet. We can just steamed or grilled it and eat them topped with some honey or sugar.

Here is the Ondeh-Ondeh recipe from Baking Mum: Do give it a try!!! ☻



What you need!

600 g sweet potato, steamed & mashed
150 g tapioca flour
3 tbsp caster sugar
2 tbsp pandan (screwpine) juice or 1 tsp pandan extract
1 tsp green colouring (optional)- if the sweet potato used have no colour
1/4 cup water
250 g (about 1/2 big coconut) shredded coconut, add 1/2 tsp salt and steamed

Filling:

250 g Gula Melaka (palm sugar)
3 tbsp caster sugar
2 tbsp water
1/2 tsp salt 1 coconut, shredded-use only the white part of the flesh
1 tbsp corn flour mix with 2 tbsp water


What to do:

Boil a big pot of water. While waiting for the water to boil.

In a big bowl, mix mashed potatoes, tapioca flour, sugar, pandan juice and knead it into dough. Add water 2 tbsp at a time, slowly knead the until the dough are soft not too dry or sticky and can roll into a ball.

Roll the dough into small ball, flatten and put the fried coconut filling in it. Wrap it up nicely and roll it again. Continue to do this until the dough are finished.

Put the wrapped ondeh-ondeh into the boiling water and cook. When the ondeh-ondeh floats to the top, the dough is cooked. Roll the cooked ondeh-ondeh in the steamed white coconut shreds.

Serve hot with a cup of tea.

Prepare the filling:

Cook and stir the chopped gula melaka, sugar and water in low heat till dissolved. Sift the sugar mixture onto the shred coconut, add in salt and continue cook in the low heat. Pour in the corn flour mixture and continue to stir till the coconut sugar mixture thicken. Leave it to cool a bit before use it.

Note : Mix the white shred coconut with some salt and steamed it to prevent it turn sourish. Make sure the fried coconut filling are not too watery for easy wrapping and make sure the potato balls already floats before you take them out from the boiling water ☻

It's delicious!!!

HAPPY COOKING !

Banana Muffin

My house have a lot of bananas. I bought some bananas the other day when I go to the market and at the same time my mother also bought some for me. What to do with the ripe bananas and I don't think we could finish them all in time. I just want to turn them into muffin rather than leave it there, wait till it got rotten and end up in the rubbish bin.

I first try to amend the mandarin orange muffin recipe in Fad About Food into banana muffin by replace the mandarin orange with banana. But, it turn out to be too sweet and the muffin's batter spilled out half way I baked them. Very ugly looking muffin I got. I don't know what's wrong with it. Maybe the oven is too hot and the batter are too watery because I just add in the mashed bananas without deduct the amount of milk and butter used in the recipe. I failed on the first try!

After I taste and look at the muffins, I decided to go for the second try. This time, I reduced the amount of sugar, milk and butter. I bake the muffins at 160c instead of 180c for 20 mins, my oven tend to get too hot when it's 180c. The top of muffins got burnt easily while inside are not yet cooked. It'll starts to spill out later on.

I cross my fingers and hope it will turn out right this time. Guess what? ... it really turn out great, the best banana muffin I've ever tried, it's soft, moist and delicious. The muffin itself are not that sweet and with the added natural sweet of the banana flesh, it taste just heavenly yummy. I finally got the best recipe for the banana muffin. My kids loved it so much!! They finished half of it when the muffins still hot. Next time, I don't have to worry that I can't finish the ripe banana anymore ☻

Banana Muffin Recipe

Ingredients:

4-5 ripe bananas, mashed
250 g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon ground
80 g caster sugar
2 eggs, slightly beaten with fork
60 g milk
60 g butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla essense
pinch of salt

1 or 2 banana, sliced into 1/2cm chunks

What to do!

Sieve flour, baking powder and cinnamon ground together. Set aside.

In a big bowl. Stir and mix butter, milk, eggs and vanilla together. Add in sugar and salt. Mix till well combined and add in the mashed bananas. Mix well.

Fold in the sieve flour at one time and mix slowly till well combined. Remember not to over stir the batter.

Scoop the batter into the paper cup, add the sliced banana chunks and cover it with some batter. Fill about 8/10 of the batter, leave some space for the muffin to raise when we bake them.

Bake at preheated oven at 160c for 20mins or till it's cooked, when the toothpick inserted at the center of the cakes came out clean.

This yummy banana muffins are great for breakfast or teatime snacks. It's great for picnic too. My daughters bring them to school as their teabreak snack. Do give it a try if you love bananas. I bet you'll like it! If your kids at home don't take fruits, just bake this for them, I'm sure they'll love it ☻

How do you like the pink paper cup I use for this banana muffins??? I think they are very photogenic. They just look so good in the pics, aren't they?? ☻

Note: The recipe for this banana muffin are just perfect. You don't have to reduce the sugar or anything in the recipe. Just make sure the banana used are the ripe one. If the banana you used are big then 4 is enough, if the banana are small then you might need 5 bananas.

Makes 12-14 muffins - depend to the size of paper cup used.

Happy Baking!! ☻

Carrot Cake

I bought 3 packets of carrots, 5-6 carrots in one packet at Tesco the other day. After using some of it for fried bee hoon. I still have 2 packets of the carrot in the fridge. I just bought Alex Goh's new cake recipe book yesterday and while I was flipping through the pages, I saw this American Carrot Cake recipe. Since I got all the ingredients for the cake, I just give it a try. The cake are soft and fluffy, not too sweet and yummy. I put more walnuts - 150g. Worth a try, it's yummy. Great for breakfast paired with a cup of freshly brewed hot coffee.
I was in rush this morning and I didn't manage to make the cheese topping. I think it'll sure taste heavenly with the topping... yum, yum. I will definitely make this again in future with the cream cheese topping. I love cheese! ☻

Ingredients:

(A)
3 eggs
150 g milk
300 g sugar
1/2 tsp salt

(B)
180 g vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla essense

(C)
280 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsps ground cinnamon

(D)
200 g carrot, shredded
120 g walnuts, chopped

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Topping Ingredients:
250 g cream cheese
60 g butter
100 g icing sugar (original recipe use 120 g)
1/2 lemon zest, grated
2 tbsps lemon juice

Method:

Cake
1. Whip (A) until creamy. Add (B) and whip until well blended.
2. Sieve in (C) and mix until well blended.
3. Add (D) and mix well.
4. Pour the batter into greased and lined 30 x 23 cm pan. Bake at 180c for 35-40 minutes.

Topping
1. Beat cream cheese until smooth. Add butter and beat until well blended. Add sugar and beat until well combined.
2. Add lemon zest and juice. Mix well.

To Assemble
Spread the topping over the carrot cake.

(Recipe from Alex Goh's Fruity Cakes Recipe Book - page 84)

Notes:

This carrot cake can be eaten plain without the cheese topping. You may also add 100g chopped pineapple to enhance the flavour of the cake.

I bake this cake at 160c for 50 minutes. I notice it takes longer time to get the center part of the cake cooked. I will try to use 2 smaller cake pan to bake this cake in future. Adjust the temperature and the baking time to suit the oven used.

I toast the walnuts in the oven at 150c for 5 minute before add it in the cake mixture. You can always replace the walnuts with some other nuts to your preference.

This cake are moist and not too sweet but if u prefer the healthier one, just reduce the amount of sugar use in the cake recipe ☻