Hainanese Chicken Rice 海南鸡饭

" Hainanese chicken rice is a Chinese rice dish most commonly associated with Malaysian cuisine or Singaporean cuisine , although it is also commonly sold in neighbouring Thailan , and found in Hainan, China itself. So-called due to its roots in Hainan cuisine and its adoption by the Hainanese overseas Chinese population in the Nanyang area, the version found in Malaysia/Singapore combines elements of Hainanese and Cantonese cuisines along with culinary preferences in the Southeast Asian region. The Hainanese chicken rice originated from China, and is Chinese in origin. " - < wikipedia >

These chicken thighs couldn't have tasted better! Simple comfort food like this is really what I enjoy most. Further, it reminds me of home :) Just follow the very easy recipe by A Malaysian Kitchen in Manchester .

Vadai , savoury snack from South India

oh wow.. I could not believe that I managed to whip this up! Thanks to this easy recipe by My Kitchen Snippets.


The only difference in ingredients were instead of lentils (dhall) , I've used split peas (made a mistake :p) . Red dried Hungarian paprika in replacement of red chilli. Also, curry leaves was omitted since it is not available in my kitchen. Obiviously with curry leaves the taste would be sharper.

The result fortunately was still quite similar to the vadai I'm familiar with despite the changes :)

I ate them with a cup of chai tea.... heaven!

Soy milk pudding (豆腐花)

Out of the blue I have this strong urge to experiment instant pudding powder with soy milk. I imagined it would taste very much like tofu fa (in canotonese 豆腐花) , a popular asian dessert. True enough I found that it is possible at Recipezaar .

What you'll need ...
1) 1 packet of instant pudding powder
- I used Dr.Oetker's vanilla flavoured pudding w/bourbon packet, simply because I couldn't find non-flavoured pudding powder.. anyway, the vanilla flavour and bourbon was too light to be noticed)

- cook according to manufacturer's instruction but substitute milk to soy milk instead and no sugar added.

2) Make sugar syrup, to taste

- since I ran out of brown sugar, castor sugar was used instead for the syrup. Brown sugar give a more attractive contrast to the dessert as seen in this photo unlike mine :p

- add syrup only when serving.

Verdict
Obviously I didn't expect the texture to be as smooth as the original. But the taste is near enough for me. I like it !

Next round I'll reduce the amount of soy milk, so that it will set easier and nicer.

My version of mille crepe

The long list of ingredients required for mille crepe puts me off from trying out the recipe. It is far too complicated for my attention span :p Perhaps some other time...
So, the next best solution for me was to use the Hungarian crepe (palacsinta) recipe by June meyer instead and by stacking up layers of palacsinta to imitate the mille crepe look ;)

Pancakes (Palacsinta)
Serves 4 to 6.

Ingredients
4 whole eggs
2 cups milk
2 tsp. sugar
2 cups sifted flour
Butter

1) Mix flour, salt and sugar.Combine well beaten eggs and milk.Add egg and milk gradually to flour mixture, beating to a thin smooth batter.Let batter sit for 1/2 hour. This gets rid of the raw flour taste.

2) Spoon 3 Tbls. on hot buttered skillet. Will be very thin. Tilt skillet quickly in a circular motion to distribute batter over skillet. Brown lightly on both sides.Continue this until batter is used up.

To make Chocolate syrup
1 bar of dark chcolate

1) Break chocolate into pieces and melt it using double boiler.

Assembling the cake

Almond flakes or grated walnut and powdered sugar for sprinkling

1) spread melted chocolate lightly on every crepe, meanwhile stacking it up til the desired height.
2) Finish off with more melted chocolate on top, sprinkle almond flakes all over.
3) When serving, sprinkle with some powdered sugar and a dollop of cream.

Peanut pancakes ( Mi Jian Kueh )

I was deprived of food blogs for 3 weeks! Thank goodness the internet service is up and running again :)

Thanks food blogger Aunty Yochana for sharing this recipe. If you read the comments in her blog, you'd realise that many malaysians/singaporeans living abroad miss it ; something which used to be easily available at their neighbourhood morning market and never thought of making it at home!

As advised by Aunty yochana I've replaced the fruit salt with instant yeast since Eno (a kind of fruit salt) wasn't available here. And I've apportioned the recipe acording to 200gm of plain flour i.e. 2/5 of the original recipe which yield 5 pancakes.

Verdict :-
I couldn't stop munching !
Texture wise it is not very near to honeycomb surface that I'm familiar with, perhaps that is due to the substitution of Eno.
Anyway, I'll definately make this again :)