Sunday, October 19, 2008

My first Madártej (Hungarian floating islands)

Whenever we return to my in-laws, my m.i.l make this delicious Hungarian dessert for us. Although I love the dessert, I resisted from making it at home because I didn't want to know the calories which go inside it. But I was craving it very much today! So, I quickly checked online for a recipe. It is a good thing to know that it requires simple ingredients which is easily available at home and not as high-calorie as I thought.

As I am typing this, the floating island is still being chilled in the fridge. I did have a small sample of it. It is definitely not as good as my m.i.l's. oh well...it is my first attempt after all.

I found the process of boiling the beaten egg-white (island) a bit too delicate for me to handle; which created a mess. The "island" tasted salty ; while the milk is not thick enough ..may be it is due to that I halved the recipe... However, I do see myself making this again :) Just that I won't be serving it to any Hungarian guests soon..haha.

If made right, the island should be firm and light and the milk should have a consistency of light cream and give a scent of vanilla.

Madártej (Hungarian floating islands)
recipe from here

Ingredients for 6 portions: (I halved the recipe)

1 l milk
4 eggs
100 g + 2 spoonfuls sugar *** too sweet for me
1 teaspoonful flour
1 pinch of salt
1 pod of vanilla *** you may substitute with vanilla sugar

Method :
Divide the eggs and whip the whites with the salt. When it is rather stiff add 2 spoonfuls of sugar and whip until glossy.

Warm the half of milk with the vanilla pod in a shallow saucepan and put dumplings of egg white into it with the help of a tablespoon. Boil the both sides of the dumplings for 1 minute each, then take them out on a sieve. Repeat it until all the egg whites are consumed. Don't overcrowd the pan because the dumplings grow during boiling.

Mix the egg yolks with the rest of sugar and beat until light and foamy. Add the flour, bit by bit the cold milk and in the end sieve the hot milk into it.

Boil the cream with continous stirring on low heat until thickens. Don't let it boil.

Divide immediately into small bowls and top with the white dumplings. Serve chilled.





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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Rum Balls


I have been wondering how to make the Hungarian kókusz golyó (coconut balls) for quite sometime. My search online brought me to this recipe . Looks easy enough for me. And I'm telling you now it is very easy to prepare! Just make sure you make it a day in advance of the day you plan to serve it.

I've scaled down the recipe to suit the quantity of biscuits in hand (about 110g crushed) ; which yield about 18 balls. The end result I think is quite similar to the original and B said so ,too :)

Note to self
Replaced Nice biscuits to local Győri (Albert) biscuits - scale down to 110g
Replaced sweetened condensed milk to home-made sugar syrup -50g sugar + 20ml hot water
Used essence of rum instead
Soaked raisins (sultanas) in sugar syrup, rum and vanilla extract before adding to dry ingredients.

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Friday, September 26, 2008

Chow Mein 炒麵

I think every chinese household has a different version of chow mein. This kyliekwong 's version (as seen on Tv Paprika) uses ginger, which I've never included in my version before this. Also, her soy base sauce was much more straight forward to prepare than mine. Anyway, here's how I tweaked her recipe based on what is available in my kitchen .

Chow Mein 炒麵

Serves : 1

Ingredients :-

One serving of spaghetti pasta (kw's recipe uses flat rice noodles)
few slices of ginger
2 cloves of garlic
half of red onion
cabbage (kw's uses chinese cabbage)
spring onions
white pepper to taste
thick soya sauce
light soya sauce
oil for stir-frying

* sesame seeds omitted (totally forgotten about it!)
* bean sprout was omitted (not available in my kitchen)
* You may also add any kind of meat / seafood of your choice.
Preparation :-

1) Cook spaghatti pasta according to your brand's instruction.

2) In the mean time, prepare sliced ginger, chopped onion , garlic, spring onions.

3) Heat oil in a wok, sauté ginger, onion and garlic until fragrant. Next in the same wok, put the dark soya sauce (enough to cover the pasta) , simmer it for a bit. Then toss-in the cooked pasta and stir-fry until soya sauce colour pasta fully. Next , toss-in cabbage, spring onion and neam sprout and continue to stir-fry for a bit. Add light soya sauce and white pepper to taste. Stir-fry for a about 3 minutes and it's ready.

4) Serve with toasted sesame seeds.
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Rice noodle roll 猪腸粉



I finally did it! I'm mostly happy with the taste despite that the recipe was actually for making Vietnamese version of rice noodle roll, Bánh cuốn .

As you can see, the texture wasn't smooth at all .. in fact it was disastrous :p I'll need to improve on the tecnique and I'm looking forward to practice making it again :)

Thanks Lily'sWaiSekHong for posting the Step-by-step tutorial in her fabulous blog !

Read more about Rice noodle roll

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Monday, September 08, 2008

Mango and apple salad

This salad was adapted from salt n tumeric 's recipe with couple of substitutes. The combination of aroma of lime , spiciness of Erős Pista , sweet and soury apple and mango make this a great dish as an apetiser.

Mango and apple salad :-

1 mango , roughly grated or julienned
1 apple , roughly grated or julienned
1 red onion, chopped
1 juice of lime
sugar , to taste
fish sauce , few dashes
Erős Pista (Hungarian sambal oelek ?) , to taste - substitute for Thai chilli
Peanuts , roughly ground

Prepare all ingredients and toss them together. Voila!



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Friday, May 16, 2008

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 .





Update 19 Nov 2012
I have used the text from the link mentioned above in case the blog disappear later.

To start with, the raw ingredients here are simple.. chicken, ginger, garlic and spring onions.

Bring them all to boil, then I add the chicken. If I had more time, I'd fry the ginger and garlic first and include the oil in the pot.

After 1 minute, including time to turn the chicken over as I did not have enough water so submerge the whole chicken (why? .. I'll explain later), the chicken has now gone white and I quickly put it under cold water to tighten up the skin.

Then I boil it again in the same pot.

After 15 mins, I turn off heat and leave it for another 30 mins. Then I give it another cold water bath!

Now, I lay it aside to dry. I ensure I keep it suspended in the air so that the whole surface dries. Some people may prefer to use a hook and hang it up.

Now, I boil down the stock. Earlier, I said I did not have enough water to submerge the whole chicken. That is because, the more water I use, the longer it takes to boil the stock down and I did not have the time. I also add a bit of Knorr's chicken stock here for additional flavour. Of course, I add salt, sugar and pepper to taste as well.

With the stock ready, I add it to my rice, with a blade of screwpine (pandan) leaf.

When the chicken is dry, I rub it with sesame oil, then chop it the Chinese way. The sauce is a mixture of sugar, stock, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper and spring onions

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

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!

Updated May 1, 2014 :-
I am including the recipe from the link above for my own reference.



Vadai 
Ingredients

200g dhall (lentils)
a bit of water
1/4 tsp cumin
1 green chili-finely sliced
1 red chili - finely sliced
1 tsp of turmeric powder
1 sprig curry leaves, finely chopped
1/2 an onion, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 tbsp rice flour

1. Wash and soak dhall overnight. Drain well, then put into a blender. Add water and process until dhall is coarsely blended.
2. Combined all the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Heat oil for deep-frying.
3. Wet your hands and take a spoonful of dhall mixture, place the mixture on the palm of your hand. Make into a round then flatten slightly.
4. Drop into the hot oil. repeat until all the dough is used up. Fry until golden brown. Remove from oil and drain on paper towel.
 

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

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.

VerdictObviously 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.

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Friday, February 29, 2008

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.

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Sunday, February 24, 2008

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 :)

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Sausage on a bed of sauerkraut


The magazine where I saw an appetising photo of Káposztaágyon sült kolbász (meaning as per title) didn't accompany a recipe with it. So, I literally just put

a bed of sauerkraut (drained) on a lightly oiled baking dish,
season to taste : sugar, salt, freshly milled black pepper and
a few bay leaves,
top with Hungarian sausage.
a little water

Bake at 140°c (gas mark 1) for 30 mins. turning the sausage once.

The juice from the sausage will soak in the sauerkraut giving it a wonderful flavour!
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Sunday, January 06, 2008

Cottage cheese strudel



Each Friday I'll bake something for my partner's parents when he goes home for private classes. I tell you, it's a great way to experiment with lots of recipes and not having to gain the extra inches on the waist *evil grin*

This week there's left over cottage cheese in the fridge, so it's easy to decide on what to bake. Originally I set my mind on cottage cheese cake but when I saw some strudel at the convenient store I changed my mind ;)

For someone who hasn't acquired the taste of cottage cheese, I find the end result quite appetising!

Note :
Conincidentally, my fave. Hungarian food blog baked something similar. With the use of canned peach pieces ; which I'll definitely incl. in the future.



Cottage cheese strudel
Yield : 8 square pieces using 32x21cm baking pan

Ingredient for fillings
adapted from Allrecipes

300 g cottage cheese
80 ml milk
1-1/3 eggs
15 g all-purpose flour
20 ml lemon juice
3 ml vanilla extract
90 g white sugar
1 g salt
handful of raisin, soaked til soft

Ingredients for Strudel Layers (estimates)
6 pcs Filo (Strudel) sheets (size slightly larger than baking pan)
60 gm butter, melted

Method :-
1) Pre-heat oven gas mark 3.

2) In a blender, combine cottage cheese, milk, eggs, flour, lemon juice, vanilla, sugar and teaspoon salt. Blend until smooth. Mix in the soften raisin. Set aside

3) Grease a baking pan. Put two filo sheets inside, then spread metled butter on them, then put Put half of the cottage cheese filling on it, followed by 2 new filo sheets, again spread with melted butter. Next spread the other half of the filling, finish off with remaining 2 pcs. of filo sheets and melted butter.

4) Grease knife and cut pre-bake strudel according to your liking.

5) Bake for 25 mins. or until golden brown.

6) Dust icing sugar before serving.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Beginning of new cycle!

Happy new year , again!

For 2008, I'll want to learn more about Hungarian cuisine and also test it out myself as often as possible. I think especially meals for the winter months example stews, stuffed paprika / cabbage and goulash. Usually these dishes are accompanied by salads ; so, I'll include them in my 2008 plans :)

Right now, I'm particularly interested to know more about a type of cheese spread named körözött (photo). It's great as party food, serving them on crackers. However, searching the recipe online only made me confuse ..there are so many varieties of cheese used in diff. household! For now, we're happy with the store-bought version. Guess the best guide would be my partner's father. He is the only one who prepares it..and I haven't eaten his version for long time!

Meanwhile, does anyone have any good körözött recipe to share?


Best of 2007

First off, Happy new year!

2007 has been a fruitful year in terms of my culinary experiment!

One major difference between 2007 and prior years was the availability of asian ingredients. More and more stores (medium or hyper) start to promote asian ingredients, which I managed to grab some good deals. Some of the items that I acquired were tapioca flour, hoisin sauce, sambal oelek, sesame oil, tumeric powder etc :) Hopefully, in 2008 we will see the product range expand further!

The baking has gone overboard..hahah. In fact, I tried new recipes each week though I did not post it up here. Knowing that I can actually substitute some of the baking ingredients (ya duh!) helped to expand my experience.

I mentioned before the reason that I hardly cook Hungarian. In 2007, I did learnt 3 authentic recipes given by my partner's parents or from food blogs online. Slowly I'm building the confidence in trying out more Hungarian recipes.

Finally, since this is about the best of 2007, I shall choose my favourite recipes each from sweet and savoury category...

Fave. sweets of 2007 : chcolate walnut biscoti . It's bitter sweet combination just got me hooked. I'm looking forward to bake again and mail it to my sis back home. A chocoholic like her should appreciate it.

Fave. savoury of 2007 : Roasted pork belly . I'm really proud that I took the challenge, despite the lack of proper ingredients. Of course, the result wasn't perfect , but there's always a next time!

Sunday, October 19, 2008

My first Madártej (Hungarian floating islands)

Whenever we return to my in-laws, my m.i.l make this delicious Hungarian dessert for us. Although I love the dessert, I resisted from making it at home because I didn't want to know the calories which go inside it. But I was craving it very much today! So, I quickly checked online for a recipe. It is a good thing to know that it requires simple ingredients which is easily available at home and not as high-calorie as I thought.

As I am typing this, the floating island is still being chilled in the fridge. I did have a small sample of it. It is definitely not as good as my m.i.l's. oh well...it is my first attempt after all.

I found the process of boiling the beaten egg-white (island) a bit too delicate for me to handle; which created a mess. The "island" tasted salty ; while the milk is not thick enough ..may be it is due to that I halved the recipe... However, I do see myself making this again :) Just that I won't be serving it to any Hungarian guests soon..haha.

If made right, the island should be firm and light and the milk should have a consistency of light cream and give a scent of vanilla.

Madártej (Hungarian floating islands)
recipe from here

Ingredients for 6 portions: (I halved the recipe)

1 l milk
4 eggs
100 g + 2 spoonfuls sugar *** too sweet for me
1 teaspoonful flour
1 pinch of salt
1 pod of vanilla *** you may substitute with vanilla sugar

Method :
Divide the eggs and whip the whites with the salt. When it is rather stiff add 2 spoonfuls of sugar and whip until glossy.

Warm the half of milk with the vanilla pod in a shallow saucepan and put dumplings of egg white into it with the help of a tablespoon. Boil the both sides of the dumplings for 1 minute each, then take them out on a sieve. Repeat it until all the egg whites are consumed. Don't overcrowd the pan because the dumplings grow during boiling.

Mix the egg yolks with the rest of sugar and beat until light and foamy. Add the flour, bit by bit the cold milk and in the end sieve the hot milk into it.

Boil the cream with continous stirring on low heat until thickens. Don't let it boil.

Divide immediately into small bowls and top with the white dumplings. Serve chilled.





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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Rum Balls


I have been wondering how to make the Hungarian kókusz golyó (coconut balls) for quite sometime. My search online brought me to this recipe . Looks easy enough for me. And I'm telling you now it is very easy to prepare! Just make sure you make it a day in advance of the day you plan to serve it.

I've scaled down the recipe to suit the quantity of biscuits in hand (about 110g crushed) ; which yield about 18 balls. The end result I think is quite similar to the original and B said so ,too :)

Note to self
Replaced Nice biscuits to local Győri (Albert) biscuits - scale down to 110g
Replaced sweetened condensed milk to home-made sugar syrup -50g sugar + 20ml hot water
Used essence of rum instead
Soaked raisins (sultanas) in sugar syrup, rum and vanilla extract before adding to dry ingredients.

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Friday, September 26, 2008

Chow Mein 炒麵

I think every chinese household has a different version of chow mein. This kyliekwong 's version (as seen on Tv Paprika) uses ginger, which I've never included in my version before this. Also, her soy base sauce was much more straight forward to prepare than mine. Anyway, here's how I tweaked her recipe based on what is available in my kitchen .

Chow Mein 炒麵

Serves : 1

Ingredients :-

One serving of spaghetti pasta (kw's recipe uses flat rice noodles)
few slices of ginger
2 cloves of garlic
half of red onion
cabbage (kw's uses chinese cabbage)
spring onions
white pepper to taste
thick soya sauce
light soya sauce
oil for stir-frying

* sesame seeds omitted (totally forgotten about it!)
* bean sprout was omitted (not available in my kitchen)
* You may also add any kind of meat / seafood of your choice.
Preparation :-

1) Cook spaghatti pasta according to your brand's instruction.

2) In the mean time, prepare sliced ginger, chopped onion , garlic, spring onions.

3) Heat oil in a wok, sauté ginger, onion and garlic until fragrant. Next in the same wok, put the dark soya sauce (enough to cover the pasta) , simmer it for a bit. Then toss-in the cooked pasta and stir-fry until soya sauce colour pasta fully. Next , toss-in cabbage, spring onion and neam sprout and continue to stir-fry for a bit. Add light soya sauce and white pepper to taste. Stir-fry for a about 3 minutes and it's ready.

4) Serve with toasted sesame seeds.
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Rice noodle roll 猪腸粉



I finally did it! I'm mostly happy with the taste despite that the recipe was actually for making Vietnamese version of rice noodle roll, Bánh cuốn .

As you can see, the texture wasn't smooth at all .. in fact it was disastrous :p I'll need to improve on the tecnique and I'm looking forward to practice making it again :)

Thanks Lily'sWaiSekHong for posting the Step-by-step tutorial in her fabulous blog !

Read more about Rice noodle roll

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Monday, September 08, 2008

Mango and apple salad

This salad was adapted from salt n tumeric 's recipe with couple of substitutes. The combination of aroma of lime , spiciness of Erős Pista , sweet and soury apple and mango make this a great dish as an apetiser.

Mango and apple salad :-

1 mango , roughly grated or julienned
1 apple , roughly grated or julienned
1 red onion, chopped
1 juice of lime
sugar , to taste
fish sauce , few dashes
Erős Pista (Hungarian sambal oelek ?) , to taste - substitute for Thai chilli
Peanuts , roughly ground

Prepare all ingredients and toss them together. Voila!



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Friday, May 16, 2008

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 .





Update 19 Nov 2012
I have used the text from the link mentioned above in case the blog disappear later.

To start with, the raw ingredients here are simple.. chicken, ginger, garlic and spring onions.

Bring them all to boil, then I add the chicken. If I had more time, I'd fry the ginger and garlic first and include the oil in the pot.

After 1 minute, including time to turn the chicken over as I did not have enough water so submerge the whole chicken (why? .. I'll explain later), the chicken has now gone white and I quickly put it under cold water to tighten up the skin.

Then I boil it again in the same pot.

After 15 mins, I turn off heat and leave it for another 30 mins. Then I give it another cold water bath!

Now, I lay it aside to dry. I ensure I keep it suspended in the air so that the whole surface dries. Some people may prefer to use a hook and hang it up.

Now, I boil down the stock. Earlier, I said I did not have enough water to submerge the whole chicken. That is because, the more water I use, the longer it takes to boil the stock down and I did not have the time. I also add a bit of Knorr's chicken stock here for additional flavour. Of course, I add salt, sugar and pepper to taste as well.

With the stock ready, I add it to my rice, with a blade of screwpine (pandan) leaf.

When the chicken is dry, I rub it with sesame oil, then chop it the Chinese way. The sauce is a mixture of sugar, stock, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper and spring onions

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

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!

Updated May 1, 2014 :-
I am including the recipe from the link above for my own reference.



Vadai 
Ingredients

200g dhall (lentils)
a bit of water
1/4 tsp cumin
1 green chili-finely sliced
1 red chili - finely sliced
1 tsp of turmeric powder
1 sprig curry leaves, finely chopped
1/2 an onion, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 tbsp rice flour

1. Wash and soak dhall overnight. Drain well, then put into a blender. Add water and process until dhall is coarsely blended.
2. Combined all the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Heat oil for deep-frying.
3. Wet your hands and take a spoonful of dhall mixture, place the mixture on the palm of your hand. Make into a round then flatten slightly.
4. Drop into the hot oil. repeat until all the dough is used up. Fry until golden brown. Remove from oil and drain on paper towel.
 

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

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.

VerdictObviously 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.

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Friday, February 29, 2008

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.

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Sunday, February 24, 2008

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 :)

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Sausage on a bed of sauerkraut


The magazine where I saw an appetising photo of Káposztaágyon sült kolbász (meaning as per title) didn't accompany a recipe with it. So, I literally just put

a bed of sauerkraut (drained) on a lightly oiled baking dish,
season to taste : sugar, salt, freshly milled black pepper and
a few bay leaves,
top with Hungarian sausage.
a little water

Bake at 140°c (gas mark 1) for 30 mins. turning the sausage once.

The juice from the sausage will soak in the sauerkraut giving it a wonderful flavour!
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Sunday, January 06, 2008

Cottage cheese strudel



Each Friday I'll bake something for my partner's parents when he goes home for private classes. I tell you, it's a great way to experiment with lots of recipes and not having to gain the extra inches on the waist *evil grin*

This week there's left over cottage cheese in the fridge, so it's easy to decide on what to bake. Originally I set my mind on cottage cheese cake but when I saw some strudel at the convenient store I changed my mind ;)

For someone who hasn't acquired the taste of cottage cheese, I find the end result quite appetising!

Note :
Conincidentally, my fave. Hungarian food blog baked something similar. With the use of canned peach pieces ; which I'll definitely incl. in the future.



Cottage cheese strudel
Yield : 8 square pieces using 32x21cm baking pan

Ingredient for fillings
adapted from Allrecipes

300 g cottage cheese
80 ml milk
1-1/3 eggs
15 g all-purpose flour
20 ml lemon juice
3 ml vanilla extract
90 g white sugar
1 g salt
handful of raisin, soaked til soft

Ingredients for Strudel Layers (estimates)
6 pcs Filo (Strudel) sheets (size slightly larger than baking pan)
60 gm butter, melted

Method :-
1) Pre-heat oven gas mark 3.

2) In a blender, combine cottage cheese, milk, eggs, flour, lemon juice, vanilla, sugar and teaspoon salt. Blend until smooth. Mix in the soften raisin. Set aside

3) Grease a baking pan. Put two filo sheets inside, then spread metled butter on them, then put Put half of the cottage cheese filling on it, followed by 2 new filo sheets, again spread with melted butter. Next spread the other half of the filling, finish off with remaining 2 pcs. of filo sheets and melted butter.

4) Grease knife and cut pre-bake strudel according to your liking.

5) Bake for 25 mins. or until golden brown.

6) Dust icing sugar before serving.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Beginning of new cycle!

Happy new year , again!

For 2008, I'll want to learn more about Hungarian cuisine and also test it out myself as often as possible. I think especially meals for the winter months example stews, stuffed paprika / cabbage and goulash. Usually these dishes are accompanied by salads ; so, I'll include them in my 2008 plans :)

Right now, I'm particularly interested to know more about a type of cheese spread named körözött (photo). It's great as party food, serving them on crackers. However, searching the recipe online only made me confuse ..there are so many varieties of cheese used in diff. household! For now, we're happy with the store-bought version. Guess the best guide would be my partner's father. He is the only one who prepares it..and I haven't eaten his version for long time!

Meanwhile, does anyone have any good körözött recipe to share?


Best of 2007

First off, Happy new year!

2007 has been a fruitful year in terms of my culinary experiment!

One major difference between 2007 and prior years was the availability of asian ingredients. More and more stores (medium or hyper) start to promote asian ingredients, which I managed to grab some good deals. Some of the items that I acquired were tapioca flour, hoisin sauce, sambal oelek, sesame oil, tumeric powder etc :) Hopefully, in 2008 we will see the product range expand further!

The baking has gone overboard..hahah. In fact, I tried new recipes each week though I did not post it up here. Knowing that I can actually substitute some of the baking ingredients (ya duh!) helped to expand my experience.

I mentioned before the reason that I hardly cook Hungarian. In 2007, I did learnt 3 authentic recipes given by my partner's parents or from food blogs online. Slowly I'm building the confidence in trying out more Hungarian recipes.

Finally, since this is about the best of 2007, I shall choose my favourite recipes each from sweet and savoury category...

Fave. sweets of 2007 : chcolate walnut biscoti . It's bitter sweet combination just got me hooked. I'm looking forward to bake again and mail it to my sis back home. A chocoholic like her should appreciate it.

Fave. savoury of 2007 : Roasted pork belly . I'm really proud that I took the challenge, despite the lack of proper ingredients. Of course, the result wasn't perfect , but there's always a next time!