Happy new year!

Happy Easter!

To cook list

Ah...just got my daily dosage of food blogs surfing...mmmm, seriously making me hungry - torture! At the same time I printed recipes that I have bookmarked over the past few weeks. Boy, a big stack of recipes infront of me now...

Steamed caramel cupcakes by Pusiva
Tagine of chicken and Lemon by Vanilla Garlic
Sweetened condensed milk custard by Tecnicolor Kitchen
Dutch baby pancake by ChickyEgg
Sour Cream Chocolate Chip cookies by Gilly
Hungarian Chicken Paprikash version by Simply Recipe
Chicken with Basil sauce by world wide school
Rosemary Apricot Pork Tenderloin by Milky Way Diner
Buttermilk Fried Chicken by Simply Recipe
Mama Rita's Peach Cobbler by Delicious Days
Churros by A daily obession
Bail chicken in Coconut curry sauce by Simply Recipe
Mashed potatoes, Oriya Style byy One Hot Stove
Oven Roasted Tomatoes by Exclusively Food
Devil's food cup cakes by Baking bites
Hungarian Goulash by June Meyer

The above hasn't even include some Kosher recipes which need to be translated..Phew!
Oh, can you figure by now that I love all-things baked, fried, spicy and with basil ? ;)

Too lazy to put up the links, will do so when and if the results are posted here.

Changing theme again / Being lazy

Can't made up my mind which one I prefer..hopefully this theme will stick around longer. At least a month!

Yeah, I still owe food-cookies a meme (apologies ^-^) Ah, too lazy to compose anything these days :p By next week , for sure!

Ciao

A peanut sauce review

If you're a SE asian in Hungary craving for peanut sauce, I highly recommend you grab a packet of Asian Home Gourmet's peanut sauce. As advertised, it is seriously authentic in taste!You see how creamy it turned out? that was made using regular milk instead of coconut's. Although I would love some Satays (Saté) to go with this sauce but it works fine with carrot sticks & cabbage. ..oh, it is available at tesco near you :)

Review : Dr. Oetker Muffin mix

This box of muffin mix kept staring at me in the kitchen since Christmas (got it in a set of gifts). I counldn't resist anymore, I have to give it a go!

Due to my first bad experience (once only) with muffin mix (another brand), which turned out dry, hard, powdery and the taste ....artificial ; I didn't have too high of expection this time round.

Dr. Oetker chocolate chips muffin mix changed my perception of pre-mixes. The muffins were fluffy, wholesome, and didn't taste artificial at all. If you want to spice it up, try twirling in some peanut butter (which i did) or any other jams before baking. It was great for tea time...yum ..satisfying ;)

Note : Included in the box was 1 pkt. of choc. chips, flour mix, 12 muffin cups. Additional fresh ingredients - eggs, milks and oil

What kind of food are you?

Haven't been baking as much as I want to. *sigh* I need to reduce my calorie intake. However, I do have a few more recipes that I will blog later. Meanwhile, let's find out what kind of food are you?

You Are Thai Food

Trendy yet complex. People seek you out - though they're not sure why.

What Kind of Food Are You?

Comfort!

one of the places to visit whilst in Budapest for us is KFC! I tell you it was all worth it going through the hassle of tracking down the only one KFC in the city.
When entering the outlet, you'll immediately noticed the dull ambience, not very KFC-like with bright lited box, colonel sanders plastered around. The neglecting ambience is probably due to fact colonel sanders is relatively unknown here..people prefer the more trendy McD and B King, I guess.

But who cares! I came for the chicken! the crispy deep-fried chicken! I know i know its not healthy..be moderate and I should be fine :p Yummy, it was! I smothered some coleslaw on the chicken and its ooh la la! So yummy, the next morning we decided to pack this christmas set and eat it as brunch...finger lickin' good ;)

what to eat before you die ?

A tough question to answer! at least for me...here's an idea of what others voted for, compiled by BBC "50 things to eat before you die"..scanning the list, wow! I did good! what about you?

50 cornish pasty 49 caviar 48 haggis 47 jerk chicken/pork 46 tapas
45 roast beef 44 ribs 43 octopus 42 Durian 41 mango
40 Australian meat pie 39 scallops 38 kebab 37 reindeer 36 barramundi
35 paela 34 sushi 33 shark 32 guinea pig 31 venison
30 salmon 29 american diner breakfast 28 squid 27 mexican food 26 burgers
25 Greek food 24 sandwiches 23 chocolate 22 kangaroo 21 oyster
20 alligator 19 cream tea 18 lamb 17 cheesecake 16 mussels
15 pasta 14 pancake 13 barbeque 12 clam chowder 11 Moreton Bay bugs
10 Prawn 9 Curry 8 Crab 7 Pizza 6 Ice cream
5 Chinese food 4 Thai food 3 Steak 2 Lobster

1 Fresh fish

appetising...

I attempted cook this yesterday. Now who would have thought things can go wrong with such a easy peesy recipe? The rice became mushy when i poured in the sardines, perhaps it is the type of rice and the method of which the rice was prepared (no one uses rice cooker here..can't even find it in electronic shops :(. Then, the canned sardines were tasteless (no ayam brand!!) not tomato-ish enough. In the end, the dish was saved by a simple side dipping sauce of
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sliced chilli with soya sauce saved the day! ;)

kohlrabi

In German it means, kohl (cabbage) plus rabi (turnip). I'm curious, can you get this in your country? I'm asking because the vege. is alien to me until I arrived here. They are popular in Hungarian househoulds and great in soup :) In desparation, I use it to substitute turnip when I made spring rolls few months back. Boy! was I glad that it turned out as good as using turnip.
Perhaps you can try a salad recipe by Rick stein.

Message to Ma

hey, ma! guess what's my recent food purchase is?
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hehehe, dont fell off the seat! We got this at another city last w/end and I tell you the size is huge! not forgetting the shocking price as well! It's so precious I'm planning carefully what to do with it. Stay tune ;)

Take away Baklava

I figure different countries must have different ways of packing pastries for take aways, I thought I'd show you how ours look like.

Since we do not have any fancy franchise outlets here, the packing is more or less similar between shops, using basic wrapper like the photo below. However not all shops use this, which is already considered "fancier" than others


Unwrapping it, reveals the base made out of card board, for larger quantities , a bigger base is used. You can not see it but on top of the pastries, is a piece of transparent sheet to shield the pastry from direct contact with the wrapper..


To those who are unfamiliar with what pastry this is, its baklava, a type of dessert originated from Greek or Syria. I'm currently hooked on this sweet dessert made out of nuts, honey with layers of filo sheets. This particular bakery where I bought the baklava sells tiny small piece per serving, so we usually have to buy 2 instead of usual one (we're on diet) ..good trick to sell more :p)

New addition to kitchen

After one year of searching high and low for this sauce, just when I'm about to give up, I stumbled upon it at the local organic shop..duh?! As a child, I wasn't a fan of this sauce. I remember my dad love adding anything and everything with fish sauce. But the smell was just too strong. Why then I buy it? , you may ask.. well, I LOVE thai cuisine! I have in my vault many thai recipes that i hope to try out soon with this new gem in the kitchen :)