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

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.
 

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.

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 :)

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!

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.