Cucur Ayam Dinner

Meh, this is a bit late, but yesterday, I finally became *brave* and made cucur ayam for dinner! Hadi and Justin were out for tae kwon do as usual. Just recently, someone (Nisah, I think) mentioned that they haven't had cucur ayam for a very long time. I was, of course, flabbergasted! How can anyone NOT like cucur ayam??? I love cucur ayam. It is one of my favorite-est foods *ever*. :$

Be that as it may though... I've never been successful at making it. :( The last time I tried was back in the first year, and my cucur batter was ... well, not very good. But since Nisah (was it Nisah???) mentioned it, I suddenly got this craving for cucur ayam.

So... using up a lot of oil in the process, I made my very own cucur ayam in more than two years! *claps* Just for (my) reference, I used deboned drumsticks, cut into slices then coated lightly in flour. The batter was from about 1 cup of flour, with one egg and enough milk to make it into a very thick batter. Like pancakes. :) It was, of course, seasoned generously with salt and plenty of white pepper.

Tadah~

Does it not look good??? Ooooo, I'm drooling even now. Sigh. I want to eat more of it. It went really well, actually. I got the measurements quite okay this time~! :D The flour coating was sooooo smooth and creamy and yum! Earlier, I thought it wasn't flavoursome enough though, so I added more salt to the chicken and batter. Big mistake. It turned out a bit too salty. But still delicious~

I had extra batter though, and used that to make "cucur kosong". To compensate for no chicken, I seasoned it with a LOT of white pepper! Yummy!!!


But you know... back in Brunei, I eat a *LOT* of cucur ayam. It's the one thing I can eat lots and lots of. I have limited chicken (not to mention oil) here though, so I decided to do what my brother always does and make a cucur ayam burger! Oooooo, look at that.... so pretty...


Funnily enough though... I was very very full from that. (Yes, I know the topmost picture had a lot of food on it. Two burgers??? Whoa! But I eat a lot on Wednesdays...) But I usually eat a lot more in Brunei (of cucur ayam, I mean). I wonder why... Maybe its because I don't have to bother cooking it? Haha. Since I used a small pot, I could only cook small batches at a time... and kept on snacking, meh. That's the one disadvantage of cucur ayam... Its not fun if you make it yourself. :( You have to wait before eating it... then it gets kind of cold... Sigh, oh well, never mind! I'll just wait till this summer! :D :D :D

Quote of the day: My mother was a good recreational cook, but what she basically believed about cooking was that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.

Lemon Chicken Stir-fry

I don't really like lemon with chicken, although I am forced sometimes to eat chicken flavoured with lemons. One of which was Hadi's lemon roast chicken (unblogged) that he was particularly proud of. A lot of people love lemon chicken, Hadi included. Even though I don't, I thought it might be interesting to use it once in a dinner, hehe. So here we go. :)

What you need:
6 chicken drumsticks, deboned
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
5 tablespoons cornflour
1 bunch spring onions
1 lemon
1 garlic clove, crushed (I used 1 tablespoon garlic granules)
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
2/3 cup liquid chicken stock
Oil, for frying
Salt and black pepper, for seasoning

What you do:

1. Cut the chicken into 1 inch strips. Put in a bowl with the soy sauce and leave for at least 10 minutes. Sprinkle on 4 tablespoons of the cornflour and toss to coat.
2. Trim the roots and cut the spring onions diagonally into 1/2 inch pieces. With a vegetable peeler, remove the lemon rind (yellow bit of the lemon skin) in thin strips and cut into fine shreds. Reserve the lemon juice.
3. Blend the garlic, sugar, chicken stock, lemon juice and remaining cornflour into a paste, with water.
4. Heat about a tablespoon of the oil in a wok. Add the chicken pieces and pan fry until golden brown. (Or, alternatively and even better, deep fry the pieces in a lot of oil). Remove to a dish and keep warm.
5. Add the cut spring onions to the pan and fry for 2 minutes.
6. Add the remaining ingredients (lemon rind, and lemon juice mixture) with the chicken, and bring to a boil, stirring until thickened. Add more stock if necassary, and adjust seasoning. Stir until the chicken is evenly covered with sauce. Reheat for 2 minutes, and serve immediately.

I must say, peeling the lemon rind with our vegetable peeler was pretty hard, meh. Maybe because its really blunt, haha. Though why its blunt, I don't know, because we *never* use it. Oh well. I tried getting as much of the rind out as possible, but only did half the lemon before I gave up, haha. :D I also tried cutting it into as this strips as possible, but was lacking the patience.

Anyway, about frying the chicken, if you're hardworking enough with a large supply of oil, do deep fry it. It will drastically improve the texture. I was thinking of baking it in the oven, but was too lazy, meh. So I just shallow-fried it, which gave it some crunchy bits on the chicken, but not all over. Just places where it was "seared" by the pot, haha. Although, in saying that, this was a really easy dish. Less than an hour from cutting the chicken to serving it for dinner. Quite nice. :)

Hadi and Justin, of course, loved it. Hadi's first impression was that it was very "Chinese-y". But the boys have always loved chicken with lemons, for some reason. The lemons did give my *hands* a nice fresh smell, but I don't really like the way they tasted with the chicken, meh. It was nice, oh yes, just not my taste, hehe. I was able to have the chicken, but the sauce was way too much for me.

I do remember though, a few years ago, Hadi and Ka Anum were fans of this particular lemon dish.... hmm... what was it called? It had honey and lemon, so honey lemon chicken maybe? I never had it, but it sounds nice, hehe. You could probably substitute the sugar here with honey if you want. I might even sprinkle on some roasted sesame seeds (if I ever make this again) just to give it extra decoration. Its a beautiful dish! Golden pieces of chicken, with yellow strips of lemon rind and green spring onions, hehe.

Hmmmm.... I miss air limau kasturi... *drool* The limes here aren't the same as limau kasturi, it seems. They're huge! o.o But I should try making lemonade once... It won't be so bad as a drink, I think.

Quote of the day: When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

Salty Garlic Chicken with Tongkeng

Whenever Hadi buys chicken from the butchers here, he always tells them to save the tongkeng (chicken butt) - a request with which they are always surprised about. because although sateh tongkeng (or whatever you call that thing with tongkengs on a wooden skewer) are abundant in Brunei, people here never eat that part of the chicken. What Hadi does with it is just place it in a plastic bag with marinades of his choice, then just freeze it until he feels like eating it. As a very fatty snack, haha. What he decided to do today was to bake the tongkengs together with our chicken for tonight, so that the tongkeng juices would mix up with the chicken and give it extra flavour. Or so he says. So here we go~

What you need;
3 chicken thighs
Garlic granules
Chicken stock powder
Black pepper

Tongkengs, marinated in your choice of seasonings (Hadi's choices of seasonings was sweet, of course)

Note: all the seasonings are according to taste. Probably equal amounts of garlic and pepper, with four times the amount of chicken stock. As a guide. :)

What you do:

1. Mix the seasonings with the chicken, rubbing well under the skin to get the flavour in.
   
2. Place in a shallow baking dish. Arrange the tongkeng in between the chicken pieces.
3. Bake at 180 C for 40 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.
   

Only Hadi is a big fan in tongkeng in this house, meh. Justin tolerates it, but I find it funny tasting. Which is a good thing. Otherwise, I would probably be eating a lot more of it than I should. Plus, me and Hadi would probably fight over who gets the tongkeng. He would probably win, since he's the one who buys them. But yeah, anyway. I think Hadi just wanted an excuse to eat his tongkengs, haha. It really wasn't necassary, and you barely tasted it in the chicken juices. Unless you go near to where the tongkengs were. They have this particular taste about them...

Oh, and is *that* how you spell tongkeng by the way? Haha, I never actually bothered to find out...

The chicken itself was nice, this being a rather simple dinner, meh. I didn't actually taste the garlic much, but rubbing the seasonings under the skin gave the chicken very nice flavour, hehe. Hmmm... not much else I can say really. Meh.

On a side note, this blog received close to 200 visitors today! Which is a yay moment~ :D But I'm wondering if people are particularly hungry today, or something. Haha

Quote of the day: Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste rather than exact measurements.

Double Fudge Cookies

One of the people that I know who has been trying (rather unsuccessfully, she says) to make her "perfect cookies", complained that in most cases, the cookie dough just tastes like butter, and nothing else. I don't see what's wrong with this, since I like buttery cookies :), but I do see how some people would prefer a cookie that's more... chocolatey. So I was wondering if there would be such a recipe where melted chocolate would be mixed in with the dough (I usually just see cocoa powder). That's when I came across this, in a food blog called Notes from the Cookie Jar. They're apparently very chocolatey (and with over 300g of chocolate in them, I can see why!), so I thought I'd give it a try. So here we go~

What you need:
350g semisweet chocolate, chopped
2 cups plain flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
230g butter, softened
1 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons instant coffee powder (optional)

What you do:

1. Melt the chocolate, and set aside. (I used a microwave. As usual, be careful not to burn.)
2. In a bowl, add flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Stir well to combine, and set aside.
3. In another bowl, beat the butter with a mixer until light and fluffy.
4. Add brown sugar and mix well.
5. Add eggs one at a time, beating well between additions. Remember to stop and scrape the sides of the bowl once in awhile.
6. Add in the vanilla and coffee powder and mix well.
7. Add the melted chocolate, and mix until combined.
8. With a wooden spoon, stir in the flour mixture and mix until just combined.
9. Using tablespoons, drop onto a cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.
10. Bake at 150 C for approximately 20-22 minutes. The cookies come out quite soft, so test (carefully!) with a finger to see if they are set when you take them out.
11. Cool on a wire rack, before storing in a container.

First off, I made a few additions. I added just a bit more of salt, and also added some coffee. A brownie recipe I have adds in coffee with the chocolate and it tastes really good. Complements the chocolatey flavour well, so I thought it would be nice here. Also, since I like my cookies with a little bit of crunch, I replaced 1/2 cup of the brown sugar with just under 1/2 cup of vanilla (caster) sugar. Also, the original recipe didn't really mention where to mix in the melted chocolate. I asked the author about it, but I really wanted to make these today and was too impatient to wait for her answer, meh. :P After reading a few other recipes on the Internet, I hazarded a guess and mixed them in after the vanilla. :$

I don't know whether it was because of that guess or not, but the cookie dough seemed weirdly stiff. Or maybe I'm just not used to this kind of cookie dough, haha, since I usually go for chocolate chips. The dough was firm enough for me to shape it with my hands. Hmmmmm.... Is that right??? Oh well, I thought maybe the chocolate had set in the cold mixture, or something. The dough was really yummy - very chocolatey with slightly crunchy coffee granules, so I decided to go ahead and bake it anyway.

Which led to the second problem. The cookies expanded - and I really mean expanded! - in the oven. Not so much to the sides, but more towards um, the sky. Which made them really thick cookies. This confused me, because in the original picture, the cookies looked quite flat. When I took the first batch out though, it seemed like they weren't quite done (after the 22 minutes). They had the texture of a cake instead of a cookie! (At this point, I was thinking... uh-oh... I think I made a boo boo :( ) But never mind. I popped them in the oven for 5 more minutes. But they were still like mini cookie-shaped brownies! Very good brownies, but not exactly what I was looking for...



I did two batches this way before I decided to do something about it. So for the third batch, I added about a tablespoon of milk into the dough (just enough for 5 large-ish cookies) and also cranked up the temperature to 175 C, and adjusted the cooking time to about 15 minutes as well. The dough that resulted was almost as soft as my usual cookie dough. I don't know whether that would affect the texture of the finished cookie, but I decided to try anyway. The finished cookies looked slightly different than the first two batches. Much smoother. But still looked like cake! One even had a cracked top because it expanded so much! In fact, they were much much cakey-er than the first batch. Whoopsie. Guess milk doesn't work...


While that batch was baking though, the other cookies seemed to have hardened somewhat. I haven't tasted the cooler cookies yet since its too close to dinner, but I had a look at the cookies the boys were eating and it was still cakey. Feh. *disappointed* :(

Trying to do *something* to make the cookies crisper, I made the cookies smaller instead - using a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon, but left the cooking time at 15 minutes (at 175 C). This seemed to work. The cookies still had a cake-y core, but were more crunchy than brownie-like. Also, this made for smaller cookie servings, which might be a good thing! Haha! :D Here's a size comparison:


But yeah... these cookies weren't really what I expected :( It was probably my fault, but still. Disappointing. Might try this kind of cookie again, but with a different recipe. That said, the mini-brownie bites I have now are very nice, haha. They're like chocolatey pieces of brownies with a lot of the crust ((upper layer) that you find in brownies. I'm one of the people who like the crisp parts of a brownie, so I suppose this will work out fine. It's like portable brownies, haha.

I was really looking forward to having cookies though. :(

Quote of the day: Nine out of ten people like chocolate. The tenth person always lies...

On a side-note, my new baking sheet works very well, hehe~

Parmesan Chicken

Lookie what Hadi had for breakfast today. Isn't it adorable??? :D I just *had* to take picture of it, and even now, I can't stop giggling whenever I see it. It is just *too* cute~! Its made of two eggs, with baked beans scattered with cheese. How it became a face, we have now idea. It was some weird coincidence, haha. Besides that, Hadi has also been making okonomiyaki for breakfast. It's healthy (full of cabbage!) and filling too. He also find it really tasty, so its a good option, heh. I am not a fan though. Although I can take little bites, hehe.


Back to the smiley face, I find it so cute, I even tried dressing it up!

To disastrous results, haha. Maybe some of you out there could do better :P


But anyway, let's get back to what was for dinner, shall we?


In my Internet "travels", I've come across a lot of Parmesan chickens. Seems like its a popular dish. I don't quite like Parmesan with pasta, but I've come to like Parmesan with chicken (weirdly enough). I've had it with a few dishes already, such as the chicken with garlic and herb crust, but never have I had it as a proper coating, not as a mere seasoning. So of course, I was curious. So all that's left was to choose one from the myriad of Parmesan chicken out there. That was when I (quite by accident) came across this recipe in AnakBrunei's blog, a local photoblogger. I'm sure many of you have heard of him, hehe. There were a lot more stuff in his recipe than I've seen in some of the other recipes, so I thought I'd give it a try :) So here we go!

What you need:
3 chicken drumsticks
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3/4 tablespoon dried parsley
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons bread crumbs

1/4 cup butter, melted

What you do:

1. In a shallow bowl, combine the Parmesan and the rest of the dry ingredients. Mix well. I got a beautiful orangey powder with specks of green, just so you know. Picture's above, hehe.
2. Dip each drumstick into the melted butter, then straight into the Parmesan mix, turning until all sides of the chicken are coated. Repeat with the other two drumsticks.
3. Place on a shallow baking dish and drizzle any remaining butter over the chicken pieces. Bake in an oven (preheated to 180 C) for about half an hour, or until cooked through.

And tadah~ The cooked chicken looks like the powder. Golden brown, with specks of green. I love using herbs in cooking, hehe. They add a nice splash of colour. ;)


I've more or less stayed true to the original recipe, except for a couple of things. First, I reduced the amount of Parmesan, since we really didn't need so much. I kept the amounts of the herbs and spices the same though. "We like our food strong!" Hadi would say. And second, I added the breadcrumbs. Just to give it a bit of a crunch, hehe.

Also, there's the fact that we used drumsticks instead of wings, but oh well. Wings are cheap here (1 pound per kilo!) but to get them, we have to travel quite a bit, so I usually don't bother. Unless I happen to be in the area. Hmmm... have I mentioned this before??? Sounds vaguely familiar, but oh well.

Anyway, this chicken smelled nicely cheesy while it was cooking, and I was worried that the Parmesan might come off as a bit too strong. But we tasted it, it was surprisingly mild - for Parmesan, that is, haha. Or maybe I really do like Parmesan, just not with pasta sauce. Who knows...? The breadcrumbs didn't actually give much difference in texture, oh well. Maybe I should have added more, but that would have bulked up the mix too much. We would have loads of excess. Plus, it would dilute the Parmesan-y taste, haha.a

One thing that Hadi commented on though was that although the outside of the chicken was flavoursome, the inside was a bit bland. Perhaps the strong flavours on the outside gave a starker difference to the unseasoned inside, meh. So if I make this again, I would probably either rub some of the mix under the skin of the chicken (we did have some extra, but I didn't think of doing that!), or use boneless pieces of chicken, or even wings, haha. Oh well, that's a story for next time, I guess. :D

Quote of the day: In cooking, as in all the arts, simplicity is the sign of perfection.

PS And to those in my family who are reading this, cousins and all... (IF you guys are reading this, which I highly doubt. :P) why have you not signed up??? Yes, you know what I'm talking about, haha. Don't you want cookies? ;)

Copycat Tex's Chicken v4

The latest in Justin's attempt to copy Tex's chicken is out~! We haven't had it in awhile, because I think we've been a bit busy, what with dinners outside and all. Well, one dinner. And probably other events as well, not sure. But anyway, enough rambling from Ihsan, meh. Here we go!

What you need:
Chicken thighs

Coating:
4 heaped tablespoons of flour
1/2 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tablespoon white pepper
1/2 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon nutmeg
1/2 tablespoon sage
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon chicken stock
1/2 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon onion powder

What you do:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl (or a resealable plastic bag).
2. Dip the chicken pieces in the milk and toss in the bowl to coat with the flour mixture (or add into bag and shake around until properly coated).
3. Bake in a 180 C oven for about 40 minutes or until cooked through.

Just in case you want to compare, here are links to version 1, version 2 and version 3. Following on from version 3, Justin decided to add more nutmeg, after tasting a sample of the original Tex's chicken. Version 3 also wasn't salty enough, so he added more salt as well.

While this one was cooking, it smelled really close to Tex's chicken. Very strong yummy smell, hehe. :D So I guess the nutmeg was a good call. Justin decided to serve oven chips with this instead of rice (although Hadi was insisting that we are an "Asian household" and we "need rice!" haha :D). Because we didn't have enough space for both chicken and chips, what Justin decided to do was place the chips under the chicken. Like so.

The chips were actually supposed to be in one layer, but Justin just filled up the baking dish until it was full. Since the chips were supposed to be baked for only 20 minutes, while the chicken for 40, we thought it would help prevent the chips from burning. Bad idea. The chips were blocking the heat from the bottom of the oven, so that while the top of the chicken was over-browned (see top picture) the bottom of the chicken wasn't even cooked! When I cut into my chicken, blood squirted out!!! Ewwwwwwwwww! :( So we had to microwave our chicken before eating. Not only that, the chips weren't quite done either. So we popped them in the oven for an extra 10 minutes. So yeah, even though this sounded like a smart idea to utilise our oven space, it wasn't really. Haha.

Anyway, once the chicken was cooked properly, we started eating (of course). Hadi and Justin can't quite remember what the original Tex's chicken powder tasted like, but I have it often enough, so I do recall it quite well. :) And the good news is... this is the closest Justin has gotten to it, woohoo! His coating was a lot less salty, but it seems like the nutmeg was a good addition, hehe. After all, you taste some of your food through your nose, so there was definitely a hint of Tex's chicken in his chicken (since the chicken did, after all, smell like Tex's chicken while it was cooking). I don't know what else is missing. Probably the MSG. And some of the other ingredients we couldn't find as well. It definitely needs more salt, but after that, I can't say what else it needs.

One major thing was that although the outside of the chicken was flavourful, the inside was rather blah... Even for Tex's chicken, this is the case, so I usually debone my chicken pieces before coating them. I suggested this to Justin, so he might do it next time. If he isn't too lazy, haha.

By the way, I don't think there will be anything new for the weekend (well, Friday and Saturday) since Justin is going to London to celebrate Chinese New Year. Hadi might be going out with friends, so most likely, I will be having Nasi Goreng or Tex's chicken for the next two days, haha. Do check back on Sunday. :D

Quote of the day: If a man's gonna eat fried chicken, he's gotta get greasy.

Baked Jam Doughnuts

I love the jam doughnuts from Sainsbury's. They're so soft, so tender - and not too sweet. And they're cheap too! Not very healthy perhaps, but nice to have for lunch (or as a snack!) once in awhile, hehe. I especially like to bring them home and pop them into the toaster oven for about 5 minutes. They get all warm and crispy on the outside, yet soft in the inside. Sooooo good.... I have no idea why I like jam doughnuts, yet HATE jam on normal bread.

Since I like them so much, its of course of no surprise that I would want to *make* jam doughnuts. Now, the thing is, doughnuts are usually fried and while I'm not against frying (my diet is probably one of the more unhealthy ones out there :P) the cost of oil here is much more than what I would like to spend, haha. So when I found a recipe for *baked* jam doughnuts, I thought, "Well... that's an idea."

This recipe is apparently adapted from a Weight Watcher's recipe, the main difference being that more milk is used in the adaptation, and less yeast. More milk sounds good to me, so I followed the first recipe, hehe. Here we go~!

What you need:
500g plain flour
Pinch of salt
50g caster sugar
7g instant yeast (I had a 6g packet)
1 egg, beaten
250ml lukewarm milk
Jam, of your choice
Caster sugar, extra

What you do:

1. Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. Stir in 50g sugar and yeast.
2. Make a well in the flour. Add the beaten egg. Add milk and mix into a dough.
3. On a floured board, knead the dough until soft - about 5 minutes.
4. Divide the dough into 20 portions and roll into balls.
5. Place on a greased baking tray, cover with clingwrap or a damp teatowel and leave the dough to double in size in warm place.
6. Bake in a 220 degree celcius oven for 12 - 15 minutes or until well risen and browned. Cool slightly.
7. Make a small incision in the doughnut and fill with a teaspoon of jam (a syringe or narrow spoon works well). Brush lightly with water and roll into the extra sugar.

I got 16 doughnuts from this. Which was lucky, because that just about fit my baking tray. :) They got a bit squished during baking, but still managed to retain their shape, which is good, I guess. The picture below illustrates some of the steps from above. :D Including a rather blurry one taken through the grimy window of our oven, haha. It needs a good cleaning, looks like. :P



This was my first time making bread, and I thought it was rather simple, hehe. Although, since this required only one rising, I suppose it took a shorter time than usual. I was a bit worried in the initial kneading, but the dough slowly got less sticky and more elastic. Woohoo~! Although... I can't remember whether it was bread that you're supposed to be rough with. I know that you're supposed to handle pastry gently, but bread....? Not sure...

The hardest part was actually the sifting of the flour! Haha! I only have a teeny tiny sifter, so it took a lot of effort. My arms were hurting at the end. Putting the jam in was also a bit messy and took a bit of time, but not too much effort, so it was okay, I guess :) I had to put the tray of balls in my room so that it could be close to the heater and stay warm. :P I guess it worked, hehe. So here's the end result! Pretty??? :D :D :)



As pretty as they look though, I was pretty disappointed with this. The bread part was too bland, while the jam was much too sweet. It wasn't as tender as the Sainsbury's one, but I was expecting this. It was still fluffy, but a touch too tough. But that's to do with my "skillz" in bread-making, I'm sure. The taste though was not my fault, or so I believe, hehe. I followed the instructions exactly. I admit that baked doughnuts wouldn't be as nice as fried ones, but at the very least, the bread of this one should have *some* taste? To me, it just tasted of flour and water, meh. Sort of like the "bread" we made when we went camping last time, haha. Cooked flour, and not much else. :( Oh well, back to the drawing board, I guess.

Or maybe not. I can, of course, just buy them from Sainsbury's for 12p now (less than 40 cents Brunei). For that price, its not worth the effort of actually making them, hehe. Although I might want to try fried ones someday. But for now, I'll just buy them. :D

Quote of the day: I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughtnut... I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. To some skeptical friend, 'Don't even act like I didn't get that doughnut, I've got the documentation right here... It's in my file at home. ...Under 'D' '.

Mazati @ Bristol

Today, the two post-graduates who studied here in Bristol last year graduated. :D Because we haven't seen them since this summer, we met them for dinner last night and took the opportunity to drag along the rest of the Bruneians here, whom we haven't met for awhile now. Hadi's friend also told him of this halal restaurant (which we haven't tried before), so it seemed like a good opportunity, hehe.

This particular restaurant was called "Mazati" and served Lebanese cuisine. I wasn't actually certain on whether to write on it or not, since my pictures were all *horrible*, but I thought I might as well, hehe. So here we go :)

The whole restaurant ... felt like a cave. But in a good way. It was in the basement and so was dim and dark, with brick walls, but the it felt cozy - though a touch claustrophobic, meh. :P I'm not the tallest person around (in fact, I am probably one of the shortest), but I felt like I would bang my head on the ceiling. Well, okay, maybe not that bad. But looking at the ceiling made me feel much taller, haha. That's all.

Now, on to the food. Squint, and you might begin to see how our food looked like. Haha, even there, I could barely see my food. The lighting was *much* too dim.

This was my dish - Farrouj Meshwi (hoho, I know the name!). Its apparently marinated WHOLE chicken, semi-deboned (actually, cut in half also) which has been grilled and is served with fries and garlic sauce. I loved the garlic sauce, so yummy. And the fries were salty and flavoursome, so no complaints there. The chicken was juicy and tender (and crisp on the outside) but I only tasted a small hint of the marinade. Maybe they didn't marinate it enough, haha. :P Whatever the case, this cost 9 pounds and I thought it was an *ok* deal. Better than having a quarter of a chicken for 6 pounds, no? :D This would definitely be a better "sharing" dish, but everyone else wanted some lamb (or fish). I am the only true chicken fan, haha! (oh, and Jai :D *pokes*) I had to give Hadi slightly under a quarter of the chicken, but managed to finish the rest. Was very very very full the whole night though.



Hadi had spicy grilled lamb pieces (lahm meshwi) which have also been marinated then grilled. I forgot to ask him how it was, but it looked spicy. Very red. The rice portion was pathetic though, haha. Barely two mouthfuls.


This was one of the other's dishes, lamb shank (kharouf mehshi). This was supposedly one of the more tender parts of the lamb. I wouldn't know. But it looked impressive, haha. Its supposedly marinated, then cooked with "special herbs". Its rice portion was more, as you can see, and there was supposedly minced lamb in there as well! Sounds worth it for 10 pounds...

The drinks, there was the usual, meh. What I found funny was that in the menu, there was "Freshly squeezed orange juice" but then they crossed out the freshly squeezed! Haha, honest of them. (Once in Brunei, I ordered oren campur - mixed orange juice, thinking it was juices of different kinds of citrus fruits mixed together, but it was just orange squash! Misleading...)

The service there was a bit... slow. I think there were two people on the waiting staff only, and the restaurant was close to full (even though it was a Tuesday night). So the ordering took a bit of time, but the food didn't take too long at all. Also, what was nice was that they served warm fresh Lebanese bread to eat with your meal. This was free, but then they charged 10% for service fee. Sigh. Oh well. It was to be expected, I guess.

So, the verdict? It seems like the other people were happy enough with their food, although there were complaints from some of the people who had a mixed dish with both lamb and chicken. They said the chicken was better, haha! Some people were also impressed with the "value" of my dish, since it *is* a whole chicken, although its a rather small one. But still. Quite worth it, hehe. Especially if you share, which I would, if we ever go here again. What's interesting though, is that they change their menu with different seasons. We had the winter menu, so it might be interesting to check out the spring menu next time.

My main complaint, though, would be the prices. I paid a total of 11 pounds for my dinner. Compared to the less than 1 pound if I eat at home. Okay, maybe I'm being a bit karit (greedy? selfish?) haha, but hey, being a student, I am entitled to that, I'm sure, haha. I just don't like spending a lot of outside food, is all. Fast food's the cheapest here, at about 2 pounds for 2 pieces of chicken and fries. *drool* I love fast food chicken. But getting off track here, haha. *back to the point* I wouldn't mind coming here again, although I would prefer not to eat out too often. The main point of us going for dinner was to hang out with the others though, and that, we definitely did. I'm pretty sure everyone had fun last night. I know I did, and I hope the others did too. :D

Quote of the day: The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

Chicken Pie with a Cheese Crust

Last night, Hadi made Nasi Ayam. Even though it is a *really* easy recipe, he still managed to mess it up - because he didn't add salt at all! So basically, we had boiled chicken with rice for dinner. Very healthy, I must say. :P Hadi smeared lots of chilli sauce on his chicken, I sprinkled some salt on mine, while Justin, who had a blocked nose, had to resort to eating his rice with lots of serunding. Ah well. I'm sure Hadi has learnt his lesson now, heh. :P




Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I've had this particular craving for chicken pie, hehe. I haven't had that since this summer (Ibu made it, yummy~!), and buying one from the shops here isn't an option, heh. So, what to do, but to make it myself!


Now, normal shortcrust pastry is really nice, but in one of my books, there's a recipe for a CHEESE shortcrust pastry. If you haven't gotten it by now, I love cheese, hehe. I like to use it in almost everything I eat, heh. (So would most of my siblings for that matter. family resemblance? :P) My usual chicken pie usually has cheese inside the filling anyway, but to have cheese IN the crust??? That sounds fantastic! So... I decinded to make it. ;) I copied most of the instructions from the original chicken pie, heh. But here we go anyway...

What you need:
Cheese crust:
225g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon garlic granules
100g softened butter (or margarine, if you want)
75-100g finely-grated cheddar cheese
Cold water

Filling:
Chicken pieces (I used 4 drumsticks and 2 thighs)
Oven chips (uncooked)
Chicken stock granules
Salt
White pepper
Cornflour
Cheddar cheese (optional)

What you do:

1. To make the crust, mix the flour, salt, Parmesan cheese, cayenne pepper and garlic granules together.
2. Add the butter (cut into small pieces). With your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour mixture, until the whole thing resembles breadcrumbs. Mix in the cheddar cheese.
3. Add enough water (slowly, by the tablespoon) to bind the mixture into a stiff dough.
4. Knead lightly on a floured surface. Wrap 1/3 of the dough in clingfilm and store in refrigerator. Roll out 2/3 of the dough with a rolling pin, until it is large enough to fit into your pie tin. Handle it lightly at all times.
5. Lightly prick the base with a fork. Bake "empty" (with a circle of greaseproof paper over the bottom, weighed down with rice or beans) for about 15 minutes at 190 C. Remove the weights and paper, and bake for 5 minutes more. Set aside.
6. To make the filling, first boil the chicken until cooked. If using chicken with bones, boil until the meat falls off. Collect the chicken meat and drain, reserve the boiling water. Mince the chicken, either shredding finely by hand, or with a electrical grinder. Or, you can just be lazy and use pre-minced chicken, but the results are not as nice (in my humble opinion, anyway)
7. Return the minced chicken into the pot, add chopped uncooked french fries and more water, if necassary. Add seasonings - chicken stock, salt and white pepper. Simmer until very water is left. Add in cornflour mixed in with a little water to thicken it. Make sure its still moist, or your filling will be too dry.
8. Fill the baked pastry case with the filling. (I had too much, heh. Use less chicken than I did.) If you want to use more cheese, place as much cheese as you like over the top of the filling.
   
9. Roll out the remaining 1/3 of the pastry dough until it is large enough to cover the top of the pie. Press firmly over the top.
10. Bake the assembled pie at 190 C for 20-30 minutes or until the top is golden and crisp.

Just look at that. The cheese oozing out... The golden crust... The juicy filling... *drool* Its a bit too heavy for breakfast and I actually meant to have it for lunch, but Hadi and Justin had early classes today, so we had it for breakfast instead. A bit heavy perhaps, but yummy nevertheless...

Hadi was really impressed with the pastry. It was "exceptionally good", was his exact words, hehe. I don't know if its because of the cheese, or if I finally managed to get the hang of making pastry... but I do admit that this is my best shortcrust pastry attempt yet. Even while rolling it out, I could tell it was perfect! (Haha, modest much? :P) It had a slight hint of cheese, which was fantastic with the cheesy filling. But it didn't make it overpoweringly cheesy, which was good. Too much cheese can make me feel a bit queasy sometimes, haha. It was also crisp and cooked properly, unlike some of my earlier attempts. So yay~!

One thing though, I forgot to put a layer between my pastry and the rice I used to weigh it down in the earlier "empty" baking. As a result, the rice grains STUCK to the bottom of the pastry! Whoopsie. I managed to get most of them out, and weirdly enough, I didn't taste any of the leftover grains in the finished pie. Which is good. But safe to say, this is a mistake I definitely won't be making again, haha. At one point, I thought my oh-so-perfect pastry was ruined! :(

And, as usual, I didn't take into account on how salty the cheese would be. So the filling was a *bit* too salty, but nothing that is too serious, I guess, hehe. But, make it a point to season your filling slightly less than you would, if you're planning to use cheese. (Hmmmmm, does that sentence make sense??? Oh well, you get what I mean anyway, right?)

But all in all, this is my best pie yet, hehe. And its perfect for a cold morning~! ;) (Though it is weirdly warm for winter. Spring is coming, yey~)

Quote of the day: A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.

Tori Teriyaki v2

I haven't made Teriyaki Chicken in awhile now. Never this year, and only once back in the summer. Which is strange, because it really is an easy recipe and both Hadi and Justin love it. I don't *quite* like it as much, since its a bit too sweet and a bit too strong for me. With that in mind, I tried to make it slightly differently this time round. Here we go.

What you need:
3 boneless pieces of chicken, with skin
6 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons sugar
7 tablespoons Japanese soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoons kicap manis (sweet soy sauce)

What you do:

1. Heat a non-stick frying pan over very high heat. Add chicken, skin-side down, until fats start to run. This will make it really nice and crisp. Fry until golden brown. Turn over and fry until golden brown. Discard fat and set aside chicken.
2. To the hot pan, add the water and scrape off any bits and juices of chicken left on the pan. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.
3. Add the soy sauces and vinegar, and simmer until the vinegary smell is not quite so strong. Just stick your nose above the pan, and if the vinegar goes up you nose, you need to simmer it some more. :P Stir occasionally, until the sauce is slightly thickened.
4. Add the fried chicken pieces and simmer until they are cooked through. Transfer chicken onto a plate and cut into slices. Extra sauce can be used as a dip, or drizzled over chicken

Awwww, my picture from this is not as nice as last time's. Probably because our chicken pieces this year seem pathetically puny. Ah well.

Anyway, do be careful when simmering the chicken in the soy sauce. Back in Brunei, I once left the chicken simmering so long that the soy sauce was *very* thick and the chicken shrunken. It was also very very very strong. Not one of my best dishes, needless to say.

Also, I have to warn you that the amounts above are very approximate, since I was basically experimenting. Feel free to modify until you get what you want. See, I didn't really want it to be too sweet, so at first, I didn't add a lot of sugar. But soy sauce on its own ... is just way too salty. Flavour without any depth, if you know what I mean. So I had to adjust the amount of sugar, and then water, and then soy sauce.... Well, just keep on tasting the mixture and you should be fine, hehe.

I have to say, this isn't one of my best dishes, heh. :P The boys liked it well enough. "Strong," Hadi commented, when he tasted the sauce. It also took very little time to cook, just under half an hour. Which is very very rare. But it didn't turn out quite as I wanted it to. It tasted almost the same as the old one (though the boys barely remember that at all. Haha, I should cook it more often), and was almost as strong. I wanted to get something more like Kaizen sushi has. Sweet, but not overpoweringly so. Not too strong a sauce. And juicy tender chicken pieces (which I did manage to get right, hehe). Oh well, back to the drawing board, I guess...

Quote of the day: If I could only have one type of food with me, I would bring soy sauce. The reason being that if I have soy sauce, I can flavor a lot of things.

Cheesy Oven-Fried Chicken

I've been having cravings for something quite cheesy lately, heh. There's always Nasi Goreng Cheese, I suppose, but I prefer something more ... "meaty". Pasta would have been best, but I don't really feel like having beef. (Haha, like *when* do I ever feel like eating beef? :P) I've made this particular recipe back in Brunei before, but that was only once, and almost two years ago besides. So when I "rediscovered" it in one of my books, I thought it would be nice to have it for dinner. Hehe. So here we go!

What you need:
3 chicken thighs
Salt
Black pepper
75g butter
1 small garlic clove, crushed
50g fresh white breadcrumbs (I used seasoned breadcrumbs from last time)
50g mature Cheddar cheese, finely grated

What you do:

1. Wipe the chicken pieces with a damp paper towel and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. (I added some seasoning under the skin as well)
   
2. Melt the butter slowly with the garlic in a saucepan.
3. Meanwhile, mix together the breadcrumbs, cheese and 1 teaspoon salt (I substituted with chicken stock granules), and spread in a shallow dish.
4. Brush the pieces of chicken all over with the melted butter, then press, one by one, into the breadcrumb mixture, turning to coat both sides. Press the crumbs in place.
5. Arrange the portions, skin side-up and side by side in a shallow baking dish. Scoop out the garlic and trickle the remaining butter evenly over the exposed chicken surfaces.
6. Bake, uncovered, in a preheated oven at 180 C for 35-40 minutes, until the juices run clear when the chicken is pierced with a skewer and the coating is crusty and golden-brown.

I found this in one of Ibu's old recipe books back in the days when I was starting to get an interest in cooking, hehe. I think it was back during the summer of my first year (2005), so that was about one and a half years ago. I can't quite remember how it was, but I remember it was quite messy to make, hehe. However, I didn't have much problems today, which was a nice surprise. More experience perhaps? ;) Hehe.

Okay, so the picture might not look like much, hehe. Partly my fault, since all my cheese was coarsely grated. You could probably get a prettier chicken if you use finely-grated cheese (which is annoying to make, by the way :P Unless you have one of those magic grater thingies)

Now, how was the dish, you ask? While it was cooking, it smelled ... very ... Parmesan-y, hehe. That would have been from the seasoned breadcrumbs, but if you do use plain fresh breadcrumbs, adding a tablespoon of Parmesan might be quite nice. Give it "oomph", as Hadi might say. I was planning to add Parmesan anyway, when I remembered I already did, haha.

The breadcrumb-cheese crust on the chicken was reaaaaaallllllyyy good. The cheese was all crispy and brown, and had that particular taste of slightly burnt cheese. I love that, hehe. Hadi used to melt some cheese in a microwave and cooked it until it was brown and crispy. I loved that, and this tasted almost exactly the same. I didn't actually taste the Parmesan (or the herbs for that matter) in it though. Which is weird, coz it smelled really strong, but oh well. Hadi and Justin (and I, of course) agreed that the chicken tasted really good. The flavour was really good~! I'm not quite so sure if it went well with the rice, but oh well. It was so flavoursome, that Hadi was able to finish his rice with less than half of his chicken....

Although... it was perhaps a bit *too* flavoursome - in a salty kind of way. I think I got too overexcited with the salt, haha, and sprinkled it much too liberally. I don't really work with salt much (prefer chicken stock) so I'm not really how much to add. Also, the breadcrumbs already had some salt anyway (which I forgot). Ad of course, the cheese was quite salty as well! So the chicken was a touch too salty, but nothing too extreme, and easy enough to modify, hehe. What was nice though, was that the seasonings permeated through almost the whole piece, even though I didn't marinate it at all. That was probably thanks to the seasonings under the skin, hehe. Such a good idea I had. :P So saltiness not withstanding, the chicken tasted really really good.

On a side note, we usually bake our chickens on a wire rack, but this time I didn't, since the butter was supposed to help "fry" the chicken in the oven, I think, hehe. The chicken juices were *very* yummy though. Salty, with a hint of chicken and cheese. *drool*

Cheese craving now satisfied, but now I feel like having chicken pie! Haha, or at least something with a crisp buttery pastry. *drools* Oh well, next time I guess. :D

Quote of the day: Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese -- toasted, mostly.

Chicken with Garlic, Herb and Mushroom

Surprisingly, Justin didn't continue with his "quest" to perfect his Tex's chicken recipe, and decided to go with another dish instead. Apparently, the boys cobbled this together in the supermarket on their way home from the gym. Fair enough. So here we go. :)

What you need:
3 chicken drumsticks
1 teaspoon ginger powder
1 teaspoon garlic granules (or 1 clove fresh garlic, chopped or minced)
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon chicken stock
Salt, for seasoning
Half of a 295g can cream of mushroom soup
Dash of garlic and herb dressing

What you do:

1. Season the chicken with the ginger powder, garlic granules, dried basil, chicken stock and some salt.
2. In a wok with a bit of oil, fry the chicken until golden brown all over.
3. Add the mushroom soup, some water and the salad dressing. Mix well.
4. Simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 50 minutes. Serve with the mushroom sauce.

Maybe the mushroom soup was too thick or something, the chicken didn't cook as fast as I would have thought. It was slightly pink even after 40 minutes, so we popped it into the microwave for about a minute to finish cooking it.

This dish was... nothing exceptional. I don't really like mushrooms, but the soup wasn't all that strong. I also didn't take too much of the sauce, so maybe I didn't quite taste it well, haha. Although there was a slight hint of mushroom, it was mainly just salty-creamy. Weirdly enough, Justin found it too strong... It was probably too salty for him. Hadi, of course, said it was lacking "oomph~!" Whatever oomph is. :P

From my point of view, this dish is fine as it is, although a bit plain. But I think Hadi and Justin would've enjoyed it more if Justin had put in fresh mushrooms inside. Fry it with the chicken maybe. Also, it could've used more garlic and basil. Or maybe not basil, mixed herbs might be slightly stronger. Also, I'm not sure why Justin put in the ginger powder. I didn't really taste it, but I really think its unnecessary. But this is all just my opinion, hehe. :D If you do try this, add in whatever you think will be nice. :) I believe that's Hadi and Justin's policy in cooking. :P

Quote of the day: I confess, that nothing frightens me more than the appearance of mushrooms on the table, especially in a small provincial town.

Ayam Bakar Tomato Rumah (Tomato Baked Chicken from Home)

Whoopsie, I made a mistake last time. Justin is cooking tomorrow, Hadi today, heh. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Hadi made Ayam Bakar Tomato in an attempt to recreate one of our common dinners back in Brunei. He didn't quite get Ibu's combination right, so he tried again today. So here we go :)

What you need:
3 pieces chicken thighs
Tomato sauce
Kicap manis (sweet soy sauce)
1 teaspoon lemon juice

What you do:

1. Marinate the chicken with the rest of the ingredients, with the tomato and soy sauce in a 1:1 ratio.
2. Bake at 180 C for 40 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through, basting with the juices occasionally. Hadi placed the chicken in a shallow baking dish and poured over the extra marinade, so that the chicken partly cooks in its juices and marinade. (Yum!)
   

This smelled really good while it was cooking, a smell reminiscent of Ibu's Ayam Bakar Tomato, except for the slight hint of lemon. That was Hadi putting his own touch, haha. The chicken looked quite similar as well, a darkish brownish reddish colour, hehe.

But he didn't quite the combinations right, I think. It was slightly too sweet, with not enough of the tomato coming through. Plus, he didn't put in some other ingredients - turmeric, a pinch of salt and a dash of oil.

That said, Hadi and I *did* like the chicken, hehe. It was so flavoursome and so familiar. The lemon did go quite well with it, but it tasted a bit strange because we are not used tohaving lemon in our *normal* ayam bakar tomato, hehe. Justin, however, didn't like it much. He said the flavours didn't go together very well, and that it was too sweet. Hmmm, as far as I know, people usually like the ayam bakar tomato from our house, so I guess Hadi just didn't get it right this time. Hadi and I were just biased because of our "childhood" memories, hahaha. Oh well, we'll eventually perfect it. :D

Quote of the day: In the childhood memories of every good cook, there's a large kitchen, a warm stove, a simmering pot and a mom.

Copycat Tex's Chicken v3

Looks like Justin's threat of making a Tex's chicken copy wasn't an idle one. He's up to version 3 now, with more on the way, since it's not even close to perfect, heh. So, here's his latest attempt.

What you need:
Chicken thighs

Coating:
4 heaped tablespoons of flour
1/2 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon white pepper
1/2 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1/2 tablespoon nutmeg
1/2 tablespoon sage
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon chicken stock
1/4 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon onion powder

What you do:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl (or a resealable plastic bag).
2. Dip the chicken pieces in the milk and toss in the bowl to coat with the flour mixture (or add into bag and shake around until properly coated).
3. Bake in a 180 C oven for about 40 minutes or until cooked through.

Its exactly the same as version 2, except that he reduced the amount of flour, increased the chicken stock AND added onion powder. Yes, we finally managed to locate some, hehe.

So how did it turn out this time??? It was much crispier than version 2, that's for sure. Because of the reduced amount of flour, there was a much bigger proportion of all the rest of in ingredients (compared to the flour). Although this wasn't immediately obvious for most of the ingredients, our first impression was "Whoa! This is a lot of pepper!" White pepper, to be specific. I don't know about the other two, but there was so much pepper that I couldn't really taste the rest of the ingredients, heh. So look forward to a version 4 sometime in the near future :P This Thursday I believe, hehe. See you then~

Quote of the day: When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Man invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking.

First Year @ Bristol: Ayam Putih (White Chicken)

Well, yes, I know. Chicken is white meat, so technically, all chicken dishes are white. But the original version of this dish (by Ibu) was a beautiful sparkling white, hehe. Its a basic chicken stirfry recipe, where the chicken is seasoned and cooked. It was my favorite dish back in Brunei and in my first year in Bristol as well, but its come a long way since then, with a LOT of versions. :P

See, back in my first year, I lived about an hour away from the nearest halal butcher (unlike now, where one is just 5 minutes away, hehe). So every month (sometimes every two months) I would troop all the way to Easton to buy 20 pounds worth of chicken. Since it was so far away, I "rationed" my chicken into small servings, and learnt to make my dishes *very* flavoursome to make up for it. With only about 1/6th of a chicken breast each time, that was absolutely necessary to finish my 1 cup of rice. The only exceptions were Nasi Ayam, and of course, Nasi Goreng Cheese.

But anyway, to achieve my goal of boosting my meagre amounts of chicken, I added various modifications to the original ayam putih recipe. Here's its history ;)

• v1: Chicken with salt
• v2: Chicken with chicken stock powder and a bit of white pepper
• v2a: As with v2, but with some cornflour + water added, to make the juices thicker
  
• v3: As with v2, but fry some sliced shallots before adding the chicken
• v4: See below :D

What you need:
Boneless pieces of chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces
4 shallots, sliced finely
2 dried red chillies, sliced
Dried chilli flakes
Salt, chicken stock and white pepper, for seasoning

What you do:

1. Season the chicken with salt, chicken stock and plenty of white pepper. Add the chiili flakes and marinate for 15 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, heat some oil in a wok and fry the shallots and dried chillies, until shallots are softened and slightly translucent.
3. Add the chicken pieces, and stirfry until cooked through. Taste, adjust seasoning, and serve with white rice.

Ok, thanks to my modifications, the chicken is no longer white, hehe. Or maybe that was because I used drumsticks this time, instead of chicken breasts. Well, whatever the case, its no longer white - but to me, it will always be ayam putih, hehe.

Justin was sceptical on how I could make a good meal out of such basic ingredients, but I think I did quite well. Unfortunately, he went out for dinner tonight, and didn't have a taste. But Hadi liked it. I *really* liked it as well (haven't cooked this in more than a year!) but I found it just a little bit too spicy. Shouldn't have added the chilli flakes, I guess, hehe. But I thought they added a nice splash of colour. ;)

To tell you the truth, I would much prefer Ayam Putih v1, which is elegantly simple, hehe. I have simple tastes in food, and the 1st version is absolutely perfect (for me) but some people do find it a bit too *blah*, haha. But the thing about it is that it is very easily modified (such a basic recipe!) and its so simple to make too! It was perfect for my first year here, scared as I was of cooking at that time, hehe. Now that I've rediscovered it, I'll probably be cooking it a lot more as well! :D

Quote of the day: I feel a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation.

Chocolate Chip Cookies v4 (with Maltesers)

Hoho, haven't had the time to continue on my quest to find the perfect cookie lately, but the 4th installment is finally here. :D As a summary of my cookies so far, v1 and v3 were very similar - quite chewy, while v2 was a bit too dry. How will v4 fare? :D

This isn't actually a "pure" chocolate chip cookie, but its as good as one, hence the version 4. This is from yet another food blog, Grab Your Fork. I love food blogs. They can be quite creative (in cooking), and the writers really try hard to perfect their recipes. I'm not quite there yet, but someday... :D So anyway, here we go!

What you need:
250g butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar (I used vanilla sugar, reduced to 1/2 cup)
3 eggs
2 1/4 cups plain flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup malted milk powder (I used Horlicks)
200g dark chocolate, broken into chunks (I reduced to 150g)
100g Maltesers, smashed in the bag (I increased to 150g)

What you do:

1. Cream the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer at low speed.
2. Add the eggs gradually, beating well between each egg.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
4. Place large tablespoonfuls of the mixture onto baking trays lined with baking paper. Make sure that there is plenty of room between mounds to allow for spreading (recommended 5 per tray).
5. Bake at 150 C for 20-25 minutes, depending on how crispy you like them. For crispier cookies, bake for 30 minutes.

I forgot myself and creamed the butter and sugar at quite a high speed. But in this kind of weather, its really hard to get the butter soft. :P I put it on the heater to soften, took it off and prepared the other ingredients (didn't want it to melt while I was busy). By the time I was ready to use it, it was not soft anymore. Grrrr! So I needed the high speed. :P

But anyway, maybe because of that, my cookies spread *quite* a lot. One heaped tablespoon of dough made a cookie much bigger than the palm of my hand. Surprisingly though, the cookies were not at all cakey. They were very thin and mostly crispy, with just a hint of chewiness. They were, in fact, very very good. The best yet, I would say! Very very close to Famous Amos (in texture, if not in shape :P). Only Famous Amos has no chewiness at all. I am also utterly convinced that they use dark chocolate in their chocolate chip cookies. Or at least semi-sweet chocolate. Because the bits with the chocolate chunks tasted amazingly close to Famous Amos!!! *so excited* Progress at last~!

On a side-note, while both me and Hadi liked the crispy parts (from the edges to almost all the way in the middle), Justin thought it wasn't chewy enough. I can't emphasize enough just how different people's "perfect cookies" would be like. Keeping this in mind, do read on. ;)

Although, this wasn't actually how I thought the cookies would turn out. I didn't taste the malt in the Maltesers OR Horlicks at all! I didn't even taste the Maltesers. Might have been partly my fault, I think I crushed them into too fine pieces, but still. Rather a big let-down. I love Maltesers. :P As my Maltesers "cake" might have suggested, haha. So, I might try this recipe again. Only with a LOT more Horlicks, and with no dark chocolate. Just large pieces of Maltesers all the way through, hehe.

But anyway, this cookie is very very close to what I would like for the texture of my perfect cookie. :D I *might* try freezing it before baking next time as well, to prevent the cookie from spreading too much. I hope this won't adversely affect the texture. :S And of course, no beating the butter and sugar at too high speeds, hehe. I *would* like to try again this week, but I don't think we'll be finishing this batch any time soon. This recipe makes a LOT of cookies, and all of them large ones. I shudder to think how many rounds I would have to make to cook smaller cookies. I even had to transfer to a pot to do the final mixing, since my mixing bowl was not large enough. That has *never* happened before... :S

I think I should also buy a new baking tray. :( Mine at the moment is silver-coloured, which would reflect quite a significant amount of heat. As a result, the bottoms of my cookies are always not quite cooked compared to the tops. Even putting it on the lower shelf of the oven doesn't help, sigh. I always have to give it a second round, this time with the bottom sides up. I get it before my next cookie adventure, hehe. ;)

Quote of the day: Broken cookies don't have calories.

Honey and Mustard "Chicken Tonight"

Very simple dinner tonight, Hadi just followed the instructions on the back of a jar of Chicken Tonight, Honey and Mustard Flavour. (Justin's used a jar of Sausages Tonight before, if you remember). So anyway, here we go :D

What you need:
Boneless chicken pieces
1 onion, sliced
Salt and black pepper, for seasoning

What you do:

1. Season the chicken well with salt and black pepper. Pan-fry the onions with the chicken, until the chicken is golden brown.
2. Stir in sauce and simmer until chicken is fully cooked.

The boys got it in their heads that I would hate this dish, just because its supposed to be sweet (yes, I do detest sweet chicken). But surprisingly, this wasn't as sweet as they thought. Which is good. :P I quite liked it, it was quite... savoury, haha.

Hadi and Justin helped themselves to the sauce (I like my rice dry :P) but quickly got tired of it. Hadi complained that it was slightly oily. I guess it was nice when it was hot, but got a bit icky when cold. Oh well, that goes for most foods.

On a side-note, Justin didn't win anything for the tae kwon do competition, Hadi got a silver medal. But the thing is, Hadi won silver just because he was one of the two people in his weight + belt category. So the thing is, is it better to win nothing at all, or to win by default? :P

And Ruzanna, this is for you. ;) The label of the elusive Tex's chicken. Hope you can find it. :D

Quote of the day: I love cooking, I love reading, I love anything that doesn't take too much exercise!

Copycat Tex's Chicken v2

As I had mentioned before, it would not be long until you see the second version of Justin's attempt to copy the Tex's chicken powder. And sure enough, the very next time he's cooking dinner (which is today, obviously) he made the second version. In fact, he has "threatened" to keep on making copies until I say that it tastes better than Tex's chicken. Just why would he want to do this? Well, he says it makes it easier for him to decide what to cook - and will help him in his plans to take over the world. Well, not really. He's planning to sell the chicken goreng powder he's currently developing and become rich. Seriously. Right. So, here we go!

What you need:
3 pieces chicken (ours were small, so we used 2 pieces each instead)

Coating:
7 heaped tablespoons flour
1/2 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon white pepper
1/2 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1/2 tablespoon nutmeg
1/2 tablespoon sage
1 tablespoon ginger powder
1/2 tablespoon chicken stock
1/4 tablespoon salt

What you do:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl (or a resealable plastic bag).
2. Dip the chicken pieces in the milk and toss in the bowl to coat with the flour mixture (or add into bag and shake around until properly coated).
3. Bake in a 180 C oven for about 40 minutes or until cooked through.

As you hopefully noticed, he's missing a lot less ingredients now. Just the MSG, celery seed, onion powder and rusk is left. I'm not sure if he's going to try and source them. He's probably going to just go ahead with the current ingredients and find the golden ratio.

To help him with this, he instructed me to write down the exact amounts of the stuff he was using - so that making a version 3 would be much easier. I did that, but I know for a fact that his tablespoons are ... well, less than standard, shall we say. But the approximate amounts are more than good enough for this, I guess.

So did this second version manage to at least improve on the first one (which was rather bland, if you still remember)? Well, surprise surprise (!) but this was actually much much more tasteless than the first one! Probably because he put in too much flour. His 7 tablespoons were very very heaped tablespoons, probably about 2 cups of flour, if not more.

Also, the chicken, as you can see, remained quite powdery and didn't turn a nice golden-brown, like the others. It wasn't even all that crispy, even though it was in the oven close to an hour. Either our oven's not working properly anymore, or Justin coated it with too much flour (because of the large excess he had...). Actually, he didn't preheat the oven earlier either, so it was probably in there for shorter than we thought. Although he says that he never preheats ovens. Oh well, never mind. I'll try to intercede next time, and get him to preheat it. Easier to estimate cooking time, heh.

So anyway, for his next version, I guess he will be cutting down the amount of flour, and possibly increasing the seasonings. Stay tuned~! ;)

Quote of the day: Bad cooks -- and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen -- have delayed human development longest and impaired it most.

PS Hadi and Justin have a Tae Kwon Do competition in Birmingham tomorrow. They would never read this in a million years, but good luck guys~! (Yeah, I know, why can't I just tell them face to face? :P) Haha. Just thought the world (and Ibu) would like to know. ;)

Crispy Tomato Chicken

Hadi really liked the crisp exterior of Justin's chicken from last time, but thought it was rather bland. So this time round, he tried marinating the chicken before coating with the flour mixture and cooking. Sounds like a rather neat idea, hehe. We usually eat Justin's chicken with tomato/chilli sauce, so how would actually putting the sauce inside with the chicken be like? You're about to find out. ;)

What you need:
3 pieces chicken thighs

To marinate:
Tomato sauce, enough to cover the chicken
Salt and black pepper, for seasoning

To coat:
Flour mixture from Justin's chicken, or just plain seasoned flour

What you do:

1. Marinate the chicken in the tomato sauce seasoned with salt and pepper. Hadi marinated his overnight, but do it as long as you can.
2. Place the flour mixture in a plastic container with a cover, and place one piece in chicken inside. Cover, shake to coat and set the chicken piece aside. Repeat with the other two pieces.
3. Bake in a 180 C oven until cooked and juices run clear.

Like its "predecessor", this chicken was also nice and crispy on the outside. The biggest difference was the subtle hint of tomato right under that crispy coating. Me and Hadi really liked it. Justin found it a bit weird tasting though. I do admit that the tomato sauce was sweeter than I would have liked (its usually sourer than this) so maybe the cooking somehow made the sauce sweeter or something. :P Whatever the case, I'm sure adding a bit of salt (and perhaps vinegar) would remedy this.

And perhaps turmeric as well. :D (Haha, it would be a lot like ayam bakar tomato, only crispy! Sounds good to me~!) Someone once said that a little bit of turmeric helps chicken absorb any marinade, so it should do well here, I think. Just a little. Because even though Hadi marinated it overnight, the flavour didn't really penetrate the top layer, so under the crisp crust, it just tasted like chicken. :S He forgot to poke the chicken though, that didn't help I'm sure. Also, like most tomato-based dishes (eg pasta?) I think this would benefit from some herbs as well (in the marinade), just to deepen the flavour, hehe. ;)

It *might* also be an idea to use plain flour, since the seasonings from the original mixture might not go with the ones used in the marinade. Other than that, this was a nice dish, and I'm sure it'll crop up pretty often (with different marinades, I think. Perhaps chilli next time? ;) )

Quote of the day: I don't like gourmet cooking or 'this' cooking or 'that' cooking. I like good cooking.

Garlic Bread

I like the garlic bread from Pizza Hut, hehe. And when you get the garlic bread supreme, with the cheese. Sigh, so yummy :D But the thing I don't *quite* like about it is that it is usually a bit dry. Problem was solved when Ibu made garlic butter at home, which you can just spread over the top of your toast, but here in the UK, I've discovered one garlic bread "product" that I really really like. ;)

They usually sell it pre-made in supermarkets, and consists of a baguette half-cut into slices with garlic butter inserted in between. Then what you do is just bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the baguette turns golden brown. Pull the slices apart, and what results is fresh fluffy garlic bread, that is dripping with the butter. No dried-up butter here, nuh-uh. My favorite is the Sainsbury's version, which is more buttery and less salty (compared to say, the Tesco's version)

But anyway, you can easily get it in the UK (and its usually quite cheap - 2 pounds for 4 baguettes) but I'm not sure if you can get it in Brunei. We smuggled some over to Brunei last year, and apparently my siblings liked it, heh. (Not sure about now though... :P) But anyway, I wanted to try it replicating it at home, so that I can have fresh garlic bread when I am permanently back in Brunei, hehe. Justin thought it was rather useless, since like I said, its easily available here, but hey, I should practice. Now, the thing is... can you get part-baked baguettes in Brunei? So anyway, here we go~! :D

What you need:
2 part-baked baguettes

Garlic butter:
75 g salted butter, softened
Garlic powder, or minced garlic
1 tablespoon dried parsley
Salt, for seasoning

What you do:

1. Mix the ingredients for the garlic butter together in a bowl. Since the amount of garlic-ness that people like often differ, add the garlic slowly and in small amounts, tasting in between until you get the strength you want. Adjust the seasoning with the salt if you want.
2. Put the mixture into a piece of aluminium foil and roll into a cylinder shape. Refrigerate or freeze until solid. (Shown above)
   
3. Make incisions into the part-baked baguettes at 2 cm intervals to form pockets.
4. Remove the butter from the fridge, cut into 5mm slices and place a slice into each of the incisions.
5. Wrap in foil and bake in an oven pre-heated to 200 C for 5-10 minutes, or until golden brown.

It sounded quite simple, but I had problems inserting the butter into the incisions. :P Fingers nor nimble enough, haha. I managed to break the baguette in half accidentally, but decided to put it in the oven anyway. 10 minutes later, I was slightly disappointed, as it seems like I didn't put in enough butter into the incisions. The portions *with* the butter were really nice though, and the bread was soft and fluffy and warm. Oh well, never mind.

I tried another way with the second baguette. This time, I cut it into slices and placed the butter slices on top, before baking for 10 minutes. The results were better, the bread was fluffy and yellow with butter, haha, *but* it was also dry. The butter evaporated or something, or else drained off. The garlic taste was not quite enough, as a result, heh. Not really what I was looking for, but still good enough, I guess. (If you use this way, you can even put cheese on top of the slices! :D)

Now, thinking about it, I think an easier way would be to cut the baguette into incisions, but then just placing a lot of softened butter in it using a butter knife (instead of solid slices). It'll be easier to put it in, with a lower risk of breaking the baguette, haha. You can also put in as much butter as you want, which would be nice. :D AND the butter won't be dried out~! ;) I don't think I would be trying it anytime soon (too much bother, easier to just run to the supermarket, haha. Plus the price difference isn't big enough :P) but I might try it the next time I'm in Brunei, if I can find baguettes. :P

But anyway, if you ever try this, once you assemble the baguette, then just pop it in the freezer. That way, you can have fresh garlic bread whenever you want. :D

Quote of the day: I often put boiling water in the freezer. Then whenever I need boiling water, I simply defrost it.