Simple Oyster Chicken

Haha, admit it. You thought that there wasn't gonna be a post this weekend, right? Not after that totally unexpected midweek post. :0 Or maybe no one notices that I've been posting only on the weekends these past few weeks. :(

Anyhow, I was actually planning to make something else this weekend, but that dish didn't turn out too well, I am sad to report, so here, I bring you another. ;) Perhaps as a result of me listening to a *LOT* of jiwang malay songs these last few days, or perhaps I really missed Malay food, who knows, but I had a hankering to eat a Malay dish, so here we go!

What you need:
2 boneless chicken drumsticks, cut into bite-sized pieces

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon corn flour
Sprinkling of turmeric

3 small dried red chillies, chopped
2 shallots, sliced into rings
5 curry leaves
1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce

What you do:

1. Marinate the chicken pieces in the black pepper, cumin powder, 1/2 tablespoon of oyster sauce, cornflour and a bit of turmeric for about half an hour.
2. Pan fry the chicken pieces until golden and set aside or (recommended) dust in more corn flour, deepfry until golden and set aside.
3. Stirfry the shallots with the remaining oyster sauce until softened and translucent.
4. Add in the curry leaves and dried chillies and fry until crispy.
5. Add in the chicken, stir well to mix and serve with hot white rice.

To tell you the truth, I actually used roughly double the amounts in this recipe as per the original recipe, which was a mistake, because I probably had much less chicken than they did and it turned out much too salty and strong tasting. So halving the recipe (for one person's serving) is probably a good idea.

But doesn't the dish look so very pretty? All golden with splashes of green and red. I like that kind of dish, hehe. It also kind of reminds me of buttermilk chicken. :) Which is something I haven't had in awhile, but am way too lazy to make it, hehe.

I was actually planning to deepfry this, so that it will be all nice and crispy, but again, couldn't be bothered and decided to make it pan-fried instead. I added the corn flour in an attempt to make it even slightly crispy, but that didn't work too well. Sigh.

But all in all, this wasn't too bad a dish, if you get rid of the excess flavourings that I had. I actually wasn't sure what jintan manis is. It was a toss-up between cumin and fennel and since cumin was the only one I found, I decided to just use that one. In the end, it didn't turn out too bad, like I said, but I just thought I'd mention it. :)

Quote of the day: Best way to get rid of kitchen odours - eat out.

Chilli Chicken with Honey and Soy

No, you didn't see wrong. My dinner tonight really did have vegetables. Shocking, huh? This dish is a throwback to the Bristol days, where I would cook things that are chockful of green things, and Hadi and Justin (You do still remember them, I hope? ;) ) would eat them all while I would touch nothing except for the chicken. :P Anyway, I have no idea why I decided to make this recipe tonight, except that I've had it lying around for the past year or so, and already had two of the three veggies required, haha. So here we go!

What you need:
1 tablespoon oil
1 small boneless chicken breast, diced
1/2 red pepper, deseeded and sliced
3 spring onions, roots trimmed, bulbs left whole and greens trimmed
small pinch crushed chilli flakes, to taste
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon clear honey
1/4 cabbage, sliced thinly (5 savoy cabbage leaves were recommended, but I don't have that :P)

What you do:

1. Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan, then add the chicken and cook over a high heat until starting to colour.
2. Tip the pepper into the pan and tip in the whole spring onion bulbs.
3. Spoon the chilli flakes, soy sauce and honey into the pan and mix in.
4. Pile in the cabbage, let it wilt slightly, then toss in the spring onion greens.
5. Serve with rice noodles (recommended) or rice (as Ihsan did. :P)

Now.... if you're still wondering. I did it. I actually ATE the vegetables! Big shocked face everyone!! :0 So that's half a pepper, 1/4 of a cabbage and 3 spring onions. Add in the clementines I had for lunch, that's my 5-a-day of fruit and vegetables down, hehe. Ihsan feels particularly healthy tonight! :D

So.... how was the dish itself? Its a rather typical dish with an Oriental base, as I'm sure you'll notice. (Though I got the recipe from a British magazine). I'm sure anyone can make this kind of recipe up by themselves. Just add in your favorite vegetables, hehe.

Aside from the vegetables, this is a particularly healthy dish. Stirfries are usually low in fat, as they use very little oil, and chicken breasts, of course, are healthier than the juicier thighs. Probably the only "bad" thing about this dish would be the salt involved. I dunno about other people, of course, but I actually found this a bit too healthy. GAH, real typo there! I mean SALTY. I found it a bit too salty. (haha, too healthy? What is my mind telling me??) Probably because I put in too much soy sauce, since I never measure it out and go overboard, haha. I also decided to add a bit of salt to the chicken while it was frying, so that didn't help either. But as long as you follow the intructions, it should be fine?

One thing I was wondering though. This was supposed to be some kind of sweet-ish and sour-ish dish, but probably because of my excess soy sauce, I couldn't actually taste the sweetness of the honey. And I fail to see where the sourness would come from. As far as I know, red peppers and spring onions are slightly sweet, and cabbage is more or less tasteless - which is kind of why I like it, really. :P I just thought I'd mention what kind of taste the dish was going for.

By the end of the dish though, I was struggling with the vegetables, since I don't like cold food, and especially not veggies. But of course, Ihsan knew this and Ihsan is a smart girl, so Ihsan ate her veggies EARLY before they got cold. Great idea, huh?? :D So there was only very little to choke down at the end of the meal, hehe.

Apart from that though, this is an easy and fast dish. You don't even have to chop the spring onions finely like what is usually done. All you have to do is cut them into roughly three equal parts. Preparation for this dish would take maybe 5 minutes, and cooking another 10, depending on how soft you like your veggies. I like them pretty soft, so I took slightly longer. But a total of 15 minutes, maybe, for a simple and nutritious meal!

Good huh?? :)

Quote of the day: If taking vitamins doesn't keep you healthy enough, try more laughter: The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.

Gyoza

I've never before felt the need to have gyoza. My aunt last year had made some, but I didn't particularly like them, though I can't remember why. Perhaps it was because it had too much vegetables, too strong ginger, or something like that. But when I came across this recipe here, I suddenly felt the urge to make them. Because the end result of that recipe looks amazing! (Scroll to the end of the post - that one, not this one).

So... what exactly are gyoza? Wiki has a pretty good article, but I'll give you the gist of it. Basically, gyoza are Japanese dumplings which are Chinese in origin. The dumplings consist of a meat and/or veggie filling, wrapped in dough. The name of the Chinese version is jiaozi and, as far as I can tell, the main difference between gyoza and jiaozi is the way you cook it, as well as the seasonings you use. Gyoza are first pan fried then steamed, while jiaozi can be steamed, fried or boiled. Of course, I'm no expert in this, so someone correct me if I'm wrong. All I know about gyoza is from that Wiki article, haha.

Anyways, there's a brief intro, so let's get on to the recipe, shall we? The original site is *very* good in detailing out the recipe. It basically goes step by step. This is definitely a recipe that needs step by step pictures, but since that site has already done it, I didn't bother. Just refer there for the methods, if you're unsure. I just changed the ingredients somewhat. Here we go!

What you need:
1 boneless, skinless chicken thigh - minced finely
3 spring onions - minced finely, makes about 1/4 cup
Cabbage - minced finely, makes about 1/4 cup
3 cloves garlic, grated - I used garlic powder
Ginger, to taste, grated - I used ginger powder
1/4 cup mozarella cheese
Salt
Soy sauce
Sesame oil, about 2 tablespoons
Nanami (Shichimi) togarashi, or Japanese seven-flavour chilli pepper
Gyoza wrappers, thawed - I used 25
Flour, mixed with a little water to make a chalky liquid

To serve: Soy sauce mixed with a little chilli oil, for dipping

What you do:

1. Mix the chicken, cabbage, spring onions, garlic, ginger, cheese (!!!), salt to taste, about 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, sesame oil and the seven-pepper powder. Feel free to use your own seasonings. Also feel free to modify the filling. The original recipe used onions, but I was out, so I skipped it.
2. Now to assemble the gyoza - first, take a gyoza wrapper and place onto the palm of your hand. They've been sprinkled with flour, so they won't be sticky.
3. Add about a teaspoon or so, of filling onto the centre of the wrapper. Don't put too much, you need to leave a border of about half an inch to close the gyoza properly later.
4. Using your finger, wet half of the border of the gyoza wrapper with the floury water. This will act as a glue to keep the gyoza closed.
5. Now to close the gyoza. I'm not sure why, but you need to crimp the borders as you close it. Probably makes it prettier. Taken straight from the original: "You’re going to have to close the shell, but not just in a smooth, straightforward manner. You will have to crimp one side of the border, making creases along the way. Different people have different techniques for this. My way is to bring the two halves of the shell together and close them just at the center point, leaving the sides temporarily open. Then, working from the top/center, I take some slack from the far side of the shell (as you see in the above illustration, I start on the right side), creating the crease–then pressing down hard to seal them together. I do this twice on the right, and twice on the left, for four creases; you do what suits you." There's an illustration on how to do this, so just have a look there.
6. Tadah, this is a finished plate of my gyoza! Well, half a plate. I put the rest in a container to freeze. I got 25 dunplings, and decided to cook only 11 and froze the rest.
7. Spread some oil onto your frying pan with a paper towel so that there is just a thin layer of oil at the bottom of the pan.
8. Place the gyoza into the pan. I managed to squeeze all 11 into my 8 inch frying pan, just so you have an estimate on how much space you need. Fry gyoza (no cover) at low heat until the bottom of the gyoza are golden brown.
9. Raise the heat and add a cupful of water into the pan. Quickly cover the pan as the water turns to steam. (I used my plate to cover, since I don't have one for the pan)
   
10. Keep the cover on for 5 minutes or so, checking occasionally, until the water has more or less steamed off. If there is no water left, but the gyoza still look a bit uncooked, just add more water and cover again.
11. When the gyoza are done, place onto a plate (the writer suggested placing a plate onto the pan and turning it upside down, but this didn't work for me. You can use whatever method you want, so long as it gets the gyoza out of the pan. :P) and serve immediately with the soy sauce dip.

Wow, this is a pretty long recipe to type out, but it really didn't take that long. Of course, like any small portion dish, it takes awhile to assemble the gyoza, but its not difficult to do. I actually found it a bit relaxing, haha. Although the crimping bit was fiddly.

But the end result is.... Yum!! Very very yummy! The gyoza are crisp on one side and soft on the other, and the filling is nice and juicy. A very good combination! If you noticed the mozzarella cheese in the list of ingredients there, you might wonder what its doing there. It was recommended by the original recipe, since it makes the filling juicier, apparently. To be honest, I was also wondering whether I should put it in, since I was adding extra stuff like ginger and soy sauce. Will that go with cheese??? But being the cheese fanatic that I am, I decided to be brave and put it in anyway. If it doesn't work out, then I could just lie about putting it in, haha.

But in the end, I think it worked out pretty well!! Mozzarella is a mild cheese, so you don't really taste it, but I definitely think it improved the texture of the filling. It kind of held everything together, like a glue, so... everything is looking good! Amazing, in fact. I mean, it has cheese. There is nothing else I could possibly want in here! :P

The only "downside" to this would be that its a bit oily. I could feel the oil around my mouth as I ate, but that's minor, really. I dabbed off excess oil with a paper towel after that, so it wasn't an issue.

So... my opinion? An absolutely amazing dish! I would have this everyday, if I could, haha. The 11 gyoza made me feel stuffed, though I have to admit I wasn't that hungry to begin with. Apparently, 12 is about the serving size for a normal appetite, but that would depend on the size of your gyoza and the amount of filling you put in, obviously. You can modify the filling to your own taste, but I must say that the one I made makes *me* feel pretty happy, hehe.

Since this freezes well (just make sure you place them single layer as you freeze them. Once they're frozen, you can just put them into a bag. To cook them, cook them for slightly longer.), you can make lots and lots of gyoza and stock up! Since I have quite a bit of the wrappers left, I will probably use them up whenever I'm free. Then, I can have gyoza whenever I like, yay! The actual cooking is pretty easy and doesn't take long, I assure you.

So go make some gyoza!

Quote of the day: If cooking becomes an art form rather than a means of providing a reasonable diet, then something is clearly wrong.

Chocolate Warning.... Again

So remember last year, when there was a whole big fuss about chocolate from Masterfood's being non-suitable for vegetarians (and hence, non-halal for Muslims)? Well, I thought chocolate is now safe to eat, because soon after that, they issued a statement that they will be changing their recipe back to a vegetarian-safe one.

Not so.

Only just yesterday, a report came out on that some of their chocolate was still non-vegetarian safe! Apparently, some kind of committee investigated and found that Twix, Milky Way and Celebrations still have animal rennet in them. And apparently, the Masterfoods spokesman claims that it has always been made with that recipe, and that they have no plans to change it.

Grrrrr. How annoying. I love Twix.





Oh well, at least Maltesers are okay.

Also, I can't say if this info is correct globally. I just know that it applies to UK, is all.

Have a good day, people.

Chicken Topped with Tomatoes and Cheese

When I came across this recipe, I quite liked the idea of it. I mean, yes, it has cheese, which is always good. But if you think about it, its sort of pizza ... minus the bread. No? In this case, the chicken acts as the "bread" as well as the chicken, and then, like a pizza it is topped with chicken and cheese. Unlike a pizza, it is fried instead of baked, but hey. Close enough. :D So, here we go!

What you need:
1 boneless skinless chicken breast, sliced horizontally in half
Salt and black pepper, for seasoning
Plain flour, for coating
Oil, for shallow frying

1 tomato, peeled and seeded, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 clove garlic, chopped (I used 1 teaspoon garlic powder)
2 tablespoons tomato ketchup (I used one of ketchup and 1 of pasta sauce)
Dried herbs, of your choice. I suggest oregano, basil, etc

Cheddar cheese, grated or sliced, to taste


What you do:

1. Season either the chicken or the flour with the salt and black pepper. Heat up the oil in a shallow frying pan. You need only about 1-2 tablespoons of oil.
   
2. Coat the chicken in he flour and shallow fry on both sides until golden-brown and crispy.
3. While the chicken is cooking, mix up the tomato, vinegar, garlic, tomato sauces and herbs in a small bowl.
4. Once ready, lower the heat and top the chicken with the tomato mixture, then the cheese.
5. Cover the pan (with a pan cover, or a plate if you don't have one handy) and leave until the cheese is all melty.
6. Serve chicken with rice, or in a bun as a burger.
   

Before I made this, I was wondering whether I should have it with rice or as a burger. As you see from the picture, I decided to go with burger, but according to my sister, it should go well with rice. But I thought cheese goes rather well with bread (yes, the whole pizza thing again) so I decided burger.

So anyway... the original recipe seemed quite easy and though I modified it slightly, it still seems easy, no? It took me less than half an hour to finish up the whole thing, but I have to say, the cheese makes it a slightly messy job. I decided to use sliced cheese, as that is easier to handle for things like this, but since I cut the chicken to size (to fit into the bun) the chicken pieces were much smaller than the cheese slices. So the cheese melted into the oily pan, which was a waste. :( (But fried cheese, yum! My cousins used to deepfry this type of cheese, I forget its name. It was yummy...) But all in all, it wasn't too bad, really.

As for its taste.... hmmmm... I thought it was rather okay. I am not that big a fan of fresh tomatoes really, but it wasn't too bad here. The seasonings were quite nice. Plus the cheese = awesomeness! :D I might pack this for lunch one day, if it wasn't so oily. Maybe if I bake it (like a real pizza) it'll be healthier. But I doubt it'll taste as good. ;) Plus, I suppose you really shouldn't worry about how "healthy" something is if you add cheese to it. :P Though to be honest, I didn't add that much cheese to it. *gasp* Since the chicken pieces were small and all. Oh well...

Anyway, when I left the kitchen last night, it was in its usual horrendous state, but when I went down for a mug of milk this morning, to my surprise, it was clean! Like, really clean! Someone cleaned the counters, washed most of the dishes (lazy people who left it!), and cleaned the disgusting stove even! I was planning to eventually make the kitchen cleaner (no, really, I was!) but I guess someone has beaten me to it. I doubt it was someone from the staff, since it *was* at night, but hey, it could be, I guess. And if it was a student, let me just say, you are awesome! Thanks very much! :D :D :D

Oooh, and the results of the poll are in! Looks like the favorite dish of most of the readers on this blog is .... chicken! Which is awesome, because I also like chicken and hence, there are a lot of chicken recipes here. Trailing behind in 2nd place is lamb, but let me say that chicken won a landslide victory! Woohoo! :D :D :D Watch out for the next poll, coming soon!

Quote of the day: If you can organize your kitchen, you can organize your life.

Spicy Shredded Chicken v2

Wooo! First post in 2008! That means that this blog will be turning TWO YEARS OLD in a couple of months. Can you believe it?? I know that last year I did an awards thingie but I think we didn't cook that many dishes this year, so I shall unfortunately have to skip out on it. Hopefully, I shall be able to do something awesome for Food for Thought's second birthday. :D Anyway, on to the dinner!

I was first introduced to the concept of shredded chicken in my first year of university, where my flatmate cooked an awesome shredded chicken dish called Szechuan Chicken, the recipe of which I still have to obtain. I gladly took the technique of shredding chicken to use in making chicken pies, where I found that the filling tasted *much* better if you shred the chicken, instead of using ground chicken.

However, the yearning for my flatmate's Szechuan Chicken still cropped up from time to time. I knew, roughly, what ingredients were needed and when I mentioned it to Hadi, he took it into his head to cook it for dinner - the results of which you can read here. Of course, as I mentioned there, Hadi totally ruined the dish my adding all sorts of ... unnecessary stuff. Really.

So anyway, I thought I'd try it for myself this time. Here we go!

What you need:
Quarter of a chicken - any piece, skinned

2 spring onions, green parts and white parts separated, and chopped finely
1 teaspoon of oil, for cooking
Ginger powder, to taste (or fresh shredded ginger)
Garlic powder, to taste (or fresh garlic, chopped finely)
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon Chinese hot chilli/pepper oil
Sprinkling of dried chilli flakes

What you do:

1. Boil the chicken in a pot of boiling lightly salted water, until the meat just turns white and juices run clear.
2. Cool the chicken slightly (under cold running water, if you must) and roughly shred into fine pieces.
3. Heat up the oil in a small pan. When hot, add in the white parts of the spring onion (as well as the ginger and garlic, if you're using fresh ones) and stirfry until softened.
4. Add in the chicken and stirfry until warmed. Mix in the garlic and ginger powders, if using.
   
5. Add in the soy sauce, salt and chilli oil (to taste) and add in some dried chilli flakes if you want the chicken to be spicier.
6. Sprinkle with some of the green parts of the spring onion and serve with white rice. Yum!

My flatmate didn't actually cook the chicken again after shredding it. (In fact, this recipe is probably not close to her recipe at all. She used ground Szechuan peppers to give the spicy kick, as well as some actual fresh chillies.) But I like my food hot, temperature-wise, so I decided to give the chicken a few minutes in the pan to warm it up a little.

And the result was very very very good. I am pleased with myself. I can't quite remember how that chicken in my first year tasted like, but I can imagine it tastes like this. I dumped in a bit too much ginger though - will cut it down next time. It was nice, but too gingery. Not the taste I am looking for. :P Other than that though, it was perfect - or as close to perfect as I can imagine it, hehe. The soy sauce gave a light colour and flavour to the chicken, and didn't turn it completely dark, like Hadi's version. The spring onions were also really good, since I'm a fan of spring onions. :D And although I can't take too spicy food, I actually like the spicy kick, so this dish, in my humble opinion, was awesome!

Also, although I mentioned that I used 1/4 of a chicken (breast, to be exact), I actually used much less than that. I actually cooked this together with chicken pie filling since they both need shredded chicken and I used a lot of chicken for the chicken pie, since I accidentally put in too much potato. But this dish was more than flavoursome enough to take the rice on! I managed to finish about 1 cup of rice with about 1/4 of a chicken quarter. Believe me, there was very little chicken. But the chicken tasted great! And I needed a lot of rice to tone down the spiciness, hehe. Oh, before I forget, I also added some of the stock from the chicken pie filling making to the shredded chicken dinner. Made it more flavoursome, I do believe. So everything turned out well.

This was cooked yesterday. So guess what I am having for dinner tonight. Yum!

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