Maple Chicken N Ribs

Recipe Source : Nigella Express

Ingredients :

12 pork spare libs

12 chicken thighs

250ml apple juice

4 tbsp maple syrup

2 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tbsp soy sauce

2 star anise

1 cinnamon stick

6 gloves garlic, unpeeled

Method

Put the ribs and chicken pieces in a couple of large freezer bags or into a dish.

Add the remaining ingredients, squelching everything together well, before sealing the bag or covering the dish.

Leave to marinate in the fridge overnight or up to two days

When the marinating time is up, take the dish out of the fridge and preheat the oven to 200c

Pour the contents of the freezer bag into one or two large roasting tins (making sure the chicken is skin side up), place in the oven and cool for about an hour and a quarter, by which time everything should be sticky and glossed conker blown.

Kuih Ketayap & Honecomb Cake

Time flies , it's fasting month again !!! I love fasting month back home, I love and miss the joy of hanging around in the Rmadhan market with my brothers. After some attempts on Malaysian Sweets, I decided to try my hand on my favourite Malaysia Sweet - Kuih Ketayap and Honey Comb Cake. Thanks to My kitchen Snippets for the recipe of the kuih Ketayap.

I got the Honeycomb cake recipe from a friend at work. The cake turned out good, the texture was extracly what it should be, but I think i over baked the cake hence it was a tad too dry. This recipe is definately a keeper. Thanks Swee Lan !!

I would like to submit this to Joy from Fasting to Feasting held by Yummy Food. Although I don't celebrate Ramadan, there is a special link between me and Ramadhan - the food!!

Honeycomb Cake

Ingredients

150g sugar

125g soft margerine

1/2 can of condensed milk (397g can)

4 large eggs

150g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

Put sugar into a heavy based saucepan and melt over low heat, stirring until sugar turns into an amber coloured syrup. Remove from heat and slowly add water. Stir until the caramel syrup dissolves into a thin dark liquid. set aside to cool.

Line the base of a 19-20cm square cake tin with greaseproof paper. Cream margerine until creamy and light. Beat in the condensed milk.

In a seperate bowl, whisk eggs until light and fluffy. Stir into margerine and milk mixture. Mix until well combines. Stir in sifted dry ingredients until well blended. Add cooled syrup and mix well.

Pour into prepared tin and bake in preheated 175c oven for 1 hour or until cake is cooked when tested with a skewer.

Kuih Ketayap

Ingredients for crepes

1 cup of flour

2 eggs

1/2 cup of coconut milk

1 cup of water

1 tsp of salt

2 tbsp of oil

1 tsp of pandan paste

Ingredients for filling

2 cups of grated coconut

1 piece of palm sugar (sbouy 1/2 cip) - roughly chopped

1/4 cup of water

a pinch of salt

Method

To make the filling, in a pan combined water and palm sugar and bring it up to boil. Once sugar melted add in the grated coconut. Once the coconut is moist and shiny and all the water absorbed, take it off the stove and set it aside to cool

For the crepe, mix all the ingredients until the batter is smooth. Heat up a non stick pan, brush the pan with a bit of oil, pour some batter to the pan and swirl the pan around so that the better completely covers the base.

Cook the crepe until you see the side is lightly brown and crispy. Flip it over and cool the other side for about 20 second. Remove from pan.

Put some filing on the pancake and roll it up like a spring roll. Serve hot.

Enche Kabin - Nyonya style fried chicken

These Nyonya Style fried chicken wings are soooo delicious that you can't stop after one. I made these Enche Kabin last sunday for a family gathering and they were a hit at the dinner!! The only set back about this recipe is ....hmm.. my house still smells very "Enche Kabin" even untill now !!!!

Ingredients

6 Chicken Wings

Marinate

3 tbsp curry powder

1 tbsp grated ginger

1/2 tsp salt

5 tbsp coconut cream

Method:

Marinate the chicken wings with the seasoning overnight.

Deep fry the chicken untill crispy.

Serce Hot

***Please refer to Lily's Wai Sek Hong for complete recipe****

Chocolate and Prune Cake

I haven't baked for quite a while, apart from our diet, my mother in law was diagnosed with early stage of diabetis. I understand it can be very hard for someone who has a sweet tooth to cut back on dessert (we all know this, don't we?). Hence, i got a book from the library - "Cooking for diabetics"and baked her this beautiful chocolate cake. The cake turned out all moist and yummy, this recipe is definately a keeper.

Ingredients

300g dark chocolate

150g low fat spread

200g prunes

3 eggs

150g flour

2tsp baking powder

120ml soya milk

Preheat the oven to 180c.

Grease and base line a deep 20cm round cake tin. Melt the chocolate in a bowl.

Mix the spread and prunes in a food processor. Process until light and fluffy, then scrape into a bowl.

Gradually fold in the melted chocolate and eggs, alernately with flour and baking powder.

Beat in the soya milk.

Spoon the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 20-30 minutes.

My New Hair Cut

Slightly off topic, guys .. today we are not going to talk about food !!!

After a few nights of "tossing and turning" on my bed at night (yeah, getting your hair cut is a big decision for a girl), I finally got the courage to cut my hair SHORT. It was not an easy decision to make, but hey .. i've done it !!

Dah-Lah !! My new hair cut !! I love it!!

Ondeh - Ondeh

This is an event submission from me for the Merdeka Open House 2009 held by Babe in the City -KL. The theme for this years open house is My Sweet Malaysia. Well, i must admit i felt a mixture of excitement and anxious feelings when i heard about this theme. Don't get me wrong, i love traditional sweets but I've never attempted any traditional Malaysian sweets at home and my pathetic knowledge about Malaysian sweets isn't gonna help.

Initially i was planning to make glutenous rice dumpling with coconut pandan leaf stuffing, a recipe from Poh @ Masterchef. However, i failed terribly and the whole lot of dough went into Mr. Bin's tummy. After the failure, i then opted for something simplier - something that even dummy me can do. So i found this ondeh-ondeh recipe from rasa Malaysia's site. Sorry for not being able to submit something more exotic but i tell ya, even making these simple ondeh ondeh was a hard and desperate task for me. I started making these little sweets without any expectation of success.

To my relief, everything turned out ok. My ondeh ondeh might not have looked as good as Sea Salt and food but hey, at least they were editable. I gave some for my colleague to try and she loved them !! woohoo.. !!!

Anyway, this is my little contribution to this years Merdeka Open house. Happy 52 years old Malaysia!!!

Caramelised Lotus Root

This is such a simple, easy and fantastic dish !!

Steve and me loved the crunch and delicate flovour of the lotus root.

Give this a try and i am sure you will get addicted to this little sweet crunchy vegetable!!

Recipe : Kylie Kwong - My China

2 tbsp peanut oil

1 garlic bulb, unpeeled and cut in half crossways

2 garlic cloves, finely sliced

5 cm piece ginger

550g fresh lotus root, peeled and cut into 5mm

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp shao hsing wine

1 tbsp brown rice vinegar

2 tsp light soy sauce

Heat oil in a hot wok until surface seems ti shimmer slightly. Add garlic, cut-side down, and sear over medium heat for 1 minute. Add sliced garlic and ginger and lotus root and stir fry for 3 minutes. Add sugar and stir fry for 2 minutes or until slightly caramelised.

Add Shao hsing wine and stir fry for 1 minute. Lastly, add vinegar and soy sauce and stir fry for a further minute. Serve immediately