I finally did it. IT FINALLY WORKS. MY KOREAN STYLE STICKY CHICKEN RECIPE FINALLY MAKES SENSE.
So, months and months and months ago I first made this. I remember vaguely what I put into it, it was one of those quick rush meals that you just whack together last minute. So of course, I didn't write down a recipe or anything because I was making it up as I went along.
It turned out that this chicken was delicious, my Boyfriend ran off with half of the chicken and even my mum approved of it. It was numbingly spicy, but not enough that you stopped eating, made a delicious, sticky, salty sauce that went wonderfully with rice and the smell of it was absolutely divine.
Then my Boyfriend requested it again.
I had no idea what I had initially done. So began the first of a long series of experiments on different ratios, different ingredients and different cooking styles to get what became this recipe. All I knew was that I had brined the chicken, oven baked it, minced up garlic and soy sauce, added some water perhaps, some garlic, some gochujang paste and some honey. Then I started adding weird stuff when I was cooking off the sauce and that's where it got tricky.
Korean Style Sticky Chicken
Ingredients:
1kg of brined chicken wings/drums/whatever
1/2 cup of soy sauce
1/2 cup of warm water
3 cloves of minced garlic
3 tablespoons of gochujang paste
3 tablespoons of honey
Sesame oil
Vegetable oil
Instructions:
1. Brine your chicken beforehand.
2. Preheat your oven to 180C while you mix up the sauce. Line a baking tray with baking paper/aluminium foil and splash on a little oil to prevent the chicken from sticking.
3. Mix up all the leftover ingredients barring the oil. The honey and gochujang paste are very thick, so mix them with the warm water first. Then soy sauce and then the garlic.
4. Cook your chicken for at least 40 minutes, until cooked through. Turning at least once during this time.
5. Heat up a large frying pan/wok on a medium heat, with a little bit of sesame oil and vegetable oil, maybe a teaspoon or so of each.
6. Cook the combined sauce until the sauce begins to boil.
7. Throw in the chicken and baste constantly until the sauce thickens to the desired consistency, I normally leave mine in until they turn universally dark brown and the sauce reduce by 2/3rds.
8. Serve with rice and steamed veggies.
Alternatively, if you'd rather, you can change the recipe to basting every 15-20 minutes and halve the sauce recipe if you don't like much sauce.
Showing posts with label Home Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home Food. Show all posts
Friday, 31 October 2014
Sunday, 26 October 2014
Viet style sticky ribs
Every now and again, I get obsessed with making something and this time it was sticky, slow cooked ribs. It coincided nicely with the factor that my butcher was selling Angus ribs for $3/kg. I based the recipe off this one from Not Quite Nigella. I added a few other bits and pieces to the recipe, mostly I've added cinnamon and more star anise so it smells more like pho!
I've made this recipe many, many times over the last few weeks. In total five times at the time of writing. Ribs night is now a big deal at work because news has spread that I do bloody good ribs. Manda and Dani,, both say that they would either marry me or request it as their last meal. I also spam my Instagram with pictures of my ribs in various states of cooking.
I usually can only afford super cheap ribs, they're not the American style ribs you imagine when you get ribs. These are literally chunks of meat, fat and gristle with a bit of bone shoved it, as you imagine its still pretty delicious but its not real rib meat. One day I'll get real ribs, but for now, cheapo $3 ribs are much better than $20/kg ribs.
For marinade times, the minimal is about two hours and the longest time I've ever done it is over two days. Basically the more you want it to be delicious, the more effort you put in. Every hour give the box a shake, or mix the pieces around. Otherwise do the easy marinade option, two hours, flip the box, another two hours, flip again. If you are efficient, flat packed bags are great or I just put my ribs in my largest cake container and shake like a maniac every time I open the fridge. That's the kind of love I have for my food.
Ingredients:
2-3kg of beef ribs,
1 cup of dark soy sauce
1 cup of soy sauce
1 cup of brown sugar
2 large limes/lemons juice, and rinds thrown into the marinade
6 cloves of garlic, skins removed and smashed
7 pieces of star anise
1 large piece of cinnamon bark
2 inches worth of ginger
1 large onion, cut in half
Water to top!
A large 6L slow cooker!
Optional:
As many hot red chilies as you can stand
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
1 tablespoon of rice wine
Extra 1 cup of sugar for sauce
1. Make the marinade. Literally mix everything up, dissolve the brown sugar in the sauces, smash up your garlic, cut your onion in half, squeeze your limes/lemons and give it a good mix.
2. Put your ribs on top. Marinade for as long as you can stand.
3. Separate your sauce and spices into your slow cooker. Seal off the ribs if you want, or don't. It just adds more colour to it.
4. Chuck everything into your slow cooker, the ribs, spices, marinade and put in extra water or the leftover sauce from the last time you made ribs. Just remove the lemon/lime halves. Cook for either four hours on high or eight hours on low.
5. Allow to cool overnight if desired so the fat is easier to scoop off. Separate the meat and the sauce.
6. Boil one cup of the sauce down with a cup of brown sugar to make a sticky glaze you can coat the meat in and serve with whatever you want. Favourites of the girls at work include cheap Woolies/Coles brand pasta/potato salad, a fresh salad, good bread and butter, steamed white rice and potato bakes.
I've made this recipe many, many times over the last few weeks. In total five times at the time of writing. Ribs night is now a big deal at work because news has spread that I do bloody good ribs. Manda and Dani,, both say that they would either marry me or request it as their last meal. I also spam my Instagram with pictures of my ribs in various states of cooking.
I usually can only afford super cheap ribs, they're not the American style ribs you imagine when you get ribs. These are literally chunks of meat, fat and gristle with a bit of bone shoved it, as you imagine its still pretty delicious but its not real rib meat. One day I'll get real ribs, but for now, cheapo $3 ribs are much better than $20/kg ribs.
For marinade times, the minimal is about two hours and the longest time I've ever done it is over two days. Basically the more you want it to be delicious, the more effort you put in. Every hour give the box a shake, or mix the pieces around. Otherwise do the easy marinade option, two hours, flip the box, another two hours, flip again. If you are efficient, flat packed bags are great or I just put my ribs in my largest cake container and shake like a maniac every time I open the fridge. That's the kind of love I have for my food.
Ingredients:
2-3kg of beef ribs,
1 cup of dark soy sauce
1 cup of soy sauce
1 cup of brown sugar
2 large limes/lemons juice, and rinds thrown into the marinade
6 cloves of garlic, skins removed and smashed
7 pieces of star anise
1 large piece of cinnamon bark
2 inches worth of ginger
1 large onion, cut in half
Water to top!
A large 6L slow cooker!
Optional:
As many hot red chilies as you can stand
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
1 tablespoon of rice wine
Extra 1 cup of sugar for sauce
 |
| Sans optional ingredients |
2. Put your ribs on top. Marinade for as long as you can stand.
 |
| Yay! |
 |
| You can top up with water if you want to be lazy |
 |
| So pretty |
5. Allow to cool overnight if desired so the fat is easier to scoop off. Separate the meat and the sauce.
Tuesday, 8 July 2014
Garlic knots
I got this garlic knot recipe from an extremely popular US recipe site called Simply Recipes.. Its a ridiculously easy little recipe, if a little time consuming due to the rolling out and rising parts. I've made these garlic knots about eight or nine times now, at the time of writing, and they cause silence in rooms. That or my coworkers seek me out to specifically tell me how good these are, on the third or fourth time I made this, some of the other nurses were interrupting handover to tell me how good they were.
I even gave some to Mama Pham and VGirl who told me that it was good, my Sixth Auntie also had some and she shyly asked for another one, so I know they are damn good.
The method is relatively easy, the only thing is that there are lots of little things you need to remember to watch out for with this recipe. Other than that, its just a bit time consuming as there is just a wee bit of waiting around for the dough to rise. At my slowest, I can crack out a batch in just under two hours on a cold (3-7C) winter night. When I first started making this in summer? Took me an hour in 30C, heat and humidity really affect this dough.
With making the knot part of the garlic knot, roll the worm sized blob of dough in some flour so that it doesn't stick to itself. Once you tie the knot, if its unfloured on all sides, it will eventually turn itself back into a weird blob shape once it rises again. The extra flour stops it from sticking and keeps its nice shape when baked.
If your dough isn't rising due to cold weather, briefly heat your oven up to a low temperature say 100C, for a few minutes until the oven gets warm. Then turn off the heat immediately and shove in your dough in a mixing bowl, and allow it to proof there. The top and sides might begin to cook a little bit if the oven is too hot, scrape it off if it happens and continue with the rest of the recipe.
Garlic knots
Ingredients:
For the knots:
2 cups of strong 00 flour
2 teaspoons of active yeast or a 7g packet of yeast
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of olive oil
For the garlic butter
1/4 cup of finely chopped curly leaf parsley
3-4 cloves of finely minced garlic
100g of butter
1 teaspoon of salt
1. Heat up some water, it should be warm around 38-40C. Make it the same heat as you would for a baby bottle. Dump the yeast in and let it bubble away!
2. Dump all the rest of the bread ingredients into a steel mixing bowl and wait until the yeast is ready.
3. Its ready when it should smell like a bakery, very yeasty and beery. It should be cloudier than it is clear and full of little bubbles. Dump it all into the mixing bowl
4. Either knead it/turn on your dough hook appliance until a smooth dough is formed and starts pulling away from the edges. Should take about 4-8 minutes in your dough mixer. By hand? Who knows! Maybe 8-20 minutes? Add more flour as required if it still continues to feel wet.
5. Cover the top with some plastic wrap and place somewhere warm for however long it takes to double in size. The least amount of time it took me was 20 minutes, the longest? Almost 40.
6. Give it a another brief knead and dust your favourite board with some flour. I didn't do it in this first batch, but the later batches did.
7. Pretending we have a floured board, pinch off a 50 cent sized piece of dough, or a 5cm rough blob.
8. Give it a roll in the pretend floured board, once it gets to about 10-15cm or about the thickness of your finger stop!
9. Make yourself a simple slip knot, over, under and through! The flour will help it not stick to itself. Don't squish it too hard or it will stop being so pretty. You should be able to give the dough a bit of a stretch if required to make the knot complete.
10. Put them on a tray, brush with a little melted butter and allow to rise for another 10+ minutes until they puff up to twice their size. Meanwhile preheat your oven to 180C
11. Bake in your preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, or lightly golden brown.
For the butter.
1. Mince your garlic and parsley.
2. Melt your butter in a pot over a low heat.
3. Throw in the garlic once the butter has melted and allow it to cook off in a low heat for 2-3 minutes or until the garlic is fragrant.
4. Toss in your parsley and salt, and try a little bit.
5. If you're civilized and don't want to kill yourself with butter, paint on the garlic butter onto the garlic knots. If you don't care, do what I do and throw it in the same bowl as the garlic knots and toss to mix. The best bit is scraping more bits of garlic butter onto your roll.
I got contacted about promoting the James Street Food and Wine Trail, currently in its 3rd year and running from the 31st of July to the 3rd of August. Read the media release below and if you're keen I'll see you there! I'll keep updating this and posting it to the bottom of my posts until the day of the event :)
I even gave some to Mama Pham and VGirl who told me that it was good, my Sixth Auntie also had some and she shyly asked for another one, so I know they are damn good.
The method is relatively easy, the only thing is that there are lots of little things you need to remember to watch out for with this recipe. Other than that, its just a bit time consuming as there is just a wee bit of waiting around for the dough to rise. At my slowest, I can crack out a batch in just under two hours on a cold (3-7C) winter night. When I first started making this in summer? Took me an hour in 30C, heat and humidity really affect this dough.
With making the knot part of the garlic knot, roll the worm sized blob of dough in some flour so that it doesn't stick to itself. Once you tie the knot, if its unfloured on all sides, it will eventually turn itself back into a weird blob shape once it rises again. The extra flour stops it from sticking and keeps its nice shape when baked.
If your dough isn't rising due to cold weather, briefly heat your oven up to a low temperature say 100C, for a few minutes until the oven gets warm. Then turn off the heat immediately and shove in your dough in a mixing bowl, and allow it to proof there. The top and sides might begin to cook a little bit if the oven is too hot, scrape it off if it happens and continue with the rest of the recipe.
Garlic knots
Ingredients:
For the knots:
2 cups of strong 00 flour
2 teaspoons of active yeast or a 7g packet of yeast
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of olive oil
For the garlic butter
1/4 cup of finely chopped curly leaf parsley
3-4 cloves of finely minced garlic
100g of butter
1 teaspoon of salt
 |
| Almost expired parsley woo! |
 |
| Bubble, toil and trouble! |
 |
| Add caption |
3. Its ready when it should smell like a bakery, very yeasty and beery. It should be cloudier than it is clear and full of little bubbles. Dump it all into the mixing bowl
 |
| Ooh yes |
4. Either knead it/turn on your dough hook appliance until a smooth dough is formed and starts pulling away from the edges. Should take about 4-8 minutes in your dough mixer. By hand? Who knows! Maybe 8-20 minutes? Add more flour as required if it still continues to feel wet.
 |
| In it goes! |
 |
| This was my Christmas present from VGirl! |
 |
| This one is a bit floury |
 |
| Something like this! |
 |
| Like so! |
8. Give it a roll in the pretend floured board, once it gets to about 10-15cm or about the thickness of your finger stop!
 |
| Voile! A worm! |
 |
| One! |
 |
| Two! |
 |
| Three! |
 |
| So fat |
 |
| Even fatter! |
 |
| My second batch! |
 |
| The blobby ones were made without flour coating the knots |
For the butter.
1. Mince your garlic and parsley.
2. Melt your butter in a pot over a low heat.
 |
| Delicious! |
3. Throw in the garlic once the butter has melted and allow it to cook off in a low heat for 2-3 minutes or until the garlic is fragrant.
4. Toss in your parsley and salt, and try a little bit.
 |
| Mmm garlic and parsley |
5. If you're civilized and don't want to kill yourself with butter, paint on the garlic butter onto the garlic knots. If you don't care, do what I do and throw it in the same bowl as the garlic knots and toss to mix. The best bit is scraping more bits of garlic butter onto your roll.
 |
| Serve warm! Eat immediately! Also good the next day, but best right now! |
Monday, 19 May 2014
Baked brie with red wine and garlic
I first got the idea for this baked brie from watching an episode of Masterchef. It was one of the later seasons, the one where Adam and Callum were the finalists. There was a gourmet cheese master class that had a fancy British guy teaching the recipe for this. I watched eagerly, I saw the gooey strands of cheese and the crusty bread that went with it. I thought to myself, I can do that. The brainchild of many an attempted recipe.
I make this in many, many different ways but the basic recipe remains the same. Soft cheese, red wine, garlic and whatever herbs you have. I've use rosemary, dill, thyme, lemon thyme and whatever else you want. Blanch the garlic, poke lots of holes, shove the garlic in, top up with wine and then bake until gooey.
The soft cheese goes all gooey and liquidy, the garlic goes soft, sweet and mellow and oh god the smell of this is absolutely glorious. It is very easy and requires few ingredients, what else do you need?
Baked brie with red wine and garlic
Ingredients:
1 brie or Camembert, any size will do
1 clove of garlic
How water
Red wine
Enough snipped up herbs to sprinkle over the top
1. Finely slice your garlic clove and blanch it in hot water for a minute. Drain and pat dry. Turn the oven onto 180C.
2. Stab lots a hole for each slice of garlic into the top of the cheese. If you want, you can slice off the rind at the top before doing this, but I normally keep it on.
3. Put a piece of garlic into each hole.
4. Splash some wine over the top of the cheese and allow the wine to soak in. Sprinkle the herbs on top if you're using any.
5. Bake the cheese in a ramekin/oven proof bowl/it's box until gooey and golden. Generally about 15-20 minutes at 180C.
6. Serve with crusty bread!
I make this in many, many different ways but the basic recipe remains the same. Soft cheese, red wine, garlic and whatever herbs you have. I've use rosemary, dill, thyme, lemon thyme and whatever else you want. Blanch the garlic, poke lots of holes, shove the garlic in, top up with wine and then bake until gooey.
The soft cheese goes all gooey and liquidy, the garlic goes soft, sweet and mellow and oh god the smell of this is absolutely glorious. It is very easy and requires few ingredients, what else do you need?
Baked brie with red wine and garlic
Ingredients:
1 brie or Camembert, any size will do
1 clove of garlic
How water
Red wine
Enough snipped up herbs to sprinkle over the top
 |
| All you need is this~ |
 |
| Blanch! |
 |
| Lots of slits! |
4. Splash some wine over the top of the cheese and allow the wine to soak in. Sprinkle the herbs on top if you're using any.
5. Bake the cheese in a ramekin/oven proof bowl/it's box until gooey and golden. Generally about 15-20 minutes at 180C.
 |
| Looks gross but its delicious. |
6. Serve with crusty bread!
Saturday, 8 March 2014
Beef rendang
Oh man, beef rendang. I can't even describe the deliciousness involved, super slow coated beef that melts in your mouth, coated in a thick spiced coating of lemongrass, galangal, ginger, onion, garlic and chilli smothered in a thick coconut and tamarind sauce that's been absorbed with golden roasted coconut. You smell it before you even see it. That appetising looking mess of dark brown curry on top of snowy white plain rice. Even if you aren't lucky enough to get a piece of beef, the spicy gravy goes so wonderfully with rice.
It gets better with age, so if you even manage to not finish it off, the flavours just meld even more divinely overnight. It freezes beautifully and I find myself making huge bloody batches of the stuff for a special day at work. The looks of envy on the faces of friends at work is worth it, when they catch a hint of the smell. Just one mouthful transports me to a world of bliss. My god, I love beef rendang.
I first had beef rendang as part of my nasi lemak at Malaya Corner a few years ago and kept going back there to eat more. Then I realised I could probably make it at home. Then I made it from a few different premade jar mixtures. Then a spice paste mixture. Then I tried several online and printed recipes before settling on this one by Neil Perry by way of this ladies blog. I played around with a few different things though, but this one is a very good starting point.
In general, the recipe is an easy one. Make a spice paste, fry off the spices in oil until fragrant, add the meat until coated in spices, top up with water, coconut cream, tamarind, sweet soy and kaffir lime leaves. Put on a lid and simmer for 2-4 hours, stirring occasionally to stop it from sticking. Once you're happy with the consistency of the meat, take off the lid and simmer it down. Toast some shredded coconut and throw at the simmered down sauce to thicken it up. Serve and enjoy!
The honest to God, worst part of this dish is finding galangal. It's a pretty tricky spice to track down as its not particularly well known and there aren't any alternatives like a powdered/frozen/paste version like you can find with say tumeric/ pandan leaves/ lemon grass/ kaffir lime leaves/ shrimp paste. Most of my Indian/Vietnamese/Korean/Taiwanese friends didn't immediately recognise it when I showed it to them either, mistaking it for ginger until they noticed the red hue. The only places I've been able to find it are in Yuen's Market in Sunnybank and certain small Vietnamese run market stalls when they sell it exorbitantly and in poor condition too.
Mama Pham took over and found me a miraculous kilo of the stuff for six dollars a kilo at Inala. Goes to show, that Inala has everything and super cheap too! The stuff she found was the freshest of the fresh. I wish I had taken a photo of it before I put it in the freezer. It was a bright pinkish red, with a glossy skin and no dried out wooden chunks. Picking a good piece of it is very similar to how you pick fresh ginger, the bigger the better as you don't want too waste all your time peeling a little chunk, the thinner the skin and the smoother it looks the better it is too.
Unlike ginger however, it has a very, very tough skin. Ginger can be peeled with the back of a spoon, galangal requires a very sharp knife, brute force and possibly chainmail gloves to stop yourself slicing off a finger. Not for the faint of heart.
For the beef, use whatever cheap fatty cut you fancy. I've used topside, chuck steak, gravy beef, blade steak and anything labelled casserole cuts. It's a slow cooked curry, so all these fatty cuts turn into the tenderest meat imaginable while the fat turns beautifully gelatinous and adds body to the sauce. Cut the meat into largeish chunks, they will shrink quite a lot while cooking so please account for that. I normally go about a good thumb sized chunk, about four or five centimetres by five or ten centimetres.
Ingredients for the spice paste:
3-4 dried hot chillis
1 teaspoon of dried coriander
1 teaspoon of dried tumeric
30g of ginger
30g of galangal
30g of lemongrass
1 large onion, roughly chopped
5-6 large cloves of garlic
20g of shrimp paste
Ingredients for the sauce:
500g-1kg of beef, cut into large thumb sized chunks, 5-10cms
5-6 kaffir lime leaves
1/4-1/3 cup of shredded coconut
400ml of coconut cream
Not pictured:
2-3 tablespoons of sweet soy sauce
1-2 tablespoons of tamarind paste
1-2 tablespoons of salt
1.5L-2L of water
Instructions for the spice paste:
1. Roast the shrimp paste in foil at 180C in the oven for 8-10 minutes until fragrant or cook in a dry frying pan for 3-5 minutes.
2. Chop up the onion, ginger, galangal and dried chilli and place it in the spice mixer.
3. Put in the tumeric, coriander and crumbled shrimp paste.
4. Put on the lid and blend like a madman until a thick paste is formed.
Instructions for the sauce:
1. Cut up all the beef into thumb sized chunks.
2. Heat up a large saucepan/stock pot whatever on a low-medium heat, chuck in all your shredded coconut and toast gently, stirring frequently until all the coconut is golden brown.
3. Put the coconut aside and give the pan a wipe clean.
4. Turn up the heat to a steady medium and add a tablespoon of oil to the pan.
5. Throw in all the rendang paste. Fry off until fragrant, expect 2-3 minutes, and mix frequently so the mixture doesn't stick.
6. Throw in the meat and combine with the spice paste until the meat is coated in spices.
7. Put in everything else in, the tamarind paste, the sweet soy sauce, the salt, the kaffir lime leaves, the coconut cream and 1.5L of water.
8. Cover and turn down the heat to a low simmer. Cook for 2-4 hours stirring constantly so it doesn't stick to the bottom.
9. When the meat is tender, take off the lid and turn up to a steady medium-hot. Allow the water to evaporate down and chuck in the toasted coconut so it soaks up the juices.
10. When it reaches the desired thickness, serve immediately. Don't eat the kaffir lime leaves.
It gets better with age, so if you even manage to not finish it off, the flavours just meld even more divinely overnight. It freezes beautifully and I find myself making huge bloody batches of the stuff for a special day at work. The looks of envy on the faces of friends at work is worth it, when they catch a hint of the smell. Just one mouthful transports me to a world of bliss. My god, I love beef rendang.
I first had beef rendang as part of my nasi lemak at Malaya Corner a few years ago and kept going back there to eat more. Then I realised I could probably make it at home. Then I made it from a few different premade jar mixtures. Then a spice paste mixture. Then I tried several online and printed recipes before settling on this one by Neil Perry by way of this ladies blog. I played around with a few different things though, but this one is a very good starting point.
In general, the recipe is an easy one. Make a spice paste, fry off the spices in oil until fragrant, add the meat until coated in spices, top up with water, coconut cream, tamarind, sweet soy and kaffir lime leaves. Put on a lid and simmer for 2-4 hours, stirring occasionally to stop it from sticking. Once you're happy with the consistency of the meat, take off the lid and simmer it down. Toast some shredded coconut and throw at the simmered down sauce to thicken it up. Serve and enjoy!
The honest to God, worst part of this dish is finding galangal. It's a pretty tricky spice to track down as its not particularly well known and there aren't any alternatives like a powdered/frozen/paste version like you can find with say tumeric/ pandan leaves/ lemon grass/ kaffir lime leaves/ shrimp paste. Most of my Indian/Vietnamese/Korean/Taiwanese friends didn't immediately recognise it when I showed it to them either, mistaking it for ginger until they noticed the red hue. The only places I've been able to find it are in Yuen's Market in Sunnybank and certain small Vietnamese run market stalls when they sell it exorbitantly and in poor condition too.
 |
| Yuck, avoid |
Mama Pham took over and found me a miraculous kilo of the stuff for six dollars a kilo at Inala. Goes to show, that Inala has everything and super cheap too! The stuff she found was the freshest of the fresh. I wish I had taken a photo of it before I put it in the freezer. It was a bright pinkish red, with a glossy skin and no dried out wooden chunks. Picking a good piece of it is very similar to how you pick fresh ginger, the bigger the better as you don't want too waste all your time peeling a little chunk, the thinner the skin and the smoother it looks the better it is too.
 |
| Pretty shiny stuff :D! |
For the beef, use whatever cheap fatty cut you fancy. I've used topside, chuck steak, gravy beef, blade steak and anything labelled casserole cuts. It's a slow cooked curry, so all these fatty cuts turn into the tenderest meat imaginable while the fat turns beautifully gelatinous and adds body to the sauce. Cut the meat into largeish chunks, they will shrink quite a lot while cooking so please account for that. I normally go about a good thumb sized chunk, about four or five centimetres by five or ten centimetres.
Ingredients for the spice paste:
3-4 dried hot chillis
1 teaspoon of dried coriander
1 teaspoon of dried tumeric
30g of ginger
30g of galangal
30g of lemongrass
1 large onion, roughly chopped
5-6 large cloves of garlic
20g of shrimp paste
 |
| I like onions |
500g-1kg of beef, cut into large thumb sized chunks, 5-10cms
5-6 kaffir lime leaves
1/4-1/3 cup of shredded coconut
400ml of coconut cream
Not pictured:
2-3 tablespoons of sweet soy sauce
1-2 tablespoons of tamarind paste
1-2 tablespoons of salt
1.5L-2L of water
 |
| I forgot some of the ingredients in this picture |
1. Roast the shrimp paste in foil at 180C in the oven for 8-10 minutes until fragrant or cook in a dry frying pan for 3-5 minutes.
2. Chop up the onion, ginger, galangal and dried chilli and place it in the spice mixer.
3. Put in the tumeric, coriander and crumbled shrimp paste.
 |
| Yep easy |
 |
| Great stuff |
1. Cut up all the beef into thumb sized chunks.
2. Heat up a large saucepan/stock pot whatever on a low-medium heat, chuck in all your shredded coconut and toast gently, stirring frequently until all the coconut is golden brown.
3. Put the coconut aside and give the pan a wipe clean.
4. Turn up the heat to a steady medium and add a tablespoon of oil to the pan.
 |
| May have gone overboard on the oil here |
 |
| Fry off that bad boy |
7. Put in everything else in, the tamarind paste, the sweet soy sauce, the salt, the kaffir lime leaves, the coconut cream and 1.5L of water.
 |
| Like this! |
9. When the meat is tender, take off the lid and turn up to a steady medium-hot. Allow the water to evaporate down and chuck in the toasted coconut so it soaks up the juices.
 |
| I made 2kg the following week, hence the pot change |
10. When it reaches the desired thickness, serve immediately. Don't eat the kaffir lime leaves.
Saturday, 25 January 2014
Matcha Chiffon Cake
Do you know what the most definitive indication of a woman's weight loss is? That one thing that tells you, "geez you've lost a bit recently."
Visible collarbones? Nope.
A thigh gap? Nope.
An arse that defies gravity? Nope.
No periods? That fine anorexia down to conserve body heat? Yes, but that's gone way too far. I'm talking quick fix here, no one drops down to anorexia proportions and goes back up in a week or two.
It's actually a women's breasts that tend to shrink first when losing weight. Breasts are pure fat, so it only makes sense that when the body is lean and mean, the first place to go is the breasts and pretty much nowhere else. Sorry thighs and belly fat, this is a more permanent storage solution for the body, so this is often the last to go.
What does this story have anything to do with matcha chiffon cakes? Well one of the finer points of chiffon cakes is that the lightness is due directly to the huge amount of stiff peaks egg whites used as well as the lack of heavy fat. Chiffon cakes, unlike most cakes, is made without butter and instead only oil, water and a splash of milk are used to moisture to the cake. This makes for a very light, fluffy and delicate flavour rather than the rich buttery flavour you'd associate with most cakes.
With this being said, chiffon cakes are quite plain in flavour and are always flavoured with something else. This recipe is easily adapted to contain other flavours though, like orange zest, lemon zest, pandan, vanilla and whatever else you can think of.
My cakes fell a little flat because I don't have a high cake tin. Since this cake is so light and has no real substance, it needs a high walled cake tin to cling to to support itself. You can buy specially made chiffon cake tins and things but I've never seen one for sale ever. Despite the lack of cake tin, they still had a beautiful rise and were soft and fluffy. This is the recipe I originally used. I just messed with the proportions a bit for lazy baker inside all of us, it still worked.
When I measure out this matcha powder, I normally sift it a few times to get out the tougher bits of tea. I find myself using a fair bit of matcha powder to make this cake but the flavour is delicious. For the neutral flavoured oil, don't use olive oil, it makes the cake have a really odd flavour due to its strong flavour. Vegetable oil is normally my go to for oil in cakes.
Beating stuff into stiff peaks is honestly the hardest part of this cake. Not so hard if you've got a stand mixer, or are willing to wash yours. I did mine the old fashioned way with a wire whisk and did the traditional test of standing it over my head. Jubi drew me a picture because I made this cake once over Skype.
Matcha Chiffon Cake
Uses: unsweet cake for Asians to enjoy.
Ingredients for the cake:
5 large egg yolks at room temperature
3/4 cup of caster sugar
1/3 cup of neutral tasting oil
2 tablespoons of milk
2 tablespoons of water
1 scant cup of plain flour with 2 tablespoons of corn flour well sifted in, aka cake flour
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
25g of matcha green tea powder
Ingredients for the meringue:
5 large egg whites at room temperature
1/2 scant cup of sugar
Pinch of cream of tartar
Instructions:
1. Separate your eggs.
2. Beat your egg yolks and sugar together until pale, thick and creamy.
3. Start mixing in the oil a little bit at a time, while whipping vigorously. Very much like a mayonnaise. I don't know why I do this, you can just add it all in at once, I found it made only a small different to how fluffy the cake turned out.
4. Mix in the water with the sugary mayo mixture.
5. Sift the crap out of your matcha green tea, flour and baking powder. I normally do this about three or four times depending on how lazy I feel. If there are any chunky bits of tea left behind, just throw them out.
6. Mix the matcha/baking powder/flour into the sugar mayo mixture. Start working on the meringue mixture and you will notice the mixture will start to turn a bit greener as the tea infuses.
7. Time to work on the meringue! Start whipping the egg whites vigorously.
8. When it hits soft peaks, add in the cream of tartar and start adding the sugar in a teaspoon at a time. Whisk vigorously after each addition.
9. You will notice the egg whites start to turn nice and shiny after the sugar. Once the egg whites hit stiff peaks, you are done.
10. Fold the first third of the meringue into the matcha cake mixture. Fold carefully before folding the rest of the meringue.
11. Bake in a high walled 22cm cake tin at 180C for about 40 minutes, this cake doesn't turn golden brown. It really only get pale and springy when pressed down, do the skewer test and you should be sweet.
Yeahhh do not use a bundt tin, that's not the same thing at all.
Oh and I didn't bother putting in pictures about the thigh gaps, collar bones or nice arse. Its actually quite NSFW/raunchy considering what I'm looking up, especially when you start venturing into thigh gaps and nice arses. If you need photos, you're already on the internet buddy, check out that stuff in your own time.
Visible collarbones? Nope.
A thigh gap? Nope.
An arse that defies gravity? Nope.
No periods? That fine anorexia down to conserve body heat? Yes, but that's gone way too far. I'm talking quick fix here, no one drops down to anorexia proportions and goes back up in a week or two.
It's actually a women's breasts that tend to shrink first when losing weight. Breasts are pure fat, so it only makes sense that when the body is lean and mean, the first place to go is the breasts and pretty much nowhere else. Sorry thighs and belly fat, this is a more permanent storage solution for the body, so this is often the last to go.
What does this story have anything to do with matcha chiffon cakes? Well one of the finer points of chiffon cakes is that the lightness is due directly to the huge amount of stiff peaks egg whites used as well as the lack of heavy fat. Chiffon cakes, unlike most cakes, is made without butter and instead only oil, water and a splash of milk are used to moisture to the cake. This makes for a very light, fluffy and delicate flavour rather than the rich buttery flavour you'd associate with most cakes.
With this being said, chiffon cakes are quite plain in flavour and are always flavoured with something else. This recipe is easily adapted to contain other flavours though, like orange zest, lemon zest, pandan, vanilla and whatever else you can think of.
My cakes fell a little flat because I don't have a high cake tin. Since this cake is so light and has no real substance, it needs a high walled cake tin to cling to to support itself. You can buy specially made chiffon cake tins and things but I've never seen one for sale ever. Despite the lack of cake tin, they still had a beautiful rise and were soft and fluffy. This is the recipe I originally used. I just messed with the proportions a bit for lazy baker inside all of us, it still worked.
When I measure out this matcha powder, I normally sift it a few times to get out the tougher bits of tea. I find myself using a fair bit of matcha powder to make this cake but the flavour is delicious. For the neutral flavoured oil, don't use olive oil, it makes the cake have a really odd flavour due to its strong flavour. Vegetable oil is normally my go to for oil in cakes.
Beating stuff into stiff peaks is honestly the hardest part of this cake. Not so hard if you've got a stand mixer, or are willing to wash yours. I did mine the old fashioned way with a wire whisk and did the traditional test of standing it over my head. Jubi drew me a picture because I made this cake once over Skype.
 |
| I freaked out several times attempting this |
Matcha Chiffon Cake
Uses: unsweet cake for Asians to enjoy.
Ingredients for the cake:
5 large egg yolks at room temperature
3/4 cup of caster sugar
1/3 cup of neutral tasting oil
2 tablespoons of milk
2 tablespoons of water
1 scant cup of plain flour with 2 tablespoons of corn flour well sifted in, aka cake flour
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
25g of matcha green tea powder
Ingredients for the meringue:
5 large egg whites at room temperature
1/2 scant cup of sugar
Pinch of cream of tartar
 |
| All the usual suspects |
1. Separate your eggs.
 |
| I should just reuse this photo constantly |
 |
| Same for this photo |
 |
| Shiny, shiny oil |
4. Mix in the water with the sugary mayo mixture.
5. Sift the crap out of your matcha green tea, flour and baking powder. I normally do this about three or four times depending on how lazy I feel. If there are any chunky bits of tea left behind, just throw them out.
 |
| One of the many siftings |
 |
| The colour quickly evens out |
 |
| Shiny/lumpy |
 |
| Is this picture upside down? |
8. When it hits soft peaks, add in the cream of tartar and start adding the sugar in a teaspoon at a time. Whisk vigorously after each addition.
 |
| Dump the sugar in! |
9. You will notice the egg whites start to turn nice and shiny after the sugar. Once the egg whites hit stiff peaks, you are done.
 |
| This glossy |
10. Fold the first third of the meringue into the matcha cake mixture. Fold carefully before folding the rest of the meringue.
 |
| Fold it in! Not with a whisk though! |
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| First third! |
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| Last few thirds! |
 |
| Give it a light tap and smooth out the top |
Yeahhh do not use a bundt tin, that's not the same thing at all.
 |
| Whats the name of my blog again? |
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