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 Original Recipe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Original Recipe. Show all posts
Friday, 31 October 2014
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
Spicy Peanut sauce for noodles
I can't remember how I first started making this sauce. I had a basic peanut butter sauce that I had made ages ago that I remember having as a cold entree at several Chinese restaurants. This one is a mix of different recipes I got online as well as what I've found to have worked several times. I've made this about four times at the time of writing, three batches for myself and one for my sister.
The very first time I bought this into work, it was just vegetarian with red capsicum, onion, garlic, cabbage, carrot and noodles. K.O., watched me enviously when I ate it, and kept remarking that I should add hot water to it to rehydrate it. She kept nagging and nagging me, insisting that just a little more would help the consistency. After about five minutes of this, I gave in and let her do what she wanted.
She loved it, slurping away at the noodles and I have to grudgingly admit that it did get a lot better. K.O., had eaten all her dinner but I got full really quickly so I gave her my dinner. M for Megababe came in for dinner and she and K.O., shared the rest of my dinner. The pair of them couldn't stop talking about the peanut sauce and demanded I give them the recipe.
Since then, everyone has happily made their own version of this recipe. Its one of those good vegetable user upper type recipes. The peanut sauce goes with a heck of a lot of ingredients. M for Megababe says that she enjoys it as a hangover food, so she makes a big batch for the weekend and eats it warmed up. I prefer it cold to be honest. You can use whatever noodles you want. A lot of the traditional recipes use thin egg noodles, Hokkien noodles, but I wanted to use up these Korean sweet potato noodles that I had in the pantry for japchae. 100g of dried noodles makes a good amount for about 4-6 large serves.
I've played with the proportions a bit but it seems to be 2 parts peanut butter/ soy sauce/ hot water to 1 part sweet soy sauce/ sesame oil with Sriracha and lime juice or vinegar to mix. You want a thick, rich, salty, tangy and spicy sauce, mix it to taste but that's how I like it. The hot water is to thin out the sauce of course, the noodles tend to suck up all the sauce especially after a day in the fridge.
Ingredients for a large batch of peanut sauce:
2 tablespoons of crunchy peanut butter
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
2 tablespoons of hot water
1 tablespoon of sweet soy sauce
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
Sriracha sauce and lime juice or vinegar to taste
1. Mix the soy sauce, sweet soy, peanut butter and oil together until a thick paste is formed.
2. Thin it out with hot water and season to taste with Sriracha sauce and lime juice or vinegar.
An example of what to put in your noodles:
100g of dried Korean sweet potato noodles, whatever that equals cooked
1-2 large julienned carrot
1 cup of shredded cabbage
1 medium capsicum, cut into strips
1 large onion
3-4 cloves of garlic
1/2 kilogram of cooked chicken, I pan fried mine and shredded it
1. Cook the noodles in boiling water until al dente.
2. Stir fry all the vegetables, onions, garlic first. Then carrots, cabbage and finally capsicum.
3. Pan fry your chicken until cooked through, shred with a fork once cooled down.
4. Mix everything into the peanut sauce.
The very first time I bought this into work, it was just vegetarian with red capsicum, onion, garlic, cabbage, carrot and noodles. K.O., watched me enviously when I ate it, and kept remarking that I should add hot water to it to rehydrate it. She kept nagging and nagging me, insisting that just a little more would help the consistency. After about five minutes of this, I gave in and let her do what she wanted.
She loved it, slurping away at the noodles and I have to grudgingly admit that it did get a lot better. K.O., had eaten all her dinner but I got full really quickly so I gave her my dinner. M for Megababe came in for dinner and she and K.O., shared the rest of my dinner. The pair of them couldn't stop talking about the peanut sauce and demanded I give them the recipe.
Since then, everyone has happily made their own version of this recipe. Its one of those good vegetable user upper type recipes. The peanut sauce goes with a heck of a lot of ingredients. M for Megababe says that she enjoys it as a hangover food, so she makes a big batch for the weekend and eats it warmed up. I prefer it cold to be honest. You can use whatever noodles you want. A lot of the traditional recipes use thin egg noodles, Hokkien noodles, but I wanted to use up these Korean sweet potato noodles that I had in the pantry for japchae. 100g of dried noodles makes a good amount for about 4-6 large serves.
I've played with the proportions a bit but it seems to be 2 parts peanut butter/ soy sauce/ hot water to 1 part sweet soy sauce/ sesame oil with Sriracha and lime juice or vinegar to mix. You want a thick, rich, salty, tangy and spicy sauce, mix it to taste but that's how I like it. The hot water is to thin out the sauce of course, the noodles tend to suck up all the sauce especially after a day in the fridge.
Ingredients for a large batch of peanut sauce:
2 tablespoons of crunchy peanut butter
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
2 tablespoons of hot water
1 tablespoon of sweet soy sauce
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
Sriracha sauce and lime juice or vinegar to taste
 |
| I have a lot of sauces |
2. Thin it out with hot water and season to taste with Sriracha sauce and lime juice or vinegar.
An example of what to put in your noodles:
100g of dried Korean sweet potato noodles, whatever that equals cooked
1-2 large julienned carrot
1 cup of shredded cabbage
1 medium capsicum, cut into strips
1 large onion
3-4 cloves of garlic
1/2 kilogram of cooked chicken, I pan fried mine and shredded it
1. Cook the noodles in boiling water until al dente.
2. Stir fry all the vegetables, onions, garlic first. Then carrots, cabbage and finally capsicum.
3. Pan fry your chicken until cooked through, shred with a fork once cooled down.
4. Mix everything into the peanut sauce.
 |
| Pre meat |
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| Delicious chicken |
Thursday, 24 October 2013
Ethiopian Lentils and flatbread
Have you ever been so enamoured of your recipe that you crow about it to everyone you meet and continue to eat it for days on end? I'm the kind of person who can't eat the same meal more than twice in a row. I ate this lentil and flatbread recipe for a record nine days before I stopped. I can't eat Mama Pham's pho for any more than three MEALS in a row
I have no idea why I wanted to cook lentils, however the first recipe from one of my friends at work, S.,. She also gave me the mustard seeds for the recipe which also included cumin seeds, tumeric, tomato paste, onions, garlic, red lentils, stock and chilli. That seemed like a pretty easy recipe as I had all of that at home barring the lentils and the mustard seeds.
Of course when I went to cook the lentils, I found that my cumin seeds had gone missing, courtesy of VGirl when she was making falafels. Then the tumeric was gone from when we last made banh xeo, Vietnamese tumeric savoury crepes. Well that was me well and truly fucked, I'd have bailed but I had already pre-soaked my lentils and had no idea what to do with it.
I decided to be courageous and wing it with a spice mix. I had to choose between a powder madras curry or my new berbere spice mix that I had picked up. I went with the berbere, the premade one I had didn't have the ingredients listed but Wikipedia helpfully tells me that it usually has at least chili, garlic, onion, ginger, dried basil, Ethiopian cardamom, rue, nigella, fenugreek as well as ajwain or radhuni. I have no idea what Ethiopian cardamom, ajwain or radhuni taste or smell like, so there was no way I was going to try and make berbere from scratch. From the smell of it, mine has paprika and nutmeg in it too. Feel free to make your own if you want.
I actually can't remember what brand of berbere I got, except that I got it from Pennisi Cuisine, a whole sale deli store in Woolloongabba and they don't even have it on their website. Its comes in a little rectangular packet though . . .
Anyway, I also decided to make some flatbread with it. I stole Julie Goodwin's recipe for it, when I made it though, I made about 20? small pieces rather than 8 large ones. Each flatbread piece only ended up being about the size of my hand, a good 20cm or so in diameter. I prefer my flatbread quite thin and crispy though, so that might why I had so many.
I was very proud of both the lentils and the flatbread and made lots of people eat it at work. H., adores it, and I kept making her a little box of lentils and lots of flatbread to scoop it up with. Di really enjoyed the flatbread too and asked for the recipe. While K., who was on a bad financial stretch also vowed to cook this, until I took pity on her and made her a batch of sausage rolls to stretch it out until pay day haha. Oh Gill and I also do a dinner swap and she owes me a bag of lentils to cook her a batch.
Julie Goodwin's Flatbread
Uses: Bribing H., to do work for you.
Ingredients:
4 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon if you're a salt fiend like me
100g of butter
375ml of milk, I used soy cause I never have normal milk handy
Cooking oil
Instructions:
1. Heat the milk and butter together until the butter is just melted. I nuked mine in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Microwave strengths may change.
2. Sift the flour in a large mixing bowl with the salt and make a well in the centre. Gently mix until the dough comes together.
3. You should have a soft stretchy dough that doesn't stick to the board. If it does, continue to add flour until it stops being a pain. Knead for about 5 minutes until soft and stretchy.
4. Cover and rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes or so.
5. Heat a large saucepan on a steady medium until hot, splash in some oil and begin step 5.
6. Pinch off a blob and roll out as thinly as possible, lifting off the the board several times and rerolling until you are satisified. Throw in the pan, and start rolling out another piece while the flat bread cooks. It takes about a minute or so.
7. Once the surface begins to bubble and the edges curl slightly, flip over and continue playing around with your flatbread.
8. Continue frying flatbread until you have enough to eat for your meal.
Ethiopian lentils:
Uses: eating vegetarian for several days
Ingredients:
2 cups of uncooked red lentils
4 cups of water or stock
1 medium onion, finely diced
3-4 cloves of finely diced garlic
1 tablespoon of berbere spice
1 tablespoon of black mustard seeds
1/4 cup of water
400g can of diced tomatoes
1-2 tablespoons of tomato paste
Salt/pepper/sugar/chopped chilli to taste
1. Soak your lentils for about 30 minutes before cooking, also fine to cook straight from dried lentil. This recipe is very flexible. If you do decide to not soak the lentils, use an extra cup of water when cooking to compensate for water absorption. Chop up all your garlic and onion.
2. Cook your lentils on a steady low simmer until soft and melting. While this is happening continue with the other steps.
3. Put in a tablespoon of berbere spice and mustard seeds together in a hot saucepan. Stir until the mustard seeds begin to pop and smoke.
4. Add in the additional 1/4 cup of water and stir until the water has all evaporated again, this normally takes a minute or two. This gives the berbere and mustard paste additional time to cook. It gives it a really odd taste if you don't cook down the berbere paste so keep at it.
4. Toss in the garlic and onion and cook until the onion has begun to brown and caramelise, 6-10 minutes.
5. Blob in your tomato paste and cook for a few seconds to sweeten the mixture.
6. If you're brave, pour the lentils into the saucepan, if not, pour the spice mix into the lentils. If you go lentils into the saucepan, it will seize and spit at you for a bit, so have a lid handy.
7. Add the canned tomatoes and season. I normally add at least a tablespoon of sugar, salt and hot chilli powder. I prefer this curry a little sweeter to be honest and the spiciness of hot chilli cuts through nicely. Heat to simmer and allow to cook for a further 5-10 minutes, until the colour brightens and the lentils thicken slightly.
I have no idea why I wanted to cook lentils, however the first recipe from one of my friends at work, S.,. She also gave me the mustard seeds for the recipe which also included cumin seeds, tumeric, tomato paste, onions, garlic, red lentils, stock and chilli. That seemed like a pretty easy recipe as I had all of that at home barring the lentils and the mustard seeds.
Of course when I went to cook the lentils, I found that my cumin seeds had gone missing, courtesy of VGirl when she was making falafels. Then the tumeric was gone from when we last made banh xeo, Vietnamese tumeric savoury crepes. Well that was me well and truly fucked, I'd have bailed but I had already pre-soaked my lentils and had no idea what to do with it.
I decided to be courageous and wing it with a spice mix. I had to choose between a powder madras curry or my new berbere spice mix that I had picked up. I went with the berbere, the premade one I had didn't have the ingredients listed but Wikipedia helpfully tells me that it usually has at least chili, garlic, onion, ginger, dried basil, Ethiopian cardamom, rue, nigella, fenugreek as well as ajwain or radhuni. I have no idea what Ethiopian cardamom, ajwain or radhuni taste or smell like, so there was no way I was going to try and make berbere from scratch. From the smell of it, mine has paprika and nutmeg in it too. Feel free to make your own if you want.
I actually can't remember what brand of berbere I got, except that I got it from Pennisi Cuisine, a whole sale deli store in Woolloongabba and they don't even have it on their website. Its comes in a little rectangular packet though . . .
Anyway, I also decided to make some flatbread with it. I stole Julie Goodwin's recipe for it, when I made it though, I made about 20? small pieces rather than 8 large ones. Each flatbread piece only ended up being about the size of my hand, a good 20cm or so in diameter. I prefer my flatbread quite thin and crispy though, so that might why I had so many.
I was very proud of both the lentils and the flatbread and made lots of people eat it at work. H., adores it, and I kept making her a little box of lentils and lots of flatbread to scoop it up with. Di really enjoyed the flatbread too and asked for the recipe. While K., who was on a bad financial stretch also vowed to cook this, until I took pity on her and made her a batch of sausage rolls to stretch it out until pay day haha. Oh Gill and I also do a dinner swap and she owes me a bag of lentils to cook her a batch.
Julie Goodwin's Flatbread
Uses: Bribing H., to do work for you.
Ingredients:
4 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon if you're a salt fiend like me
100g of butter
375ml of milk, I used soy cause I never have normal milk handy
Cooking oil
 |
| Soy sauce is not involved |
1. Heat the milk and butter together until the butter is just melted. I nuked mine in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Microwave strengths may change.
2. Sift the flour in a large mixing bowl with the salt and make a well in the centre. Gently mix until the dough comes together.
 |
| Like this |
3. You should have a soft stretchy dough that doesn't stick to the board. If it does, continue to add flour until it stops being a pain. Knead for about 5 minutes until soft and stretchy.
 |
| Squishy |
 |
| Squish squish squish |
5. Heat a large saucepan on a steady medium until hot, splash in some oil and begin step 5.
6. Pinch off a blob and roll out as thinly as possible, lifting off the the board several times and rerolling until you are satisified. Throw in the pan, and start rolling out another piece while the flat bread cooks. It takes about a minute or so.
7. Once the surface begins to bubble and the edges curl slightly, flip over and continue playing around with your flatbread.
 |
| Rustic is a nice word for imperfect cooking |
8. Continue frying flatbread until you have enough to eat for your meal.
 |
| So crunchy and buttery |
Uses: eating vegetarian for several days
Ingredients:
2 cups of uncooked red lentils
4 cups of water or stock
1 medium onion, finely diced
3-4 cloves of finely diced garlic
1 tablespoon of berbere spice
1 tablespoon of black mustard seeds
1/4 cup of water
400g can of diced tomatoes
1-2 tablespoons of tomato paste
Salt/pepper/sugar/chopped chilli to taste
 |
| Mmm lentils |
1. Soak your lentils for about 30 minutes before cooking, also fine to cook straight from dried lentil. This recipe is very flexible. If you do decide to not soak the lentils, use an extra cup of water when cooking to compensate for water absorption. Chop up all your garlic and onion.
 |
| Lentils in stock! |
 |
| Is it red yet? If so, done. |
3. Put in a tablespoon of berbere spice and mustard seeds together in a hot saucepan. Stir until the mustard seeds begin to pop and smoke.
4. Add in the additional 1/4 cup of water and stir until the water has all evaporated again, this normally takes a minute or two. This gives the berbere and mustard paste additional time to cook. It gives it a really odd taste if you don't cook down the berbere paste so keep at it.
 |
| Lean away and turn on your exhaust fan |
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| Pretty much done |
4. Toss in the garlic and onion and cook until the onion has begun to brown and caramelise, 6-10 minutes.
 |
| Sorta hard to tell with the colour though |
5. Blob in your tomato paste and cook for a few seconds to sweeten the mixture.
 |
| This is what you want |
 |
| Bubble bubble, toil and trouble! |
 |
| Almost there! |
7. Add the canned tomatoes and season. I normally add at least a tablespoon of sugar, salt and hot chilli powder. I prefer this curry a little sweeter to be honest and the spiciness of hot chilli cuts through nicely. Heat to simmer and allow to cook for a further 5-10 minutes, until the colour brightens and the lentils thicken slightly.
 |
| Delicious |
Thursday, 11 July 2013
Sick Sister Food
I'm really surprised I didn't make one of these things earlier actually, VGirl seems to get sick a fair lot. She has very poor circulation and dresses fashionably even in winter, which probably does her in a fair bit. I don't cook for her very often, she doesn't like trying new things and is very, very picky about what she wants to eat. That and I as Mama Pham tells us, "your sister is a vegetarian, its not like she has any strength anyway. All she eats is vegetables."
So one day, she comes over complaining about how sick she's been since she's been exposed to all the sick people coming into her pharmacy, that she has exams coming up, that's she's too tired to cook and that dad isn't cooking for her anymore because she doesn't eat the food he makes her. Its probably better because his cooking would've finished her off. So I told her I was going to make her something and that she should come over the next day to have some.
I had big plans to cook a hearty, thick soup for my little sister while she was sick. It was going to have all the mushrooms I could afford and easily find to put in it and as many roasted garlic bulbs as I could stand parting with to put in the soup. I woke up early, went to the Sunday markets in both Mount Gravatt and Woodridge before making a quick stop at the local Woolworths. I bought home half a kilo of button mushrooms, a pack of enoki mushrooms, some thyme, thickened cream, vegetable stock and some large organic purple Australian garlic.
I wanted to buy leeks but was badgered by my mum into not buying any because we had some at home, there wasn't any of course. I had some dried shimeji and dried black cloud ear fungus soaking in a bowl. I had sliced everything up and I sent VGirl a message saying to call me when she was done with work and I would start cooking so the soup would still be warm when she got to my house.
Of course, she forgot. Mama Pham called her, asking if we were eating yet and VGirl had no idea what she was talking about. So Mama Pham began hassling VGirl about going over because of how much effort I had gone to, so VGirl called me and I began making soup. I also hastily made her some croutons as well.
Anyway, I choose all these different mushrooms to add lots of texture and different layers of flavour to the soup. White button mushrooms for their basic mild mushroom flavour and as my main filler, enoki for their crunchiness and pasta like appearance in the soup, shiitake for a chewy texture in the soup, their large amount of umami flavouring as well as their distinctive aroma and black cloud ear fungus because its also crunchy but can also be slippery in texture if cooked long enough.
Experiment! I think this soup would be suitable with any edible mushroom you prefer, if I had wanted portobello, cremini, oyster, morel or any other ones I can't think of, I'd have gladly used them. You can easily change the ways the mushrooms are cut as well, don't use the same cut, vary it a bit and see the change in texture and intensity of flavour.
Many Mushroom Soup
500g+ of white button mushrooms, finely sliced
1 pack/100g of enoki mushrooms
3 large bulbs of roasted garlic
100g rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, or 8 dried ones roughly
100g rehydrated black cloud ear fungus, 3 large dried pieces
1 large brown onion, diced or sliced
1L of vegetable stock
100ml of thickened cream
Thyme, I don't know how much I used
Salt/Pepper
Thyme Croutons
3 slices of day old bread
2-3 tablespoons of butter
1/2-1 tablespoon of thyme
Instructions for the soup:
1. Cut off 1cm off the tops of your garlic bulbs. Sprinkle with olive oil and salt before wrapping the heads tightly in aluminium foil. Place them on a tray and bake for half an hour at 180C before allowing them to cool and squishing out all the roasted garlic from the cloves. Squash them again with a fork so that you don't get cloves of garlic floating in your soup.
2. While you are roasting the garlic, rehydrate your dried items with a bit of hot water. Poke them underwater with a spoon every now and again. Remove the stalks off the shiitake mushrooms, they're gross and tough.
3. Chop up everything. The smaller cut the button mushrooms, the better. Slice or dice your onions up. For the cloud ear fungus, give it a rinse and a squeeze before cutting them into thumb sized chunks. For the shiitake, squeeze all the waters out of them and cut into slices. Slice off the base of the enoki mushrooms, probably about 2-3cms off so that the dirt it grew on comes over, rinse it and separate into smaller strands.
4. Heat up some oil in a large stock pot on a steady medium until hot. Saute your onions until fragrant.
5. Throw in all your mushrooms barring the enoki mushrooms. Throw in the thyme with it, I used my scissors to chop it into manageable bits. Saute until your brown mushrooms have wilted, wept juice and become dry again.
6. Throw in the garlic and then all of your stock. Once the stock is heated, throw in your enoki mushrooms and pour in the cream.
7. Season at this stage and once the enoki have softened slightly, serve with thyme croutons!
Instructions for thyme:
1. Cut your bread into a manageable bite sized pieces.
2. Heat up a frying pan and melt in a far chunk of butter into it, what some would deem an unhealthy amount.
3. Fry your thyme in the butter for a few seconds. Throw in the bread. Toss to coat in butter.
4. Continue to fry, frequently turning to ensure an even golden brown texture. Some will toast faster than others, that's okay, throw them into a bowl.
5. Serve on soup, eat all remaining buttery croutons with relish if there is no soup.
So one day, she comes over complaining about how sick she's been since she's been exposed to all the sick people coming into her pharmacy, that she has exams coming up, that's she's too tired to cook and that dad isn't cooking for her anymore because she doesn't eat the food he makes her. Its probably better because his cooking would've finished her off. So I told her I was going to make her something and that she should come over the next day to have some.
I had big plans to cook a hearty, thick soup for my little sister while she was sick. It was going to have all the mushrooms I could afford and easily find to put in it and as many roasted garlic bulbs as I could stand parting with to put in the soup. I woke up early, went to the Sunday markets in both Mount Gravatt and Woodridge before making a quick stop at the local Woolworths. I bought home half a kilo of button mushrooms, a pack of enoki mushrooms, some thyme, thickened cream, vegetable stock and some large organic purple Australian garlic.
I wanted to buy leeks but was badgered by my mum into not buying any because we had some at home, there wasn't any of course. I had some dried shimeji and dried black cloud ear fungus soaking in a bowl. I had sliced everything up and I sent VGirl a message saying to call me when she was done with work and I would start cooking so the soup would still be warm when she got to my house.
Of course, she forgot. Mama Pham called her, asking if we were eating yet and VGirl had no idea what she was talking about. So Mama Pham began hassling VGirl about going over because of how much effort I had gone to, so VGirl called me and I began making soup. I also hastily made her some croutons as well.
Anyway, I choose all these different mushrooms to add lots of texture and different layers of flavour to the soup. White button mushrooms for their basic mild mushroom flavour and as my main filler, enoki for their crunchiness and pasta like appearance in the soup, shiitake for a chewy texture in the soup, their large amount of umami flavouring as well as their distinctive aroma and black cloud ear fungus because its also crunchy but can also be slippery in texture if cooked long enough.
Experiment! I think this soup would be suitable with any edible mushroom you prefer, if I had wanted portobello, cremini, oyster, morel or any other ones I can't think of, I'd have gladly used them. You can easily change the ways the mushrooms are cut as well, don't use the same cut, vary it a bit and see the change in texture and intensity of flavour.
Many Mushroom Soup
500g+ of white button mushrooms, finely sliced
1 pack/100g of enoki mushrooms
3 large bulbs of roasted garlic
100g rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, or 8 dried ones roughly
100g rehydrated black cloud ear fungus, 3 large dried pieces
1 large brown onion, diced or sliced
1L of vegetable stock
100ml of thickened cream
Thyme, I don't know how much I used
Salt/Pepper
 |
| So many brown/beigey things |
Thyme Croutons
3 slices of day old bread
2-3 tablespoons of butter
1/2-1 tablespoon of thyme
Instructions for the soup:
1. Cut off 1cm off the tops of your garlic bulbs. Sprinkle with olive oil and salt before wrapping the heads tightly in aluminium foil. Place them on a tray and bake for half an hour at 180C before allowing them to cool and squishing out all the roasted garlic from the cloves. Squash them again with a fork so that you don't get cloves of garlic floating in your soup.
2. While you are roasting the garlic, rehydrate your dried items with a bit of hot water. Poke them underwater with a spoon every now and again. Remove the stalks off the shiitake mushrooms, they're gross and tough.
3. Chop up everything. The smaller cut the button mushrooms, the better. Slice or dice your onions up. For the cloud ear fungus, give it a rinse and a squeeze before cutting them into thumb sized chunks. For the shiitake, squeeze all the waters out of them and cut into slices. Slice off the base of the enoki mushrooms, probably about 2-3cms off so that the dirt it grew on comes over, rinse it and separate into smaller strands.
4. Heat up some oil in a large stock pot on a steady medium until hot. Saute your onions until fragrant.
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| I have so many pictures of onions frying. |
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| There wasn't really anything fancy with this at all. |
 |
| Simple soup right? |
Instructions for thyme:
1. Cut your bread into a manageable bite sized pieces.
 |
| Okay, I could've made them a bit smaller. |
 |
| Ignore the blurriness, I was quickly taking photos. |
4. Continue to fry, frequently turning to ensure an even golden brown texture. Some will toast faster than others, that's okay, throw them into a bowl.
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| Oh so toasty. |
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| VGirl ate most of the croutons out of the pan before she had the soup. |
Thursday, 4 July 2013
Orange and Chocolate Cake aka Jaffa Cake
"Imma make a cake tomorrow." I said to the girls as we were walking home from work.
"Vat vill you be making tomorrow?" The wonderful Mrs I asked me. Mrs I has a very thick Hungarian accent.
"I don't know." I replied thoughtfully.
I had been thinking about it all day and had hit up absolutely everything in my arsenal of food sites, all my the food blogs I frequent, my list of recipes to try on Facebook, Food52, taste.com, my collection of magazine clippings and nothing was enticing enough to try. I didn't have enough time to go shopping and buy anything else so I only had what was in my house. What to make, what to make?
I was browsing the internet when I thought, I want to make a jaffa cake, an orange and chocolate flavoured cake! A CAKE THAT HAD BOTH CHOCOLATE AND ORANGE IN IT. In my mind I had two thoughts, an orange scented light sponge coated in a chocolate ganache with candied orange slices on top or a dense chocolate cake with orange zest and juice baked inside and then doused in an orange sugar syrup.
I scoured the googles to find a recipe to inspire me. There was shit bugger all. All the recipes I found had weird stuff that I didn't have, like liquors, package orange jelly, cold mashed pumpkin, condensed milk or worse, didn't seem like it would work. So I decided to make up my own recipe!
First, I had to be consumed by doubt. I asked first Shishi, Yannikins, Dr H, VGirl, T., Lis., and L., what their thoughts on which cake I should make. Everyone but the contrary VGirl agreed that the latter of the two, the dense chocolate cake with orange juice/zest and the sugar syrup sounded like the better of the two. Yannikins thought of the little Mexican girl.
L., was sending me lots of recipes and recommending stuff I didn't have. Shishi and Dr H., warned me that I should be careful of the balance of the sugar syrup since it could make the cake sickly sweet. They also wanted me to use dark chocolate and minimal sugar when I baked it. Dr H and Yannikins added that its pretty uncommon to see sugar syrups used on anything besides plain flavoured cakes and teacakes. Dr H was wondering why I asked Yannikins and Shishi when they don't know how to cook, but I told them that they know what they like and she agreed that Asians know what they like in a cake.
So I played around with my solid flourless chocolate and hazelnut cake, changed some of the ingredients around, added some juice, some zest, made up a syrup and bam baked it. I'm unsure if the reason why the cake batter solidified so greatly was because the chocolate cooled down too much, since most of the time I barely have the patience to allow it to cool down at all, or because I used way too much flour. It got very thick and claggy and I had to really enthusiastically fold the egg whites, so I think the cake could've been lighter and taller than what it turned out to be honest. I made a tester batch that puffed up beautifully so I think that had the majority of the egg whites in it.
It turned out very nicely I think. As a result of all the orange zest, it has a great fragrance especially when freshly baked but also as a cooled cake. Due to the high butter content its a very moist cake as well. The cake is also very fluffy despite this because of the folded egg whites. I don't think it needs any extra sugar as the syrup adds a lot extra. Mama Pham aka my mum gave me her stamp of approval when she tried some of this cake and said it smelt good, was rich and that it was just sweet enough and any sweeter and she wouldn't eat it. Its a great thing to have my mum's approval, she is highly critical of a lot of food.
I used navel oranges in this cake because that's all I had. Valencia or any other juicing orange would be preferable because of their increased flavour/juice production. Since you're eating the zest, organic would be the way to go here. A bitter dark chocolate would be the way to go as well. You can also bake the cake at 180 for 40 minutes if you have a well controlled temperature, but I would be extremely cautious about doing so, because if it overheats, you could have an ugly cake on hand.
I brought it into work and people were raving over how light it was, the fluffiness of the cake, its great moisture, its orange flavour and that it tasted exactly like a Jaffa should. I made it for Dr. H's parents as well when we went out with VGirl, Shishi and Yannikins. I later learnt that Dr. H's dad went to work with the rest of the cake and Yannikins parents mugged him for his cake as soon as he went home. I have now got his mum's recipe for chiffon cake. I also made this for my Boyfriend's parents who made lots of excuses to have it with tea and coffee.
Orange and Chocolate cake = JAFFA CAKE
Uses: pretending to be healthy, using up oranges
Ingredients for cake:
4 eggs, separated
200g of dark or milk cooking chocolate
150g of butter, cubed
1 cup of self raising flour
2 oranges worth of zest
1/2-3/4 cup of orange juice, depends on how good your oranges are
3/4 cup of sugar
Ingredients for orange juice sugar syrup
1 cup of orange juice
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of water
Instructions for cake
1. Cube your butter and break up your chocolate into small bits. Melt this all in a bowl, however you want, microwave, in a double boiler, just get it melted! I'm a fan of placing a bowl above boiling water, and allow the heat to melt it that way.
2. Meanwhile, line a 20cm springform/normal cake tin with baking paper and separate your eggs into yolks and whites.
3. Zest your oranges, juice both of them and strain the juice. Eat the pulp, its good for you. Turn the oven to 150C.
4. When the chocolate melts, allow it to cool slightly while you make the rest of the cake.
5. Combine the yolks, sugar and zest. Beat until creamy, thick and pale.
6. Combine the chocolate and orange juice with the yolk mixture and stir until just combined.
7. Sift the flour on top of this mixture, stir until combined.
8. Whisk your egg whites until you reach soft peaks, gently fold a third of the egg whites into the cake and then fold the remaining 2/3s.
8. Pour into your prepared cake tin and bake for at least an hour, resist the urge to open up the oven and flip it around or poke it with a skewer too early on.
Instructions for orange juice sugar syrup
1. Wait until about 5-10 minutes before the cake comes out of the oven. Mix all of the ingredients.
2. Heat over a steady medium-low heat, get rid of any orange foam.
3. Take off the heat when it thickens to 1/3 or 1/2 of original volume, or slightly thick, depends on how you like your syrup, I like mine thick and almost caramelised.
4. Poke lots of holes into the top of your cake with a skewer.
5. Pour the hot syrup over the still warm cake.
"Vat vill you be making tomorrow?" The wonderful Mrs I asked me. Mrs I has a very thick Hungarian accent.
"I don't know." I replied thoughtfully.
I had been thinking about it all day and had hit up absolutely everything in my arsenal of food sites, all my the food blogs I frequent, my list of recipes to try on Facebook, Food52, taste.com, my collection of magazine clippings and nothing was enticing enough to try. I didn't have enough time to go shopping and buy anything else so I only had what was in my house. What to make, what to make?
I was browsing the internet when I thought, I want to make a jaffa cake, an orange and chocolate flavoured cake! A CAKE THAT HAD BOTH CHOCOLATE AND ORANGE IN IT. In my mind I had two thoughts, an orange scented light sponge coated in a chocolate ganache with candied orange slices on top or a dense chocolate cake with orange zest and juice baked inside and then doused in an orange sugar syrup.
I scoured the googles to find a recipe to inspire me. There was shit bugger all. All the recipes I found had weird stuff that I didn't have, like liquors, package orange jelly, cold mashed pumpkin, condensed milk or worse, didn't seem like it would work. So I decided to make up my own recipe!
 |
| You leave me no choice |
 |
| YEAH |
So I played around with my solid flourless chocolate and hazelnut cake, changed some of the ingredients around, added some juice, some zest, made up a syrup and bam baked it. I'm unsure if the reason why the cake batter solidified so greatly was because the chocolate cooled down too much, since most of the time I barely have the patience to allow it to cool down at all, or because I used way too much flour. It got very thick and claggy and I had to really enthusiastically fold the egg whites, so I think the cake could've been lighter and taller than what it turned out to be honest. I made a tester batch that puffed up beautifully so I think that had the majority of the egg whites in it.
It turned out very nicely I think. As a result of all the orange zest, it has a great fragrance especially when freshly baked but also as a cooled cake. Due to the high butter content its a very moist cake as well. The cake is also very fluffy despite this because of the folded egg whites. I don't think it needs any extra sugar as the syrup adds a lot extra. Mama Pham aka my mum gave me her stamp of approval when she tried some of this cake and said it smelt good, was rich and that it was just sweet enough and any sweeter and she wouldn't eat it. Its a great thing to have my mum's approval, she is highly critical of a lot of food.
 |
| Inside of the cake. |
I brought it into work and people were raving over how light it was, the fluffiness of the cake, its great moisture, its orange flavour and that it tasted exactly like a Jaffa should. I made it for Dr. H's parents as well when we went out with VGirl, Shishi and Yannikins. I later learnt that Dr. H's dad went to work with the rest of the cake and Yannikins parents mugged him for his cake as soon as he went home. I have now got his mum's recipe for chiffon cake. I also made this for my Boyfriend's parents who made lots of excuses to have it with tea and coffee.
Orange and Chocolate cake = JAFFA CAKE
Uses: pretending to be healthy, using up oranges
Ingredients for cake:
4 eggs, separated
200g of dark or milk cooking chocolate
150g of butter, cubed
1 cup of self raising flour
2 oranges worth of zest
1/2-3/4 cup of orange juice, depends on how good your oranges are
3/4 cup of sugar
Ingredients for orange juice sugar syrup
1 cup of orange juice
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of water
 |
| Compulsory loaf of bread in background |
1. Cube your butter and break up your chocolate into small bits. Melt this all in a bowl, however you want, microwave, in a double boiler, just get it melted! I'm a fan of placing a bowl above boiling water, and allow the heat to melt it that way.
 |
| So shiny |
2. Meanwhile, line a 20cm springform/normal cake tin with baking paper and separate your eggs into yolks and whites.
 |
| I couldn't find my other stainless steel mixing bowl |
3. Zest your oranges, juice both of them and strain the juice. Eat the pulp, its good for you. Turn the oven to 150C.
 |
| We lost the rest of the citrus juicer a long time ago |
4. When the chocolate melts, allow it to cool slightly while you make the rest of the cake.
5. Combine the yolks, sugar and zest. Beat until creamy, thick and pale.
 |
| Yes there are yolks under there |
 |
| Is this upside down? Does it matter? |
 |
| Oops almost forgot |
 |
| It looks really gross somehow |
 |
| Pretty |
 |
| Bleh |
 |
| Chunky |
 |
| Looking gooood~ |
8. Whisk your egg whites until you reach soft peaks, gently fold a third of the egg whites into the cake and then fold the remaining 2/3s.
 |
| Haha I forgot to take a picture of the final batter |
8. Pour into your prepared cake tin and bake for at least an hour, resist the urge to open up the oven and flip it around or poke it with a skewer too early on.
Instructions for orange juice sugar syrup
1. Wait until about 5-10 minutes before the cake comes out of the oven. Mix all of the ingredients.
 |
| Add caption |
2. Heat over a steady medium-low heat, get rid of any orange foam.
 |
| Weird orange foam! Scoop and throw away! |
3. Take off the heat when it thickens to 1/3 or 1/2 of original volume, or slightly thick, depends on how you like your syrup, I like mine thick and almost caramelised.
 |
| Intensely orange flavoured |
4. Poke lots of holes into the top of your cake with a skewer.
 |
| So many holes. Also Siri |
 |
| A hole because I ate a bit to test |
 |
| Both the cakes together! |
 |
| Crater face cake |
5. Pour the hot syrup over the still warm cake.
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