Blueberry Muffins

Freshly baked! They turned out really nice. I don't have a weighing scale so sometimes it's hard to get the quantities right. I put a little too much butter. It didn't ruin the taste, but the muffins are quite soft on the inside. This recipe is divine!

From www.exclusivelyfood.com.au:

Makes 12 muffins.

290g (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) sour cream
1 large egg (we use eggs with a minimum weight of 59g)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (1 teaspoon vanilla essence)
40ml (2 tablespoons) milk
55g butter
38g (1/4 cup) plain flour
250g (1 2/3 cups) self-raising flour
200g (3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons) sugar
225g (1 1/2 cups) fresh or frozen (unthawed) blueberries

Combine sour cream, egg, and vanilla in a small bowl. Allow mixture to stand at room temperature while preparing the tin and other ingredients. If the sour cream mixture is too cold when you add the melted butter, the butter may start to harden.

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius (170 degrees Celsius fan-forced).

Line a muffin pan (1/3 cup capacity holes) with 12 patty/muffin cases that measure 5cm across the base.

Melt butter with milk in a small saucepan over low heat, or in a microwave-safe bowl in the microwave.

Combine flour and sugar in a large bowl. Add berries and stir gently to coat with flour mixture. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture.

Add butter mixture to sour cream mixture and stir until combined. Pour wet ingredients into the well in the dry ingredients. Mix gently until just combined. Don't over mix as this will toughen the muffins and crush the berries. The mixture should have a fairly firm, coarse consistency.

Divide the mixture evenly between the cases.

Bake for about 25-30 minutes, until golden brown. When the muffins are ready, a knife inserted into the centre of a muffin will come out without any batter attached. The muffins should also spring back when lightly pressed.

Creamy Garlic Prawns

This recipe is so easy, simple and quick. Oh, and also delicious.

Ingredients:
- 200 grams of uncooked prawns
- butter
- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
- approximately 1/4th cup of cream
- chilli flakes
- dried herbs
- salt and pepper

Method:
- Heat a tablespoon or 2 of butter in a fry pan until it melts. Add the garlic and fry for about 30 seconds.
- Next, add your prawns and cook for a couple of minutes until it is almost cooked.
- Season with salt, pepper, chilli flakes and herbs.
- Add cream and cook for a few minutes until slightly thickened.

Chicken Biryani

Biryani's probably one of my favourite dishes. There's nothing better than a really good biryani. The first couple of times I've tried making it, it's turned out bad. However, I stumbled upon this one recipe and I swear I'm never having a go at another recipe. This one's that good. I've made it for my friends, my housemates and my family and they've all loved it! It takes ages to make but its definitely worth it. Here's the link to the recipe:
http://pearlsofeast.blogspot.com/2008/04/shahi-dum-chicken-biryani.html

The only difference is that I marinate my chicken in yogurt plus ginger, garlic, turmeric, chilli powder, cumin (jeera) powder and coriander powder (alternatively, you could just use chicken masala and chilli powder).

Chicken Tikka Sandwich

We've had such beautiful warm weather in Melbourne for the past couple of weeks, so we thought it would be nice to have a picnic. We should have guessed that Melbourne being Melbourne, the good weather is not likely to last. It was cold and windy and looked like the picture above. Melbourne's such a girl with its mood... oops, I mean weather swings. One can never get used to the weather here.

Regardless, we still had a good time with good food and wine. I made chicken tikka sandwiches with baby spinach and garlic yogurt sauce. Okay, so the chicken is meant to be more red rather than pink, but the only food colour I have at home is pink. Plus, pink's cooler! :)

Recipe:

- Chicken breast, cut into small pieces
- 2-3 tablespoons of yogurt
- 1 tablespoon of grated garlic and ginger
- 1 teaspoon of chilli powder
- 1 teaspoon of coriander powder
- 1 teaspoon of garam masala
- 1-2 teaspoons of chicken masala
- a couple of drops of food colour (optional)

I marinated it overnight, but a good 2-3 hours should be enough. I then stir-fried it and it's done!

Pho Gai

I love soup noodles. Hot and spicy ones, brothy ones, tangy ones. So naturally I try to make it from scratch every now and then. I came across a recipe for Pho Gai, which is Vietnamese chicken soup noodles, in the Sunday Magazine one weekend in Hong Kong. I cut out the recipe and brought it back with me to Melbourne. About a week later I tried out the recipe and fell in love with it. The star anise brings out a unique but beautiful flavour to the dish. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
- Approx. 500 grams of chicken with bones
- 1 onion
- 40 grams fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
- 1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
- 2 whole cloves
- 2 star anise
- 2 lime leaves
- 1 red finger chilli
- 40ml fish sauce
- Lime juice to taste

Method:
- Roast the onion and ginger in a broiler or over a wire rack with the flame on medium and cook until brown on both sides (this adds flavour to the broth)
- Sprinkle chicken with some salt, cut into pieces and place in pot with about a litre of water and bring to boil over medium heat. Lower the heat so the water is just simmering and skim off any scum that rises to the surface.
- Add charred onion and ginger and black peppercorns, cloves, star anise, lime leaves, chilli, fish sauce and about half a teaspoon of salt. Simmer for 45 minutes to one hour. Remove the chicken, shred the meat and discard the bones.
- Strain the stock through a sieve into a bowl. Return the broth to the pot with the chicken and add the lime juice. At this point, taste for seasoning and add any extra lime juice, fish sauce or salt if needed. Serve with cooked rice noodles or vermicelli, bean sprouts, lime wedges and coriander leaves.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

I found an excellent recipe for this online and tweaked it a little here and there. This soup is very easy to make and tastes way better than the canned ones you get at the supermarket. The recipe I found used white mushrooms and thus had a lighter colour, but I prefer the more richer, browner mushrooms, so my soup turned out pretty dark.

Ingredients:
- Swiss brown or field mushrooms (300-400 grams approx.), finely chopped in a food processer
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 tablespoon (or about 4-5 leaves) of fresh parsley
- 2 tablespoons of butter
- Half a small-sized onion, finely chopped
- 1 cup of stock (I used chicken)
- 1 cup of milk or cream
- salt and pepper

Method:
- Melt butter in sauce pan and sauté onion, garlic and parsley on medium heat until softened (about 5 minutes).
- Add the mushrooms and cook for about 15 minutes.
- Add salt, pepper, cream/milk and stock and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

New York Cheesecake

I love a good cheesecake, but only plain cheesecake without any additional fruity flavors. It's probably one of the easiest cakes to make. The only problem is that it takes a good hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes to bake. Also, with cheesecake, you really gotta let it cool for a good few hours or even overnight for it to get firm and hold shape. BUT, it's absolutely worth it :)

Ingredients:
- 500 grams cream cheese
- 100 grams sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 teaspoon cornflour
- 12 digestive biscuits
- 25 grams butter

Method:
- Blend the digestive biscuits in a food processor with the melted butter until thoroughly mixed. Cover the base of a baking dish/cake tin with the mixture, press down well and bake at 150 degrees Celsius for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, beat the cream cheese (Philadelphia), sugar, eggs and cornflour.

- After 5 minutes, remove the cheesecake base from the oven, cover with the cream cheese mixture, and then return to the oven in a bain-marie (keep the cake tin over a tray or a bigger tin filled with water.. although I think it should bake just fine without the bain-marie). Leave to cook for one hour forty-five minutes. Insert a skewer into the cake to test if it is cooked. If it comes out clean, remove from the oven and allow to cool before removing from the mould.