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.

Mushroom Pasta

My best friend who is Italian made this for me once. I absolutely fell in love with it and I've made it a million times since. This is probably the dish I cook most often. It's not a very saucy pasta, but it's packed with a lot of flavour. Also, I don't think it would taste as good with white/button mushrooms. You should use swiss brown mushrooms, portobello or any of the other browner varieties. The trick with this recipe is to cook the sauce on slooowwww.

Ingredients:
- Mushrooms (300-400 grams approx)
- 2 cloves of garlic
- Half an onion, finely sliced
- Small handful (approx 1-2 tablespoons) of chopped parsley (fresh, not the kind you get in bottles)
- 1 small tomato
- salt and pepper

Method:
- Add a generous amount of olive oil into a sauce pan on low-medium heat.
- Fry the onion, garlic and parsley for approximately 10 minutes. You want the onion to caramelize but not brown.
- Add the tomato and fry until it's softened, which should take at least another 10 minutes.
- Add the mushrooms and let it cook (again, on slow). This should take around 20-30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and mix it with cooked pasta of your choice.

Swiss Cheese and Baby Spinach Quesadilla

I came home late evening one day and I was in no mood to cook a big meal. I also didn't have very much in my fridge other than a mango and some peach. Joy! So I pulled out whatever it was that I did have: pita bread, swiss cheese and baby spinach. Usually, I'd just dump all these ingredients in the middle of a heated pita bread and make a wrap out of it. This time, I thought I'd do something different and make a quesadilla instead. Oh it turned out goooooood, especially with the swiss cheese. As long as I have pita bread at home, this will be my new alternative to instant noodles :) Here's how I made it:

Ingredients:

- Pita bread or Tortilla
- Grated cheese
- Baby spinach
- Mayonnaise
- Chilli Sauce
- Oil

Method:

- Heat up a pan on medium heat. Add about half a teaspoon of oil and spread it over the pan. Add the pita bread or tortilla and flip both sides a couple of times until it starts to brown a little, then remove from the pan.

- Add the cheese, spinach and sauces on one half of the bread and fold the other side over so that it covers the ingredients. Reduce the flame to low and place the folded bread on the pan. Cook each side for a couple of minutes, or until the bread is crisp and the cheese has melted. Remove from pan and cut in half.

Caramel Slice

I have been dreaming about this caramel slice since a friend's birthday dinner at Sante, Crown, a few days ago. Sante's a buffet restaurant in Melbourne with a huge selection of food and dessert. This is where I had caramel slice for the first time ever. It was the most divine dessert ever, really! I went back for seconds but it was all gone :( I promptly came home and bookmarked the most appealing recipe and have been dying to make it since. My search came up with none other than Amanda and Debbie's Exclusively Food website. I have tried at least 2 other recipes from their site and I have not been disappointed! They're absolute dessert goddesses. It turned out quite delish!

Here's the link to the recipe:
http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2006/07/chocolate-caramel-slice-recipe.html

Chicken Satay

I found this recipe in this Thai recipe book I borrowed from the library.. it turned out pretty good. I didn't think making satay was this easy!

Here's the recipe (for 40 sticks of satay):

1 kg skinless chicken breast fillets

Marinade:
2-3 Asian shallots, roughly chopped
4-5 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
4 coriander roots, finely chopped
1 inch piece of ginger, sliced
1 tablespoon roasted ground coriander
1 tablespoon roasted ground cumin
1 tablespoon roasted ground turmeric
1 teaspoon Thai curry powder (I'm not even sure what this is, I used some red curry paste instead)

2 tablespoons light soy sauce
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
410ml coconut milk
2 tablespoons palm sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
40 bamboo sticks

- Cut the chicken into strips and put them in a bowl
- Using a food processor or blender, blend the shallots, garlic, coriander roots and ginger to a paste. Add the paste to the chicken, along with the ground coriander, cumin, turmeric, curry powder, light soy sauce, vegetable oil, coconut milk, sugar and salt. Mix until the chicken is well coated. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate in the fridge for at least 5 hours or overnight.
- Soak the bamboo sticks in water for an hour to prevent them from burning during cooking
- Thread a piece of the marinated chicken onto each stick as if you were sewing a piece of material.
- Heat a barbecue or grill (broiler) to high. If using the grill, line the tray with foil. Barbecue the satay sticks for 5-7 minutes on each side, or grill for 10 minutes on each side, until the chicken is cooked through and slightly charred. Turn frequently and brush the marinade sauce over the meat during cooking. If using the grill, cook a good distance below the heat.

Mud Cake

Here goes my first blog ever :)

I'm a huge fan of mud cake. The richer the better. So naturally, I attempt to find a few good recipes and make it myself. I've tried a couple of mudcake recipes and so far this one's turned out to be the best. I've made it countless times for numerous friends and they have all loved it... at least that's what they told me. It takes a while to make, but it's totally worth it. The recipe calls for a combination of milk and dark chocolate, but I prefer it with just milk chocolate. I always half the quantity of the ingredients cuz otherwise I end up having to make 2 cakes. Enjoy!

http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2006/07/chocolate-mud-cake-recipe.html