CHICKEN IN BBQ SAUCE

 CHICKEN IN BBQ SAUCE MARINADE

1x 1.6 kg whole fresh Broiler chicken, butterflied OR chicken drumstick, thigh or wing pieces

Marinade ingredients:

3 tbsp light soy sauce

1/2 cup tomato sauce

3 tbsp honey

1.5 tbsp brown sugar

3 tbsp apple cider vinegar

2 tspn grated fresh ginger

4 cloves garlic, grated

1/2 hot cup water

Mix all marinade ingredients together. Pour on butterflied whole chicken. Roast on preheated oven 180 deg C for 1 hr, basting every 15-20 minutes.

KUEH KETAYAP (Pandanus Pancakes wraps with grated coconut with palm sugar)

 KUEH KETAYAP aka KUEH DADAR

Batter Ingredients:

230 gm flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

4-6 Screwpine leaves (Pandanus leaves), blended with 200 ml water, strain

400 ml water

Cooking oil

Filling ingredients:

250 gm palm sugar

2 tbsp coarse sugar

60 ml water

1 coconut, grated

1 tspn salt

2 tbsp butter

See video for instructions.

BRAISED CHINESE CABBAGE with DRIED SCALLOPS

 BRAISED CHINESE CABBAGE WITH DRIED SCALLOPS

1 medium size chinese cabbage, quartered

2 dried scallops, soak, shredded and retain water after soaking

1” ginger for juice

3 tbsp meddler seeds

2 tspn Maggi Chicken stock concentrate

3 cups water

Salt to taste

1 tbsp tapioca starch mixed with 1/4 cup water

1) Measure water into a pan. Add the shredded scallops ginger juice and the scallop soaking water. Bring to boil and simmer for 1/2 hour.

2) Just before serving add the cabbage, meddler seeds and chicken stock to the broth.

3) Bring to boil and simmer for about 15 minutes or until cabbage is just soft.

4) Remove the cabbage onto a serving plate carefully.

5) Increase heat and boil to reduce broth to just about 1.5 cups of liquid. Thicken broth with tapioca starch mixed with water. Add salt to taste.

6) Pour gravy on cabbage and serve hot.

WHAT IS 'WOK HEI' IN CHINESE COOKING?

 WHAT IS ‘WOK-HEI’?

'Wok-hei' is the flavour of burnt oil in your food, achieved by letting your food get caught by the fire for a brief moment.

It can be quite dangerous to do this in a home cooking hob because of the danger of your cooker hood catching fire especially if yr cooker hood is the old type that uses a gauze filter.

But you can still achieve it safely by using a smaller n shallow cooking utensil (like a frying pan) and turning on the fire to the maximum to let it come up to the edge of your utensil and then letting the fire get caught into yr food.

An alternative way to achieving the 'wok-hei' flavour in your quick/flash stirfrying food is to use a cast-iron wok. They retain heat well and maintains the required high temperature to quickly stirfry your food in just seconds, mainly in Cantonese style cooking.

Best trying this outside your kitchen for safety.

ABOUT THE AUTOMATED ELECTRIC RICE-COOKER

 ABOUT THE USE OF RICE COOKER

The Rice Cooker is one of the best ingenious cooking gadget ever invented based on the simple knowledge that water boils at 100 deg C/212 deg F.

Rule of thumb in cooking rice is that water has to be 2 times the amount of your rice. Once water has been fully absorbed by the rice, temperature will rise beyond 100 deg C and thats when the rice cooker will automatically switches off.

Based on this knowledge about the rice cooker, there are a few exceptions to the rule to how to ‘cheat’ the rice cooker to cook other type of rice dishes other than just plain white rice:

1) Nasi Lemak rice, Briyani Rice, Chicken Rice

All of these rice pilaf dishes contains oil and oil will cause the temperature of yr rice cooker to rise rapidly even before the rice grains are cooked. So the trick to cheat the rice cooker is do not use too much oil/santan in the rice but stir in a tablespoon or 2 of the santan/ghee/chic fat after the rice cooker has switched

off and let the rice stand for 10 minutes before eating.

2) Cooking unpolished rice

Unpolished rice is not desirable to eat because they are hard and chewy. These type of rice require 3 times the amount of water of your rice. What happen is that the grains will be boiled for a longer time until the grains breaks and rice cooker will switch off after d liquid has dried up. Adding more water does not mean that this type of rice absorbs more water but instead it allows d rice grains to be boiled longer to soften so that you get fluffier and less chewy rice.

The newer model of the electric rice cooker now comes with Congee/porridge model too and with a steaming tray accessory and an extra inner pot.

For a more durable rice cooker, look to buy that comes with a stainless steel inner pot instead of one with a non-stick surface or aluminium inner pot.

ABOUT NON-STICK COOKWARES

 ABOUT NON-STICK SURFACES ON COOKWARE

Tefal came up with the first types of non-stick cookwares. The non-stick surface is called Teflon.

Do not wash these cookwares while they are still hot. Let the cookware cool before washing.

If u need to clean the surface while it is still hot and because u need to use it again to cook the next dish, just wipe the surface with a kitchen towel.

These cookwares are not suitable to cook hard food like frying fish, meat with bones and seafood with shells because they will scratch the surface and so thats how the Teflon surface will wear-off over time and your cookware will have to be thrown away.

Nowadays manufacturers have come up with new technology on non-stick surfaces with scratch-proof. Not sure how good they are but only time will tell after a few years of use.

CREAM CHEESE BUTTER CAKE with PASSIONFRUIT ICING

 CREAM CHEESE BUTTER CAKE

100 g Cream Cheese

120 g Soft Brown sugar

150 g Cold unsalted Butter, diced

3 large eggs

220 g Self-raising flour, sifted

7” square cake pan, line bottom with parchment paper and grease n flour sides of pan

Passionfruit Cream Cheese Frosting: 170 g Cream Cheese, 170 g cold butter, 160 g sifted icing sugar, pulp of 1 passionfruit

1) Beat cream cheese and cold butter until light and fluffy.

2) Beat in eggs one at a time until just combined.

3) Fold in flour using a spatula

4) Pour into cake pan, level and smoothen top with spatula.

5) Bake in preheated oven at moderate temperature (180 deg C) for 50 minutes.

6) Turn out cake to cool on wire rack after cooking before applying frosting.

Passionfruit Cream Cheese Frosting:

1) Beat cream cheese and butter until just white. Beat in icing sugar until just combined. Stir in half the passionfruit pulp. Reserve the other half of pulp for decoration at the top of cake.

Spread mixture on cake using a spatula and top with the remaining passionfruit pulp.