Chicken soup Seafood/Minced porrk/ Abalone porridge

Making something light and simple today. Chicken soup porridge with minced pork and abalone. You can play around with the ingredients to include other seafood like prawns if you like as in the 2nd photo.

Abalone porridge with Minced pork

Seafood porridge with minced pork and carrots & oyster mushrooms

The key to this is having a nice chicken broth to make the meal tasty, without the use of salt and sugar.

You will need to prepare the chicken stock before hand.

Chicken stock preparation

Ingredients for chicken stock

- 2.5 litre of water
- 3 fillet of chicken breast.
- 1 inch of smash ginger, without skin
- 1/2 stalk of spring onion, the lower white half.

Chicken stock cooking steps

1. Boil 2.5 litre of water. Add the smash ginger and spring onion. Bring to boil with lid cover
2. Add the chicken breast and turn the flame down to medium and close lid to boil.
3. After 30mins, the soup should taste of chicken stock, reduce flame and boil for another 45mins to hour at small flame. Once the soup taste naturally sweet, you are done.

Ingredients to make the porridge

- to serve 2 pax, 1 cup of jasmine white rice.
- minced pork, portion for 2
- 1 red carrot.
- abalone, portion for 2
- prawns (optional)
- 1 rinsed spring onion, chopped.
- some sliced ginger

Abalone minced pork cooking steps (after chicken stock is ready)

1. Rinse rice until water is clear. Add to cooking pot.

2. Add enough water to cover the rice by over 3 inch. (doesnt matter if its more since I will be throwing the excess away. However, it cannot be too little)

3. Cook the rice over medium flame and stir occasionally to prevent it sticking to the pot base.

4. Throw away any excess water when rice is almost ready and add chicken soup to cover rice into the rice pot. Continue to simmer.

4. Meanwhile in separate pot, stir fry sliced ginger and garlic with sesame oil till slightly brown. Add minced pork, chopped abalone sides, chopped carrots (and whatever ingredients you like to add to your soup porridge) and stir. (For those who like heavier flavor, u may add salt, soy sauce and pepper) Add a dash of sesame oil for fragrance.

5. When ingredients are cooked, add to the porridge simmering in chicken soup stock.

6. Only Add fresh prawns now to the mix if you like to have some.

7. When prawns are cook, remove form flame and scoop into bowl. If you prefer it to be more soupy, add more soup into the porridge.

You are done. You may add dash of pepper and fish sauce for taste if you like but its optional.

Steamed Bamboo Clams, garnished with fried garlic and chilli.

I saw some bamboo clams in the market today and decided to give it a go. It was yummy and fast to cook! Under 2 mins!

I havent cook any before because i never knew what they were called in Cantonese in Hong Kong. It was only because this lady was ordering some for her steamboat that piqued my interest as she was calling out a name I have never heard before. Then Viola! Saw those lovely fresh live clams!

I asked the fishmonger for cooking instructions and it's sooooo freaking easy and cheap.All it took was to steam them for 2-3 mins with ginger slices and they are done!

What I did was to fry some chopped garlics, deseeded chopped chilli in some coconut oil. When the clams were done after 2 mins, I scooped the fried ingredients and together with the oil, drizzle over the clams as in the photo. After which, for those who prefer some sauce to go with, mix 1/2 teaspoon of soysauce with some water and drizzle over the clams as well. Garnish with spring onion as well. Done!

Steamed bamboo clams

A yummy dish served under 5 mins!

Tip: The garlic gives it a nice roasty crunch and the chilli after frying is no longer spicy. However if you want to retain that spicy effect, fry the chilli separately and remove from frying oil before it loses the redness.

Honeyed Soya sauce with Apple Cider Vinegar Chicken Thighs

Took me 3 separate attempts to perfect this dish to the balanced flavor I like. This is a modified version from the Filippino's version since I like my meat to be more balanced with a tinge of sweetness.

Servings: 2 pax

Time to cook: 25-30 mins

Ingredients:

- 4 chicken thighs.
- 1/8 cup of Apple Cider Vinegar
- 1/8 cup of Mirin
- 1/4 cup of (Gluten free) Soya Sauce
- 5-6 tsp of honey on standby.
- 1/2 cup of water
- 3-4 sliced large cloves of garlic

Cooking Steps:

1. Mix water, soya sauce, mirin, sliced garlic and Apple Cider Vinegar into a sauce pot. Bring to boil.

2. (Optional): If you have a griller, turn up the griller to about 250 degree C on fan forced.

3. Add chicken thighs into the boiling sauce with skin side down. Lower the heat to medium or medium low to simmering heat. Cover lid for 10mins

4. Flip the chicken (only once) and leave to cook in simmering sauce for another 10mins. You dont have to cover the lid.

5. Remove chicken from the sauce pot and add 2-3tsp of honey to the sauce to sweeten. Bring sauce to boil and WATCH over the sauce, careful not to burn it.

6. When the sauce starts to thicken, taste. If it is sweet enough, turn off flame. If not, you can add another teaspoon of honey.

7. Meanwhile, coat lightly your chicken both sides with some honey and put it into the pre heated oven griller. This helps to "glue" the honey to caramelise it onto the chicken. If you dont have a griller, you can skip this step. Instead, if you do not have a griller, simply place the coated honey chicken back into the sauce pot (meat side down) and leave it for 5mins.

8. Grill the chicken for about 3-5mins on skin side. When you see the nice glaze on the skin (like in photo above), you know its ready.

9. Place meat on dish, pour sauce over the chicken and serve.

Tip 1: If you need to cook for more people, you just need to double the portion of sauce and chicken.

Tip 2: If you dont have mirin, it's fine, just change apple cider to 1/4 instead of 1/8.

Fudgy Brownies

Personally, I have not tried this myself but I sure have tried the final product who made it and it was good!

Ingredients

• ·      250g dark choc            (melted together & cooled slightly)
• ·       200g butter

• ·      2 tablespoon instant coffee       (dissolved & cooled)
• ·       1 tablespoon hot water

• ·       3 eggs
• ·       220g brown sugar (white sugar will also do)
• ·       125g plain flour
• ·       125g chopped walnuts (may omit and replace with 100g chopped choc instead)
• ·       200g chopped dark choc

Method

1. Line a 8x12 inch tin with non-stick baking paper or aluminium foil (for easy removal from tin).
2. Using a electric beater or hand whisk, beat coffee mixture, eggs & sugar until thick & fluffy.
3. Stir in melted choc mixture until well combined.
4.  Stir in plain flour, chopped nuts & chopped dark choc, all at one go. Stir until flour is just incorporated into mixture – DO NOT overstir or your brownies will be stiff instead of fudgy.
5. Pour into tin and bake for 35mins at 170°C, or until just firm. The center may still be slightly wobbly, but the edges should be slightly pulled away from the tin surface. 

Black Bottom Cupcakes

My friend is an avid baker. She makes the loveliest sweets and so I'm taking the liberty in sharing some of her recipe here.

Black Bottom Cupcakes

Cream Cheese Filling

v 12-oz cream cheese, room temperature

v 1/3 cup sugar

v Pinch of salt

v 2 medium egg whites, room temperature

v 2 tbsp sour cream, room temperature

v 1/3 cup miniature chocolate chips (not full size*)

Cake

v 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

v 1/2 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder

v 1 1/4 cups sugar

v 1/2 tsp salt

v 1 1/4 tsp baking soda

v 3/4 cup sour cream

v 1 1/3 cups water

v 1/2 cup butter, melted and slightly cooled

v 1 tsp vanilla extract

1.     Preheat oven to 180°C. Line two 12-cup muffin tins with paper liners.

2.     Cream cheese filling: In a medium bowl, beat together cream cheese, sugar and salt until smooth. Beat in egg whites and sour cream. Stir in chocolate chips and set aside.

3.     Cupcake batter: In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, salt, flour, cocoa powder and baking soda. Combine sour cream, water, butter and vanilla. Make a well in the center and slowly add in the liquid ingredients, stirring together until just combined and no streaks of flour remain.

4.     Divide cake batter evenly among 24 cupcake liners. Top each portion of batter with 1 rounded tablespoon cream cheese mixture (It is ok to have a little left over).

5.     Bake for about 40-50 minutes. A toothpick inserted into the side (cake only part) should come out with a few moist crumbs on it. Rotate pans halfway through baking if you are using two racks.

6.     Cool in pans for 5 minutes. Cream cheese filling should sink slightly in this time. Remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Makes 24 cupcakes.

*Full-sized chocolate chips will sink to the bottom of the cupcakes, while miniature chips will remain suspended in the cream cheese center.