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.

What those Fish names in Japanese Kanji characters means in English

Came across this in supermarket today at the sushi shelves. Thought of testing myself...couldnt identify all of them but the common ones are easy enough.

Handy to know what u are eating or ask for, while looking at a Japanese menu or at the sushi bar.

鰈 かれい Right eye flounder
鰻 うなぎ Eel
鮑 あわび abalone
鰆 さわら jap Spanish mackerel
鮭 サケ Salmon
鯛 タイ Snapper
鰯 イワシ sardine
鰹 カツオ Bonito
鯒 flathead
鱒 マス Trout
鱈 タラ Cod
鮒 フナ Carp
鮃 ヒラメ flatfish
鰤 ブリ Yellowtail
鯖 サバ mackerel

The rest...completely no idea....Now, to find out how they are pronounced in Cantonese in Hong Kong...

Japanese style Teriyaki Salmon Fillet

Over the year, I have really nailed down cooking salmon to perfection, where the fish is just pink on the inside and still tender. No kidding! I never thought it would happen..but I have arrived. The Queen of Salmon:)

There are various ways to cook my salmon. Commonly I would do the Teriyaki version. During summer with abundance of fresh sweet fruits, I would accompany it with fresh fruit salad of Mango-lychee with fresh greens drizzled in Japanese Sesame with Yuzu ponzu sauce. The  sweetness of the fruit was to balance the citrus ponzu sauce.

The trick to cooking salmon is really catching the exact moment where it starts cooking on the inside. Once you missed it, it is a road of no return with a slap of harden fish.

While the teriyaki sauce version normally wont do this, however I would rub my salmon fillet with garlic salt or seasalt as well. (Otherwise pink salt is fine as well) Otherwise, i tend to find the teriyaki sauce alone is too sweet. .

I didnt have time to take more pictures being in a hurry to serve dinner, but the cooking steps are as below.

Time to Cook: 15mins
Marinate time: 2 hours min.

Ingredients

- Fresh salmon fillets skin on (of about equal thickness if you are cooking more than one)
- Dash of Garlic salt or other salt for all the fillets

- Black pepper grated

- 3tbsp of Mirin. Currently am using mizikan mirin. Frankly this is not my fav mirin but the organic version I was used to is no longer carried in Hong Kong supermart...sigh.

- dash of oil

- 3 tbsp of good quality Sake (Japanese rice wine). Usually I would use "Junmai-shu" (純米酒), which is pure rice wine with no addition of distilled alcohol.  

- 1tbsp of sugar
- 3 tbsp of Japanese bottled  bonito soup base.
- 1 tbsp of corn flour or potato flour (this is used only to coat the skin to make it crispy)

I am still tasting out the various Japanese Bonito Soup base sold in Hong Kong supwemart.

Currently I am using "Hirokoshi Soup Base" that includes kelp and bonito flavor. However we had a recent Japanese food fair and as I was chatting with the Oji san at the fair, he introduced me to the bottle on the left which is fast becoming popular in Japan. I tried it and I like it.

Cooking Steps:

1. Rinse salmon and pat dry. Rub some garlic salt onto the fillet. leave to stand for 10mins.
2. Add Mirin, Soup base, sake, and sugar into a saucepan. I would add 1 tbsp of water. Stir to blend well. 
3. Heat up the saucepan over medium low heat. As soon as the teriyaki sauce bubbles and thickens, remove it from heat and allow the sauce to cool. 
4. Next is to marinate the salmon with some of the Teriyaki Sauce (the fish is fully coated) in a sealed zipped locked bag for at least 2 hours. Unlike pork or other meat, it doesnt really need to be marinated overnight from personal experience. The absorb the flavors really quickly and plus, if you have a a good of fish, you dont really want to ruin the original sweetness of salmon.
5. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degree Cel..
6. Remove the salmon from fridge and rub a little oil on the skin.
7. Using a siever, lightly sprinkle a thin layer the corn flour over the skin. This step is to prevent the skin from burning on contact with hot pan and to add that extra crisp. (Learned this from chef TV program)
8. Heat up a non-stick pan over medium heat. Add a dash of oil and slide the fish skin side down and pan-sear the marinated salmon until the skin is nicely brown, about 2 minutes. Flip the salmon all round to the sides and top to give it a nice brown searing for the next few mins on each sides.
9. Transfer the salmon to a oven tray prelined with baking paper. Brush the remaining Teriyaki Sauce on the seared salmon. I would grate some black pepper over the top. Bake for 10 minutes. (Generally this is the right time for any standard fillet)

Tip: For novice cook, in order to be sure you wont be serving semi raw salmon, you may like to stick a butter knife down the middle (where the vertical line is) about slightly under 1 inch to check the inside. It should be a very nice mild pink shade. You might still see there is a gradual change in colour from the outer cook side to the inside which is slightly a tinge of rose pink. That means your fish is ready. Your fish will continue to cook on the inside while you are plating.

Generally you can also tell by pressing lightly on the top of salmon on the thickest part and if the fillet feels very bouncy and wobbly within, its still raw. A cook salmon should not be overly bouncy and a overcook salmon will be firm and wont bounced. Keep trying each time you will soon get the sense and wont even need to cut the fish to check the inside. However, 10mins is normally the right time to cook salmon to a pink moist inside.