Lemon Wings

This is the 6th and last of my round 2 on experiments for wings.

I tweaked my recipe for Tangy Wings, to add a little sweetness to this version.  It is similar to the Thai Tangy Wings, except without the spiciness and the sweetness of honey.

The sweetness here is from the sugar and there's a light aroma of the lemon. This is one of my favourites and there's no stopping at one for me.

Ingredients:

• 12 Mid-joint Wings
• Juice of 1 Lemon
• Zest of 1 Lemon
• 4 tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
• 2 tablespoon Sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon Garlic Powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon Onion Powder

How to do it:

1. Combine all ingredients together.
2. Marinate overnight.
3. Roast the wings in a preheat oven at 200C for 20 to 25 minutes.
4. Turn the wings in between roasting.
5. Serve immediately

Note:
A friend was telling me how she hated cleaning the rack after roasting and I shared with her on how I was using baking paper to 'roast' all these chicken wing I have shared. I kena 'scolded' for not sharing it earlier. :p So, if you happened to have Glad Bake (non-stick Baking and Cooking Paper), try this.

Place a piece of Glad Bake paper on your baking tray or foil. Roast the wings on the paper as per normal. When you are turning the wings, tilt the tray so the juice, if any will run to the side. The idea is to roast the wings dry and not on the juice. No greasing is required and the paper will not stick to the wings. At the end of the process just discard the foil and the baking paper. No racks to wash and the wings looked perfect too.

I'm not sure if this will work for other baking paper though, so try at your own risk. :P

Please not that I'm not doing a advertorial for Glad Baking Paper. It was the first baking paper I used since I first started baking because I was attracted to its "no need to grease" on the packaging. I was able to bake cookies using the same piece of baking paper over 5 times and I suspect it would be longer. And it works will with other oven cooking too. So you see the reason I'm 'sticking' to it?

Assam Prawns 亚参虾

Last week, my sister posted some sort of a riddle for her friend on Facebook and the answer to that riddle was my father's Chilled Cockles! That made me missed my parents' cooking.  My parents don't cook that much. Most of which, according to them were the results of "just anyhow cook", and that became a difficulty to replica their recipes. Try as I might, I seldom come close to the original. Not even my father's simple Chilled Cockles. :(

One of the dishes my mother did that I loved so much was Assam Sotong (squid). She used small baby sotong, which is hard to come by now, and it was with lots of onion and sauce (to go with the rice). Yum!

I'm adapting my mother's recipe for Assam Sotong to make Assam Prawn instead. Not exactly the same as mother's Assam Sotong but I'm sure she will be glad it was her Assam Sotong that gave results to this dish.

Ingredient:

• 400g Prawns, shelled and deveined
• 3 tablespoon Assam (Tamarind) Pulp
• 5 tablespoon Water
• 1 Fresh Red Chili, seeds removed and chopped finely
• 1 teaspoon Light Soy Sauce
• 2 teaspoon Brown Sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon Fish Sauce
• 1 teaspoon Corn Flour
• a dash of Pepper
• a pinch of Salt 
• 4 tablespoon Oil

How to do it:

1. Mix assam pulp with water. Squeeze the pulp to extract the juice.
2. Sieve the assam mixture for the juice only, discard the pulp.
3. Mix the prawns with the assam juice and the rest of the ingredients except oil.
4. Marinate for no longer than 15 minutes otherwise the prawns will turn marshy.
5. Heat oil in wok and in the prawns.
6. Pan fry till all prawns cooked. 
7. Dish and serve.

Note:
Leave the shells and heads on if you like. It will help absorb more sauce. We are lazy and didn't want to get our fingers dirty peeling the shells. :P

Tangy Thai Wings

This is the second flavour of round 2 of my wings experiments, which happened to be my favourite of the three.

Inspired by the sweet Thai Chili sauce, which is one of the few chili sauce I can handle, this goes very well with the tangy lime juice I have added to the wings.

This is great if you want a Asian flavoured wings but not the usual sweet based one for bbq.

Ingredients:

• 12 Mid-joint Wings
• 50ml Lime Juice
• 2 tablespoon Thai Chili Sauce with Garlic
• 2 tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
• 1 teaspoon grated Fresh Ginger
• 1/2 tablespoon Chopped Garlic
• 2 teaspoon Honey

How to do it:

1. Combine all ingredients together.
2. Marinate overnight.
3. Roast the wings in a preheat oven at 200C for 20 to 25 minutes.
4. Turn the wings in between roasting.
5. Serve immediately with extra lime juice if desire.

Peppers Cheese Omelette with Avocado Salad

I had this for one of my late dinner. After cooking for the kids and again for my husband, I didn't really have appetite to eat, especially looking at the amount of washing I have to do.

Needless to say, I became hunger a few hours later. :P

Ingredients for Avocado Salad:

• 1/2 Avocado, sliced
• 5 Cherry Tomato, halve
• Juice of 1/2 lime
• Same chopped Spring Onion
• 1 teaspoon Japanese Mayonnaise
• a dash of pepper

How to do it:

1. Mix and toss all ingredients just before serving.

Ingredients for Omelette:

• 2 Eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon Cornflour
• a dash of pepper (optional)
• 1/2 small Red Pepper
• 1-2 slices Cheese
• Oil for frying

How to do it:

1. Blister the red pepper by cooking the skin side over fire till all charred.
2. Place the red pepper into a plastic bag.
3. Close it with air inside (like a balloon) and shake it hard to make the charred skin come off.
4. Remove and rinse it with water.
5. Julienne the red pepper and set aside
6. Add corn flour to the eggs and mix well.
7. Season the eggs with pepper if you like.
8. Heat pan with oil.
9. Pour the beaten eggs over the pan.
10. Swirl the pan to spread the egg
11. When the egg is 80% cooked, add the red pepper and cheese on 1 side of the egg.
12. Cover the egg with the other side to seal the egg.
13. Flip over to cook on the other side for half a minute.
14. Dish and serve with avocado salad.

Note:
Do not add salt as the cheese as salty enough.

Sweet Hoisin Wings

I bought a bottle of Hoisin sauce recently at a recommendation of a friend. I had only used 1 tablespoon of it so far and didn't know what to do with it. :P

I decided to use it for one of my wings experiments, again. :) 3 different tastes, sweet, spicy and tangy. This one here uses the Hoisin sauce and it the sweet one. It turn out rather nice. My hubby likes this. I would recommend it for BBQ.

Watch out of the other 2, Spicy Wings and Tangy Wings, coming soon. :)

Ingredients:

• 12 Mid-joint Wings
• 4 tablespoons Hoisin Sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon minced Garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon Pepper
• 1 teaspoon Honey
• 1/3 teaspoon grated fresh Ginger
• Juice of 1/2 Orange

How to do it:

1. Combine all ingredients together.
2. Marinate overnight.
3. Roast the wings in a preheat oven at 200C for 20 to 25 minutes.
4. Turn the wings in between roasting.
5. Serve immediately.

Garlic Fried Rice

I had to re-do my blog again as I was informed that it was 'out of sort'. It seems that the side widgets are all over the place. It was fine viewing from my computer. Hopefully, it's proper now and do let me know if you find it taking an unreasonable time to load. Thanks!

This is my son's current 'favourite dinner'. He as been asking me to cook fried rice almost everyday last week. This is the base of the fried rice and I'll add other ingredients, like sausages, beans, carrots, corn, peas, etc to it. This meant, he had different fried rice everyday; in a way. ;)

Ingredients:

• 1 bowl of cooked rice
• 4 tablespoon Oil
• 4 clove Garlic, coarsely chopped
• 1 Egg

Seasoning

• 1/4 tablespoon Oyster Sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon Fish Sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon Sugar
• a pinch of salt
• A dash of pepper and ground black pepper

How to do it:

1. Add oil and garlic in wok.
2. Fry garlic while oil is heating. This prevent the garlic getting burn to fast and the oil will more fragrant.
3. Drain garlic once it's lightly golden and set aside.
4. Using the same oil for frying the garlic, add in the rice.
5. Stir in the seasoning.
6. Toss and fry well till the rice is well combined with the seasoning and heated.
7. Break the egg on the rice and quickly stir fry to mix the rice and egg well.
8. Continue frying till egg is cooked and rice is dry.
9. Add in the fry garlic and toss to combine.
10. Dish and serve.

Note:

• What you see here is freshly cooked rice. I don't use overnight rice because we prefer rice that's softer. You can use overnight rice if you prefer.
• If you want to add meat or veggies, stir-fry them after frying the garlic. Dish out and set aside. Add into your rice after step 8.

* Garlic Fried with Sakura Ebi*

Herbal Black Pepper Prawns 黑胡椒当归虾

My original plan with to cook the prawns with black pepper sauce. I had some left-over Dang Gui 当归 powder and thought I would experiment combining both the black pepper with Dang Gui 当归. :P

It rather nice except, next time I'll leave out the curry leaves (you see in the photo) as it overpowered the Dang Gui.

Ingredients:

• 400g Prawns, shelled and deviened
• 1 medium Onion, cut into chunks
• 4 tablespoon Oil for frying
• 1 tablespoon Oil for stir-frying

Marinade:

• 1 teaspoon Dang Gui 当归 (Angelica Sinensis)Powder
• 1 teaspoon Ground Black Pepper
• 1 tablespoon Corn Flour
• 1 teaspoon Sesame Seed Oil
• a pinch of Salt

Sauce:

• 1 tablespoon Oyster Sauce
• 1 tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
• 1 teaspoon Chinese Cooking Oil
• 1 teaspoon Sugar
• 4 tablespoon Water
• 1/2 tablespoon Ground Black Pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon Corn Flour

How to do it:

1. Coat prawns with marinade.
2. Marinate for 30 minutes.
3. Heat oil in wok and fry the marinated prawns till 80% cooked.
4. Remove and drain.
5. Heat a clean wok with 1 tablespoon oil.
6. Add onion and stir-fry till slightly softened.
7. Add in sauce mixture and pre-cooked prawns.
8. Stir-fry and toss quickly to coat prawns well with sauce and till the prawns are thoroughly cooked.
9. Dish and serve.

Note:
I'm not sure if you can get powdered Dang Gui 当归 but you can always grind sliced Dang Gui 当归 on your own at home.

Chocolate Viennese Cookies

I found my old notebook when I was packing my storeroom. One of the stuff that was scribbled in it was a recipe on Chocolate Viennese Fingers. It was really simple to make. No wonder I had it scribbled down. :P

The original recipe required a fluted tip to pipe the mixture into 'fingers' and it also asked for the cookies to be dipped in melted chocolate.

I did some changes to the recipe as I only have a flower tip and I didn't want to dip the cookies into chocolate as I find it difficult and messy to store. I also added corn flour into the mixture to make to more crunchy.

I'm sharing my recipe adapted from the original one, after trying out a couple of times with a few adjustments.

Loved the results as it was crunchy and sort of melt in your mouth. I would have added more sugar (I got sweet tooth :P ) but the kids and my husband said it was just nice.

Ingredients:

• 250g Butter, softened 
• 100g Icing/Powdered Sugar
• 230g Top Flour or just All-purpose Flour 
• 180g Corn Flour 
• 2 tablespoon Cocoa Powder
• Chocolate Bits (instead of dipping in melted chocolate)

How to do it:

1. Beat butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
2. Sift all other dry ingredients together in a bowl.
3. Mix well with the butter mixture.
4. Spoon mixture into a piping bag with a star/flower tip.
5. Pipe onto greased baking sheets.
6. Add chocolate bits to the center of the piped mixture, if desired.
7. Bake in preheated oven at 180C for 11 minutes or till firm.
8. Cool on rack before dipping in melted chocolate, if desired.

Roasted Lemon Herb Wings

I have something to air, before I share my recipe. So bear with me for a just a little while.

I have something to said to those who don't like what they see here; again. If you think my blog suck for whatever reasons, you don't have visit again. Just click on the 'X' on the top right corner of your computer screen. It will save you from your agony. Please don't waste time sending me a 'comment', especially if you are going to sign off nameless. Once again, I stress that I blog for my own pleasure, not for you or anyone. I am happy with the amount of love this blog received. I'll do fine without yours. Go love someone else's perfect blog instead. Thank you very much.

I'm done. ;)  Thank you for bearing with me. :)  I got 'spat at' twice since last week. Nothing new to me and certainly not the worst compared to the hate mail I received sometime back. I got a feeling it's not going to be the last one.  Some people just have too much time on hand and are so kind to have to offer their two cents worth. ;P

Hopefully, that didn't affect what I'm going to share, which is last of my 3 experiments on wings, for the moment. The last 2 were a hit with my family. :) I'll be making those again very soon. :)

For this, it's a a result of tweaking this and this together. I always love chicken with a tangy taste. It opens up the appetite. Hmmm ... maybe it's not such a good ideas. :P

Ingredients:

• 8 Mid-joint wings or Drumlets
• Juice of 3/4 Lemon, save the 1/4 wedge of lemon
• 4 clove Garlic, pressed and chopped
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
• 2 tablespoon Chopped Rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 2 teaspoon Ground Black Pepper

How to do it:

1. Marinate wings with lemon juice, garlic and Worcestershire sauce overnight.
2. Remove wings from marinade and pat dry.
3. Brush wing with olive oil.
4. Combine rosemary, salt and black pepper together.
5. Sprinkle the herb combination on the wings.
6. Roast on greased foil at 200C for 30 minutes.
7. Serve immediately with the remaining lemon wedge.

Seasoned (leftover) Fries 辣蒜粉调味薯条

My daughter and I had fast food after her Chinese Enrichment Class yesterday. I ordered a little too much and the fries were left almost untouched. Maybe, it was bland and soggy? :P

I didn't want to waste it and brought it home. I sprinkled on some spice and bake it. It turned out slightly crispy on the outside and they tasted so much better. My husband finished them and told me, we I should always do this with fries next time. O.o

What I added to the fries were Paprika, Garlic Powder, Parmesan Cheese, Dried Parsley and Salt (optional). Toss them to mix well before baking it at 180C for around 10 minutes, depending on the leftover fries. Mine was soggy, hence I baked it longer.

Next time, when you want to toss away the pack of bland or soggy fries, try savaging it by doing this instead. :)