Chicken Cutlet with Black Pepper Sauce 黑胡椒鸡扒

I just received my Happy Call Jumbo Grilled Pan recently to replace my current grill pan which has lost it non-stick surface.

I love to have grill lines on my food but I was a bit disappointed that my grilled chicken just couldn't get the grill lines as the grill lines on the pan are too shallow. Other than that, the pan works perfectly, with minimum oil splatter as I can cover the pan while grilling the chicken.

You see this commonly served in restaurant. It is a very easy and you can make it yourself at home. You can either use instant black pepper sauce or like me, make it yourself so you can adjust the the sauce to your liking.

I make this rather often as it's one of my and my husband favourite. You will be surprise how easy it is. :)

Ingredients:

• 2 Chicken Thigh, deboned
• 4-5 New Potatoes or 1 regular Potato

Marinade:

• 1/2 tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
• 1/3 tablespoon Sake or Chinese Cooking Wine
• 1/3 teaspoon Garlic Powder or 2 clove Garlic, grated

Black Pepper Sauce:

• 1/2 tablespoon Oyster Sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
• 1 tablespoon Ground Black Pepper
• 1 teaspoon Sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon Cornflour
• 50ml Water

How to do it:

1. Marinate chicken thigh in marinade for an hour.
2. Drain and grilled on lightly greased pan, skin side down on medium low heat for 15mins.
3. Turn chicken thighs over and grill for another 10mins or till chicken thighs are completely cooked.
4. Meanwhile, boil a pot of salted water to cook the potatoes till tender.
5. Remove potato skin, cut into small pieces if necessary, and set aside.
6. When chicken is done, dish and set aside.
7. Slightly pan grill the potatoes on the same pan you grill the chicken.
8. Set aside with the chicken thighs.
9. To prepare the black pepper sauce, mix all ingredients together in a sauce pan.
10. Constantly stir it while bring it to a simmer over low heat till it thickens.
11. Do not cook over heat it over high heat or boil it otherwise it will be very starchy.
12. Adjust the sauce to your liking.
13. Drizzle over the chicken thighs.

Note:
You can add the dripping (all the brown bits minus the oil) together with the sauce ingredients and cook it together.

{ Bread Cup } 面包杯

I used to make bread cups by pressing the bread into the muffin tray. The bread cup is then used to fill with ingredients you like.

The disadvantage of the 'simpler' way is that there will be 'bread crease' and where there are creases, the bread will be thicker. What you need is have a few cuts on the bread and it will solve the problem.

Basically, you will need just a baking cup or muffin tray. To make things easier, I use an additional tool, a circle cookie cutter (actually, it my kids' play dough cutter. I 'stole' it from them :P). I used it to leave an impression on the bread, for 2 purposes. First, as a guide on where I should cut the bread and second to make it easier to press the bread into the baking cup. The impression on the bread makes it easier to fold and fit into the baking cup.


Please take note that the circle cutter have to be smaller than the inside of the baking cup, in order for it to work. The bigger the circle cutter is, the wider the bread cup will be.

Once the bread is fitted into the baking cup, toast it for 5 to 8 mins at 180C and the bread cup is really to be filled with your favourite fillings! If you are not re-toasting the bread cup after adding the fillings, You might want to toast it longer to get it slightly more brown. It's your preference. 

I did two different bread cups with two different fillings here. The Egg Bread Cup is filled with chopped hard-boiled egg, topped with cheese and baked for 7mins. The bread cup has the corners trimmed-off. You can add mayonnaise to the chopped egg to turn it into egg mayo. My daughter doesn't want mayo. She wanted it to be toasted with cheese as the topping. Fussy kids, I have. :P

The Tuna Bread Cup has tuna in it (obviously). My son requested for it to be toasted, again, which resulted with the edges being more brown. I originally thought of just filling it with tuna without re-toasting. Hence, I had the bread cup toasted longer. But alas...  Another point for you to take note for. :) Oh! The corners for the Tuna Bread Cup were left as it was, just to let you have another option.

Please refer to the slide show below for the steps on how I did the bread cup to get a better picture. Click on the photo to expand it for a clearer view.

Little Lunch Box #13 小饭盒

Another very adult lunch box for my daughter's lunch in school today.

She wanted pot stickers for dinner last night but I forgotten about it :p, so I told her I'll make it for her for lunch today.

As usual, she has to have a veg and egg in her lunch box. I prepared blanched broccoli and egg with chopped crabstick and broccoli.

Cheesy Chicken Sticks酥脆芝士鸡柳

I'm doing a quick post here, a remake of my older recipe, with very little changes. I was trying to finish a pack of self-raising flour and I used it here instead of the normal plain flour. It works really well too.

I'm re-posting the recipe here for easy reference. This is one of my meat-hating kids' favourite. 

Ingredients:

• 1 skinless chicken breast meat, sliced into strips
• 1/2 tablespoon Light Soy Sauce 
• 1/2 teaspoon Garlic Power (optional)

Coating:

• 1 portion Breadcrumbs or Panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
• 1 portion Shredded Parmesan Cheese
• 1 Egg, beaten
• 5 tablespoon Self Raising Flour or Plain Flour

How to do it:

1. Cut the chicken meat into strips
2. Marinate with light soy sauce and garlic poweder for 30 minutes.
3. Dust the chicken with flour.
4. Dip the chicken in the beaten egg.
5. Coat well with Panko mixed with Parmesan Cheese.
6. Deep fry till golden brown.
7. Dish and drain away excess oil.
8. Serve with or without your desire sauce.

Note:

• I used equal portions of panko and cheese here. You have choose to have more of cheese or more of panko if you like.
• You can sprinkle on some chilli powder or paprika after frying too.

 

Little Lunch Box #12 小饭盒

My daughter has enrichment class in school today and will have to take her lunch in school. I made her some simple sandwiches as per her request.

The chick is egg sandwich, with layers of egg crepes in-between and an extra egg crepe on top. The bushes has kaya as the filling. The chick's beak, eye and feet are from the bread 'skin'.

Home-made Chocolate Ice Cream自制巧克力雪糕

Last week, I made and shared my Home-made Mango Ice Cream and it created a Mango Ice Cream making fever in my Facebook community. I have friends in Facebook who have made, Oreo Cookies, Strawberry, Peach, Coconut Flavours too. Raisins and Rum are also in consideration!

However, none of those are my daughter's favourite. She only likes Chocolate flavour. So I made a small tub of Chocolate Ice Cream just for her.

This recipe is slightly different from the Home-made Mango Ice Cream. It will required some cooking but it's worth the trouble. The quality of chocolate ice cream depends very much on the chocolate chips used. I'm using the chocolate shown below. It is slightly bitter and the result was the ice-cream tasting very chocolatey and very similar to the store-bought Sticky-Chewy Chocolate Ice-cream. :)

My daughter love it and since this portion makes only about 4-5 scoops, noone else is sharing this with her. (my son had the whole tub of Mango Iceream to himself too)

Ingredients:

• 200ml Whipping Cream
• 100ml Fresh Milk
• 55g Cooking Chocolate Chips
• 1 tablespoon Sugar or to taste

How to do it.

1. Prepare a pot of water and let it simmer.
2. Place whipping cream and fresh milk in a smaller pot.
3. Put the smaller pot over the simmering water and warm the cream and milk.
4. Add the chocolate chips into the warm milk and melt it, while still hold it over the simmering water.
5. Keep stirring till all chocolate chips are melted and blended in with the milk.
6. Add sugar to taste and melt it.
7. It will now look like thick chocolate milk.
8. Pour the chocolate milk to your freezing ware.
9. Cool it before freezing.

Note:

• This portion yields 4-5 scoops of ice-cream.
• I used double-boiling method to method the chocolate with the milk to avoid burning the chocolate.
• I removed the ice-cream to stir with a fork twice only and let it before letting it set.
• You can mix some chocolate rice when it's partially cool (to avoid melting them) too.
• I use the baking paper to cover the ice cream to prevent any water droplet from getting to the ice cream, which will cause the ice-cream surface to crystallize.

Sweet Bovril Winglets 保卫尔烤鸡翼

I did this on the spur of the moment as my late night supper. I love Bovril and Marmite but prefer Bovril. I have been having it since I was a little girl.

During those days, Bovril was in Beef Flavour. Then it was discontinued and came the vegetarian version. When the Beef Flavour was back again, it never make its way to Singapore. I was super lucky that a very good friend of mine was holidaying in London and she brought back 4 bottles of Bovril Beef for me. I'm so blessed. :)

For this simple recipe, you can use the vegetarian Bovril because you won't be able to get the Beef version in Singapore. The winglets will have a subtle taste of Bovril. You'll enjoy it if you like Bovril.

Ingredients:

• 8 Chicken Winglets

Marinade:

• 1 tablespoon Borvil
• 1 teaspoon Maltose or Honey
• 1/2 teaspoon Brown Sugar

How to do it:

1. Mix marinade together well.
2. Add winglets to the marinade and marinate for 2 hours.
3. Drain winglets from marinate and place on a baking tray. Retain marinade.
4. Bring reserved marinade to a boil and set aside to use for basting. Add a bit more sugar if you want the sauce sweeter.
5. Grill in preheated oven at 220C for 25 mins, basting it in-between.
6. Remove when done and serve.

Crispy Enoki Mushroom 酥脆金针菇

This is one of our family's favourite snack. You can't stop till it's all gone. My kids hate Enoki Mushroom but they can never reject these fried ones.

Usually, I'll make these for dinner if I ran out of ideas what to cook.

Ingredients:

• 2 packet Enoki Mushroom, ends chopped off
• Oil for Deep Frying

Batter:

• 4 tablespoon Self Raising Flour
• 2 tablespoon Rice Flour
• 4 tablespoon Water
• a pinch salt

Seasonings (Optional)

• 1 teaspoon Chicken Powder
• a dash of Pepper

How to do it:

1. Mix batter well and set aside.
2. Separate enoki mushroom into small batches.
3. Heat oil hot but not smoking.
4. Dip enoki mushroom into batter.
5. Drip off excess batter and deep fry in batches to prevent them from sticking together.
6. Remove when they are lightly golden brown (mine is a bit too brown).
7. Drain on paper towel.
8. While waiting for the enoki mushroom to be drain off the excess oil, dry fry the chicken powder and pepper together on low heat till fragrant.
9. Serve with crispy enoki mushroom with sprinkle of seasonings, if you like.

Tangy Hoisin Winglets 酸味海鲜酱烤鸡翼

I had marinated the winglets with Hosin Sauce the night before, intending to use cook it the next day but changed my mind.

I tweaked my recipe a little and oven grilled them for supper instead. Then were slightly burned but that doesn't affect the taste. It was really good. My husband didn't even reject me when I offered to let him have more. :P

If you like something tangy, you would love this. :)

Ingredients:

• 12 Chicken Mid-joint
• 4 tablespoon Hoisin Sauce
• 2 tablespoon Maltose
• 1 1/2 teaspoon Garlic Powder
• Juice of 1/2 - 1 Lemon
• Additional 1 Calamansi to be squeezed over grilled winglets (optional)

How to do it:

1. Marinate chicken mid joint with Hoisin Sauce the night before or for at least 4 hours.
2. Combine maltose, garlic powder and lemon juice together.
3. Add in to the marinated chicken and continue to marinate for half an hour.
4. Drain winglets but retain the marinade.
5. Heat marinade in a pan and bring it to a gentle simmer. 
6. Cook till it is thicken. Use this as the basting sauce.
7. Meanwhile, grill winglets in a preheated oven at 220C for 25 minutes, basting it with the thickened marinade every 5 to 6 minutes.
8. Serve with juice of a calamansi if you like.

Home Made Mango Ice Cream 自制芒果雪糕

I had an old recipe that I posted sometime back on my home-made ice-cream which required more steps and more ingredients.

This time I tested it with just using whipping cream (cos I happened to have one) and it works well too! You will be surprised to know how easy and simple it can be. :)

Mangoes are somehow in season now (didn't remember they were in season during this part of the year) and are always on offer. I can't resist it and bought 5 there other day and kept two for this recipe.  You can use other fruits instead but Mango is always a favourite. You just can't go wrong with Mango.

I'm sharing this recipe first as I have a high number of requests for it after I post it in my Facebook. If you are waiting for my other outstanding recipes, I will post them as soon as I have time to do it.

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this recipe. Do check out my recipe for Home-made Chocolate Ice-cream too.

Ingredients:

• 2 ripe Mangoes
• 200ml Whipping Cream
• 5 tablespoon Icing Sugar or to taste

How to do:

1. Stone and skin mangoes.
2. Puree 350g of the mangoes (about 1 1/2 mangoes) and dice the rest.
3. Mix or blend the mango puree with sugar and whipping cream.
4. Add some diced mangoes too if you like to the blended mixture (I did though you can't see it from the photo). It's really nice to be able to bite into bits of mango when you eat the ice cream.
5. Pour the mixture into a container.
6. Place a piece of baking paper on it and freeze till frozen.

Note:

• Add sugar according to your taste, taking note that after adding the whipping cream, the mango mixture will be less sweet.
• If you remove every hour to stir with a fork and repeat for 5 to 6 times or till it set. It will helps keep it more creamy and less crystallize-like.
• I use the baking paper to prevent any water droplet from getting to the ice cream, which will cause the ice-cream surface to crystallize.

Cabbage with Mung Bean Noodles 高丽菜炒冬粉

This is one of my favorite childhood dish. I don't cook this often because my husband hates the dried shrimps. It just won't taste right without it. I'm glad I found someone else to enjoy this dish with, my son. Well, he eats mostly the Mung Bean Noodles though.

I'm using the Happy Call Pan to cook this but you can use your regular pan to do it too.

Ingredients:

• 1 small head Cabbage (round type)
• 1 small handful Dried Shrimp, soaked to soften
• 40g Mung Bean Noodles, soaked to soften
• 100ml Chicken Stock
• 3 clove Garlic, minced

How to do it:

1. Cut cabbage into strips and set side.
2. Heat pan with a tablespoon of olive oil.
3. Add garlic and dried shrimps.
4. Saute till fragrant.
5. Add in the cabbage.
6. Cover the pan and cook for 8 minutes on medium high fire.
7. Open the pan and add in the mung been noodles.
8. Give it a stir before adding the chicken stock.
9. Cover the pan and cook for another 4 mins.

Season with salt and serve.

Cheesy Meatball 香煎芝士肉饼

This is one of the dishes that I made often because it's a kid's favourite.

For this particular one one, I tweaked an old recipe of mine which was done by deep frying it. This time I use the Happy Call Pan to do it. It's so much juicer and the kids love it as much.

Ingredients:

• 100g Minced Pork or Chicken
• 100g Fish Paste
• 3 slice Chesse, cut into 9 pcs each
• a dash of Pepper
• 1 tablespoon Olive Oil for frying

How to do it:

1. Mix pork and fish paste together.
2. Scoop about 2 - 3 tablespoons of paste onto your (clean) oiled palm.
3. Place 4 pieces of cheese stacked together in the middle.
4. Fold in the paste so that it covers the cheese stack.
5. Shape it with your palms before frying it.  
6. Meanwhile, spread oil on the pan and heat it on medium low heat.
7. Place all the meatballs in the pan.
8. Close the pan and cook it for 4 minutes.
9. Open the pan and turn it over to cook for another 3 minutes till it turn lightly brown.
10. Dish and sprinkle on some Parmesan Cheese if you like.

Note:
I do not season the meat paste and fish paste is usually seasoned and the cheese in it will give it the extra saltiness.

Little Lunch Box #11 小饭盒

My daughter requested for Kaya Bread today. She said her friends are all having bread for recess and she wants bread too. o_O I prepared the bread, as per her request.

Little Lunch Box #10 小饭盒

I prepared something hot for my daughter for her recess today. I packed the food in a Thermal Food Jar to keep it warm.

She is having Chicken Porridge sprinkled with White Bait Powder, Egg (of course) and Green Peas & Crabstick with lots of garlic. She LOVES garlic.

If you are wondering how I did the egg, you can follow THIS post.

Little Lunch Box #09 小饭盒

We bought some donuts last night and I packed 2 for my son to bring to school today. He's having Chocolate Donut coated to Chocolate Rice Krispies.

Little Lunch Box #08小饭盒

This is what I prepared for my daughter for recess today. The same stuff but presented in a different way. I'm using the Happy Call Pan to make this but a regular pan works too.

 I have added a pinch of salt and a sprinkle of light soy sauce to 2 beaten eggs. I also have chopped Xiao Bai Cai and 2 crabsticks added to the eggs. I had wanted to use ham instead of crabstick since I'm using it with the rice. Didn't realised that someone has finished.  :P

I used 2 crabsticks to roll with regular rice, not sushi rice and set that aside. I cooked the omelette till it's about 90% cooked. The omelette is dry at the bottom but still a bit wet on the top. I rolled the omelette with the rice roll in it as tightly as possible.

To make the omelette roll fully cooked, I covered the pan and let it cook for about 5 minutes, opening occasionally to turn it so it get browned on all 4 sides.

After slicing, the omelette roll, I pan fried it in the same pan only on 1 side for 20 seconds so it doesn't  break so easily.

I have a made a video on this to let you have an idea what I have been babbling about. :P

In the video, I used only 1 egg without any other ingredients and 1 crabstick rice roll. If you use 2 eggs, it will spread to cover the whole Happy Call Pan. Hope the video will give you a better understanding on how my Omelette Roll is done.