Kiddo's Potato Patties

Made some potato patties for my girl - decided to give her a break from porridge :P

I forgot to take some photos of the proper shaped patties, only have some that I mashed up when I was reheating it for dinner!

Anyway, I'm posting it since 2 mummies "raved" about it (quite kind to complement my cooking) and requested for the recipe.

Princess' Patties

Ingredients

1 large potato - peeled and cubed into 1 inch bits

2 small shallots (or 1 small onion) - finely chopped

1 small heap of finely grated carrot (use the smallest holes) (about 2 to 3 tablespoon)

a handful of spinach or other green leafy veggies - washed, squeezed dry and finely chopped

1 tablespoon of meat - finely grounded or mince (I used pork)

1 egg

Method

1. Cover the cubed potatoes with water in a pan and add a pinch of salt. Boiled till cooked. Alternatively, cover the cubed potatoes with water in microwavable bowl, add a pinch of salt, and microwave on high for 8 minutes (or till cooked). Drain and mash. Set aside.

2. Heat non-stick frying pan, add 1 teaspoon of oil and shallots and turned to low heat. Cooked till translucent (not brown). Add meat. Season with a little salt/ light soy sauce and pepper - it should be slightly over salted. Add carrots and spinach and mix well. Fry till cooked.

3. Remove meat and veggies from pan, into the bowl containing the mash potatoes. Mix well. Add egg and stir to combine thoroughly.

4. Hear non-stick frying pan on low heat and use a little oil to oil the pan (use a piece of kitchen towel to mop the oil all over the pan). Add spoonfuls of the egg-potato-meat mixture and slowly cook. You need to flip it to cook it like a pancake. Try not to "burn" it on high heat - we should not be introducing carcinogens to them at such a young age!

Tips: You can add peas, brocolli, etc too. It's really up to you! If you are using fish, cook the fish and then flake it - there's not need to mince or chop it before cooking.

Hope your kiddos like it!

Moving on to Corn

Babies are not suppose to eat corn till they are 18 months, but I wanted to try it out, since the soup stock I prepare already include corn.

For today, I tried making a "stew" for her. I had the leftover corn cobs from the last time I made the soup stock (frozen), so I thought that I might as well give it a try.

I cut off the corn, threw them into my blender and add some water and blitz it. Wanted to sieve it too, but couldn't find my metal sieve, so I gave up since my puny plastic sieve would probably give way if I tried to extract the corn "juice" from the pulp.

To my 1 cup of soup stock with a piece of frozen carrot, I added

50g of mince pork (chicken if you prefer)

1 finely chopped potato (shred it if you prefer) (the powdery type)

the corn "juice"

I also added a tablespoon of rice to thicken it.

Verdict? She loves it! She was happily eating it with her own spoon too (she's trying to self feed now) so I'm quite happy that my efforts didn't go to waste.

Soup Stock Ingredients
Carrots
Corn
Chicken breasts

What I do with leftover Chicken breasts meat? Shred it, add lemon, pepper, finely chopped onions and japanese mayonnaise. Yummy sandwich spread!

Purple pancakes

This reminded me so much of my girl's first solids. Then I had bought organic purple sweet potato, and after all the mashing and straining, it looked like purple goo.

Today it was slightly better, I made blueberry pancakes and we both loved it. She had a pancake all by herself. The size of the pancake was probably 6 cm in diameter.

The following recipe would probably serve 4 adults, but if you are making it for non pancake lovers or non berries lover (like my hubby), you probably should halve the recipe. Leftover batter should be made into pancakes and frozen for later consumption.

Blueberry Pancakes

Ingredients
Group A
1 cup buttermilk*
1 pat of butter, about 50g or 3 tablespoon
2 tablespoon sugar
2 eggs

GroupB
2 cups self-raising flour

Group C
1 cup blueberries (I used frozen ones)

Method:
1. Add buttermilk, sugar and butter in a glass or enamel cookingware and heat gently till sugar and butter has melted. Leave it to cool. I cheat by pouring it into a bowl and leaving it in the freezer.

2. Once above is cooled, beat in eggs until combined.

3. Add flour and mix till combined. Add blueberries and mix well. Batter will be thick.

4. When making the pancakes, use the back of the ladle to smoothen out and thin the batter out on the pan. It will be quite difficult to cook thoroughly if the pancake is too thick.

Texture wise, it will be slightly chewy, but fluffy. Perfect for my girl to hold it in her hands to eat without it falling into bits and pieces!

* If you do not have buttermilk, you can use 1 cup full cream milk and 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice. Mix and stir before use. It will curdle slightly.**

** If using lemon juice, consider adding the lemon zest to the batter as well.

I actually can cook fish!

I had to cook fish for tomorrow's dinner (the guest doesn't eat any other meat) so I went to do some shopping, bought 2 fishes (exactly the same type - sea bream) and came back to experiment on one for dinner (it will be exactly the same fish cooked the same style tomorrow).

To my dismay, the preserved mustard greens I bought (going to do a teochew style steam fish) was SWEET - it wasn't even in the least bit sour. The preserved sour plum? All saltiness with no hint of sourness too. *sigh* The bottle of white vinegar came into good use. I scooped out the required amount of perserved mustard greens and then "marinated" in the vinegar. The fish "stabbed" me with its fin and it was so painful =( I trimmed off all the fins and what nots, slashed the fish 3 times diagonally, then rubbed some salt all over the fish. I then put some sliced ginger in the cavity and the areas which had been slashed. I pour the mustard green over the fish, add some water and some chinese mushroom. I had to use my biggest serving plate and the wok which had been retired for quite some time.

Thankfully the results came out quite yummy I must say. I actually ate 1/4 the fish, given that I don't really appreciate fish. I forgot about the tomatoes and I didn't think my sun dried tomatoes would make it, so luckily the vinegar made up for the sourness in taste.

Let's just hope tomorrow's fish will be a success too!

P/S: This would be officially the 3rd time I actually tried to steam fish since I got married - needless to say the first 2 times were dismal, so well, it's 3rd time lucky!

Upgrading my skills

I've decided to pursue my interest in baking a bit more, now that we are settling down as a family and I have a bit more time on my hands.

So I went through a cupcake decorating class - fun! It helped that I had company, CH, to attend the class together.

So I had been musing for a while, and I finally decided to plonk down $$ for 2 more decorating class! I signed myself up for a Wilton Cake Decorating Course Level 1 which cost me $270. It will start sometime next month I think. The other class I signed up for was a Valentine Cookies Bouquet thingy. Sounds fun and I hope I will have fun. Hopefully the reciepient of the cookies won't complain about it being ugly!

I plan to do a bit more cooking, rather than baking, since now my girl is on solids. I've already planned her menu and cooking processes I need to do up to make life a breeze. I may be working full-time, but it doesn't excuse me from not preparing food for my girl. It's not difficult, just a little more time spent cleaning up and getting ready the ingredients. But, it will be time well spent, don't you think so?

Prawns done thai style

Wanted to cook some prawns (saw the recipe in my cookbook) over the weekend so I did my due diligence in getting the prawns, the lemongrass, etc etc.



Then when I was preparing dinner, to my horror, my cookbook was missing. I still had no idea where it went so I shelved the idea for the day, chuck the prawns back into the fridge and did what I could with the rest of the dishes.



The next day, I literally hunt for the cookbook. Alas, it was not even at my facourite place for stashing cookbooks aka the loo. *sigh* So, I search the internet for a recipe, trying to look for something I had already in mind. In the end, I just mish mash the ideas I had from the internet and did my own thing (which probably isn't anything new). Amazingly, it turned pretty good!



Fako Thai Style Prawns



250g prawns (medium to large works best - less cleaning to do!)
- you have to shell (leaving the tails intact), butterfly* and devein them. Drain and leave aside.
* to butterfly a prawn, just turn it on its side, slice along the spine, open up and flatten it.


2 stalks of lemongrass
- peel off the outer layers until you can smell the aroma.
- cut the lemongrass into 2 sections, white and green.
- finely chop the white section - put aside in a small glass/ ceramic mixing bowl.
- cut the green sections into 2 inch lengths - put aside.


4 bunches of coriander leaves
- wash thoroughly, including the roots.
- slice the roots from the leaves. Chop the roots and 2 bunches of leaves finely. Add to the mixing bowl.
- roughly chop the remaining 2 bunches and put aside.


4 chilli padis
- wash and chop finely. Add to mixing bowl.


1 cm knob of ginger
- peel and chop finely. Add to mixing bowl.

Add approximately 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to the mixing bowl. Mix well.

Divide the paste into portions as required - depending on how many prawns you get for 250g!


Take a portion and spread it along the cut spine. Do not use bare hands as the chilli in the paste will make your hands smart! Repeat until all the prawns have been "stuffed". Place in a glass or ceramic bowl/ plate.



There will be some liquid left in the mixing bowl. Add 1 tablespoon of water to the bowl and then drizzle over the prawns.


Let the prawns marinate in the fridge for at least 1 hour before cooking it.


To cook:
1. Heat 3 tablespoon of oil and add the green sections of the lemongrass.
2. Fry till fragrant and add the prawns. The paste will fall out of the prawn's spine, but it's ok.
3. Fry till the prawns is almost cooked and then add in the remaining coriander leaves.



I personally will fry till some of the paste turn golden in the pan before I off the fire, but it's your own preference!

Sorry, no pics of the done prawns - the ones that you see above are in my fridge now! The ones I did over the weekend are already out of my system :P I'll see if I remember to take some pics tomm!

Butter Cookies

I hadn't baked in the longest time, the last "adventure" being my annual Christmas cakes last December.

Before I returned to the daily grind of work, I decided I MUST bake something.

Usually, given that I had the urge to bake, I'll normally choose to bake a cake, since I find it a whole lot easier than cookies. However, since I was pouring over my 3 ingredient cookbook, I found this recipe which seem simple enough so lure me back to the cookie baking business.

The ingredients that were called for:
1 cup Butter (I used SCS salted butter)
2/3 cup lightly packed soft brown sugar (The recipe originally called for golden granulated sugar)
2 and 2/3 cup Plain Flour
Plus Demera Sugar to roll the cookie dough in (I added some edible red glitter too)

I also added 2 teaspoon vanilla essence and some red food colouring (I wanted pink cookies! but they turned out peachy colour :P)

The method? Oh so simple!

1. Heat the oven to 160 degree Celsius.
2. Cream butter and sugar together till fluffy. Add Vanilla essence and beat a little more.
3. Stir in flour and mix into a soft dough (non sticky!).
4. Tear a piece of baking paper and shape the dough into a long roll on it. You can have it round or square or rectangle.
5. On one side of the baking paper, sprinkle a thick layer of demera sugar.
6. Coat the dough with the sugar. Wrapped with the baking paper when done.
7. Put into the fridge to chill for at least 30 mins (I put mine overnight).
8. Unwrap the dough and cut into slices. Place on baking sheet (I put a layer of baking paper on top) at least an inch apart. The cookie will still expand somewhat.
9. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or till golden brown (depends on how big your cookies are).
10. Tadah! Lovely with coffee, tea or just on its own!

Enjoy!

Recipe for Sugi Cookies (Chinese style)

We finally verified the amount of ingredients for the cookies and figured out some issues, so enjoy the cookies!

Sugi Cookies

Ingredients A
600g plain flour
200g icing sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoon baking soda (You can add 1 teaspoon instead if you dislike the taste of baking soda)
1 teaspoon baking powder

Ingredients B
3/4 rice bowls/ 250ml Corn Oil

Ingredients C
1 egg yolk plus 1 egg lightly beaten with 4 drops of egg yellow food colouring

Method
1. Sift ingredients A together 3 times (VERY IMPORTANT).

2. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture, pour oil into the center. Mix well into a crumbly dough. Let the dough rest in the mixing bowl for 30 minutes to 1 hour, covered with a wet towel.

3. Divide and roll into balls. Poke the center with the sharper end of a chopstick. Brush with egg wash. Baked at 150°C for 30 minutes (Preheat Oven for at least 20 minutes before baking).

If the cookies taste floury, it means the cookie is under cooked.

Optional:
Add 200g almonds – toasted/ dry fry in a work till fragrant and coarsely grounded the almonds when cooled. Add a bit more oil if dough is too dry. Additional sugar is not required.