I’ve always wanted to make biscuits – American-style, not jammie dodgers English-styled. American biscuits are more like scones, eaten with a main meal instead of dinner rolls. As per my previous post, I’m totally in love with the butter-drenched naughty Cheddar Bay biscuits from Red Lobster. So copy-cat baking it is then!

I googled like crazy for a good copycat recipe – to my dismay most of the recipes require the use of Bisquick, which is also not sold here in the UK. AAARGH. I eventually found one that seemed passable, and decided to use that recipe. I should have really used my brains instead of just following the recipe blindly – the biscuits, although delicious, are EXTREMELY salty. This is probably due to the 1tbs salt that the recipe called for, plus salted butter & cheese. However, the texture seemed to be very close to Red Lobsters’, so I’m going to share the recipe anyway – omitting the salt and replacing the butter for unsalted butter. You could also add some parsley flakes into the dough, and temper the garlic powder according to how garlicky you’d like it to be.

Copycat cheddar biscuits

2 cups/250g all-purpose flour (unbleached or regular)
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
75g unsalted butter, cold, cut into chunks
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
150g grated cheddar cheese
120-160ml milk

For brushing on top:

3 Tbsp. butter
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. dried parsley flakes

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and garlic powder.

Add the cubed butter to the dry mixture; I used my fingers and rubbed the butter into the flour

Add oil and grated cheddar cheese.

Slowly add milk, little by little until the whole mixture holds together. Add milk until the dough is moistened and you can no longer see any raw flour.

Drop approximately 1/4 cup portions of the dough onto an un-greased cookie sheet or a Silpat using an ice cream scoop or large spoon.

Bake for 15-17 minutes in a preheated oven at 400F/200C

While biscuits are baking, melt 3 tablespoons butter is a small bowl with 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder and the parsley.

Brush the garlic-parsley-butter combination on top of the biscuits immediately after they are done – the more you add, the more utterly butterly it is! Yums…. Best served warm

.

I love it because it’s buttery, cheesy and light – if it wasn’t so darned salty due to the crazy 1 tbs salt the recipe called for, it would’ve been perfect!

---
You might also be interested in these :

• Awesome America: Red Lobster
• autumn roast 3
• Sundays in Leeds
• Recreating Sydney’s Monuments
• Black bottom cupcakes

Still feeling unwell, therefore today’s lunch was just a haphazard arrangement of frozen rice and some of my frozen bento stash that I accumulated over the weekend…I could show you, but you’d probably cry at the state of it . So I thought today would be a perfect time to catch up on my recipe post.

.

Soboro can be made out of meat or fish – and is very similar to furikake (rice ball seasoning, usually dry to almost a chilli flakes texture) . The major difference is that whilst furikake lasts fairly long, a soboro made out of meat or fish(usually salmon?) is of course bound to go off sooner, and thus does not keep as long. The less moisture it has, the longer it lasts. My version of the tuna soboro came to be when I decided to have a bit of tuna with my instant noodles one night. What do I do with the rest of the tin?? The cat usually gets it, or it goes in a sandwich the day after. Seeing that I had kinda sworn off sandwiches, I thought I should turn it into some sort of stuffing for my onigiris or as an okazu (side dishes to go with rice).

.
Inggredients

» 1 can tuna, drained
» 1 tbs mirin (I actually used proper sake)
» 2 tbs rice vineger
» 1 tsp sugar
» toasted sesame seeds – to taste
» soy sauce – to taste; I used about 1tsp
.

First stir-fry the tuna on a wide non-stick pan rapidly, with no oil. Add mirin and rice vineger. Continue stirring rapidly, adding sugar and toasted sesame seeds. I love sesame seeds, so I put in quite alot for me but less for the hubs. When it looks fairly dry and floss-like (like chinese meat floss), stir in soy sauce and continue stirring so it doesn’t burn but still soaks up the goodness of the seasonings. This would be the time to mix in shredded nori if you’re using it – I didn’t this time as I was making it for both of us, but will be when I try this recipe out again next time.

The whole process would take about 10-20 minutes. Just remmeber to keep stirring to keep the tuna from burning. You can keep this in the fridge in an airtight container for a good week or two, using a few tablespoons when your food need a little Oomph!

Some of the bentos that I have used the sorboro on:

chirashi sushi style

.

Stuffed in onigiris

---
You might also be interested in these :

• A corn a day keeps the toilet bowl at bay
• yummzz
• preparing for Glastonbury
• project fatbastard rewind
• The cat who were nearly human…

We’re usually away for Christmas, so it was refreshing this year that we decided to stay home. This meant that the cat have the pleasure of our company (hehe), I was able to have an actual Christmas dinner on Christmas day, and got actual presents to open up! I got some speakers, a new sewing machine and other assorted knick knacks – Your Shape Wii game for one, chocolates, books ect ect…yay!

.

Not to mention the magnificent snowfall! My first White Christmas – but thinking about it..I have not actually spent that many Christmases in countries that actually snow, so one in five is not too bad! Yep, I made the above on Christmas morning…

.

And bacon made this, which is supposed to be a snow-cat

Unlike alot of people, I do not tend to get stressed out with making Christmas dinner. In fact, I quite enjoy it. It’s really not that difficult as well….and I do love making Christmas dinner with all the trimmings..

.

My beautifully golden brown turkey. Yumm. My secret recipe is to brine it, let it swim in salt water for 24hours ; it makes the turkey wonderfully moist and flavourful. And NEVER follow the cooking time on the packaging. I cooked this for less than 2 hours (4.2kg bird), whilst the packaging reccomended about a 3 hour + cooking time. Of course, ALWAYS check the thickest part of the bird is not bloody before taking it out of the oven. To be honest, my bird could’ve done with only 1 hr & 30 mins, as I let it brown (without the bacon) for about 30 mins at 220deg before wrapping bacon all over the turkey for the remaining time at 180 deg. This browns up the turkey beautifully, whilst the bacon wrapping keeps it wonderfully moist. Lovely.

.

I also made my fave festive red cabbage; with port, red wine vineger, cranberries, orange juice & rind, onions, cinnamon, nutmeg & star anise.

.

And of course, the lovely trimmings – roast potatoes & parsnips, stuffing balls, pigs in blankets, sprouts with chipped bacon and assorted roast vegetables. I do love the trimmings.

.

My piece de resistance – traditional American candied yam. This is the first time ever that I’m making it, but it is a very traditional American dish not to be missed with Thanksgiving & Christmas dinners. Fairly unknown outside of the US, this came from the 3 Thanksgiving that I spent in California. I have not had a full American Thanksgiving dinner for so long….and sorely missed the candied yams. Slightly misleading name – this is not a candy nor is it made out of what the rest of the world call yam. It is sweet potato, cooked in a lovely sauce of butter, maple syrup, spices and orange juice, it is then topped with marshmallows (yes, MARSHMALLOWS!) and baked till the marshmallows starts to toast – about 15 mins.

Serve immediately – the marshmallow crust looks deceptively hard, but its all soft and gooey inside, perfect mixed in with the sauce. I added some crushed walnuts to my sauce, and it tastes absolutely magnificent. Delicious. I like. Suprisingly enough, so did bacon – he had been apprehensive ever since I bought the sweet potato (sweet potato with my Christmas dinner??!! Never!!) . He was won over by this wonderful dish, the marshmallows just melting perfectly into the sauce. Bliss. Definately something that I will be repeating, with bacon’s seal of approval.

The whole spread – with homemade giblet gravy…. yummz.

.

Until next year!!

---
You might also be interested in these :

• So how did you do?
• Winter look 2009
• changes to your favourite blog
• Winter wonderland my @$$
• its Christmas!

Tonight saw me conjuring up a childhood favourite – my mom’s blend of not-so-secret delicious curry. I have only attempted this a handful of times, but tonight’s go probably turned out the best from the lot. With the outlaws saddled with a bumper crop of chillies (more than 1kg!) being way too caliente for them to handle, I was given the gift of spice. Mmm…this played a huge part in me conjuring up the curry – chillies here are ridiculliously expensive at about £0.70 for about three or four. Whenever I make this curry I tended to be very conservative with the expensive chillies = don’t taste the same. Tonight was different, I could add as many chillies as I like to my hearts’ content and have leftovers (about 1 kg!). So off I went shopping for the other ingredients, including a very large chicken (about 2.5 kg).

I twit-piced my chicken bubbling away on the stove, and @them_apples asked for a recipe, so here it is! A word of warning; if your chillies are anything like the outlaws’ crop, be very, very careful how many you put in and do not follow my suggestion! Basically, if you’re more of a korma person, this recipe’s probably not for you, or you could use 1-2 chillies instead of 15.

To blend:
6 shallots (large ones), diced
3 medium red onions, diced
10-15 very red chillies , de-seeded and de-plithed
1 stalk lemongrass, thinly sliced & leave off the hard bark-like bits

Be very CAREFUL de-seeding and de-plithing the chillies…use disposable gloves if you have any. I make sure I wash my hands at least 3 times throughly before I touch any other parts of my skin. Once the above is all blended to a very thick paste in a food processor (add a little oil or water if it’s too thick to blend), taste to make sure that it’s not too hot. Add more shallots if it’s too hot – alternatively, add chillies slowly towards the end, making sure that the heat is bearable before adding another one.

Incorporate the below once you’re happy with your chilli/onion level.

To add:
1 tbs tumeric powder, or 1in knob fresh
1 tsp salt – or to taste
I tbs curry powder

Incorporate the above ingredients until well mixed….I just pop this into the blender with the paste above. Make sure that there are no chunks of tumeric powder and everything is well-incorporated. Heat up your wok, with about 1-2 tbs vegetable oil. Do not use olive oil as it burns way too easily. Once the oil is heated , tip the blended mixture in. Over low to medium heat, slowly heat it up…your kitchen will start to smell wonderful with the fresh ingredients releasing their aromatic oils as it reacts with the heat. Your paste is now ready.

You will see now that this recipe makes quite a large portion of paste. Depending on how big your chicken is/how spicy you like it/if you’re adding potatoes/coconut cream, you may want to scoop some out to keep for another serving – it keeps at least a few days in the fridge. I must say, I have kept the fresh paste in the fridge in a tightly sealed container for a few weeks and it was still fine. Yeah, if it’s too spicy you can add coconut cream at the end to temper the heat down. This would also be a good time to conjure some rice up to soak up all the yummy curry later.

It is now time to tip your chicken in. I chop mine into about 8 -9 pieces, and took the skin off as well. Turn the chicken pieces around until well-coated with the paste – you may want to keep the wok going on a low heat so the paste does not burn. Once the chicken’s well coated, thin it out slightly with some water, about 150ml. Now leave it bubbling away uncovered for about 20mins if you’re cooking pieces of chicken on-bone, less if you’re cooking chicken fillets/breast cubes. After 20mins of cooking uncovered, the water should have reduced to reveal a thick-ish sauce. I would restir and recoat the chicken right about now, and leave it covered on low heat for a further 20 minutes. At this time, I also added about 4 tomatoes - because I had some growing on the vine – you don’t have to if you don’t have any, the juices from the tomatoes sweetens the curry slightly.

And voila. I was starving, so not much of a picture.Top it off with some coriander would be my preferred way of serving, but as usual, I didn’t have any on hand…hehe. It is also delicious cooked with potatoes (add diced potatoes in immediately after adding the chicken) and/or coconut cream added towards the end of the cooking time to make it silky smooth and temper the heat of the chillies slightly.

If only I cook like this every work night…..

---
You might also be interested in these :

• Hansa’s
• someone call me an ambulance!
• Grilled Stingray
• Project karipap
• different, but is it really?

They are so damn good. Its like cheesesticks with ham and mushrooms, and absolutely rocks! Could do with full-fat milk instead of the skinny milk that I had..definately not one for the faint-hearted dieter. Bet it’ll taste lovely as well with some dried herbs sprinkled into it, will try that next time. These muffins are great as I can bring them to work in my lunchbasket…not something that I can do with frosted cupcakes! I don’t believe that the recipes in the book really works – very impressed!

Cons? Instead of the 12 muffins that this was supposed to make, yield was 30. Probably in a large part due to me using normal cupcake cases instead of a large muffin case. Now I just gotta eat it all for my lunch..

---
You might also be interested in these :

• Christmas 2009
• Flaming MSG
• Recreating Sydney’s Monuments
• Theakstons Brewery
• Sesame

I am the queen of failed baking. I have had so many shit batches of cupcakes that have gone straight to the bin it’s outrageous. Of course, most of my recipes are off the internet, off recipes of people who usually ‘think’ they can bake, and publish their recipes. When I was still feeling flush last week, I decided it’s time for me to splurge out on a proper recipe book on baking. After weeks of flipping through piles of recipe books, including a two-hour trip to Borders, I decided on the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. Seeing that London is not really on my doorsteps, this is the next best thing to having access to the actual bakery.

I’ve been looking forward all week to try out one of the beautiful recipe from my lovely book…and decided on the black bottom cupcakes. Made of a duper chocolatey base of devil food’s cake, this dark, decadent base is topped with a light and fluffly topping of cheesecake mixture.

Don’t you just love the contrast? It looks so dramatic! I decided to holding off the frosting this time around, waiting to see how it taste like without frosting first. It was such a perfect mix of sweetness that I decided to just leave the frosting out.

The cheesecake top goes beautifully with the dark chocolate base, don’t you think?

---
You might also be interested in these :

• cyb mon
• Bad blogger
• domesticated weekends
• flickr
• Packaging

Yes, its’ bacon’s birthday TODAY!!! I have therefore stole his recipe and make him something yummy. What he wants for his birthday is TO BE LEFT ALONE. Seriously, that’s not very nice for me and really, slightly insulting. So he’s spending the day watching SKY sports news…after bringing me to the debenhams sales, of course.

Inggredients:

3.5 ounces self raising flour
0.5 ounce cocoa powder
3 ounces butter
1 ounce oil
1 clementine, or other citrus fruit.
3 ounces caster sugar
2 free-range large eggs
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp natural vanilla essence
125g milk chocolate

Slightly melt butter, and cream with sugar & oil. This needs to be beaten until the bright yellow color turns slightly pastel

Beat in eggs until fluffly, airy and light.

Add in sieved flour, baking soda & cocoa powder

Continue beating until fully mixed in

Meanwhile, heat oven at 180 c for 10 minutes

The cake mixture should be very thick now. Add in vanilla essence, zest from the clementine and juice from the clementine.

Continue beating untill light.

Chop chocolate (I use Cadbury’s dairy milk) into tiny chunks…I chop mine into four pieces per tablet. Fold it into cake mixture slowly

Scoop into individual cup cakes cups; bake for 12 minutes.

Poke a metal skewer in – if it doesn’t stick, it is cooked!

Icing:

1 clementine, juice & zest
icing sugar

Pour in about 100g of icing sugar
Mix in zest
Slowly mix in orange juice.
Texture needs to very very thick, bacon always says that icing sugar needs to be thicker than you think….otherwise it just won’t set properly!

I love it when I bite into it and get a suprise mouthful of the just-melting chocolate chunks. Mmmm mmm yumm.Thats what’s so special about this recipe…the lovely choc chunks. I love chocolate & orange, and 1 clementine has just enough juice to gently flavour the cake with orangey goodness. You can drop in some orange essence I guess….hmm, wonder if I can use orange essential oil? Is it essential oil even edible?

---
You might also be interested in these :

• Black bottom cupcakes
• Come fizzle with me
• The Sunshine Bakery
• The Hummingbird Bakery
• Happy Mother’s Day!!

Happy New Year! Unlike last year, I will be heading to work on the first day of the Ox year, ableit in a brand new red top. Heck, I wasn’t even really in the chinese new year mood until saturday morning, which I started decorating and food shopping with abandon.

I did, however, manage to make my fav chinese new year dish, partly thanks to Lisa’s recipe. I didn’t actually follow all of it, missed out coriander and cucumber….and the crunchy red, yellow and green ‘strands’ that comes with normal yee sang. The crunchy bits are fried grated yam, and I can’t seem to find any yam around, which was annoying. So no colorful bits, but I did subsitute that with extra crackers! And smoked salmon with jellyfish as well – hey, if I am going to make it, I’d rather have it all with my favourite stuff.

Extra crackers and a generous drizzing of plum sauce…yumss

---
You might also be interested in these :

• home sweet home

Pan-mee (or in Penang Hokkien: Mee Hoon Kueh (flour cake)) basically means flat-flour noodle. It is quite a favourite in Malaysia, especially for breakfast. Mine usually comes in a plastic bag – as I never wake up early enough! The noodles are freshly made from normal everyday flour – abit like making fresh pasta. I like mine to run through the pasta machine to flatten it, and then go through the fettucinnie setting for it to come out as fat, flat noodles. However, not owning a pasta machine, we just flattened it out with our palms and tore pieces of the flour-water mixture up.

I must admit, this is not something that I usually yearn for, as flavours are fairly mild, which is not my style. When KJean was here over new year’s eve, we were racking our minds of what to have for dinner (it was below freezing, so no going out!) – and somehow KJean said that she missed Pan mee and wished she could get it in London. Well, it was easy enough to whip up, seeing that I had all the inggredients at home. I liked it so much that I made it again the next week with beef mince that I was going to make into bolognese…and it’s nicer with beef!Gonna try it with turkey next, or maybe a mix of beef/pork.

Inggredients for mince
300g mince (chicken/pork/beef/turkey)
10 soaked dried shitaake mushrooms, sliced thinly
Oyster sauce
Sweet soy sauce ( Kicap manis)
Soy sauce, thick
splash of Shaoshing wine (chinese cooking wine)

Marinade everything for about 30 minutes. Pan fry inggredients until cooked, and set aside. I keep mine slightly saucy – this goes to flavour the soup. Tip: Save the water where the mushrooms were soaking in to include in the stock.

Inggredients for stock
A handful of dried anchovies – mine is washed and fried beforehand.
1.5l water
Salt
Spinach

Boil – the anchovies should impart enough of its flavor in about 15 minutes – you can actually smell the yumminess. I usually let it simmer on for about 30 minutes. Add the spinach before serving – traditionally mani vegetable is used. I have no idea what it is in english, but spinach is about the right texture and taste.

Inggredients for noodles
150g plain flour (with extras to dust/add)
one egg
some oil
water
salt

Knead all until it is hard/dry enough to be rolled out with a rolling pin. Be careful with adding too much water – I always add too much water and have to add more flour to make it more ‘viscose’. It should be non-sticky, and easy to roll out using a rolling pin without it sticking. Set aside – you can run this through the pasta machine or just roll it out with a rolling pin when you are ready to eat. If you’re rolling it out, just tear pieces of it and drop it into either a separate pan of boiling water until cooked or do it the lazy way – straight into the stock.

Assembly
Once the noodles are cooked, scoop it all out into bowls – this recipe is enough for 2-3 servings depending on portion size. Place a couple of spoonfuls of the cooked mince on top of the noodles. Add a few scoopfuls of stock, top with a dash of white pepper, and you’re ready to go! Serve with a side of chopped fresh red chillies in soy sauce.

I cheated and and used lettuce instead – hehe. Notice mine has loads of mushrooms – it imparts a lovely flavour, but bacon hates it, so I get to have all of it! I think there is a version where the noodles are only mixed with the cooked mince topping, and the soup is served separately.

---
You might also be interested in these :

• No related posts

Elderflower grows wild in the UK. They flower in early summer, turning into berries later in the summer. Elderflower berries and flowers are regularly used to make cordial (like ribena but with flowers) and also wine. However, I found a recipe for deep fried elderflower, like pakoras or bhajis! I have never had fried flowers of any sort before and was suitably intruiged. I saw the recipe it last year, but bacon was more than reluctant to let me try it, as he had never heard of anyone eating elderflower before. This year I managed to persuade him to be slightly more adventerous, and this morning we went to the woods behind his dad’s place to pick some, as he used to climb them when he was young.

So, we came back with a good lot of elderflowers, and being me, I soaked the flowers without reading the recipe first which calls for no soaking as it removes the lovely floral aroma that it emates. We had a couple of friends over earlier in the afternoon who had never tried elderflower before as well, so I got cooking.

Batter seemed to be fairly ordinary with with the usual flour and milk. Instead of salt, the recipe calls for sugar. Hmm. It also calls for a squeeze of lemon and honey to top it off. Ours is not exactly a deepfrying household as I always end up getting oil splatter all over myself, but I don’t think I did too bad today – everything was cooked, nothing was burnt and I remained splatter free!

Presenting deep friend battered elderflowers:

You cant see the blooms anymore as they were all coated with thick batter. Compare it to the before picture.It was very strange, but in an extremely pleasant way. It smells like perfume, and tasted just slightly sweet with the honey on top being a nice touch as I had blossom honey as well which added slightly to the lovely aroma from the elderflowers.

Would I have it again? Hell yeah, its free food after all; elderflower is very widely available near where we live; and the taste is so pleasant that I would have it again even if I had to buy it from the supermarket, which by the way, they don’t sell.

Thanks to Liz at Gastronomy Domine for such a lovely recipe!

---
You might also be interested in these :

• Sherlock’s