Stir-fried Chilli Clams 辣椒炒蚬

** Hi all, will post the recipe later. Have been quite busy lately. Cheers!

Watercress soup with bitter almond and honey dates

Ingredients: Pork ribs, watercress, bitter almond, honey dates and red dates.

Jamie Oliver's Pizza Dough

DH and i fell in love with home made pizza because we have control over the type of ingredients, the amount of cheese and the dough. I used a different pizza dough for this, the recipe is by Jamie Oliver. The pizza is fantastic, the texture is totally different from the previous one. It taste the best while hot, the crust is crispy but it's soft inside.

.

Jamie Oliver Pizza Dough

.
Ingredients
1kg strong white bread flour or Tipo '00' flour
or 800g strong white bread flour or Tipo '00' flour, plus 200g finely ground semolina flour
1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
2 x 7g sachets of dried yeast
1 tablespoon golden caster sugar
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
650ml lukewarm water

.
Method

1. Sieve the flour/s and salt on to a clean work surface and make a well in the middle. In a jug, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork, bring the flour in gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid. Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, and when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour-dusted hands. Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough.
2. Place the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl and flour the top of it. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size.
3. Now remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands - this is called knocking back the dough. You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in cling film, in the fridge (or freezer) until required. If using straight away, divide the dough up into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas - this amount of dough is enough to make about six to eight medium pizzas.
4. Timing-wise, it's a good idea to roll the pizzas out about 15 to 20 minutes before you want to cook them. Don't roll them out and leave them hanging around for a few hours, though - if you are working in advance like this it's better to leave your dough, covered with cling film, in the fridge. However, if you want to get them rolled out so there's one less thing to do when your guests are round, simply roll the dough out into rough circles, about 0.5cm thick, and place them on slightly larger pieces of olive-oil-rubbed and flour-dusted tinfoil. You can then stack the pizzas, cover them with cling film, and pop them into the fridge.

.

Source: Recipe taken from Jamie At Home by Jamie Oliver©

.

** I used 1/4 of the recipe, yields 2 medium size pizza

.

Orange Capsicum

I was attracted by this beautiful orange colour capsicum in the supermarket the other day. Actually i only wanted to get 2 capsicum for my pizza but ended up with 4, because of the colours and my photo taking.

Sushi at home

Everytime when we buy sushi home, DH will complaint not enough. Because DH is a very big eater, he can eat the share of 2-3 person. So if we were to buy take-away sushi, it will takes alot of sushi to satisfy him. So inorder to satisfy his huge appetite, i decided to cook part of the meal.

.

What do i mean by that? Well, that means we will just buy some sashimi and the egg roll and prepare the rest of ourselves. Items we can prepare at home, such as the Chicken Karaage (i used the frozen ones), steam rice and seaweed. With some seasoning like the japanese soy sauce and mayonnaise, you can wrap your own Chicken Karaage handroll, egg handroll and of course the sashimi handroll in any sizes you want.

.

This is our perfect weekend, with nice food, nice wine or beer and a good DVD at the comfort of home. Nothing beats this!
.

Where to get frozen Chicken Karaage

For the japanese ones, you can get from Kuriya Fish Market (I got mine from Great World City branch).

Otherwise, you can also get from Cold Storage or NTUC.

.

Cake hunt continues : AllanBakes Cheesecake

In search of nice cakes and bakes, this time is cheesecake. As it was not a planned cake hunt and it was a Sunday and i was at the west, would like to try Lana's Chocolate cake, but they are closed on Sunday. So the only choice i have got is AllanBakes at The Village Centre. It's located at Pasir Panjang area. No problem with parking, but it's super expensive. We just stop by to get some cakes, and ok i also stop by The Fish Market to get some japanese seasoning, but all in all was only 25 minutes and we were being charged for $2.89. More expensive than parking at Takashimaya! (But we did not check the parking rates, not sure was it per entry charge on Sunday that's why so expensive. Do let me know if you know.)

.

AllanBakes is located at level 2, a small little shop, whereby you are greeted by the aroma of the bakes and surprisingly the baker, Allan, himself. The smell was so wonderfully that it makes you want to buy everything. However, i heard that they are famous for cheesecake, so i didn't want to waste my calories for the others. Perhaps it was quite late, so the only cheesecakes left in slices were Strawberry, Blueberry and Apple flavour. I chose Strawberry and Apple because i don't really fancy blueberries.

.

The cheesecakes are not cheap given the location and packaging. It was $4.80 per slice for the Strawberry and $5.00 for the Apple one. The packaging is those normal plastic boxes you see from Bangawan Solo.

.

Their signature cake is the Strawberry Cheesecake. I would say i was quite disappointed. But the cheesecake was really very ordinary, Newyork cheesecake with strawberry topping. The base was the normal shortcake base and perhaps i only eat it on the next day, it was soggy and oily. As for the cheesecake itself, it was really normal and in fact i find it too sweet. 3/5

.

As for the Apple cheesecake, the texture is very different from the Strawberry cheesecake. It was like a mousse cheesecake, because the cheesecake kind of "melts" after being left in room temperature for a while. Taste like apple pie, due to the combination of Apple and cinnamon. It is light in texture, flavour wise, not bad but again, too sweet for my liking. 3/5

.

AllanBakes

3 South Buona Vista

#02-13 The Village Centre

Singapore 118136

.

Contact number

6774 7100

.

Opening Hours

Mon to Sat: 10.00 am to 8.00 pm

Sun, Eve & Public Holidays: 10.00 am to 6.00 pm

Jas Pork Bowl

After the delicious Korean "BBQ" that i had the other day, i marinated another batch of sliced pork wanted to create the same again. But after i got home from the cake hunt, i was too tired and lazy to prepare the BBQ (because it was time consuming to cook them in batches). So instead of that, i wanted to cook something quick and simple. DH likes the japanese beef bowl, Gyudon, so i was inspired by that dish and created this pork bowl.

.

Jas Pork Bowl

.

Ingredients

- 400g Pork Shoulder, sliced

- 1 whole brown onion, sliced

- 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

.

Marinate

- 3 tbs Korean BBQ sauce

- 1 tbs light soy sauce

- 1 tbs mirin

- 1 tbs brown sugar

- 1 tsp corn starch
.

Method

1) Marinate the pork for at least 2 hours.

2) In a wok/frying pan, brown garlic until fragrant, add in the pork and fry on high heat. Do not stir too often but let them lightly brown on each side.

3) Add in the sliced onions, stir and cook till onion soften. Dish up and serve.

.

Simple Korean BBQ

This is a quick and easy to prepare Korean "BBQ" at home.

Just marinate sliced pork shoulder meat (those with abit of fats - about 400g for 2 person) with korean BBQ sauce (3 tbs) for 2 hours or longer. Pan fry using claypot to give the additional flavour. (Fry in a few batches, so as to create the "BBQ" effect, because if you were to fry all together, you may not get the "burnt" effect). After the pork is done, using the same claypot, with the left over juice to fry any vegetable of your choice, capsicum or enokitake.

Enjoy

Using lettuce of your choice to wrap with rice, pork, capsicum, raw garlic and korean fermented bean paste sauce. Taste almost like eating Korean BBQ in a restuarant!