Recipe: Chicken Tartlets

Yeah, this one’s an overdue recipe of the damn yummy chicken tartlets I’ve had ages and ages ago. One of it being was that the white sauce recipe was a kill to make and so I needed to substitute something that’s equally creamy but less time-consuming to boil and stir.

Here goes nothing...

Ingredients:
(The filling)
3 Potatoes
One packet of Ramly mince chicken (defrosted to room temperature)
Finely chopped onions and garlic
Some canned mushrooms (all chopped)
One can of Campbell mushroom soup
Frozen mixed veggies (defrosted)
(Spices)
One dried basil leaf
Some dried rosemary

Instant frozen pastry roll (defrosted to room temperature)
Some foil pie cups for the tarts (I got mine at Tesco hypermarkets)

Serves: A lot

1. Firstly, to the potatoes! Peel all 3 of them and cut them into tiny square chucks, each no bigger than the nail of your little finger.

2. Next, fry the chucks of potatoes into hot oil until they’re half cooked (more yellow golden than golden-brown).

3. Remove all the potatoes from the pan and then start frying the chopped onions and garlic until they’re soft and fragrant.

4. Add in all the mince chicken to the pan and fry the meat. When the chicken is half-cooked, add in about a cup of the mixed veggies and keep on frying. Once the meat and mixed veggies are well mixed-in and soft, add in the half-cooked potato chucks and the chopped canned mushrooms.

5. Reduce the pan to low heat. Open up your can of mushroom soup and dump the whole can into the pan. Add water to only about a third of the soup can and pour it into the mix. The filling should be soft and gooey. You can decide how thick you want the filling by adding water or letting it cook longer to dry the water.

6. For some fragrance and taste to the filling, add the dried basil leaf and scatter some dried rosemary. Mix everything well.

6. After the filling is cooked, leave it to cool in the pan and start on making the tartlet pastries. Use the foil cups to determine how big you want to cut circles in your pastry dough roll. Make sure the dough circles are larger than the foil cups.

7. Mix some egg white with a little bit of water. Use this mix to coat the foil pie cups so that the pastry won’t get stuck to the foil cups when you want to eat.

8. Arrange the pastry dough into the cups. You may have to pinch the pastry on its side walls to make it fit into the cups.

9. Pour in the filling into the cups, as much as you think the foil cups can handle.

10. Next, pull some long strips of pastry and place them cross-sectioned on the pies. Usually about 4 strips each. This is to prevent the pie from getting too dry during baking and keep the pie in one piece when you want to take it out of the foil pie cups.

11. Okay, now set your baking oven to about 190’C. Place the pies on an oven tray and bake them until the pastries are nice golden brown. Serve while still hot, but it’s also great as a picnic food.

Original Link: Invaded by Chicken Tartlets!

Recipe: Breakfast Pepper Mix

Haha, this one is especially for Raising Mercury requesting healthy recipes. My family isn’t really a super-duper health concerned family other than always keeping our sugar intake to absolute minimum (family history has occasional diabetes), like tea with no sugar.

Although this recipe frys the food, I still say it’s healthy because there’s a lot of ingredients; the balance of veggies, meat and carbo. Mak only makes these in a huge batch in the morning so she could eat it again by noon (unless big brother Arsenal drops by, then the Pepper Mix is gone before mid-morning).

I don’t have the step-by-step photos, mainly because I wasn’t around when Mak cook this (too lazy to get out of bed) but as all you need is a wok and a large pepper grinder, it’ll be cool.

Pepper Mix.

Ingredients:
Some whole grain bread slices, 4 at least.
Potatoes, thickly sliced.
Carrots, sliced.
Broccoli, chopped.
Japanese cucumber, sliced (optional).
Onions, chopped.
Canned button mushrooms, sliced OR soaked shiitake mushrooms, sliced (optional).
Hot dogs
At least 2 burger patties (optional).
Lots and lots of grinded pepper.
NO SALT!

1. First up, boil the hot dogs until it’s soft and meaty, then slice them. Fry the burger patties on a pan (I used Ramly brand) until they’re half-cooked, then add in the sliced hot dogs. Fry them together until they’re done (frying the hot dogs gives it a grilled taste).

2. If you don’t want to use meat, use mushrooms! Slice some canned button mushroom or some shiitake mushroom (after it’s been soaked long enough to turn soft) and fry them in cooking oil.

*Note: Mak usually use meat or mushrooms as an excuse to reduce adding salt, or not add salt at all. You can still use both meat and mushrooms but it’ll be very, very filling (Ayah complains it’s Mak’s fault that he’s fat).*

3. Remove the meats/mushrooms from the pan and put them in a serving bowl. If you’re cooking burger patties, cut them into smaller pieces. Now fry the potatoes until it’s cooked. Poke it with a fork to see how soft you want it to be.

4. Remove the potatoes and also add them into the serving bowl. Now fry the carrots slices and chopped broccoli until, yes, soft and juicy. Occasionally, Mak often adds sliced Japanese cucumber into the frying veggies for more vitamins.

5. Once veggies done, that too goes into the serving bowl. Now you can fry the onions. To add a bit of spicy-ness, chop a bit of fresh chilli and fry them with the onions.

Note: If you’re wondering why all this stuff had to be fried seperately, it’s because the potatoes cook longer than the onions and the veggies don’t fry well if the heat is too high. Frying everything at once also takes longer to cook.*

6. For the last bit, toast the whole grain bread slices and then cut them into squares. Mix in all the cooked ingredients by tossing them like salad with a healthy dose of pepper. It helps if you had pounded the peppercorns in a pestle and mortar first.

7. Add an easy spray of oil and best served hot. It still taste good after it cooled, which you can eat it as a snack throughout the day.

This recipe was made soon after BabyNabil got over his teething and wanted to bite into everything. We can’t let him eat our too-long-french fries or thick daging masak merah so the Breakfast Pepper Mix was a hit because of the bite-sized pieces.

However, there is this mysterious phenomenon, but maybe it’s only in my house. Take note though. If you cook this with the meats and left the food on the open table, the meats tend to disappear to a smaller amount from time to time.

Either cooking this creates a black hole in the serving bowl, or somebody kept popping food into his mouth with his fingers when no one is looking. Maybe I better ask big brother Arsenal as this happens most often when he’s home.

Recipe: Southern Chicken with Onions

Mak’s food fest continues. I think she’s trying to experiment a few recipes she took from Astro’s AFC channel, especially now that she knows 3 of her sisters takes food ideas from the TV too.

Of course, there are times when the meaning of family means being test-dummies for bizarre experiments (I’m still gagging on her beef quiche). But often, some recipes work well.

Here’s one of my favourites chicken recipes.

Ingredients:
A whole bird, cut into quarters
Some salt and pepper
A good amount of paprika and chilli powder
Some all-purpose flour
Some butter
1/2 cup of oil
Some hot water
A whole onion, sliced
Potatoes (only as much as you can eat)

1. Firstly is to marinate the chicken quarters. Mix in all the salt, pepper, paprika and chilli powder and rub all those spices on the meat until they’re covered completely. Leave that in the fridge for at least 6 hours.

Look, Ma! I’m marinating.

2. With the potatoes, peel off the skins and cut into chunks. Then dump the potatoes into a saucepan full of water and bring it to boil.

3. Take the marinated chicken out of the fridge and then coat them with a layer of flour. This will give it a nice, fried, golden brown colour.

4. Heat the oil in another pan until quite hot. Then fry the chicken quarters.


Don’t fry all of the chicken at once. Other wise the oil will cool and lose heat and it takes even longer to get cooked.

5. Keep cooking the chicken until it has a nice, fried, golden brown colour. If your chicken quarters are big and you’re not sure if they’re fully cooked, you can put them in the microwave heat. Use High and for about 2 minutes at least.

6. What’s left on the pan are the oil and spices residue. This will turn into gravy. Turn the heat low and add a bit of hot water (hot water prevents gravy from cooling) and stir. Add flour to make it thick, add water to make it thin. You can also add the rest of the marinating spices for more flavour.

7. When the gravy is consistently mixed, add in all the onions. Keep frying until the onions had turned soft.


Mm-mmm, looks like a witches’ brew...

8. Once done with the chicken and onion gravy, your potatoes should have done boiling and be soft enough for mashing. Take the potatoes off the heat and drain the water out.

9. Add butter, a bit of salt and some pepper to the potatoes. Mix and mash them (for extra smooth potatoes, add some sour cream).


Here’s some hard-knock smashing. You can use a wooden fork or the bottom end of a plastic cup but I got this special potato masher from Ikea.

10. And then you’re done! Serve the fried chicken, onion gravy and mashed potatoes with steamed vegetables of your choice (Mak always serve Western cooking with steamed broccoli, carrots and cabbage).

Personally, what I like great about this recipe is how the onion gravy can be eaten with the mashed potatoes, quite a different combination of taste.


EAT!!!

Recipe: Taco Bake with Corn Chips

This is a pretty easy recipe to make and doesn’t take an hour to cook; but there’s a whole lot of activity going on. You got to fry the meat, boil the pasta and then bake the casserole. But I tell ya it’s delicious! If you’re on a diet, stay away from this picture-filled message.

This is a warning; you’ll gain kilograms while you’re reading this.

Ingredients:
1 whole large onion, finely chopped
A few cloves of garlic, also chopped
Some paprika powder or chili powder (optional)
1 bottle of salsa
1 brick of cheddar cheese, shredded
Some Sunglo sour cream (I got mine at Giant hypermarket)
1 packet of Ramly brand frozen minced meat (400grams, beef or chicken)
1 packet of Old El Paso Taco Seasoning mix (found at Giant hypermarket or Cold Storage)
1 Kraft’s Deluxe Macaroni n’ Cheese dinner (bought at Cold Storage)
1 medium-sized bag of Chachos corn chips

*Note: make sure the frozen minced meat had defrosted into room temperature; otherwise you’ll get meat lumps when you fry ‘em.


Heat a pot of water until it boils. Then add the macaroni pasta as this one takes the longest to cook.


Fry those chopped onions and garlic until soft and fragrant, then add the minced meat.


When the meat is half cooked, add in the Old El Paso Taco Seasoning mix. Keep frying until the meat is cooked, then take it off the heat and let it cool in the wok.
*Note: You can also add a little bit of chili powder or paprika powder as well to make it spicier.


The pasta would have been cooked right about then. It should be white and soft but firm, not mushy because otherwise they’ll break to pieces after baking.
*Note: Now you should preheat your microwave oven to 180’Celcius to get ready for baking.


Drain the pasta and while still steaming, pour ‘em into a mixing bowl. Add all the Kraft’s cheese sauce and about a cup of the sour cream.


After mixing them well, add ONLY HALF (yes, just half) of the macaroni mix into a casserole dish. Then add a layer of the spicy minced meat. Using ONLY HALF of the shredded cheddar cheese, add a layer of it OVER that meat layer.


Add all the remaining macaroni mix over all that. Add a thin layer of salsa sauce over the casserole for taste. With the remaining shredded cheese, divide it into HALF and use just one half to spread a layer over the casserole.


Bake the casserole for just 15 minutes. Add the rest of the cheddar cheese, then bake a little while longer for only 5 minutes.


You can lick the cheesy mixing spoon while you wait. Mm-mmm...


Once done, crush the Chachos corn chips and spread ‘em all over the casserole.

Now eaaaaaaaaaaaaattt!! This recipe feeds 6 people; it’s very filling. I really wish you could smell the spicy taco mince meat cos it's really great. The touch of the salsa sauce alongside the saltiness of the cheese sauce melting on your mouth is just soooooo good. Chewy macaroni pasta and crunchy corn chips-, not saying anything more.

My folks always have this dish with a side of fresh, tossed salad drenched in thousand-island sauce. Other having a nutritional, balanced diet (Mak’s a food pyramid freak), the mix of tomatoes and lettuce leaves just seem to work superbly, sort-of like, it refreshes your taste buds as you eat.

Why am I writing this? Because I’ve decided that it was absolutely futile to stick to my New Year’s Resolution, that’s why.

Spread the cheesy love...