Sunday 24 August 2008

Salmon Onigiri

Onigiri also known as Omusubi, is a snack of Japanese rice formed into triangle or oval shapes and often wrapped in nori (edible seaweed). Traditionally, the onigiri is filled with pickled ume fruit (umeboshi), salted salmon, katsuobushi, or any other salty or sour ingredient. But now most of the Onigiri can be wrapped with other special ingredients like salmon, ebi or etc.


For our Quick & Easy menu tonight, we will be having Salmon Onigiri. I use the pan-fry salmon flake to make three different version of Salmon Onigiri, 1st type is salmon flakes with black sesame seeds, 2nd is salmon flakes with seaweed flakes and 3rd type is salmon & cheese wrapped with rice. And making of Onigiri is so much easier with the help of the assorted Onigiri Moulds sold in the supermarket. Posted by Picasa

Ingredients: (make 6 Onigiri, 6cm by 5cm)
1 Cup of Short Grain/Calrose Rice
1 Piece of Salmon Fillet, about 250g
3-4 Slices of Ginger
1 Teaspoon Black Sesame Seeds, toasted
1 Teaspoon White Sesame Seeds, toasted
1 Slice of Sandwich Cheese, folded into quarter lengthwise
1 Small Sheet of seaweed, cut into 8cm by 1cm

Methods for Salmon & Black Sesame Onigiri:
1. Wash and rinse the rice with a few rounds of water until the water is clear, then soak it with about 20ml more of water for about 2 - 3 hrs then cook it in the rice cooker as per normal.
2. While cooking the rice, heat up a small non-stick saucepan and add in about 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil and saute the ginger slices till fragrant then add in the salmon skin side down.
3. Pan-fry it for about 2 minutes or till golden brown then flip it over and cook on the surface until it is cooked through, but do not overcooked it.
4. Add about 1/4 of the cooked salmon flakes in a big bowl, use the fork to flake it then add in 1 scoop of the cooked rice and about 1/2 teaspoon of the black sesame seeds.
5. Mixed them well then fill the rice in the Onigiri Mould and pressed the cover hard to get it moulded into shape.
6. Remove it from the mould and sprinkle some extra black sesame seeds on top. (You can make about two of this using the 6cm by 5cm mould)

Methods for Salmon & Seaweed Flakes Onigiri:
1. You can follow the same steps as the Salmon & Black Sesame Onigiri but do some changes on method 4.
2. Instead of adding 1/2 teaspoon of black sesame seeds to mixture with the salmon flakes, you can add in 1 teaspoons of the seaweeds flakes to make it green and pink.

Methods for Salmon & Cheese Onigiri:
1. You can follow the same steps as the Salmon & Black Sesame Onigiri from method 1 to 3.
2. Next instead of mixing the salmon with the rice, you filled almost 1/2 the Onigiri mould with cooked rice, then place 1 piece of cooked salmon(about 1.5cm cube) in the middle and top with 1 piece of the cheese cube.
3. Next cover the filling with another 1/2 of the cooked rice on top to fill the mould.
4. Put on the cover and pressed tie to get the shape, remove the Onigiri from the mould and wrap it with seaweed strip and sprinkle with some white sesame seeds on one side.
5. Heat the the same saucepan use to pan-fry the salmon with 1 teaspoon of olive and pan-fry both side of the Onigiri for about 1 minute each side so that the heat will melt the cheese inside.

Ingredients & Onigiri Moulds


Notes:
a) You can toast the sesame seeds in advance and keep it in an air-tight container for future use.
b) You can either serve the Onigiri cold or warm.
c) You can use whatever ingredients you have in your pantry, if you do not have black or white sesame seeds or even seaweed sheet, you can either omit or replace it with other ingredients.

Saturday 23 August 2008

Orange Caramelized Banana

Our house will always have some banana hanging around in the kitchen because it is Reyon's favourite fruit since he was a toddler. Today we are in the mood to make this Orange Caramelized Banana for our after dinner dessert.....


This is my very 1st time trying to make this Caramelized Banana at home and to my surprised it taste really nice and fragrant because of the use of Orange Rind, Juice and Grand Marnier. To further enhance this dessert, I served it with some Ice-cream, chocolate and extra shredded Orange Rinds.Posted by Picasa

Ingredients: (serves 2)
2 Medium Size Banana (ripe but still firm)
10g Butter
3/4 to 1 Tablespoon of Brown Sugar
2 Teaspoons Grand Marnier (optional)
1 Medium Size Orange, grate the zest and juice
Serve with Ice-Cream, optional

Methods:
1. Cut the banana into halves.
2. Melt butter in a small non-stick pan then add banana and fry until golden brown. (you can carefully turn it over so that both side will be caramelized with nice brown colour)
3. Add in the orange zest and cook for 20 seconds then sprinkle Grand Marnier evenly on top.
4. Next sprinkle brown sugar over the banana and pour in about 50ml of orange juice and cook until almost thicken.
5. Serve with Ice-cream and some extra shredded orange rind to enhance the flavour.

Note:
1) You can drizzle some extra melted chocolate for that luxury.
2) You can omit the Grand Marnier if you are serving for the kids.


Baked Chicken With Plum Chutney & Cheese

Today's Special from Cuisine Paradise Kitchen is this Baked Chicken With Plum Chutney & Cheese. All thanks to Tracy (my best pal and sister-in-Christ) who gave me her Homemade Plum & Apple Chutney which you can find the original recipe at here. But according to Tracy, since she don't have crystallized ginger, she replace it with fresh ginger slice and it really makes nice fragrant of her version of chutney. At first when she made this Chutney, both of us still cracking our head on how to use those bottles of homemade chutney. But after experience it with different food and spread both our family members and us actually find it as a new way to bring about the taste of plum.


As you can see from the 2nd pictures, the colour of her homemade chutney is so gorgeous and it's really like red ruby sparkling in the light. The taste and aroma of the chutney is sort of like sweet, sour and spicy. It is full of flavour and texture which I think it will make a great Marinade ingredients. So without hesitate, I go ahead to experience it. I used it to marinate with chicken Maryland over night in the fridge and baked it with some extra fresh plum to give it more texture on the fruits.

At first, I still wonder how will it taste but my doubt was clearly after the aroma of the chicken flow out from the oven. The kitchen was filled with the fragrant of the spice from the chutney and the adding of the extra Mozzarella cheese also give a great enhancement to this dish. I have served this dish with baked herbal vegetables & some extra chutney. And the dessert for the night is Orange Caramalized Banana. Posted by Picasa

Ingredients: (serves 2)
2 Chicken Maryland, trim the fat
8 Tablespoons of the Plum Chutney
2 Fresh Plum, stoned and cut into wedges
2 - 3 Tablespoons Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
2 Medium Size Potato, cut into chunks/cubes
1 Small Carrot, cut into chunks/cubes
1/2 Teaspoon of Dried Mixed Herbs
1 Teaspoon Olive Oil

Methods:
1. Trim and wash the chicken the cut a few slits on the meat of the chicken, pat dry and stuffs some plum chutney into the slits then top with the remaining chutney.
2. Marinate it for at least 2 hours or over night in the fridge.
3. An hour or two before baking the chicken, you can marinate the mixed vegetables with the mixed herbs and olive oil.
4. Remove the chicken from the fridge 5 - 10 minutes before cooking.
5. Heat up a saucepan with 1 teaspoon olive oil then pan-fry the vegetables until slightly brown and almost cooked through.
6. Remove and place it on foil paper and put it in the oven toaster and toast for about 5 minutes, turning once or twice. (this will make it totally cooked through or soften and at the same time, force out the extra oil when frying)
7. Next, place the chicken, skin side down in the saucepan that is used for frying the vegetables and saute the chicken till the skin is slightly brown.
8. Turn it over and saute it for another 3 minutes, then add in the fresh plum wedges and remaining marindae sauce, cover and let it simmer for about 5 minutes.
9. You can add it a 1 - 2 tablespoons extra of the plum chutney if you find that it's too dry to simmer.
10. Remove chicken, plum and etc from the saucepan and place it in a baking dish and put it in the toaster oven and baked for another 10 minutes or so until the chicken is cooked through. (or to save the trouble, you can put everything in the baking tray and baked at 200 degree for about 30 minutes until the chicken is cooked through)
11. Next sprinkle the shredded Mozzarella Cheese on top of the chicken and let it baked for another 1 - 2 minutes until the cheese is golden brown.
12. Remove and serve it with the baked herbal vegetables, extra chutney and fresh plum.

Quick & Easy Toddler Meal

It had being a long long time since I post something on Toddler food, actually there is nothing fancy on this dish. I use the same old mix vegetables stock to make either noodle, porridge or rice for Reyon whenever he requested for it. For this post i just want to share with you the cute fish cake that I spot in the wet market today. Although it look kind of out of shape for some of the design...i still cannot figure out is it a MOUSE? BEAR or ???? Can you figure out what animal is it? But then it's rather cheap compare to the Hello Kitty design fish cake that is sold in some of the supermarket..... The packet that I got is about $2 for 15 mini fishcake. Posted by Picasa

Monday 11 August 2008

Golden Pillow

Tata...This is another post-dated dish that I didn't have time to update it. Actually, this curry is cooked by my mum and I just use it to re-create this Quick and Easy meal. I have empty some of the filling in the small baguette(french loaf) so that I can fill it with the chicken curry.


After I removed some of the filling in the baguette, I place it in the toaster oven for about 3 minutes so that it will be crisp and crust in the inner portion. Then I have fill in the curry gravy, potato and chicken and make it into a simple One Dish Meal - Golden Pillow. You can fill it creamy soup like, cream of chicken or mushroom and serve it as as Starter. Or you can stuff it with some chicken pie ingredients and bake it like mini Chicken Bread. Posted by Picasa

You can refer to the curry recipe as reference at Pork Ribs Curry With Egg Wrap Rice or you can use any recipe as your own preference.

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