Chicken & Fresh Coconut Soup

This is my 1st time using Fresh Coconut to stew soup. So far, I had only used coconut milk and shredded coconut for making curry, dessert and keuh. Until recently I saw a few cookbooks have different recipes on Coconut Soup so I mix and match and come up with this version of my own.

Coconut(椰子肉): It is good for good for strengthens the Lungs and nourishes the Qi. So it's actually a great soup for the whole family. Saw from the News a few days ago that actually eating more coconut or using coconut oil in cooking are good for health. When you cooking this soup, you can actually smells the coconut fragrant all around the kitchen. And as you drink the soup slightly warm, you can also taste the sweetness and fragrant of the coconut in between your teethes.


Fox Nuts(茨实): It supplement the internal organs, strengthen Qi, nourish and strengthen the body. They also benefit the kidneys, promote the replenishment of Jin, tonify the Spleen and stop diarrhoea. They are effective in healing indigestion, diarrhoea, poor bladder control and leucorrhoea.

Ingredients:
4 Slices Of Bei Qi北耆
1 Tablespoons Of Gou Qi Zi, 枸杞子
8 Red Dates红枣, remove seeds
1 Small Portion Of Fresh Huai Shan, cut into sections
1/2 Fresh Coconut(椰子肉), cut into slices
3 Chicken Drumstick/Half Chicken
50g Fox Nuts(茨实)
1.5 Litres Water

Methods:
1. Wash and trim the fat of the chicken, scald in boiling water and rinse with cold water, drain.
2. Wash Bei Qi, Gou Qi Zi, huai shan red dates, fox nuts and coconut flesh and set aside.
3. Bring the water to the boil and put all ingredients in.
4. Bring to boil again for about 10 minutes, turn to low heat and simmer for 3 hours at Low heat in a slow cooker.
5. Season with salt and serve.

Notes: You can get fresh coconut at those Indian stall that selling grated fresh coconut. Ask them to remove the dark skin then cut into pieces.

Steam Durian Tapioca Kueh

Another Durian Recipe coming out from Cuisine Paradise Kitchen's........ This Steam Durian Tapioca Kueh is made together by me and my mum for my relatives who loves this. It's pretty straight forward steps and ingredients and all you need is grated, mixed and steam then you will have your nicely fragrant durian kueh coated with fresh grated coconut........

This is for a chance, because we always had those colourful triangle steam tapioca kueh coated with shredded coconut. So maybe you will like to try out this which had a mixture of tapioca and durian instead.

Filling Ingredients:
600g Grated Tapioca
30g Wheat Starch
100g Durian Flesh
150ml Coconut Milk
140g Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Salt

Coconut Coating:
200g - 250g Fresh Grated Coconut
1/4 - 1/2 Teaspoon Salt

Methods:
1. Grease an 7" Square baking tin and line with banana leaves.
2. Combine all Filling ingredients and mix well.
3. Pour mixture into baking tin, place in a steamer and steam on medium heat for 45 minutes or until done. Remove and set aside to cool.
4. Mix grated coconut with salt and steam over high heat for 5 minutes.
5. Cut durian tapioca cake into small slices and coat with steamed grated coconut or you can pan-fry the cut slices with some oil.

Rainbow Wasabe Prawn Salad

Saw a version of this similar Wasabe Prawn Salad at one of the TV program. The salad ingredients are rather simple and you can use whatever you have in your fridge. While the main ingredients are Prawns and Wasabe.

People are confused by the message that Prawns contain high levels of Cholesterol. Cholesterol is only found in foods of animal origin and liver, egg yolk and shellfish are the major sources of dietary cholesterol. Prawns have only 99kcal per 100g while other proteins such as Beef Mince contain 209kcal and 13.5g of fat and grilled sausages contain 294kcal and over 22g of fat. Prawns are even lower in calories and fat than chicken. As well as being high in protein, prawns contain magnesium, which plays a role in bone development and nerve and muscle function; Zinc, which is good for growing bodies, and selenium, an important antioxidant.


So for today's salad, we also added in alot of vibrant fruits and vegetables to enhance the appearance as well as to boost up the Appetite.

Ingredients:
300g Of Medium Size Prawns
6 Cherry Tomatoes, cut into halve
6 Seedless Grapes, cut into halve
1 Japanese Cucumber, peel & cut into cubes
1/2 Carrot, shredded
1 Mango, cut into cubes
1 - 1 1/2 Teaspoons Of Roasted Black Sesame Seeds

Methods:
1. Shell, butterfly and devein the prawn, rinse and wash it with some salt water then pat dry.
2. Marinate the prawns with some salt, sugar and cornflour and set aside in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or more.
3. Coat the prawn with some potato starch and deep-fry in hot oil for a few second to 1 minutes until golden brown, drained and set aside.
4. At the meantime, prepare the fruits and vegetables on a serving plate.
5. Coat the prawns, evenly with the wasabe sauce and place it in the middle of the serving plate with the fruits and vegetables surround it.
6. Drizzle the remaining sauce all over the salad, then sprinkle the black sesame seeds and serve.

Wasabe Sauce:
4 - 5 Tablespoons Of Japanese Mayonnaise
1.5 Teaspoons Of Wasabe

Methods:
1. Whisk the above together ingredients together until combined and set aside.

Creamy Pumpkin Dessert

Managed to gather all the ingredients for this making this dessert that is strongly recommend by one of my blogger's friend Tracy. She used to cook this dessert at least 2 - 3 times a month. She get to know this dessert from one of the blogsite at http://www.dimsumdolly.com under JinGua Hu at 12 August 2005.

Based on the description from the website and some guideline of how much ingredients to add from Tracy. I came out of my own version of Creamy Pumpkin Dessert. But I think, next time I should chopped the ingredients even more finely because base on the actually Jin Gua Hu dessert, the ingredients seems to be tiny little bits and pieces. So I guess it all depend on individual, if you like to have a more crunchy texture then what I had is just nice for you......

Ingredients:
1/4 Wedges Of Pumpkin, about 300g
Set aside 100g Of Pumpkin, finely chopped
5 Water Chestnuts, finely chopped
1 Medium Orange Sweet Potato, finely chopped
1 Medium Japanese White Potato, finely chopped
1/2 Cup Uncook Sago
1/2 Cup Cream Corn/Sweet Corn
Few Pieces Of Pandan Leaves

Methods:
1. First, boil half a big pot of water and add in the un-cooked sago, boil and stir occasional over medium heat until sago is almost clear. (about 10 mins, then rinse and soak in cold water for later used)
2. While waiting for the sago to cook, peel and cut 200g pumpkin into cubes.
3. Bring 1.5 litres of water to boil, add in the pumpkin cubes and cook until tender then remove.
4. Add in the finely chopped, pumpkin, sweet potato, water chestnut, drained sago and pandan leaves in the water and simmer over medium low heat.
5. Puree the hot pumpkin with 1 cup of water(from cooking the pumpkin) until smooth then pour into the pot together with the rest of the ingredients.
6. When it boils, add in the sago and stir occasionally to prevent sago from sticking to each other and the bottom of the pot.
7. Simmer until the all the ingredients had cooked through then add in the corn and some rock sugar to taste.
8. Adjust water to consistency (thickness) of the soup that you desire whether too thick or watery.

If you put the cool pumpkin dessert in the fridge, it will became slightly harden like jelly. So in order to make it more creamy, you can add a few tablespoons of Fresh Milk to dilute it to the consistency that you prefer. To us, we prefer to eat it cold with some fresh milk as it's more creamy and fragrant.