Tuesday 18 January 2011

Baked Sweet Chili Chicken

Continue from last week Philips, MyKitchen (www.philips.com.sg/kitchen) recipe post on the "Red Cabbage Salad with Filet of Duck Breast", this week I would like to share with you this super quick and simple Sweet Chili Chicken which is perfect for BBQ function or served as finger food during party.



Sweet Chili Chicken Mid-Joint



Preparation Time: 60 Minutes                  Cooking Time: 25 Minutes

Ingredients: (Makes 10 Mid-Joint)
1/2 Tablespoon honey
2 Tablespoons Sweet Chili Sauce
1 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
10 Chicken Mid-Joint Wing

For working mothers who don't have the luxury of time to spend an hour marinating the chicken. The quicker way would be doing it the night before or spending around 5 - 8 minutes in the morning preparing it ahead and leave them in the fridge till evening time.

Method:
1. In a large bowl, mix together the honey, sweet chili sauce and soy sauce.
2. Place chicken mid-joint wings into the bowl. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour.
3. Preheat oven to 180 degree on grill function, arrange the mid-joint wings on baking tray and bake for about 10 minutes.
4. Turn the wings over, baste with marinade and continue to bake for another 10 minutes.
5. Adjust the oven to 200 degree fan-forced mode on upper and low heat, bake for the last 5 minutes to achieve the golden and char-grilled colour.


ORIGINAL RECIPE FROM PHILIPS (MyKitchen):

Sweet Chilli Chicken Drumsticks



Preparation Time: 60 Minutes                  Cooking Time: 20 Minutes

Ingredients: (Makes 12 Drumsticks)
1 Tablespoon honey
5 Tablespoons Sweet Chili Sauce
3 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
12 Chicken Drumsticks

Method:
1. In a large bowl, mix together the honey, sweet chili sauce and soy sauce. Set aside a small dish of the marinade for basting.
2. Place chicken drumsticks into the bowl. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour.
3. Preheat barbecue for medium high heat.
4. Lightly oil the barbecue cooking grate. Arrange drumsticks on the grate and cook for 10 minutes per side, or until cooked through.
5. Baste frequently with the reserved sauce during the last 5 minutes.


With such a quick and easy recipe above I am sure you would like to explore more recipes from Philips MyKitchen at www.philips.com.sg/kitchen for coming Chinese New Year too. Stay tune for more recipe idea from MyKitchen on next week post which I would share a recipe for a delicious dessert.


Monday 17 January 2011

Taiwan SunnyHills Pineapple Cakes

I am sure during Chinese New Year most households would have at least a tub of freshly made or store bought "Pineapple Tarts". And for those who loves Taiwan snacks, their famous Pineapple Cake(凤梨酥) or Sun Biscuit(太阳饼) is definitely something that you would not want to miss out.

Last week I have received a complimentary box of Pineapple Cakes from "Sunnyhills(微热山丘) which is air-flown from Taiwan. According to the local distributor Mr Damian these pineapple cakes are made from fresh ingredients that do not contain any preservatives or colourings. From the photos you could see that each brick-shaped pineapple cakes is individually packed and sealed to maintain it's freshness till the expiry date.

Sunnyhills Pineapple Cakes (微热山丘凤梨酥) used only the native Cayenne pineapples from the rich fertile soil of Ba Gua(八卦山) mountains in Nantou(南投) area to make their pineapple stuffing which is full of natural sweet and sour goodness.

These golden brick-shaped crusts are made using premium eggs mixed with gourmet baking flour from Japan and pure New Zealand butter. No wonder each mouthful that you bite brings out a wonderful buttery aroma and fine texture from the pastry. And with its authentic gift box set that comes in 3 different sizes including a little warm greeting card, I guess this might be something special that you would want to consider in your Chinese New Year gift purchasing list.

  In order to achieve customers satisfaction, the distributor for Sunnyhills Singapore would also give out free individual tasting packet (sample shown above) to customers who visit their booth during the festive event period. So if you are interested to find out more about this new product from Sunnyhills, remember to pop-by at Funan IT Mall starting from 17 - 31 January 2011 on the Chinese New Year Food and Lifestyle event.

Or you could also contact them at (65)8522 9605 for enquiries or place your order which they would delivery to your door-steps at your convenience at a minimum amount purchased. Lastly Iwould like to thanks Sandy and Damian for sending us these delicious Pineapple Cakes from Sunnyhills which comes just in time for Chinese New Year.



TO ORDER


Contact: (65) 8522 9605
Fax: (65) 6792 8211
Email: services@sunnyhills.com.sg
Website: www.sunnyhills.com.tw

~ FREE DELIVERY for oders S$90.00 and above.


Saturday 15 January 2011

Bunny Pineapple Tarts

Chinese New Year is just about 3 weeks or less from now and most of my social network friends from facebook and twitter have already started their Chinese New Year Bakes with Pineapple Tarts, Kueh Bangkit, Peanut Cookies, Kueh Lapis and etc since early this week. For me every year I would definitely baked our family favourite pineapple tarts which I would giveaway to some relatives and close friends.

Since this coming Chinese New Year would be the year of "RABBIT", I decided to make some special "BUNNY" theme pineapple tarts to suit this year Chinese Horoscopes theme. If you have followed this blog for long, you would have remember about my last year "Tiger" theme tarts for the year of "TIGER" too (you could read more HERE).

This year I have made two different types of "Bunny" shape tarts which comes in either "Open" or "Closed" tart version. For the "closed tart", I have wrapped the pineapple fillings with a thin layer of dough skin and pressed it into a bunny mould to achieve the shape shown above.

For this pastry recipe, I have adapted another version from one of my favourite blogsite know as The Little Teochew which some of you might have read most of her posts before. 

Ingredients:
(adapted mainly from The Little Teochew)
400g Plain Flour
50g Corn flour
1/4 (heaped) Teaspoon Salt
280g Cold, Unsalted Butter (do not allow it to soften)
3 Egg Yolks, beaten
3 Tablespoons Cold Water (or iced water)
5 Tablespoons Icing Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Cognac
For glaze:
1 egg yolk + 1 Tablespoon water, beaten

Getting the tarts ready by gazing and topping it with pineapple fillings before sending them into the oven.

Method:
1. Refer to the original recipe from Little Teochew for the steps on making the pastry HERE.
2. When the dough is done divide it into smaller portions(example 3 portions) and place each portion in a plastic bag and slightly flatten it before chilling in the fridge for about 10 minutes or so.
3. While working with the pastry, you can use 1 portion at time and keeps the remaining in the fridge to prevent the pastry from oozing oil due to the warm temperature.
4. Roll the pastry to your desired thickness and cut out dough using bunny or normal traditioanl pineapple cutter.
5. Arrange cutouts neatly onto baking tray with some spacing apart.
6. Once the tray has filled up with tart shells, glaze them with beaten egg yolk mixture and placed the pre-rolled pineapple jam balls onto each tart shell.
7. Bake in preheated oven at 160 degrees for about 20 minutes. Rest baked tarts on tray for about 2 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.


From the enquiries of some readers, these are the two mould that I used for making the Bunny Pineapple Tarts. For the open tart bunny, you could get any bunny design cookie cutters from baking stores or even Daiso. But as for the closed tart version, you have to get this bunny design egg mould which I got it from one of the online Bento spree years back.

As for the pineapple paste, you could either prepared your own using fresh and good grade pineapples together with sugar, some spieces and cooked it over low heat till it turns into a thick golden colour paste. Or in order to save time you could always get those ready made paste from local supermarket too. Here are some suggestions shared by our fanpage readers on the choice of "Butter" and "Pineapple Fillings" for your reference.

Finally after spending a few hours in the kitchen doing all the rolling, cutting, egg washing and etc. Here are our Chinese New Year Bunny Pineapple Tarts for the year of Rabbit. And I hope this new creation of mine would give you some ideas on what to bake as gifts or treats for the coming New Year to impressive your guests. And also I am submitting this post to "Aspiring Bakers #3: My Favourite CNY Cookie! (January 2011)", hosted by Jess of j3ss kitch3n at this link HERE.


Lastly perhaps if you like this post, do help by leaving a comment(s) on which "Bunny" do you prefer? Closed or Open version? For us my boy prefers the open-tart bunny where he describe the pineapple fillings symbolised as a bag of GOLD on the bunny's tummy :)


Thursday 13 January 2011

Red Cabbage Salad with Filet of Duck Breast

Talking about "Philips" brand I am sure most of you would automatically relates it to their popular electrical appliances such as Television, Hi-Fi System, Household Products and etc. Recently, Philips launched a new on-line recipe resource known as "MyKitchen" (www.philips.com.sg/kitchen), and it has since been receiving popular reviews in the local media because it has a wide variety of recipes catering to all palates including the Asian delights. For example you could find recipes range from Korea, Japan India, Asian and etc that suits your family and guests.

Since Chinese New Year is around the corner, perhaps you would be keen to take a peep at their MyKitchen website for more recipe ideas to impress your guests with restaurant like cuisines. Here I would share with you FOUR different cuisine which I find it interesting and easy to prepare with. First we shall have :-


Red Cabbage Salad with Filet of Duck Breast


Preparation Time: 20 minutes + 30 minutes to marinade

Ingredients: (Serves 2)
400g Red Cabbage
2 - 3 Tablespoons Raspberry Vinegar or Red Wine Vinegar
3 Tablespoons Walnut Oil
1 Teaspoon Dried Thyme
Freshly Ground Black Pepper
1 Filet of Tame Duck Breast (300-400 g)

Method:
1. Heat 1.5 l water to 100°C in your Philips kettle. Remove the hard core from the cabbage and finely shred the red cabbage (in a food processor or with a grater).
2. Put the shredded cabbage in a colander and pour on the boiling water. Drain well.
3. Next beat the vinegar and walnut oil in a bowl with the thyme, salt and pepper to taste to make a dressing. Mix in the warm, red cabbage and leave to stand for 30 minutes.
4.Cut a diamond pattern into the skin side of the duck breast every 1 cm. Lay the duck breast skin side-down in a frying pan and fry on a high heat for 6-8 minutes until crisp and brown (no extra fat is needed, this melts from the skin).
5. Turn the duck breast over and fry the other side until nice and brown. The meat may be rare (rosé) on the inside. Let the duck rest briefly.
6. Meanwhile scoop the red cabbage salad onto 2 plates. Slice the duck into thin slices and arrange these on the red cabbage salad. Tasty with brown bread or roast potatoes.


With such a quick and easy to follow recipe you could easily whipped up restaurant standarad of food in less than an hour. So do pop-by MyKitchen at www.philips.com.sg/kitchen for more ideas to pamper your family today.


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