Lasagna

Lasagna Lover? You might want to try this =)


Ingredients

 

(butter is not in the picture)

Minced beef
Chopped Fresh tomatoes (optional: tin tomatoes)
Sliced Mushrooms
Chopped onion
Smashed garlic (2 cloves)
Butter
Lasagna sauce
Lasagna sheets

For the White sauce you need:
Milk
Butter
Cheese (I use grated cheese and mozarella)
Plain flour

Baby Steps
Beef sauce ( I do advise you prepare this first before the white sauce)
1. Melt butter in a pan.
2. Fry chopped onions and smashed garlic.
3. Add mince meat and fry them well.
4. Stir in tomatoes and mushroom.
5. Add lasagna sauce. (other option: spaghetti sauce)
6. Cook until thick and rich.

White sauce
1. Melt butter in a pot.
2. Add milk, grated cheese and mozarella.
3. Add a tbsp of flour.
4. Stir until thick and rich (It's easier if you use a whisk to stir)
    * it is very important that your white sauce is thick enough for the lasagna.

Prepare the lasagna
1. Start with the meat sauce.
2. Then the lasagna sheet.
3. The white sauce.
4. The lasagna sheet.
5. Repeat them according to your size of dish.
6. End the layer with white sauce.
7. Sprinkle grated cheese and mozarella on top of the white sauce.
8. Bake in the oven about 200C/Gas 6

I add a little bit of coriander leaves but I don't suggest this.

Have a try! It took only 30minutes out from the oven for my housemates to finish this =)

Mr Rogers at home!

Big fan of Kenny Rogers? Well, you might want to try this. Big fat thanks to Popo who first introduced me this recipe. You can get the full and authentic version of this roast chicken with potatoes recipe from Jamie Olivers' website!

Ingredients
1 whole chicken (cleaned inside)
Potaoes
1 bulb of garlic
1 lemon
Black pepper
Salt
Turmeric (kunyit)
Roasted herbs
A handful of thyme
A handful of rosemarry
Olive oil

p/s: Thyme and rosemarry might be quite hard to find in certain countries. I'm still in searching what can replace rosemarry and thyme best. I'll share with you once I find one.

Baby Steps
1. It is best to marinade your chicken with black pepper and salt and keep it inside the fridge at least 8-10 hours before.
2. Rub a reasonable amount of salt and black pepper inside and out of the chicken.
3. Boil a large amount of salted water.
4. Cut potatoes into wedges-sliced, peel 1 bulb of garlic and make holes on the lemon using a fork.
5. Boil the ingredients above in the salted water for about 12-15 minutes.
6. Drain the water and allow them to steam (this will make the potatoes crispier)
7. Take out the chicken and rub  reasonable amount of olive oil, tumeric and roasted herbs inside and out the chicken.
8. Push the garlics, lemon and thyme inside the chicken.
9. Put the potatoes around the chicken and place the rosemarry on the potatoes.
10. Roast the chicken and potatoes gas 6/204 degrees celcius (but I prefer gas 7 because it roasted faster and crispier)

11. Once cooked take out all the inside ingredients of the chicken, cut and serve according to your preference. I normally cut the chicken into 4 parts and served them with the roasted potato and salad.

Cheesecake

Fancy Secret Recipe cakes? Why not have one fresh from your oven. Surprise your mom and your love ones with your own homemade cheesecake. Besides, you have a full control on how much sugar and calories you put in. Big fat thanks to Choco and KK who first introduced the recipe to me.

Ingredients
Rich tea biscuits (other options: digestive biscuits)
2 tupperwares of 300g Philadelphia original full fat soft cheese
1 soured cream (300 ml)
1 double cream (300 ml) (Other options: whip cream)
2 eggs
Vanilla flavouring
Butter
Lemon
Sugar

Baby Steps
There are 3 stages for this cake.

Stage 1: The crust
1. Blend the biscuits until you get biscuit crumbs. (depends on how thick you want the crust to be)
2. Melt butter in a pan.
3. Add sugar and stir until it melts.
4. Add melted butter and sugar into the blended biscuits and mix well.
5. Carefully coat the bottom of your baking tin with the mixture.
6. Use the bottom of a glass to press the crust flat and even.
7. Bake for about 10 minutes (gas 4/ 180 degrees celcius) and keep inside the fridge for about 10-15   minutes.

Stage 2: The filling
1. Mix well and beat Philadelphia cheese, eggs, sugar, vanilla, lemon zest and 200 ml double cream in a bowl. 
(you decide the quantity of sugar and lemon zest according to your taste and diet)
2. Take out the crust from the fridge and pour the above mixture over the base.
3. Bake for 1 hour (gas 4/ 180 degrees celcius)

Stage 3: The topping
1. Mix well and beat soured cream, sugar and the remaining double cream in a bowl.
2. Once the filling is baked, let it cool down about 10 minutes and then pour the above mixture over the filling.
3. Bake for another 15 minutes.

Finally, once your cake is baked, keep it inside the fridge at least 6 hours before you start to serve.

A sprinkle of chocolate powder would be nice!

Bake your own cheesecake today!

Basic Chocolate Chip Cookies

My first experience with home made cookies was during my teen days. Thank you to my aunt because she introduced me a very basic chocolate chip recipe from hershey. It's simple, easy and tasty! You don't even need any baking experience to start!

Below are the ingredients and directions which I copied from hersheys' website. (I'm saving my own words for my essays.lol)

Ingredients

• 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened (unsaltened butter)
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar (white sugar)
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs (I suggest egg yolks only)
• 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) HERSHEY'S SPECIAL DARK Chocolate Chips or HERSHEY'S Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (any type of chocolate chip will do)
• 1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Baby Steps

1. Heat oven to 375°F.
   
2.  Stir together flour, baking soda and salt. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla in large bowl with mixer until creamy. Add eggs; beat well. Gradually add flour mixture, beating well. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts, if desired. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet.
   
3.  Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely. About 5 dozen cookies. 

Choc chips with almonds (before)

I hosted a tea party last few days for my swimming mates. Although it wasn't a typical English tea party but we all had a lot of fun at the party. Cookies is great for tea party I believe and I managed to prepare 2 jar of them for the party.

p/s: I hide the other jar as there were cookies-thieves in my house.

P/S: I started to learn baking because I used to like someone who really loves home made cookies. It tickles me a lot each time the memory comes. Well, those were the days =)

Healthy Snacks

I love snacks especially between meals and movie time. A box of chocolate, a packet of doritos, a jar of cookie and the list goes on. They already taste yummy by just typing them out. But everytime I finished snacking I felt this terrible guilt. All the extra calories, sugars, fat and etc.


I tried to control my cravings and replaced them with fruits salads. I prefer to prepare my healthy snacks early in the morning. I'll cut the fruits into small pieces and keep them in a tupperware. So, instead of having a bar of chocolate I'll just grab my fruits tupperware! I love to have them with honey and I normally would change my choice of fruits from time to time just to add variety. Plus, I love to see colours in my food =)

Healthier choice but still taste fabulous!
 

This is my favourite. A combination of small slice apples, oranges and strawberries. Try to have them with honey. It tastes better!

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Living with 6 British girls for a year I had to learn to eat less belacan, ikan bilis, chillies, fried foodie and etc. The smell sometimes made them felt uncomfortable. The easiest meal to have besides takeaway and microwave foodie would be spaghetti. And yes, meatballs and spaghetti are like soulmates completing each other! However, to get halal meatballs here would be a great difficulty. So, a very good friend of mine helped me out by introducing a very simple yet tasty meatballs recipe.

Meatball

Mince meat
Onion
Parsley leaves
Egg
Bread
Cheese (I prefer cheddar cheese but i think it's ok to use other kinds)
Black pepper
Salt

However, there's no mince meat and bread available in my house today. So, I decided to use a similar recipe from the normal one (above) and it still worked. Please mind that the steps are similar just the ingredients are slightly different.

Todays' ingredients
Mince meat is replaced with chicken
Bread is replaced with flour and bread crumbs

Sorry, I didnt put cheese in the picture.

Baby Steps
1. I replaced the mince meat with chicken. Chop the chicken into small cubes and blend them.
2. Chop parsley leaves and onion into small cubes.
3. Mix together all the above ingredients in a bowl.
4. Whisk an egg. (depends on the quantity of meat/chicken you used)
5. Add reasonable amount of black pepper and salt.
6. Add egg and mix well.
7. Add reasonable amount of flour and bread crumbs.
8. Cut the cheddar cheese to small pieces and add them into the ingredients.
8. Use 2 spoons to help you make round shape meatballs.
9. Roll the meatballs in flour.
10. Fry. (You can bake them in the oven if you prefer - healthier choice)

Note: If you use bread, you don't have to use any flour and bread crumbs. Simply cut the bread to small pieces and add them with all the other ingredients. Make round shapes and straight way fry them. (It's almost the same like making 'begedil')

chickenballs (before fry)

Spaghetti with sausages and mushrooms

Ingredients
Olive oil
Sausage (Cut thin slices)
Mushroom (Cut thin slices)
Onion (Chop small cube sizes)
Garlic (Crash)
Spaghetti sauce
Black pepper
Pasta seasoning
Butter
Cheddar cheese (Grate/ Parut)
Pasta water (Air rebusan spaghetti)
 

Baby Steps
1. Heat your pan with olive oil.
2. Add onion and garlic. Fry.
3. Add sausages.
4. Add mushrooms.
5. Mix them well.
6. Add spaghetti sauce.
7. Add pasta water (reasonable amount)
8. Mix and cook them for a few minutes.
9. Add pasta seasoning.
10. Add butter (option)
11. Add salt and pepper.
12. Cook until it's dense enough.
13. Turn off the heat.
14. Add grated cheese.

Mix your spaghetti with parsley leaves and serve with sauce and meatballs.

Have fun making your own homemade spaghetti and meatballs!

Waffle

The same ingredients for pancakes are also wonderful for waffle. You just need a waffle maker and have a go!

Serve with fruits, ice cream, chocolate sauce, peanut butter or anything you like! Juicy gossips with friends shall be a perfect combination with your waffle on tea time =)

Breakfast Pancakes

Make your own pancakes from scratch!

Ingredients
Plain Flour (you can try wholemeal flour if you want a low fat ones)
Skimmed milk (you can have full cream milk if you like)
Egg (i'll be using only the egg yolk)
Butter
Baking powder
Low fat plain yogurt
Vanilla flavouring
Salt

the low fat yogurt I used - thanks to choco

Baby Step
1. Prepare a large bowl.
2. Add flour first (I normally used about 10 table spoons)
3. Add egg yolk, 1 and a half table spoon of butter, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 table spoon of low fat yogurt, 1 teaspoon of vanilla flavouring and a pinch of salt.
4. Add 1 and a half cup of milk
5. Mix and Whisk well all the ingredients.
6. Add milk again if you feel necessary.
7. Prepare a non stick pan.
8. Smear a little bit butter on the pan.
9. Ready to cook and flip your pancakes! (Low heat please)

*This mixture normally could last approximately 2/3 days for me.

This one I had for breakfast today. Rupa tak cantik sebab sibuk gossiping while cooking;)

I love to have bananas and strawberries with my pancakes. This pancake should make me full until lunch time!

p/s: If you like, you can have this for tea time but try to have it with ice cream=)

Baked sweet potatoes with chillies

Missing my mama's steamed sweet potatoes lately. And so I grabbed just one big sweet potato from the market today. As usual, I googled all the recipes for sweet potatoes but none really suits my taste. I really want to have the sweetness of sweet potatoes with something hot and spicy.

If you search on the net recipes for sweet potatoes many would suggest you to baked them with olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano. Since I want a sweet and spicy flavour I tried to combine a mixture of western and eastern taste into the sweet potato.

This recipe is also wonderful to replace french fries/chips for snacks. HEALTHY choice!

Ingredients
Sweet potato (keledek)
Blended dried chillies (cili kering dah blend)
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Curry powder

Baby Steps
1. Cut the sweet potato to thin slices. (picture above)
2. Put them into a large bowl.
3. Mix well all the ingredients; reasonable amount of olive oil, black pepper, salt, curry powder and chillies.
4. Put the mixed-sweet potato on a baking tray.
5. Put them into the oven and bake them for about 15 to 20 minutes.

I ate them with crab salad and they taste fabulous!

Charlotte potatoes with roasted herbs

After a week of zero attendance to gym and fitness class it was quite hard to start back again. My vacation has "menjahanamkan my diet". Today, after a session in fitness class I felt terribly thirsty and hungry. Straight away after the class ended, I went to the nearby market and tesco to get fresh fruits and vegies. While choosing vegies I saw packed potatoes garnished with i-cant-remember-the-herbs-the-brand-used.lol.

At home, I tried my own recipe of charlotte potatoes with roasted herbs. *I'm quite sure this is not the most suitable meal after a session of fitness class. But once awhile we do need exceptions.

Ingredients
Charlotte potatoes (any potatoes will do but I still have the remaining potatoes from my last tortilla)
Roasted herbs
Salt
Pepper
Lemon
Vegetable oil

This is the roasted herb I used

Baby Steps
1. Wash and cut the potatoes medium-sized
2. Prepare the oil and fry the potatoes
3. Once cooked, mix the potatoes with salt pepper and roasted herbs.
4. Served with salad and lemon.

Squeeze the lemon on the potatoes for a bit of fresh taste!

p/s: Kak Ili, if you can't find the roasted herbs perhaps you can try to mix the potato with chillies, garlic and lemon and then you fry them. I saw similar recipes like this in the net. I was thinking about this at first but I malas nk chop garlic.ehe

Sea bream with apple juice

I bought a sea bream long long long before I went for my SpainVacation trip. Once I got back home, I tried to google how can I cook this fish without having any 'hanyir' smell. A classical way of cooking this fish was with wine (i can't remember red or white). So, I google again what can replace this wine. And tadaa, apple juice should be a good replacement.

My favourite pitstop googling recipes would be jamie's website but I couldn't find any recipe for sea bream. But I did found an interesting recipe of grilled fish trout from jamie.

And so, I decided to come out with my own version of sea bream with apple juice. It's easy, fast, delicious and most important, HEALTHY!

Ingredients
Sea bream
Dill (widely suitable for fish meals)
Apple juice (I found almost-rotten apples in the fridge and I decided to get the apple juice from them)
Lemon
Butter
Salt
Pepper
Kitchen foil

Sea bream

Dill

Apple juice

Lemon

Baby steps
1. Clean the fish inside out. (Big thanks to asda makcik for cleaning it for me)
2. Make 3 cuts on the fish both sides (you can have more cuts if you have bigger and gemuk fish)
3. Put reasonable amount of salt and pepper inside and outside the fish.
4. Prepare a kitchen foil on a baking tray.
5. Put the dill leaves inside it.
6. Place the fish.
7. Dot butter on the fish (this was what jamie did with his grilled trout)
8. Put the sliced lemons on the fish.
9. Pour the apple juice inside.
10. If you have remaining dills, feel free to put it on top of the fish.
11. Put another foil to cover.
12. Place the fish into the oven and bake.

Tortilla Espanol

Talking about tortilla, I'm sure one will imagine a kind of flat bread, chicken wrap and etc. But thanks to Spain for introducing their own version of tortilla which is now my friends and I new addiction. While walking in the streets of Cordoba in a thirtyseven degrees temperature, we came by a small cozy shop selling variety of drinks but the only one that we could understand from the menu was fruit juices. Due to the thirtyseven degrees I managed to persuade my vacation mates to stop for a drink in that shop. Honestly, I wasn't thirtsy at that moment. What actually caught my eye was a well in the middle of the shop with fruits on top of it. Sorry mates ;)

And the discovery of tortilla began when my friend, Oci ordered Tortilla Espanol which he thought was the cheapest food in the menu. We laughed about it for awhile and I must say that was the best decision Oci ever made in the trip. It was the most delicious Spanish meal for me so far!

Back home, I decided to google the recipe for this tortilla espanol and I finally came out with my own version of Tortilla Espanol =)

Ingredients
6 eggs
1 red bell pepper (I used only half of it)
Mushrooms
1 onion
Parsley leaves (Daun sup)
Potatoes (any potatoes will do - charlotte potatoes is my favourite)
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper

Red bell peppers, mushroom, parsley, onions.

charlotte potatoes

Eggs

Olive oil (the most important-you can get other better brands but asda's will do for me)

Baby steps

1. Whisk the eggs

2. Prepare and cut red bell pepper, mushrooms, onion and parsley leaves. (don't forget to clean them first)

3. Wash potatoes with water and cut them medium sized.(I didn't removed the skin because I love having charlotte potatoes with the skin on)

4. Fry the potatoes (Olive oil would be the best option but it's ok to use other types of oil)

5. Put together all the ingredients from No. 2 and the potatoes in a large bowl.

6. Mix them together with a reasonable amount of salt and pepper.

7. Then add the eggs which you already whisked into the bowl.

8. Mix them together and mash the potatoes (I choose not to for my first trial)

9. Prepare a nonstick pan and pour a reasonable amount of olive oil into the pan.

10. Pour the mixture into the pan. (Use low heat)



Then, the difficult part:

11. After the mixture has turned brown an the bottom you can turn it over to cook the other side. (If you fail to do so, you'll end up with a scramble tortilla)


And this happened to me. So what I did was, with my scrambled horrible tortilla I decided to put them in a cake baking tray and press the tortilla until it's dense enough. After that, I decided to put my tortilla in the oven and bake it for 5 minutes. Well, it turns out good and I served it with salad.

My First Own version Tortilla Espanol

The one I ate in Cordoba

p/s: I think we could also call this tortilla espanol as "spanish omelette" or "telur dadar" in malay. lol.