Images Lemon and Rosemary Roast Chicken

Lemon and Rosemary Roast Chicken

I ❤ roast chicken. You don't have to do too much to make it a delicious meal. It is soOooo convenient. For me, it's matter of spreading a few basic ingredients over the chicken and voila! Into the oven it goes. A couple of hours later, dinner is ready.

But I have a totally different take for festive occasions. Special occasions are seasons for complicated recipes. This feeling is not out of any need to impress friends. It's because of the excitement I feel from the positive energy that surrounds the special occasion. It just screams, "Churn out something magical for 'eat' gathering!".

Anyway, this is how I usually make roast chicken on normal days. It is lightly seasoned with salt, rubbed with butter, dried herbs and some sort of fruit like  oranges, mangoes, apples or lemons.

I chose to go with lemon this time. One can never go wrong with lemon. The aroma that wafts through the air in the midst of roasting is heavenly. Makes me drool thinking about it.

If you're wondering whether it tastes sour. It doesn't. It has this savoury lemon flavour without any of that 'sour' taste. Yum stuff. Check out the recipe below.

Ingredients:
- 1 small medium chicken
- 3 medium potatoes (quartered or smaller)
- 2 medium onions (cut into wedges)
- 100g butter more or less (softened)
- ½ tsp dried rosemary
- ½ lemon 
- Salt, to taste

How-to:
1) Rub salt, rosemary and half of the butter all over the chicken. Stuff a wedge of onion into the chicken.

2) Line roasting tray with foil and brush on a bit of butter.

3) Place chicken onto the tray. Arrange potatoes and onions around the chicken.

4) Spread remaining butter over the potatoes and onion.

5) Squeeze lemon juice over it. Then, stuff the lemon into the chicken.

6) Roast at 185C for 1 hour 10 minutes or longer (depending on the size of your chicken). 
Note: I basted the chicken twice in between roasting time using the juices that had accumulated on the tray. This is to keep the chicken moist and to add a little more flavour to the skin. 

Butter it. Squeeze lemon juice all over.

 

Roast chicken underway

 

Fresh out of the oven ~ Lemon and rosemary roast chicken with a nice brown

I had mine with lettuce and dragon fruit.

Roast chicken with Dragon Fruit balls (used a melon baller) and lettuce. Yum!

Images Sweet Soy Sauce Herbal Chicken

Sweet Soy Sauce Herbal Chicken with Red Dates, Yu Zhu and Wolfberries

Just something I cooked the other day because I was itching to get away from my regular soy sauce chicken recipe, which typically involves only dousing light and dark soy sauce together for taste. It's my lazy-day favourite.

In this recipe though, several natural sweetish ingredients were included to enhance the flavour, like red dates, Yu Zhu (Solomon’s Seal Rhizome - Learn more about Yu Zhu here. ) and carrots. In short, I've complicated the recipe a little for something richer.

The end result is a yummy sweet-salty herbal chicken dish that compliments plain brown rice or yam rice.

This is the recipe. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Ingredients:
- 5 pcs chicken drumstick
- 1 clove garlic (chopped)
- ½ medium carrot (julienne)
- ½ small cabbage - just a handful (sliced)
- 1 tsp dried wolfberries (rinse and soak in water for 10 minutes)
- 6 slices of dried Yu Zhu (rinse and soak until tender, preferably overnight)
- 2 medium dried red dates (rinse and soak in water for 30 minutes, make a small cut before cooking)
- 1½ tbsp light sweet soy sauce
- 1½ tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tsp corn flour to thicken (diluted in a bit of water)
- Pinch of salt and pepper
- 1 tsp cooking oil
- 2-3 cups water
- Spring onions (chopped) for garnishing

How-to:
1) Heat cooking pan with oil. Add garlic and fry until lightly browned.

2) Add chicken and carrots. While stirring, season with soy sauce and oyster sauce.

3) Add water, followed by red dates, cabbage and solomon's seal. Stir well and simmer until the chicken is cooked and slightly tender (about 45 minutes). Add more water if it gets too dry.

4) Taste and season with a pinch of salt (if necessary) and pepper. Stir the wolfberries in at the last five minutes of cooking.

5) Switch the fire off, add the corn flour while it's still hot and stir well. Serve garnished with spring onions.

Yummy Herbal Chicken

Serve garnished with spring onions!

Images Old Cucumber and Salted Kohlrabi Chicken Soup

Old Cucumber and Salted Kohlrabi Chicken Soup

 
It was in our Facebook group that I'd first heard of salted kohlrabi. Kohlrabi - what was it...german turnip, cultivar of cabbage ..according to Wikipedia.

Salted Kohlrabi

I've so far only included it in soups but I'm guessing it'll go great in braised dishes as well. 

It wasn't easy trying to find this ingredient. Partly because I had no idea how it would be packaged for the supermarket. I took some time reading the labels for each salted vegetable I picked up and it would have been easier to spot had it not all been compressed in little clear plastic packets. But joy, I found it!

AndDdDDdddd.. so was born this easy soup recipe.

Ingredients:
- 2 pcs whole chicken leg
- ½ medium old cucumber (remove seeds and slice)
- 1 medium red onion (quartered)
- 1 slice salted kohlrabi (rinsed and sliced into smaller pieces)
- 4 pcs dried black fungus (medium variety, soaked for 30 minutes, remove hard parts, slice into smaller pieces  if you wish)
- 1 medium carrot (cubed)
- 1- 1.5L water
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 stalk spring onion (chopped, for garnishing)

The ingredients

How-to:
1) Lay all the ingredients in the pot. Pour water in.
2) Boil until chicken is tender. (One hour on medium heat did it for me.)
3) At the last stage of cooking, taste and season with salt (if necessary) and pepper. Cook for awhile longer.
4) Serve garnished with spring onions.

Slow boil

Tadaaa! Tender chicken with salted kohlrabi and old cucumber

Soup of the day..slurp!

Images Baked Mandarin Orange Chicken with Buttered Potatoes and Apples

Baked Mandarin Orange Chicken with Buttered Potatoes and Apples

Distributing mandarin oranges to friends and family during the Lunar New Year is an age-old practice for people with Chinese roots in my homeland. I received my fair share during the festive season. That said, this is a long overdue blog post, at least two months behind schedule!

Aaah..anyway, back to the oranges. I wish I could have eaten it all as is, peeled fresh and just out of the fridge, but there was more than this household could handle with two boxes in keeping. So, I did what I could to clear it off quicker - I decided to cook it. And this is really yummy stuff although it's a simple recipe! Then again, when it comes to food, I've rarely ever said yuck.

I didn't mess the flavour with too much seasoning. I felt the juice from the orange would be sufficient to pass for delicious and it did.

Ingredients:
- 2 chicken drumsticks
- 2 potatoes (sliced thin, not all the way through)
- 2 red apples (sliced)
- 2 medium red onions (quartered)
- 3 mandarin oranges (Peel skin off from the segments of two oranges. Squeeze the juice out from one)
- 1 tbsp salted butter (softened)
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Cooking oil

How-to:
1) Season chicken with a little bit of salt, pepper and some mandarin orange juice.

2) Place the chicken on a lightly oiled baking tray. Add onions, orange segments and the remainder of the orange juice to create the yummy gravy. Sprinkle on a wee bit of salt and pepper.

3) Spread butter onto apples and potatoes. Place in a separate baking tray (also lightly oiled).

4) Bake for about 45 minutes at 175C. Baking time differs. You're done once the chicken is cooked and the potatoes are tender.

I garnished mine with some chopped celery leaves.
 

In the oven - Chicken with mandarin oranges

Baked Chicken and Mandarin Oranges

Images Spaghetti Chicken (Simple Style)

I have a friend who had continued his tertiary education in Rome, Italy a few years ago. And I remembered every time when he comes back for his annual holidays and even in his emails, he would complained loudly about the food over in Rome - that's it's all pasta and pizza. As I'm a pasta lover, I told him, why don't we switch place - I don't mind having Italian's authentic pasta almost every day ... I sure won't complain ! ^_^

I never get bored with cooking and/or eating pasta. But I prefer to cook spaghetti over others as the members in my family are more receptive to it - maybe it resembles my very own Asian yellow noodles :)

Anyway, this home-made Spaghetti Chicken is quite straightforward. I use tomato sauce and tomato puree together instead of making a tomato concasse as my family members aren't really receptive to pure tangy tomato flavour - or else, no one will eat it. :)

Ingredients :

Sauce 

- 3 pieces of medium-size drumstick (without skin, de-bone and cut into smaller pieces)

- Tomato Sauce (about half a 500gm bottle)

- Tomato Puree (one and a half standard can)
- 1 carrot (big size)

- 1 or 2 fresh tomatoes 

- 2 medium size onions

- a few cloves of garlic (chopped)

- a few teaspoons of sugar - according to taste (optional)

- cooking oil

Pasta

- 500g of spaghetti (serves about 4 persons)

- 2 teaspoons of sea-salt

- some butter

- Parmesan cheese (grated or shredded)

- a bit of cooking/olive oil (optional)

How-to:

1) Parboil tomatoes (with skin), then dice it (after taking out the skin & seeds)

2) Parboil carrots & onions (both with skin peeled off), also dice it. 

3) Heat up pan with cooking oil, put in the chopped garlic, stir it until near brown.

4) Put in immediately the chicken drumstick pieces, stir-fry it until near cooked.

5) Add in the parboiled carrots, onions and tomato, continue stir-frying under medium heat. 

6) When the chicken meat is cooked, time to add in the tomato puree and tomato sauce.

7) Stir evenly until all ingredients are covered in the sauce, add in sugar.

8) Add some water if you need to create more gravy for your pasta, bring it to boil. 

9) On another stove, bring to boil a pot of water that is big enough to submerge the pasta. 

10) Add in the salt, then slowly dip in the uncooked spaghetti.

11) Add in a little cooking oil if you like, stirring the pasta occasionally thru out the cooking.

12) Let it boil until 10 to 20 mins, depending on whether you like it al-dente (firm) or soft.

13) Drain the pasta, and toss it in a bowl, mix/toss some butter into the cooked pasta.

14) Serve a portion of the spaghetti on a plate, add in the sauce & sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on it.

Options:

- If you can take the acidic/tangy tomato taste in the sauce, you can leave out the sugar or/and you can even add more of the tomato sauce.

- If you like 'firm bites' of onions, you can leave out the parboiling process.

- After adding water into the sauce, if you like, you may add a bit of corn flour to thicken the consistency of the sauce.

- You may not need to add in oil while cooking pasta, but for me I still think it does help in preventing the pasta from sticking together in a clump, plus I like that it glistens the texture of the pasta.

- Instead of Parmesan, you can use Mozarella ... but it wouldn't have the same pungent taste and aroma - which I favour. ^^ 

Images Tomato Chicken Curry

Tomato Chicken Curry with Finger-licking Tender Potatoes

It's chicken curry day! Cooking curry is usually reserved for Sundays in my family. This is because of the amount of work involved. Mom's a firm believer of the "pound with pestle and mortar" method. She's been pounding chilies, onions and garlic for years! I prefer the electric blender ....shhHhh..

This is my version of yummy Tomato Chicken Curry. It's been sometime since I last cooked tomato curry. I've forgotten what really goes into it so I've come out with this new version, which is not bad either - an aromatic, tomato rich flavoured dish which does not come with an overpowering taste of curry powder.

I am someone who loves curry but I don't quite fancy curries with that powdery taste so I tend to cut down on the powder or add on other ingredients to balance things out.

Anyway, this is the recipe. Quite a number of ingredients in there but very easy to cook and well worth the effort. 

Ingredients:
- Half chicken (cut into small pieces)
- 4 medium tomatoes (quartered)
- 1 large potato (cubed)
- 4 cloves garlic (roughly cut)
- 1 large onion (roughly cut)
- Pinch of ginger
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp meat curry powder
- 1 tbsp blended fresh chili
- 1 tbsp tomato puree
- 2 tbsp cooking cream (or more)
- 2 one-inch cinnamon sticks
- 2 star anise
- 2 cardamom pods
- 1 tsp light sweet-saltish soy sauce (optional)
- ¼ tsp dark soy sauce (optional)
- 2-3 tbsp cooking oil 
- Salt to taste
- Water

How-to:
1) Blend onion, garlic and ginger together (with a bit of water if necessary), into a rough paste. Set aside.

2) Mix coriander and curry powder with a bit of water, into a wet paste. Set aside.

3) Heat cooking oil in pot. Pour in garlic, onion and ginger paste. Add cinnamon sticks, star anise and cardamom pods. Fry until fragrant.

4) Add curry powder and coriander paste. Mix well, then add tomato puree, fresh chilli, tomatoes, potato and chicken. Stir until all the ingredients are coated. Add water, just enough to cover the chicken. Cook covered until chicken and potatoes are tender to your liking. (Don't be afraid to add more water if you want more curry gravy.)

5) Season with salt, and soy sauce (optional). Lower the heat and stir in cooking cream. Mix well and that's it. Serve garnished with chopped spring onions if you like.

Tomato Chicken Curry..Perfect with Breads and Rice

Images Spicy Apple Chicken

Spicy Apple Chicken with Snow Peas

An apple a day keeps the Doctor away, so they say. I think it's just one of mom's tricks to get us to eat our fruits .. seriously.

This is a really simple recipe, something I made the other day because I had one red apple left in the house and I wanted it gone before it starts to get all dry and wrinkly.

It's mildly sweet and spicy all in - not strongly flavoured. Check out the recipe below.

Ingredients:
- 2 chicken leg quarters (marinated with salt and 1 tsp meat curry powder)
- 1 red apple (roughly chopped)
- 1 clove garlic (roughly chopped)
- 1 medium onion (roughly chopped)
- 1½ tsp blended fresh red chili
- A pinch of dried rosemary
- A pinch of salt and pepper

How-to:
1) Bake chicken in a preheated oven (180c, approx. 45 minutes for me). Save the chicken juice.
 
2) For the sauce, blend apple, garlic and onion together (with a little water to get things moving), until fine.

3) Heat chicken juices in pan with the blended ingredients, rosemary and chili. Season with salt and pepper. Stir until the sauce is slightly thickened.

4) Coat baked chicken in the apple sauce. Serve with vegetables of your choice.

Baked Curry Chicken

Plate the Chilied Apple Chicken

Spicy Apple Chicken Garnished with Coriander

Images Mango Chicken

This is probably the yummiest dish I've ever made and I say this only because it is hard for me to resist the charm of the mango. Don't you just love 'em? I can understand people avoiding the Durian or Tarap but I'm pretty sure the mango is welcome in most homes!

When cooking with mangoes, I opt for simplicity. The mango provides a natural flavour that is so delicious that I try not to mess it up with too much seasoning. A pinch of salt and pepper is as far as I go.

Here's how I did this.

Ingredients:
- 2 chicken leg quarters
- 1 large sweet mango (diced, seeded)
- 3 cloves garlic (chopped)
- ½ tsp meat curry powder
- 1 bunch asparagus (about 20-30 spears)
- 1 tbsp cooking oil
- Salt and pepper

How-to:
1) Marinate chicken with curry powder, salt and pepper. Bake at 180c for 45 minutes in the oven. Do not throw the chicken juice away.

2) Stir-fry asparagus in cooking oil with a bit of garlic and a pinch of salt. Leave aside.

3) To make the mango sauce - Pour chicken juice into pan. Stir-fry that with the remainder of the garlic. Add the mango. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook until the mango is slightly tender and starts to look like gravy.

4) Finally, assemble cooked asparagus on a plate. Lay the chicken on top and pour the gravy over. Voila!

Baked curried chicken

Assemble on plate - first asparagus, then the chicken, finally the sauce

Diced mango

Chicken juice, garlic and mango - the gravy

Images Fish Maw Soup

Fish maw, otherwise known as dried swim bladders, is perfect in stews, soups or braised. It is good with wet dishes largely because it easily absorbs flavour from other ingredients it is cooked with. On its own, it is tasteless.

It is said that fish maw is rich in collagen but whether this is scientifically proven is beyond me. The ones I use for cooking are, after all, dried products.

Fish Maw Soup - Garnished with Spring Onion

Fish Maw Soup happens to be a household favourite, a potful easily gulped away in one dinner sitting! I usually cook this with a lot of pepper. It gives this simple dish a lot of punch.

Here's the recipe, if you're keen to try.

Ingredients:
- 2 cloves garlic (chopped)
- 70g / a small bowl of spongy fish maw
(Pre-soaked in water an hour or two until spongy. Rinse away as much oil as you can and then, slice into pieces)
- 200g chicken bone parts (I opted for chicken feet and neck)
- A handful of sliced cabbage
- 1.5L water
- Salt and pepper to taste (Optional: a pinch of chicken stock granules)

How-to:
1) Boil all the ingredients together, until the cabbages are really limp and soft.

2) Season to taste with salt, but be generous with the pepper (optional- a pinch of chicken stock granules). It is fine if you don't want it too peppery, but as we Malaysians say it, "No kick-lah" (No oomph!).

The four ingredients

All in the pot

Peppery Fish Maw Soup - Yummy!

Images Turmeric Roast Chicken

Not overthinking things opens opportunities for creativity. Coming up with new recipes is about exploring beyond our comfort zone. Sometimes it turns out extremely well, sometimes it's just so-so but at the end of the day, it still boils down to personal taste.

Perhaps it was the sun that inspired me that day but there was this great desire to roast chicken with a deep yellow colour. The only ingredient I could think of to achieve this goal was "turmeric". Ooo..nothing else? Yellow curry powder, perhaps!

I went with turmeric and so was born my version of Turmeric Roast Chicken ♥

Mmm..mmm..it does look good! Tastes just okay being mildly spicy and sweet-saltish like but not quite what I had in "mind". I had imagined a more robust flavour so I guess I'll be playing around with how I season this the next time I attempt this recipe.

Turmeric Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Onions at the sides

Ingredients:
For the paste : 1½ tsp turmeric powder, 2 medium onions and 2 garlic cloves roughly chopped, bit ginger, 2 red chillies (seeded)  - blend all together with just enough water into a medium thick paste.

For the seasoning, this would be up to you because I'm still working on it. I've got salt, sour plum juice mixed into the paste and then, a bit of honey which I brushed on at the end of baking time.

How-to:
1) Place the chicken, whole, onto a baking tray. Rub some of the paste all over the chicken.

2) Pour the remainder of the paste onto the chicken and bake this in a pre-heated oven at 190C for 1-2hours (depending on the size of the chicken).

The chicken was basted a couple of times in between because I was excited about keeping the colour intact.

I also brushed some honey onto the chicken in the last 5-10 minutes of baking time, keeping close watch to ensure it doesn't burn. I know what honey does! I could not resist doing this because I really wanted a little "sweet" to top it off.

Turmeric Roast Chicken - In progress

Well, that's that. It's back to the drawing board for me. Happy experimenting!

Images Foil-Baked Herbal Chicken

Oh noooOoo.. there goes my decade-old crockpot! It tore at the rim just as I placed the heavy clay pot onto the heating base *sad*.

I was going to slow cook a herbal chicken dish for dinner but ended up using the oven, going the foil-wrap way. The meal turned out oh-so-yummy but then again, my lack of fussiness is surely a bane to food critiquing and any real assessment taste-wise. I have the genes of a regular mom (although I'm not one myself) when it comes to food and wastage.

This is my version of Foil-Baked Herbal Chicken. It's simple to prepare - just involves throwing everything together and leaving it to cook. The end result is tender chicken in a rich flavoured sweetish soup gravy.

Foil-Baked Herbal Chicken

Ingredients:
- 4 chicken thigh pieces
- 2 large red dates (seeded and halved)
- 2 medium onions (quartered)
- A handful of solomon seal rhizome (yu zhu, pre-soaked an hour)
- A handful of fresh coriander (roughly cut)
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce stirred in 1-1½ cup water (largely depends on baking tray size)
- Pinch of salt and pepper

How-to:
1. Rub a little salt and pepper on the chicken pieces.

2. Line the inside of the baking dish with foil. Spread chicken pieces, dates, onions, yu zhu on top. Pour diluted oyster sauce in at the sides (Add more water/sauce if you want more gravy).

3. Cover the top of the tray with foil, make it air-tight (to steam the chicken). Bake at 180C in a pre-heated oven for just about an hour. Leave to rest for another 15 minutes before opening the cover (Be careful - hot steam will gush out.)

4. Garnish with coriander and serve.