Bread and Batter – Page 8 – The Occasional Cook

Asian Dishes, Bread and Batter, Poultry, Sides

Smoked Duck Crepes

November 7, 2011November 7, 2011 7shasha7

I made this for breakfast for the girls the other day. I used ready made crepe. I spread Hoisin sauce over the crepe, but then afterwards I realised that I should have used plum sauce. I did have plum sauce in the fridge. I love this.

IMG02312-20111027-0554 — On top of the smoke duck, I added chopped lettuce and carrots, and strips of Japanese cucumbers.

IMG02313-20111027-0611 — Delicious crepes.

Bread and Batter, Meat, Western

Cheeseburger

October 22, 2011March 3, 2021 7shasha7

I just had this two minutes ago. Yummy. And cheap. If you think about it, one packet of ground beef costs about $5 plus a packet of burger buns (four inside) costs about $2. Cheese is what? A few cents. Let’s say everything is about $8 and you can make about 5 patties; why, that’s about $2 per burger! And, you get a super thick burger meat for that instead of that paper thin burger meat they try to pass off at fast food outlets.

I’ve watched Diners Drive-Ins and Dives plenty of times and one thing I noticed is that the diners in America only season their meat with salt and pepper. Nothing more. It’s the other extra stuff that makes a burger good.

So this is what I made for our family dinner:

IMG02292-20111022-1802 — Season with salt and pepper and form thick patties. Use this kind of spatula to flip your burgers. Any thicker and chances are you will break the patty. This is patty no. 5. So if you make smaller patties, you can make more burgers!

IMG02293-20111022-1802 — Oil a griller pan (I used olive oil) and cook the patties. Don't overcook. Once the bottom of one side has browned, flip over and continue cooking till required doneness.

IMG02295-20111022-1803 — Once you are almost ready to take the patty out, slap on a good quality cheese. Or any cheese for that matter. I used smoked cheese.

IMG02294-20111022-1802 — While the patty is still cooking away, slather some mayo and any condiment onto bread. I used this chilli chutney. It turned out to be deliciously sweet. A great ingredient for meat.

IMG02296-20111022-1806 — Eat it while it's hot! Of course you can add whatever toppings like lettuce, tomatoes, onions, etc etc but for today, I just wanted a simple juicy cheeseburger. And juicy it was!

Bread and Batter, Desserts

Cinnamon French Toast with Strawberry Sauce

October 16, 2011October 16, 2011 7shasha7

I’ve been making breakfast for two or three colleagues nowadays. Last Friday, I decided to make French toast. This time round, I wanted to make it the real Western way. Well, almost. The real way to make French toast is to make a custard out of eggs, cream, sugar and seasoning. The Singaporean way, and the way I’ve been making for years, is just to use beaten egg. I believe I had an earlier post on cinnamon french toast. Anyway, as I didn’t have cream, I used Carnation milk instead. And then, because I had a boxful of strawberries, I decided to make strawberry sauce.

IMG02259-20111014-0523 — Four eggs, carnation milk, one vanilla bean, cinnamon, sugar.

IMG02260-20111014-0525 — I fried purely in butter and I used wholemeal bread,.

IMG02256-20111013-2036 — Sliced strawberries, with sugar and 1 tsp of lemon juice. Boil till it becomes syrupy. Chill in the fridge.

IMG02261-20111014-0545 — I cut the bread into half, and when cooled dust powdered sugar on top, a quarter teaspoon of honey and put the strawberry sauce on the side with a few mint leaves.

Bread and Batter, Cakes and Cookies

Buttermilk Biscuits

June 26, 2011 7shasha7

From the same page I got my Buttermilk Fried Chicken, I made these fabulous biscuits this morning. It’s my first time ever making biscuits and I was disappointed with the result because I obviously didn’t understand what “roll to 2 1/2″ thick”. I’m horribly bad at Math and if I had understood what that meant, I would know that 1 inch is about 2.5 cm and hence 2.5 inches would be slightly more than 5 cm. Well.

The result was a tasty flavourful biscuit (what with the butter and buttermilk in it) but it looks flat. I served these with Buttermilk Fried Chicken for today’s lunch.For added flavour, I ate the biscuits with margarine.

Recipe

1. 2 cups plain flour

2. 2 tsp baking powder

3. 1/2 tsp baking soda

4. 1 tsp salt

5. 1/4 cup shortening (I used butter)

6. 3/4 cup buttermilk

In a dry bowl, stir to mix all the dry ingredients. Add the butter and rub it in till it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Pour in the buttermilk and lightly knead to a dough. Flour the work surface and roll dough out to 2.5 inches thick (do the Math please) and cut using round cutters. I had The Little Girl to do this, and she did a mighty fine job, cutting rounds till there was no more dough left to cut. She rolled and cut the leftover dough three times. Wonderful. Oh, and then bake in the hot oven till golden and cooked in the centre.

IMG01859-20110626-1107 — Notice that incomplete round dough? That was when The Little Girl cut too close to an earlier round. But I used that as the tester biscuit to check the doneness.

Bread and Batter

Fruity French Toast

June 8, 2011 7shasha7

Instead of using regular sliced bread, I used Gardenia’s oatmeal loaf (already pre-sliced) and then grilled bananas and sprinkled cranberries and walnuts and then drizzled Manuka honey over.