Category: Sides

Seafood, Sides

Salmon Croquettes

7shasha7

Yesterday for lunch, I made salmon (pronounced sae-men) croquettes (kro-cats) “,)

I think in an earlier post I mentioned about begedil – ubiquitous delicious potato minced meat patties. I had a pack of frozen salmon meat which I had no idea what to do with except to make croquettes when I first spied them at Fassler. So yesterday, croquettes it was. However, when I finally opened the pack and took the meat out, I realised I could use it in a million other way. OK, more than just croquettes then.

After making them, they did look beautiful so I decided to make a little sauce. Without following any recipes, I decided to be like one of the Chopped contestants (my favourite show on telly). I blackened my one and only vegetable in the fridge(yellow capsicum) and then took off the skin and sliced them. Throw them into the blender, added some leftover sunflower seeds (from the vegetable salad pack), a wee bit of balsamic, olive oil and salt. The colour turned out brilliant! The taste, a bit salty/vinegary … not a lot of pepper flavour came out. But it taught me a lesson: anything can be blended and made into a sauce!

Cook salmon meat in olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic.
Boil and mash up russet potatoes (5 in the bag) and season with salt, pepper, a bit of olive oil. Stir in the salmon.
Form the potato mixture into a ball and then a pat into a patty. DIp in egg and coat with panko breadcrumbs and then fry in shallow oill. Make sure its shallow. Too much oil and it wont work at all!
Serve plain or with some sauce.
Asian Dishes, Malay, Sides, Singapore

Begedil (Potato Patties)

7shasha7

Who can claim to be a Singaporean but not like begedil? Scoffs at anyone who doesn’t like them. What is not to like? Meat? Check. Potatoes? Check. Egg? Check. Oh, no offence to vegetarians. Hmmm…

Certainly with this kind of recipes, there are many variations. Today, mine was super easy. Fried potatoes whizzed. Minced meat, fried. Add them together with some breadcrumbs (as the mixture was too soft) coat them with beaten egg before frying and voila!

A few years ago I made begedil from scratch. That is to say, I fried the potatoes and then, instead of whizzing them in the blender I used a pestle and mortar and pounded them till mashed but too too fine (like you would in a blender). Added in some fried onions, finely diced Chinese celery leaves, white pepper and minced meat. It was a labour of love for a loved one. Now, after two kids, I think the blender version would do.

Also, you could boil the potatoes instead of frying them. Basically, you can do whatever you want to them as long as you dip them in egg before you fry and they look like small little flat discs.

Cakes and Cookies, Desserts, Sides

Cream Cheese Centred Herb Muffins

7shasha7

Now, this is a recipe I created. It’s not yet perfect (still sweet for my liking). I wanted to bake muffins and I wanted cream cheese. So I thought, why not do like what those people at Mr Bean do? You know, those circular pancakes with cheese or other filling inside? Tokiwado, I call them.

It’s easy to make muffins when you set everything up neatly.

Using Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Chocolate Muffin recipe as a base, I started improvising. And then, these were the results:

I added some batter, and a triangle of cream cheese (Laughing Cow)
Top it up with some more batter.
Bake till golden and fluffy.
Eat warm so that the cheese is nice and melting.

I still think the batter is sweet; I wonder if I can completely omit the sugar. I will try this again. For now, it’s wonderful enough. If you want to make these, try using 1/4 cup sugar instead of my 1/2 cup.

Shasha’s Cream Cheese Centred Herb Muffin

Dry

1. 1 3/4 cup plain flour

2. 2tsp baking powder

3. 1/2 tsp baking soda

4. 1/2 cup sugar (use 1/4 cup instead)

5. 2 tsp dried herbs (I used Provence Herbs)

Wet

1. 3/4 cup and 2 tsp olive oil

2. 1 cup milk

3. 1 egg

Cream Cheese triangles for the centre. Enjoy! 😀

Salads and Vegetables, Sides

Popcorn

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Why buy popcorn when you can make tubs and tubs of it very cheaply at home? I didn’t even know that you can make your own popcorn till I was about 11 or 12. I was visiting my cousin and she taught me how to make popcorn. Then, I taught my friend at her home (I think I brought over some I had made at home) and until today, her mother remembers me for the popcorn.

I use this brand now to make popcorn. It comes in a resealable bag and it keeps for a very long time. It can be popped ‘white’ or ‘yellow’ – I bought the ‘white’ ones.

You can easily get this at Cold Storage.

The best part of making your own popcorn is that you can experiment with as many flavours as you want. I’ve been watching the Food Network and in America they are really big on Kettle Corn. You can flavour your popcorn savoury or sweet or even the bizarre (I had bubblegum flavoured popcorn once).

These are some of the flavours I’ve tried:

Caramel

Put popped corns aside. In the saucepan, heat some sugar till caramelised and then pour over popped kernels till coated well. Before that, you may want to add a bit of melted butter over too. My children love this.

Plain Cinnamon

Just sprinkle lots and lots of powdered cinnamon over the popcorn. Very healthy and good for your health. Don’t add melted butter.

Herbs and Salt

This is French-style. Sprinkle sea salt over and Herbs de Provence. Shake well to coat and serve.

Butter and Salt

Melt lots of butter. Sprinkle over popcorn and then sprinkle salt. Very salty, buttery popcorn. Mmmm…

I’m going to try out other flavours when I can. 🙂

Malay, Meat, Sides, Singapore

Singaporean-style Samosas

7shasha7

I love samosas and I only know how to eat this version. Then when I was in my very late teens, I realised that when you order samosas in an Indian restaurant or hawker, it does not come in the manner I was used to. The real, actual samosas are not made from egg roll pastry, but from real dough/flour! Duh. And they were so hearty and delicious and I suspect healthier?

Anyway, I like the usual local version of samosas too. The Arabic version uses only minced meat. I wanted to learn to make samosas – the folding part- from The Helper, but decided that going to the mall was much more pressing. Ahem.

But I was in time to see her do the folding. The filling is easy. Minced meat fried in onions (in my case, pulverised to itsy bitsy bits that The Hubby’s naked eyes cannot detect), garlic, powdered cumin and fennel. Some people like to add green chillies (most encouraged, just that I didn’t have any today) and a small potato finely diced. You can add mint leaves or coriander leaves too. Don’t forget to season.

More minced meat to potatoes please. Let filling cool.

She makes it look so easy! She finished making one in like ten seconds. And she fried 8, the rest I told her to keep in the freezer but guess what? I didn’t even get to taste one. They all got walloped by The Hubby and The Girl. The ones in the freezer are mine!