The Occasional Cook

Buttermilk Fried Chicken

August 23, 2020November 24, 2020 7shasha7

I love fried chicken. The Malay kind, the Korean kind, the US kind, the Japanese kind… I can’t imagine a country without their own fried chicken version!

Today, instead of spending lots of money ordering KFC or Texas Fried Chicken in, I decided to make my own for the family.

It starts with marinating the chicken in buttermilk for a couple of hours in the fridge. Before that, add salt to the chicken and then marinade. I’ve tried not adding salt to the chicken before and only to the flour mixture and I must say, the chicken came out pretty bland.

After that, coat the pieces in seasoned flour. Here, I use my own recipe based on the kind of spices that I like.

In this tray, I’ve added two cups of plain all purpose flour, two tablespoons of corn flour, two tablespoons of smoked sweet paprika, two teaspoons of garlic powder, two teaspoons of salt and a few rounds of freshly ground black pepper.

Remove marinated chicken and place them in
another tray. Here, I have one whole chicken cut up and six pieces of tender inner fillets.

For the broccoli slaw, I’ve cut up into small florets 1 small head of broccoli and one carrot, thinly sliced. To it I added, 1 small tub (200g) of Greek yogurt, one tablespoon of Japanese kewpie mayonnaise, one tablespoon of cider vinegar, some sea salt and black pepper mixture. Mix well and refrigerate.

And that’s all there is to it! Fry the chicken till done by mixing them to the flour mixture, serve with the slaw and mashed potatoes. I made a simple mash by boiling and ricing russet potatoes, adding salt, milk, butter and pepper. Top with mushroom soup as a sauce (I always have ready made frozen soup in the freezer.)

Here’s a video I made trying to capture the entire lunch process in less than 30s. Enjoy!

Asian Dishes, breakfast, Singapore

Singapore Style Breakfast

August 23, 2020March 3, 2021 7shasha7

The teenage girl wanted to eat soft boiled eggs with kaya toast. I’ve posted a few times, mostly not what I made, but in my opinion one of the best kaya toast eateries in Singapore here.

I got only two eggs right out of 6. It’s not easy to make soft boiled eggs because 1. You’ve really got to get the temperature and timing perfect 2. The quality of eggs plays a part too

So I had the first two eggs right but the last four were way undercooked. And so I realised what the problem was. I’ve placed too many eggs in my basket! Or in this case, my pot.

But in the end, it all turned out fine and the girl was happy with her breakfast before her Chemistry tutor arrived for her lesson.

I’ve also started making videos so enjoy the video I’ve made for this post! ☺️

You can also follow me on Instagram at @shasha_cooks

Cakes and Cookies, Desserts

Lemon Loaf

August 15, 2020 7shasha7

I’ve been wanting to make this for a long time and today is finally the day.

For the lemon loaf today, I followed this recipe

I followed the recipe faithfully EXCEPT for the lemon extract. While the author recommended NOT to use lemon juice, I went ahead and used lemon juice and I think it makes little difference. Perhaps extract will have a more robust lemony flavour but lemon juice works just as well. My substitute was 3 tbsp of lemon juice.

Now, I wished I had lined the loaf tin instead of following the author in just greasing and flouring the tin well. I did, but half the bottom of the cake still stuck to the pan! My heart bled lemon juice seeing that. Sigh. Next time, line the tin with parchment paper, girl, I say to myself sourly.

First step: in a bowl add 3 large eggs, one cup of sour cream (I used a tin of 200g), and 1 cup of caster sugar. Whisk well till combined.

Once combined, drizzle in 1 cup of vegetable oil. I used sunflower. Add 3 tbsp of the lemon juice, and 2 tsp of lemon zest. And then add in the dry ingredients: 1.5 cups of plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp salt. Mix to combine but don’t overmix. You will see lumps but according to the author. Don’t over mix and try to smoothen it out.

Pour into greased and floured loaf tin, I really
recommend lining the bottom with parchment paper. Please don’t make the same mistake I did.

Bake in a 175 degree Celcius oven till cooked. It
should be nicely browned and a skewer comes out clean when inserted in the centre of the cake.

Transfer to a cooling rack with a pan at the bottom. Drizzle with the glaze. You should wait till it’s completely cooled but I couldn’t wait. It was fine. The glaze uplifted the cake because it’s made with 1 cup confectioner’s sugar with 3 tbsp lemon juice.

Look at how moist it is. And very lemony!

Try following this recipe for a wonderful weekend treat! 🍋🍋🍋

Cakes and Cookies, Desserts, Western

Victoria Sponge Sandwich

August 10, 2020March 3, 2021 7shasha7

To celebrate the nation’s 55th birthday, I decided to make this red and white cake. It’s meaningful actually. It’s symbolic of the historical ties we had with the UK and it was also the first cake I learnt to bake! I was only a Sec 1 13 year old girl then, and they made us do this for our Home Econs practical test. I still remember this so vividly. I was so scared of the gas oven back then, and made my partner turn it on most times. For the exam, I remember asking my mom for a dollar so I could get a purple orchid to decorate my piece. I put my purple orchid in a small vase on the tray. I never knew how much I got but I will never forget baking this cake for the exam. 😂

And now decades later, I’m baking this again. I don’t have my Sec 1 Home Econs book anymore so I scoured the net and settled on Mary Berry’s recipe. How very British. 😄

However, after this was done, I must say this recipe is really good! The cake was very moist and very soft! I couldn’t bake it as long as suggested because mine was done ten minutes earlier. But the result was perfection! Another trick I got was to buy one of those cake liners with handles! I reckon I’ll be baking now more because of these liners I got from Amazon. They were amazing and come in various sizes. You can get them here: Cake Liners

Look how they fit so perfectly! This is the best thing I ever thought of buying!

The batter is so easy peasy! Just cream butter with sugar and then the eggs and flour. Oh, I did tweak a bit by adding a teaspoon of vanilla. I wonder why vanilla was not in the recipe.

After that, I inverted one cake and placed it on a plate. Then I added whipped cream first then the strawberry jam (because of the national flag). And then put the second cake on and dusted powder sugar all over.

That beautiful plate? I got it from a UK seller on Etsy. So pretty, don’t you think?

Check out that lava filling! Now, one would think I was overzealous and slathered too much. And maybe I did but believe it or not, when we started eating, we wanted more cream and jam! 😂 There’s never a thing as too much.

I really recommend Mary Berry’s Recipe. And to my country, Majulah Singapura! 🇸🇬

Desserts

Apple Crumble

August 9, 2020 7shasha7

So yesterday was the niece’s first birthday and in small groups of 5, we went to visit her. I thought I’d bring a dessert. She’d probably have birthday cake, so why make another cake, right? So I searched for desserts and came across apple crumble!

And this recipe is so lovely that the family loved it. The thing about Apple crumble is that it really isn’t the prettiest to look at. But it sure tasted awesome! I used Fuji apples (because that’s why I had in the fridge), and cashewnuts/hazelnuts mix (because I didn’t have pecans in my pantry).