Salads and Vegetables, Sides

Creamed cottage cheese potatoes

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I invented this dish. Hee hee. I believe I’m the only one, or very few in the world, who has thought of combining cottage cheese into pulverised potatoes. It tastes delicious too. The Little Girl loves it. I love the food processor for being able to process the potatoes to a smooth, creamy, baby food like consistency.

Recipe

1. Boil two large potatoes.

2. In a food processor, dump potatoes in. Add half a packet of cottage cheese, a little bit of olive oil, salt, lots of black pepper and a half teaspoon or garlic paste.

3. Whizz, whizz, whizz.

The result?

Creamy, velvety potatoes fit to serve in any health-conscious restaurant. Or not. Mmmmm….even The Little Man loved it and ate a bowl.

So much for my diet.

Poultry

Oven Baked Fried Chicken

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I have been very very good the past three weeks as I’ve not eaten anything really deep-fried. But I miss fried chicken. I scoured the net for oven baked fried chicken and came across several. I decided to follow some bits here and there from what I’ve read and watched and decided to do it my way. My way turned out pretty good although, sigh, here it comes…bland. Again, not enough SALT on the meat. The coating etc was fine, but when you bite into the white flesh, you knowinstantaneously that it needs SALT. Anyway, since many of us Asians love to eat our chicken with chilli sauce, it wasn’t bad at all.

Recipe

1. In a flat dish, beat one egg and season with salt and paprika.

2. In another flat dish, add crushed cornflakes. Make sure they’re pretty fine but not powdery. Have a bit of crunch. Season with lots of herbs provence (mixture of dried herbs) and salt and black pepper.

3. Take a piece of chicken (skin removed) and dip in the egg mixture. After that, coat in the cornflake mixture and then place in the roasting tray lined with non-stick baking paper.

4. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes, turning them at the halfway mark.

5. Serve with salad, mashed potatoes etc.

Crushed cornflakes. You can season any way you like.

 

Chicken ready to go into the oven.

 

Crispy crispy 'fried' chicken.

 

The next time I make this, I’ll soak in buttermilk overnight first. It really does make the chicken white, softer and juicier.

Try making this healthier option when you can. 😀

Poultry

Chicken Piccata

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The other dish we made in our mother and child cooking class was chicken piccata. This one, the kids all loved it! The Little Girl couldn’t wait to try it. Furthermore, it’s really a wonderful dish to make with children and I’m sure young teens will be able to handle this too.

All you have to do is get some boneless chicken thighs or breasts or whatever parts you like and coat them in plain flour.

Dip them in the egg mixture which is made up of three eggs, some parmesan cheese and a handful of chopped parsley.

Fry the chicken till they are done. Serve.

The use of parmesan cheese was indeed interesting. The Chef said it’s also lovely with fish fillet. Frankly, it was a bit too eggy for me, the smell of it turned me off. But once cooked and properly drained and cut into pieces, it tasted rather nice. I’m trying to find a way to modify this dish without frying or even using any eggs for that matter. But The Little Girl loved it so I suppose one day, I’ll have to make this dish again with her at home.

Salads and Vegetables, Sauces and Sambals

Italian Tomato Sauce

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On the last week of term, some chef came to the school to conduct a cooking workshop for teachers and their children. It sounded interesting so I signed up for the course even though it would end at half past eight. The menu for the day was …

The other was chicken piccata which I’ll post. What interested me most was the tomato sauce. It really was delicious. The spaghetti dish itself was so-so. He used Italian canned tomatoes, olive oil, very finely chopped carrots, onions, cabbage I think? And loads and loads of garlic. The result was really good and he said we could use this to serve with breaded calamaris. Mmmmm..that got me even excited. Such a simple recipe yet I was too lazy to make my own tomato sauce, preferring to buy bottled or ready canned ones instead. 

Sausages (it was supposed to be turkey breast. hmph), zuchinni, chicken thigh
Pour two cans of Italian peeled tomatoes and mash with a fork till, well, mashed.
In a rather large saucepan, add in a lot of olive oil. Add finely minced garlic and fry till golden brown. Add in very finely chopped vegetables and fry till fragrant. Pour in the tomatoes and cook for a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper. At this stage, you can season with any Italian herbs you want or throw in a bay leaf etc.

The sauce was the bomb. Then, we had to cook that spaghetti dish. Simply boil spaghetti, add them into the fried sausages and zucchini and then pour about half of the tomato sauce in. I didn’t like the dish. It tasted insipid. Bleah. But the rest of the teachers were so famished (it was half past eight before we could eat our dinner!) that I didn’t get a chance to ask what they thought of the dish. However, you’ve got to try the sauce. And serve it with fried calamari or mushrooms! Yums!

Salads and Vegetables

Meslun Salad with Feta

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I am very happy because I can get relatively cheaper meslun salad at the market now. 🙂 For a salad this light, it does not need a dressing. I simply crumbled some feta cheese, added in cherry tomatoes and drizzled a very light olive oil over. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice. Sprinkle some freshly ground black pepper. So deliciously light and healthy.