Wednesday 31 July 2013

Enoki Mushroom Wrapped Beef

So far, a lot of the recipes we've posted have been heavily influenced by North American cooking styles. And so we thought... why not post something Asian inspired? We are Asian after all! Now don't get us wrong, although we post a lot of North American inspired recipes, we love our Asian food! The thing that's difficult with Asian cooking is that... there are no recipes. We usually never have recipes for anything we cook! The beauty about Asian cooking is that there are never any exact measurements or steps for anything... the only requirement to be good at Asian cooking is that you have working tastebuds. The one principle to remember about Asian cooking: taste and adjust everything along the way. That being said, it's a little harder for us to post some of our more Asian inspired dishes... because we never have recipes for them. But this time around, we made sure to note everything down as well as exact measurements for our fellow readers out there that are new to some Asian flavors! This enoki wrapped beef, is great as an appetizer or side. We wouldn't recommend serving it as a main entree because it really isn't all that filling, unless you have a plate of fried rice or noodles to go along with it.

Ingredients:
Enoki mushrooms
1-2 packs of thinly sliced sukiyaki beef
Cornstarch and water mixture

Glaze:
3 TBSP oyster sauce
2 TBSP mirin (sweet Japanese rice wine)
1 TSP soy sauce
3 TBSP water

DISCLAIMER: Shop at your local Asian grocery store for these ingredients. We made the mistake of going to a regular grocery store, and found almost nothing.

A couple of things about the ingredients... how much enoki you buy, will depend on how many of these you want to make. The ingredients for the sauce, will be enough for about 15-20 of the wraps. We ended up making about 15 of them. Another note about the beef, is really you can use any beef you want to. We chose to use the ready sliced, thin sukiyaki beef to save us the extra work of having to pound out and slice some meat. What's great about the ready to cook sukiyaki beef is that it is already thinly sliced, and the perfect size to wrap around your enoki. If you can't find the sukiyaki beef at your local Asian grocery, we recommend sirloin. Just pound and tenderize them out so they become thinner, and slice to the appropriate sizes.

Procedure:
  1. Wash your enoki and trim off the edges.
  2. Mix some cornstarch and water together to make a little paste. Make sure that it is not too runny.
  3. Grab a bunch of the enoki, and wrap a slice of the beef around it using the cornstarch water mixture as a glue to seal the beef around the enoki. (Note: the enoki will shrink once cooked, therefore wrap the beef as tight as possible).
    Enoki Wrapped Beef before searing and cooking
  4. Heat up some oil in a non-stick skillet, and place your enoki wrapped beef in the pan.
  5. Rotate the wraps until all sides of the beef have been seared.
  6. Once the beef has been seared, pour your glaze mixture in and simmer the wraps until the mushrooms are soft (about 3-5 minutes). (Note: if your pan is not big enough to fit all of your wraps, you might want to save half the glaze mixture so you can do another batch)
    Adding the glaze
  7. Once the mushrooms are tender, remove the wraps and place on a serving tray. (Note: At this point, the mushrooms and beef should be fully glazed and flavored. You may or may not choose to pour the remaining sauce in the pan over the wraps - we did because the glaze is delicious)
Enoki Wrapped Beef ready to serve

Tuesday 23 July 2013

Supporting Local Causes: Aprons for Gloves Part 2 - Roasted Vegetable Lasagna

Last time we spoke of bruschetta with balsamic reduction to support our fundraising feast for Aprons for Gloves and the Restaurant Rumble, which by the way, is happening TODAY.

Part 2 of our fundraising feast for one of our dear friends and hopeful fighter (shout out to Aston!) involves making roasted vegetable lasagna from ALMOST scratch (yes, almost scratch because we didn't really make the noodles).

Here it goes!

Roasted Veggies:
  1. Squash: rub with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Place in 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes.
  2. Zucchini, red and yellow peppers: rub with salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Place in 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes
  3. Broccoli and spinach: blanche (2 minutes in boiling water then into an ice water bath)
Tomato sauce:
1/8 cup olive oil
1/2 cup green onion
1/4 cup garlic (minced)
1/4 cup onions
1/4-1/2 cup celery (sliced)
flat leaf parsley
2 BIG cans tomato (or fresh stewed ones)
Crushed bullion (2-3 cubes) and prepared as directed
1-2 tsp italian herbs like basil and oregano + salt and pepper to taste
  1. Heat oil in the pan and sautee garlic, onions until fragrant.
  2. Add celery, parsley and sautee for 1-2 minutes until translucent
  3. Add the tomatoes, stock, and herbs and simmer for 30 minutes. Make sure to stir every so often, and then add the seasoning.
Bechamel Sauce
5 tbsp butter
4 tbsp flour
4 cups milk
2 tsp salt
Dash of nutmeg

Procedure:
  1. Melt the butter and add flour in a saucepan over medium heat until the mixture is smooth. Bring milk to a boil and combine. Whisk until smooth and season with nutmeg (and maybe a little cheese)
Lasagna
500g mozzarella (we love cheese.)
300g parmesan (we love more cheese)
350g ricotta (all kinds of cheese)
300g emmental (we had some spare cheese to go with our cheese)
1-2 packs lasagna noodles (we used 2 boxes to fill 3 baking pans)

Procedure (and this is where we had fun):
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  2. Grate emmental, mozzarella in a large mixing bowl and set aside
  3. In a glass baking pan, layer ingredients as follows: tomato sauce-noodles-tomato sauce-ricotta cheese-roasted veggies-parmesan, emmental and mozzarella mixture. Repeat until pan is filled.
  4. Bake in the oven for 30-45 minutes, until mozzarella cheese on top begins to brown.

This is what it should look like once you're layering the ingredients
Browned cheese on top! 
Layers of cheesy and vegetable goodness in this somewhat "healthy" lasagna. Well, not really healthy, but we definitely had our share of vegetables! 
'Til next time!

Saturday 20 July 2013

Supporting local causes: Aprons for Gloves Part 1 - Bruschetta with Balsamic Reduction

Here is part 1 of a 2-post series adventure on our good deed this weekend. This weekend we're supporting Aprons for Gloves and their event called the Restaurant Rumble- where local restaurants fight to keep a boxing gym alive for the local Eastside Kids.

How? 

By throwing a fundraising feast for one of the hopeful fighters (and one of our dear friends). Proceeds went to fundraising his team, and we're hoping he gets to fight at the Restaurant Rumble (or at least we get to support the cause). 

We hosted a home cooked vegetarian friendly dinner, and charged everyone $20 (suggested donation). For an appetizer, we started out with some fresh bruschetta. Recipe below: 

Ingredients (serves 10-15):
2 French baguettes 
7-8 medium sized tomatoes 
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar (this varies depending on how much glaze is needed)
2.5 TBSP brown sugar
salt, pepper, olive oil, garlic powder, thyme, oregano
  1. Preheat the oven (suggested 350 celsius). Slice the baguettes into 1/2 inch slices, place in a baking pan and lightly brush with some olive oil. Place in the oven to toast for about 10-15 minutes or until the bread is crispy on top. 
  2. While the baguettes are toasting, dice all the tomatoes and place in a big bowl. Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, thyme and oregano to taste.
  3. Once the buns are nice and toasty, remove from the oven and place tomatoes on top of baguette slices.
  4. In a sauce pan, combine the balsamic vinegar and brown sugar in medium heat. (WARNING: do not. DO NOT stick your nose on top to smell the concoction. This can be painful... for your brain). Once the balsamic vinegar is brought to a boil, remove it from the heat and stir it continuously until it thickens into a syrup like consistency.
  5. Glaze the baguettes with the balsamic reduction QUICKLY. Balsamic reduction hardens once cool, we suggest washing the spoon and sauce pan ASAP or melting the mixture in hot water before washing. 

Mini Bruschetta Bites 

These bite-sized bruschetta appies were gone pretty fast! Stay tuned to see what's in store for the main course!

Thursday 18 July 2013

Summer Kebabs Recipe

Meat on a stick...enough said.

Seriously... who doesn't love meat on a stick?

Meat on a stick (aka: kebabs)
We thought it would be more interesting if we grilled something other than your usual BBQ fare like hotdogs or burgers. We are fans of middle eastern grill concoctions so we decided to try kebabs. The great thing about kebabs is that they're so versatile, and you can really make them any way you want or prefer. You can use any type of meat really, but we decided to go classic with some beef. We used a tri-tip cut, which we just cubed. For the veg, we opted to go with some cherry tomatoes, green peppers and pineapple for some sweetness.

Beef marinade:

1 1/2 cups olive oil
3/4 cups soy sauce
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup sesame oil
4-5 garlic cloves minced (add more if you want more garlic flavor)
1/3 cup teriyaki sauce
1/2 cup honey

Vegetable marinade:

Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Onion powder

  1. Combine all the ingredients for the beef marinade.
  2. Marinate your beef for at least half a day in the fridge. (Note that the longer you marinate it for the more flavorful your meat will be)
  3. On the day of the BBQ, chop your vegetables and toss with some oil and seasoning. (Note: do not marinate or season your vegetables until you are ready to skewer because the salt will draw out moisture in the vegetables and they will be soggy)
  4. Skewer everything and grill.
The beef marinade above will be enough for meat for around 20-25 skewers. So if you're making a lot less than that, we suggest splitting the marinade recipe in half.

These kebabs turned out to be quite good, and everyone seemed to appreciate the fact that we had something other than burgers or hotdogs. Considering the marinade was put together based on what we had in the kitchen... it turned out pretty delicious. Give this recipe a try, and surprise all your friends and family at your next summer BBQ!

Wednesday 17 July 2013

White Chocolate Chip and Cranberry Soft-Baked Cookies

Cookies aren't something we bake pretty often. We have one solid chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipe on hand, and that's about all we ever use when we decide to make cookies. After scouring through our Pinterest baking boards, we discovered a pin from a long time ago for some white chocolate chip and cranberry cookies. Click here to see the original pin. We decided to give these cookies a shot.

White Chocolate Chip and Cranberry Soft-Baked Cookies
Ingredients:

3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter softened to room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
2 tsps vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup white chocolate chips
3/4 cup dried cranberries
  1. Begin by creaming the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy
  2. Add the egg and vanilla extract to the mixture and make sure everything is well incorporated
  3. On low speed, mix in your dry ingredients
  4. Mix in the white chocolate chips and dried cranberries
  5. Line a cookie pan with parchment paper and preheat oven to 350F and bake for 10 minutes
The original recipe tells you to chill the cookie dough before baking and that apparently the longer you chill it for the better the cookies are suppose to rise and bake. This was not the case with our cookies. We had made the cookie dough in the morning, and left it in the fridge for a couple of hours to chill. We took it out in the afternoon and realized it was rock solid and had to wait a while before we could start forming them into balls for the cookie sheet. After all that waiting, we let them bake in the often and once we pulled them out we realized they did not spread at all, and we had to push them down with a spoon so they would at least look like cookies and not just some...ball. We would probably skip this step next time.

The second thing that was weird about the original recipe is that the author had been so adamant about not baking the cookies past 9 minutes. There is absolutely NO way that those cookies are done in 7-8 minutes like the original recipe suggests! We actually baked them for close to 12 minutes, and they still came out soft-baked in the end. It probably varies per oven, but do not be afraid to leave these in longer.

The last warning we will leave you with is... these cookies are dangerously sweet. In fact, they were a little too sweet for our tastes. This cookie is for the TRUE sweet tooth. The brown sugar gives it a really rich taste. The brown sugar combined with the white chocolate was overkill for us... but many of our friends really liked the cookie. Although we have quite the sweet tooth, we are probably bigger fans of things like dark chocolate.

Have a go at this cookie if you like love sweet chewy things and this cookie will not disappoint!

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Tropika

Got a craving for some Thai/Malay/Singaporean or just Asian food in general? When we're craving some Asian goodness, a favorite of ours is Tropika. Tropika serves a whole array of dishes from many different Asian countries.


We started off the meal by ordering their Chichee drink, which you can see in the top right of the picture. Tropika has quite an extensive drinks menu, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic but we decided on the Chichee because it was described as "everyone's favorite" and we soon discovered why! It was deliciously refreshing, sweet, creamy and satisfying! Because the description on the menu didn't really tell us much about what was in it, we asked the waiter and he told us it was a combination of coconut cream, pineapple juice, grenadine and ice. Who knew, such a simple combination would make something so delicious!

Following our drink, we ordered the sambal bunches (green beans pictured in the lower right) and this might've been our favorite of the night! They disappeared so quick! These bad boys packed a whole lot of punch and flavor in one bite!

As for our entrees we ordered some Hainanese Chicken and Beef Rendang Curry. Hainanese chicken is a classic Singaporean dish that is prepared by boiling the chicken repeatedly in various stocks which makes for an extremely tender and falvorful chicken. It is served with a light and sweet soy sauce like mixture on the side, as well as fresh ginger and some chili sauce if desired. The Hainanese chicken of Tropika did not disappoint! We also ordered the Beef Rendang Curry, which was soft and tender and had just the right amount of spice and kick to it. The only criticism we have is that the curry was a little oily, making it a little heavier on the palette but it was overall very rich and good. Of course an Asian meal is not complete without some form of rice! Tropika had many different types of fried rice to choose from but we settled on their Coconut Seafood Rice. We loved how it was served in an actual coconut! The rice was very good, and the coconut was very light and not overpowering at all. The little bits of seafood (shrimp and scallop) added a nice and welcomed touch. The rice went very well with all of our entrees.

Lastly, we finished our meal off with a traditional Malaysian dessert: iced kachaang (pictured top right). Iced kachaang is a combination of ice with some lightly sweetened coconut milk, different flavored jello and some asian ingredients such as red bean. The dessert was very light, and had the perfect amount of sweetness which was a perfect way to end our Asian feast.



Sunday 7 July 2013

Baked Macaroni Pasta and Garlic Bread

Today's kitchen adventure involves pasta. Finally! A pasta post! For all our readers out there, another thing you should know about us is that we love pasta...and you will frequently see us post about it in the future. Pasta, is easy and practically foolproof. All you have to do is boil water, put pasta in and wait. If you can't manage that then you probably shouldn't be in the kitchen to begin with! (kidding! hehe). But this is precisely why we love making pasta, it's simple, easy and hard to screw up... You should also know that we love pasta because if there's anything we may possibly love more than chocolate... it's cheese. Today's recipe brought us to make some baked macaroni pasta and home made garlic bread.

Baked Macaroni Ingredients: Serves 4-5 people

2.5-3 cups elbow macaroni
1 jar tomato pasta sauce sauce
Cheese
1 package ground beef (we used around 0.4 kg [we like our meat] which is just under a pound)
2 tsp Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Herbs of choice
  1. Start by cooking your pasta. Boil some water and throw in some salt and olive oil (the oil helps prevent the macaroni from sticking to each other once cooked)
  2. In a sauteeing/frying pan add some olive oil and begin to cook your ground beef.  Season as it cooks with salt and pepper and herbs of your choice. Add some butter if you want an extra richness and creamy taste to it.
  3. Once your ground beef has cooked add in your jar of tomato pasta sauce. We used a tomato, garlic and basil flavor. Any brand will do, we're cheap so we just bought whatever was the cheapest. We bought a 700ml jar and ended up using most of it. Be generous with the sauce, because when the macaroni bakes some of it will evaporate and if you don't use enough the pasta may come out a little dry.
  4. After adding the pasta sauce to the ground beef, mix in your cheese. You can use any cheese you want, but we ended up using smoked gouda. The smoked gouda gave it a nice roasted flavor as opposed to a more pungent flavor from typical pasta cheeses such as parmiggiano reggiano. Add in as much or as little cheese as you want (we recommend adding quite a bit for a nice rich and creamy taste). We put around 2-3 cups in the sauce mixture.
  5. Drain your macaroni and toss it into the sauce, and mix everything making sure the sauce and macaroni are well incorporated.
  6. Transfer the pasta into an oven safe dish and top with more cheese and bake at 375F for about 30-35 minutes.
Baked Macaroni Pasta
Garlic Bread Ingredients:

1 baguette
Garlic
Butter
  1. Slice your baguette into the thickness you desire for your garlic bread.
  2. Spread butter on each piece
  3. Take a garlic clove and rub it onto each piece of buttered baguette (if you want a really strong garlic flavor you can finely chop up some garlic and top off your buttered garlic baguette with it)
  4. Bake at 375F with the macaroni for a few minutes till the bread is nice and crispy (monitor the bread because it can burn easily in the oven!)
Garlic Bread
Here's how our final meal turned out:

Baked Macaroni Pasta with Homemade Garlic Bread
This easy fool proof pasta recipe gets the hammer and potato seal of approval!

Monday 1 July 2013

Fudge Brownies and Salted Caramel Sauce

If you've been consistently following our blog, then you know by now that we're big chocolate fiends. Today's recipe is to die for fudge brownies with a homemade salted caramel sauce. Sounds simple enough...right? So we thought! This turned out to be an adventure, a kind of funny one at that. This is the original recipe we used, which we changed a bit because, of course, we had to add MORE chocolate!

Ingredients:

1 and 1/4 sticks of unsalted butter
1 and 1/4 cups white sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (we used Hershey's)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup all purpose flour
Chocolate chips/pieces

1) Using a double boiler combine the butter, sugar and cocoa powder and melt together.

*Interlude: Things already got interesting at this point. Although we do a lot of baking, this is the first time we've actually made brownies from scratch so we weren't quite sure what to expect or what the batter was supposed to look like. Up until today, we've relied on the boxed brownie mix to get our brownie craving satisfied! The mixture of the butter, sugar and cocoa powder once melted together was extremely grainy. We thought something had gone wrong because there was no way brownie batter was supposed to look that grainy in our minds... Feeling kind of disappointed we continued on. The good news? YES! For all you brownie first timers out there, this part of the batter is supposed to be very grainy! Do not panic!

2) Let the mixture cool until it is just warm and not hot, then add the vanilla extract and one egg at a time, making sure everything is well incorporated.

*Interlude: This is when things started to look up. We discovered that when you added the egg, the batter smoothened out!!

3) Add in the flour and mix well.
4) Place in a square baking pan (we used a standard 9x9 inch baking pan, which gave us the perfect thickness) and bake at 320F for 20-25 minutes.

Our brownies took 22 minutes to bake, but we suggest checking it every minute after 20 minutes because you do NOT want to overbake these brownies! If there's one sin in baking brownies, it's overbaking them. A minute too long in the oven can result in dry and unappealing brownies, so be sure not to overbake them! You'll know you got it right when they're fudgey in the center but not gooey.

Chocolatey goodness

To go with the brownies we bought some vanilla ice cream, and made some home made salted caramel sauce. The salted caramel sauce recipe came from a very good friend of ours, Burgerography. You can check out his blog here for some delicious recipes and restaurant reviews.

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup heavy cream
4 TBSP unsalted butter
Sea salt to taste

1) Start by continuously stirring the water and sugar until it becomes a thick syrupy texture on medium heat on a non-stick pan.

2) The mixture will eventually harden to resemble little crystals, which will melt and turn into an amber colour.


3) Once amber, take the pan off the heat and add in your butter 1 tablespoon at a time whilst mixing vigorously.
4) After adding the butter, add the cream and stir vigorously. (WARNING: when adding the cream the mixture will bubble violently, therefore we suggest using a large non-stick pan - this scared the daylights out of us)

Salted Caramel Sauce
5) Add sea salt to taste, and mix until it looks smooth and shiny.

Note: You can store the caramel in a jar or container in the fridge, and if it gets too hard simply microwave it for 30 seconds during your next use.

Slice the brownies, add a scoop of vanilla ice cream and drizzle the salted caramel sauce.

Fudge brownies with vanilla ice cream and salted caramel sauce