Our Cooking Project #8: Toddler making Improbable Quiche

I can't believe it's been ten months since we last did a cooking project! Hubby and I actually started this "cooking project" almost two years ago as a couple thing, but last year we included our then 21-month-old boy in on the project with Choco-Banana Muffins (we made the move to Hong Kong shortly after that, and I guess the cooking project took a back seat since). Two weekends ago my son cooked dinner using my Improbable Quiche. For safety reason, he obviously needed a lot of help, especially with chopping up the ingredients and cooking at the hot stove, but he was involved in every step from picking up the ingredients at the supermarket to eating the finished product. He had a ball making the quiche, and especially loved getting to hold a knife for the first time and cooking at the stove. We basically followed the recipe very closely, except for the chopped spinach, which was added to up the vege content for an easy one-dish meal. It was tough fitting all three of us in our tiny Hong Kong kitchen, but we got the job done and thoroughly enjoyed the fruits of our labour!

Improbable Quiche

Ingredients

1 tablespoon oil
1 small brown onion, chopped
3 rashers of bacon (~75g), roughly chopped
4 slices of ham (~40g), roughly chopped
A bundle (~100g) baby spinach, washed and chopped
1 small red capsicum, diced
5 eggs, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups of milk
1/2 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup (80g) grated cheese
1/2 cup frozen corn
1-2 tablespoons herbs (I used basil, rosemary, oregano, parsley, thyme and sage)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180degC and grease a 24cm diameter ovenproof dish

Chop, chop, chop:

2. Heat oil in a pan over medium heat, and cook the onion, bacon, ham and capsicum for a few minutes, stirring often, until the bacon is lightly crisp, the onion is slightly caramelised and the capsicum is cooked. Add the chopped spinach to the pan and cook briefly (less than a minute) until wilted. Remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes

Pour the milk into a bowl:

3. Whisk the eggs, milk, flour and baking powder in a large mixing bowl until well combined.

Add the eggs to the mixing bowl:

4. Stir in the bacon mixture, grated cheese, frozen corn and herbs into the mixing bowl. Season with pepper (and salt, if desired, but keep in mind that bacon and ham are salty already).

Mix, mix, mix:

5. Pour mixture into your greased dish, and bake for 45 minutes or until set in the centre.
6. Allow to stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Et voila - the Improbable Quiche (or half of it anyway, at the dinner table):

Our Cooking Project #7: Choco-Banana Muffins (feat. Zak!)

My son is not yet 2, but not long ago I entertained the idea of doing a cooking project with him, for no reason other than that it would be fun. Of course, I had misgivings about this idea, wondering if it would be a recipe for disaster instead of a fun-in-the-kitchen activity, and whether or not a 21 month-old toddler is a little too young to be helping out in the kitchen. With that in mind, I set up a few things to keep any disaster at bay, such as selecting a simple recipe, pre-measuring out all the ingredients, and enlisting my husband's assistance with the activity. In addition, for practical (and safety) purposes, because our Tokyo kitchen is too small for more than one person to be in it, the main part of the 'cooking' was done in the dining/lounge area. Hubby also sensibly kept the boy in nothing but his nappy, and we utilised both the dining table and high chair.

Muffins are really easy to execute and quite fool-proof, and we enjoyed making Choco-Banana Muffins (adapted from a previous banana muffin recipe). My boy has allergies to soy, nuts (including coconut) and sesame, so I kept the ingredient list fairly simple but it was delicious anyway. (Take note that this is a healthy muffin recipe intended to be healthy enough for toddlers, so it's not as sweet and fatty as muffins usually are.) When we first started our cooking projects idea, we'd initially intended it to be a couple thing; however, we are more than happy to include our son in future projects, because he makes the photos a little more pleasing to the eye!

Choco-Banana Muffin

Ingredients

2 cups (250g) flour (I used 50-50 wholemeal and plain)
3 teaspoons baking powder
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup (50g) sugar
1 cup bananas (about 2 large or 3 medium sized bananas), mashed
3/4 cup (150mL) milk
2 eggs
50g butter, melted

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180degC.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa into a mixing bowl.
3. Add the sugar to the flour mix, and stir to combine.

Mixing the dry ingredients:

4. Mix the wet ingredients (mashed bananas, milk, eggs and butter) together.
5. Combine wet and dry mixtures until just blended (avoid over-mixing otherwise you'll have tough-textured muffins).

Combining the wet and dry ingredients:

6. Pour the mixture into a 12-muffin tray, filling each muffin cup only 2/3 full.
7. Place the muffin tray in preheated oven, and bake for 15-20mins or until a toothpick comes out clean when poked into a muffin.

Best enjoyed fresh out of the oven, and okay for freezing too.

Zak demonstrating one of the many ways to enjoy the muffin:

Christmas-related recipes

These are mostly for my reference so I don't have to do the research every year just because I was too busy to write down what I used/did. Rob said the roast turkey lunch I cooked for Christmas '09 was my best yet, and I suppose that is a pretty good reason to take some time to make note of my recipes.

Fruit Mince Pies (Cooking Project #6)

Rob and I made a small batch of fruit mince pies a week before Christmas, but most of them were eaten by the time Christmas rolled around. I blogged about making fruit mince pies before but failed to take note of the pastry recipe. This pastry recipe is modified from this taste.com.au recipe, but we made it by hand instead of using a food processor, and we used a 410g jar of ready-made fruit mince (Robertson brand) which yielded about 17 pies. We used a 12-muffin pan because we couldn't find patty pans anywhere here in Tokyo; in fact, my muffin pan was brought over from Australia because I couldn't find muffin pans here except for individual muffin cups which were relatively fiddly to use.

Ingredients
300g (2 cups) plain flour
40g (1/4cup) icing
150g chilled butter, chopped
1 egg yolk
2-3 tablespoons of water

Method
1. Combine the flour and icing in a bowl.
2. Using fingertips, rub in the butter to the flour mixture until it resembles fine crumbs.
3. Add the yolk and 2 tablespoons of water to the mixture, and stir until it clumps together. Add more water if it's too dry.
4. Bring the mixture together to form a rough ball.
5. Tip onto a lightly floured surface and knead until you have a smooth dough. Avoid overworking the dough.
6. Then proceed with making the pies as shown here.

Roast Turkey Stuffing

I have written a roast chicken dinner recipe before, but for Christmas, I wanted to put a little more effort into making the stuffing for the roast turkey. Quantities are only approximate - I generally used the same volume of onion, celery and carrot, all cut up to roughly the same size, and I seasoned it with herbs, ketchup, salt and pepper to taste. I went out on a limb with the ketchup but for some reason (fortunately for me!) it worked quite well with the stuffing. For roasting the turkey itself, I found this site quite useful. For our 4kg turkey (stuffed weight), I roasted at 170degC (fan-forced) for 145 minutes, breast-side down for the first 90 minutes.

Ingredients
some olive oil (1/2 tablespoon)

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 stalks of celery, diced
1 carrot, diced
3 rashers of bacon, chopped
3 slices of bread, crumbed (use a processor)
some stock or water (1-2 tablespoon - just enough to 'deglaze' pan but not too much otherwise you'll end up with soggy stuffing)

1 egg

Parsley and rosemary

Tomato ketchup
Salt and pepper


Method

Saute the onions until it is translucent and cooked. Add the garlic, celery, carrot and bacon and cook over medium heat until the vegetables are soft and the bacon crisp. Add breadcrumbs and stir well. Add the water/stock, egg and herbs and stir well to combine. Add tomato ketchup, salt and pepper to taste.

Sponge Cake for Trifle

No recipe here, just wanted to show off how well this sponge cake turned out. It's almost a shame that I made this sponge cake specifically for the trifle, because it would have made a nice decorated cake. I've posted a trifle recipe before.



Our Cooking Project #5: Strawberry Cheesecake

Last weekend, we had the honour of spending time with a gorgeous Japanese family at their beautiful home. We met this lovely family almost two years ago on our trip to Hakone, and we kept in touch and have met up a couple of times. It's great having these cultural encounters as we can exchange and share more about each others' culture and language. They really are a wonderful gracious hosts and we all enjoyed the company along with homemade temaki sushi lunch. The two little girls have grown so much, and they had fun playing with our 11 month-old.

The lovely home prepared spread. We loved the tasty chicken salad, and the fresh seafood. It was fun eating our individual temaki sushi as we made them:


Rob and I prepared a Strawberry Cheesecake as our humble contribution to the meal, and we followed this recipe I posted up almost four years ago. I would have ideally used fresh strawberries to top the cheesecake (as done by Rob's mum here), but it is not winter, the season for strawberries in Japan (strange, right? Strawberries at their peak during winter), so I made a glaze using gelatin and the remainder syrup from the can of strawberries. We also can't get granita biscuits here, but the Carr's Whole Wheat Crackers was a very good substitute.





We are off to the airport in a little while for a trip to Malaysia and Sydney for two weddings in my family two weeks apart, so I won't be able to post anything up for a couple of weeks or so. Please do check back in a few weeks time as I will be sure to have lots and lots of photos to post about Malaysian food and other eats we will have.

Our Cooking Project #4: Olive and Rosemary Focaccia

We're not doing a bad job at keeping this cooking project alive, are we? Last weekend, Rob and I once again joined forces in the kitchen to make this Olive and Rosemary Focaccia at home. I had a look at a few focaccia recipes, but this time I decided to make things easier for me and just stick to one recipe rather than adapting my own one from several different recipes. The Olive & Rosemary Focaccia recipe on the taste.com.au website seemed relatively simple to follow, with a relatively short list of ingredients.

Since there were only two of us eating this, we halved the quantity to make a smaller focaccia, used bread flour instead of plain flour, and didn't bother with blooming the yeast because we used the instant type which was put directly in the dough. We also didn't have fresh rosemary leaves and used dried rosemary instead, which we mixed into the dough (rather than sprinkle on the top as suggested in the taste.com.au recipe), and then we sprinkled a mix of dried "Italian herbs" (sage, basil, oregano) on top of the dough prior to baking. In addition, we halved the amount of salt specified and didn't sprinkle salt on the dough. Other than these variations, we didn't change much from the recipe. Our focaccia turned out really well (was salty enough too), and it was so delicious that there was not a crumb of it left the next day. Certainly not for the carbophobic!



Olive and Rosemary Focaccia

Ingredients

310ml (1 1/4 cups) warm water
2 teaspoons (7g/1 sachet) dried yeast
2 teaspoons caster sugar
3 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
450g (3 cups) plain flour
1 teaspoons sea salt flakes
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves (or 1 1/2 teaspoons dried rosemary)
2 teaspoons dried Italian herbs (sage, basil, oregano)
20 pitted kalamata olives

Method

1. Combine the water, yeast, sugar and 2 tablespoons of oil in a small bowl. Set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 5 minutes or until frothy.

2. Place flour, sea salt and rosemary in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in yeast mixture. Use a wooden spoon to stir until combined, then use your hands to bring the dough together in the bowl.

3. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Brush a bowl with oil to grease. Place dough in bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a damp tea towel. Set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 45 minutes or until doubled in size.

4. Preheat oven to 200°C. Brush a 20 x 30cm Swiss roll pan with 2 teaspoons of remaining oil. Punch down centre of the dough with your fist. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 2 minutes or until dough is elastic and has returned to original size. Press into the prepared pan. Cover with a damp tea towel and set aside in a warm, draught-free place to prove for 20 minutes or until doubled in height. Use your finger to press dimples into the dough. Brush with remaining oil and sprinkle over dried herbs. Press the olives into the dough.

5. Bake in oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden and focaccia sounds hollow when tapped on base. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Our Cooking Project #3: Prawn, Pork and Garlic Chive Dumplings

So far I've avoided making dumplings (of the stuffed variety such as wonton, jiaozi and ravioli) because of they seem like so much effort to do, even with the widely available ready-made wrappers. I love eating dumplings, yet I always avoid buying the prepared ones in the supermarket because I don't know what kind of processed crap has gone into them. When Rob and I recently began doing cooking projects together, making dumplings was one of the first ideas I had because of how labour intensive they are, perfect for when you have extra hands in the kitchen.

This recipe was adapted from Rasa Malaysia's Shrimp & Chive Dumplings recipe, which was chosen because it seemed straightforward and easy to do. We included pork and black fungus in the filling for added protein and texture. The uncooked filling smelled really good as we were making the dumplings, thanks to the fragrant combination of chives and sesame oil. We panfried half of the dumplings and boiled the remaining half, and then we ate the dumplings with two dipping sauces: sweet chili sauce and a soy-vinegar sauce. The dumplings were delicious, and we thoroughly enjoyed the fruit of our labour.

Prawn, Pork and Garlic Chive Dumplings

Makes about 25 dumplings

Ingredients

140g medium to large peeled prawns/shrimps
80g minced pork
40g chives, cut into short pieces
5 g dried black fungus, rehydrated and chopped into small pieces
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon cornflour
a dash of shaoxing wine
some salt and pepper
Wonton skin
oil for pan-frying

Method

1. Cut the prawns into small pieces, about 3 pieces per prawn.
2. Combine prawn pieces, minced pork, chives, and the rest of the ingredients together and mix well. Leave it to marinate for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.
3. To panfry:
i) Lay a wonton skin on a flat surface and add a teaspoon of the filling in the middle of the skin. Dab some water along the outer edges of the wonton skin and fold the skin towards the middle, sealing tight. Repeat until all the filling is used up.
ii) Heat a pan on medium low heat, and panfry dumplings on one side for a few minutes until golden brown. Turn over to cook the other side.

Filling on the wrapper; and the folded dumpling for panfrying:


4. To boil:
i) Make dumplings by placing the filling on one wonton skin, dabbing water along the edges, and placing another wrapper on top to seal tightly.
ii) Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and put in dumplings one by one. Stir gently to prevent dumplings from sticking together and to the bottom of the pot. Bring to boil again, reduce heat and continue cooking until dumpling is cooked (when the wonton wrapper appears translucent and the dumplings are floating). Remove the dumplings and place in a serving bowl.

Panfried dumplings; and the boiled version:


Enjoy dumplings with sweet chili sauce and/or soy-vinegar dipping sauce (equal parts soy sauce and black vinegar).

Our Cooking Project #2: Ddeokbokki & Bulgogi

I guess we didn't have to wait long after our first cooking project before I posted up the recipe of our second project. On our recent visit to K-town, we bought a packet of garaeddeok (cylinder-shaped rice cake) to make ddeokbokki. At first we were going to buy a 1-serving pack of ready-made ddeokbokki sauce to make the dish, but I also intended to buy a jar of gochujang (spicy paste) and I figured the sauce must surely use this condiment. I thought that it couldn't be difficult to make the sauce from scratch, and besides, the sauce packet was completely in Korean and I had no idea what other junk (e.g. artificial flavouring/preservatives/colours etc) was in it.

After a quick search on the internet for ddeokbokki recipes, it became clear that gochujang is indeed an essential ingredient, and that like most stirfry dishes, there are no hard and fast rules for making this dish. So armed with the essential spicy paste, I made up my own recipe using the vegetables I had in the fridge, and had the help of my wonderful husband with the prep. Incidentally, I had some sirloin steak in the fridge, so we also made some bulgogi to go with the ddeokbokki. I've made bulgogi before when we had bibimbap at home so I had a rough idea of what goes in it, but funnily enough, it didn't occur to me to refer to my recipe.

We ate the bulgogi with the ddeokbokki wrapped in crisp lettuce leaves, and it was so good - who says healthy can't be yummy? I love using my hands to eat - there's something fundamentally wonderful about it, plus it means less things to wash!




Bulgolgi

Ingredients
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon mirin
1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds
2 cloves garlic, chopped
300g sirloin steak, thinly sliced

Method
Marinate beef for at least 30minutes, then panfry over high heat for 1 minute. Turn off heat, drain and reserve the liquid for the tokboggi. Remove the beef from the frypan.


Ddeokbokki

Ingredients
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 cm ginger, chopped
1/4 cabbage, chopped
200g daikon, cut into thin sticks
100g broccoli, cut into bite-sized florets
200g garaeddeok (cylinder-shaped rice cake)
3 teaspoons gochujang (spicy Korean paste)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
A couple tablespoons of water

Method
1. Prepare the rice cake according to the packet instructions - which was all in Korean, but the picture seems to suggest that I put them in boiling water, so I boiled it for only a minute or two until the rice cake softened.
2. Heat the oil in the frypan and cook the chopped onion over medium heat for a few minutes.
3. Add the garlic and ginger to the frypan and stirfry for a minute until fragrant.
4. Add the daikon and cook for a couple of minutes before adding the broccoli and cabbage.
5. Stirfry the lot for a few minutes until the cabbage has softened slightly. Meanwhile, mix together the gochujang, sugar, chilli powder and water.
6. Add the prepared rice cake cylinders into the frypan with the gochujang mixture and continue to stirfry until vegetables are cooked.

Our Cooking Project #1: Chicken, Spinach & Ricotta Cannelloni

Rob and I recently decided to start doing cooking projects together on a regular basis on weekends as a couple thing, and our first project was this unbelievably delicious Chicken, Spinach & Ricotta Cannelloni. I'm not being biased here just because we cooked it - this was the best stuffed pasta I have ever eaten, better even than the ones I've eaten at restaurants. Getting the ingredients was not as easy (or as cheap) in Tokyo as it would have been if we were in Australia or New York, but it wasn't impossible. It was well worth the effort and the discomfort from the extra heat generated by the oven. Of course, when I say we cooked this "together", I meant that we had to take turns in the kitchen and looking after Zak: Rob did the prep while I breastfed the baby, then I cooked the filling, sauce and lasagna sheets ready for assembling while Rob watched Zak during his playtime. We did get in the (tiny) kitchen together for the final step of assembling the cannelloni while Zak watched the hustle and bustle from the safety of his playpen in the adjacent living room. It was all about great teamwork! This wasn't just about making a delicious dish - it really felt good to do something as a couple, something that has become somewhat of a rare occurrence since Zak was born. (By the way, the last thing we cooked together was almost a year ago.)

How we enjoyed eating lunch that day - but don't just take our word for it - do give this recipe a try and see for yourself how delicious it is! The recipe was adapted from several recipes on Taste.com.au, because, as always, I cannot simply follow just one recipe - where would the creativity in cooking be if I didn't add my touch to the recipe?

I just could not get a good photogenic shot of the cannelloni after plating, so it may not look very appetising but we relished every bite of it:


Chicken, Spinach & Ricotta Cannelloni

Serves 2 (with big appetites), 3200kJ/762cal per serve

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 large brown onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic
200g minced chicken
250g spinach, chopped
250g ricotta
1/2teaspoon nutmeg
Italian herbs (oregano, basil, thyme, sage)
690g bottle of passata (tomato puree)
salt and pepper
Grated mozzarella (as much as you desire, we used about 50g)
~100g dried lasagna sheets (7 sheets of the Barilla brand), boiled briefly to soften enough to be pliable without breaking but not soft enough to tear - a step before the edible al dente stage

Method

Prepare the filling and sauce

1. Heat oil in frypan over medium heat and cook the onion and garlic for a few minutes until the onion is soft and slightly caramelised. Set aside half of the cooked onion and garlic mix.
2. Add the chicken mince to the remaining half onion and garlic mix in the frypan, and cook for a couple of minutes until the meat changes colour, breaking up lumps as you cook.
3. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and allow to cool. Briefly blanch the chopped spinach in boiling water, then drain it and allow to cool. Add the spinach, ricotta and nutmeg to the chicken in the mixing bowl, and season with salt, pepper and herbs to taste. Mix well.
4. To make the sauce, return the reserved onion and garlic mix to the frypan and add the passata. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for a few minutes over low heat. Season with salt, pepper and herbs to taste.

The oh-so-photogenic shot of the filling mix in the bowl; and the sauce in the pan:


Assembling

5. Preheat the oven to 180degC.
6. Place one of the lasagna sheets on a flat surface, and spoon some of the filling along one short edge of the pasta. Roll it up, and repeat for all the lasagna sheets or until filling is used up.



7. Spread half the tomato sauce over the base of a 20cmx30cm baking dish, and arrange the cannelloni in the dish.



8. Spread the remaining sauce over the cannelloni and top with grated cheese.
9. Bake for 20 minutes, and serve with salad.

Before and after baking: