Category Archives: Recipe

Recipe UPDATE: Butterbeer Cupcakes

So around a month ago one of my friends read my recipe post about the Butterbeer Cupcakes and decided to give them a short herself with some good results.

Here is her blog post about her attempt with the Butterbeer Cupcake recipe and her impressions. She even includes pictures which was something I neglected to do.

She goes so far as to say what part of the recipe she followed – because if you remember I strayed from the path a bit – and cuts off the recipe portion from there and just continues with what she did.

Her impressions?

Following the recipe directly using one standard cake box mix, it made 21 cupcakes for me, with plenty of frosting to cover them all. It might be a tiny too little if you manage 24 cupcakes. The cupcakes are some of the lightest and fluffiest cupcakes that I have ever had. One of mine even turned onto the side in the oven. It was undamaged but quite funny to me. The cupcakes are so good that you can honestly eat them without the frosting. They’re good with them, but the average cupcake is nothing without its frosting.

I would definitely agree with that assessment… but what about her verdict?
Continue reading →

Recipe: BBQ Pork on Seasoned Rice

Once a week (or every other week) a friend of mine and I would gchat taking about various dishes or meals we’re planning to eat that day, what we ate, recipes we tried, etc.

So earlier this week I was trying to figure out what to eat based on what I had on hand at home. The problem I have is that I am planning to leave for a trip out of country so whatever I make I wanted to make sure it is just enough to last til I have to fly out so nothing gets wasted. Then I realized that I had about a pound of BBQ pork and a pound of roasted pork that were sitting in the freezer that I had purchased from meat shop weeks prior. So I moved the BBQ pork to the fridge and decided to just cook up a batch of rice and have BBQ pork on rice.

But that was just plain boring. One thing in Vietnamese cuisine is that we love our oiled green onions. So I purchased a bag of them at the local grocery and chopped them up and simmered them with a little bit of vegetable oil. In the meantime I got the crock pot going with white rice and water and instead of plain white rice I decided to season it up a bit for additional flavor.

I got this idea after visiting a Persian restaurant about a month ago and they had a batch of dill rice that I really liked, but instead of cooking the rice and mixing the dill afterwards I decided to cook the dill in while the rice was cooking so that the flavor would (hopefully) be saturated into every grain of rice.

Turned out I was right and voila! A batch of dill flavored rice with BBQ pork. Nom nom nom nom. Now I think I would give this a try with other seasonings too to kind of spice up the traditional white rice to make sure the flavor is well saturated.

Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures like I am prone to do when I go out for meals… I was too hungry to think about “ooh must take pictures so others could see!” ah well maybe next week, except I think I will try something different and see.
Continue reading →

Recipe: Cabbage and Chicken Salad

Being from a Vietnamese background, it is of no wonder that I would love to keep the recipes that I loved. So when my mother emailed me the recipe to a cabbage / chicken salad… to say that I was thrilled was an understatement.

In Vietnamese this is known as Gỏi Gà aka Vietnamese Chicken and Cabbage Salad. Looking at my mother’s recipe I knew it was a more simplistic version of a salad I knew well in restaurants. So searching online I found a more appropriate recipe that you guys could latch onto:

INGREDIENTS
1/2 kg cooked shredded chicken (or use the chicken meat from making the congee)
1/4 cabbage, finely sliced
1 carrot, peeled and thinly sliced matchsticks
1/2 onion (red or brown)
1 cup herbs (Vietnamese mint, mint and coriander)
3 tablespoons roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons fried shallots
1/2 lemon juice
4 tablespoon of white vinegar
2 teaspoons salt
3 teaspoons sugar
1 cup fish sauce dipping sauce

METHOD
Step 1. In a small bowl, combine, lemon juice, vinegar, salt and sugar. Stir until sugar and salt dissolves.

Step 2. In a large bowl, add cabbage, carrot, onion, herbs, chicken and vinegar mixture. Gently toss to well combined.

Step 3. Turn salad to a serving platter and sprinkle roasted peanuts, fried shallots and serve with fish sauce dipping sauce.

Continue reading →

Recipe: Butterbeer Cupcakes

Once upon a time, I really wanted to try my hand at cupcake baking. I came across this new fangled idea when I was surfing Mugglenet.com and came across a recipe for Butterbeer Cupcakes by the Collegiate Baker. When reading up on what the Collegiate Baker did I realized that she actually adapted her recipe from that of another blog from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen.

When perusing the recipe I realized that I am not exactly a fan of butterscotch to begin with, but Butterbeer is a popular beverage that is described by JK Rowling as

a little bit like less-sickly butterscotch

Ok, so now I’m tempted… I am really really tempted, especially since the homemade frosting became a major draw for me.

INGREDIENTS
For the Cake:
1 box yellow cake mix
1 cup cream soda
3 eggs
1 stick of butter, melted
1/2 cup melted butterscotch chips 		For the FROSTING:
1 stick of butter, softened
3 tablespoons of cream soda
3 cups of powdered sugar
2 tablespoons of butterscotch ice cream topping
butterscotch chips for topping

DIRECTIONS:
Step 1: (Starting with the cake portion): Mix the yellow cake mix, cream soda, eggs, melted butter, and melted butterscotch chips (in that order) in a medium/large mixing bowl.

Step 2: Mix on medium speed for two minutes.

Step 3: Follow the temperature and time directions as instructed on the yellow cake mix box.

Step 4: (Now for the frosting): cream the butter and cream soda by mixing on medium speed for approximately two minutes.

Step 5: Mix in powdered sugar, one cup at a time for easy mixing.

Step 6: Then mix in butterscotch topping.

Step 7: When cupcakes are cooled, cover each with frosting and top with butterscotch chips.

Continue reading →

Recipe: Corned Beef Hash… on Rice

While grocery shopping a few weeks ago, I came across a bit of corned beef and decided to purchase it on a whim. Coming from an Asian family, corned beef isn’t exactly a common meat in the household, though we all have had a bit of a corned beef as a deli meat and as sandwiches.

So why did I decide to get a slab of corned beef? Who knows… and it took well over a week before I figured out what to do with it… Corned Beef Hash!

Well duh, why didn’t I think of this before? The recipe would be similar to that of the Vietnamese dish: Bo Luc Lac aka Vietnamese Shaking Beef. Over at RasaMalaysia the Ravenous Couple were asked to write a guest post blog about the dish as well as their recipe:

INGREDIENTS:
Beef Marinade
1.5 lbs beef sirloin (or any cut you like) cut into 1″ cubes
2 tbs minced garlic
1.5 tbs sugar
2 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs sesame oil
1 ts thick soy sauce

Vinaigrette
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1.5 tbs sugar
1/2 tbs salt

Dipping Sauce
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 ts kosher salt
1/2 ts fresh cracked pepper

1 red onion, thinly sliced
2 bunches of watercress, long stems trimmed
2 tomatoes, thinly sliced

Cooking oil for frying

METHOD:
Prepare marinade by combining garlic, oyster sauce, sugar, fish sauce, thick soy sauce and sesame oil with the beef for at least half an hour, preferably 1-2 hrs.
Prepare vinaigrette by mixing rice vinegar with salt and sugar. It should be a balance of sour, salty and sweet.

Thinly slice the red onion and use about 3-4 tbs of the vinaigrette to pickle and set aside covered in fridge for about 10 minutes. Prepare bed of watercress and tomatoes in a serving platter and set aside.

Heat a large wok or pan over high heat. Add about 2 tbs cooking oil and when it begins to smoke, add an even layer of beef and allow to sear for about 2 minutes, before “shaking” to sear the opposite sides for about another 1-2 minute more to brown all the sides. Do this in batches to cook all the beef if necessary.

Transfer beef to bed of watercress and tomatoes. Drizzle another 3-4 tbs of vinaigrette over the beef and greens and top with pickled red onions. Lastly, squeeze lime juice over salt and pepper in a small ramekin.

Enjoy!

COOK’S NOTE:
We like our beef medium rare and test the meat by touch and sight–it will plump up slightly and be bouncy to the touch with a spatula.

Granted, at home we had a much more simplistic version of the above recipe, but this is very good nonetheless. But, instead of adapting the above recipe for the corned beef, I figured I would go with my original idea of making Corned Beef Hash to test for taste and texture before seeing if I could create an adaptation of the above with the Corned Beef.
Continue reading →