Category Archives: Food

Recipe: Steamed Herbal Chicken

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yummy herbal chicken

If you love a good herbal chicken, you can give this recipe a try!

My earliest memories of a herbal chicken dish was at Old Airport Road food centre. And then came those premixes that you can get from the supermarkets.

Haha but with premixes, I always wondered what goes into the powdered satchet. Or gives that added oomph into the dish. I tried making my own and still couldn’t quite get it right. It wasn’t just the herbs.

Finally chanced on a recipe that used a marinade with the herbs. So easy? Just like that?

Yup, just like that haha. We used chicken marylands instead of a whole chicken just because it is so much easier to manage and portion out too! Doing it at home just got simpler.

Ingredients
10g yuzhu
5g ginseng beard
4-5 pcs dang gui
5g dried longan
1 tbsp wolfberries
3 red dates
50ml water

To marinade
½ tsp sugar
½ tsp pepper (we used black pepper)
1 tsp light soy sauce
½ tsp salt
2-3 slices ginger

4 chicken marylands

Baking paper
Aluminium foil

Marinade chicken pieces with prepared marinade for about 15mins.

Line aluminium foil with baking paper. Place herbs & ginger on the baking paper, then place marinated chicken thighs on top of the herbs.

Lift up edges of foil & baking paper and gently fit into 3L ShuttleChef inner pot. Pour 50ml water into the parcel and fold edges of aluminium foil to secure the parcel.

Fill pot with water till it comes up halfway of the sealed parcel. Bring water to boil and simmer with lid closed for 30mins. Place pot in outer pot for 3 hours.

Eat with hot steamed rice! Enjoy.

Day 278/2020: lifestyle change

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Attempting a juice cleanse

Circuit breaker has brought out the cook/baker in all of us. Hahah. I think it is because I could actually cook dishes without being interrupted, with ah lau at home and being able to watch the kids for a bit.

Obviously the lack of moving about meant we were piling on some weight. I wasn’t very consistent with exercising. I love my food, and I felt conscious exercising at home with so many eyes on me. Hahaha. And just like that, I piled on an additional 6kg. 😭

I have to constantly remind myself that I am not doing it to lose weight but to stay healthy. I can’t cut the food I love so exercise would be it. Close to hitting 40 already, ah lau has high cholestrol. My weight has been yo-yoing for the past 8 yrs with 4 pregnancies. I went for a gallbladder removal surgery 2 yrs ago cos of gallstones.

If not now, then when?

So ah lau attended a detox zoom class and decided a juice cleanse was what he needed. I rolled my eyes..like a lot. Isn’t that like a super expensive fad? I have nothing against juices, I love it. But wah lao, I rolled my eyes cos this is coming from the skeptic of the year, my ah lau himself.

We used to have a centrifugal juicer and he went on about how we should blend fruits instead of juicing so it retains the fibre, or eat the actual fruit itself; how difficult it was to wash and how a balanced diet was more important. How slow-pressed juices were just a con job to charge exhorbitant prices; how fruit juices are all sugar.

Ok lor. But wthhh he got damn excited after the class and we nearly bought a juicer over the weekend?? I am supportive wife ok. But logic got over the better me, smacked some sense into him and we decided to borrow his mother’s Kuvings to trial for 3 days.

$40 of veggies and fruits poorer, today is day 1 of his juice cleanse. We did some research and learnt that juice cleanse is more veggies than fruits, the various types of masticating juicers (capacity, speed of machine, brands and other uses for said machine) and that hey, veggie juices with an apple or two don’t really taste that bad.

Juices! Lelong lelong 😂

I made an apple, pineapple, carrot and mint juice for myself. Ah lau’s kale, spinach and apple juice didn’t taste too bad. He is still going strong lol. He is taking notes of his journey so maybe there’ll be some result after 3 days!

I was also conscious of all these pulp getting wasted. Ah lau actually sent me a link to use the pulp for baking bread! Wahh, so supportive of my zero waste. I would use for compost if I had a bin but my last attempt at composting got me a little iffy so I will pass on it for now. The almond pulp didn’t get wasted tho!

Almond pulp from making almond milk

I used these from my last batch of almond milk and add it into my banana bread batter. Oh my…it was so lovely! It was not as fine as almond meal which is fine cos it means the bread has a nuttier texture to it. It was so so yummy.

Banana bread with almond pulp and a glass of almond milk

Recipe for banana bread:
1½ cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
125g unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
2 large ripe bananas, mashed
½ cup buttermilk (make ½ tbsp lemon juice and enough milk to fill ½ cup)
100g almond pulp

Preheat oven to 170°C. Sift flour, baking powder and bicarb soda together.

In another bowl, use an electric mixer to cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add in the eggs one at a time, ensuring egg is well mixed after each addition. Then add mashed bananas in and stir to mix well.

Add the dry ingredients into the wet mix, alternating with buttermilk, stirring well after each addition. Finally, add in the almond pulp until combined.

Spoon mixture into prepared loaf tin and bake for 50 – 60mins, or until the top of the bread is firm and is a deep brown colour. An inserted skewer should come out clean. Cool in tin for 10 mins before removing.

 

Recipe: Chrysanthemum Rose Bud Tea

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Chrysanthemum Rose Bud Tea

 

The wet market near my place occasionally has a few pop ups with peddlers selling different stuff on the weekends. I happened to chance on a peddler selling a range of dried goods in small packages and decided to grab a pack of dried rose buds.

To be honest, no idea what to do with it. I had some wild notion of infusing it in oil and hoping to get some rose oil or what not hahahah. But ah what the heck, let’s pop it into some hot water and drink it maybe? Did some reading and found out rose buds had had levels of Vitamin C, even more than citrus fruits! Say whaaaat.

I randomly decided to pop a tablespoon of buds together with my chrysanthemum tea, sweetened with some red dates, wolfberries and rock sugar. Another light drink to add to the list!

Ingredients:

1 tbsp dried chrysanthemum flowers
1 tbsp dried rose buds
1 tbsp rock sugar
1 tsp wolfberries
1-2 pitless red dates

I placed these ingredients into a 500ml Thermos one-push tumbler, filled it up with fresh boiling water and closed it. All ready in 2 hours.

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