homemade Archives - The Wifey's Corner

November 19, 2017June 30, 2023

Simple French Toast

What are you doing to that few slices of bread left on the fridge? There are few ways that I can think of right now, such as making croutons, bread butter pudding, filled with ragout – crumbed and deep fried for delicious savory snacks. But we can also make french toast, which is easy and take no longer than 30 minutes. And that is what we had for breakfast yesterday morning 🙂

Anyway, this is how I prepared my french toast:

6 slices of sandwich bread
2 eggs
1 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of sugar
dash of vanilla extract
half teaspoon of ground cinnamon
butter

Combine all ingredients (except bread and butter) in a shallow dish, whisk well.

Melt some generous amount of butter on your frying pan. Meanwhile, dip the bread on the egg mixture and place it to the pan. Just note that if you leave the bread dipping in the mixture for too long, it will absorb more liquid hence longer cooking time.

Cook each side until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes.

It is best to serve immediately, or keep in the warm oven until you finish cooking all.

If I have double cream at home, I would use half double cream and half milk for the egg mixture. It will add more richness to the french toast. But, I have also known some people use mix of nuts milk and they come out as tasty as using regular milk. This recipe is definitely a versatile one where you can adjust it according to what’s in your pantry.

Of course, how you serve the french toast is really up to your liking. We love it with drizzle of maple syrup, or chocolate syrup and fresh fruits. Some have theirs with slices of bacon, absolutely any variations that make breakfast or brunch special. The one we had yesterday was only with dust of icing sugar and some chocolate syrup for hubby’s.

September 23, 2017September 22, 2017

Pumpkin Baked Cheesecake

Pumpkin is one ingredient that I never ever bought or cooked with, let alone baked with 😛 I enjoy pumpkin soup every now and then, or have had mashed pumpkin with my meal in restaurants. But that is all my encounter with pumpkin, really. Then I watched a video on making pumpkin baked cheesecake the other day and my curiosity prompted me to try it out. Perhaps I was thinking by adding pumpkin, the cheesecake would be healthier. I have to say the recipe does not disappoint, in fact you can hardly taste the pumpkin at all if you mashed them really fine. It taste just like a baked cheesecake, except maybe more orange in colour.

Anyway, here are the ingredients as per original video:

200 grams Kabocha squash/pumpkin, net weight after mashed
60 grams granulated sugar
200 grams cream cheese(room temperature)
100 grams heavy cream
2 eggs (large) at room temperature and whisked
Vanilla extract
Chocolate for decorating

Method:

Cut the squash/pumpkin to small pieces, skinned. Place in a microwave-safe dish, cover with cling wrap and microwave for 3 – 4 minutes until cooked.

Mashed them with a spatula, add in sugar and mix well.

Add cream cheese, heavy cream and eggs, whisk together until all combined and no visible lumps.

Lastly, add a dash of vanilla extract to the batter.

Pour into a round 15 cm baking pan.

Bake in preheated oven at 170 C for 30 – 40 minutes.

(Since I don’t have a baking pan of that size, I used muffin cups instead. My baking time took about 30 minutes.)

Once it is cooked, let it cool to room temperature inside the oven with its door ajar.

Decorate as you wish and keep in refrigerator.

Enjoy the cold pumpkin baked cheesecake with your favourite tea or coffee 🙂

September 6, 2017

Indonesian Style Chicken Galantine

As I googled chicken galantine, I learn that galantine is a French dish; de-boned stuffed meat (usually poultry) that is poached then served cold. Now, this is quite different to the chicken galantine we have in Indonesia. I am not sure what is the source of my recipe below, it was in my recipe book from years ago and unfortunately back then I had not understood the concept of acknowledging the sources 🙁 So, to whoever created this recipe originally, thank you!

Chicken Galantine:

500 gr minced chicken
6 tablespoons of bread crumb
2 eggs
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons of milk powder
salt, pepper and sugar to taste

Mix all ingredient in a bowl until well combined. Place a few tablespoons of the mix into a sheet of aluminium foil and roll into a log shaped, secure both ends well.

Steam the galantine rolls for about 25 minutes and let it cool before peel off the foil.

Slice each roll into 1.5 cm slices then pan-fried them with butter to give them a bit of colour.

And it’s ready to serve with sauce and condiments.

Sauce:

half onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
3 tablespoons of tomato sauce
1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon of sweet soy sauce
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of maize flour, mix well with little bit of water
water, as needed
salt, pepper and sugar to taste

Saute the onion and garlic with butter until fragrant.

Then add in all sauces above, salt, sugar and pepper; mix and let it boil then add the maize flour mixture to thicken the sauce.

Condiments:

Usually Indonesian style chicken galantine is served together with some steamed vegetables, such as carrots, green bean, broccoli and lettuce leaves. On top of that, french fries often accompany this dish.

Overall this is a good recipe to keep and also make a good lunch box. But, there certainly some variations to make it more special, for example by stuffing some cheese pieces in the middle of the roll; or wrap them with prosciutto or bacon before pan frying them. It will definitely make these tastier and I shall try them next time 🙂

July 29, 2017

Lontong Sayur aka Vegetables in Spicy Coconut Broth

Now that we have finally moved and settled and I finally almost fully recovered from flu, it is time to update my forgotten blog. This post will be about lontong sayur, another common Indonesian dish. Been having huge craving for this meal for months but will all those house inspections and moving etc, I hardly found time to get into it. And just as we settled in the new place, I came across few posts about this dish – talk about good timing, eh 🙂

Anyway for the vegetable soup, I used recipe from here. I followed everything as per Flo’s recipe, but ended up added a lot more chillies for colour and kick. If you do not handle chilli well, her recipe is perfect as I find it tastes quite mild yet super delicious. Also, I did some variations on my condiments for lontong sayur – based on what we have in the pantry/fridge 🙂

Here is the recipe as copied from the link above:

Ingredients:

500 gr young papaya fruit/chayote, julliened (I used chokos)
10 stalks long bean, cut in 3 cm pieces
Optional: fresh tiger prawn, cleaned and deveined
3 cm galangal, crushed
2 stalks lemongrass, crushed
3 pieces bay leaf
1000 ml light coconut milk
500 ml coconut cream
500 ml water

Spices:
10 pieces of shallot
6 cloves of garlic
4 pieces of candle nut
3 pieces of red chilies
Salt, pepper and sugar to taste
1 teaspoon of shrimp paste
2 tablespoons of dried shrimp, roasted and ground
2 tablespoons oil for saute

Ground and saute the spices until fragrant, then add the ground dried shrimp. Stir well and cook for another minute
Add in the julliened chokos, stir well
Then add the coconut milk and water to the pot, let it boil and cook the chokos until 75% cooked, and add the long beans and all other ingredients
Lastly, turn the heat to low and add the coconut cream. Bring it to simmer and it’s done. Make sure to adjust salt, pepper and sugar level

The usual condiments that always goes into lontong sayur is ketupat or rice cake. And since I am lazy, I just used my pressure cooker to cut down the cooking time of ketupat. Do head to Flo’s page for instructions on making the rice cake in a more traditional way. Thankfully mine turned out well taste wise, although didn’t look it.

At the time I cooked this, we happened to have beef rendang in the fridge – so we threw that in as condiment as well. The other condiments I prepared are fried boiled eggs and shrimp crackers. And lastly, sprinkle some fried onion on top of the dish before serving.

As you can see, there are a lot of things to prepare for this meal. But, it is totally worth the effort and time, happy tummy happy life, right? 🙂

The spices, julliened chokos, long bean, and cooked rice cake

July 1, 2017June 30, 2017

Jam and Cheese Thumbprint Cookies

While going through my photos folder, I saw these pictures of fail attempt of thumbprint cookies with blackberry jam. But still, I will share the recipe in case some readers get a successful results of it. It is supposed to be one of those easy and fast to make cookies as no cookie cutter involved. And even with the ugly shapes, they still actually taste really good. I truly hope that you will not be discouraged by the terrible looking to give this recipe a try. The baked jam gives nice caramelised flavour and become slightly chewy in texture. I kind of know which mistakes have led to the fails, so read on to the end for tips!

Ingredients (source from here):

150 grams of butter (50 grams of butter may be substituted with margarine)
120 grams of castor sugar (I’ll reduce to 80 grams next time as this is too sweet)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 egg yolk
225 grams of flour
20 grams of milk powder
20 grams corn flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
your favorite jam
grated cheese
1 egg white so the grated cheese will stick to the cookies

Mix butter, sugar, salt and vanilla extract until pale and fluffy. Then add in the egg yolk, mix again until well combined.

Add the flour and baking powder in four stages to the butter egg mixture – make sure to fold the mixture until well combined with a spatula after each stage of flour addition.

Make round-shaped cookies, dip top half of the cookie in egg white then grated cheese and place them in baking tray.

Then press the center of each cookie with your finger to create a dent. Fill in the dent with jam, make sure to not overfill these.

Bake for approximately 15 minutes at 175C preheated oven. It is done baking when the base of cookies start to harden and change to golden colours. At this stage the cookies might feel slightly under-baked, but once cooled to room temperature, they will be perfect.

Please pardon this horrendous looking cookies 😛

As promised, here were the mistakes I made on the attempt:

* I overfilled the cookies with jam, so it overflowed during baking and hence cracked cookies

* I had used jam with chunks of blackberry in it. This combined with overfilling has resulted in problem above. It will be best to use smooth-textured jam and fill in the cookie dents with piping bag.

* As usual, the amount of flour shown in recipe is guidance. Especially for cookies recipe, you may need to add or reduce the amount a little bit. My mistake was I should have reduced the flour a little bit so my cookie dough would not be too dry

* Do not dip the whole cookie in egg white, as they will be a mess to remove from the tray after baking. Therefore, only dip the top half and then cover with grated cheese

* Depends on type of jam you are using and your liking of sweetness, you may need to adjust the sugar amount for the cookie.