Pancakes

I decided to rekindle my luv for pancakes recently, thinking more of the little one than myself. For my first attempt, I tried the given recipe right off the milk carton. Maybe it was my maiden attempt (after a few decades long), I didn’t like the outcome. I thought it was too cake-y for a pancake. It was not airy, and very heavy.

Hunted for various pancake recipes and after tweaking a few of them, here’s my version:

• 2 cups self-raising flour – to sift first then measure 2 cups
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs – sit at room temperature
• 2 and 1/4 cups buttermilk – sit at room temperature
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 2tsp of vanilla essence

Preparation:
Sift together flour, sugar, and salt. Aeration causes the pancakes to rise better and therefore become more fluffy. Set your dry mixture aside.

In a separate bowl, beat your egg lightly, do not overbeat. Add melted butter and beat lightly till it blends. Add half of the milk and beat lightly. Add all of the dry mixture, mix. Add the rest of the milk and mix.

Your batter will be lumpy but Never overmix your batter as the lumps will cook out. Approximately 15 secs of mixing is enough, if you want to time yourself.

Using about 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake, cook until bubbly, a little dry around the edges, then turn over and brown the other side.

Bubbly on top and a little dry around the edges, then flip:

1 set of blueberry pancakes and 1 set of plain pancakes.

If you can't find buttermilk in the supermarkets, which usually happens to me when I needed it most, you can actually make ur own buttermilk with normal fresh milk. Use 1 tsp of lemon juice for every cup of milk, let it sit for 5 minutes and you’ll get buttermilk. Easy? :)

Oh and You can of cos' add fruits to your batter too: bananas, blueberries, strawberries, anything goes!

I am still happy with this recipe and I prefer the outcome of this recipe a lot more. Unfortunately, my dear son's not a pancake eater. He doesn’t like them! Must be a boy/male thing? Bcos both hubster and son do not take to pancakes well.

But I do.

Yummy to Mummy! :)

Chicken Curry

Chicken is our favourite poultry, like I've mentioned before. And Chicken curry is another favourite dish in the house. Why's that so? For a very simple reason - Because of its versatility. We can have it with baguette, normal white bread, rice and of course with our favourite roti jala too. Yum Yum!

For my curry, I don't use coconut milk. I used lotsa tomatoes though. The thing about cooking curry is you've to make sure that the oil separates properly and only then will your curry 'become' curry, if you get what I mean. If the oil doesn't separate, the taste is not quite there.



Here's my chicken curry recipe, and I cooked curry a lot. It's quite the staple dish at home. :P

Ingredients:
I whole chicken, cut into 8/12/14 pieces.

A)
2 big red onions - sliced thinly (I don't use yellow onions in my dishes. But spicy, huge red onions as they are packed with more flavour too).
2 ripened tomatoes - diced them up
3 cardamoms
1 cinnamon stick
4 cloves


B)
2 cloves of garlic - to blend it
1 cm old ginger - to blend it
1 tbsp tomato puree
Mint leaves - loading up on the mint leaves is a treat


C)
1 cup of water
2 potatoes, quartered
2 ripened tomatoes - quartered
2 fresh green chillis - halved


Half a packet of Baba's meat curry powder
coriander leaves - for garnishing

Method:
Fry A) till the sliced onions become translucent

Add in B) and fry thoroughly.

Add the chickens to the mix and cover the lid for around 3 minutes. Then, add half a packet of meat curry powder, mix thoroughly and cover the lid again for around 3 minutes or so, to allow the flavours to infuse through.

Then, add in C). Cover the lid and cooked till the oil separates and the potatoes become soft.
Garnish with some coriander leaves. Voila! The curry's done! :)

Mint leaves are essential as it enhances the curry flavour and gives an enticing aroma that's sure to whet ur appetite further. I've used curry leaves before but mint leaves are still the ones for me.

A gastronomical treat indeed. :)

Grilled Drumlets

I like using my oven a lot, whether baking cakes, cookies or grilling meat.

The chicken is our favourite poultry at home. Chicken curry, grilled chicken, sambal chicken, fried chicken, u name it, we love it.

For grilling chicken, I prefer to use drumlets than the wings. Wings are almost always reserved for frying.



This is another simple grilling recipe that I've been using, but it's based on agar-ration.

Ingredients:

Tomato Sauce/ketchup
Chilli Sauce (Lingham chilli sauce is my fav brand)
Honey
Dried oregano
Black Pepper
Salt

Preheat oven to 200 deg C. Mix all the above and marinate the drumlets. I waited 5 hours before grilling the chicken. U can also marinate overnight.

Grill for 20 minutes and then turn over and grill for another 5-10minutes.

I like to dry roast my black pepper first and then crushed it with pestle&mortar for the aroma. Wonderful wonderful indeed!

Oregano helps to enchance tomato or spicy dishes. I used mexican oregano which has a stronger flavor so I have to be careful not to go overboard or it'll be too overpowering.

This is another simple recipe, a bit of agar-ration required depending on the taste that you'd like it to be, more tomato or more honey or go crazy and load on the black pepper. Yum!