Shepherd’s Pie

Tags

autumn recipes, brunch, chives, comfort food, easy recipe, lamb mince, lamb sauce, lunch, mash, mashed potatoes, One bowl meal, pie, rosemary, sheperds pie, thyme, winter recipes, worcestershire sauce

I’ve been itching to have a go at making this pie for a while now! What’s not to love about creamy mashed potatoes and a hearty thick lamb mince ragu all in a single bowl? It’s a pretty balanced meal is it not? Carbs, protein and vegetables? Let’s forget for a moment about the amount of cream and cheese that went into it and label it as the ultimate balanced meal.

Comfort food. Easy to put together. I will definitely make this again! The recipe calls for peas and corn as well but I made do without them since I’ve got a picky eater on my hands today!

Ingredients 

Meat Layer

• Minced lamb – around 700 grams
• 2 carrots, diced into smallish cubes
• 1/2 cup fresh corn kernels
• 1/2 cup fresh English peas (if you’re feeling lazy there’s always the frozen mixed vegetables option which has carrots, corn and peas all in one convenient bag. Use 1.5 cups of the mix then)
• 4 cloves garlic finely minced
• 1 cup minced onion
• 3 tsp chopped rosemary leaves
• 3 tsp thyme leaves
• 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 3 tbsps Tomato puree, have an additional 3 tbsps on hand if you prefer more of it in the ragu
• 2 tbsps Worcestershire sauce – other recipes call for 1 tsp, I found it insufficient and ended to my taste, so add to your taste
• 2 tbsps all purpose flour
• pepper to taste

Potato Layer

• 700 grams peeled russet potatoes approx.
• 200 ml cream
• 30g salted butter
• pepper to taste
• 1 tsp garlic powder (optional)
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• fresh thyme leaves

Cooking Instructions  

• Heat up butter in a large deep skillet on medium high heat
• Add the chopped onions first, and cook until translucent and starting to caramelise.
• Add the garlic and fry for about half a minute or so until that’s soft
• At this point if the mixture is getting a tad too dry, add a little more butter. After which we can now put the lamb mince into the pan to brown. Break up the meat into small pieces (the smaller, the smoother the ragu will be, but that’s only if you like it that way)
•  Mix in the vegetables, we’re only adding them now as we don’t want to overcook them
• Sprinkle the thyme and rosemary over the mixture and give it a good stir.
• Pour in the red wine, chicken broth, Worcestershire sauce and tomato puree and flour.
• Bring the sauce to a boil and lower the heat to simmer for a couple of minutes. The flour should thicken the sauce in the process.
• Turn the heat off and cover with a lid.

• As for the potatoes, place them in a large pot and cover with cold water
• Add salt to the water
• Bring to a boil. Once they are pierced easily with a fork, drain them. Check in about 10 minutes, if the potatoes are still resistant to the fork the leave for a bit longer. However, take care that you don’t overcook them. Don’t want mushy potatoes!
• Press the potatoes through a ricer (or mash them by hand) and put aside.
• Meanwhile, melt the butter in a saucepan and add the cream. Bring this to a gentle simmer before adding the potatoes to the cream and mixing it all up. Season with salt and pepper.
• (Additional step:- you can put the mashed potatoes through a sieve to get rid of all the lumps for that smooth mash)

Ladle the ragu into your prettiest deep dish (one that is oven-compatible). Sprinkle a layer of cheese over the ragu.   Spread the mashed potatoes evenly over the ragu like so.
After which you’re done. You can use a fork to create patterns on the mash which will turn out a little crispy after some time in the oven. My ideal meat ragu to potato ratio  is 3:1.

However, you can add more if you like your mash. Here, I decorated the top by squeezing the potatoes through a decorative nozzle.

Sprinkle some cheese over the top of the mash layer, and arrange some thyme leaves strategically into the top layer as a sort of garnish and for the fragrance.

Bake at 205 Celsius for around 20-30 minutes
Added some chopped chives before serving, just because I like chives.
  

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Shaoxing Wine Ginger chicken

Tags

chicken, Chinese, easy, easy meals, easy recipe, ginger, ginger wine chicken, healthy, Home Cooking, scallions, sesame oil, shaoxing wine, shaoxing wine ginger chicken, South East Asian, spring onions, white pepper, wine, wine chicken

This dish brings back a lot of memories from my Warwick days. For some reason I remember that the preparation process was long and tedious back then! It involves deboning chicken thighs/drumsticks and skinning and julienning ginger. At the present though, I no longer find it as long and dreary a process. Perhaps I could attribute it to… better knife skills? Or maybe just better knives, I don’t think my knife skills have improved at all since then!

This is a very warming, hearty dish and the sauce is lovely with freshly cooked white rice. It’s currently a favourite with the family and guests who happen to try it! It doesn’t take very long nor need many ingredients and makes a perfect addition to the dining table. I include pictures from two attempts at cooking this dish and I realized that I naturally throw the same ingredients into the pan, despite starting off with perhaps a couple less ingredients in one of the photos. That goes to show that agaration (the South East Asian technique of cooking by guesstimating) isn’t very far off from precision after all!Ingredients from trial number 1Ingredients from trial number 2.

But don’t worry, I’ve consolidated the ingredient list and summarized it as below:-

Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 2-3 stalks of Spring onions including the white bits with roots removed
• 3 inches of ginger, peeled and roughly julienned
• 4 Chicken thighs with skin on, deboned
• 3 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 3 tbsp clear chicken stock/broth
• 1 tbsp sesame oil

Chicken marinade

• Shaoxing wine 1 tbsp marinade
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2-3 tbsp soy sauce
• white pepper
• 2 tsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tsp corn flour

Cooking Instructions

Upon deboning the chicken, remove the skin from two of the chicken thighs and discard. Keep the skin on for the remaining two chicken thighs. We want some chicken fat rendering in the gravy but not too much!

Trim off the excess fat and remove the tendons from the chicken. Tendons are tough to cut through and unpleasant to eat so be thorough in removing them whenever preparing chicken! Once that is done, cut the chicken meat into bite-sized, uniform pieces so they cook at the same speed. 

Place the chicken in a bowl and lightly mix in the chicken marinade with your hands. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes at room temperature.

In preparing the scallions/spring onions, cut them into thirds or 2 inch sections. You can take some of the green sections to slice thinly for garnishing as well.

Heat up some oil in a pan/wok on medium fire. When the oil is hot enough (i.e. if you drop a piece of ginger into the oil it starts to sizzle right away), slide the ginger into the oil gingerly (I’m so funny I know) and fry for a minute until the ginger starts to turn a little golden and the gingery aroma seeps out. The point of this step is to flavour the oil with ginger as well as prep the ginger so it’s at its best to mingle with the chicken.Add the chicken pieces and fry until half-cooked.

Then, flip the pieces over and add the chicken stock, sesame oil plus Shaoxing wine and cover to cook for a minute. We’re quick-braising/stewing the chicken with some moisture, not searing it to death. Remember, the chicken has to be swimming in a luscious pool of delicious gravy!Upon uncovering, add the spring onion sections into the pan/wok and stir fry for a little while more. Taste to check if it needs more white pepper or salt.

And it’s done!Not the fanciest of dishes but highly satisfying and easy on the stomach. Healthy too!

Check out the before and after picture of trial number 1. I used 10 thighs for that round of cooking!

Wiped clean. ❤

Truffle eggs with cheese

Tags

black truffle, black truffles, bread, breakfast, brunch, cheese, easy, easy meals, easy recipe, Egg, eggs, Home Cooking, scrambled eggs, scrambled truffle eggs, truffle eggs

Just another quick picture post on some scrambled eggs I made while I was in London. Found some black truffle at Borough Market, so I shaved some over the eggs. I still think nothing beats the aroma of Alba winter white truffles!

A minute twist to ordinary scrambled eggs… add some truffle oil and mild cheddar cheese shavings to give boring ol scrambled eggs a little kick! Top with chopped chives and serve over slices of sourdough bread, pan toasted in butter. Recipe for the basic scrambled eggs here.

Hoedeopbap again!

Tags

dinner, easy recipe, healthy, hoedeopbap, hotate, hwedeopbap, koream sashimi salad, lunch, One bowl meal, quick meal, sake, salad, salmon, sashimi, scallops

Bought some really fresh, plump salmon sashimi and some scallop as well. Thought I’d just quickly whip up some hoedeopbap (Korean sashimi salad) to go with some freshly cooked rice. Rice is one of my guilty pleasures and I try not to have carbs at night but I couldn’t resist… yet again T___T

Here’s the link to the initial post I did up on Hoedeopbap. I just changed some of the vegetables and type of fish according to the ingredients that I have on hand. The one thing that doesn’t change is the sauce. Also, I managed to get hold of Korean perilla leaves (kkaenip)! It was so difficult to find in Singapore, so I was shocked when I came across it by accident in a korean grocery store in Kuala Lumpur. I quickly snapped up 3 packs of it!

My prize: the korean perilla leaf in all its glory

And the rest is just arranging the salad so it looks pretty 😉

Mix it up well and good.

Devour!

❤

Chocolate Chip cookies

Tags

best chocolate chip cookie, chocolate chip cookies, cookies, dessert, easy recipe, famous amos, gift, occasion, present, special occasion, valentine, valentine's day

I’m a real sucker for Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies so I looked up recipes that claim to be Famous Amos cookie-worthy back in university. When I hit upon this recipe and tried it out, while I’m not 100% sure it tastes exactly like the famed cookie, it comes pretty close and definitely hits the spot. I can’t remember where I got this recipe from, but when I do come across it again I’ll put up the credits here.

As today is Valentine’s day, thought I’d put this up along with a brownie recipe made a little more special as it comes in the shape of a heart ;D

Ingredients (yields 4-6 dozen cookies)

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup butter (if its salted, then forego the salt later on in the recipe)
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp milk
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

First, thoroughly cream the sugars, butter, milk, oil and vanilla essence.

Then, add in the dry ingredients and mix well before adding in the chocolate chips. Mix in the chocolate chips with a spatula, try not to do it with your mixer unless you want the chips thoroughly incorporated into the batter -___-

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees celsius and place some baking paper on top of some baking trays/cookie sheets.

And now, the fun part! Using a teaspoon, drop cookie dough onto the sheets like so. Leave around 1.5 inches of space between each cookie as it will expand in the oven.

If you like the chocolate chips to be less visible, you can hide the chips in the dough. It will come out nice and even once cooked with little chocolate surprises when you bite into it. You can even make shapes with the cookies. Try making heart-shaped cookies for Valentine’s day ;D

Pop it into the oven for around 8-12 minutes. For it to be crunchy, leave it in for longer, it should brown slightly around the edges. If you like chewy cookies, bake it for 8-9 minutes. The crunchy ones last longer though.

Remove from the oven and let it cool completely.

Repeat with the rest of the dough.

Isn’t this jar cute? I got it from Muji. Super rustic.

Please remember to let it cool completely before storing the cookies in the jar. Otherwise the chocolate will still be all melted and gooey and will smudge the inside of the jar. Not a pretty sight. 

And here it is, the final product!Happy Valentine’s day!!! Brownie recipe next up.

White truffle series part 1: Garlic soy lamb with white truffles

Tags

aluminium foil, baked, dinner, easy lamb recipe, easy meals, easy meat recipe, easy recipe, garlic, lamb, mains, meat, soy sauce, truffle lamb, truffle oil, truffles, white winter truffles

This is a super easy recipe, all you need is a rack of lamb, some chopped up garlic, soy sauce and some white pepper. And then you shove it in the oven. I used to make this in university when I could spare the money for some lamb meat (definitely did not fancify it with truffles back then!), and I ate it with rice. It made for a really satisfying meal!

This time around I made the dish again along with my other truffle themed dishes:-

Top left; uni mixed with sushi rice topped with ikura, truffles and more uni

Centre: Sea bream/tai sashimi with chopped canned black summer truffles in truffle oil, fleur de sel and shaved white truffles. I’ve made this before with black winter truffles

Bottom right: Garlic soy lamb with white truffles

Bottom left: Uni sushi with truffles, japanese mayonnaise, chives and white truffles

Here are a couple more pictures of the sashimi, won’t be doing up recipe posts on it as I’ve done it before:

(Yes, I bought a mountain of uni in honour of the white truffle! Hello cholesterol!)

Ingredients for the trio of truffle carpaccio dish (yeah well it was supposed to be a carpaccio but truth be told I bought it as sashimi)

Chopped canned black truffles

Here’s a peak of the monster white truffle…

Ingredients (for 1 pax):

(Please ignore the ice wine, balsamic vinegar and honey that’s in the photo… I had initially wanted to make a separate sauce for the lamb but I found that the sauce from the lamb after cooking was more than sufficient!)

• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small rack of lamb, around 200g with the bone – this was a really small rack of lamb, thus only feeds one person
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• white pepper to taste
• 1 tsp white truffle oil (optional)
• white truffle shavings to top (optional)

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius
• Place the room temperature lamb in a sheet of aluminium foil large enough to entirely wrap the lamb.
• Rub in the soy sauce, minced soy sauce and a dash of white pepper into the lamb

• Place 1 tbsp of water into the sheet before wrapping up the lamb.
• Place the lamb in the oven for about 35 minutes for a pink centre (you can adjust the temperature slightly higher and/or leave it in the oven for longer if you like it well done)
• Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes at room temperature.
• Shave white truffles over the top and serve

mmmmm…