Maguro Tuna Avocado rice bowl (Maguro Avocado don)

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avocado, clean, cleaneats, cleanfoods, easy, easy meals, easy recipes, healthy, homecooked, ikura, leeks, maguro, maguro avocado don, maguro avocado rice bowl, mayonnaise, one person meal, onebowlmeal, quick meals, rice, rice bowl, solitary eating, soy sauce, tuna, tuna avocado

This is one super easy and delicious don! (don = rice bowl dish in Japanese). All you need to actually cook is the rice. The rest is all about slicing up the sashimi and avocado and assembling the rice bowl. Since the current trend now is all about clean eats, clean foods and healthy eating, I suppose this makes the cut (if you ignore the ubiquitous mayonnaise blobs popping up among the luscious chunks of creamy avocado and fresh maguro).
Ingredients (for 1 person)  

• 100 grams sashimi grade maguro tuna
• 1/2 ripe avocado, pitted and skinned
• Mayonnaise – amount at your discretion, I used Japanese mayonnaise
• Cooked short-grain white rice
• 2-3 tsp soy sauce depending how seasoned you like your tuna
• Optional (for garnish) – chopped chives, seaweed flakes and thinly sliced leeks (only the white parts). I would highly recommend you add these as they add texture, lots of flavour and freshness to the dish
• Optional – 2 tbsp ikura (sashimi grade salmon roe)
• Optional – furikake (a type of Japanese rice topping/seasoning)

Method

• Slice up the maguro sashimi into thick chunks, I cut mine into 3/4 inch cubes but do it however you like.
• Season the maguro with soy sauce and set aside.
• Cut up the avocado into cubes/chunks roughly the same size as the maguro.
• Place the rice in a bowl (if you’ve opted for the furikake, mix it into the rice before arranging the rice in the bowl) and pile the maguro and avocado on top.
• Squeeze mayonnaise over the dish in zig-zag lashings or you can add them in blobs like I did.
• Add the ikura and garnish with chives, seaweed flakes and sliced leeks.
• Serve

I enjoyed it so much I had it again for the next meal… only in the sloppiest, most disgusting way one eats when alone:-  Still tasted amazing nonetheless!

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Whole Roast Chicken and Roast Chicken Thighs

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baste, butter, celery, chicken, chicken thighs, compound butter, dinner, easy, easy meals, easy preparation, french cut, garlic, mains, onion, oven, oven roast, protein, quick preparation, roast chicken, roast chicken thighs, rosemary, thyme, western, whole, whole roast chicken

Roast chicken dinner for the family! There’s nothing quite like a full roast at the dining table… and no, Nandos and Kenny Rogers do not count. Roasting a whole chicken (or just the thighs as I will show later on in this post) is actually easier than one would think.

Fresh out of the oven and piping hot, it releases a perfumed steam as you cut into the juicy roast. Absolutely divine.
My shopping haul XD. So without further ado, the ingredients:-

Ingredients (for just 1 roast chicken, you can double it if your family is as greedy as mine)

• 1.7kg whole chicken
• 25g salted butter, softened
• 1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary (or whichever herbs you prefer)
• 1 tsp chopped fresh thmye
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 medium white onion
• 1 stalk of celery of around 10 inches, chopped into large sections (optional)
• 2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
• 2-3 sprigs fresh rosemary
• salt
• black pepper

Instructions

In a small bowl, combine the butter, chopped thyme, rosemary and garlic to form the compound herb butter.
  To prep the chicken, remove feet, giblets, head, neck and internal organs. Give the chicken a rinse and then pat it dry with some paper towels.
Gently separate the skin from the meat of the breast and spread the herb butter on the meat underneat the skin. If you can get to it, try to spread it onto a part of the thighs as well. Take the remaining butter and rub the skin (do it as gently as possible so the skin does not break. It is very important to keep the skin intact and whole). Rub some salt and black pepper onto the entire surface of the chicken, including the cavity of the chicken. If you’re prepping the chicken the night before, cover the chicken with cling wrap and refrigerate it. Some would condone leaving the chicken uncovered for crispier skin but I just can’t bear the thought of food exposed in the fridge!

Take the chicken out of the fridge an hour before cooking. This makes for tender chicken and even cooking throughout the bird.
  Stuff the cavity with the onion, celery and 1 sprig each of the thyme and rosemary. Here I had stuffed a lemon into the chicken but I’d much prefer the onion and celery option.
Scatter the remaining herbs on top and it’s good to go into the oven!  
Into the oven they go at 205 degrees celsius.   Roast for around 1.5 hours, basting the chicken in its own juices every half an hour.
And there you have it,  a hearty roast chicken that’s ready to be eaten with a variety of side dishes, as can be seen in the picture below!   Roasted some vegetables (recipe to come), made some mushroom soup, lobster pasta, cauliflower cheese (recipe to come) and pomme puree (recipe to come) as well as gravy to go with the chicken.

My sister also made some excellent focaccia bread to go with aged balsamic vinegar. I’m going to nick the recipe off her as well!
  Complete roast chicken dinner.

Roast Chicken Thighs

This is a good alternative when cooking for 1-2 people or if you simply prefer the thigh meat.  Clean the chicken and pat dry. You can use the chicken straight away but I prefer to make it look … somewhat more posh and french.   With reference to the above picture, I cut around the bone near the end of the drumstick. What happens is that I cut through the tendons and sinew (as seen in the top chicken). Remove visible tendons (they’re tough to eat). After which I proceeded to remove all skin, bone and cartilage from the bone end of the chicken, thus resulting the the chicken on the bottom of the picture. All cleaned up at the end.Chicken quarters cleaned up french style.

Make the compound butter (same as that used in the whole roast chicken recipe)

  Smear the compound butter under the skin as evenly as you can.

Tempt the dog (dog doesn’t seem tempted at all).Place the chicken into the oven preheated at 205 degrees celsius (ignore the 190 degrees seen in the picture) for about an hour or until juices run clear and the skin is golden brown in colour. Don’t forget to baste the juices onto the chicken, a couple of times will do I should think.

That’s it! Oh and if you have spare sprigs of herbs, go ahead and arrange them onto the completed dish for decoration.

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.

Kanto style Sukiyaki すき焼き, Japanese hotpot

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bacon, black pig, cast iron pot, easy, grilled tofu, Home Cooking, hot plate, hotpot, japanese, kanto style sukiyaki, kanto sukiyaki, kurobuta, leeks, mizuna, nabe, nabemono, pork, pork shoulder, raw eggs, seared tofu, shirataki, streaky pork, sukiyaki, udon, yaki tofu, yaki-dofu

On a recent trip to Hokkaido, I finally got to try sukiyaki. It’s a pretty commonplace dish, one that I’ve never tried because most of the time sukiyaki tends to be a quintessential beef hotpot dish. I don’t eat beef so I could never have it. In Hokkaido however, I found a sukiyaki place that offers the pork option. After cooking the pork in the sauce and dipping it in raw egg, I fell immediately in love with sukiyaki.

Many cooking videos and recipes later I discovered that there are two main types of sukiyaki; kansai style sukiyaki and kanto style sukiyaki. Kansai style sukiyaki calls for the method of frying the meat in some rendered fat and sugar before adding the sauce and the rest of the ingredients to the pot. Kanto style is where the sauce, called warishita (割り下）, is prepared beforehand and everything is thrown in. This is what I am more familiar with. Normal chinese hotpot sessions normally have large boiling tubs of soup with various vegetables, fishballs and meat thrown in. I guess sukiyaki is a little more special as it seems to be geared towards good cuts of meat. It is also sweet and savory making the cooked meat perfect with a bowl of white rice.

I was initially worried about the idea of using raw egg back here in Malaysia. Salmonella and all. Then I discovered that pasteurized eggs are safe for raw consumption as they eliminate risk of Salmonella and Avian flu virus. Make sure you do your research before buying and consuming raw eggs in any circumstance! I bought mine from safeegg at Aeon:-

http://www.safegg.com.my/subContent/what_is_safegg.swf

Ingredients (feeds 6 people)

warishita (割り下）sauce

• 3/4 cup sake
• 3/4 cup mirin
• 3/4 cup sugar and 1-2 tbsps extra sugar in case you want it sweeter (*edit* I used less sugar and found it so much better, around 2/3 cup. I’d recommend 2/3 cup of sugar  rather than 3/4 cup as it is less cloying and enhances the taste of the ingredients better)
• 1.5 cups light soy sauce (I got the low sodium Kikkoman soy sauce, which is why I still had to add a little salt afterwards; it wasn’t salty enough ;p)
• 2 tsp salt
• 4.5 cups water

Other ingredients 

• 1.5 kg of sliced meat (I got some sliced pork belly, pork shoulder and even managed to get some kurobuta meat)
• 1 leek
• 4 stalks of spring onion
• 6 pasteurized eggs
• 1 carrot
• 1 large onion
• 1 pack firm tofu
• 1 pack enoji mushroom
• 10-12 fresh shiitake mushrooms
• 1 pack other mushrooms (whichever you like)
• Shungiku leaves – I couldn’t find these so I used mizuna. You can use any other preferred leafy vegetables
• 1/2 chinese cabbage
• Udon (I used 3 packets but since we also had rice we couldn’t finish all the udon. Cook as much as you think you need)

For sukiyaki it would be sufficient if you had a multi-purpose cooker placed in the center of the table so as to cook all the food as you eat. I do NOT think it is a good idea to throw in all the ingredients and cook it in the kitchen and brought over to the table. It pretty much defeats the purpose of sukiyaki and more often than not your ingredients will be overcooked and will lack the “freshly cooked” taste to it. I used a cast iron pot with sides high enough so that I can fit all the vegetables comfortably, as well as a hot plate.

Cooking Instructions

• Wash all the vegetables and mushrooms.
• Cut off the roots of the spring onions and cut the spring onions into 3 sections.
• Cut off the roots of the enoki mushrooms and separate them
• Cut off the stems of the shiitake mushrooms and create star shape patterns onto the cap of the mushrooms

It’s also a good idea to arrange the vegetables in large plates as you go along. Presentation is always important in Japanese cuisine!

• Slice the carrot thickly
• Slice onion
• Cut the chinese cabbage into bite sized pieces
• Pour a tablespoon of oil into a frying pan and fry/sear the surface of the tofu. What we are making here is yaki-dofu or grilled tofu. This is a good step-by-step on how to make it:http://japanese-kitchen.net/yaki-dofu-grilled-tofu/
• Once you’re done searing the tofu, cut it into bite sized pieces

Tadahhh! All that effort of cleaning and cutting those vegetables! Not to mention searing tofu. I accidentally broke off some of the edges T___T

• Prepare the udon according to instructions and set aside
• Drain the shirataki and set aside

Next, combine all the wareshita ingredients in the pot and simmer to dissolve sugar.

Prepare all the meat and have it on standby with the vegetables.

Start the sukiyaki feast!   

Place your pot on the hot plate and bring the sauce to a simmer. Cook the meat, dip into raw beaten egg and eat with fresh white rice. Throw the ingredients in according to your preference but I’d suggest putting in the leeks, onions and carrots first along with the meat as it lends more sweetness to the sauce. Not that it matters much, the sauce is already sweet enough, it’s just that these vegetables also take more time to cook. Enjoy!!

White truffle series 4: Garlic bread uni and salad

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bread topped with uni, easy, garlic bread, garlic bread sea urchin, garlic bread topped with uni, garlic bread uni, Home Cooking, honey, honey lemon and mayo dressing, lemon, light, quick, sea urchin, truffle oil, truffle salad, uni, uni and truffle, white truffle, white truffle recipe, white truffles

This is another quick uni and white truffle combination that I love. Super easy to put together because you’re gonna be using ready-made garlic bread!

Just grab your favourite brand of garlic bread, pop it into the oven until its nice and hot and crispy on the outside and then top it off with a heaping mountain of golden orange sea urchin roe (make sure it is fresh uni). Finish it off with a sprinkling of chopped chives and fragrant slivers of white truffle. The garlic bread should have enough salt content, but you can add some fleur de sel on top if you wish.

Love ❤

And then there’s salad. I put together a salad of baby spinach leaves, radish, cherry tomatoes, a handful of dried blueberries, some ikura/salmon roe (personally I love ikura but you can leave this out if you think it’s weird), shaved parmigiano reggiano cheese and white truffle on the top. Dressed it lightly with my favourite dressing; a simple honey, lemon and mayo mixture. I can’t remember now if I added any truffle oil to this or not. Good time to try making this again when I get hold of some truffles!

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Pork loin tonkatsu

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breaded, deep fried, easy, easy recipes, flour, japanese, japanese cuisine, katsu, panko, pork, pork loin, pork tonkatsu, potato flour, tonkatsu

Pork tonkatsu is a deep-fried, breaded pork dish, very common dish in Japanese cuisine and generally comes in two types;  pork fillet (ヒレ, hire) or pork loin (ロース, rōsu) cut. It goes well with Japanese curries or on its own with some lemon or tonkatsu sauce (you can get these at your local Japanese grocer). I opted for mayonnaise and english mustard for mine. This is the basic pork tonkatsu, using pork loin. First you dust the meat in flour, then in an egg batter and finally some Japanese panko breadcrumbs before frying them until golden brown. You can play around with the fillings using this concept, some restaurants roll up some sliced meats and layer them with cheese, mentaiko etc. to make tonkatsu, and those are amazing as well!

Ingredients (3 pax: 1 pork loin per pax)

• 3 pork loin cuts
• 1 beaten egg lightly seasoned with salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup of potato flour
• 3/4 cup or more of Japanese panko breadcrumbs (adjust as you see fit, I normally eyeball the amount and add when I feel that the loins could do with more breadcrumbs)
• enough cooking oil to submerge the pork cutlets

Cooking Instructions

• In preparing the pork, remove the excess fat if you’re not a fan. If you like it then by all means leave the fat on. Either way, you will need to make several cuts on the side where the fat/tendon is. Make sure the fat/tendon is cut through in each incision made. This ensures that the pork does not curl up during the cooking process
• Next, use a meat tenderizer and pound at the meat on each side. It will flatten out a little after the pounding. Don’t go overboard as you might end up with pork shreds! Just enough pounding to ensure that the pork will be juicy and tender after cooking. Rearrange the pork back into its original shape (pat it back into shape!)
• Season both sides of the pork loin with some salt and pepper.

• Press the pork into the flour, lightly covering all surfaces of the meat, and tap off the excess flour
• Next, dip the pork into the egg mixture, lightly coating the pork in egg
• Lastly coat the pork in panko breadcrumbs. It should look like this when you’re done:-

• Heat up some oil in  wok or a pot on high heat. Ensure that there’s enough oil to completely submerge the pork, otherwise it will not have an even colouring.
• Before placing the pork into the oil, test it with a pair of cooking chopsticks. Tiny bubbles should form around it, as shown in the following photo:

• Gently place your pork into the oil. It is very important NOT to overcrowd the pan as that again will lead to uneven colouring and the tendency to overcook the pork is pretty high. We all have moments where we think the heat is not high enough and end up leaving the meat to cook way longer than it should. Lesson learnt, do not overcrowd the pan so that the temperature remains high and food cooks as it should.
• Cook until the pork turns golden brown.

• Flip the pork once halfway through cooking so that the top part of the pork gets a chance to brown evenly too!

• Remove the pork cutlets and place them on a wire rack to drain off the excess oil.

• If you are going to make another batch of tonkatsu, make sure you skim off all the burnt bits from the oil before frying the next batch. Otherwise, other than uneven colouring on the next batch of tonkatsu, you risk burning them too. It’s not what I’d call appetizing 😉

• Slice it up and take a moment to appreciate that satisfying *cruncchhh*~ when you cut through the crispy golden layer.

❤

Serve!! In Japanese restaurants, this is normally served with some steaming hot white rice, miso soup and some pickles with some lemon and sauce on the side. Along with a mountain of shredded cabbage. Makes you feel a lot better about all the deep fried food you’re about to have ;D

Er…. but the Malaysian that I am decided to serve it with a variety of other foods. Made a simple fried omelette dish, some deep fried breaded silverfish, stir fried green vegetables and my favorite garlic soy lamb!

Crayon Shin Chan Kyaraben

Tags

apple, apple designs, bento, character bento, Crayon Shin-chan, cutters, easy, flower shaped apples, food art, furikake, Home Cooking, Kyaraben, lunchbox, nori, quick, salmon furikake, seaweed, seaweed art, shin chan

Here’s an easy kyaraben (Character bento) that you could attempt. This anime character is Shin Chan, one of the many anime characters that bring back a wave of university nostalgia. For the list of tools used, please refer to my first bento post.To make Shin Chan’s face, I used some rice mixed with Salmon furikake (to make the flesh tone). I couldn’t find a furikake that had no seaweed in it so unfortunately my flesh tone had little specks of seaweed in them T___T. It turned out ok in the end though.

For the hair, eyes and eyebrows I cut out strips of seaweed using a sharp design cutter as shown in my first bento post.

As usual, I drew my design on paper, just to make the face fit in with the other food I wanted to put into my bento. Using this design as a template, you can then cut out the hair, eyes and eyebrows by clipping the paper on top of a sheet of nori on a cutting board as shown in the pictures below.  

So the sequence is: Paper, seaweed and then cutting board. All fastened together to make it easier to cut out the delicate pieces of seaweed. Then you mix your Salmon furikake into the rice, place it into the bento box and shape it into the form that you’ve drawn in the design, roughly in the same size as accurately as possible. Then add the seaweed hair, eyes and eyebrows.

If added the seaweed directly onto the rice, the seaweed will shrivel. However I find that cutting out cheese to form the base for the seaweed infinitely cumbersome so I skipped that step. Cheese normally should be the base for any form of seaweed art so that the seaweed remains nice and flat instead of all crumpled and shriveled like it was in my bento T____TSo there it is. I cut out some flowers from an apple, added an egg and some chicken. Then I used a chunk of chilli for Shin Chan’s mouth. I suppose you could use ketchup or do it the professional way and use an egg sheet dyed red. Too much trouble to make the egg sheet for such a small area. Plus I like the spicy kick that the chilli lent. This is the second part of the bento. Just a compilation of the stuff I wanted to eat. Make sure that moist foods like fruits are separated from dry foods using rubber separators or in this case, leaves 😉 I wouldn’t want that egg tart to turn soggy!

I’d like to draw your attention to the apples. I saw these designs in a magazine but couldn’t understand how it was made so I freestyled it… basically I winged it.  I cut some apple chunks with the skin still on, in large cubes. Then I made four shallow cuts in the skin with a small knife, in the form of a hashtag # (I hope you understand what I’m bumbling on about, guess this is where a video would be much more educational than my incoherent words). Use the knife to gently peel off the skin slices in alternate blocks, leaving the skin on in some blocks so that it forms the design as shown. It is actually easier than it looks.

And there you have it, a Shin Chan bento. This was quick, delicious and fun to prepare. Definitely fun to eat as well 😉

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Truffles Part 6 – Zafferano inspired Clear soup with winter vegetables and pastry with truffles and foie gras

Tags

black truffle, chicken soup, clear broth, comfort food, easy, foie gras, pastry, Puff pastry, Soup, soup bowl, truffle, winter vegetables

I was cracking my head on what else I should do with the remainder of my truffles. I had way too much for myself! Then my sister described a dish that she really enjoyed at Zafferano. I’ve never been to Zafferano myself, but what she described sounded just perfect as it was not heavy and full of cream and fat (well, excluding the foie gras that is). I had been pigging out on heavy, calorie-laden food while making all these truffle dishes. Clear broth sounded amazing then.

Ingredients (per person)

1) Half a foie gras slice, cut into chunks (well you can add more if you like, but remember this is going to be boiled and not seared, thus it would make the soup really oily if you add too much)

2) chicken broth to fill up to slightly more than half of the soup bowl that you will be using

3) 1/4 of a courgette,sliced and quartered

4) 1/4 of a large carrot, sliced

5) 1/4 a large onion, sliced or 3 inches of a white radish, sliced and quartered

6) Truffle shavings

7) 1/4 of a 500g Jus-Rol Frozen Puff Pastry sheet, rolled out in a square shape and trim the ends with a sharp knife. It should be large enough to cover the soup bowl

Instructions

1) Add the vegetables and foie gras to the broth and simmer for about 5 minutes or until vegetables are sufficiently cooked to your liking.

2) Meanwhile preheat your oven temp. to 220ºC or the temperature that is stated on the cooking instructions for your ready made pastry.

3) Ladle out your soup into the bowl, I think it would be best if the soup was warm and not boiling hot because if it is the latter, the steam from the soup will cause the pastry puff sheet to sink down a lot more while baking. Mine totally sunk =(. Lastly add some sliced truffle into the soup. You could add the ends of the truffle, which is difficult to shave but too much of a waste to let go.

4) Place the pastry sheet over the soup bowl and make sure it is securely in place. Using a fork to make patterns (see picture below) helps to secure it in place. You can also go crazy with the patterns. 😉

5) Bake for 15-20 minutes until the puff pastry is all nicely puffed up and golden brown.

6) Told you my dough sank into the soup =(. With the middle bit sunken like that I had to save it somehow, so I draped a couple of sprigs of thyme and shaved the truffles on top

7) It was really good! The pastry and soup together is so comforting ~ Would totally make this again.

Strawberry Hearts Jelly No Bake Cheesecake

Tags

cheesecake, dessert, easy, jello, no bake, strawberry, strawberry jelly cheesecake

This happens to be one of those “inspirational foods”. The tiny strawberry hearts and the clear jelly that encases it are just so exquisite! Even the taste is yummy and pretty addictive despite being so easy to make! Perfect for Valentine’s day or a special occasion. Or just a snack 😉

Ingredients

Crust

300 gram McVities digestive biscuits (crushed)

140 gram melted butter

Cheese Filling

2 blocks Philadelphia cream cheese

4 tsp gelatine powder

7 tbsp sugar

1 cup hot water

1 tsp vanilla essence

Strawberry Jelly

1 box strawberry jelly (Brand: Jell-o can be found in cold storage or Jason’s)

2 cups hot water

A box of strawberries for decoration

Instructions

1) For the biscuit base, blend biscuits until fine and mix with melted butter. Mix thoroughly

2) Press mixture into a 10″ square tray. Chill in the freezer to let it set and harden a little

3) Slice off the strawberry skins and cut out strawberry heart shapes out of them. The hearts should not be too thin and should show the red outer layer of the berry. Set aside at least 30 of these hearts.

4) Stir gelatine powder into the boiling hot water until it dissolves

5) Beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla essence until creamy before slowly adding the slightly cooled gelatine. Beat until smooth. Pour half of the cream cheese mixture on top of the digestive biscuit base.

6) Place the tray back into the freezer to set the first layer.

7) Once the first layer is set, pour the rest of the cheese mixture evenly on top. The reason why I do this is so that the strawberry hearts will not sink to the bottom of the cheese mixture and remains sticking out of the last layer of cheese where it is prominently shown.

8) Before setting the last layer of cheese, place the hearts uniformly on the cheese and ensure that the red hearts do not get covered by the cheese mixture. Once you’re done placing the hearts to your satisfaction, place the tray back into the freezer to set the cheese and hearts into place.

9) Now to prepare the jello layer, dissolve the Jell-o into the hot water, stir and let it cool for a while. It should be warm but not hot so that it cooks the cheese and strawberry hearts. And it shouldn’t be too cool so that the jelly sets and can no longer be poured.

10) Using a ladle, ladle the strawberry jello mixture evenly over the cheese cake. The jelly mixture should cover the strawberry hearts.

11) Refrigerate to set the jelly. To serve, slice with a hot knife. The strawberry hearts will be enclosed in a ruby jeweled casing (i.e. the jelly) and it is super pretty! The jelly is clear and red so you can see the delicate strawberry hearts resting on the cheese.