Air Fried Sweet Potato Fries

Sweet potato always goes on sale during the holidays season, so I bought a few to make my sweet potato pie and air fry sweet potato fries.  I am very much prefer the sweet potato than the potato because it is healthier.  I like red potato for the baked crispy potatoes and Russet potato for smashed potatoes.  Anyway, with the air fryer, making sweet potato fries is so much easier and I have a meal ready in less than 40 minutes.

I am serving the sweet potato fries with my air fried Cornish hen and butter thyme broccoli.

Baked Chicken Fingers

This is one of the easy meals that you can serve at home.  My girls totally loved this.  I can serve this with a side of salad and potato-totes.  Or it can very well be an appetizer or a finger food for a party. You can get creative with any seasonings of your choice, it doesn't really matter.

I served mine with portobello mushroom, fresh cucumber and tatertotes!

Short-cut Curry Puffs

This is my short-cut way of making curry puffs as I don't have lots of time to spend in the kitchen. Edda wanted me to make curry puffs for her, and I remembered I used to make curry puffs while I was in my early 20s and people loved it.  I didn't have the recipe anymore but I remembered I only used flour, salt and butter I think.  I loved my keeper flaky pie crust recipe and it had all the ingredients that I remembered, hence I set out to try this flaky pie crust recipe for my curry puffs.

The skin is flaky when deep-fried as well.

As how did I come out with the short-cut curry puffs?  When I cooked a big pot of curry chicken with organic red potatoes, I took some of it without the gravy and keep it in the freezer.  When I have the mood or time to make curry puffs, I defroze the curry chicken potatoes the night before and then cut it into smaller pieces.  Then, I used my food processor to make the flaky dough.  After that, just wrap it and then deep-fried it in my newly acquired deep-fryer.  Viola!  Just like the name implied, this curry puffy skin was flaky.  Just toast it in a toaster oven to have a warm curry puff the next day.

You can also individually freeze these uncooked curry puffs and then put it in a Ziploc freezer bag and deep-fry it as needed.  In this case, you can have curry puffs anytime you desired.  It is great to invest in a deep-fryer, it makes deep-frying so much easier for me.  I especially love to deep-fry firm tofu in my deep-fryer and had it with my noodle soup, so good!

Red Bean Roti Canai

While shopping at the Asian market one day, I saw this frozen red bean roti canai.  It reminded of the Chinese red bean pancake dessert that I had when I was in Malaysia, so I bought this on impulse.  I just pan-fried this oil free in a non-stick pan and it came out looking like roti canai instead of the Chinese dessert that I thought it was.  It just tasted like roti canai with red bean filling so I was kind of disappointed.  Edda said she didn't like it at all.  Oh well, guess we wouldn't be buying this in the future.

I think the one that I made here long time ago tasted better than this!

Roti Canai with red bean filling.

Coconut Mochi Cake

I have some sweeten coconut flakes in the refrigerator and making a coconut mochi cake just strike me as an excellent idea.  It couldn't be yummier and the crust was crispy in the day it was baked and turned soft the next day.  Nevertheless it was still delicious!  If you like all things coconut, you might want to give this recipe a try!  Least to say it was super duper easy to make as well.  Enjoy!

Chinese Fried Donuts

I am sharing the secret recipe of the Chinese donuts dessert that you order at the Chinese restaurants.  This is so simple to make, so delicious to eat and loved by many.  It is hard to stop at just one!

Homemade version is so much healthier and cheaper.  You get to use your own trans fat free oil and 100% pure cane sugar instead of the GMO granulated beet sugar.  Furthermore, you can save this clean oil to reuse for your next batch of fried donuts as well.

Wait no further, continue to the next page for the recipe!  Enjoy!

Chewy Rice Paper Pan-fried Nian Gao

This inspiration came about when I was watching a Korean Variety Show called "Happy Together".  There was a winning dish that used the rice paper to wrap leftover and pan-fried it.  Just so happen that I still have a small piece of nian gao/ steamed glutinous rice cake in the refrigerator, so I thought rice paper and nian gao would go well together and quickly set out to give it a try.  We all loved this chewy variation of eating the nian gao too.  Now I have a new way to enjoy the leftover nian gao from Chinese New Year!  I bet you all have some nian gao laying around your house too right?  Give this a try!! *wink*

Soft and chewy bite with melted nian gao/ tikoy/ steamed glutinous rice cake with a slight crispiness from the skin, simply divine!  If you don't like it chewy, you can also try my Crispy Springroll Fried Nian Gao.  You can omit other filling and just wrap it with the nian gao alone, crispy and delicious!

Baked Turkey Meatballs

Do you love the convenience of frozen meatballs that sell in the supermarkets?  I do!  But as I am becoming more aware and more educated about food such as whole food vs processed food, I couldn't bring myself to buy it.  As I flipped to the back and read the ingredients list, I had to sigh and put the frozen meatballs back in the freezer.  I told myself, if I want some meatballs, I just have to make it myself and freeze it!

I chose turkey because I bought a small turkey breast during the Christmas sales.  I removed the turkey bone and hand minced the turkey breast with a cleaver.  Then, just added the seasonings and baked.  Since my turkey breast was small, it didn't yield much meatballs, next time I would have to make more to freeze.  These turkey meatballs were delicious as it.  Or you can add it in spaghetti sauce, or make a BBQ meatballs sauce, or an Asian style sauce to coat the meatballs.  I even sandwiched it in a bun with a slice of cheese for Evy to bring in as her lunchbox to school.

Korean Smoked Fish Ham

Look what I found while shopping at the Korean supermarket, H-Mart?  Smoked Fish Ham!!  I didn't know that fish can be made into ham, that was new to me.  A lady was doing the sample booth and offering me a sample of this fish ham and I really was impressed as it really tasted like ham.  Best of all, it was made of fish which made it slightly healthier?

It was on sales for $5 (usual price $8) and according to the lady it might increase to $10.  I certainly wouldn't pay $10 for it but since it was on sales and all of us loved it, I bought one along with some fish cakes.

I just sliced it into pieces and pan-fried it in a little oil as demo and served it with Udon noodle soup (not picture).  I put vegetable and mushroom into the noodle soup to make it more balance.

Kimchi Pancakes

Kimchi pancakes have been on my to-do list for quite some times.  Glad to say I finally made it happen.  I made it vegetarian and vegan without adding any meat and egg.  I also added the spicy radish that I made earlier for extra kick.  I didn't add any seasonings in these pancakes as the kimchi and spicy radish were well seasoned.  Furthermore, I served this kimchi pancakes with ginger scallion soy sauce.  Hence, I didn't want to make it too salty.

Makes a great side dish or appetizer in any meal.

By the way, Evy made the pretty flower origami!  :-)

Lazy Egg Tarts

 

When I saw this egg tarts made using puff pastry at Nasi Lemak Lover's blog, I immediately bookmarked it.  Simply because I am lazy and simple or short-cut recipes attract me.  Just so that I had a piece of frozen puff pastry waiting to be used and my girls and I loved loved egg tarts (in any crust), so this recipe came in the right moment.  Each of us had three pieces after it came out of the oven and it was pretty good for a short-cut recipe.  However, I would prefer to use the pie crust for this instead of puff pastry the next time as it couldn't hold lots of filling as I was having difficulty in stretching the thawed puff pastry to fill the muffin hole.  

I would use the custard filling recipe again and make my own crust the next time I feel like eating egg tarts.  Definitely not a bad way to get a quick fix.  However, I would recommend the refrigerated pie crust instead of frozen puff pastry if you don't want to make your own crust and want a quick craving fix..

Deep Fried Italian Panko Shrimps

Have you ever wonder how the chef deep-fried the shrimps without it curled up?  One time when we were visiting our friend's restaurant, her chef made a similar dish for my girls.  His was without seasonings, just dip in flour, then beaten egg, then panko and deep fried.  What caught my eyes was that the shrimps were not curled up so of course I had to pick one to examining it.  When I tasted the shrimp, I sort of gotten the idea of how it was made.  I would share with you the secret in my next page.

I found the unseasoned one quite bland, so I seasoned mine and added dried herbs.  We all loved this, but who could resist this type of fried food anyway?  Flavorful and crispy, hard to stop at a few.

Crunchy Baked Chicken Strips

I was inspired by Gert and decided to make my own version. I have some leftover whole grain cereal with oats and almonds that no one wants to eat anymore so I thought this would be the perfect crispy coating for my chicken strips. If you have any cereal left at home, use it to coat your chicken, it is the perfect way to use it up. I used very simple seasoning grinders that I have at home, you can season yours however you liked too. My cereal is slightly sweet so my baked chicken strips turned out to be crunchy sweet. It's good eating like this without any dipping sauce. My girls totally loved it. Crunchy Crunch and Crispy Crisp!