mycookerygarden

I wanted to make a savoury vegan bread. Many savoury bread recipes have cheese as an ingredient. Based on this recipe but omitted the cheese and replaced walnuts with almonds. Used olive oil. https://www.asdagoodliving.co.uk/food/recipes/tomato-asparagus-loaf About 500g bread flour 2 tsp instant 2 tsp salt 1 tsp sugar About 150g Thai asparagus - sautéed and chopped, kept a few shoots for decor Dried tomatoes - oven baked from 500g fresh tomatoes Chopped walnuts - used what was left in snack container - with skin/peel on - next time, should use nuts without peel 2 tbsp olive oil Water as needed Made dried tomatoes from Malaysian tomatoes - 500g reduces a lot. Supposed to be by 7 times. Takes a long time - at least 3 hours at 150° - 170° C. Need to turn as well. Oven dried tomatoes. Tasty. Not as good and professionally done as the store-bought ones but much cheaper. Had a lot of almonds! The initial mix. Added water as needed. Hmm could have ma...

I have been wanting to post this since Chinese New Year i.e. Feb 2018! Hai Sem Bak, or translated from Hokkien to English - Sea Cucumber Pork - is an important and 'grand' dish to serve at our Chinese New Year reunion dinner. Every year, my mother devotes about one week to prepare and cook this dish. The actual cooking time also takes several hours. On top of this, the dried sea cucumber is expensive. Surely, any recipe with these two headers below will scare away 90% of readers. Preparation time: 1 week Cooking time: a few hours This is the final dish, garnished with broccoli and red chilli. Old school, heritage dish. Very Hokkien and Teo Chew too, I think. Sea cucumber served with broccoli Garnished with a nice red chilli. My contribution to this dish is to procure the dried sea cucumber way before the Chinese New Year shopping rush. Prices are better and the sea cucumber is already with my mother, for her preparation, regardless of the timing of my tri...

I turned the pot moringa plant as the branches were growing lopsided. See the plant's 180° moves in the pics below. Amazing.

I am recording this apple pie for its beauty. By my "low" standards. Usually, my dishes are not presented well or pretty. I decorated this crust with nice leaf petals this time, and they baked well. So, ta - dah! The pastry mixture is more biscuit like rather than short-crust pastry - only used 1 tbsp butter and some olive oil with an egg for about 1.5 - 2 cups of flour. So, this is the healthy part. The cubed apples (about 3 medium apples) was stewed for about 20 mins with quite a lot of cinnamon powder (2 tsp) and about 2 tbsp of sugar. So, altogether quite a "dry" crust apple pie - it will be more palatable for dessert lovers with a scoop of ice-cream. Baking in the oven at 180C. A little bit of leftover egg with water as egg wash - helped the browning. You can see this is a healthy crust by the crumbs from the knife cutting - it is a little dry because there was only about 1 tbsp butter and some olive oil used in the pastry, with an egg.

I had a block of Malagasy cheese that I found too "milky" - is it called "young, not matured cheese" ? I could not eat this cheese on its own. So, I looked around for a recipe to cook the cheese. Voila - spicy cheese crackers with lots of herbs sounds like it will disguise the milky taste. It did. Tea time Based on this recipe: https://www.browneyedbaker.com/spicy-southern-cheese-crackers/ 8 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (about 2 cups) = I used about 200g of Malagasy cheese 0.5 cup (113 grams) salted butter, at room temperature = reduced a little 1 teaspoon kosher salt 0.5 teaspoon cayenne pepper = I used chili powder 0.25 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 0.125 teaspoon garlic powder = I must have used a lot more 1.5 cups (213 grams) all-purpose flour  I tasted the dough when it was out of the mixer and added quite a lot of pepper, garlic and even chili powder to get the spiciness to the right level. To each his own. This is actually a v...

A friend gave me an organic lemon. It looked bigger than usual and it had some spots, showing its naturalness! So, what to do with a nice lemon? I remembered Mary Berry's Lemon Drizzle Cake but her one or two recipes in the web had this 1:1:1 ratio of flour, sugar and butter. For the classic sponge cake, I think. But this other recipe seems better for my taste. http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/4830/polly-welby-s-famous-lemon-drizzle-cake.aspx 110g (4 oz) butter 170g (6 oz) self raising flour 4 tablespoons milk 170g (6 oz) caster sugar = I used 150g and it was sweet enough 2 eggs lemon zest and juice from 1 lemon 3 tablespoons icing sugar = for once, I had icing sugar in the fridge This cake turned out great. I love it because the lemon infused cake is so light to eat and the sourness and sweetness matches so well. Absolute delight with such simple ingredients.   Heavenly slice - the lemon juice hits the sweetness of the cake just right. All mixed up with lemon zest...

For non-vegetarians, the idea of a tofu burger is not exactly palatable. BUT .. this one can make the grade. Well, it is not meat but it is tasty tofu. And not the mashed up type of patty where you don't know what exactly you are tasting. I prefer to see and eat the whole piece of tofu - a recognizable and tasty tofu patty. All it needs is to press the water out (stack something heavy on top for 20 mins or more), season with some soya sauce and pan-fry it. Oh, add some sauce like ketchup or barbeque sauce (usually not vegetarian) - so look for HP sauce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Sauce The inspiration for this cooking came from this blog: https://lovingitvegan.com/tofu-burger/ Next time, I'll add in the mushroom sauce with coconut cream. Pan fried pieces of tofu Arrange to your heart's content - coriander really jazzes up the taste, besides the bottled sauce!