Random recipes in 2013

Baked Buffalo Wings

So last week I tried out a few different recipes to varying degrees of success.

Here's the succesful one, and super duper easy, basically 3 ingredients only

Baked Buffalo Wings
Ingredients

• Chicken Wings
• 1 bottle of Frank's Hotsauce
• Unsalted Butter

Boil Chicken wings til cooked and no longer pink
Heat up hotsauce with butter
and then grill/bake chicken wings in oven and when crispy pour heated hotsauce over and keep adding the sauce to it every 5 minutes til sauce is finished

Nasu Dengaku

Here's another one of my new favourites, Nasu Dengaku. The sweet and salty flavour of the miso goes perfectly with the creaminess of the eggplant. I could just eat this all day long. and it was pretty simple to make.

Nasu Dengaku
Ingredients

• Eggplants, sliced in half vertically
• Spring onion
• Miso paste
• Sake
• Seasame Oil
• Toasted Seasame seeds
• Sugar
• Mirin

First, brush seasame oil on cut side of eggplant, place face down to grill in oven at 200 degrees C for 5 minutes til skin blackens, then flip it over and grill for another 5 minutes until it's all a bit mushy.

At this point, while eggplant is grilling, mix miso paste with mirin and a splash of sake (I used vodka) and heat on stovetop, add sugar and keep mixing til the paste is bit liquidly and spreadable. Take eggplant out of grill, spread miso mix on top and stick it back in oven for another 2-3 minutes, becareful the top can burned quite easily because of the sugar.

Remove from over and top with chopped spring onion and toasted seasame seeds to serve.

Slow-cooker Venture

Jamaican Stewed Peas before cooking

I do love my slow-cooker, especially during Winter. I often just chuck stuff in right before bedtime and wake up to an aromatic house. Honestly I think the smell wakes me up most of the time. LOL

So I've used my slow cooker over 4 times in the past week and a half, because my cooker is so big, I generally make a massive pot enough to feed 6 people - but there's only me. So I get sick of left overs really really fast. My friends and colleagues at work have been dragged into

tasters of my slowcooking venture. So far I have made Chinese Soups, Jamaican Stew and also an Italian dish.

Stewed Peas ah Ready!

Here's the Jamaican Stewed Peas recipe:
Ingredients

• 2 tins of Red Kidney Beans
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 1 ham hock
• 1 pack of gravy beef/chuck steak
• 1 onion chopped
• 3 clove garlic chopped
• 1 tspn ginger
• bunch of spring onion
• bunch of thyme
• Chili (I added lots)
• sprinkle of allspice, cloves, cinnamon
• Salt & Pepper to taste

And basically you just chuck everything in the slow cooker and wake up to deliciousness! This is such a comfort food dish for me and always brings a smile to my face. The authentic Jamaican version would have pigs tail instead of hamhock and also spinners (little doughy fingers that I was too lazy with)

Before: Chicken Cacciatorie

And the other thing I made was Italian Chicken Caccaitore, though it was ok for me. I have friends who raved about this dish, but maybe I used too much liquid and it was too soupy. Even though I left the lid off 2 hours before end.

But the slow cooker is great for Chinese soups! OMG why haven't I been doing this before? I looove soups, my family used to nickname me "Tong Wun" aka Soup Bowl because I would just drink bowls and bowls of soup everytime at dinner. I made Ginseng Chicken soup and also Dried veg with pork bones, carrots and shitake mushroom soup and they were great!