Monday, February 16, 2009

Valentine's Kitchen Project

You can't find a better day to hone your culinary skills better than Valentine's Day! That's exactly what i did this Valentine's.

First off was my first attempt to bake. There's a simple recipe for Rock Cakes (some kind of biscuit/cookie thing. Don't know why it's named so) from a childhood book that i've been itching to try ever since i was little. I think i bugged Yin to make them for me before.

The recipe was quite easy with not much ingredients and a few easy steps:

4 oz of self raising flour
2 oz of butter/margarine
2 oz of sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp of currants
4-5 tbsp of fresh milk

Cut up the butter/margarine into smaller pieces and rub it into the flour until it looks like bread crumbs. Then mix in the sugar, then the beaten egg, then the currants. Lastly, slowly pour in spoonfuls of milk while stirring the dough. Don't stir the dough until it's too runny (a mistake on my part), got to leave it thicker. Pre-heat the oven to 200 C. Then scoop the dough into the baking sheet (spread some butter on it first) and then put it on the oven tray. Bake the cookies for 15-20 minutes.

Ingredients

I underestimated the power of self raising flour

A little burnt on the edges, but tasty nonetheless

I'm trying to figure out why the edges burned so much faster. Is it because of the size? The oven function i used? I did use the recommended function to bake and even tried to lower the temperature to 180 C, but it was still the same. Nevermind, will try again another time with smaller cookies. The cookies came out tasting good though.

Next up, i made Chicken Cordon Bleu for dinner. Changed the recipe a bit for my convenience. Hehe

2 chicken fillets
2 pieces of cheddar cheese (suppose to use mozzarella)
2 pieces of salami (suppose to be honey baked ham)
Egg whites
KFC flour (substitute for plain flour and Japanese breadcrumbs)
Lots of vegetable oil

First, you can season the fillets with salt and pepper (according to the original recipe), which i didn't. Slab the salami and cheese on fillet and roll it. I used a few toothpicks to hold it in place. Then dip the whole thing into the egg white and roll in the KFC flour. Pre-heat the oil, and then put the fillets into the oil. Fry till golden brown (they always say that in recipes) or till you think it's cooked!

Hold it!

All fried up

The chicken turned up good as well. So i can declare my Valentine's Kitchen Project a success!

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