Don't throw away the bread!

Hungarians are extremely fond of their bread. The Hungarian bread is delicious and essential for the kitchen. Most importantly they must be served fresh especially when eating with stew and goulash. That said, we do have quite high wastages in terms of stale bread. Well, to reduce the amount of bread being just discarded, its better to make them in to pudding once in blue moon, don't you think?

Verdict : Considering that I haven't actually tasted this before in my life, it was overall a good experience trying for this recipe. Aside that its too sweet to my taste, the positive is the roasted texture on top combined with moist bread inside..simply Lovely!



Bread Pudding
Ingredients
Serves 8.

12 slices day-old baguette; cut into 3/4-inch
4 eggs; room temprature
1/2 cup light brown sugar; firmly packed
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch freshly grated nutmeg
pinch Salt
4 cups milk
1/4 cup dried cranberries or raisins
confectioners' sugar; for dusting

Method

Lightly butter an 8-inch square baking dish. Spread the bread cubes in it.

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt until well blended. Pour in the milk and whisk until combined. Pour the mixture over the bread cubes. Let stand, pressing down on the bread occasionally, until it is evenly soaked, about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat an oven to 350°F (Gas mark 4).

Scatter the cranberries evenly over the surface of the soaked bread and press to submerge the fruit. Set the baking dish in a large, shallow roasting pan. Add very hot tap water to the roasting pan to come halfway up the sides of the baking dish.

Bake the pudding until a knife inserted near the center comes out almost clean, 45 to 55 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature. Generously dust the top of each slice with confectioners’ sugar.

Pita Pizza

Yet another easily prepared snack, Pita bread with pizza ingredients. We had this for breakfast this morning since I'm bored with the usual breakfast items. So, the next time you're in the supermarket, please don't forget to buy the pita bread and try making this at home. IMHO, it is as good as the pizza sold in pizzeria ;)

Let's get started! Preheat toaster/oven. Set bread on baking tray, first spread ketchup (or pizza ready made pizza sauce) as the base followed by shreded cheese (any type of cheese which easily melt). Then top with cuts of sausages and salami. Finished off with shreded cheese and mayonaise. Ready to toast.



See how wonderful it look (below). Remove from toaster/over when cheese has melted. You can put anything for the toppings. I don't think anything will go wrong with this tasty bread :)

Anniversary Brownies

A packet of pecan pieces started this baking session. It came all the way from the USA through food exchange project BBM3. That was 7 months ago. Afraid that it will turn bad, I decided to bake the recipe included at the back of the packet.

The brownies turn out great! A tad too sweet, but great first :) After its cooled, dark chocolate icing was added to tone down the sweetness. What a wonderful dessert for our anniversary ;)..
update : tasted even better after overnight in the fridge ..yummilicious !

Fudge Brownies
make : 16 squares

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter or margerine
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
2 sq. (1 oz) unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
1/2 cup sifted flour
56gm pecan pieces

Method
cream butter, sugar and vanilla. Beat in eggs. Blend in chocolate. Stir in flour and pecans. Bake in a greased 8x8x2-inch pan at 325°F (gas mark 3) for 30-35 minutes. Cool.

Substitution - Spring roll fillings

As the remaining filo pastry in the fridge nearing its expiry date, I needed fillings for the pastry. Sweet or savoury? No contest, of course savoury ;p
First thought popiah a.k.a. spring roll 's filling. The photo you see in the link is the wet version while I made the baked version since I'm using filo pastry . By the way, can filo pastry be fried?

Again this is a "what you see, what you get" recipe. The recipe requires turnip which is not available here. So, I've experiment with Hungarian turnip and still tasted pretty much the same. I'm happy with the outcome...woohoo! I can have spring rolls whenever I crave for them :)

Fillings :-
Carrots (shreded)
Turnip (shreded) (substitute with Hungarian turnip)
onions (chopped finely)
Green peas
Chinese sausages which has a sweet base (in this case, I've substitute Hungarian sausages )
seasoning to taste - salt, peppper, sugar

From the Hungarian kitchen

Eating out for us means fast food, pizzas, burgers, chinese, Indonesian, Indian*,etc. We hardly try-out Hungarian food in restaurants. Reason being, we get to eat home-made Hungarian dishes cooked by B's (my partner) parents. Most of them are quite tasty and suit to my taste. I do have my favourites and today's recipe is one of them.



Hungarian Mushroom Chicken (Gombás Csirke)

Ingredients (serves 4)
12pcs chicken wings (small-sized) or 8 pcs. pork chop
500gm of mushrooms
2 medium-sized Onions
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
3/4 soup bowl of flour
1 1/2 small wooden ladle spoon of paprika
1 small wooden ladle of vegeta (seasoning)
500ml of water
lots of parsley, chop finely
dash of cumin

Method
1) coat meat with flour, pan fry with some oil for about 10 mins. Set aside.

2) Use remaining oil from the pan to sweat onions. Followed by adding mushrooms and a dash of cumin, stir fry for some minutes. In the same pan, make a hole in the middle and pour in the flour and mix well. Next put in the paprika, pour in about 300ml of water, seasoning and garlic continue to stir for awhile, pour remaining of water.

3) Finally put in the meat and let it simmer. Before serving sprikle the parsley into the dish

This dish is great with pasta, and of course best eaten with some sour cream..I guarantee you'll like it :)

*only in Budapest

Easy peesy pie

mmm..all my favourite ingredients - mushrooms, green peas, cheese dumped into this pie shell, in addition, some mince meats and seasoning and VOILA! easy, aint it?! ;D

How to make the pie shell …

Makes about 24 tarts

INGREDIENTS:

Pastry:

2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup lard
1/3 cup butter
4 tablespoons hot water, or as needed

PREPARATION:

1) Preheat the oven to 325°F degrees (gas mark 3) and grease the tart pans.

2) Cut the lard. Use a sifter to sift the flour into a large bowl. Work the lard and butter into the flour with the tips of your fingers, until the mixture has the appearance of coarse breadcrumbs. kneading, adding the hot water. Roll the dough into a large ball, cover with wax paper

3) On a large, lightly floured surface, roll out the dough until it is very thin (about 1/8-inch or 3 to 4 mm thick). Cut the dough in half before rolling out if needed. Use a pastry cutter to cut out 18 circles that are 3-inches in diameter. Fit the circles into the tart shells.

4) Pour the filling into the shells. Bake for about 35 minutes. Then leave to cool.

Working with Filo

A couple of weeks ago, while crusing the local market, I found a 6-pc pack filo sheets. Boy! was I happy 'cos all i've seen on the shelves are the 18-pc pack ones. How not to buy it?! Without having a clue what I'd do with them, I already paid for them. The next thing I knew, the packet was forgotten and will soon expired. In the state of not wanting to waste, I wisked up apple filling, roll them up and baked them in the oven. BIG mistake! some of them turned out okay while others are non-edible :p i.e. the sheets tasted like paper!

Erm.. a second packet soon make way into my fridge :D However, this time I did googled for more info. on cooking the sheets. Following Dilip's method was a success! The link is now safely saved in my 'favourites' ..ooh, the next batch shall be using them for spring rolls! Stay tune:)

Pibim Pap imitation

You know sometimes when you see a dish that you really fancy in magazines, etc..but it didn't come with a recipe, what do you do? Me, imitate!! I'll lock that dish in mind or if i'm not tooo lazy to get a pen and paper, i'll quickly write down with guesses on what goes into the mysterious dish and hopefully be able to cook it as soon as possible ;)

So, the following dish was inspired under similar situation..Tadaa! my version of Pibim Pap!


Pibim pap is Korean and it simply means mixed (=pibim) rice (=pap) . After researching online, the way to eat this meal is to mix the rice/vege whatnots thoroughly with spoon or in this case, chopsticks. See here for the original serving of pibim pap.

I didn't bother to look for the actual recipe, the ingredient was "what you see is what you get" basis minus some bits which are not available in the 'super' i.e. a bit of Hungarian pickled cabage, 1 egg -sunny side-up, spring onions, toasted sesame and dash of soya sauce and its ready!

The crunchy soury taste of pickled vege. and everything else matches so well, an appetising comfort food, and a keeper for those lazy days.

Rice in cream

That's the translated name of "nasi lemak", the supposedly national dish of Malaysia. Nasi lemak is a dish of rice cooked in coconut cream/milk. Fried anchovies, egg, spicy chili sauce (sambal),peanuts and cucumber are the basic condiments to go with the rice. Of course you have the choice of more side dishes.

Believe it or not, this rich dish is one of Malaysian's favourite breakfasts! The breakfast version is lighter, with simpler condiments. It's usually not cooked at home as it's available at hawker stalls/restaurants and road side stalls at anytime of day. Some of the sellers are so famous that many don't mind travelling far just to sample their favourite food ;)

Enough of intro., already. The recipe I'm sharing is going to be for the spicy chili sauce that goes with the rice. ..pulling this photo from the archive made me crave the medley of creamy rice and spicy *drool* I can't wait to taste the authentic ones back home ..

Spicy Eggs (Acar Telur)
More like a sambal, the thick gravy is sweet, sourish and spicy. It is very appetising and takes off the heavy edge from the nasi lemak.

Ingredients
5 eggs, hard boiled

Ground ingredients:
5 cloves garlic
5 shallots
1 big onion
2cm knob ginger

2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons cili boh*
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 tablespoon tomato ketchup
1 tablespoon sugar, or to taste
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

Method
1. Shell the hard-boiled eggs and heat enough oil in a wok to deep fry the eggs until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.

2. Blend, or pound the ground ingredients to a paste.

3. Heat oil in a wok and saute the ground ingredients until fragrant.

4. Add the cili boh. Fry until aromatic before adding the eggs, vinegar and tomato ketchup. Season to taste with sugar and salt.

*dried chili pound into paste

Cooking Rice Noodles

Finding asian cooking ingredients here hasn't been easy. Fortunately, Tesco has a section of shelves that fulfil my needs. Though the supplies are limited, they do stocked general ingredients i.e. the soya sauce, curry powder, various instant sauces, etc. One of the best finds is rice noodle. This rice noodle is not quite like the fine rice vermicelli but some what similar to kway teow.

On the packing, it suggested to pour any flavour of hot soup over the rice noodle. However, for my taste, I prefer dry version instead. The following recipe was inspired whilst watching Nigella 's cooking programme with minor additions.

As you can see, I've prepared a small portion of each ingredients as we're going to toss these ingredients with the ready noodles. Clockwise - stir fried mince pork, toasted sesame seeds, stir fried button mushrooms, fried onions in oil, finally spring onions.

Usually, the tossing is done for one portion of noodle. In an empty bowl, first put the fried onions in oil, mushrooms, mince pork, dash of soya sauce and pepper to taste, mix the ingredient, then put in the rice noodles, toss til consistent, finished off with a sprinkle of spring onions and sesame seeds. Repeat the same for 2nd portion. This way, the unfinished ingredients can be kept in the fridge and heated up until the next meal :)

Verdict : the rice noodle were smooth and firm. Slurping was very easy! Give it a try :)

Tiramisu

To start the ball rolling, what I'll do is gather all food photos that i've posted in various on-line sites and re-post them in the next few days incorporating the recipes. First stop, Tiramisu!

This is my first tiramisu recipe that I've ever made and tasted nearest to the ones served in an Italian restaurant I once worked in. They are absolutely addictive! Cream is rich with a hint of rum..yum! Hope you'll try it and let me know your verdic :-)

Ingredients:
4 cartons (1x250g) mascarpone cheese
41g castor sugar3 eggs, separated
250ml kahlua or other coffee-flavoured liqueur
425ml very strong cold black coffee
30 sponge fingerscocoa powder, for sprinkling

Method:
1. Put the mascarpone cheese, sugar and egg yolks in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until evenly blended

2. Whisk the egg whites until standing in stiff peaks. Fold into the mascarone mixture until evenly incorporated. Spoon a quarter of the mixture into the base of a glass serving bowl.

3. Mix the liqueur and coffee together in shallow dish.

4. One at a time, dip one the sponge fingers in this mixture for 10-15 seconds, turning once so they become soaked through but do not lose their shape.

5. After each one has been dipped , place it on top of the mascarpone in the bowl, making a single layer of sponge fingers that covers the mascarpone completely.

6. Continue to layer the mascarpone mixture and sponge fingers alternatively, finishing off with the mascarpone.

7. Sift cocoa powder liberally over the top.

8. Cover the bowl and chill in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Serve chilled.

Good luck!

Pilot

What better ways to keep tap of all my culinary experiences than starting a food blog? hmmm.. may be not all i.e. failures or ugly photos won't be recorded :D Okay, that is not true! I will make a note whenever I find the time and mood for it.

To anyone out there who is reading this :-
Welcome to kitchen at #19, my little cyber kitchen!