Chicken Salad

Ever been asked in a survey what dish you would pick if you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life? Well, if I had to choose, it would be chicken salad. There's something about cold chicken and raw vegetables that just work so well together. 

With the summer heat truly upon us in Hong Kong right now, many a night I feel like something cool and refreshing. It may seem too light a meal, eating salad for dinner, but if you add enough goodies inside it, it makes for quite a filling dish.

There are endless variations to the chicken salad, but my favourite is a mixture of vegetables, potato and chicken without (egads!) any dressing. Firstly, I'm not too fond of mayonnaise or any other dressing overpowering the salad, and secondly, I'm always trying to cut down on the calorie intake. Plus, if your veggies and chicken are fresh, the natural taste of the dish is really all you need. And if you must, put some dressing on a side dish and mix a little as you go along, rather than pouring it all in at the start...

My favourite chicken salad combo right now is:

Shreddded chicken (roast chicken gives the salad more flavour, but you can also poach or panfry some chicken), lettuce, baby spinach leaves, roma tomatoes, baby potatoes (microwaved or boiled until soft and melting), sliced green peppers (capsicums), mixed together with a healthy dose of freshly ground black pepper. Yum!

To make the salad more filling, you could also add some spiral/shell pasta, or some corn...




Fruit Salad

This is not the most exciting of photos, or recipes, but it's been one of our favourite desserts lately - fruit salad. I suppose a fruit salad should have more than 2 types of fruits inside it, but that often doesn't bother me... It's a great way to get reluctant fruit eaters (such as myself) to enjoy fruit. Somehow, eating an apple or watermelon is a bit boring, but when you chop it up and mix it with another fruit, the blending of flavours makes the experience more tasty and satisfying. It's also a great way to use up fruit which you've bought but discover isn't so sweet, or is a bit dry - just mix it with a slightly sweeter, riper fruit or a more juicy one.

Combinations I like right now, although basically any fruit combo would work-

• watermelon, pineapple (with or without seedless grapes) - this works especially well if your watermelon is not too sweet, and your pineapple is very sweet. This combo is also good with a squeeze of lime juice);

• apples, plums, peaches and chinese pears (takes longer, but I find peeling the skin off the fruit makes it blend together better);

• strawberries, kiwifruit, blueberries and chinese pears;

• watermelon and green seedless grapes (put chopped watermelon squares and grapes into little glasses and freeze them for few hours for a nice icy treat!)
  




Baked Chicken Breast with Tomato n Cheese

This dish (although it looks like a gluggy mess in the photo) is fast becoming a favourite with me because it is so easy to make. It is a little like chicken parmigiana, but unlike chicken parmigiana, which is first breaded, fried and then baked, this dish is just baked - which means you throw all the ingredients into an oven-safe dish, and plonk it into the oven. Done!

Chicken breast works well in this dish - because it is baked in the tomato liquid, the chicken remains juicy and does not dry out.

Method:
Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C.

Place a raw chicken breast into a shallow medium size oven-proof dish and season with a little salt and pepper. Open a 400g can of chopped tomatoes in their natural juices (I use Waitrose brand) and pour over the chicken. Top the chicken with some shredded cheese (I use a mix of parmesan and cheddar cheese, you can also use mozarella). Bake the chicken for 30 - 40mins until the chicken is cooked (the juices will run clear). 

(If you happen to have a convection oven, you can decrease the cooking time by using a combination bake and microwave function)

Serve with vegetables and pasta or potatoes. Shorter pasta such as spiral, macaroni or ravioli works well because you can coat the pasta with the excess tomato and cheese sauce.

Tip: For this dish, I like to buy ready-made pasta like ravioli stuffed with roasted vegetables. It's a slightly more expensive alternative, though...but a nice treat...




In a Pasta Rut

Sometimes I get so caught up making the same thing over and over again, there is nothing new to post. It's been a little like that lately, with poor YH constantly being served my regular favourite dishes (not that he ever complains). 

My obsession with pasta took on a life of its own last week, when we ate pasta 4 days out of 7! If you happen to get into a pasta rut like me, a nice way of making things more interesting is to explore the different types of pastas available. I found one interesting dried spaghetti with chilli in a little Italian deli, which was orange in colour. The pasta was made out of durum wheat semolina, water and red hot peppers (peperoncino). Since I love all things spicy, I had to buy it at once, and used it to make my Scallop & Sausage Aglio Olio spaghetti. The chilli spaghetti turned a lovely light tomato red colour when cooked, and a little to my surprise, you could still taste the chilli in the spaghetti (I thought the chilli might have been washed out or watered down after being boiled). 




Beef & Potato Curry Puffs

Curry puffs are easily available in Malaysia and Singapore, but not so common in Australia when I was growing up, so we always looked forward to my mum's homemade version, which she would make using puff pastry (rather than the traditional flour pastry which is deep fried). My sister and I would help her measure and cut out the pieces of puff pastry, then fill it with a spicy mince beef and potato filling. Although I do like the more traditional curry puff pastry, if I make it myself, I will use ready-rolled puff pastry like my mother did - it's easier to make as it is is baked rather than deep fried.

If you don't want your curry puffs so spicy, just reduce the amount of chilli and curry powder, or you can omit it altogether and just make a non-spicy beef and potato puff, if you like. For a vegetarian version, omit the beef.

Continue reading for the recipe...

Beef & Potato Curry Puffs
(makes around 72 small triangular curry puffs)

1 medium onion, finely chopped
olive oil (or other cooking oil)
600g lean mince beef
3 large potatoes (or 4-5 medium potatoes)
curry powder
chilli powder (or cayenne powder)
salt and pepper
9 sheets frozen ready rolled puff pastry (1.5kg puff pastry)
1 egg, beaten
(chilli oil and chilli flakes - optional)

1. Peel and cut the potatoes into small cubes. Cook the potatoes until soft, either in boiling water, or in the microwave.

2. In a medium sized saucepan, heat 1 Tbsp oil and lightly fry the onions until soft. Add the mince beef and stir well until cooked. Begin to season the meat by adding 1-2 Tbsp of curry powder and a good shake of chilli powder (or cayenne powder). Stir well.

3. Over low heat, add the cooked potatoes to the meat, and mix well. It is fine if the potato cubes get a little mashed. Season with salt and pepper.

4. Taste the beef and potato filling, then add more curry powder and chilli powder if you wish. I like my curry puffs very spicy, so I go a bit wild with the curry and chilli here. I also add some chilli oil and chilli flakes at this stage for added spice. The filling should be a little on the salty side, as the flavour will dissipate once it's wrapped in the pastry. Set the filling aside to cool.

5. If you are using frozen ready rolled puff pastry, separate and defrost the square sheets of pastry. Cut the pastry into small squares or triangles. You may use a knife to do this, but I find it is easier to cut the pastry using a clean pair of kitchen scissors. Cut the large square of pastry into half, then half again to form 4 squares. Then cut each square into half diagonally to form 2 triangles. You will then have 8 triangles of pastry. 

If you want to make larger puffs, or square puffs, just cut the pastry accordingly. (If you live in a hot environment, keep the remainder of the pastry in the fridge/freezer until you are ready to use it, or the pastry will soften and will be hard to handle)

6. Line a baking tray with some foil, and lightly grease the foil with some cooking oil. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. 

7. Take a piece of the cut pastry in one hand, and add a heaped teaspoon (or more) of cooled curry puff filling. Fold the pastry over in half and squeeze the edges together to seal the filling inside. I like to squeeze together one edge of the pastry first to form a little "cup", add the filling, then seal the remaining edge. Place the curry puff on the lined baking tray. 

(Making up the curry puffs whilst watching TV helps pass time more quickly.)

8. Crack an egg into a small bowl and beat it. Brush a little beaten egg on top of the curry puffs, then bake them in the oven for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove and place on a wire rack until cooled. Continue baking the rest of the curry puffs in batches.

Keep them covered in the fridge, or pack them into airtight freezer bags and freeze them. Reheat them in the oven before serving.

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Paprika Chicken & Avocado Sandwich

This is one of my favourite sandwiches. It's great in a bento lunch, easy to make, and healthy, too. The chicken tenderloin is marinated with a little soya sauce and paprika, then grilled. I use my George Foreman grill for this, but you can also panfry it if you prefer. The meat is then shredded, and added to a multi grain nut bread, along with slices of avocado and tomato. I find the nuttiness of the bread matches very well with the buttery avocado and paprika chicken. There is no need to butter the bread as the avocado already provides the sandwich with a moist buttery taste.

Accompany the sandwich with some raw carrot sticks and hummus dip.

Tip: When packing sandwiches in your bento lunch, a handy way to keep the sandwich together and your hands clean when eating it is to wrap the sandwich with baking paper/parchment paper. Then cut the wrapped sandwich in half, paper and all, with a sharp knife (a serrated bread knife works well). 




Noodle & Dumpling Bento

I find I'm always short on groceries (and time) Sunday night, so making bento for Monday usually involves rummaging around in the freezer. Today's lunch for YH is a simple combination of thin udon noodles mixed with sesame oil, soya sauce and oyster sauce, dumplings (from the freezer) and some baby spinach (wilted slightly with a little sesame oil and sesame seeds). A little red container of chilli sauce brightens up both the bento and the taste of the noodles. 

The best part about this lunch is that everything can be cooked in one small saucepan, which saves time and washing up. The water for boiling the frozen dumplings can also be used to cook the noodles, and the cooked noodles can be mixed with the sauces in the pot. Later, the spinach can be wilted slightly in the same saucepan as well. 




Sausage n Egg Bento

Today's bento reminds me of breakfast sets often served in Japan - sausage, egg, salad and rice. I lightly panfried the onion flavoured sausages, and made a giant tamagoyaki layered with leftover beef soboro. Accompanying that was some butter lettuce and cherry tomatoes. I topped the salad with some leftover boiled prawns from last night's dinner (which didn't quite fit with the breakfast theme.). 




Beef & Egg Soboro Bento

After a short trip away, it's back to bento for me this week. I was preparing this late Sunday night so I kept things simple and made some beef and egg soboro. Together with some peas and rice, it was quick and easy to prepare. As I find the beef soboro is already quite salty, I did not season the egg, so it is actually just plain, finely scrambled egg. (Normally, you would usually season the egg with a little soya sauce, mirrin, sugar and salt.)




Bento in Osaka

We just returned from a short trip to Osaka to catch the tail end of the sakura season. As expected, most of the flowers had already fallen there, so we headed out of the city to Yoshino, where over 10,000 sakura trees grow wild on the mountain. To my delight, there were still quite a few sakura blooming, especially in the higher regions of the mountain.

On the train journey to Yoshino, we enjoyed a lovely 3-tiered bento lunch that we purchased in the food section of Kintetsu Department Store. I was quite inspired by the first tier, and will try it out one day - it contained sushi rice, topped with shredded egg, slices of mushroom, a few peas, bamboo shoots and a prawn. The other two tiers contained a lovely assortment of pickles, savoury tamagoyaki, small fried fish, bamboo shoots, fish balls, lotus root and a sweet konnyaku jelly. It was really delicious, and very exciting to be eating a bento on a train in Japan!