Our Thanksgiving Feast

The main star - Roasted Turkey

Stuffing

Steamed Vegetables

Coleslaw

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Bread and Butter Pudding (Puding Roti)

Simple is usually the best way to prepare food. Don't you agree? Like bread and butter pudding. I just love them and I expect everybody would too only to find out that Michael do not. I really have to change my mentality that not everybody enjoy food. Some people eat because they just have to.

Back to bread and butter pudding. Since I love them, I have tried a few recipes and all of them are too elaborate for my taste. I realised that I don't like 'stuff' like raisins or nuts in them. I remember one time I made it with all the ingredients that you can think of and my friends love it but I didn't. Since then I scaled down the ingredients used in my bread pudding until I am satisfied with the taste. This reminds me of Gordon Ramsey's show The F Word. On 1 episode he and another guy had a showdown on bread and butter pudding. As usual his is very fancy shmancy while the other guy's is very simple and once they are done, were served to the customers 'in the dark'. The result? Well, the other guy's bread and butter pudding won hands down and Ramsey was shocked! I thought that was funny. hehehe.

Bread and Butter Pudding

6 slices of bread
3 eggs
1 3/4 - 2 cups milk
1 tbs vanilla extract
6-7 tbs sugar
3 tbs melted butter
Chocolate chips
Cinnamon powder


1. Butter baking dish or use cooking spray

2. Cubed 4 of the bread and lay them on the baking dish. Add chocolate chips on top.

3. In a bowl, whisk the egg, add milk and vanilla extract.

4. In another bowl, add sugar with butter. Butter the other 2 slices of bread with them and sprinkle with cinnamon powder. Cut into 4 pieces each. Set aside. (This is for the topping)

6. Combine the egg mix with butter and stir well. Pour them on top of the bread in the baking dish. Let it rest on room temperature for 30min.

7. Preheat oven to 325F.

8. Add the topping to the baking dish and bake for 1 hour.


*** I got the idea for the topping from here.***

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Baked Trout with Vegetables

There are many reasons why I love blogging. From getting to 'meet' people from around the world, sharing experiences to learning different cultures and cuisine. One of my newly found friend is Olga of Mango & Tomato. A couple of months ago while browsing her blog, something caught my attention. Her dad was her guest blogger that day and he just made Baked Trout with Vegetables. I love fish. And vegetables. But I have never bake them together. In fact I have never baked any fish before.

I told her that I will try that recipe once I got hold of some trout and last weekend I finally got some .. err actually just 1. As usual I would add a few others of my favourite vegetable and ingredient. Here is my version of Baked Trout with Vegetables.

Baked Trout with Vegetables
serves 1

1 trout, cleaned and make 4 slits on each side
2-3 medium size potato, peeled and cut into chunks
1 carrot, peeled and cut into chunks
1 eggplant, cleaned and sliced 1cm thick
A handful of green beans, cut both ends and halves
1 red chili, core removed and julienned
Juice of 1 lime (or 2)
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs sweet soy sauce
2 garlic, finely chopped
Salt
A dash of cayenne pepper
Tarragon
Oil

1. Preheat oven 375-400F

2. Season the fish with salt (inside and out) and lay it on the oiled pan.

3. Put lime juice, soy sauces, garlic, salt, cayenne pepper and tarragon in a bowl and mix well.

4. Lather the fish with the mix making sure that you stuff some of the coarser ingredients in between the slits and the inside of the fish. Pour the rest of the ingredients on to the fish.

5. Start laying out the vegetables around the fish and drizzle some salt and oil on top.

6. Bake for 20-30min.

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Cheesy Garlic Biscuits

Is it just me or it is hard to get back to posting after a very long weekend? Well, Thanksgiving was good. Our friends, Shirley and Kevin came to celebrate it with us. We did not have any turkey this year but that does not mean we did not have lots of food. We had hot roast beef sandwiches, Cheesy Garlic Biscuits, sushi, potato salad, coleslaw, yeemee noodles and even a few vodka shots. ;)

I don't really fancy biscuits but Michael loves them especially the ones at Red Lobster. He could just eat those Cheesy Garlic Biscuits and nothing else and he is a happy camper. Very easy. So for Thanksgiving, I decided to make some. I found the recipe at Joyfulabode.com and decided to give it a try. I'm glad everybody liked them. It is easy to make and goes well with the hot roast beef sandwiches.

Cheesy Garlic Biscuits
Makes 12

1 pack buttermilk biscuit mix (I used Bisquick, about 1 1/2cups)
1 1/2cups shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oregano
3/4 tsp garlic salt1. Preheat oven to 400F. Spray cooking sheet with non-stick spray.

2. Put biscuit mix, cheese and milk in a bowl and mix well to form a sticky dough.

3. Using spoon, drop lumps of dough onto cookie sheets 1.5in apart. Bake for 10min.

4. In a bowl, melt butter and mix with oregano and garlic salt.

5. When the timer goes off, take them out and brush with butter mixture and bake 5min at 400F and another 5-6min at 350F.

6. Transfer into a plate and serves immediately.

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Swiss Souffle Potatoes

Looking at my my blog entries it seems like I only make asian or Malaysian dishes. Well, that is not entirely true since Michael doesn't really eat my food so everytime I cook something for myself, I will cook something western for him like here, here and here.

Recently we went to Ross and I found this cooking book called Best-Ever 500 Recipes. They might have 500 recipes but typical me, I would only try to make something if 1) I have the ingredients or at least substitute with something that I already have 2) its easy to make 3) its something that either one of us would like. So I chose to make these Swiss Souffle Potatoes and they turned out so good I wish I had made more.

Swiss Souffle Potatoes
serves 2

2 baking potatoes (about 1lb)
1/2 cup grated Gruyere cheese (I used mozzarella)
1/4 cup herb butter (I used regular butter)
2 tbsp double/heavy cream (I used evaporated milk)
1 egg, separated
salt and ground black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 425F.

2. Scrub the potatoes and prick all over with a fork. Bake for 1-1.5hrs or until tender. Remove from oven and reduce heat to 350F.

3. Halves potatoes and scoop out the flesh into a bowl. Place the potato shells on a baking sheet and return to the oven to crisp up while making the filling.

4. Mash the potato flesh, add cheese, butter and egg yolk. Mix well, then season with salt and pepper to taste.

5. Whisk white egg until stiff and carefully fold into the potato mixture. Pile the mixture back into the potato shells and bake for 20-25min until risen and golden brown.

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Banana Bread Recipe

After 1 miserable attempt at making banana bread, I almost gave up. My 1st attempt was so bad it was flat and hard and my heart sank with it. But I keep telling myself, "hey, everybody experiences failure at least once especially in the baking section". And so I got more flour and banana and gave it another shot.

Im gonna let you enjoy the picture and will come back for the recipe tomorrow when I have a better internet connection ok?

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After checking out Rasa Malaysia and Retno of Dapur Hamburg, I changed the recipe that I used the 1st time (tht gave me the disaster) and am very happy with the result. Here is the recipe.

Banana Bread

2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4-1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups mashed overripe bananas (i used 1.5 lb)

Preheat oven to 350F

1. Lightly grease loafpan

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and powder & salt

3. In a separate bowl, cream butter & brown sugar. Slowly add eggs, mashed bananas and vanilla extract. Continue mixing until well blended.

4. Stir banana mixture into the flour mixture.

5. Pour batter into the loafpan.

6. Bake for 1hr or until toothpick clean.

7. Let bread cool in pan for 10min before taking it out.

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Easy Homemade Meatball Recipe

Another one of Michael's favourite. Simply because it's ground meat base. What else is new, huh? lol. I like making this because it's just so easy and simple and using the ingredients that I would normally have in the kitchen. I try not to make anything that requires me to buy something that can only be used for certain things. When I buy something, it has to be practical or else it would probably ends up in the rubbish bin after only being used once. I try not to waste any food. ;)

1lb ground beef
1 egg
2 tablespoon water
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/4 cup minced onion
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

1. Preheat oven at 350F

2. Combined all the ingredients with the ground beef last.

3. Shape into balls about 2-2.5in in diameter. You should get around 24 balls.

4. Lined them on a cooking sheet with about 1in space between them.

5. Baked for 30min.

You can either make your own sauce or do what I do, used the canned spaghetti sauce. ;) Put 1 cup of sauce in a small pot and reheat for about 5min. Add the meatballs into the sauce and stir until all the meatballs are covered with sauce.

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