Braised Ginger Chicken with Potatoes

I admit that when it comes to food, I'm a little weird and maybe a little picky sometimes, yes, just sometimes. Weird in the sense that I only eat the skin of the chicken if it's deep-fried or roasted. I cannot stand the 'squishy-ness' and the slight taste of fat of the chicken skin if it is cooked any other way.

So, understandably, I would choose chicken fillets instead of chicken drumsticks as stated in the original recipe. I also realised that chicken fillets are not as dry as chicken breasts, if cooked quick and right.

Braised Ginger Chicken with Potatoes (Recipe from here)

Ingredients:

- Chicken drumsticks - 5 pcs, chopped into chunks
- Coriander leaves, one handful, chopped (I forgot about this so I used spring onions)
- Potatoes - 2 medium sized, chunks
- Ginger - 10 slices
- Garlic - 2 cloves, minced
- Shallots - 1 pc, sliced
- Salt - 2 tsp
- Dark soya sauce - 2 tbsp
- Sesame oil - 1/2 tsp

Seasonings:

- Light soya sauce - 1 tbsp
- Lee & Perrin sauce - 1 tsp (I omitted this)
- Salt & pepper - Dash
- Sesame oil - 1 tsp

Directions:

1. Marinate chicken drumsticks with seasonings. Set aside for 20 mins.

2. Sautee garlic, shallots, ginger till fragrant.

3. Add in potatoes and sautee till potatoes are slightly brown.

4. Add in marinated chicken, stir fry for 10 mins.

5. Add salt. Stir occasionally till chicken is half cooked and fragrant.

6. Then, add warm water to cover 3/4 of the chicken. Simmer with lid covered till sauce is thicken.

7. When the sauce is half thicken, add in coriander leaves. Simmer for another 10 mins.*

8. Off fire, stir in dark soya sauce and sesame oil, mix well.

9. Dish up, garnish with some coriander leaves and serve.

*Note : If you are using chicken fillets or breasts, I think you can keep the simmering to under 10 minutes, or the better gauge is to check for the consistency of the sauce.

Oven-baked sweet potato chips

The last few times we went to the supermarket, the husband lingered a bit longer at the potato chips section. But he always managed to resist the temptation. So, considering his constant need to snack and in hopes to satisfy his craving for the heavily salted potato chips off the shelves, I decided to try out a version of oven-baked sweet potato chips I found online.

Since I didn't have a mandolin slicer, I had to try to cut the sweet potato slices as uniform in thickness as possible. Other than that, the rest of the process was simple.

Oven-baked sweet potato chips (recipe from : here)

Ingredients :

- 1 sweet potato

- vegetable oil for spraying

- sea salt

- mandolin slicer(preferably)

Directions :

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Slice potatoes with a mandolin slicer. Lay out the potato slices on a single sheet in the oven. Spray the potatoes with vegetable oil on each side and sprinkle lightly with salt. Bake for 10-20 minutes, monitoring the chips frequently to make sure they don't burn. If you want, you can flip the chips halfway through baking. Let cool a bit and then serve!

Baked Cheese French Fries

Ok, don't get too excited, or get your expectations too high. As you can already see from the picture, these cheese fries ain't nothing like your KFC, or New York Pizza's one. (note : if you haven't tried New York Pizza's cheese fries, click on the link and go try it once you found an outlet near you. Yes, immediately.)

Anyway, back to my very pale home-style cheese fries. Got some potatoes and cheese I needed to get rid of, so thus this idea. The baked fries were surprisingly quite tasty by themselves, but some got stuck to the baking tray as I tried to turn them halfway through the baking time.

I didn't dare to bake for too long after I added the cheese in case the top got dried up, and won't have the "stringy" effect when I eat them. All in all, not that bad (I'm quite easily satisfied, especially with my own cooking. haha...). But something to note though, too much of it is definitely going to make you feel slightly sick... coz after a while, everything will start to get too "cheesy".

As for the recipe, I used 2 separate ones (originals : Baked French Fries, Bacon Cheese Fries) from All Recipes and combine them into one, editing to how I made my cheese fries.

Baked Cheese French Fries

1 serving

Ingredients :

- 1 large baking potato (I used Russet potato)

- 1 tablespoon olive oil

- 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

- 1/4 teaspoon chilli powder (optional)

- a sprinkle of Cheddar cheese over the fries (amount depends on how cheesy you want it to turn out)

Directions :
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).

2. Cut potato into wedges. Mix olive oil, garlic salt and together. Coat potatoes with oil/spice mixture and place on a baking sheet.

3. Bake for 30 minutes in preheated oven.

4. Sprinkle cheese over the fries, then bake for another 1 - 2 minutes, or until the cheese has melted.

Herbed potatoes

I had these 3 poor potatoes that had been staying in my fridge for quite some time. So since I was feeling quite sick of outside food, I decided to find a way to get rid of the potatoes. Came across this recipe and decided to make use of it as a guide to make dinner tonight. So here it is, a simple dish I came up with:

Ok, ok... I know this looks something more like breakfast than dinner. But who cares? As long as it can help me get rid of some stuffs from the fridge and fill our tummies, anything goes.

My herbed potatoes

2 servings

Ingredients:
- 3 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 2 medium-sized red onion, chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper

Directions :
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add potatoes, and cook until tender but still firm, about 12 minutes. Drain, and set aside.

2. In a large frying pan, heat up some oil, and add in the onions. Give the onions a few stirs before adding in the potatoes.

3. When the potatoes are slightly browned, add in the salt, dried oregano and black pepper. Cook for a few more minutes then take it off the fire. Cover to keep warm.

Then from here onwards, you can decide if you want to eat it that way, or to scramble some eggs like I did. For the eggs, I added some garlic salt and black pepper as it cooked.

The Grillmaster's "Death Row Potatoes"

Yes, the name of the dish sounds a bit strange, and the overall look isn't that appetising. But it tasted good! For those who loves potatoes and cheese... this is a great and simple dish to do. It's done within 45 minutes. You can have it for any meal of the day.

However, I did make a teeny weeny bit of change to the original recipe. I used a mixture of Parmesean and Cheddar cheese to top the potatoes, instead of only the former as stated in the recipe. The Parmesean will only turn brown and melt on wherever you had sprinkled it on. But with the Cheddar, it will melt over to the other potato slices as it baked.

Also, please place a piece of aluminium foil on the baking tray for the potatoes if you do not want to spend half the time scrubbing away the stuck bits at the bottom of the tray. I'm using an oven-toaster so that was what I did. But I'm not sure if the aluminium foil is needed if you are using an actual oven.

The Grillmaster's "Death Row Potatoes" (from : Nigella)

Ingredients:
- 4 spuds (potatoes) peeled and sliced 1/4 to 1/8 inch thick
- 1 cup parmesean cheese
- 5 to 10 cloves garlic minced, depending on desired garlickiness
- 3/4 stick of butter
- salt/pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Heat oven to 400.

2. In a small pan, melt the butter with medium high heat. When it gets hot and slightly bubbly add the garlic. Cook for 1 minute, and 1 minute only.

3. Dump the garlic/butter over the spuds and toss. Add 3/4 cup parmesean with salt and pepper and toss with wild abandon.

4. Layer the spuds in a buttered baking dish. Top with the remaining parmesan cheese.

5. Bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown on top.

Potato salad

Managed to "catch" this very simple potato salad recipe from Jamie Oliver's show. So, I decided to try it out and brought it for the "guinea pigs" since we are going to the boss's place for Hari Raya gathering later. Heh.

It's actually quite easy to make:
Just some bite-sized potatoes, cooked them for about 10 minutes, drained, then toss with fresh dill, olive oil, a few drops of lemon juice, salt, pepper and a handful of capers.

The time-consuming part is to peel the potatoes. Because I bought them in bite-sized, so it's not easy to use the peeler. Instead, I boiled them with their skins on, then transferred them immediately to a pot of cold water. The skin comes off easier this way.

However, I think I bought the wrong type of potato. The ones I bought seem more suitable for mashing. But the end product is still edible... at least the guys have to pretend to enjoy it. Haha.

Oh, by the way, this potato salad is meant to be served hot/warm, not cold.


For those of you who are not sure what are capers (like me when I first heard it), below is the picture. I think it is mostly sold preserved in a bottle. I bought mine from Carrefour.

Garbage Fried Potatoes

Today is another after-work-no-tuition day. So decided to cook something simple for myself.

Yes, that's the name of the dish... Garbage Fried Potatoes. And yes, too... the dish turned out looking more like fried carrot cake than potatoes.

Anyway, this is a really simple dish to make, especially for 1 - 2 persons.

Took me about an hour to finish everything. Although not a really healthy cooking method, it's a pure vegetarian dish, and really filling coz of the potatoes. If you look through the recipe, the person who posted this up explained why the word "garbage" is in the name.

If you are not a fan of the green and red bell peppers, you can try to substitute them with other stuff. I used the US Russet potatoes, which soften in about 35 minutes, about 10 minutes faster as the stated time in the recipe. In addition, I felt that 15 minutes is just right for cooking the onions but a bit too long to be cooking the bell peppers. They turned out too soft for my liking.

Also, the recipe states to cut the potatoes into thin slices, which I think, should turned out something like potato chips in the end. But obviously, I didn't follow that. The reason being I felt it's much easier cutting them in cubes than in slices. In another word, lazy. Heh.

Garbage Fried Potatoes (from : allrecipes)

4 servings

Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 4 large baking potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1 (4 ounce) can sliced mushrooms, drained
- 1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
- 1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
- salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the potatoes, and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until you think they are about halfway done.

2. Mix in the mushrooms, red pepper and green pepper. Continue to cook and stir until potatoes are golden brown and somewhat crisp, about 15 more minutes. Season with salt and pepper, and serve.