Chicken and Sweet Corn Soup

Last week I cooked chicken and sweet corn soup with pasta for Aston for his lunch.  Not to be boastful but it was so tasty! I would say I was about 90% closed to restaurant standard.  The only thing that was missing was the cornstarch to thicken the soup which I omit since my intention was to cook it for Aston.  I was so surprised how easy it was to make it.  Initially, I thought of just a simple chicken soup because Aston was down with flu and I used the sweet corn just to make it more "sweet".  I didn't expect it to taste so similar to those I had in chinese restaurants.

Anyway, below is my own version of Chicken and Sweet Corn Soup:

Ingredients:
2 pieces of skinless chicken breast cut into cubes
1/2 cup of frozen sweet corn
500ml water (estimate because I never measure)
1 Egg
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste ( No pepper for Aston)

Cooking Instructions:
Cooked in Slow Cooker
1. Put in slow cooker the chicken breast, sweet corn and water
2. Cooked for 4 hours under "Auto" function
3. Transfer to normal pot to continue cooking using stove

Cooked using Gas Stove
1. Bring the soup to a boil
2. Break the egg into a bowl (no whisking is required)
3. Pour the egg into the soup as slow as possible while stirring the soup.  This will create a "egg flower" effect in the soup.
4. Salt and pepper to taste
5. Serve while hot.

I put some shell pasta into the soup for Aston and he loved it.  Unfortunately, I did not manage to take any photos because it never came across my mind until I finished it.

 

My Most Successful White Bread

I decided to bake for my parents today as they are coming to visit.  Usually, the white bread that I bake had one minor imperfection.  That is the top is very white while the other sides are nicely brown.  Something like below.

My first attempt to making rosemary bread

Anyway, the ingredients to the bread I made today using the bread machine as follows:-

235ml warm water

25g     white sugar

7g       bread machine yeast

60ml   vegetable oil

410g   bread flour ( I used high protein bread flour)

6g       salt

30g     mixed goodies (psyllium husk, flax seed, oat bran, buckwheat)

The directions as below....

According to my dad, weighing directly inside the mixer is the most accurate.

Activate the yeast by putting in water, sugar and yeast.  Wait for 10 minutes and the result will be like above or at times even more bubbles.....

After activating the yeast, add the remaining ingredients ( I forgot to take a photo) and just put it in the machine and start the cycle.  The above photo was taken after the machine started kneading.

3 hours later......

Nice and yummy bread!

Waiting for it to cool

Top View of the bread

Side view of the bread

Another side view of the bread

I will try to bake some buns once I can find a tray that can fit in my convection oven.  Otherwise, I will need to get a new oven..** Hint Hint hubby**

Mummy's New Toy

I indirectly bought a new toy few weeks ago.  Why I mentioned indirectly? Well, I actually used my credit card points to exchange for a Lebensstil bread maker.  I was very eager to start baking and I thought since it's homemade bread I might as well make it healthy all the way so I bought some organic flour.  I even bought plain white bread flour and wholemeal! The day that I bought the ingredients I can't wait to start baking.  I dug out the weighing scale and what not and started putting everything inside the baking pan as per the instructions that came with the bread maker.  Tick..tock..tick...tock walking in and out of the kitchen peeping through the window on the machine I thought...oooh looking good! However, I remembered my mum told me that baking bread at home will make your house smell like a bakery but all I can smell is yeast!

Tick..tock..tick..tock...the whole process takes 3 hours by the way I still smell yeast! The moment it was done I quickly took it out and I was so disappointed.  The bread did not rise as much as I imagine and the smell was definietly nothing like bread.  Therefore, attempt no 1 FAILED!

Attempt number two I tried wholemeal instead.  Went through the whole process as per the instruction and this round I even tested the delay baking.  Delay baking means you calculate how many hours later you want your bread to be ready from the time you press start.  The delay baking was perfect.  My bread was ready at 7.30am as per what I've calculated but this round my bread did not rise!! My bread end up resembles a banana cake! Attempt no 2 FAILED miserably!

After two attempts I complained to my mum and dad and decided to pass the machine to them to have a go.  I even pass them the yeast and flour.  They were also eager to start baking and at their first attempt the bread was so delicious!! After one week of having the bread machine my dad decided to return it to me with recipe and instructions.  All this while I did not activate the yeast! Lousy instructions from the machine! Anyway, my parents even bought me high protein bread flour, wholewheat, yeast and mix grain that include physillium husk, flaxseed and linseed.

Again, I waited till we finish the loaf of bread at home and started baking white bread.  This time I let the yeast to activate.  Waited for 10 minutes no reaction! It's suppose to be bubbles but I do not see any bubbles! So I waited and started stiring the mixture and end up waiting for 30minutes! I knew something is not right but I still continue and as expected my bread rise just a little bit more compare to the "banana cake" but the texture is still lacking.  However, this round the bread taste much more like a bread.

My last attempt was just two days back.  I decided that I'm going to go all out this time.  Wholemeal + mix grain.  If I fail again, I'm going to give my parents the machine and get them to bake me the bread instead! I started with activating the yeast..waited 10 minutes looking good! Put in the rest of the ingredients and started baking and YES this time my house smells like a bakery and the bread rised! Yayy!! I'm so happy that I can't wait to bake another one when I have the time.  I plan to take photos the next round I'm baking.  Honestly, after having homemade bread you wouldn't want to have any commercial bread anymore! The bread is so soft and fluffy even after 2 days!

Tiramisu...Attempt No 1

My friends and I were planning for a Christmas dinner at my place but unfortunately the main chef fell sick so we had to postpone our dinner to next week.  Anyway, I told my friends that my contribution for the dinner will be Tiramisu for dessert.

I found this recipe online from Jamie Oliver and it looks very simple.  Since the dinner was postponed, I told myself that I will test out the recipe today.  Well everything went well until the recipe says to slowly fold in the beaten egg white into the mascarpone mix.  Silly me did it the other way round! I pour my mascarpone mix into the egg white and started folding and notice hmmmm this doesn't seem right...  oh well too late to do anything so just continue folding...On top of that, the recipe states to briefly soak the sponge fingers into the coffee...without even testing one I straight away put in 5-6 sponge fingers and they soak up so fast that I didn't have enough coffee left and they started to be really soft.  Hopefully, after setting it in the fridge overnight everything will still turn out OK.

But I had another concern... Half way through making the tiramisu it suddenly hit me that perhaps I shouldn't be eating it until I deliver.  Why? Well, the recipe requires 3 eggs and because there's no baking involved it means that the eggs are not cook at all! Isn't raw eggs a big NO NO to preggers? AAarrgh! Maybe I'll just try a little bit tomorrow!