Coffee-infused raisins with chocolate chip ice creams

Bombastic though the name is, the recipe is very simple. It's all about using the basic ice cream recipe, then after beating the cream and adding the condensed milk, just add:

1) 1/2 cup of raisins infused in 1/2 up of coffee
2) 1 tbsp of coffee (soaking liquid reserved from raisins)
3) 1 tsp rum (to counter the coffee liquid becoming ice)

After the mixture has frozen for 3 hours, use a fork to break up the big chunks of ice. Repeat again 3 hours late. This is to mix up the raisins which would otherwise have sunk to the bottom of the container.

My chocolate still seized up to become chocolate 'chips'. This time I was careful to use a metal spoon rather than a wooden one, which could have moisture inside, one of the leading reasons of causing chocolate seize up. I was also careful to microwave the chocolate in short bursts to prevent burning. I learnt from surfing that I should not have used chocolate buttons, which has a very low chocolate percentage!

From left to right: black sesame ice cream, and coffee-infused rains with choc chips

Oven "fried" chicken

I think I've finally cracked it. After much experimentation and combinations of various recipes, this seems to work best. A thought stuck me when I was warming up frozen fish fingers (ok, they were more like cutlets) and noticed that there seemed to be oil oozing from under the bread crumb layer. There obviously is oil involved underneath! Fish isn't really that oil, so where did the oil come from?

I scoured the Internet and voila, came across a recipe where instead of using egg (the most usual thing used to 'stick' the breadcrumb mixture onto the chicken skin), the recipe called for butter. Amazing! So with a few tweaks to the my previous attempts, e.g. instead of using a baking sheet and a wax paper, I decided to use a wire rack (suggested by another recipe) so that the air gets underneath as well to ensure an all over crisp, with the added advantage of not needing to turn halfway!


Ingredients
1kg chicken wings, cleaned (remove stray feathers). I used the 3 jointed wings with tips attached.
1 tsp five spice (you can use any dried herbs you like)
1 tsp salt
pinch of pepper
4 tbsp corn flour
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
50g butter, melted

Method
1) Place wings in a bowl and pat dry with kitchen towels as much as you can. Add the salt, pepper and five spice and mix well. Leave in the fridge to dry and marinate, preferably overnight.
2) Add the corn flour and stir to ensure even coverage.
3) In a microwaveable bowl, melt the butter. This usually takes about 1 minute on low, but stop after 30 seconds and stir. Be careful not to burn the butter.
4) Coat each chicken wing with the melted butter.
5) In a bag, pour in the panko bread crumbs. Toss in the chicken wings and toss everything about to ensure even coating.
6) Remove each wing and it on top of the wire rack which has been placed it in a baking tray to catch all the oil.
7) Bake in a pre-heated oven at 220 deg C for 25 minutes, then turn down to 180 deg C for another 20 minutes or until golden brown. Serve immediately.

Pickled green chilli

What do you do when a little bit of fertiliser causes your chilli plants to amply reward you with 75 green chillis? Make pickles!

Of course i could have waited too they ripened on the plant but then what do i do with 75 red chillis, when i still have 7 now dried red chillis sitting on my window sill?


Recipe from my favourite Malaysian food blogger.

http://rasamalaysia.com/pickled-chilies/2/

Saenggangcha

Why pay $10 or more per bottle of tea when you can make it yourself? My favourite winter tea is ginger tea, and I've been particularly partial to the korean ones that you can buy at Korean supermarkets. However, they cost an arm and a leg for a bottle, although it does last a long time. My one piece of ginger and some honey that I had in the cupboard cost me probably less than $2 in total.

I surfed the Internet and it's so easy to make your own! Or if you can find Korean citroen fruit, even better!

I used this recipe from my favourite Korean cook but there are tonnes of others.
http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/saenggangcha

Her recipe is easy because there is no cooking involved, and it's so fast. It took me less than 5 minutes with a grater, faster if you use the food processor (but I was feeling reluctant to fire up the food processor for just a couple of seconds' work!).

Add equal portion of honey (Maangchi put her grated ginger into a measuring cup but I just eyeballed), stir well and voila!

Can be served hot (add recently boiled water) or cold (she didn't even add boiling water, just cold water and ice).

Maangchi does advice us to keep the bottled mixture in the fridge though.