Salmon Potato Cakes

It is always fun to learn making something new. And even more fun to add in my own additions to make it more nutritious or perhaps just simpler. My quest is always just two. One, trying new dishes for the kids and hubby. And two, hiding nutritious ingredients in the meal for the three kids (yes, hubby included, because he is the one to avoid his vegetables).

The original recipe calls for breadcrumbs to absorb moisture but I decided to cut the breadcrumb preparation instead grinded some instant oats for the same purpose. It does work for meatloaf and I was pretty sure it will work here too.

Below are the ingredients for the salmon potato cakes:

Steamed Salmon fish, deboned - about 500gms
Broccoli - steamed
Boiled & mashed potatoes  - about 4 large ones
1 onion - chopped
4 garlic - grated
some dried parsley (fresh better)
some spring onion - chopped fine
half cup of instant oats - grinded fine
2 tbsp tomato pasta sauce
1 egg
half cup of grated cheddar cheese

Simply mash and mix the above ingredients. Shape into patties. You can be creative and use large cookie cutters to get cool shapes. I sprinkled some cheddar cheese on top of each patty. I even made one batch more special by filling it with cheese. You can shallow fry them on the pan but since I (unexpectedly) made such a large batch, I just baked them in the oven. Plus the cheese sprinkle works better when baked. It is too tiresome to do it one by one. I was worried it might not turn out as good, but it did indeed come out firm to the hold.

I totally love my stockpot, that allows me to boil and steam at the same time. I did cut down a lot of cooking time with it, yet I was a tired mummy at the end of it. And since it was a large batch I was able to freeze some for the kids.

For every action there is a reaction. The reward for being good boys eating their fish and vegetables, I baked some chocolate chip muffins. Special one in the ramekins for the BIG boy with Cadbury chocolate inside for some molten-like effect. Recipe from joyofbaking.

And later I did a Anna Olsen style switch up with the leftover salmon potato cakes. Made a simple pasta sauce with tomatoes, milk and ground almonds. 

Spread the salmon potato cakes at the bottom. One layer of pasta sauce. Then some cheese. And then one layer of pasta. Topped with another layer of pasta sauce and cheese, and voila!

As usual my picture was taken slightly later, once the kids started eating.

I hope you enjoy making it as much as I did! Happy trying!

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

When life gave me lemons I made lemon poppy seed muffins out of it! 

 

Well in reality its quite the opposite. Mom has this magical spice that she adds into almost all her Indian cooking, and you know how sometimes even if the thing is right under your nose you can hardly spot it. It is called 'kas kas' in Hindi and I had no idea what is it called in English. I happened to see it once by chance together with the translation and I got ecstatic to know that it is indeed poppy seeds!

I remembered how lemon poppy seed cakes are a favourite in most baking websites. That is how I got to buying lemons next. And searching the internet for the perfect recipe. Most recipes called for yogurt or buttermilk, which I did not have at this moment, so I settled for this recipe from food network (also my favourite channel!).

This is definitely one of the many firsts. Also the first time I made muffins from scratch without any premix, apart from the first time lemon and poppy seed use. And gosh I never knew lemon zest can be so refreshing! Don't beat me for it, we are all in the learning curve after all.

This is also the first time ever I learnt to fold in the dry ingredients properly into the matter without over mixing it. Oh yeah, it does make ALL the difference!

I added some zing into it by giving it a lemon and honey glaze right when it is hot from the oven because it allows the muffin to soak up all the glaze. Just mix a teaspoon of lemon juice with 1 tablespoon of honey, or until you get your desired taste. Little did I know that juice from one lemon takes a lot of honey to bring the sour taste down. Well, well, another first here. All the better to have it more lemony, because as they say, lemon cuts down the fat, right? Right??! Thankfully my sourish glaze added the perfect amount of zing to it!

I feel my muffins look a little naked because I baked them directly inside the muffin trays, I suppose I should add muffin cups into my next shopping list.

I have been having throat inflammation for the last week, so I am hoping this lemon and honey combination will work just fine. Okay, I am just being hopeful and guilt-free here. I am still curious as to how would it taste if I used yogurt or buttermilk, I hope I will have the patience to try this again with yogurt next.

The end product is lovely, and the sweetness is just nice for us health conscious people. And the lemon taste will keep you refreshed the whole day! I can see why this can be a quick breakfast favourite. Suddenly 12 muffins seemed to little in real munching numbers that it disappeared so fast!

Cinnamon Swirl Muffins - A Twist To The Usual Pancakes

I have this habit of modifying and recreating something to give it a little twist and come out with a slightly new packaging or outlook. Old wine in a new bottle, you say? Exactly!

Pancake is something that we all make for our families. Once in one of the 30 minutes cooking shows I saw Jamie Oliver making pancakes in the muffin tray for dinner, something called yorkshire pudding, and I saw the light bulb flicker on!

I am this cinnamon+brown sugar enthusiast, as I type this, I just finished licking the last of my cinnamon stix from Auntie Anne's. Yes I am that crazy. And looking at some cinnamon swirl recipes online, I got the idea for a quick pancake revamp!

So I just took the pancake premix flour, prepared it according to the instruction. Next I prepared the cinnamon swirl of 1tsp cinnamon powder, 4 tsp brown sugar and 3 tsp butter. Just mix all of these together, and you have your cinnamon swirl. Carefully pour the cinnamon swirl mixture into the batter, and fold it slowly, not to mix it thoroughly. Pour the batter into buttered muffin tray. Pour up to 2/3 cup only. And bake at 180C for 15-20 minutes. You know it is done once you see the lovely brown colour!

I eat these muffins with some honey. The kids can munch on them on its own. Else you can also make a honey lemon glaze and glaze them while still warm so that it gets infused in.

I have also tried this with a chocolate swirl preparation, of cooking chocolate and milk. In this case you leave the chocolate mixture separate. Pour in the batter and chocolate layer by layer to get the swirl. It works just as good. Happy trying!

Mini Quiche Recipe

Quiche is one of our favourite quick and rich bake for dinner. I had never eaten quiche before when I saw Anna Olsen making it on AFC. Needless to say the mere look of it shouts 'eat me'! And the rest is history.

After googling for the easiest possible recipe I managed to recreate my own here as on my old blog post. I have always used my own short cut, that is the ready made prata for the base. And recently as I discovered the magical world of frozen puff pastry, life is not the same anymore.

On the quest to provide bite sized snacks and also something to pack for hubby's breakfast for the next day, I got inspired to make mini quiche using the muffin tray. 

This is before I discovered the proper way of cutting the puff pastry to fit the muffin tray. Therefore I kind of did a shoddy job in cutting the pastry in (ugly) squares and fitting them into the tray.

This is really simple and fast to prepare. Firstly sautee bacon till golden, add chopped onion n mushroom n sautee till done. Set aside. For the custard batter, mix 1.5 cup of milk with two eggs. Add salt n black pepper n mix. Set the pastry squares (or circles if you can make them) on the muffin tin. Put the sauteed filling on the base of the pastry cups. Pour the milk mixture over till 80% of the cup. Sprinkle grated cheese oven n bake at 180C for 20-25mins.

This recipe yields 12 mini bites. However I gotta warn you. They finish fast!

Cooking For The Non Eater (Recipes)

In our household we have two good eaters (not including myself) and a NON eater. 

From the time Sanju started his solids, I never had headache over feeding him because he pretty much ate everything I prepared and fed him. As he grew older he became adventurous with his food like his father, and continued enjoying whatever comes on his plate (or spoon, cos he is spoon fed after all).

Then came Jeev. He has been very different from Sanju in many ways, and one of it is indeed eating. He is a smaller, slow and picky eater. He is very temperamental, and his preference changes from time to time. One day he likes something, next day he will reject it completely.

The past one week has been the first time that he rejected everything. I tried feeding from rice dishes, soup, pasta, noodles to capati. There were also moments when he happily did eat his capati, soup or pasta, but the next feeding he would reject it. 

Over the weekend he was somewhat different, enjoying the outings and eating at restaurants with us. Somehow it was so mind boggling to see him behave differently at home and outside.

Seeing the fussiness over food again this week, I let him have some finger foods such as nuggets and buns, and he was fine in munching on them over his own sweet time. Picky, and slow. So I gotta gear down and cater to his preference. Because I am his personal (non certified) chef after all.

Do not feel pity over this poor boy. He was hiding his face from the food as if I tortured him for fun. 

 

So I was a mom on a mission. 

First thing I tried egg fritatta muffins. The method is very simple, mix 4 eggs with half cup of milk, add grated carrots, some salt and pepper. Beat together, and slowly pour them into the muffin tins. Sprinkle each with cheddar cheese and parsley. Verdict: No go with Jeev, but other (great) eaters loved it.

 

Next I saw him munching on plain tortilla bread, and thought why not glorify it. So I toasted the tortilla bread in my HCP, spread some pasta sauce and sprinkle some cheddar cheese. Fold and let it stick.Verdict: A HIT (Jumping of joy!)

After that I thought why not upgrade the tortilla bread to homemade capati as it is rich with its own wholemeal goodness. Same thing as the previous tortilla bites, but this time I also spread some egg on it. Verdict: A HIT, although my capatis turned out a bit hard, gotta work on that.

So these have the little efforts in trying to get the non eater to eat something at least. From the observations, it can be concluded that he loves to self feed on bite sized food. Hence finger foods it is. Also I don't chase him for meal times anymore. I ask and let him eat as he pleases. Next in the list will be finger foods involving meat and fish. But I am hoping that this is just a temporary condition because its gonna be hard cooking a separate dish everytime for just Jeev. A happy kid is a happy mom is a happy kid!

Happy Calling - Mini Pie Cuppies

Happy Call indeed, when I received my Happy Call double sided pan! I had contemplated buying this pan for months now seeing mothers raving about it everywhere. I asked myself did I really need it? It took a while to answer the question, and by then I had found out the best price in the market, all the way from Gmarket in Singapore, which even provided free shipping to Malaysia!

What made me decide for it? Since it is a double sided pan, with a lock, I can fry anything and flip it while it is closed. This means my phobia for frying fish pretty much answered, and I can also fry my other favourites like egg tofu without worrying about the oil spluttering over the kitchen and with my kids playing all over the kitchen floor, safety is the most important factor. With the lock system it also means that food cook faster than the normal pan. How cool is that?

I have been cooking pretty much every day on the weekdays. And my current frying pan was wearing out anyway, I don't blame it, it was a cheap one to begin with. My kitchen utensils needed a desperate upgrade, and non stick surface is the way to go since we are getting all so health conscious (I have some baby weight to lose still).

Right before they go in the oven

 

I have been crazy over this muffin tray that I recently got, and wanted to make this little pie cuppies that I got inspired from Rachel Ray's recipe. It is a simple chicken ham crusted pie with creamy spinach filling. For the spinach filling, I just sauteed garlic, spinach, asparagus and red pepper. Added some milk and cream cheese to cream it up. I also filled up the cuppies with a mixture of 1.5cups of milk and 3 eggs beaten together, with some salt, pepper and ground oregano. There is still some balance left however, I am hatching my next plan on how to utilise it next.

After baking for 15 mins at 150C

Here is what I learnt today:

HCP lesson no.1: Do not flip the HCP if you are cooking with some gravy
HCP lesson no.2: Do not toss and shake the HCP as how you see the Korean dude do it on the video.

Ah well, I am still a beginner!

Now as I go back to cooking and painting the kitchen red with my new toy, stay tuned for more inventions!