I Made Jamie Oliver’s Fantastic Roast Chicken

Posted on April 4, 2012 by The Giddy Tigress

roastchicken1

This epic and legendary roast chicken recipe has always been nagging at my thoughts and I had wanted to try it for a long time.  Well, a few days ago, I decided to do some homework and look up the recipe online.  Oh yes, I get almost all my recipe ideas online nowadays.

Anyway, what I discovered was that there are 2 versions of this roast chicken recipe; one using olive oil and one using butter.  I opted for the latter, because with the proof in the pictures from my pal Paris’s site, I knew this was a fool-proof recipe.  I followed her recipe almost to the tee, except that I omitted the bacon strips, and instead of dried herbs, I used fresh herbs.

The result was a roast chicken dish that was moist on the inside, and deliciously crisp on the outside; which is how I like it.  I served it with warm steamed rice, but it probably can be eaten on its own or even with some warm steamed buns or bread!  Hubby loved it but my kids were not too keen on the lemony flavors.  My kids liked the chicken on its own though.

roastchicken2

All I can say is, for a first attempt, this was definitely a resounding success!  I say it’s fool-proof because c’mon, how wrong can you get by just chopping and mixing everything and roasting the bird?   Plus, there are only so many ways to stuff the butter into the chicken!

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The Day I Burned 600+ Calories

Posted on March 30, 2012 by The Giddy Tigress

gym

A friend of mine invited me to one of the gyms here in Penang as her guest today.  The main intention was to check out (or in my personal case, reconnect with) one of my loves of all times, Body Pump: an awesome strength training workout which I had abandoned more than 6 years ago.

I had prepped my kids to wake up early and I dropped them off at school at around 8:30a.m., after navigating for 25 minutes through the Friday morning jam.

My friend and I reached the gym about 10 minutes to 9:00a.m. but alas, the Body Pump instructor called in sick that day. 🙁

In the end, we ended up just doing the RPM class (a spinning class) – and that was how I burned 600+ calories.

Felt really good.  Is this the start of many more sessions to come?

I’m supposed to go for the Pump class this coming Friday though…and I can’t wait. 🙂

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Dong Po Rou: Restaurant Cuisine at Home

Posted on March 28, 2012 by The Giddy Tigress

I’ve always loved this restaurant dish, but only recently did I find out that it’s called Dong Po Rou (東坡肉), which means Twice-Cooked Pork Belly.  I’ve always just called it “that sinful pork dish” or something to that effect.  I love the taste of it, especially eaten with warm steamed buns.

When I set out to recreate this dish at home, I did not know that it required 2 very important ingredients: brown rock sugar and Chinese rice wine.  I ran into a snag too, because the butcher at the market would not sell me the pork belly in the shape of a square 😛

You see, I had seen this recipe from Almost Bourdain, and I wanted mine to look like that.

Alas, I had to improvise, and in the end, my version looked something like this:

dongporou

The flavors were just about right, but hubby said the lean meat was not “melt-in-the-mouth” enough.  Well, maybe the piece of pork belly was a little too lean to begin with, or maybe my steamer is not working too well, but we’ll try again next time.

Overall, a not too bad attempt for a first time, and it’s easy enough to try over and over again till we achieve perfection.

Sinful flavors, anyone? 🙂

Dong Po Rou (東坡肉)/Chinese Style Twice-Cooked Pork Belly
Serves 4
(recipe adapted from Almost Bourdain, awesome name for a blog, by the way)

Ingredients

1 kg pork belly, skin on
100 g scallions (spring onions / green onions), cut into half
50 g ginger, sliced
500 ml good quality Shaoxing wine
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
80 g rock sugar

Method

  1. Cut the pork belly into two equal sizes to fit the pot.
  2. Put the pork belly in a pot of boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. This step is to get rid of the impurities. Remove the pork belly and set aside.
  3. Pour away the boiling water from the pot and line the base with scallions and sliced ginger.
  4. Lay the pork belly (skin side down) on top of the ginger and scallion.
  5. Mix the wine, soy sauces (light and dark) together and pour in the pot together with the rock sugar.
  6. Add some water if necessary to make sure 2/3 of the pork is submerged in the water.
  7. Bring the master stock to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer with lid on for 2 hours. Turn the pork once half way through the cooking.
  8. Remove the pork belly and reserve the master stock.
  9. Steam the pork belly in a steamer on high heat for 30 minutes.
  10. Serve pork belly with the master stock.


Posted in Close to Heart & Home, Drooling & Cooking | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

My First Attempt at Novelty Cupcakes

Posted on March 27, 2012 by The Giddy Tigress

I’ve been wanting to make some novelty cupcakes for a long time now, and when my nephew’s full moon celebration came along, I knew it was the perfect opportunity.

(Oh, did I forget to announce that I just turned “Aunt” all over again?  Yeah, my brother and his wife recently welcomed a third addition to their family, with newborn baby Caleb, over a month ago)

Anyways, here’s what I made:

Caleb-fullmoon1

The cupcakes are vanilla-chocolate chip flavored, and let me just tell you that decorating cupcakes are SO much easier than decorating big cakes! 🙂  I had a whale of a time making these, and we ate those undecorated ones 🙂

I even got a nice carry-box for them:

Caleb-fullmoon2

Hope everyone enjoyed the cupcakes as much as I did making them 🙂

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The Chicken Soup for My Soul

Posted on March 21, 2012 by The Giddy Tigress

My kids love the “Kai See Hor Fun” or Chicken Koay Teow at Old Town.  Being an Ipoh-bred lass, I have definitely had my fair share of yummy chicken koay teow, which originates from my hometown.  I have often wondered how a seemingly simple-looking dish can taste so good.

My curiosity got the better of me and made me determined enough to try making it myself.

I was sure it was not as simple as boiling chicken stock and pouring it over koay teow.  Surely there must be a secret step involved.

And when I stumbled on this recipe from ChopinandMysaucepan, I knew I had found THE recipe.  It was the writer’s mother’s very own recipe, and it just felt so authentic when I read it.  The pictures seemed to call out to me and it looked simple enough to try.  Plus I found out what the “top secret ingredient” is… 🙂

So I tried it out last week, …and here’s we had for dinner that night:

kaiseehorfun1

Looks good, right? 🙂  I especially like the way how the orangey oil adds color to the dish.

Wanna know what the secret step/ingredient is?

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Posted in Close to Heart & Home, Drooling & Cooking | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments