Steam Salted Chicken

This is one of the backdate posts which I have no time to publish it out. We have this dish a few weeks ago on one of the weekend meal together with the Tomato Scramble Egg. The method of this Steam Salted Chicken is sort of similar to the Steam Herbal Chicken. But the main Ingredients here is salt pair with a lot of grated ginger and spring onion to infuse the chicken.

You can use either Chicken Maryland (refers to the thigh and leg)like what I have here or you can substitute it with chicken wings, or cut chicken pieces.

Ingredients:
1 Chicken Maryland, trim
2 Stalks of Spring Onion, cut into sections
1/2 Tablespoon of Grated Ginger
1/2 Teaspoon of Salt
1 Teaspoon of Wolfberries
2 Red Date, halves
1 Tablespoon Rice Wine, optional

Method:
1. Clean and trim the chicken fats, pat dry with paper kitchen towel then rub salt and ginger all over it and set aside.
2. Get a ceramic bowl or deep plate, arrange some spring onion at the base (this is to act as a supporting based to let the chicken cook through easily) then place the marinate chicken on top of it.
3. Next put half of the remaining spring onion on top of the chicken together with the red date and set aside in the fridge to marinate for about 30 minute or longer.
4. Remove from the fridge 5 minutes before steaming and steam it over medium heat for about 20 - 25 minutes or till chicken is cook through when you poke it with fork and the juice runs out clear.
5. Remember to add in the wolfberries and rice wine after 15 minutes of steaming time.

Note:
a) You can also cover the bowl or plate with a foil to keep steam chicken moist and as well trap the fragrant of the dish but then you might need a longer steaming time for this. Usually I will cover only when I add herbs to it so as to keep the fragrant of the herbs.

This is a very fragrant dish that you can serve it with hot rice and use the gravy from the steam chicken to serve with your rice. If you want it to be more herbal, you can add 2 to 3 slices of Dang Gui (当归) on top of the chicken and steam it accordingly.

Chocolate Overload

Talk about Chocolate both Reyon and me can't resists it. We have all kind of chocolate stuffs in the kitchen pantry and fridge, ranging from cookies to ice-cream and cakes.....So when I come across this recipe, I told myself that this is a must try list on our baking list. I show Rey the picture of this Chocolate muffin and at once he told me that he wants to make for me, Grandma and Grandaunt on Mother's Day.

So immediately after the washing up from our Salmon Bento lunch. We started our Mother's Day baking project. I help Reyon to measure all the ingredients and put them into separate bowl while he will follow my instructions to make the muffins. This as usual is suitable to be handle by kids as it require only, WHISK, STIR, POUR and BAKE. So do give your kids a chance to whisk up this simple and yet irresistible chocolate muffin.

Bento #27 - Salmon Onigiri Bento

Today is Mother's Day and after our usual Sunday Church service, we went to the nearby Supermarket to get some ingredients to prepare our lunch. After looking at the ingredients, we settle for Salmon Fillet, Button Mushroom and Corn.

With the ingredients in hand, we made some Salmon Flake & Corn Onigiri. Rey and I love the colour combination as our Church dress code for Mother's Day is Pink this year. I pan-fry the salmon fillet with shredded ginger and spring onion until brown then set aside. I cook the rice as per normal by adding some fresh corn kernel and chestnut and cook until done then I add in the salmon flakes and mould them into round onigiri.

With some olive oil, I do a quick stir-fry using the sliced button mushroom and carrot to serve it as a side dish. Tata... so after assemble above is what we have for our lunch today....

Bento #26 - Cheese Pie & Fruit Salad

Since I am alone in the office this week as my colleague went for Holiday Trip. I decided to pack some light and simple lunch for work today. I packed 3 different types of cut fruits which are Kiwi, Dragon fruit and apple to go with my Blueberry Cheese Pie. As we are in a rush, I forget to soak the cut apple slices in some salted water to prevent it for discolouration.

On the second day, I bring some cut dragon fruits and apple slices to work again and this round I have soaked the cut apple in some salted water for a while and the colour remain clear and nice through out even when I eat it quite late after lunch :)

I used this set of Mickey Mouse design vegetable cutter to cut my apple slices for the bento.... :) You can take a look at other range of the Mickey Mouse Bento Tools here.(click the link)

Bento #25 - Happy Mother's Day

This coming Sunday, 10 May 2009 will be the once a year Mother's Day. And we had this Pre-Mother's Day Bento last weekend just in case we are out for celebration on the actual day. It's done by me and my 5 years old boy. He helps to remove the shell from the cooked quail eggs, cut the features and assemble them into cute little farm animals. Cut the jam sandwiches and kiwi slices using the heart-shape cutter. We did have a lot of fun making all and it's a great way to bond with kids too.

Tata... this is what I did for the finally arrangement. After Rey had finished all the cutter and sticking of the features, I will do the finally touch up as well as the arrangement into the bento box. So in the end, this is what we have..........

This is the set of Quail Egg Cutter which CP from Bentomarket get it for us through the suggestion of Amy(Shoppingmum) from MotheringCorner to source for this cute cutter. Amy has a cute froggies bento using this quail cutter to make the frog too... take a look :)

I have help Rey cooked the Quail Eggs, then he did all the peeling and using the cutter to cut the features and assemble these cute little Farm Animals. Out of the 5 animals, I only help him to cut the zig-zag outline for the chick using the special cutter available in the set. He really have a lot of fun doing these and it's the best Mother's Day present for me because these cuties are from the hand of my darling......

Look at this row of farm animals queuing up in action..... starting from Little Dog, Chick, Rabbit and Piglets......

Happy 4th Anniversary - Cuisine Paradise

Today, 30th April 2009 is the 4th Anniversary of this blog - CUISINE PARADISE. At the beginning it was just a blog whereby I keep an online record of our family daily meals to share with friends and readers. But after sometime, I found that there are too many categories that I wish to try on so in order to keep a better view and records of all the posts. I sub-divided the Main Blog into another 4 individual blogs which is the Tea-Time Delights(collection of tea-time delights and kid's meal), Kitchen Tips(collection of ingredients and kitchen gadgets), Recipe Index(a list of recipes that I tried)and Eramblings(my walk with the Lord).

I sincerely wanted to thank all those readers and participants for joining the Blog Giveaway Event which just ended on the 17 April 2009. With all your warm co-operation, this event is held successfully with so many draw entries. I hope those winner of the draw will like their gifts and be of some use to them. Lastly, I wish to thank everyone for participating and stay tune for the next upcoming Blog Event which will be up soon in May.

Lastly, just wish to share with you some of my favour photos in my blog posts which marked my 4 years journey in blogging. There are so many kinds of food that I had tried & test out during my blogging days and I also wanted to sincerely thanks Lijie and Daniel who interview & published my blog and recipes. This credit really brings a BIG encouragement in my blogging life. Thank you..... and most of all..thank you those who support this blog. Hope there will be another 4 years coming by... lol

Winner Of The Blog Event

Finally the Blog Event had closed and ended on 17 April 2009. I sincerely appreciate and thanks all the participants for joining this event to celebrate the 4th Anniversary of this blog. After sorting the participants for each draw category, we conduct a mini Lucky Draw for each Gift Set and here are the 4 LUCKY WINNER of the blog event.


Gift Set #1 - Goes to Tan Yee Lin from Singapore.


Gift Set #2 - Goes to Christine Ong from Australia


Gift Set #3 - Goes to Carolyn Cheng from Singapore


Gift Set #4 - Goes to Estella from Singapore

All winners will be notify by email. If you do not received my email confirmation by Wednesday, 22 April 2009 do let me know by leaving me a comment here or send me an email. Once again, thank you everyone of of the participants of this event.

For those who participate but didn't stand a chance on the gift set. You will have Another chance in coming May 2009 for the next upcoming blog event with more exciting prizes to be won. So do come back and check out for more details which will be announced soon....

Blog Event - CLOSED

Dear readers and participants of this Blog Event. Thank you so much for taking your time to leave a comment here and as well as sent in your draw details via Email to me. I hope everyone of the participants have received my confirmation reply thru Email on your draw item.

At the meantime, I will be sorting out the list of participants for the lucky draw. The 4 LUCKY WINNER will be announced on Monday, 20 April 2009. Till then, just remember to come back and check out on the draw result on Monday to see whether you are ONE of the luck winner :p

GOOD LUCK! EVERY PARTICIPANTS!!!

Bento #24 - Homemade Fan Choy

This is my Morning Tea-break Bento. I reheat the Fan Choy that my mum specially made for us as Breakfast and packed it together with a few extra Siew Mai and Har Kao(prawn dumpling). This definitely marked my day with a hearty Homemade Dim Sum Breakfast.

Homemade Banana & Passion Fruit Jam

This is definitely a simple and easy to attempt keeper recipe. I got to know this special Homemade Banana & Passion Fruit Jam from Happy Home Baking website(click here). You should take a look at her recipe if you are interested in making your own jam at home. It's very simple and straight forward. All you required is only 3 Ingredients which are:- Ripe Banana, Passion fruit Pulp and Sugar.

Put all these ingredients into a small heavy-duty saucepan and simmer on medium heat for about less than 10 minutes and you will have your very own Homemade jam in no time...... So do hope by to her blog shown on the above link for more detail :) I promise you will be in love with the texture and fragrant of this jam.

Bento #23 - Steam Herbal Chicken

It had being a long interval since I last prepared Bento for Rey on the Panda Bento. Since we have a long weekend last week due to Good Friday, I managed to squeeze some extra time to do marketing during Sunday after Church to grab some grocery in the market to prepare our lunch and my Monday, Bento Lunch to work.

Since I only have about 1.5 hrs in the morning to get ready for work and school for Rey. I have decided to prepare steam lunch, what I need to do is just to steam the rice, herbal chicken and dumpling together then arranged them nicely in the bento box :)

I am so happy to receive my Bento Contest gift from Susan Yuen last week. This is my 1st online contest and it is such a suprised that the Seaside Bento that I did for Rey a few weeks back managed to get into the 5th place for this Bento Contest that is organised by Susan from Hawaii Bento Box.

Thank you Susan for organising such a fun and interesting contest and as well as your gifts and card. Thank you so much.

Blog Anniversary Event

Cuisine Paradise is going to be 4 years old on 30 April 2009. On this special occasion I would like to giveaway some small gifts as a token to all my blog readers irregardless of where you are from as long as you wish to take part in this giveaway :)

All you need to do are:-
1. Leave me your Name and Gift Description that you prefer on the Post Comment Link(the comments will only appear after I approved it); AND
2. Email me Your Entry Details as shown below to ellenaguan@hotmail.com : (please put eg: Gift Set #1, Gift Set #2 or etc... on your email subject, in order for me to do the sorting and luck draw list as well compare your details in case i didn't received your email. Thanks)

Example:
Gift Description:
Your Name:
Country You are From:
Blog URL (if you maintain one):
Email add for contact if you are the winner:

Please Note:
Only ONE DRAW ENTRY is allow for each visitor, please help to let others to get a chance to get their desire gift too :) There will be a limit of 40 entries per Gift for the draw and I will update each gift so that you will know which items is closed for the draw. Thanks for your support and enjoy the fun............



This Blog Birthday give away will end on 17 April 2009 (2359hr Singapore Time). I would like to thank all of you for the regular visits, comments, feedback and sharing in all my related blogs to Cuisine Paradise all these years.

Four lucky winner will stand a chance to win one of these gift set and it will be sent via registered mail to you upon the announcement of the draw on 20 April 2009. And hopefully, as a winner you will be able to receive the "gift" before 30 April 2009 in order to celebration this joyful occasion with this blog.


Gift Set #1 -Pooh Sushi Stamp Mould & Egg Mould
(30 entries as on 17.04.09)


Gift Set #2 - 2-1 Mickey Mouse Multi-Purpose Cutters
You can use this set of cutter to make something like what is shown in this Mickey Mouse Bento Set.
(36 entries as on 17.04.09)


Gift Set #3 - Assorted Wiener Cutters + Mickey Furikake Case
(11 entries as on 17.04.09)


Gift Set #4 -Ocean Picks, Baran, Fork & Spoons and Animal Sauce Bottles + Winnie The Pooh Furikake Case
(8 entries as on 17.04.09)

P/s: Dear readers, thanks you for all the support and participation on this blog event. In order to show my sincere appreciation for your draw entry, I have included another extra item for Gift Set 3 & Gift Set 4. Thank You.....

Blueberry Yoghurt & Jam Muffin

At this raining and cosy afternoon, both me and my son tends to have craving for some hot and pipping homemade muffins. So this is what we come out with after sourcing for all the ingredients we have in our kitchen pantry....... Finally we decided to make Blueberry Yoghurt & Jam Muffins for afternoon tea.