Christmas Roast Turkey

Yesterday is Christmas day although we are not Christian but we do enjoyed having a family dinner together with roast turkey, pumpkin soup, potatoes sausages salad and butter rice. This year I manage to get a small turkey (5kg) at the lowest price rm19.90perkg in Giant hypermarket where as others supermarts selling between rm22.90 to rm28.00 perkg.
The only thing that not properly done is my table and serving platters as all my things are still packed in boxes with no intention to unpack until we get to have our own house. Nevertheless we have a wonderful dinner, my sons taking pictures to put into facebook and I taking pictures for this blog as you noticed it been a while I did not update it.

Roast turkey
1 whole turkey - thawed and pat dry
2 tbsp Sage - chopped finely
Salt (2-3tbsp) and pepper                                      } mix all together
A few tablespoon of olive oil

A few twig of fresh Rosemary - cut into 3" lenght
A few slices of streaky bacon

Sauce
1.5 liter chicken stock
3 tbsp flour

1.Rub the turkey inside out with the mixture. Under the skin also rub with the mixture and stuff in the Rosemary twigs and the streaky bacon.
2. Wrap the seasoned turkey in aluminium foil and placed onto a baking tray. Keep in the fridge to marinate at least 24 hours until bake time,
3.Calculate the turkey weight for roasting 40minutes perkg. My turkey is 5kg x 40min= 3hours 30 minutes .
4. Bake at 180 C for 3 hours and removed the alunimium foil to continue baking for browning the turkey. Please keep an eyes on the turkey so is not burn.
5. When cooked, lift the turkey from tray, skim the surface fats from the roasting tray, add some chicken stock (or water) and flour.
6. Place the roasting pan onto a stove and bring to boil. Season the sauce if needed. Serve turkey with gravy.

Potatoes Sausages Salad
1 packet (800gm) potatoes - wash and boil in a sauce pot with lightly salted water until tender but not too
                                             soft. Cut into wedges, put aside.
15 pcs chicken/pork mini sausages
2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp olive oil
3/4 cup water
salt and black pepper to season.

1. Place butter, olive oil, water and sausages in a pan onto a stove with high heat. Cook until the water evaporated turn heat to low and with remaining oil stir fry to brown the sausages then add in the cooked potatoes wedges. Mix thoroughly, season with salt and pepper. Serve.

Pot Pies





Make this pot pies last weekend with leftover from our ABC soup, the soup was all finished off with  only the potatoes, carrots, chucks of chicken meat left. Is a waste to thrown it away so I turned it into my pot pies filling. First I shredded the cooked chicken meat, cutting the potatoes and carrots into smaller pieces. diced one big onion and sauteen with some butter, add in one tablespoon of flour and fry for a while then I added in chicken soup (I used instant soup in a mug one packet mix with water)then follow by the shredded chicken, potatoes, carrots and some frozen green peas. Cook for a while to thicken the sauce and add in salt, pepper to taste. Filled the pots with the filling, grease the rim of the pot and paste on the savoury pastry onto the rim to sealed. Glaze with eggs wash and poked some hole to for the air and steam to escape during baking. I cooked some brown sauce to serve with the pies and this is our dinner that evening. It was delicious with the crusting buttery pastry plus the sauce.

This picture was taken with my handphone.

Bimbinbap Korean Hot Stone Pot Rice

You need a hot stone/hot pot for bimbinbap as I do not have so use what available.

Ready cooked ingredients for bimbinbap



To cook Korean Hot pepper sauce you will need:
1 cup anchovy- soaked to soften, chopped finely
1 bulb of garlic- finely chopped
1/2 - 1 cup-  grinded chilli paste
2 tbsp roasted sesame seeds
Sesame oil & oil
Method: Preheat wok, add sesame oil and oil, sauteen garlic and chilli paste until the oil separated from the paste.
Add in the anchovy and sesame seeds, cooked until done. Can served with other dishes, noodles or rice.



First time make this bimbinbap and my family love it. Is easy to make and healthy too. I visited Korea few years back and during the trip we went to Seoul, Jeju Island, Mt. Seorak and others nearby places. Me and my buddies girlfriend have a wonderful holidays and lots of delicious Korean foods.I would like to visit Korean again if possible with my whole family soon.

Ingredients:

Soya bean sprouts-boiled in boiling water a few minutes, drained, sprinkle with salt and vineger, mix well
Spinach-boiled in boiling water a few minutes,drained, cut into 2incnes length
Beef(any meat you preferred)-shredded, marinated with soya sauce, stir fried until done.
Shitake Mushroom-soaked and shredded, stir fried until done.
Spring onion-cut into 2inches length.
Shredded Dried Seaweed
Egg
Kimchi
Roasted sesame seed
Sesame oil 
Cooked Rice

Method:
1. Preheat stone pot on the stove, wipe inside pot with sesame oil.
2. Add in the cooked hot rice, arrange the cooked ingredients, egg, Korean Hot pepper sauce and Kimchi on top of the cooked rice.
3. Sprinkle spring onion, sesame seed and dried seaweed.
4. Serve.

KOREAN GINSENG CHICKEN SOUP

Last weekend I cooked some Korean food for my family and its turn out yummy delicious. Because is a last minute decision I just used what I have in hand, for the wine in the Korean ginseng chicken instead of Jinro wine I subtituted with Chinese white wine and the last 1/4 cup of my Napoleon Bonaparte liquor which was 30th yrs old liquor, originally was bottled in a 'Gold Book' shape porcelain bottle with Napoleon head as the cap, because the bottle cap was broken I tranfer into another glass bottle. I used Chinese Ginseng (Julie's gave me 3 strips of the Chinese Ginseng during Chinese New Year) and is useful to promote overall well being. It also helps to improve mental alertness, improve skin complexion, while revitalising and strengthening the heart and lungs.

1 whole chicken- remove head and legs, cleaned and wipe dry.

1 strip of Ginseng ( Yen Sam)

5 pcs. dried red dates (jujube)

1.1/2 cups glutinous rice -soaked for 3 hours- drained

1/2 cup of Korean Jinru wine

1 tsp salt

1. Mix glutinous rice, salt and dried red dates, and stuff into chicken.

2. Next, stuff the ginseng into the chicken

3. Put chicken (belly part up)into a pot then pour wine and water until cover the whole chicken.

4. Cook in high heat until boiling and turn the fire into low heat, cover pot and stew for 2 hours.

5. When cooked, remove stuffing and mix with the soup to serve.

Pandanus Leaves & Red Dates (Jujube) Drink

I was told that this drink is good at lowering high blood pressure and especially for those who have pain at the back of our neck and shoulder. Anyway I like the taste of the drink, also good for our health and with plenty of pandanus leaves that I have planted no harm drinking it often.

10pcs pandanus leaves - cut into 1 inch length
6 pcs red dates - sliced
brown sugar (optional) to taste

Boiled for 1/2 an hour and add sugar to taste.

Parmesan & Sun Dried Tomato bread mix

My front neighbour's  Mrs Liew  gave me a pack of this bread pre mix that her brother brought back from UK. Even before the packet of flour is open you can smell the wonderful aroma of herbs and parmesan cheese. Only last week I manage to baked it and is really delicious. The mix works in bread machines but I mix it with my Kenwood cake mixer then rolled by hand into different shapes. Rest the dough and baked, there easy instruction to follow at the back of the wrapper. Unfortunately it only available in England, Let check it out at their website at  http://www.wrightsflour.co.uk/index.aspx .

                                            

Stew Sea Cucumber with Chicken, Mushroom

1 whole chicken cut into quaters, season with salt and pepper. Pan seared the chicken for browning.

Sea cucumber washed clean and dried

1 no. whole chicken - quarters, season with salt and pepper and pan seared the chicken for a while.
1 kg or more sea cucumber cut into bite size
15 pcs dried mushrooms - soaked, marinated with sugar, soya sauce, oil and some cornflour-steam for 1 hour.
3 cloves garlic - tear into pieces
2 inches ginger -sliced
1/2 tsp of five spice powder
1/4 cup of shaoxing wine (can subtitute with other liquor
oil and sesame oil
soya sauce, oyster sauce, pepper for seasoning.

Method.
1. When the above ingredients is ready, add in some oil and sesame oil into a pot.
2. Sauteen the ginger and garlic for a while then add in the sea cucumber to stir fried for 10min.
3. Add in the mushrooms stir for a while.
4. Add enough water to cover the sea cucumber and mushrooms,
5.Add soya sauce, oyster sauce to simmer until the sea cucumber is 80 percent cooked.
6. Now, add the seared chicken and simmer to cooked.
7. Season to taste.