The Mayonaise maker :)

My husband have been craving for a homemade mayo  since last month and listed as the mayo mixer as one of his "wish list" for noel gifts and his sister Marie Aline was the one who cleverly got him his super duper mayo mixer from Tuperware, which doesan excellent job of binding ingredients together delicately.

And here is how the " super-duper" robo looks like :)

so off he goes with his super duper gadget to make himself a homemade mayo with these ingredients:
Eggs, Sunflower oil & Olive oil, lemon juice, mustard

Doing his concoction to make mayonaise :)

Almost there :)

Add the ingredients and slowly turn the turner around and every now and then pour in the oil/huile through the hole on the lid which is very convenient i must say.

A voila! Homemade mayonaise creamy and yummy!

So, Marie Aline, merci beaucoup pour le cadeau Noel, ce manifique cette gadget!
(Thank you very much for the gift Marie Aline! It's definately a magnificent gadget!!)

Here is another look form our happy mayonaise maker :)
 

 À bientôt

 foodatelier@gmail.com

My first post!

Bonjour and hello to everyone :)

I'm nso excited with this new blog because i dont have to mix up my other blog with cooking things no more as i find it difficult to locate all the cooking post i did previously in my other blog. Phew! so that part is solved and am ready to get on to more exciting recipes as i go around with my husband travelling and learning about other cultures and particularly the food they are custom to eat :)

From time to time, i will be posting on behalf of my husband when he is doing the cooking so you will see a little bit of both of us here. 

I'm not a great cook, just a normal person with a great interest to learn more about cookings techniques, Latest cooking utensils, cooking gadgets, recipes and trying out new recipes as i go along. But i do know some people do enjoy my cooking and that is more then i could ask for :)
And of course...my No. 1 fan and also critique is my dearest husband  Ray. He eats everything BUT he is particular about everything particularly taste! Being a French i guess its a norm. hehehe

Well, let me go and start with my 2nd post now and of course it's going to be about FOOD :)



À bientôt

foodatelier@gmail.com

Recipe de Gratin de Brocoli with chicken :)

Ah my first post from a new country and place :) ah well to start of my debut post i would like to wish Fariza Ismail Celestial VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY although i wont be able to cook this special meal to her but i hope with this recipe you can have a go at home and cook it together with your beloved family :)

Its actually very easy to make but a very healthy and yummy food to have and not much work on it too because you leave it to the oven to do the main job :) But anyhow...here is the recipe :)

The Ingredients :-

* 1/2 kg brocoli
* 30 g flour
* 1/2 l milk
* a few slices of the craft cheese or whichever cheese you like
* 20 cl creme
* 30 g Butter
* 2 or 3 potatoes
* 1 chicken breast fillet / cubed
* 1 big onion chopped


The Preparation :-

1. toss your onions in a pot for 2 minutes then add your chicken and toss for 3 minutes add your salt and pepper to taste. let it set for 2 mins then add 1 cup or more of water until the chopped chickens are submerged. covered and wait until it is cooked and simmering in the broth. take out the chicken cubes and set aside. and keep the broth aside.

2. Pealed and washed the potatoes are now ready for a short steaming for a good 15 minutes then followed by the broccoli for another 7 minutes. After steaming take out and let rest aside.

3. Preheat your oven to 200C.

4. Now you are ready to make your Bechamel Sauce.
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until the paste cooks and bubbles a bit, but don't let it brown — about 2 minutes. Add the milk, continuing to stir as the sauce thickens. Bring it to a boil. Add salt and pepper to taste, lower the heat, and cook, stirring for 2 to 3 minutes more. Stir in 1 sliced of the Kraft Cheese during the last 2 minutes of cooking. After it dissolves remove from the heat.

5. Now you are ready to assemble your baking dish
take a wide Pyrex see through dish if you have or anything that you can use for baking. Pour some bechamel sauce in your chicken and stir through it thoroughly until all portions are covered then pour everything to the baking dish and level it out then sliced your steamed potatoes just like the size a potato chip but not too thin the arranged them in your baking dish so that it will be well composed with the chicken and finally throw in your steamed broccoli and the pour down the other half of the Bechamel sauce and if its not enough to cover the dish add in some of the chicken broth u made with the chicken early on.



6. and finally layer down your kraft cheese as much as you want or you can use mozzarella cheese as you like. Sprinkle some black pepper and some basil leaves and its ready to go in the oven.


6. after about 25 to 30 minutes when you see the cheezes started to turn golden or brown turn off the oven and you are ready to serve your Gratin de Brocoli with chicken!!



In the original recipe, it doesnt have any chicken cubes thrown into it but i like it to be a one meal thingy so that you can eat it just like that so thats why i put the chicken in :)

I hope you like it and oh by the way.... Happy birthday to you my dear Fariza and many happy returns :)


À bientôt

claritydefinesyou@gmail.com

The Week end of Asunción - 21st May 2009

Its Asunción Day and since a couple of the family members are heading this way i decided to make some Brioche and also bread while maman made "Clafootis" for dessert :)

I made two things at one time the bread and the brioche and of course brioche needs a lot more labour then making the bread so anyhow the pictures will show the finished product and tiny bits of the process :) And unlike back in Malaysia, waiting time for the dough to rise is much faster and indoors too but somehow... eventhough its spring here, the wind is still blowing hard and so a bit cool so i had to put them outside for some sunbathing process hehehe :)

cute aren't they hehehe...actually while waiting i managed to play soccer wt my little nephew and niece and we won!!!!!! hehehehe

after raised up to the level i wanted its time to bake it and brush it with some egg yolk + milk and you get that brown crusty look like that :)

nice and smells nice too :) managed to perfumerised the whole house hehehe

thanks to my phone camera can zoom zoom so can take this pic to show slightly the inside which is nothing its just like roti butter kosong very delicious to eat with cafe :) and and and usually the recipe is with pure butter, but hmn...dont want to feel too guilty to eat it later so i used demi-sel which means semi salted.

voila! my very own Brioche from the Vendée Region:)

This is maman's fruit tart or rather they call it "Clafootis" here yummy too made from Cassis berries :)

and here is the bread...

closer look at and can you imagine i used a rice cooker to bake this :)

and finally the two yummies :)

anyways have a great weekend everyone and take care!

À bientôt!

Clarity!

Making bread from a microcomputer Rice Cooker :)

The dutifully rice cooker :)

Who says you need a proper oven to make a nice bread? well, since i,m moving around so much and going to picnics or staying over at relatives place i can easily make something up out of my rice cooker :) I bought 2 of this one for my parents in law in france hence this one manually translated into french as for the functions of it and secondly one is somewhere in africa now awaiting for me to work on it hehehe. Anyways, i have made cakes with it also as it has a cake funtion button as well, so i was thinking why not bread so i tried it and voila! a wonderful golden bread :)

here is the recipe, actually anykind of good bread recipe will do as this is just another mode of emploi for baking the bread. my bread recipe is really pretty easy to follow indeed :-

The bread starter

• 1 cups of warm water
• 1.5 Tablespoons of active dry yeast
• 1 cup of plain flour

¤ mixed all up and wait for about 30 minutes or less until it becomes frothy

The dough

• 1 cup of wholemeal plain flour
• 1 cup of plain flour
• 1 Tablespoon of salt
• 1 handfull of cereal
• extra flour (almost a cup)
• 1 cup of warm water
  

¤ mixed all the dry ingredients up and finally pour in the "bread starter" [pic 1] to the dough and mixed well adding every now and then extra flour until it forms a dough [pic 2] then let it rest for 1 hour

¤ after for about an hour the dough will resemble something shown on [pic 3] flatten out the dough [pic 4] and finally let it rest for about 3 to 4 more hours until it resembles the dough in [pic 5] the doubled now sized dough indicates that its ready to be baked

¤ baked in the oven for 45 minutes until its brown or golden on the top or if using the rice cooker for about 1 hour until it resembles like the picture on [pic 6]

a voila! my golden brown bread made from baking in the rice cooker :)

have a go everyone!

À bientôt!

Clarity!

My 1st Croissant! :)

I have always love to eat croissant its one of my old time favourite. The problem with me is that, i love to eat my croissant with butter and thats sinfully rich in everything particularly fats. So i have been toying with the idea of making my own "guilt-free croissant" for i have done a few recipes of my own through trial and error for my butter free bread or organic wholemeal bread as well as guilt-free Brioches as well. So i was thinking why not make my croissant less oilly and less butter and make it as healthy as possible so i came up with my own recipe for this and so this is my first procuce. Raymond was my tester person for he is french and so he should know better on how a croissant should taste and he is very particular with breads and pastries and particularly croissant. So this morning i suprised him with my mini croissant as well as mini croissant breads and he loved it! Especially when its not oilly at all and its very crispy and crunchy he said to me you must have put in tonnes of burre but i told him just the normal then less amount of butter and unsalted and just play around with the texture for the mixture for the dough so voilà! a healthy croissant!


The process of making the croissant

And the final product...voilà! Clarity's mini croissant :)


clarity me!

Recette : Eggplant Lasagne

here's the recipe Norma! Actually i never liked eggplants before because of how it looks like after they are cooked or whatever but somehow i made this dish coz i wanted something that will use a lot of vegetables in it and just toss it in the dish and bake and i also wanted it to be low on callories so i tried to get the cheeze to be the lowest amount of calories so choosing the types of cheese thats low on calories they have a lot at the supermarket these days but it should be a balanced so that the food wont compromised too much on the taste. Also by using the browned eggplants as the lasagna sheets cuts off a lot of calories already :)) anyhow here is eggplant lasagna :) hope you have a success trying it out Norma :)

Ingredients:

3 Large eggplant, (thinly sliced)
vegetable spray
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
16 ounces sliced mushrooms
1 cup of diced capsicum red/green and yellow

¼ cup of diced tomatoes

8 pieces of sun dried cherry tomatoes (halved)
1 jar (16 ounce size) spaghetti sauce with vegetables or White lasagne sauce
1 can of Chunky Tuna (drained)

8 ounces ricotta cheese, part-skim
4 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

White sauce ingredients

250ml skimmed milk

4 slices of kraft cheddar cheese

2 tsp corn starch

salt and pepper

chopped dried basil leaves

Directions:

In large non-stick skillet sprayed with vegetable spray, quickly brown eggplant slices; set aside. In the same skillet in hot olive oil, cook onion for about 3 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until tender.

Add mushrooms and capsicum, dried tomatoes and tomatoes cook, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes or until they are tender then finally bring in the Tuna chunks stir softly for 2 more minutes add salt and pepper to taste transfer to a dish and set aside.

White Sauce

bring the skimmed milk to boil then add in the cheddar cheese until they are melted and blended with milk add salt and pepper. Take off heat and put in the dissolved cornstarch and let it thickens by stirring rapidly and forms a nice sauce texture then add in the chopped dried basil leaves and set aside.

Into an 11x7-inch baking dish, spoon about 1/4 of the sauce (i.e. Either White sauce or spaghetti sauce) Arrange three alternate layers of the (1) browned eggplant slices , (2) vegetables & Tuna mixture, (3) ricotta, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan cheese alternately ending with the top layer with the cheese topping. Bake eggplant lasagne at 350F for 30 to 40 minutes.

Have a go N!

Clarity