What To Eat, What to Cook

My younger sister is one ambitious person. She wants to learn making pate brisee and she wants to learn it fast. Given her track record of attention span, its a wonder that we managed to have any baking project done at all. Together we flipped through recipes and pored through websites, and realize that its best to stick to the only pate brisee recipe that we both think would work.

But of course, we cannot eat only pie shells! We rummaged through the fridge for anything, anything to fill the pies, and we found apples and strawberries, so apple and strawberry crumble pie it is! Gotta love my Ikea apple slicer for the efficiency. Although its not quite suitable to have such cuts for an apple pie, but I still like to use it!

I halved all the ingredients to make Pate Brisee for the pie shell to make a smaller pie.

Ingredients for the pie shell:
175 grams all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon (4 grams) salt
1/2 tablespoon (14 grams) sugar
115 grams unsalted butter, chilled, and cut into 1 inch (2.54 cm) pieces
1/8 to 1/4 cup (30 - 60 ml) ice water
Click here to refer to pate brisee recipe and instructions in full

Ingredients for the fillings:
3 medium sized apple
1/2 cup strawberries
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
4 tbsp granulated white sugar, or more, if a sweeter pie is preferred

Method for the fillings:
Core and slice the apples thinly. Mix 3 tablespoons of sugar with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder. Mix evenly with apple. Set aside. Slice the strawberries and stir in the remainder tablespoonful of sugar. Set aside for 1/2 an hour.

Ingredients for the crumble:

75 grams all-purpose flour, sifted
60 grams butter, chilled
1/2 tablespoon sugar

Method for the crumble:

Mix the butter with the flour in a dry bowl until mixture resembles coarse meal. It’s alright to have differently sized crumbles, its just gonna add to the rustic, homecooked character. Optional ingredients of oatmeal or corn flakes can be added now, but I prefer to go the simpler way by omitting them. Mix it all in well.
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Recipe credits: chefinyou.com
Crunchy, chewy and savoury. I can’t recall how many times we made emergency U-turns when we saw peddlers with big steel woks selling these freshly fried masala vadai on newspapers.

Irresistible it is, but also very fattening. Most of the time I tried to ignore the fritters swimming in a sea of oil, so when I found this baked version, I was leaping in joy. I could do this at home without the oil!

The fritters used the same recipe as the fried version, so to fry or to bake is a matter of choice. Of course, the baked version doesn’t have the glorious sheen of oil and the smoothness to go with every bite, but they are decent substitute for weight watchers.

Basic masala vadai recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup of mixed lentils (I used chad dhal and mysore dhal)
1 medium sized onion, chopped finely
2-3 green chillies chopped finely
2-3 red chilli chopped finely
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp mixed spices (whole)
salt to taste

Method:

Soak the 3 lentils in sufficient water (after cleaning in cold water) for at least 1 hour.

Drain the water well and blend it in a food processor. DO NOT ADD WATER. If its too hard to blend, add a few drops of water gradually until the mixture resembles coarse thick paste with bits of visible lentils.

Remove from processor and add in chopped onion, chillies, spices and salt.

Oil baking sheets or line with baking paper. Preheat oven to 205C, or 400F.

Form vadai patties with hand. Try to flatten them as thin as possible. Arrange vadai on baking sheet and brush some oil on the surface.

Bake them for 10-15min or until cooked. Lift them in the middle to check if they have browned on the underside. Flip them and bake again for another 10min until golden brown.

Make sure not to overbake them, as they contain very little oil the end product will be very dry. Best eaten hot, but do let it rest awhile. Serve with cut green chilli and your choice of sauce.

Ahh, roast chicken. One of the simplest way to cook and enjoy chicken. Ever since I invested in a convection oven, I’ve been doing some simple roast chicken thigh for dinner. The beauty of this dish is that, I can roast the whole bird or choose to just roast parts of chicken, depending on how many people I am cooking for.

Have I told you how much I love roast chicken already? (more…)