Breaded baked fish with homemade tartar sauce

Here's a recipe for quick and easy weekday dinners, by request of a girlfriend who's venturing into the kitchen. Good luck Annie and have fun cooking :)

Breaded Baked Fish/Pork/Chicken

What you need (feeds 2)
- 4 strips if frozen or fresh fish fillets
- 1 egg White
- 1 tsp plain flour
- some panko flakes (jap breadcrumbs)
- black pepper n salt

Let's cook!
1. Preheat oven to highest temp. Mine is 220 degrees.
2. Line in separate plates - flour, egg White, panko (seasoned with salt and pepper).
3. Pat dry fish fillets. Coat in flour dusting off excess flour. Then dip into egg White and finally panko.
4. Placed on grill lined with pan below. Drizzle some oil and place in oven for about 20mins or till golden brown.
5. Serve with homemade tartar sauce.

Homemade tartar sauce
- 2 tsp Mayo
- 1 big clove garlic, crushed
- lots of dill chips (pickle), diced
Mix all together and serve!

Same recipe can be used with chicken strips or thin pork fillets. Can either oven bake, shallow fry or deep fry. Here's a photo I shallow-fried with pork (katsu), served on a piece of toast with a sunny-side up yummy!

crabcakes, fishcakes, not that kinda cakes

This is by request of my friend San who tried my crabcakes and wants the recipe. These are probably the easiest things to make and freeze for weekday dinners. You can also do mini versions to impress your guests at dinner parties!

What you need
1 large potato
250gm frozen crabmeat, soaked in hot water for while OR
1 can tuna or salmon or any fish
seasoning: pepper, salt, mixed dried herbs
optional: some chopped parsley
1 egg
oil
panko flakes (japanese breadcrumbs) or any kinda breadcrums

Let's cook!
1. Skin and cut potato into quarters. Place in bowl, cover with water then microwave for about 11mins till soft.
2. Drain water from potato and mash it up.
3. Add crabmeat/fish, plus seasoning and chopped parsley. Mix it all together.
4. Crack the egg in a separate bowl, beat it then add half the egg into the crab/fish mix and mix well together.
5. Heat enough oil to shallow fry (about halfway up the cakes is fine).
6. Pour the panko onto a plate, roll crab/fish mix into balls (big or small) then lightly flatten them.
7. Dip the balls into the remaining egg lightly then coat with panko. Fry till golden brown, then flip over and fry the over side.
8. Drain and serve with homemade garlic aioli :) or make giant cakes and serve with side salad as a main.



These are wonderfully light and yummy! Somewhat like croquettes!

i heart canapés

I really love canapés! Not so much to eat them but more for the presentation of many tiny little things arranged on a plate just look so nice! Yes I know it's crazy haha! So at any opportunity I get, I'll try my hands at making canapés. Honestly, mini stuff are not always easy to do as it's more time consuming. But it's worth all the effort when you guests go oohh and ahh over them hehe! Here's some I made for a recent dinner party at home. Aren't they the cutest??


Mini scallops on avocado corstini with bacon dust



Mini shrimps on avocado corstini with bacon dust



Mini crabcakes with aioli

what do u wake up to?

We are all aware that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Some days we wake up and feel like we can eat a cow but other days all you want is a slice of toast, muffin or bagel. Whatever it is, brekkie is my fav because it sets my mood for the rest of the day.



I made some banana muffins with toasted almonds once cos' we had quite a few over-ripe bananas sitting around and it was a waste to throw them away. So wahla turned them into yummy muffins for brekkie! And boy did the house smell soooo lovely that morning!



The all time fav choice of brekkie is the fry-up. The best remedy for a hang-over I'll say! The fry-up is the easiest to prepare. All you do is look into the fridge and throw whatever you can find into a frying pan, together with eggs of your choice. The hubs loves his eggs scrambled, while I prefer mine sunny-side up with the prefect runny yolk. Yums!!



So do share what do you wake up to? Any interesting breakfast recipes to share?

Here's the recipe for my banana muffins:

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 cup white sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup milk
1 large egg
3 ripened mashed bananas
1/2 cup of almond flakes

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line 12 muffin tray with paper. Sieve flour, baking powder, soda and salt together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the butter, sugar, milk, egg and banana. Then stir in wet mixture into dry. Divide into 12 prepared muffin cups and top with almond flakes. Bake for about 20mins till stick comes out clean and enjoy!

pawn me a prawn toast

Tried this simple recipe from Marie Claire over the cny hols. I have to say was impressed at how pretty it look and yummy it taste. Food needs to be like this for me all the time hehe! Oh and again, simple to prepare as well. Here's my simplified version of the recipe. Ingredients

• 20 small prawns, shelled
• 1 teaspoon grated ginger
• 1/3 teaspoon chilli flakes
• soya sauce, pepper & dash of sesame oil for seasoning
• slices of bread, trim off the crumbs and cut into 1/4s
• 1 egg beaten
• mixture of black & white sesame seeds
• oil for frying

Let's cook

1. Cut prawns into pieces and place in food processor with next 3 ingredients and blend into paste
2. Spread paste onto bread squares
3. Dip into egg, bread side first then prawn paste side
4. Dip prawn side into sesame seeds to coat
5. Shallow fry in hot oil prawn side down till golden brown then turn over
6. Remove from oil, drain and enjoy with Japanese mayo dip :)

grandma alice's cutlets

This post is by special request from XLB. Grandma Alice is not my real grandma but my nanny when I was 4 till 7 yrs old. My bro and I are closer to her than our real grandparents. Grandma Alice is Eurasian, so needless to say she's a great cook and makes the best curry and stews. The 3 dishes I remember the most is her luncheon meat cutlets, this eggy prawn fritter and her famous bread & butter pudding. So one day I decided to try my hand in making her cutlets and rang her up for the recipe. I have to admit it's not easy to perfect it the way she does. As most of us know we usually dip the ball-mix into egg before frying it, as that helps hold the mix together and also gives that crispy outer layer. I tried it exactly according to her recipe and failed terribly, the whole thing fell apart when dropped into the oil. So I modified it slightly and here it goes.

Ingredients

• 1 can of luncheon meat
• 2 big potatoes
• 1/2 big onion
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon plain flour
• Pepper

Method

1. Boil the potatoes till soft, mash together with the luncheon meat.
2. Season with pepper, add flour, onion, 1 egg and mix well together.
3. Wet hands, scoop 1 flat tablespoon of the mix into palms, press and roll together quickly to form a ball and flatten it into a disc shape. Repeat with rest of mixture.
4. Heat oil in saucepan (I use saucepan so oil does not splatter everywhere). Make sure oil is hot enough, test by dipping a wooden chopstick in and if bubbles form around it means its hot.
5. Dip the cutlet balls into a bowl of beaten egg then shallow fry on one side first, then turn over to fry the other side till golden brown.
6. Drain on kitchen paper and serve with sweet Japanese mayonnaise. Enjoy :)