Microwaved chocolate and banana cake with almonds

If there's one thing I'm impatient about, its waiting for your oven to heat up. I always thought it was such a waste of energy to heat up a whole oven to bake one small cake. So I wondered if I could do this in a microwave too and hence embarked on the journey of the microwaved cake. I think this cake is best eaten warm out of the microwave and if you like you could even make a ganache for it, but I'm lazy so a little sprinkling of icing sugar will do the trick for me. It turned out moist and quite flavorsome, slightly different from oven baked, but definitely something you should try just because its so easy and quick.

Ingredients:
-100g caster sugar (you can use brown, refined any type you like), I like the cake less sweet hence going with 100g, but I'm the type that drinks my bubble tea at 50% sugar, however, if you're the type that likes your cakes sweeter and richer, use 140g.
-150g flour (I used a combination of 75g plain flour and 75g normal flour, if you don't have self raising, just use a teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate with your plain flour)
- 2 eggs
- 1 large ripe banana, mashed
- 15-20 almonds/ peacans, chopped
- 50ml olive oil (or vegetable oil, I used olive as its healthier)
- 90ml fresh whole milk
- 2.5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

Directions:
First grease a microwavable receptacle with oil so the cake won't stick to the sides, or you could choose to line the bowl, plate, dish with baking paper.
Separate the eggs into yolks and whites, cream the yolk with the sugar and beat the whites in another bowl. This step is not strictly necessary but I just like my cake lighter. If you choose to skip this step, you can just mix whole eggs with the sugar.

Sift the flour and cocoa powder and add it in batches with milk and oil to the sugar and egg. Then add the mashed banana and chopped nuts till incorporated. If you have beaten egg whites, fold this into the mixture now. The transfer everything to your microwavable receptacle and place it the microwave and heat on high for 5-7 minutes. The timing depends on your microwave, you should check on it after 5-6 minutes by inserting a toothpick in the middle of the cake. If it comes out clear, your cake is done, otherwise, continue heating for a further minute, watching that it does not burn.
Remove receptacle from microwave and leave to cool for 5 minutes then invert onto a plate to serve.
Dust icing sugar as a finishing touch.

If you choose to make a ganache, heat 1 cup cream in the microwave until just bubbling and pour unto a bar of chocolate broken into pieces, mix until you get a smooth consistency then spread on fully cooled cake. Have fun (:

Big breakfast

Big breakfast can be anything you wish it to be. Here we have our favourite few ingredients from left to right: truss tomatoes, sautéed swiss mushrooms, grilled haloumi cheese and fried bacon. In the middle on toast we have J's favourite, poached eggs.

Although it looks daunting, this is relatively simple to whip up and, if you're skilful, you might not end up with many utensils to wash.

First, start with the bacon, frying them in their own fat. When they start to brown, you can then use the aromatic oil to fry other ingredients. This way, you use less oil and everything fried in bacon oil is nothing short of delicious.

While the bacon is frying, slice the haloumi cheese into 1cm thick slices. Remove the bacon from the heat and fry the haloumi cheese in the bacon fat. In the same pan. position the tomatoes to cook them in the bacon fat and when the skin looks slightly shrivelled, remove from heat. Haloumi cheese should be brown on both sides when you remove them.

Add a knob of butter to the remaining bacon fat to cook the mushrooms. Cook until the mushrooms darken in colour. Add a pinch of powdered chicken stock or just salt if you don't have this.

Cook the poached eggs last.
1. Bring a medium pot of water to a rolling boil and add a spoonful of vinegar (use white vinegar or mirin)
2. Crack an egg into a bowl. Do not crack the egg directly into the pot as you want to drop it gently in to keep the yolk in tact.
3. Swirl the water gently with a spatula and time 2.5-3 minutes. You will see the whites starting to coagulate and once you can safely turn the egg over in the pan with the precious yolks enveloped in the whites, you can take it out gently.
Note: you should cook eggs one at a time.

While the eggs are poaching, cut a generous slice of fresh bread and toast it. You can also butter your toast and fry it on a pan, but otherwise serve eggs on the toasted bread and top with freshly cracked black pepper. Bon appetite!

Banana pancakes with whipped cream

Brunch is a big thing in Melbourne. But what if you could recreate those delicious brunch dishes at a fraction of the price and in the comfort of your own home?

Ingredients:
1.5 ripe bananas, sliced
self raising flour, 1 cup
corn flour, 1 cup
Whole milk, 1.5 cup
25g butter melted
1 medium egg
2 tablespoons sugar

Method:
Combine ingredients and beat together until thoroughly combined, heat some oil/butter in a cooking pan to medium heat and using a soup ladle, dispense one ladle of batter and let it spread out. This helps to scoop just the right amount of mixture so you can flip it without breaking the pancake in half. Mixture can be left covered in the fridge for one day in the unlikely event you can't finish using it but be sure to use it up the next day.

Flip when brown to cook on the other side. Serve with homemade whipped cream and honey or nutella is J's absolute fav. Homemade whipped cream is as buying whipping cream and whipping it. I kid you not! Hope you have fun trying it out.

Crustless Quiche

One of my most versatile and favourite dishes to make which pretty much uses all the random items you have in your fridge. I make crust-less quiches because my waistline cannot afford too much puff pastry. But if you want a crust, you could simple buy the store bought crust and bake it separately before pouring in the filling as per the recipe. This dish is a close cousin of the frittata. http://yumexperiments.blogspot.com.au/2012_10_01_archive.html

Simple cheese and onion quiche

With the quiche, you can really be creative, it can be as elaborate and as simple as you wish.

You can have it alone for a light snack, with a salad for a more balanced meal or with some brown rice for a fuller meal. You could make quiches in advance and cut and freeze individual portions for convenience. 

Tomato, spinach and ham quiche served with broccolli and chickpea brown rice

The basic ingredients of a quiche are essentially:

- 4 eggs (makes 4 servings, I like this ratio because one egg per serving gives adequate nutrients and doesn't send your cholesterol sky-rocketing)

- 1 1/2 cups fresh whole milk/ cream (I like using milk as it's less fattening but you can always use a combination)

- 1/2 cup flour

- Salt and pepper to taste

- 50g melted butter

- 1 cup shredded cheese 

- 1 to 1 1/2cup favourite filling

with the fillings you can always add whatever rocks your boat like ham, mushroom, onion, spinach, the possibilities are endless. My favourite combinations are: mushroom, tomato and spinach. Ham, onion and mushroom. Bacon, tomato and onion. Bacon, spinach, pumpkin. However do note that onions and bacon should be browned before adding for extra flavour (or you can just throw it in as-is if you're really lazy) Mushrooms should be sautéed prior to adding so that they release the water in them.

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Beat basic ingredients together and add your filling. Mix well. Bake for 40min until cooked and browning at the top. Note, to test if quiche is cooked, use a cake spatula and it should come out clean. Alternatively, give the receptacle holding the quiche a quick jerk. The contents should not wiggle in the receptacle too much as if it were still liquid inside. Let the quiche cool a little then cut into slices and enjoy. 

Wontons

It's been awhile since I made wontons owing to the work involved in making them. But, since I've more than one wonton fan in the house I decided to make some.

Ingredients:
450g minced pork
5 dried mushrooms, rehydrated
100g prawns
1 thumb sized knob of ginger, grated
3 cloves garlic, grated
4 sprigs of spring onion, chopped
4 tablespoons light soya sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1.5 tablespoon oyster sauce
4 dashes of white pepper
3 tablespoons of chinese cooking wine
1.5 table spoons of corn flour mixed with water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 packet of 500g wonton skin

Method:
Mix all the ingredients together. If you're not sure of the taste, put a teaspoon size of filling into the microwave for 30s and taste from there. It is better to taste and adjust than make a big batch of wontons that you don't like. There are a few ways to wrap wontons, the simplest being just fold the square skin into triangles and pinch the end. But, I feel that this method allows the filling to escape easily. Hence, after folding it into a triangle and sealing the ends with water, I folded the two bottom corners of the triangle towards themselves and finally I folded the top of the triangle backwards. You will end up with a neat little rectangular parcel. The filling above makes about 40 plus wontons (sorry I can't get the exact number because the wontons were disappearing as I was cooking them, no prizes for guessing the culprit though...) You should put about a heaped teaspoon worth of filling into the wontons.

Wontons can be boiled in water till they float, or deep fried. Otherwise, you could also pan fry them. (Those in the picture were pan fried)

If you have left over skins, you might also want to try this american inspired filling to use them up:
5 tablespoons cream cheese
2 sprigs spring onion, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
Wrap the wontons and either pan fry or deep fry them.
The result is stunningly delicious. I kid you not.

Crispy pork belly (Shao rou)

Pork belly was on offer in Echuca when my husband was doing a rotation there so I thought might as well try to do this since the oven there had been quite awesome all this while. Due to a severe lack of ingredients, I managed to do this without the "must have" ingredients some people swear by. You can do this with 5 simple ingredients as follows:
Pork belly ~800g-1kg
Soya sauce
Freshly ground pepper
Salt
Olive oil

Directions:
First, serrate the skin with a sharp knife, cutting through the fat but not reaching the meat. Marinate the meat in a glass or ceramic dish by rubbing the soya sauce and some pepper into it. (Do not marinate the skin) If you have 5 spice powder you can marinate it in too at this stage. Leave it skin side up and uncovered in the fridge overnight. This will help dry out the skin and enable you to achieve the oh-so-yummy crackling.

Take out the meat to rest the next day and if the skin still looks wet, use a clean paper towel to dab up any visible moisture. Then rub salt and olive oil into the cuts on the skin.

Place into a convection oven preheated to 180 degrees celsius for 1 to 1.5 hours then turn the heat up to 220 degrees until you can hear the skin crackling and the crispiness of the pork is evident (should be around 20-30minutes) Enjoy!

CNY facai veg

I had to make this dish for Chinese New Year because my mother in law gave me these huge dried shitake mushrooms which her son loves and also the facai (black moss) which was my special request.

To make this dish, I first braised the mushrooms which you can do for quite a few and reserve the leftovers for vegetable dishes later. If prepared carefully, these should be able to keep for a few days in the fridge.

Ingredients:
(List A)
- 15 dried mushrooms, rehydrated.
- 2 tablespoons of light soya
- half a tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 teaspoon dark soya sauce
- 2 tablespoons chinese wine
- salt and sugar to taste

(List B)
- 1 carrot
- Facai, 50g soaked
- straw mushrooms 80g, blanched
- baby chinese cabbage or bok choy, blanched

Combine ingredients in list A and simmer under low heat in the mushroom water (water from the soaked mushrooms), until mushrooms are tender and fragrant, just before serving, put in the facai. Arrange ingredients in list B on a plate and dish the brasied mushrooms with facai over it.

Braised mushroom is very versatile and can be served with blanched vegetables for a fancy vegetable dish.