Xephyr’s Food Haven

I did a barbecue. All by myself! Woohoo! Long live read-to-use bbq kits

I grilled chicken and it turned out awesome. Altho I only got to marinate it for 3 hours. A few more hours would have made the taste seep right through the center. Nonetheless, awesome it was! Since my siblings said so. hehe

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup olive oil or vegetable oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 t honey
1 t dried basil
1 t dried thyme
1 t crushed red pepper flakes (be careful these are very hot)
1 t salt
1 t pepper
1 t ajinomoto (optional)
1 kg boneless chicken breast halves

DIRECTIONS

1. In a bowl or a mug combine all the ingredients well except the chicken.

2. Cut chicken into 1inch wide strips and put in a resealable bag. Pour over the marinade. Rub the marinade and let the chicken rest spread out in the fridge for at least 4 hours. Periodically massage the chicken in the bag to make sure even marination.

3. Weave chicken on to bamboo skewers that have been soaked in water fro at least 30 minutes. Soaking in water prevents them from burning immediately when put on the grill. Cook around 6-8 minutes on each side.

Alternately you could halve the amount of chicken used and reserve half the marinade and use it for basting while grilling.

I got this recipe off from the nestle-laziz site. I changed it a bit while making. I used one tin (175g) of strawberry flavored Nestle cream (since I didn’t have fresh strawberries on me) and I used only 1 cup of whipping cream because I just didnt want to end up making a lot. Although this did still make a lot. I did have to whip it for a loooong time around 15 minutes using a beater to make it stiff.

I made the same amount of almond croqaunte although I overcooked the caramel and it developed a bitter taste annnnd I forgt to cut down the amount o sugar to half too since I had halved the amount of liquid cream. So to compensate I added more broken down biscuits. I also had lots of strawberry syrup in the freezer which I used a little on the top for decorative purposes. Not very decorative tho haha.

If I don’t have strawberry flavored cream I will just add strawberry syrup to the cream. Since I usually don’t have fresh strawberries on me.

Even with all the goof ups the end result was great. I will definitely make this again but this time be careful and I’m sure this will be a hit with friends.

Picture up soon. You can check it out on the site tho.

This is a recipe from Pillsbury which a dear friend of mine brought along for me to make cheesecake with me for the first time ever. I’ve changed it a bit by adding sour cream to it, but it didn’t really make a noticeable difference to the flavour. I made it in my muffin tin along with strawberry syrup.

CHEESECAKE

Ingredients:

For crust:

1-1/2 cups crushed digestive biscuits

3 T butter, melted

For Batter:

2-80z tubs Philadelphia cream cheese

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

3 eggs

1 cup whipping cream

1 T vanilla essence

3 T butter, melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 170C and grease a springform tin well

2. Mix the butter and crushed biscuits well until a coarse mixture is formed. Layer springform tin with the mixture and press down lightly with fingers. Place in refrigerator while making batter.

3. In a deep bowl beat cream cheese on medium-low speed until smooth. Add sugar and beat until mixed well. Add eggs one at a time until each is mixed in well. Add the whipping cream and mix. Then add vanilla essence and finally fold in melted butter. Make sure you don’t over beat because you don’t want to incorporate a lot of air in it.

4. Take out springform tin from refrigerator. The biscuit layer will have hardened. Pour in the batter and bake for around 60-70 minutes. Or until sides are firm but center is slightly wobbly. Switch off the oven, open the door slightly and leave the cake inside the oven itself to cool down.

Alternately you could line a muffin tin with the biscuit crust and then fill with the batter. This will make around 14 standard muffin sized cheesecakes. Bake for about 30 minutes

5. When the oven has cooled down completely after 2-3 hours place the tin uncovered in the refrigerator. Then cover with after 30 minutes and leave it to set overnight. Run a knife around the cake and remove from tin. Keep out of refrigerator for about 10 minutes before serving. Serve with strawberry sauce and fresh fruits.

NB: All the ingredients should be at room temperature. Make sure you keep them all out of the fridge at least an hour before starting.

It is also very important to allow the cheesecake to cool down slowly otherwise cracks will form in it.

You can also use a water bath to avoid cracks by covering the bottom of the tin with aluminum foil and placing the tin in a tray filled with water just boiled in a kettle. I prefer not to use a water bath and it leaves the cooked sides with a grainy texture i completely detest. Also just letting it cook slowly in the oven has never given me any cracks.

Additions:

1. You can add 1/2 cup melted white chocolate chips that have been cooled down.

2. You can add 1/2 cup of room temperature softened and beaten up sour cream

STRAWBERRY SYRUP

Ingredients:

1 cup frozen strawberries

1/3 cup sugar, granulated

Directions:

1. Thaw the strawberries and then puree them in a blender.

2. Mix in sugar. Add more or less according to taste.

You can use the same syrup to make strawberry milkshake. You’ll have to add a lot more sugar though!

VideoJug: How To Make Coke Float

I’ve tried this and it’s yum!

Third experiment with muffin tin…. banana muffins. These not only smell heavenly but also taste the same when warm. And you can make it all from start to finish in about 35 minutes! Its just that simple and quick! Here’s the recipe I used which you can find on a lot of websites. It’s so easy I remember it by heart after using it just once:

Makes 12 normal sized muffins (I have a deep mould muffin tin)

Ingredients

3-4 ripe bananas, mashed (use a fork. you can freeze ripe bananas in zip lock bags for future use)

1/3 cup butter, melted (just give it a blast in the micro for 10 secs)

1/2 cup granulated white sugar (I used 2 tablespoons less, personal preference)

1 egg, lightly beaten

1-1/2 cup flour

1 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1/2 t salt (I used 1/4t coz I’m not good with estimating how much salt I’d like so I played it safe)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180oC and butter the muffin tin well. (Or you might want to use cupcake liners. I used a nonstick muffin tin so I don’t need to grease it.)

2. Mix the first 4 ingredients.

3. In a separate bowl, sift together the rest of the ingredients. Dump the flour mixture into the banana mixture and gently fold it just enough to wet the flour mixture. Do not over mix. Bake for 20 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted comes out clean. (20 minutes was just perfect for me). Place tin on wire rack and let cool for 5 minutes. Then remove muffins and let cool on wire rack because you don’t want them to get soggy.

You may want to add 1/4 t cinnamon powder to it for kicks, or chocolate chips or walnuts! I wanted to add cinnamon but forgot so I just sprinkled a little on top of them when they were baked.

Initially when they were baking it smelt like I was cooking plastic. I was seriously starting to doubt haha. But half way through they let out a heavenly smell of bananas and butter. Mmmmm. And since taste has mostly to do with smell… they tasted just as good!

These will freeze well in ziploc bags. Pop one into your lunch box and when its time for lunch they will be at room temperature. These are so moist you don’t even need to butter them.

As a dessert you can have these with vanilla ice cream.

Second experiment in muffin tin - something savoury! After all, all good things should come in individual sized servings!

I didn’t really follow a recipe from scratch as I used leftovers. Basically I mixed some leftover cooked fusilli with chopped onions, green capsicum, cut up processed cheddar cheese slices. Then I dumped a few leftover uncooked meatballs (stuffed with feta cheese) into a frying pan, broke them up with a fork and sautéd them. Mixed folded the cooked meat along with a knob ob butter into the fusilli. Then I cupped them into the muffin molds and poured over an egg and milk solution. Baked them at 180oC fr around 20mins and voila!

Unfortunately I forgot to season the egg and milk solution. So it made things a bit bland. t was like tasting a block of bland omelette, thena block of cheese, then a block of meat… you get what I mean? Next time round, will definitely season the egg/milk. And use more pasta since I only managed to fill 11 of the 12 moulds!

Here’s the recipe I will be using next time though for 12 deep cupped muffin moulds:

Ingredients :

10oz uncooked macaroni (around 1-1/4 cup)

8oz minced meat (1 cup)

1 medium onion chopped

capsicum chopped (to your taste)

salt and pepper to your taste

1/2t garlic powder

green chillis

3 eggs

2 cups milk

6-8 oz cubed or shredded strong cheeses. (I just use cheddar)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180oC and butter muffin tin well.

2. Boil the macaroni in salted water el dente. Drain. Pour on cold water and drain again. Keep aside.

3. Add salt, pepper and chopped up green chillies to meat and saute in a pan with a little oil. Dump into macaroni along with cheese, garlic powder, onion and capsicum. Fold gently into macaroni. Taste for seasoning and adjust. Transfer into muffin moulds.

4. Beat together eggs and milk. Add 1/2t salt and pepper. Pour over filled muffin moulds. Sprinkle shredded cheese and butters bread crumbs on top. Bake for around 20 mins or until tops are browned.

I bought a muffin tin yesterday and I oh so wanted to make banana muffins. But then I figured since banana muffins are more like a bread people in my house wouldn’t quite like them. So after much thought I decided to go by the simple vanilla cupcakes recipe I found on Stephanie’s website joyofbaking.com.

I started making these at 1am when my mom was asleep. She’d have never let me make them. At least not without a lot of resentment. Correction: a truck load of resentment.

Making the batter was easy but how on earth do people scopp batter into muffin tins? I used two spoons to do it. How can one get an even amount into each? I couldnt find my 50ml cup measure otherwise I’d have used that. All I could find was the half cup and 100ml measuring cups. So tablespoons it was. I think I lost a lot of batter that way.

The recipe is meant for 12 cupcakes but going by the size of them I’d rather make 14-16 of them.

One of the columns just ended up with lesser batter compared to the rest and hence cooked up faster. I liked it size too. The others were just too big. Oh and how I just love nonstick! I just had to turn the tin upside down and out popped the cupcakes. For the three smalled ones I just used a fork to life them up. But the bigger ones we’rent going ot come out with a fork without some crumbs lost.

Once cooled I cut one into half and tasted it. Yumm but… whats this… seems a bit dry… omg… did i…. no… oh no… i missed out the 1.4 cup milk the recipe asked for. they are nice and light none the less but milk would have made them awesome. Sigh. Well if you sneak around and try to cook in a superfast mode… things like these are bound to happen!

 I have never been a sliced bread fan. I do not like fruit jams. However I al always wanted to bake my own bread. The cost of making it at home is quite obviously way huger than just buying it from the store but I’m sure it tastes much better. I also hoped that home made bread is what would change my dislike for white bread.

I saw a recipe on Nabeela’s blog for white bread which she had baked and then made a chicken sandwich out of it! I mixed up yeast, water and sugar to proof the yeast. That’s when mother came in and asked me how I could even think of doing something so stupid.

“We are not English to be baking our own breads at home. And my gas cylinder is not for you to waste.”

I looked at my yeast mixture, it had a wonderful layer of froth on it. I picked it up and dumped it into the kitchen sink. But my love for baking is far from being dead.

Some day. One day.

Haleem is a dish made of lentils, bulgar and meat known to have originated from Afghanistan. It takes a bit of effort but is well worth it and is an instant hit!

First of all I looked around for Shan’s Haleem masala in the house bu apparently mom had used it all up. This wasn’t going right. I googled and went through probably 20 haleem recipes before I came across Nabeela’s site. And because it was

named Trial and Error… this recipe was tried… and thats what made me try it to instead of all those other recipes posted online that seemed to have been put together by robots.

Nabeela has as excellent Hydrabadi Haleem recipe posted which I tried out. Yum!

This was my first time trying to make Haleem. Previously I have only help my mom in mashing up the ingredients. I used boneless chicken and since I didn’t even have any chicken stock to prevent it fro being totally tasteless I added a cube of chicken stock.

It’s sad that my mom kept telling me not to make it, that I would screw it up, that no one would eat it… Well it would have been nice if for a change she’d have been happy I was trying to make something “difficult”. (Altho trust me this is a time consuming recipe but not at all difficult). Instead of making me feel miserable and a total failure before I had even started she could have shown some enthusiasm. But no, that never happens. Well I’m glad I didn’t listen to her and made it. IT turned out great. Next time round I will tweak it a bit to my own taste. Prolly increase the amount of lentils and also add moong daal (split green gram) But this recipe stands great as it is. I’d like to try Monas Haleem recipe too.

It’s almost iftar time. Gotta go!

Bread puddings are so yum. I made bread pudding for the first time around 2-3 years ago. Unfortunately back then I would follow recipes exactly as they were written without making any obvious adjustments to our tastes. That’s how I ended up with an extremely sweet bread pudding. After all these years I tried my hand at it again. This time i decided to add some fruit to it and the ripening banans just seemed fit for the task. I was so careful with the sugar this time I think I would have been better off with a tablespoon more. But the chocolate syrup comes in handy Heres the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

6 slices of bread cut into cubes or torn

2 T butter, melted

3 eggs at room temperature

2 cups milk

4 T granulated white sugar

1 t vanilla essence

1 ripe banana

A pinch of cinamon (optional)

3 cardamoms (optional)

2 T grated coconut (optional)

Directions:

1. Drizzle butter over the bread cubes and toss them around. Put them in a baking dish. (Use a dish that can handle 3 cups of liquid. I used an 8 x 3)

2. In a mixing bowl beat the eggs. Slowly add the milk while whisking. Mix in the sugar.

3. Peel the banana and mash it up with a fork. Add about 1/4th cup of the egg mixture to the mashed banana and continue mashing with a fork to a fine consistancy. Now add the banana mixture to the egg-milk mixture followed by the cardamom seeds, cinamon, vanilla essence and coconut. Whisk throughly and pour immeduately over the bread pieces to ensure that the dry ingredients dont settle down.

4. Use the fork to press down the bread pieces so that they are soaked thoroughly in the mixture. While the bread is soaking up in the mixture preheat the oven to 175C (10 minutes).

5. It took 35 minutes to bake through but might take up to 45 minutes too depending on your baking dish. IT is done when the bread pieces start to go brown on top and the pudding rises up. You can always use a toothpick to test.

Since I used only 3T of sugar it came out a bit bland for my taste. But I served it with chocolate syrup and that made up for it. I’ll make it with 4 T next time. Also, most recipes ask for 4 eggs but I find that it tastes too eggy with 4 so I prefer 3.

Enjoy!