Home-cooked Brunch: Baked Breaded Chicken Fingers + Stir-fried Bean Sprouts in Worcestershire Sauce

Thought I would share my recipes for the baked breaded chicken fingers as well as the stir-fried bean sprouts in Worcestershire sauce.

Basically, I was trying to use up the leftover ingredients from my dinner yesterday...

I cooked pad-thai for dinner yesterday :) I used the Muji Pad-thai kit, and it's delicious! A must-try!

I was surfing Youtube in the wee hours of the night, searching for simple baked chicken fillets recipes and most are either too troublesome to make or required ingredients and seasonings not found in my kitchen. I finally found one that was reasonably easy and healthy, and I have already everything I needed. I did alter the recipe quite a bit, though I feel that I should have used a little more salt. For some reason, everytime I cook, I always have the fear of adding too much salt.. Hahah.. Anyway, here's my altered recipe:

Baked Breaded Chicken Fingers

Ingredients (Serves 1-2)
- 4 pieces of chicken fillets
- 1 medium sized egg
- about 1-2 cups of panko (bread crumbs)

Seasoning:
- Salt
- Black pepper
- Paprika
- Garlic granules
- Dried mixed herbs
- Cooking spray (I used 1 cal olive oil spray)

"Drizzling" sauce:
- Tomato ketchup (my ketchup has chilli added to it. yum!)
- Worcestershire sauce
- Japanese mayonnaise

Tools:
- Disposable baking tray / Baking tray covered with aluminium foil
- Oven

Directions:

1. I cut each piece of chicken fillet into half, so I ended up with 8 pieces of smaller bite-sized chicken meat. I then seasoned the meat with salt and black pepper.

2. I cracked the egg into a bowl and beat it gently. You could season the egg with some salt and black pepper if you wish to.

3. I spread the panko onto a shallow dish and mixed in some salt, black pepper, paprika and garlic granules. (Up to you to add how much you want.. )

4. I covered my baking tray with a light layer of cooking spray and started pre-heating my oven to 230 degrees celsius.

5. To make the dredging and coating process easier, I laid my plate of seasoned chicken pieces, bowl of egg , plate of seasoned panko and the prepped baking tray side by side. Starting from the plate of chicken pieces, I picked a piece of chicken and dropped it into the bowl of egg, making sure to coat it nicely with a layer of egg.

Then I proceeded to coat the egg-dredged chicken piece with the panko (you might need to manually pat the panko onto the chicken to make it stick better), and lay the piece in the baking tray. Continue until all pieces of chicken are coated with panko.

6. I then sprinkled some dried mixed herb onto the chicken pieces.

7. Once the oven was done pre-heating, I baked the chicken pieces for 12 to 15 minutes (or until they are well-cooked).

8. I served my chicken pieces on a plate, and drizzled some tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and Japanese mayonnaise over them.

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Up next, stir-fried bean sprouts in Worcestershire sauce. So not conventional... The Chinese style of cooking bean sprouts is to use tofu and season them with soy sauce, a bit of sugar and perhaps some oyster sauce. But I was sold once I tried my own twist of this Japanese stir-fried moyashi omelette recipe. Here's my really simple and fast but delicious recipe!

Stir-fried Bean Sprouts in Worcestershire Sauce

Ingredients (Serves 1-2):
- 2 cups rootless bean sprouts
- some chopped pieces of spring onion (I cut them into 2 cm pieces)
- 1 egg, beaten (I used the leftover from the breaded chicken recipe)

Seasoning:
- Worcestershire sauce (to taste, mine's the Japanese Bulldog brand, if that makes any difference...)
- Garlic granules (to taste)
- Olive oil (a little,  less than 1 tablespoon)

Directions:

1) Wash the bean sprouts and set aside.

2) In my non-stick frying pan, I pre-heated the olive oil over medium high heat.

3) I added the garlic granules to the pan and heated them until fragrant. It is okay if they look a little burnt.

4) I then added the bean sprouts and stir-fried for a bit until the garlic and the bean sprouts were well mixed (I did this for probably a minute or 2, not too long).

5) Next, I added and mixed in the Worcestershire sauce well with the bean sprouts.

6) I then poured the beaten egg over the bean sprouts and stir-fried the mixture. Once the egg solidified and resembled scrambled egg, I added the chopped spring onion and stir-fried for a few seconds before turning off the heat.

7) I served my bean sprouts on a nice plate. =)

Piped Lemon Cookies

Since the Chinese New Year is round the corner, I finally got to making a proper batch of the cookies after the trial attempt a couple of weeks back.

A few days after the trial attempt, I realized why my cookies were too buttery.. The original recipe calls for 1 cup or 2 sticks of butter, and instead of finding out what 1 cup of butter is in grams, I took the 2 sticks of butter as the final value. I had halved the recipe, so I used a stick of butter that I had on hand.. Guess what? My stick of butter measured at exactly 1 cup (227g)! I had used twice the amount! Good grief~ 

This time round, I used the right amount of butter and tweaked the recipe a tiny bit.

Ingredients (amount halved from the original recipe)

1 1/8 cup top flour

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

3/8 cup icing sugar

1/2 stick butter

1/4 cup raw sugar

2 egg yolks

lemon zest from 1 lemon

slightly more than 1 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Directions:

1) Sift flour, icing sugar and baking soda.

2) Whiz butter and raw sugar in food processor until well blended.

3) Add zest, lemon juice, egg yolks and vanilla essence until thoroughly mixed.

4) Add the sifted ingredients from (1) and whiz until thoroughly mixed.

5) Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Cover baking sheet with aluminium foil and lightly grease.

6) Pipe 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inch-wide circular swirls (or any shape) 1 1/2 to 2 inches apart.

7) Bake the cookies for 7 to 9 minutes until the bottom edge of cookies start to brown.

8) The cookies will be a little soft to the touch when it is just out of the oven. Let them cool down completely   to harden a bit before removing.

Buckwheat with vegetables

During my Russia trip, my group of friends and I kinda fell in love with a type of grain that is considered a staple in Russia. We had no idea what it was but I managed to buy a small packet of the uncooked version and the grains look like these:

In Russian, it's called grechka (гречка) and after translating the word, I realised it's roasted buckwheat (also known as Kasha in Slavic). And if you are wondering why it sounds so familiar... Well, my favorite soba noodles are made from buckwheat. =)

Anyways, after doing a bit of research, I found out that buckwheat is not really a grain but a fruit seed. Thus, it is perfect for those who are allergic to gluten. Buckwheat is quite a wholesome food and thus popular with vegans and the health-conscious.

I dug up more information about cooking buckwheat and there are so many ways to do it. Some vegans cook it with only plain water while the Jews have a fancier way of doing it. Since I wanted to stay closer to the Russian style, I got a few ideas from some Russian recipes and came up with my own recipe to mix the oh-so-Russian cabbage =P with grechka.

Ingredients (for 2 to 3 servings):

1) Broth A - 2 cups (I mixed 1 cup water + 1 cup Campbell's Real Stock beef broth.. Side note: I think mushroom broth will be an even better choice)
2) Broth B - About 1.5 cups (I mix slightly more than 0.5 cup water + 1 cup Campbell's Real Stock beef broth)
3) Olive Oil - About 1 to 2 tablespoons
4) Seasoning - About 1 teaspoon salt (to taste), dashes of pepper and cayenne pepper (I think Paprika will be more appropriate in Russian dishes but I don't have that in my kitchen)
5) Tomato paste - About 2 rounded teaspoons

6) Garlic - 1 to 2 cloves, sliced/chopped
7) Onion - 1/2, chopped
8) Cabbage - 1/2 medium cabbage, julienned
9) Carrot - 1, diced
10) Tomatoes - I used half, but you can used 1 whole, diced
11) White button mushrooms (or any type you fancy) - 5, sliced
12) Leaves from 1 stalk of parsley, chopped
13) 1 stalk of dill (just the leaves part..), chopped

14) Roasted Buckwheat (grechka aka kasha) - 1 cup, washed


Directions:

1) With the stove set to high heat, add the olive oil to your pot, and once the oil heats up, add in garlic, onion, carrot and tomatoes. Stir-fry until the onion turns transparent.

2) Add in broth A, seasoning and tomato paste. Stir it up a bit to mix everything well, then add in the cabbage and mushroom.

3) Turn the stove to low-medium heat, and let the cabbage simmer for 10 minutes. I stir the mixture up at intervals during the 10 minutes.

4) You should be left with about 1/2 (or maybe slightly more than that) the liquid in the pot. Add in the buckwheat and top up the liquid with broth B.

5) Let the pot simmer for 15 minutes on low heat. The buckwheat consistency should look like cooked rice on the soggy side. If the mixture still looks very wet, let it cook for another 5 minutes.

6) Serve with other dishes and/or soup.

Rhinestic's recipes - Tom Yum Gai

A pretty easy dish to prepare and make. I basically followed the recipe here but with some alteration as I was using chicken (thus the Tom Yum Gai), got my herbs for the Tom Yum soup as a packaged set and the chilli paste I have isn't the Thai chilli paste...

Herbs and tomatoes

Ingredients (serves 2-3):

Part A:
1 litre Campbell's chicken stock
0.5 litre water
1 or 2 stalks of Lemon grass - Bruised and chopped into chunks
A few pieces of Kaffir lime leaves - Chopped into about 0.5 inches pieces
Galangal ginger - sliced into about 10 to 15 wedges
4 Chilli padi - chopped into small pieces (the number of chilli depends on how spicy you like. I'd suggest 1 or 2 if you can't take spicy stuff.. I was crazy... I went with 8..)
About 4 small cloves of Shallot - sliced thinly

Part B:
Juice of 1 or 2 big limes
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of fish sauce (if the chicken stock is unsalted, you may increase the amount of fish sauce)

1 to 2 tablespoons sambal chilli (yep, I don't have the Thai chilli paste)

Part C:
2 medium sized Tomatoes - chopped into chunks
1 big chicken breast - cut into bite size

Directions:

Put Part A into a big saucepan, and cook the mixture until it boils. I let it boil for a few minutes before putting in the chicken pieces.

Once the chicken pieces are about half-cooked, put in the tomatoes and the sauce mixed in Part B. Once the chicken pieces are fully cooked, give the soup a taste. If it is not salty enough, add more fish sauce.

Lower the heat and simmer the soup for one or 2 minutes before turning off the heat. Serve the soup with white rice or pour it over cooked rice/glass noodles and enjoy!

Rhinestic's recipes - Japanese-style mushroom scrambled egg

A very simple but delicious dish that you can whip up in minutes! Literally.

Ingredient (serves 2-3)
- 2 large eggs
- About 1/2 cup of mushrooms
- 2 teaspoons shoyu
- 2 teaspoons mirin

Directions:
1) Crack the eggs into a bowl and beat with a fork until the egg white and egg yolks are mixed.
2) Add the mushrooms to the beaten eggs, and mix well.
3) Add in the shoyu and mirin to the mushroom-egg mixture and mix well.
4) Prepare a hot pan, and add a bit of olive oil. Pour In the egg mixture and let it sit for a little while before scrambling it.
5) Once cooked, serve it on a plate or with anything you like.