Grilled Chicken in Creamy Turmeric Sauce - Ayam Panggang Santan Kuning

Another recipe from what I made for baby M's recent bday celebration at home.
I hardly use coconut milk when marinating meat, but I should really use it more often. It's this magic ingredient that makes everything creamy and fragrant. Plus, the wet marinate keeps the chicken meat moist even after grilling.

Recipe
(for 4)
- 4 Chicken thigh fillet with skin on (allow half or one chicken thigh fillet per person, depending on whether it's served with other dishes and lots of rice/other carbs)
Marinate
- 3 cloves of garlic, peeled
- 3 shallot, peeled
- 2 cm ginger, peeled
- 2 tsp ground coriander
- 2 tsp turmeric
- salt, pepper, sugar
- 200ml of coconut milk
Process everything except coconut milk in a food processor or blender, or you can use mortar and pestle to make your paste. Add coconut milk, mix well. Marinate chicken in the mixture for a couple hours, or leave overnight in the fridge.

On the day of serving, you can either cook the chicken a bit in the marinate before broiling the chicken to brown the skin, or you can place chicken in a preheated oven (200C) along with some of the marinating liquid and grill it until it's done (you can crank up the heat in the last few minutes to really brown the skin). Cook the remaining marinating liquid until reduced, thickened and creamy as use as a sauce.

Golden delicious.
I might make this in the form of sate...because who doesn't love food on a stick?

Grilled Chicken with Nandos Peri Peri Sauce

It's no Nandos...but still, it's great to cure my serious cravings.

It probably didn't need garlic, shallot, ginger, etc...

I was just looking for an excuse to use my mortar and pestle.

Spice paste blended in food processor or blender is just NOT the same! ^_^

Recipe
(for 4 fillet of chicken thigh with skin)
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 2 shallot
- 0.5 cm ginger
- Nandos peri peri sauce
- salt, sugar, pepper, cooking oil
Cut garlic, shallot and ginger roughly, and turn them into paste with mortar and pestle. If you can't be bothered, that's ok, just mince them rather finely. Season the paste with generous amount of Peri Peri hot sauce, salt, pepper, and a touch of sugar. Rub the paste onto the chicken. Really give them a good massage, and let marinate for a few hours or overnight in fridge.

Grill in 250C oven until the skin is golden brown and the meat's cooked through.

Serve with more peri peri sauce if you fancy more heat.
For me, I surely like it hot ;)

Mie Soa with Oyster Sauce Grilled Chicken, Shrimps, Napa Cabbage & Shimeji Mushrooms

I am not a big fan of beehoon (bihun/mai fan/rice noodle), but I am a huge fan of mie soa (min sin), it looks like beehon, but it is more...stretchy and softer. My mom doesn't really cook, but she makes really good simple mie soa with silk squash and a bit of broth. She always made me that dish when I get sick. I am not sick, but I miss the dish and decided to make a version of it with ingredients that I had in my fridge.


Recipe
Oyster Sauce Grilled Chicken
- 1/2 - 1 chicken leg fillet per person
- Oyster sauce, sugar, pepper, oil
Preheat oven to 250C, rub the chicken fillet with oyster sauce, sugar, and pepper generously, add a dash of oil and rub well. Grill until the skin is golden brown and the meat is nicely cooked, set aside while preparing other ingredients


Broth
- 1 box of chicken stock (if you had homemade chicken stock, it'd be fantastic!)
- 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
- a cup of shimeji mushrooms
- a cup of napa cabbage, chopped
- a cup of shrimps (optional, I added this just because I had it in my fridge)
- a bit of oil, pepper, sugar
Saute garlic with a bit of hot oil, add napa cabbage, add mushrooms, add chicken stock, bring to boil, add pepper and sugar if you wish, add shrimps only at the last step and only until it's just opaque.


Mie Soa
- allow 1/2 to 1 piece of mie soa per person
- Boiling water, salt
Dip mie soa into a pot of boiling water with salt on stove top, just until it's softened, shock with cold water if not consumed immediately. Place mie soa into bowls, add broth, mushrooms, veggie, shrimps and sliced grilled chicken and...


...slurp!

Campaigning for Baby Marcus to win a photo contest to have his photo printed on Hong Kong Huggies Bus has helped SC and I take our minds off SC being in a hospital etc...
Thanks so much for all your support, guys. Greatly appreciate it!
If you haven't voted and you want to, here are the handy links:
First, click LIKE on this page:
Huggies HK Page
and then click LIKE on Baby Marcus' picture:
Baby Marcus' Photo

Thanks againnnn, we don't want Baby Marcus to miss the bus, don't we? ^_^

Super Simple Grilled Chicken with Pineapple Chunks

I've made a promise to cook at home more often instead of just parking my lazy ass by SC's mom dining table, stuffing myself with her delicious treats every day. Call me silly, but if I continued doing so, I am sure that I'll totally forget how to cook and this blog might have to either close down or transferred to SC's mom.

So, on Monday, I told SC about the plan, he was excited, although a bit unhappy about having to wait for 30-45 minutes for dinner instead of going home to a whole table of fully cooked meal ready to be devoured. Too bad!

Every day after work, he'd ask me what I planned to cook...and he'd give a very generous amount of criticism "helpful suggestions" on every dish that I've planned. Including this one. I love sweet and ripe fresh pineapple chunks in savoury dishes. Pineapple gives a dish an exotic touch...and turns it...summery!

So, I told SC that I wanted to cook grilled chicken with pineapple chunks.
His helpful comments:
- Why would you cook chicken with pineapple?
- Pineapple is always cooked with pork (and by pork, he meant beef. The dish his mom always makes for him)
- I should remember to use corn starch (SC thinks that corn starch is the essence of Chinese cooking ^_^')

My response?
Since you're such an expert, how about you do the cooking tonight?

SC's response?
Pretended that he didn't hear me :P
Typical! :D

How here's my super simple dish...

Recipe
(serves two)
- 1/2 fresh, ripe pineapple, peel skin off, remove core, cut into chunks (if fresh pineapple isn't available, you can use canned pineapple)
- 2 boneless chicken leg fillet (for grilling I like them with skin on), trim excess fat off
- seasoning for chicken: salt, pepper, olive oil
- for the pineapple: sugar (or you can use golden syrup), a bit of hot water, salt, fish sauce, a bit of corn starch dissolved in water (optional)|

Season chicken with salt, pepper, add a bit of olive oil, grill skin down on a hot pan (I used non stick, so I didn't need so much oil) to brown the skin. Once the skin's brown, lower the heat and flip the chicken, cook until the chicken is thoroughly cooked. If you wish, you can let the chicken finish grilling in the oven. Set grilled chicken aside (I cut mine to a bite sized chunks, you can serve them whole).

Get rid of excess fat from the pan, add pineapple chunks, let them caramelize a little (I was too impatient to wait for that), add sugar, salt, hot water and a touch of fish sauce to season. If you don't want the sauce to reduce much and you want it thickened, use corn starch & water mixture. The corn starch mixture will also help the sauce to "hang on" to the meat (this is a lesson learnt from SC ^_^).

Garnish with freshly chopped chillies, crispy shallot and coriander to make the dish even better. SC doesn't like them at this moment (he's having a weird moment), so I didn't use any ^_^'

Next time, let's let SC do the cooking, shall we? ;)