Gingery, Garlicky, Potato Chicken Dish

This was my favorite dinner served by my friend, who moved back to China, and I miss her, and her beautiful little girl so very much.
The dish has a very strong garlic, and ginger flavor that I just can’t get enough of. Certainly not something you want to make for a romantic evening, but definitely something you want to unleash your hunger on!
Thank you Jing for sharing the recipe with me! Hope to see you soon!

Gingery, Garlicky, Potato Chicken Dish

You’ll need:
1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into bite size pieces
2 lb potatoes, cut into cubes
Ginger, about 1-2 oz, diced
7-8 garlic cloves, diced
Dash of sugar
Salt to taste
2-3 Tbs soy sauce
Black pepper
Oil

Heat some oil in the pan, when it gets hot, put chicken in, and stir a little bit, then add ginger and 2 garlic cloves. Add a tablespoon of soy sauce, stir for few minutes, and then add potatoes, the rest of garlic, another tablespoon of soy sauce, a dash of sugar, black pepper to taste, and then add about 4 oz of water. Stir, reduce to medium heat, cover, and let cook for about 10 minutes.

Later add salt, and more water as necessary, and stir occasionally. Cook until potatoes are cooked. In the end you don’t want it to be like a stew, but rather for water to dehydrate, and potatoes very soft, and falling apart. Serve with rice. Yum!

This is my entry for the blog event, “ajme, koliko nas je” created by Monsoon, and hosted this month by Andrea.
Napravicu I link sa prevodom : )

Vanilla slice - Krempita

Vanilla slice - Krempita

2 sheets of puff pastry
1,5 l / 6 1/3 cups milk
150 g / 5 ¼ oz corn starch
3 packets (9g each) vanilla sugar
8 egg yolks
200 g / 7 oz sugar
8 oz whipping cream + 1 stabilizer

Let the puff pastry sheets thaw, the roll them out on a lightly floured surface, and bake according to directions on a jelly roll pan. Let them cool, and then cut out the shape according to the size of the square pan you will use. I used 9 inch x 13 inch. Once you cut them to the shape of the pan, cut one sheet into squares (I made 12); that will be the top of the cake.

Cream: Mix egg yolks with sugar, until frothy. Add a cup of milk (out of the 6 1/3 cups), and corn starch, and mix well. Set the reminder of milk with vanilla sugar added, to boil, and when it comes to a boil, slowly mix in the yolk mixture, and stir constantly for a minute. Transfer to a large mixing bowl, and let cool completely. When cooled, add the whipped whipping cream, whipped with a stabilizer.

Now put the whole sheet on the bottom of the pan, and spread the filling over it. Arrange the cut out sheet on top. Refrigerate for few hours before serving. Dust with powdered sugar.
Instead of the top sheet of puff pastry, you can put whipped cream, and so on. Suit yourself, and enjoy : )

Ladybug Bread

Bread

500g/1.1 lb flour
1 egg +1 egg yolk
¼ cup oil
7g/¼ oz, 1 packet, yeast
1 Tsp sugar
1 ½ tsp salt
About 1 ½ cup milk and water mix, warm

Start the yeast in a small bowl with a tsp of sugar, and a little bit of warm milk. Mix all ingredients, adding milk/water mixture as needed, more or less than the recipe calls to get medium soft dough. If you like sweet bread, add more sugar.

Let it rise, until it doubles, then work it on a floured surface, and shape one small ball, one large ball to get a ladybug (or something else). Cut the large ball of dough through the middle to get the wings look. Decorate with poppy seeds or something else. As you do this, preheat oven to 395F, and then bake the bread for about 30 minutes or more if necessary. Enjoy watching your kids, or other kids in your life tear it apart! :)

Tip: Once it's baked, and after all the awes, you can shake of some of the poppy seeds, if you don't like that many. I think next time I'll make the ladybug spots with pieces of bread, and just stick them on with egg yolk wash. Might even look cuter...

Hazelnut Torte - Paganini

Hello, my dear foodies! Thank you for all your kind words, and support in my time of absence. I am very busy, but will be dropping by more, hopefully! Today is my daughter's B-Day, and I wanted to share with you this wonderful cake I made for her. Happy Birthday baby!

Hazelnut Torte (Paganini)

First make the two fillings.
Chocolate filling:
5 egg yolks, and 1 whole egg
50 g/1.75 oz dark chocolate
150g/ 5.25 oz sugar
250g/ about 9 oz butter or margarine, unsalted

Mix egg yolks, egg, and sugar until nicely incorporated, and then cook, with chocolate, in a double boiler. Cool down completely, and then add butter, or margarine cut into thin slices, and mix until smooth. Let it sit in the fridge until needed.

Vanilla filling:
4 egg yolks
5 Tbs corn starch
1 vanilla sugar (9g/0.32 oz)
6 Tbs sugar
0.7 l/ 3 cups milk
0.5l/2 cups whipped cream, whipped + 1 stabilizer
(I use the whipped cream powder, 3 x (40g/1.41oz) with about 1 ½ cups milk)

Mix egg yolks, vanilla sugar, sugar, and corn starch with about half cup milk (taken from the 3 cups). Let the remainder of milk boil, and when it comes to boil, pour in the mixture, and stir constantly until nice and thick. Cool down completely, and then gradually add the whipped cream, whipped with stabilizer. Vanilla cream, when cooled may be very tough to mix, and blending the whipped cream in can be a bit challenging, so add the whipped cream, mix a little, then cool again, and mix some more until smooth. If you mix it in one round, you will find that it can heat up, and become runny! Thanks to Jenn, I am making these corrections.

For the base:
10 egg whites
280g/ about 10 oz sugar
280g/ about 10 oz roasted, finely ground hazelnuts
2 Tbsp baking cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 395 F. Mix egg whites until stiff, slowly adding sugar, then hazelnuts with cocoa powder. Bake in a large spring form pan (8"), or a square 9”x13” baking pan. Either use parchment paper, or grease the dish before baking. Baking time depends on your oven, check often. As usual, it is done when the toothpick comes out clean.

Cool down the cake, then poke it all over, and soak (but not to much) with milk. Put the cake on a stand of your choice, then put the spring form ring part back on (or around it, you know), and then put the fillings, that’s how you get perfect layers, and everything is kept in place, and evenly spread. When ready to serve, or giveaway (yeah, right), you just do the finishing touch. Fist top it with the chocolate filling, then vanilla, then decorate as you wish; whipped cream on the top works the best, but you can also sprinkle the top with coarse ground hazelnuts.

This cake is a true bite of heaven, prepare it to compliment a simple dinner! Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from Coolinarika.