Experiment: Carrot & mixed fruit muffin

Problem: Excess carrots in the fridge and hunger for cake.

Aim: To bake a carrot-based muffin

Objective: To modify a basic muffin recipe by adding carrots and other ingredients I can find in the fridge/cupboard

Carrot, mixed fruit and honey muffin
(yield: 6 medium muffins)

Equipment: oven, bowls, weighing scale, muffin tin, paper cases

Ingredients:

150g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp salt
2 medium or 140g carrots, grated
1 tbs mixed fruit
30 g sugar

125ml milk
1 tbs honey
60ml vegetable oil
1 egg

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and mix. Add sugar, grated carrots and mixed fruit and mix again.
3. Combine milk, honey, oil and egg in another bowl and mix well.
4. Pour wet mix into dry mix and stir until flour is moistened. Do not overstir.
5. Divide and pour into muffin cases.
6. Bake in oven for 25-30 mins. Check by inserting skewer into the centre of a muffin; skewer should come out clean.
7. Let cool and then serve.

Result:

Conclusion: Good moist texture. Not too sweet. Perhaps a little bit more sugar and/or honey and some cinnamon powder for next time.

Chicken soup for the kusut soul

Was doing some number crunching yesterday. A lot of number crunching, actually. I'm not good with crunching numbers and am really unsure about what I'm doing. Not really stuck - I did find some sort of help from the ever-knowledgeable Google - but that's the thing with the information you gain from the internet, it will tell you what to do but it won't tell you whether it is right or wrong.

So, what better way to unwind and cool off than cooking?

I roasted a whole baby chicken the day before. The reason it being whole is that it is cheaper than cut up chicken parts, and I prefer roasting whole chicken rather than chicken quarters as I think whole chickens taste better. The reason it being a baby chicken instead of a normal (adult?) one is that the baby is cheaper by a pound. I don't know whether the one I bought is truly a baby chicken as it has the same weight and size as the normal one. Looked up the internet (where else?!) for baby chicken; it is also known as spring chicken or 'poussin', aged 4-6 weeks old and not weighing more than 500g. Hmmm, mine is almost three times that weight...

Not this baby chicken...

...or these (awwwww neon chicks!)...

...but possibly that one on the right....

Anyway, back to my roasted chicken. I only had about 3/4 of one side of the breast part for dinner on the first night, and the rest of the quarter for lunch yesterday. I thought I had enough of roast for two meals in a row so I looked up for chicken leftover recipes. Ever so helpful Google listed hundreds of them so I picked the two most reliable recipe websites Allrecipes.com and BBC Good Food/BBC Food (tthe BBC ones are two different websites with very similar content, actually).

No. 1 is turkey, no. 11 is chicken and no. 6 poussin/baby chicken

Allrecipes gave me an idea of making soup out of the leftover chicken which, apart from making salad (didn't feel like having cold supper), is much easier than making pies and a bit less troublesome than cooking noodles or pasta. So I went on to search chicken soup recipes. There was so much variety - creamed chicken soup, chicken noodle soup (with a choice of Asian clear soup or Western cloudy ones), chicken soup with chili/egg/butter bean/rice/sweetcorn et cetera et cetera et cetera.

So I settled with a simple looking and simple sounding Chicken Soup. I had all the ingredients or their substitutes, it takes 30 mins to prepare and 30-60 mins to cook, which is not bad. Should have my hot supper in an hour and a bit. The picture looks nice as well.

I didn't bother to follow the recipe to a T; carrots were just chopped roughly, celery sliced with uneven thickness, chicken were not skinned. After all, the vegetables would soften and I had no one to impress. And it's the taste that counts :p. The aroma whilst cooking was so delightful, it made me drool (but not over the pan, of course). Flour made the soup cloudy and thick, and there was no need of cream or milk to make it, well, creamy. The seared (burnt, actually) skin of the chicken did make soup a bit darker and speckled with black bits, but I didn't mind. I didn't prep beforehand; I chopped and sliced the ingredients as I cook, so the soup was done in just under an hour. It tasted very heavenly and delicious, at least to a hungry person like me. Comforting as well for a chilly evening. Can't wait to have it again for today's lunch :).

I added a bit of plain yoghurt just to make it a bit creamier (and for drama :p)

They say chicken soup is good for unwell people. If only I can cook this for my dear...

Red currant jam

I bought some red currants at the market yesterday. It was selling for a pound for two little punnets. I have never tasted raw red currants before, so I thought they would be sweet like those tiny tiny grapes. I was so wrong; raw red currants are very sour and tart, and they have this bitter aftertaste, much like some sort of medicine. Hopefully I didn't buy the wrong sort of currant.

So I googled the recipes and things you can do with red currants. Most recommend cooking them with sugar and turn them into preserves/jellies/jams/sauces. The preserves can be eaten with bread or yogurt or cereal, while the sauce you can have with lamb or other kinds of meat, much like cranberry sauce. I decided to make jam as I have all the basic ingredients - fruit, sugar & water. All you have to do is boil all the ingredients until it reaches certain thickness and have the ability to set.

Equal weight of fruit and sugar plus equal number in ml of water.

After about 10 mins, the currants burst, turning the syrup red. I decided to put in a cinnamon stick. Couldn't be bothered with the cold spoon/saucer test - less dish to wash.

After about 30 mins. I guess I overcooked the jam a bit. Some of it stuck on to the wooden spoon and had to be scraped off, hence the unshiny bit in the middle. I didn't have any empty glass jars, either, so a plastic container would do. This is made of 250g of fruit; probably about 200ml of jam.