Easy Mango Ice Cream

Not everyone has the courage and time to make those premium high quality ice cream that requires you to make a beat eggs and sugar, then slowly adding warm milk and then measuring your temperature carefully on the stove. There are actually easy to make ice cream recipes that will satisfy your cravings for dessert in this hot Bruneian weather. Here's an easy recipe that requires you to just add and mix. Foolproof, idiotproof, paluiproof. Ultra easy tu.

Mango Ice Cream

INGREDIENTS

• 2 (375ml) cans sweetened condensed milk
• 1.2 litre cream
• 300ml milk
  
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 500g or 3 cups chopped fresh mangoes
  

DIRECTIONS

1) If you got an ice cream maker, just combine the liquids together first then chill them in the fridge for a few hours. After that pour your chilled liquid mixture into the ice cream maker and slowly add the chopped mangoes in.

2) If you don't have an ice cream maker, no sweat, first mix all the ingredients(except chopped mangoes) and pour them into a container. Freeze for 3 hrs in the freezer, take out and mash them. Freeze for another 3 hours and then take out and mash them again.

3) After 3 hrs again, take the mixture out and this time, add in the chopped mangoes. Don't overstir at this stage. Freeze overnight. Before serving your guests, take out your ice cream 5-10 minutes in advance. Simple home made mango ice cream.

Note: Sometimes mangoes in Brunei can be really sweet, if you don't have a sweet tooth, put in only one can of sweetened condense milk and replace it with 200ml of cream.

Note: This is not your Dryers, Swensons or Haagan Daaz quality ice cream but it will beat commercially made ice cream from the supermarket since this is home made. Have fun :)

How to make Gnocchi: Step by Step Guide

Gnocchi is a small dumpling. In fact, the word gnocchi in Italian means "lump". Gnocchi is most often made with potatoes, though it can also be made from flour, semolina, cheese or even polenta. Gnocchi is served much in the same manner as pasta, with sauce or some butter and herbs or parmesan cheese.

Gnocchi recipes date back to the twelfth century and are most common in the Northern regions of Italy. Believe it or not, gnocchi is very popular in Brazil, where people enjoy Italian food in general. While it's not as popular as pasta is in the United States, Americans enjoy gnocchi as well. In fact, most fine Italian restaurants have at least one gnocchi dish on the menu.

For this version of gnocchi, I use 2 pounds of russet potatoes, 2 cups of flour, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and 1 large egg.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake potatoes until easily pierced with a fork (about 45 minutes). You can also boil the potatoes, but baking creates a drier dough and a lighter, fluffier gnocchi. Let the potatoes cool slightly, then peel.

Pass the potatoes through a ricer or grate them into a large bowl.

Add the egg (slightly beaten)to the potatoes. Mix well with a wooden spoon.

Add the flour to potatoes a little at a time, mixing well with a wooden spoon. Add just enough flour so that the dough doesn't stick to your hands.

When all the flour has been incorporated, bring the dough together with your fingertips. Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a slightly floured surface. Knead the dough as you would bread dough. Press down and away with the heel of your hand, fold the dough over, make a quarter turn, and repeat the process. Knead for about 5 minutes.

Form the dough into a ball and then divide it into 6 smaller balls.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough using your fingertips. The rope of dough should be about 3/4 inch thick.

Cut the dough into 1 inch pieces.

You can cook the gnocchi as it is now, but traditional gnocchi has ridges. To create the ridges, press each piece of dough against the tines of a fork.

With your finger, gently roll the pressed dough back off the fork. This takes a little practice. If you find the dough sticking to the fork, dip the fork in flour before you press the dough against it.

Place the gnocchi in a single layer on a lightly floured dish.

To cook the gnocchi, place the dough into a pot of boiling water. After a few minutes the gnocchi will float to the top. Continue to cook for one minute then remove and set aside.

Serve the hot gnocchi immediately, tossed with butter and a little Parmesan cheese or with the sauce of your choice. You can serve them with tasty tomato based pasta sauces or white creamy sauces as well. They go very well also with pesto. Check the pictures below for different sauces. Recipe for the sauces will follow soon ;)

Before boiling.

Pesto Sauce

Creamy Cheese Sauce

Tomato based pasta sauce

Baked with tomato based pasta sauce sprinkled with parmesan cheese

Note: Gnocchi will not keep for long after they are prepared and they must be cooked soon. They can be kept covered on a floured cloth for few hours. Soon after they may start releasing their moisture content and become gummy and sticky. Placing them in the refrigerator will not help since the humidity present there may cause additional damage.

Gnocchi instead can be easily frozen. Drop frozen gnocchi directly in the boiling water without defrosting: they will be ready when they surface like indicated in the recipe.

KL TRIP: The Hong Kong Restaurant

When I met Suyi and told her I love to cook. She told me her dad's a chef as well and she wants me to try her dad's cooking. Her dad owns a restaurant at Pudu Plaza food court.

Me and Suyi at GreenBox@SungaiWang.

This is the Hong Kong Restaurant at Pudu Plaza Food Court


The main dishes are typical chinese dishes but you can actually special order chinese specialties like shark's fin soup, abalone, buddha jumping over the wall. Suyi ordered the crab meat and shark fin's soup from her dad in advance.

Would you look at that! What a lovely sight. Shark fin's soup with fresh crabmeat. Look at the amount of crabmeat in there - no frozen or canned bullshit crabmeat my dear - they taste really good in this soup.

We also got to try the other specialities of the restaurant.

Juicy and tender stewed claypot beef brisket

Stir fried fish with ginger and green onion. The fish slices are cooked at just the right texture. It's smooth and tastes really fresh, flavoured by the fragrance of ginger and green onions with chinese sauces. A nice light yet satisfying dish.

Stir fried BabyKailan cooked to a nice crunchy texture! Yum.

Kam Heong Chicken Cubes. This is simply a flavour explosion. The dried chilies and cashews go so well with the chicken. Spicy and full of flavour. I really love this dish. I can't wait to come here again and try other special dishes.

Hainanese Chicken Rice Balls!

The attack of the chicken rice balls from Malacca!

Amy Beh! I salute you! I reckon it will be a big shame to let you all see the rice balls and not post a recipe - so I searched and found it! Cheers Amy Beh! Here's the recipe taken from Cyberkuali. It includes even the recipe for sauces!

Ingredients

1 chicken about 1kg 5 cloves of garlic, crushed 2cm fresh ginger, crushed 1 stalk spring onion 1 tsp salt For the rice: 2 cups long grain rice, washed and drained 2 tbsp oil 1 clove garlic, crushed 1/2 tsp salt 2 pandan leaves, knotted 2 1/2 cups reserved chicken stock Garlic chilli sauce: 5 red chillies, pounded 3 cilipadi (optional), pounded 15g fresh young ginger, pounded 3 cloves garlic, pounded 1/4 tsp salt 2 tbsp chicken stock Juice of 2 limes (limau kasturi) Ginger sauce: 40g fresh young ginger, pounded 3 cloves garlic, pounded 1/8 tsp salt 2 tbsp chicken stock Juice of 2 limes (limau kasturi) Garnishing: Cucumber slices 1 stalk spring onion cut into 2cm lengths 1 stalk Chinese coriander cut into 2cm lengths Method To prepare the chicken: Rub chicken inside out with salt, then stuff with ginger, garlic and spring onion. Boil water in a deep saucepot and put in the chicken. (the water must cover the whole chicken.) Lower the heat and simmer the chicken for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and soak chicken for 30 minutes in the stock. Remove chicken and set aside to cool. Reserve the stock for the rice. To prepare the rice: Heat oil and saute garlic until aromatic. Stir in rice and fry for about three to four minutes. Place rice in an electric rice cooker. Add stock, salt and pandan leaves. When rice is cooked and fluffy, scoop out with a ladle and roll into balls (while rice is still hot). Set aside. To make the garlic chilli sauce: Mix the pounded ingredients with salt, chicken stock and lime juice. Serve in small saucers. To make the ginger sauce: Mix the ingredients together and serve with the rice and chicken. To serve the chicken: Rub a little sesame oil and light soy sauce over chicken. Cut into serving pieces and serve with cucumber slices and garnishing of spring onion and chinese coriander.

Malacca Trip: Hock Kee Chicken Rice

My dear readers, I must tell you, this is the first time I have experienced this sort of thing when going to a restaurant and that is you have to queue up to get to a place. In Malacca, there's three places where you have to queue for at least 15 - 30 minutes just to get a seat. One of them is Hock Kee Chicken Rice shop. It's so famous, even Astro did a show on them.

This is the queue - we were quite early so it's not that long yet.



This place is famous for it's special chicken rice and asam fish head.

When I went in and finally got a table, the queue was super long. A group of tourists arrived I guess. The early bird gets the chicken rice! Woohooo!

Since it was a full house, orders will take some time, but luckily it was not as long as waiting at the queue. We ordered chicken rice, assam fish head and some veggies. Where is the chicken rice? You might ask.

Here's the chicken....

And here's the fish ball... hey wait a minute! It's the chicken rice! Chicken Rice ball! Yes- that's the specialty of this restaurant! It's really cool and nice to eat it this way.

Then I dip those rice balls into the assam curry - and the ladies fingers very nice also! NYUM!!

Seriously, some people claimed Malacca's a boring place but if you like food - Malacca is a great place to crash. Stay tuned for other Malacca updates!

Deep Fried Ladies Fingers (OKRA)

In Brunei, whenever I go to the pasar or tamu, I tend to see Ladies Fingers selling for very cheap. In the west, they are known as Okras and they are normally used to make gumbo, but some like to coat it with batter and fry them. Here's a nice recipe for Deep Fried Okras

INGREDIENTS

• 10 pods ladies fingers(okra), sliced in 1/4 inch pieces
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup breadcrumbs or cornmeal (preferably use 3/4 cup cornmeal and 1/4 cup flour)
  
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS

1. In a small bowl, soak ladies fingers in egg for 5 to 10 minutes. In a medium bowl, combine breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper.

2. Heat oil in a deep frying pan over medium-high heat. Roll ladies fingers into the breadcrumbs mixture, coating evenly.


3. Carefully place them in hot oil; stir continuously. Reduce heat to medium when okra first starts to brown, and cook until golden. Drain on paper towels.


Look at those beautiful deep fried okras. This one was done using 3/4 cup cornmeal and 1/4 cup plain flour. By Alice from allrecipes.com. These babies are crispy on the outside and when you bite, it's slightly sticky and have a very nice texture. YUM!