Chicken satay

Ingredients (Serving size - 80pax):

60 pieces of chicken thighs
2 cups of soy sauce
2 cups of ketchup
2/3 cups peanut oil
1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
Garlic powder (15 pinches)
Black pepper (10 pinches)
Ground cumin (10 pinches)

Method:

I had bought the bone-in chicken thighs 'cos they were on sale at $0.99/lb. You might want to buy the boneless ones if you don't want to have to de-bone them on your own.

Remove the skin and bones with a sharp knife. I tossed out the skin but kept the bones to make some chicken stock later.

Cut the chicken thighs into smaller bite-size pieces and marinate the meat with the above ingredients before leaving it to chill in the fridge overnight.

The traditional way of making satay is to skewer the marinated meat pieces using bamboo sticks and then grill the meat sticks over some burning charcoal. However, to save time and to make my job easier.....I decided to cook the chicken pieces in the oven without the skewers.

I made some holes on the disposable aluminium trays so as to allow the meat juices to drain away as I had wanted to achieve a drier meat texture like that of BBQ-ing over a flame.

After spreading the chicken pieces out evenly on the tray, I placed the smaller "holey" trays over a big tray to catch the drips. I baked the chicken pieces for about 35-40minutes in 350F.

The drip tray managed to catch all the meat juices....and the chicken pieces got cooked nicely.

I made a peanut sauce to go with the chicken satay but I had forgotten to take a photo of it as I was rushing to pack everything for RG's party.

I also prepared some sticky rice and cucumber pieces to go with the satay.

According to RG, the chicken satay was the first dish amongst all others to run out.....I take that as a good sign.

New pillow covers

Today, I decided to make some new covers for my landlord's existing pillows. Since it's a seaside house, I naturally went for the marine-theme when picking out the fabric. I got these beautiful fabric panels for a great price from a seller on etsy.

There are different prints on each panel. I added a zipper so that I/my landlord can remove the covers & toss them into the washer for cleaning whenever necessary.

The colors on the panels go quite nicely with my landlord's furniture. I hope he likes them when he returns this summer.

Arghhhhhh.......vinyl problems! (Recycled Reese's wrapper coupon pouch)

I was totally frustrated this morning while sewing another vinyl pouch. I had used the 20-gauge vinyl (vinyl on the front and back for each sheet of recycled wrapper). The sewing part was easy peasy....I usually sew it the way I'd using regular fabrics (sew on the wrong side of fabric and then flip out to the right side).

The cutting/sewing took me altogether 10min the most and I spent another HOUR(!!!) trying to flip it out......geez. In the process, I poked myself in one of my fingers till it bled and I also broke a nail. And despite all my efforts.....the corners still looked like these.......

I tried various things like rounded the corners and made small V-cuts on the rounded corners, I also applied talcum powder on the vinyl so that it doesn't stick.....but still it's super duper hard to make the corners look nice. Anyone with tips for me please??? I'd be eternally grateful. My last resort would be to redesign the pouches or perhaps sew on the outside such that I don't have to do any flipping. But I really prefer a cleaner look with stitches on the inside. So HELP!!!!

Anyway, here's how it turned out. I like the see-through part!

And despite the ugly corners....the pouch still works in all the ways that I have wanted it to...so I can't really say I'm not happy with it :P

Chicken mushroom pot pie

Pot pie.....one of those easy 1-dish meals. I make it occasionally in an attempt to "get rid" of leftovers in the fridge....and it's super easy and yummy!

This round.....I used up the remaining of my rotisserie chicken, water chestnuts, mushrooms, onion & frozen mixed vegetables that had been lurking in my fridge for awhile. It's not hard to substitute any of these items. You can use ham, leftover turkey, minced meat, potatoes, carrots, squash, peppers etc.

And you'll need a liquid base to marry with the ingredients. I used a packet of chicken gravy (add water/stock and boil), some onion soup mix and then thicken with a couple spoons of cornflour. Or even canned chicken/mushroom soups can work as well.

You can make your own pie crusts but I just used my trusted Pillsbury crusts that fit my pie pan perfectly.

Oh, and I like to plan my cooking such that I can cook several things at the same time to save on electricity. Here, I have a big pot of chicken stock, some corn and my pot pie all baking happily together! :P

After slightly over an hour......my pot pie is ready!!! You can cover the pie edge with aluminium foil if it's browning too fast. I cut little slits on the top pie crust to allow air to vent. It's also advisable to place the pan on a baking sheet in case the gravy in the pie bubbles over.

Cut a huge slice and slowly enjoy the oozy yummy goodness.

Ngoh hiang

Finally made some ngoh hiang using the beancurd skin that my parents had sent me.

Apart from minced pork, I also added some prawns, water chestnut, carrots, garlic & spring onion.

As for seasonings, I used five spice powder, white pepper, soy sauce, oyster sauce, garlic powder, cornflour, sugar, egg & salt.

The beancurd skins were a little brittle...perhaps 'cos they were dried out as I had kept them in the fridge. I used a piece of clean moist paper towel to lightly dab all over the skin to moisten it. The last time I made ngoh hiang....I had ran the beancurd skin under the tap and that was a BAD IDEA 'cos the skin kinda disintegrated like a piece of wet tissue paper! haha

You can cut the large beancurd skin into any sizes depending on how big or small you like your ngoh hiang.

Place the meat mixture at one end of the beancurd skin and roll it up like a popiah. Don't try to stuff it with too much filling otherwise it might break apart.

I like to steam my ngoh hiangs to cook them first. Some people would just fry them directly without steaming. I'm always worried about the beancurd skin getting burnt before the meat filling gets cooked. By steaming it first, the filling is already cooked and so you need only to fry it briefly to brown and crisp the beancurd skin when you are ready to eat them. I made a huge batch (for economies of scale) so that I can freeze some until when I'm ready to fry them.

I fried a small batch for dinner tonight to go with rice and curry chicken......hmmmmmmm....

My favorite way of eating the ngoh hiang is to dip it in sweet sauce......BEST!!!

Fritos zipper purse (recycled wrappers)

I couldn't wait to try out the teflon presser foot on an actual piece of sewn work.

My first project with the teflon foot was this Fritos zipper purse using recycled Fritos chips wrapper and 12-gauge vinyl.

I cut the chips bag into 2 halves and used the Fritos logo part (top) on one side of the purse and the picture part (bottom) on the other side of the purse.

My favorite Fritos flavor!!!!!

If you want to know the nutritional value of the fritos chips...please look inside the purse...haha :P

The exterior and interior of the purse have all been lined with vinyl. This could work well as a wet bag to hold diapers and wet swimsuits if it had been bigger. Will try to collect those super-size chip wrappers (just an excuse to eat more chips really!) to make into larger size wet bags.

This fritos purse is just the right size to hold my cellphone, tissue paper and wet wipes! And one more wrapper saved from the landfill.

A quick laksa

This was our dinner tonight. The soup base tasted almost as good as what you get at Katong Laksa! It took me less than 20min to cook it and it was all thanks to........

.......Tean's Curry Laksa paste!!! The instructions are short and simple - add 1.5L of water to the paste and bring to a boil.

While soup is boiling....add dried tofu puffs and cook till soft.

Add approx 150ml of coconut cream and reduce heat to let the soup simmer.

Your laksa soup base is now done (yes, it's quite spicy!).

While the soup is boiling, cut the fish cake into thin slices.

Blanch the beansprouts in hot water to cook them slightly.

I bought this dried thick bee hoon that kinda resembles the laksa noodles.

Boil the noodles till soft.

Drain the noodles and put into a bowl. Add beansprouts, fish cake and then pour the hot soup (with tofu puffs) over the noodles and serve hot.

Slurp loudly!! :P~