Kaiseki 懐石料理 (Japanese)

One Kaiseki 懐石料理 (Japanese) dinner can consist from possibly 6 to 15 different kinds of food.  
"shiizakana" (appetizers served with Japanese sake)
"mukouzuke" (sashimi - slices of raw fish)
"kuchitori" (a small side dish)
"suimono" (a soup)
"nimono" (simmered vegetables)
"aemono" (food dressed with sauce)
"kounomono" (Japanese pickles)
"hassun" (food from the mountains and the sea)
"sunomono" (food marinated in  vinegar)
"yakimono" (grilled fish)
"mushimono" (steamed food) 
"nabemono" (Japanese hot pot)
rice 
miso soup
dessert

The kind of food served will change according to the different months, seasons and what is freshly available at the local market. It is also depends on the area. 

Gong Bao Chicken 宫保鸡丁 (Chinese)

Originally uploaded by Pretentious Cupcake




Ingredients

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into chunks
2 tablespoons white wine
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil, divided
2 tablespoons cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tablespoons water
1 ounce hot chile paste
1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
2 teaspoons brown sugar
4 green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts
4 ounces chopped peanuts

Directions

To Make Marinade: Combine 1 tablespoon wine, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon oil and 1 tablespoon cornstarch/water mixture and mix together.

Place chicken pieces in a glass dish or bowl and add marinade.

Toss to coat. Cover dish and place in refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

To Make Sauce: In a small bowl combine 1 tablespoon wine, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon oil, 1 tablespoon cornstarch/water mixture, chili paste, vinegar and sugar.
Mix together and add green onion, garlic, water chestnuts and peanuts. In a medium skillet, heat sauce slowly until aromatic.

Meanwhile, remove chicken from marinade and saute in a large skillet until meat is white and juices run clear.

When sauce is aromatic, add sauteed chicken to it and let simmer together until sauce thickens.

Spices from Istanbul

The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is guaranteed to be the best shopping point for people who loves to cook. There is the spice bazaar, I bought ten different spices to add to my kitchen stocks today!

Red Wine Sauce

Red wine sauce makes an ideal partner for all red meat. To enjoy it at its best however, you need to serve it over a good steak. To serve two people, with healthy appetites, you will need.

2x 7oz Rump steak
1x tbsn Olive Oil
2x Diced Shallots
100ml Beef Stock
Salt & Pepper
½ a Glass of Red Wine (I used a Californian Merlot)

Optional:
1x Diced garlic clove & Balsamic Vinegar

Sweat the shallots and, if you prefer, garlic in olive oil. When the shallots are done, add the red wine and let it reduce. Once it becomes thick and syrupy, add the beef stock and let simmer while you turn your attention to the steak.

Tenderise the steak and cut into two portions. Generously season with olive oil and pepper before laying on a hot griddle pan. Cook for between 3-5 minutes depending on how well you like it doing, for red wine sauce try slightly undercooking for maximum flavour. Remember to only turn once to keep all the taste juices locked in. Remove any excess fat from the steak and rest on a warm plate. Add any remaining juices to the sauce along any salt, pepper or balsamic vinegar you feel it needs. Generously drizzle the sauce of the steak and you’re ready to enjoy.

Squealer, The Pork Knuckle (Hungarian)

Originally uploaded by zannnielim

Ordered this pork knuckle dish called the Squealer at the a baby-friendly restaurant in Budapest at the Pauley Ede street. Its name is Pest Vakvarjú Restaurant. They wrote there in the menu that it is cooked in the "jóasszony style" :) Food is quite okay, just want to highlight that the staff and place is very baby-friendly.

'Quick' Salad (Belgian Chain)

Originally uploaded by zannnielim

Tried these salad next to a 'Quick' Supreme burger during our trip to Brussels. The produce in their salad is very fresh! No wonder as I found from their website that the quality of their salads are prepared with such pride: "Our salads are made every morning in each restaurant with fresh ingredients. The mixture of salads we use varies in accordance with the seasons and the harvests. They are sourced from producers that do not use chemical products to disinfect the soil." -QUICK Restaurant

Rétes . Strudel (Hungarian)

Originally uploaded by zannnielim

Rétes is the layered pastry and in English, we called it 'Strudel'. It is rather a popular traditional pastry in the former Austro-Hungarian empire. Some says it is a little similar to the Turkish baklava, but I don't think so :)

Vana Tallinn Chocolate Cream (Estonian)

Originally uploaded by zannnielim

Have you tried the Vana Tallinn Chocolate Cream? My husband arrived back from Tallinn with one bottle of this and since Tallinn is one of the Baltic states, you could find its distribution there. With this and I managed to try some. It is a robust rum-based liqueur with 16 percent proof being the Chocolate Cream variation. It is lighter brown in color, rather sweet and with a hint of Jamaican rum flavour.

Bruschetta (Italian)

Originally uploaded by openended

Bruschetta, Little Italy, bread, Dip, Italian food

Easter Bento

Originally uploaded by Tami_Moore
This is a Ham and Cheese Bunny sandwich bento. It has edible grass that looks pink and three chocolate eggs, clementine and kiwi. The pastas are easter shapes. Also you can find some orange and yellow carrots.

Töltött Paprika (Hungarian Stuffed Peppers)

Originally uploaded by zannnielim

6 Hungarian yellow wax peppers (or 4 yellow bells)
250 g fresh ground pork
1/2 cup of rice
1 small onion, diced
2 Tbsp oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 egg
salt and ground pepper to taste
water
3 sprigs of fresh parsley
2 Tbsp flour
1 small cans of tomato paste (I've used 4 fresh tomatoes)
sugar to taste

• In a small pot of water partially cook the rice.
• Drain off liquid the and set rice aside.
• De-core the peppers, removing seeds and (inside ribs which is bitter).
• In a large skillet sauté the onions in 2 Tbsp oil until soft.
• Place the ground pork in a large bowl.
• Add the garlic, the partially cooked rice, and the egg.
• Sprinkle salt and ground pepper on the top.
• Combine meat mixture thoroughly.
• Stuff the peppers loosely with the rice-meat mixture, leaving some space as it will expand when cooked.
• Form meatballs from the remaining stuffing.
• Arrange the peppers and meatballs in a deep oven proof dish.
• Add enough water to cover the stuffed peppers part of the way.
• Add the fresh parsley to the pot.
• Place the dish in the oven and bake at 320F for 2 hours or more. Baking time will depend on the size of the peppers used.
• Remove stuffed peppers with a slotted spoon into a clean dish.
• Reserve the broth for later use.
• In a skillet make a light roux from 2 Tbsp of oil and flour.
• Add the tomato paste, stirring all the time.
• Gradually add the hot broth and stir it smooth.
• Smooth the sauce with a stick blender or force it through a fine sieve.
• Season with salt and pepper and sweeten with sugar.*
• Bring the sauce to boil and pour over the peppers.
• Let the peppers cool and place in the fridge for overnight.
• Next day slowly heat through and serve.
Stuffed peppers need overnight rest to combine and relax the flavours.

*The taste should be mildly sweet.

"Piggy Face" Rice Balls (Japanese Bento)

Originally uploaded by mk family

"Piggy Face" Rice Balls Bento

Chicken Biryani (Indian/Malaysian)

Originally uploaded by ikmal and only me

Biryani was brought to the Indian Subcontinent by Muslim travelers and merchants. Local variants of this dish are not only popular in South Asia but also in Arabia and within various South Asian communities in Western countries.

Malaysian Biryani Recipe
Ingredients:-
1 Chicken buillion
1 clove garlic
5 cm piece ginger
1 tbsp poppy seed
10 cashew nuts
10 almonds
4 tbsp butter
5 cloves
5 cm cinnamon stick
1 cup Onion (chopped)
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp tumeric powder
1 can of coconut milk
2 cup rice

1. Mix Chicken buillion with 2 tbsp of warm water.
2. Grind together garlic, ginger, poppy seed, cachew nuts, and almonds. Heat butter and fry cloves, and cinnamon until fragrance.
3. Then add in the grinded ingredients, curry powder, tumeric powder and chopped onions.
4. Mix the ingredient well, and then stir in the Chicken buillion and salt to taste.
5. Stir to mix and cook covered at mediem heat for 10 minutes.
6. Add in coconut milk. Mix until mixture is well blended.
7. Add in the washed rice and cook it.
8. Make sure that the rice fully absorbs the gravy, and cook rice at low heat.

The following is an Indian Chicken Biryani Video Recipe:-

Serve hot with beef/mutton/chicken curry. Enjoy! :)

Shrimp Dumplings (Dim Sum/Snacks/Chinese)

Originally uploaded by sola.gurl

This is known as 'Har Gow' where 'har' means shrimp and 'gow' means dumpling in Cantonese. This item is one of the hot favourites of many people. It is like a piece of food art. The ingredients are wheat starch, shrimp, tapioca starch, pork fat that is cooked, scallions, bamboo shoots, cornstarch, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar as well as seasonings. If you want to watch how it can be done, here's a video posted in a previous post.

Pork Knuckle Happy Call Csülök (European)

Originally uploaded by zannnielim
This became one of my favourite food after I came to live in Hungary. When I was living in Singapore, I didn't used to know how to appreciate this food. To me, it was very fatty and sinful to eat. Now it is not the same. Csülök is how they called it in Hungarian. I made this today simply with two spices: cloves (szegfűszeg in Hungarian) and garlic powder. With a fresh pork knuckle is enough to give it good flavour, but of course add a pinch of salt to top it off. Leave them in the HappyCall pan, simmer it until tender. That's it. Just such a pleasure and satisfying to eat it in the winter cold season.

Panda Theme Bento (Japanese)

Originally uploaded by mk family

This is yet another delish looking bento inspired by the 'panda'.

Fried Dumpling, Potstickers, Gyōza 锅贴 (Chinese)

Originally uploaded by 拜小樂 | Ivy

锅贴 guō tiē is pan-fried jiaozi, also known as potstickers. Peking Ravioli in Boston, Wor tip (Cantonese Jyutping: wo1 tip3). It has so many different names but basically they are a Northern Chinese style dumpling popular as a street food, appetizer, or side order in Chinese, served also on a dim sum menu.

The filling for this dish usually contains pork (sometimes chicken, or beef in Muslim areas), cabbage (or Chinese cabbage and sometimes spinach), scallions (spring or green onions), ginger, Chinese rice wine or cooking wine, and sesame seed oil.

Guotie are shallow-fried in a wok (Mandarin 'guo'). A small quantity of water is added and the wok is covered. While the base of the dumplings is fried, the upper part is steamed and this gives a texture contrast typical of Chinese cuisine.

An alternative method is to steam in a wok and then fry to crispness on one side in a shallow frying pan. Exactly the same dumpling is boiled in plenty of water to make jiaozi and both are eaten with a dipping sauce. Three or five folds are made on one side of the round wrapper that is rolled so that the edges are thinner than the middle. This gives the base a large surface area that helps to give the dumpling stability to stand up in the pan.

The Chinese method of preparing the dough is to pour boiling water onto the flour and letting stand for five minutes and then adding a small quantity of cold water. This helps to activate the gluten in the dough.

Here's a video recipe for the Japanese yaki-gyōza 焼き餃子, enjoy :

Tabouleh (Middle Eastern)

Originally uploaded by Kobetz R
This is a salad made with olive oil, spices and fresh vegetables. Usually go with pita bread, though there are people following the traditional way to eat it simply with a fork. If you like cucumbers, you can just add it, or even red or green onions as well as carrots. Here's a video recipe to show you how to make it :)

Hummus (Turkish)

Originally uploaded by paul goyette

Hummus is a Levantine Arab dip or spread made from cooked, mashed chickpeas, blended with tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic.



Accompaniments | Dips and sauces | Garlic recipes | Grain and bean recipes | Greek recipes | Lebanese recipes | Middle Eastern recipes | North African recipes | Snacks and light bites | Starters | Turkish recipes | Vegetarian recipes

Kueh Dadah, Pandan Crepes (Nonya)

Originally uploaded by Desiree Koh

Sometimes it's called "Kueh Ketayap", this kueh is made using sweet coconut filled inside a pancake. The usual ingredients for the batter includes flour, egg, coconut milk, pinch of salt, water and pandan leaves. As for the filling, use palm sugar, grated coconut, water and again pandan leaves. Following is a video demonstrating how you can make it :) Enjoy!