I got this recipe from my cookbook "Culina Mundi". The book features selected dishes among the most popular dishes of world’s cuisines. This salad is originated in Cuba. Finding the recipe is easy to follow, and that I like having pineapple in the food I eat, so I made up my mind to make this salad for dinner.
With salads that use mayonnaise to combine the ingredients, I often prefer to chill the salad before serving. I find having a cool salad more palatable. This salad, in particular, introduced to me a new taste and new experience about the world of salads. It was not so amazing to say "wow", but I liked it.
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There are many other ingredients used in this recipe, however, I never mind cooking this as most ingredients are always available in my pantry and, more importantly, cooking procedure is very simple. Still, we have an impressive dish to serve perfectly with steamed rice, or rice noodles.
I liked this chicken at first bite, but I think I liked the sauce more and wished that I had cooked more rice than usual so as not to waste even a drop of the sauce 
Don is a way of serving or presenting a bowl of rice with a kind of "topping". I used to make oyako donburi – also a very popular don dish.This dish is less complicated than that one but it still tastes good and offers a typical Japanese flavor due to the comdiment sauce. The sauce can be made at home or you can use the same sauce as used for okonomiyaki – a Japanese-styled pizza. This sauce is often available at the supermarket. I often make okonomiyaki at home so I have one bottle of this sauce, and I used that on this fried chicken out of convenience.
Due to the breading, the chicken breast is kept juicy and tender after frying. Still, frying chicken breast should be well-monitored so as not to overcook it or it will be tough and dry. Serving the fried chicken with hot steamed rice and the sauce is simple but complete. I also cooked a boiled vegetable dish to have some greens for my meal.
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I am still feeling afraid each time I hear of curry. One of the most typical flavors and tastes of these tandoori chicken is curry. But tandoori chicken is so popular that I was very curious to know how the taste would be like. Since I never dare eat any curried-foods in Singapore for their very strong smells and tastes, but I am willing to cook at home so that I can at least control the amount of spicy ingredients I need to put into the food. For this chicken in particular, because of yogurt is used in the marinating sauce, I felt relieved with the thought that yogurt would make the curry milder.
This tandoori chicken needs to be marinated for a long time, even overnight. So I needed to prepare the chicken on the previous day. It is not troublesome at all because it took just a few minutes to prepare all the ingredients before chilling everything in the fridge. The next day we only need to heat the oven and bake the chicken.
The curry taste was still very obvious in this chicken, but it is much milder. The chicken was very tender and moist. The recipe uses whole chicken legs, but I had only chicken thighs, so again I cooked with chicken thighs only.
Ingredients:
- 4 chicken legs
- 125g natural yogurt, stirred until smooth
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp curry powder
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
- 1/8 tsp cayenne powder
- 1/8 tsp cloves
- white sesame seeds, as needed
Cooking:
- Rinse the chicken well and pat dry with kitchen papers.
- Combine all the other ingredients except for the sesame seeds. Add the chicken to the marinating mixture, soak well to coat the chicken evenly. Cover and place the chicken in the fridge to marinate for at least 2 hours or over night.
- Preheat the oven to 350F (180C) for fan oven / or 300F (200C) for convention oven.
- Place the chicken on baking pan and bake for about 45 minutes. About 15 minutes before the chicken is done, sprinkle the sesame seeds over the chicken.
My high-school classmate, who is studying in Germany, visited me with a present – a cookbook of German cuisine. I was so excited with this book. I like books, and cookbooks are always what I wish to have more and more.
Having spent several months in Germany, I didn’t have many chances to try German food. So with this book in my hands, I feel so free to start my adventure into this cuisine. I browsed the book to get the most easily applicable recipes. And I stopped at the poultry chapter with four different baked chicken recipes. All are easy to follow. But I firstly was attracted by this baked chicken with herbs, simply because I like herbs a lot. Herbs and spices play an important part in most of my cooking. So I decided to try making this baked chicken first.
I didn’t have the whole chicken legs in my freezer, I only had the thighs. So I went ahead with these. The crispy skin was wonderful with breadcrumbs mixed with herbs, which were very flavorful. I only regretted that I could use dried herbs only. There was no way I could get fresh herbs here. After baking, the excess fat from the chicken ran out onto the baking dish, so the chicken became less fat, which made me very happy too.
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My simple chicken soup with bitter gourds and young pineapple chunks.
Cooking for two people, I used only two chicken wings. Using the boned parts of the chicken offers better stock to the soup. Also, I only prefer the very small bitter gourds with dark green color to cook with this soup.
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When I looked into my end-of-week fridge, I found that I still had a pair of chicken breast left and a pack of pandan leaves, which were getting dried very soon. So I immediately remembered a simple way of cooking chicken with these just two main ingredients.
Of course pandan leaves are not edible even after frying, however, the fragrance from the leaves will be released during the cooking time and the chicken will absorb this fragrance. Also, being wrapped in the leaves, the chicken is still tender and juicy. Just notice that do not over-cook the chicken since overcooked chicken breats are not so pleasant to eat.
Remove the pandan leaves from the chicken piece before enjoying the chicken of special flavor.
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Out of convience, I cooked this chicken braised in black bean sauce. Over the weekend when I was looking for some special spices at the sauces section at the supermarket, I came across a small bottle of black bean paste. I have been familiar with soy bean paste of several kinds and flavor, but black bean paste is still very new to me. Previously I only cooked sweet soups with black beans or sticky rice with black beans, and never used them for savory dishes. And since the bottle was quite cheap, so I decided to buy home and try this paste with other ingredients.
That’s why today I made this quick meal with only chicken and black bean paste. I dared not use too many ingredients before I had more experience with this paste. So I cooked the chicken quite simply. I only add the shallot and ginger, which I knew would add better smell to the chicken. The black bean paste was a little too salty, so I mixed it with a little water first and then combined with the chicken to cook.
After all, I could enjoy a very flavourful chicken. The flavor was new but it tasted really good. Now I am thinking of what other ingredients I am going to cook with this paste next time…
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