Homemade fish finger(s)

After Alicia showed signs of getting sick of her usual baked cod, I decided to add something new to her menu - something which my hubby has been stopping me from adding since a long time ago: breaded cod. :P He's always saying that it's too heaty etc. and since she was very young back then, I also thought it wise to keep fried food to a minimum. Now that she's reached the 30months mark this month, I felt that it was time. :)

I didn't photograph the fish fingers, but here's Alicia eating it on one occasion (scroll down for recipe):

Getting ready to eat! AHHHHH!!

Picking the crumbs to eat first...

Posing with her fish finger :)

Homemade fish finger 

serves 1 tot

Ingredients:

• 1 slice of cod (about 60g)
• 1 egg, beaten
• breadcrumbs (probably about 2 tbsp - I didn't measure)
• a teeny weeny pinch of salt
• a little ground white pepper
• cornflour
• oil

Method:

1. Mix the breadcrumbs with the salt and pepper evenly.
2. Place the slice of cod into the beaten egg, then coat it with cornflour.
3. Return the cod into the egg then coat it with breadcrumbs.
4. Add some oil into a non-stick pan and shallow fry the fish finger till golden brown before turning over to brown the other side.
5. Place the fish on a sheet of kitchen towel to remove any excess oil.
6. Let it cool before serving to prevent burns.
7. (You can fry an omelette for yourself/ your tot with the remaining egg.)

You can repeat the breading process for more fish fingers before frying them.

1 beaten egg can be used to coat 8-10 fish fingers.

Mushroom and onion gravy

Mushroom and onion gravy anyone? :) I topped my baked chicken thighs with this last night and it was nice! :) hee...

*I've got quite a few posts to update so I'll just keep all short and succinct!*

Ooh.. look at the mushroom!!! :P

Mushroom and onion gravy

Mushroom and onion gravy on the chicken...

Ingredients:

• 5 mushrooms, sliced (choice of white button/swiss brown/shitake)
• 1/2-1 yellow/white onion, sliced (amount depending on your preference)
• unsalted butter (optional)
• 1L water

Seasoning:

• 1T oyster sauce
• 1/3T worcestershire sauce
• 1/3T hua diao jiu
• dashes of ground black pepper

Method:

1. Melt butter in a pot.
2. Fry the onions for awhile till slightly soft.
3. Add the water and let it come to a boil.
4. Add the mushrooms and let the mixture simmer till there's about half the amount of water left in the pot.
5. Add the seasoning and let it simmer some more till it reaches the consistency you like.
6. Add cornflour slurry if needed (optional).

*I'm more conscious about our diet recently so I skipped the butter and went straight to step 3 and boiled the onions together with the mushrooms and it still tasted ok.

Homemade pasta sauce (version II)

I slow-cooked the pasta sauce this time and it was really marvellous! So convenient to make and so delish! For the previous recipe, click here.

Even Alicia loved the sauce... you can be sure that if Alicia likes something, it's gotta be good though the converse isn't true... LOL.

Homemade pasta sauce (Version II)

Makes 3-4 servings

Ingredients:

• 2 cans Hunt's stewed tomatoes
• 1 yellow onion
• 6 cloves garlic
• about 200g minced beef
• 4 white button mushrooms
• 4 Swiss brown mushrooms
• unsalted butter

Marinate minced beef with:

• worcestershire sauce
• oyster sauce
• hua diao jiu
• dashes of ground black pepper

Method:

1. Blend the stewed tomatoes with the onion and garlic.
2. Pour mixture into the crockpot.
3. Remove stalk of mushrooms and chop mushrooms into small pieces.
4. Heat wok and melt butter.
5. Brown the minced beef.
6. Add the mushrooms and beef to the crockpot.
7. Cook on HI for 3-4hours or LOW for 6-8hours.
8. Pour over cooked pasta of choice and serve hot.

Optional: Transfer to stovetop after cooking with the crockpot if the sauce is too watery. Simmer till sauce has thickened to desired consistency.

Freeze in batches for instant hearty meals! :)

Grilled white button mushrooms

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I love white button mushrooms... even the vegetable-seller at the market knows and she never fails to offer them to me when she has them on hand! :P

I love to eat the mushrooms when cooked this way - it's simple yet tasty.

Anyway, I've got lots of backdated posts and this is the first of many to come! sigh. I do hope I can get them up on my blog soon!

Grilled white button mushrooms

Before they enter the oven!

Look at the yummy mushrooms!

Ingredients:

• 10 white button mushrooms
• 2 slices black pepper ham (cut into 2cm pieces)
• marinade or stock of any kind (choose your fav)
• unsalted all-purpose herbs
• unsalted butter
• shredded mozarella/ parmesan cheese

Method:

1. Remove the stalks of the mushrooms.
2. Place some butter into the mushrooms.
3. Add a bit of marinade or stock of your choice into the mushroom (mushrooms absorb flavours well so this will give the flavour you want).
4. Add the ham.
5. Top with mozarella/ parmesan cheese.
6. Grill on HI in the oven for 10min.
7. Remove and add dashes of herbs on the mushrooms.

Crockpot (aka slow cooker) beef stew... finally...

I know the above photo wasn't very well-taken, but I was hungry and I couldn't wait to try out the beef stew that I had been wanting sooo long to try cooking! Besides, it was so hot it kept fogging up the camera lens... :D

Anyway, it's really simple and convenient coz it's a crockpot dish and all you need to do is to serve it with rice or toasted bread, whichever you prefer (my hubby prefers rice, so rice it was...) and if you like, you can pair it with a salad to make the meal a healthier one! I thought the amount was too much for us so I didn't prepare the veggies but it was so tasty we felt that it wasn't enough! :) Should have cooked more rice.... lol.

Anyway, Alicia had this for dinner too! This is hers... I shredded the beef and lightly mashed the potato and carrot chunks... quite a heavy dinner since there's quite a lot of rice and stew... she managed to eat about half of everything... btw, this is a toddler-sized bowl in case you're wondering... :)

Beef Stew (serves 2 adults + 1 toddler) (edited on 27 May 2011)

Ingredients:

• 1 packet of beef (the packaging indicates it's for stewing) bought from Cold Storage (about S$10)
• 1 white/ yellow onion (minced)
• 8-10 white button mushrooms
• 1 big carrot (cut into chunks)
• 4 small potatoes (peeled, cut into chunks)
• 2-3 sticks celery (sliced)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 Knorr Beef cube
• 400ml water

Marinade for beef:

• 2 tablespoons cornflour
• all-purpose salt-free herbs (enough to coat the beef cubes nicely)
• ground black pepper (as desired)
• 1-2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon worcestershire sauce

Method:

1. Rinse the beef cubes and cut into appropriate sizes.
2. Marinate the beef cubes.
3. Dissolve the Knorr beef cube in 400ml hot water to make the beef stock. You may use other types of beef stock if preferred.
4. Add some oil/ butter and brown the beef briefly in a non-stick pan.
5. Remove and set aside.
6. Add a bit more oil/ butter to the pan and fry the onion till soft then add the mushrooms. 
7. After frying the mushrooms and onion for a couple of minutes, add the beef back to the pan together with the beef stock and bay leaves and let it come to a boil.
8. Place the potatoes, celery and carrot chunks in the slowcooker.
9. Pour the ingredients from the pan into the slowcooker and cook on high heat for 4 hours (or low heat for 6hrs) and resist the temptation to open the lid to taste the stew before the time is up! - opening the cover before the cooking's done adds another 15min to cooking time (each time u open it!): so unless you're prepared to wait longer for this stew, do not open the cover unnecessarily.

Here it is, served with rice.. Tuck in!

I'm really starting to love my slow cooker... Because dinner was fixed so easily and so quickly, I had time to iron the laundry today! Yay!!!! :D

Easy Chicken and Mushroom Crockpot Meal

I've been ill again (since last Friday but am almost fully recovered) so haven't been cooking much - and if I have, it's just simple, convenient food. Today since I had to bring Alicia to JG for class, I knew I won't have much time to prepare dinner since it's usually quite late by the time we get home and she finishes lunch and takes her nap. So I decided to prepare a crockpot meal and after pondering over what should go into the pot, I finally came up with this (served over cooked pasta):

Easy Chicken and Mushroom Crockpot Meal

Ingredients

• 3 skinned, deboned chicken thighs (visible fats removed)
• 10 white button mushrooms (my favourite!) (remove stem and cut into half)
• 2 leeks (cut the white segment into about 3cm-length parts)
• 1/2 large white onion (chop into large chunks)
• 1 can of cream of mushroom soup
• 1 can of cream of mushroom with roasted garlic

Method:

1. Place the leek and white onion into the crockpot first.
2. Arrange the chicken thighs on top of the leek and onion.
3. Place the mushrooms on top and pour the two cans of soup in (without diluting).
4. Cook on low for 8hours.
5. Serve over hot pasta with a generous topping of Italian herbs.

Baked garlicky, cheesy salmon

Look at the cheese!!! :D

I'm not a fan of salmon but when baked in this manner, the salmon's fishy smell is, I can say, almost fully eliminated! Most of the time, I force myself to eat salmon because I know it's good for me and also, it is believed that eating oily fish like salmon will improve the quality of breast milk for lactating mummies - so for the sake of my little Alicia, I eat it. :) But really, this baked salmon's so nice that there is no need to force myself to eat it... in fact, today the slice of salmon I bought wasn't enough for hubby and I!

Baked garlicky, cheesy salmon

Ingredients

• 200g salmon (skin removed - you may want to retain the skin if you like it - i know the skin's nutritious but I don't eat fish skin... all types)
• shredded mozarella cheese (amt depending on preference)
• 2-3 cloves garlic (minced)

Seasoning:

• a dash of teriyaki marinade
• hua diao jiu
• ground black pepper
• a dash of sesame oil
• all-purpose unsalted herbs

Method:

1. Slice salmon thinly.
2. Marinate salmon with the seasoning.
3. Mix the minced garlic and mozarella cheese thoroughly with the salmon pieces.
4. Place the marinated salmon mixture onto a piece of aluminium foil and top with more mozarella cheese (as shown below).
5. Wrap the salmon up in the foil.
6. Preheat oven to 180degC.
7. Bake the salmon at 180degC for 15min.
8. Remove the salmon from the oven, unwrap the foil and sprinkle more herbs on top of the cheese.
9. Serve hot.

Baked Squid

I'm definitely not a lover of squid, but my hubby is. So I cook this every now and then for him, but to be honest, I've never tasted it, not even the sauce. He claims it's nice so I just take his word for it. :)

Baked Squid

Ingredients:

• 1 small squid (cost me $1.50 at the wet market)
• cornflour

Seasoning:

• 2 tablespoons BBQ sauce
• a dash of dried basil leaves
• a dash of ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon light soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Method:

1. Clean the squid and remove the inerts.
2. Marinate the squid with the seasoning (I usually do it overnight).
3. Preheat oven to 200degC.
4. Bake squid at 200degC for 10min. Reserve leftover marinade.
5. Turn squid over, pour the marinade over it and bake at 200degC for a further 10min.
6. Take the squid out. Place the squid on a plate and pour the sauce into a small saucepan.
7. Add cornflour solution to thicken the sauce then pour it over the squid.
8. Serve hot.

Chicken Skewers

Alright, I'm not sure whether this is considered a Chinese or Western dish. But heck. Who cares what it's supposed to be called when it tastes great and is superbly easy to make?

Chicken Skewers

Ingredients:

• 3 chicken thighs (deboned, skin removed)
• 1 medium red/yellow/green capsicum
• 1/2 can canned pineapple or fresh pineapple cut into cubes

Seasoning (for the chicken):

• chicken marinade
• BBQ sauce
• 2 tsp sugar
• hua diao jiu
• ground black pepper

Method:

1. Remove visible fat from chicken thighs and cut into small pieces.
2. Marinate the chicken with the seasoning (overnight).
3. Cut the capsicum open, remove the the seeds and cut it into pieces (similar to the chicken).
4. Skewer the chicken and capsicum pieces, using satay sticks, alternating the two.
5. Pour leftover marinade on the skewers.
6. Preheat oven to 220degC.
7. Place skewers on baking tray and bake at 220degC for 10min.
8. Remove skewers and place on plate.
9. Serve together with pineapple slices/ cubes.

Baked Rice

This is a simple dish that I cook when I don't have much in my pantry and when I don't feel like spending too much time preparing dinner. It's fast, convenient and most importantly, nutritious so you don't feel that you're shortchanging yourself in any way. I highly recommend this dish to full-time working moms who don't have too much time to spend in the kitchen on weekdays! :)

Baked Rice (serves 2 greedy adults + 1 toddler)

Ingredients:

• $2 worth of chicken fillet
• 1 can of Campbell's Cream of Celery
• Mozarella cheese
• 2-3 handfuls of frozen mixed vegetables
• Rice grains
• butter

Seasoning (for the chicken):

• chicken marinade
• ground black pepper
• unsalted all-purpose herbs
• hua diao jiu

Method:

1. Marinate chicken with seasoning. You can do this the night before cooking.
2. Cook rice as you normally do in the rice cooker.
3. When the rice is cooked, mix the butter in evenly with the rice. Add a suitable amount of butter for the amount of rice you have cooked.
4. Mix in the chicken fillet and mixed vegetables till the ingredients and rice are well-mixed.
5. Scoop half the portion of the mixture into a casserole dish.
6. Spread half the can of cream of celery evenly on the surface of the mixture.
7. Place a layer of mozarella cheese on the cream of celery if you want the baked rice to be extra cheesy. Otherwise, skip this step.
8. Scoop the other half of the rice mixture into the casserole dish.
9. Again, spread the cream of celery evenly on the rice mixture.
10. Top with mozarella cheese evenly.
11. Pre-heat oven to 180degC.
12. Place the dish into the oven and bake at 180degC for 20min.
13. Serve hot!
    
    

Well, Alicia ate only some of the baked rice, and without the cheese for that matter. She's just not a "cheesy" gal, I guess. I had to top up her dinner with a mini banana muffin and her usual pan-fried cod... Oh well... I guess she needs time to accept new tastes and new food!

Cream of Mushroom Soup

This is how I made use of Brenda's recipe:

Cream of mushroom soup (serves 2)

Ingredients:

• 10 white button mushrooms (diced)
• 1/4 white onion (diced)
• the white part of 1 leek (diced)
• 1-2 cloves garlic (diced)
• 100ml whipping cream (I used President)
• 100ml milk (I used Paul's Whole Milk)
• unsalted butter (I used Lurpak)
• Chicken broth (just boil chicken bones and some cloves of garlic together for 2 hours)
• Cornflour

Method:

1. Melt the butter.


2. Fry the garlic till fragrant.
   
3. Add in the onion, leek and mushrooms.


4. Fry till the water from the mushrooms start to dry up then add in the chicken broth.


5. Simmer for 30minutes.


6. If you like the soup to be smooth rather than textured, you can use an immersion blender to blend the ingredients in the pot. Otherwise, leave it as it is.


7. Whisk in the cream and the milk.


8. Add water to the cornflour and add the mixture into the soup to thicken it. Add as much cornflour according to your own preference of thickness of soup.


9. Add your choice of herbs or a dash of ground black pepper to the soup if you like.


10. Serve hot together with garlic bread sticks.
    

Spaghetti with home-made sauce

Spaghetti with home-made sauce (Serves 2)

Ingredients:

• Spaghetti
• $2 worth of chicken fillet (cut into small chunks)
• 2 cans of Hunt's whole tomatoes
• garlic (diced)
• white onion (cut into small pieces)
• Organic raw brown sugar (I used 2.5 tablespoons)
• Basil
• 1-2 dashes ground black pepper
• Grated/Shredded cheese (Parmesan or Mozarella)

Seasoning (for chicken) - not too elaborate so as not to affect the taste of the sauce:

• chicken marinade
• dash of ground black pepper

Method

1. Set the spaghetti to cook.


2. Blend the whole tomatoes. I dun blend them too finely as I prefer having some tomato bits in my sauce. You can choose to blend the garlic and white onion together with the tomatoes if you do not like to bite into them.


3. Heat the oil and fry the garlic and white onion till fragrant and the white onion is quite limp.


4. Pour in the blended tomatoes.


5. Let the sauce simmer till a consistency you like - in general the longer you simmer it, the thicker the sauce would be.


6. Add basil to taste.


7. Add 1-2 dashes of ground black pepper


8. Add sugar to taste.


9. Once the sauce is of the preferred texture and taste, add in the chicken fillet to cook.


10. Once the chicken is cooked, pour the sauce over the cooked spaghetti and top with cheese.


11. Serve hot.

Garlic Bread Sticks

Garlic Bread Sticks (serves 2)

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of bread (I happened to have Sunshine's Milk Toast in my pantry)


• garlic (diced)


• unsalted butter (I used Lurpak)

Method:

1. Cut the bread into 1cm strips.


2. Melt the butter and saute the garlic in it (the smell is HEAVENLY). Do not brown the garlic as it becomes bitter.


3. Toss the bread strips in and coat them with the garlic butter.


4. Arrange the bread strips and toast them in the oven for about 4 minutes.


5. Leave them in the oven if you prefer totally crispy sticks (we LOVE this). If you prefer them to be soft, take them out immediately after 4 minutes. Toasting them for only 4 minutes prevents the garlic and bread from burning and yet I can still achieve really crispy garlic bread sticks!


6. Serve bread sticks with soup (or you can eat it on its own! - YUM!).

Baked chicken wings

This is definitely one of our all-time favourites! For that matter, I don't know anyone who doesn't like chicken wings! They are simply irresistable!

Anyway, I love these baked chicken wings not just because they taste marvellous. The main attraction about this dish is that it's super convenient to prepare, so on days that I feel lazy to whip up a feast, chicken wings are the way to go! Well, after yesterday's feast, today I'm taking a break from cooking the tedious stuff and here're the chicken wings we had for dinner!

Baked Chicken Wings

Ingredients:

• 10 medium-sized chicken wings (I don't like to use the huge ones as I feel that the meat is too thick and the marinade doesn't really get through all the way)

Seasoning (for chicken):

• chicken marinade


• sugar


• oyster sauce


• hua diao jiu


• sesame oil


• cornflour


• ground black pepper

Method:

1. Wash chicken wings thoroughly.


2. Marinate chicken with the seasoning (preferably overnight).


3. Preheat oven to 200degC.


4. Bake chicken wings at 200degC on 1 side for 15min.


5. Remove from oven and turn the chicken wings to bake on the other side.


6. Bake at 200degC for 15-20min.


7. Remove from oven and serve warm.


8. Do not leave the chicken wings in the oven too long after they are done as the heat will continue to cook the chicken wings and the meat may be tough as a result.

This is definitely a dish that full-time working moms should have on their list of dishes to cook as the chicken can be prepared the night before and just tossed into the oven the next day for dinner!

Spicy Aglio Olio

We had spicy aglio olio, Campbell's Cream of chicken and mushroom soup (hubby told me to take the easy way out on the last day of the year...) with garlic bread sticks on the side for dinner. Well, I realise that I have yet to put in the adult's version of aglio olio so here it is!

Preparing the spicy garlic oil and the prawns - still in the wok!

The spicy aglio olio's ready!

Spicy Aglio Olio with prawns (serves 2 adults + 1 toddler non-spicy version)

Ingredients:

• spaghetti
• 40g garlic (sliced finely and evenly)
• 30g dried chilli
• extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2kg prawns (The ones I used were going for $14/kg) - you can choose to use less prawns if you prefer and add other seafood like fish as well, something which I used to add but I didn't have it on hand)
• All-purpose Italian herbs (no salt added) - amt depending on preference
• Chilli Flakes - amt depending on preference
• Salt to taste

Method:

1. Soak dried chilli in hot water for awhile. Remove and set aside.
2. Marinate prawns with the herbs, chilli flakes, some of the dried chilli, a pinch of salt, olive oil and some garlic for at least 20min. Set aside.
3. Set the spaghetti to cook.
4. Pour in olive oil into the wok (be generous! I put about 4 swirls round the wok). Fry the garlic - you may wanna use a wooden spatula to press gently on them to help release more garlicky flavour as you fry them.
5. Once the oil has taken on the garlicky taste, dish out a bit of the garlic oil for the toddler portion and set aside (that's assuming the toddler doesn't take spicy food).
6. Pour the marinated prawns and the rest of the dried chilli into the wok.
7. Fry till prawns turn pink - which of course means that they're cooked. Don't overcook them...
8. Taste the oil to check if the spiciness of the dried chilli has been released into the oil. If not, press gently on them with the wooden spatula - that should help.
9. Toss the cooked spaghetti in the wok and add salt to taste.
10. Dish and serve alongside soup, garlic bread and salad (if you please).
11. Toss spaghetti in reserved garlic oil in the toddler's bowl. Add a pinch of salt if desired. Serve with veggies and cooked fish/meat.

Cream of Chicken Soup

I was intending to cook the cream of mushroom soup again yesterday because I still had some whipping cream left and it has to be used within 3 days of opening but my friend suggested that I should cook something else, like cream of chicken soup. And so I decided to take that suggestion up.

It was good too, like the cream of mushroom - though I think I prefer the mushroom soup I cooked the other day simply because I love the mushroomy taste. My hubby shares my sentiments. :)

Anyway, if you are health conscious or into calorie-counting, you can very well do without the cream and the milk and just go for a clear chicken soup (and add noodles or spaghetti for chicken noodle soup!).

Here's the recipe:

Cream of Chicken Soup (serves 2)

Ingredients:

• chicken meat (I used about $2 worth of chicken fillet)
• the white portion of 1 leek (diced)
• 1/3 of a large carrot (diced)
• 100ml milk
• 100ml whipping cream
• homemade chicken broth
• 1/4 white onion (diced)
• 1 clove garlic (diced)
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• cornflour
• salt to taste
• ground black pepper to taste (optional)

Seasoning (for chicken)

• chicken marinade
• ground black pepper

Method:

1. Marinate chicken for at least 30 minutes.
2. Dice garlic, onion, leek and carrot.
3. Steam marinated chicken. Retain gravy.
4. Dice/shred cooked chicken. Set aside.
5. Melt butter and fry garlic.
6. Add diced onion, leek and carrot.
7. Pour the chicken meat, chicken broth and the gravy from steaming in and simmer for 30minutes.
8. Whisk in milk and cream.
9. Add cornflour to thicken to desired consistency.
10. Add salt to taste.
11. Add a dash of pepper (if desired).

Sinfully Sumptuous

Food. Glorious food. Sinfully sumptuous.

I found the motivation to climb 73 storeys yesterday (twice up the 30 floors plus another 13 up to my unit) instead of my usual 60 before I cooked dinner. Must be the guilt that was building up even before I had dinner.

Here's the food that made my hubby sing my praises continuously!

Spaghetti with home-made sauce:

Home-made cream of mushroom soup with home-made garlic bread sticks:

A closer view!

While waiting for her porridge to be cooked, Alicia had some spaghetti and garlic bread sticks too! :D

To be honest, this is my maiden attempt at making home-made sauce (for adult consumption), creamy soup and garlic bread sticks. I came up with the recipe for the home-made spaghetti sauce and the garlic bread sticks on my own. The recipe for the mushroom soup is from Brenda's blog :) and you can view my adaptation of the recipe here.

Chicken chop with mixed veggies and yummy mashed potato!

Chicken chop with veggies and mashed potato

I had a sumptuous dinner tonight and decided that this was blogworthy (well, in my opinion at least =) ). Hubby and I simply relished the food tonight - hmm, not sure if it's the rainy weather that made this dish extra delightful or because it happens to be Christmas day, or perhaps today's food was really yummy... My hubby says that the food was really good today so I guess it's nothing to do with the weather or day. At least the person that I cooked for appreciates the food and really, that's what makes a chef's day (oh gosh, i just claimed to be a chef! oh well, chef of my kitchen...), isn't it?

Anyway, it's not really difficult to make... :)

Ingredients

• 4 chicken thighs (deboned and skin removed)


• 1 broccoli
  
• 1 small carrot


• 1 clove of garlic


• 2 potatoes


• 1 tablespoon heap of unsalted butter

Marinate chicken with (I use the method of guess-timation when I cook so figures stated here are all estimates):

• 1-2 tablespoons Lee Kum Kee Chicken Marinade
  
• 2 tsp sugar
  
• 2 tsp cornflour
  
• 1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce
  
• a dash of sesame oil
  
• 1/2-3/4 tablespoon crushed black peppercorns
  
• a dash of ground black pepper
  

Method:

Preparation:

• Clean chicken thighs and remove tendons and fats.
• Marinate the chicken thighs with the above seasonings and let sit for at least 30minutes. The longer you marinate it, the nicer they are.
  
• Cut broccoli into bite-size pieces (I used only the florets) and slice the carrot. Rinse.


• Mince garlic.
  
• Scrub potatoes clean and put them to boil till they are soft (poke a chopstick through and if it goes through easily and comes out of the potato with ease, you can remove them from the water).
  

Cook:


Vegetables

• Steam the broccoli and carrot for 5 minutes. You may wish to parboil them but I prefer to steam them as steaming retains more nutrients.
  
• Fry the garlic till fragrant then add in the veggies and briefly saute them and add in your favourite sauce. This is optional - you may serve the steamed veggies as they are for a healthier version.
  

Chicken

• Preheat the oven to 200degC.


• Bake the chicken thighs at 200degC for 15min - they'd be cooked thoroughly but still nice and tender.


• Reserve any extra marinade for mashed potatoes (optional).
  

Mashed potato

• Peel off the skin of the cooked potatoes (it should come off very easily) and remove any blemishes/ eyes. I remove the skin only at this point as I feel that there is minimal wastage of the potato using this method.


• Push the potatoes through a sieve to get a super fine texture (like that of baby's food) - do this if you love really smooth, melt-in-your-mouth type of mashed potato like I do! It's really worth the effort. Alternatively, if you have a potato masher, that'd work too. A word of caution on the use of a mixer for this purpose: the potatoes may be 'overworked' by the mixer and may end up gluey.


• Set aside the finely mashed potatoes.


• Melt the butter (do not burn!) and pour the hot butter over the mashed potatoes.


• Using the same saucepan, put the leftover marinade from the chicken to boil then pour over the mashed potatoes.


• Mix the mashed potatoes evenly with the melted butter and sauce.


• If you like it even creamier, you can add cream - but I think the butter's sinful enough and the mashed potato is already creamy enough with the amount of butter I mixed in!


• If you like, you may add herbs, black pepper or anything else you fancy to the mashed potato. We love it as it is though. :)

Well, from the photo of the chicken chop, you probably noticed that there was chicken chop gravy but I didn't mention how to make it. That's because this time round, I used the leftover sauce meant for the roast beef from Christmas eve dinner. But trust me, the delectable food today didn't hinge on the use of that sauce. When I do make a gravy that I really fancy (so far I'm still experimenting for my favourite), I'd definitely post it on my blog! Stay tuned! :D


For toddler's consumption:

• Cut chicken chop into small pieces for the tot. Serve with or without gravy - depending on how health-conscious you are.
• Cut the broccoli into small florets and carrot into small pieces.
• Cut down the use of butter in the mashed potato if your tot is 'weighty' :)