X-mas Dinner Menu - East meet West

While the x-mas lunch is so popular in Aussie, I'd prefer to have x-mas dinner which's allowed more time to prepare the stuffs. Our X-mas 2008 celebration were simple and tasty with mostly home made meals plus some dinner breads from new Korean bakery shop and take away roasted duck from Chinese restaurant:) and special menu that I was looking forward to cook: Turkey breast stuffed with the recipe I found from Food Ideas magazines. So, what did I have for x-mas dinner? Basically, it's a combination of East and West menu, to fulfil every body's taste.
First, for the appetizer, we had dinner bread with butter and Peking Duck wrapped.
The main course was turkey breast stuffed served with Rosemary Roasted Potato, Salad Mix with Asian dressing sauce, Green bean with crispy crumbs, honey buttered dutch carrot and Garlic steam Lobster bough by my mother in law.
I like something sweets for the dessert. My first choice was black forest cake by Gordon Ramsay, with the recipe from Australian Good Food Magazines. As soon as our stomach were singing, then I forgot everything:), so some pictures were forgotten to be taken as well.

Here is the tiny crunchy dutch carrot with the picture taken before cooking:)

Turkey Breast stuffed wrapped with bacon.




Yummy Gordon Ramsay's Black forest cake recipe with my own decoration.

Stir Fry Rice Vermecelli a.k.a Beehon Goreng

We usually just have light, simple and quick lunch. Big and complete meals only served for dinner. Here is one of my favorite express lunch with some basic ingredients that I have in my pantry and fridge to create a such of simple and delicious meal.



Ingredients:
200 gr rice vermicelli, soaked with warm water
1 ea medium size carrot, julienned
2 stalk spring onion, chopped into 2 cm
2 cup shredded cabbage
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tbs dried shrimp, soaked with warm water
5-6 tbs Rice bran oil

Marinated:
1/2 part of chicken breast, thinly sliced
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
1 pinch of sugar
1 tsp garlic powder

Mixing sauce:
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 tsp chicken powder
4 tbs sweet soy sauce
2 tbs soy sauce

Spice paste:
3 cloves garlic
3 shallots
1/2 tsp whole white pepper
1/2 tsp salt

Directions:
Heat the wok with about 2 tbs rice bran oil. Make a scramble egg. Set aside. Add a bit oil, stir fry the chicken just until lightly brown (not over cooked as chicken breast will become hard), set a side. Add another 2-3 tbs oil, cook the spice paste until aromatic, add dried shrimp, carrot, cabbage, spring onion and stir fry for 1 minutes, then add the rice vermicelli, egg and chicken. Pour in the mixing sauce and continue stir fry and fold until well mixed. I used my giant wood chopstick to well combined. Top it with crispy fried shallot.

Wholemeal Blueberry Muffin

When we saw that blueberry was on sale on Aldi we rushed there quickly. As from our previous experiences, all the good values stuffs will sold out quickly. So far, I've watched out the supermarket catalogue every week, I never see blueberry sell at $1.99/box. We like blueberry much and don't want to miss that good opportunity. As soon as we arrived in Aldi, I grabbed 3 packs:). With plenty stock of blueberry in my fridge, my favorite baking is blueberry muffin, because it's fast, easy and yummy. I used to make muffin a lot with the basic recipe that I got in the packaging of healthy baker flour. I like this recipe and fit perfectly with our taste. Originally it recipe for raspberry crunch muffin with SR flour, but I just modified according to what I have in my pantry. This time, I want to experience of using SR wholemeal flour. Here is our favorite blueberry muffin:


Ingredients:
2 1/2 cup SR wholemeal flour
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
100 gr butter, melted
1 cup buttermilk
1 tbs vanilla extract
125gr fresh blueberry

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 180'C. Mix the flour and sugar in a bowl. In another bowl, whisk to combine egg, butter, buttermilk and vanilla. Add to flour mixture and stir until well combine. Gently stir in blueberry. Spoon the mixture to the muffin pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Chocolate Madeleines

Madeleines are a great company to enjoy our lazy afternoon tea. There are easy to make, with the simple ingredients and tools. I got this recipe from my cooking book collection by Donna Hay - Simple Essential Chocolate with a little bit adjusting in sugar contents cause we don't like too sweet cake plus I dusted with some icing sugar. These madeleines are turn pretty good and yummy.

Ingredients:

2 eggs

65 gr caster sugar

50 gr AP Flour

1 tsp Baking powder

2 tbs Cocoa powder

60 gr melted butter

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 180'C. Whisk egg and sugar in a medium size bowl. Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa over the egg mixture and fold through with the melted butter. Spoon the mixture into greased madeleines tins and bake for 10 minutes or until its set. Dusted with icing sugar.