BEST Japanese Recipes & Gourmet♡

I used to study in an English boarding school and one of the most delightful times of the day is breakfast. Speaking of English breakfast, you might be thinking of full English breakfast you see in cafés with egg, sausage, bacon, baked beans, grilled tomatoes, hash browns and a piece of toast. Well, it wasn’t the case for me in the old days. The only time we could taste a full English breakfast was during Sunday when there is no chapel service. And technically it’s not breakfast but brunch since we have to wait until 11am. During weekdays, only one “main dish” is available – sausage or bacon or egg, to go with the baked beans. Except every Friday, we have another choice which I love – croissant ♡ So last Saturday, I suddenly really wanted English breakfast but there is no café that serve it around my area. At the end, my appetite beats my laziness and I decided to make my own. I always believe in “Little Happiness” that adds up to make my day. With a little twist, even a simple breakfast can do the trick. :) You can include any ingredients you want. The typical ones are sunny side up egg, scrambled egg, sausage, bacon, baked beans, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, hash browns, toast, etc. My choices of the day were:

☆  Smoked chicken sausage with parmesan cheese and spinach ☆  Green salad ☆  Baked beans ☆  Sunny side up egg ☆  Toast So what is the “Little Happiness” magic here? The answer lies within the piece of toast!

(1)   Before toasting the sliced bread, cut out a piece in the middle using a cookie mold (any shapes you like). My egg is medium to large size, so I chose a fairly big butterfly mold for my bread. So cute!  ♡ ♡ ♡

(2)   Put both the “frame” and the “butterfly” into the toaster. Toast for 3-4 minutes depending on how powerful your toaster is.

(3)   Pour a little bit of oil / butter into a fry pan.

(4)   Put the “frame” part of the toast onto the fry pan and immediately drop the egg into the hole of the toast.

(5)   Spoon some of the excess oil / butter on to the egg white to make sure it is evenly cooked .

(6)   Pour half a cup of water into the side of the pan and quickly cover it with a lid. This will help cooking the egg without burning the toast.

(7)   Once the egg white is cooked, you’re done.

(8)   The rest is easy. Pan fry the sausage until cooked.

(9)   Heat up the baked beans using microwave (600W, 1 minute 30 seconds)

(10)   Prepare your favourite salad dressing. I used olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

(11)   Lay everything nicely onto a pretty plate and it’s ready to serve! Lovely! (^o^)/

Heaven ♡♡♡

This is probably one of the simplest but sweetest breakfasts you can prepare for your loved ones.

Itadakimasu~! (Let’s eat!) 

I found an EASY PEASY bread roll recipe at my favourite Japanese recipe sharing platform Cookpad.

Since I’m a big fan of sweet potato and the colour purple (O…k), I decided to try out this recipe with purple sweet potato filling.

Remember the Tang Zhong method I introduced earlier? Something you add to your dough to make the bread fluffier? Well guess what, with this recipe you don’t even need Tang Zhong and you’ll result a soft and fluffy bun~! (Woohoo~~)

So here we go!

ORIGINAL RECIPE: http://cookpad.com/recipe/1584445

*Steps below follow the pictures in the link*

1.     If you have a bread maker it will make life much easier. Simply put 200g of bread flour, 4g of dry yeast, 3g of sea salt, 30g of white sugar, 30g of unsalted butter, 30g of egg, 100ml of water or milk (I prefer milk), half a tablespoon of black sesame into the break maker and start the dough making course. It will mix all the ingredients and finish up to primary fermentation for you. ***Pour in the wet ingredients first then the dry. Form a little mountain with the flour then make a hole at the top then pour the dry yeast into the hole. The point is DO NOT LET THE YEAST TOUCH THE WET INGREDIENTS***

Boil or steam your sweet potato until soften, remove the skin and crush it with a fork. While it is still hot, add 2 tablespoons of honey, 1-2 tablespoons of milk and 10g of unsalted butter to it then mix well.

2.     Take out your dough from the bread maker, place it onto a clean working surface then cover it with a wet towel. Leave it for 15 minutes (bench time).

Roll the dough using a rolling pin (cover it with flour to avoid it sticking to the dough) into a 30 x 30cm square shape. Spoon the sweet potato filling onto the dough.

3.     Roll the dough slowly to form a long swiss roll shape. Cut it into 8-10 pieces.

4.     Move them onto an oven tray (make sure you lay a piece of cooking paper beneath first!). Shape them nicely so they look roughly circular.

Secondary fermentation : Turn the oven to 40oC. Put a bowl of water beneath the oven tray to keep the dough moist. Leave it for around 30 minutes. The size of the dough should roughly double.

5.     Take out the tray then turn up the oven to 180 oC. If you want a glaze brown finishing, you can do an egg wash. That is brush egg using a pastry brush on the top of the dough. If you don't want it to be so brown like mine (T_T), brush it with only egg white.

Click here for a nice simple video showing how this is done.

6.     Bake for 12-15 minutes at 180 oC then it's ready to serve!

Yes yes it's a very Asian thing.

In the western countries, doctors will tell you to have oranges since it has lots of Vitamin C, which will boost your immune system. Yes that's true. But in the Asian countries, they'd tell you it's one of the worst ideas to eat oranges when you are coughing your lungs off because oranges are "cold and wet" in its nature, which would give you more sputum, hence more coughing.

But some genius which I have no idea who they are, found out a way to make both the westerners and Asians happy - EAT STEAMED ORANGES.

Technically speaking, steam the orange with a tea spoon of sea salt for 15-20 minutes. 

1/ Here’s your orange

2/ Chop its head off

3/ A teaspoon of sea salt on top

4/ Poke poke poke with a fork so the sea salt sinks into the orange

5/ Head back on

6/ Steam it for 15-20 minutes

7/ Bon appetit - your natural remedy ready to serve

This process will remove the "cold and wet" properties Asians are worried about and the poor patients can still benefit from the rich Vitamin C westerners (and most others) know that helps boosting their immune system. Oh but I have to confess - it doesn't taste heaven..

And by the way, don't bother asking me the scientific proof for this formula. It's just like any other Chinese med, simply cannot be explained but somehow works pretty damn well.

I just had one tonight myself since I'm coughing like crazy after catching a cold a few days ago. If you or your loved ones catch a cold next time and you don't want to take nasty chemical compounds, why not give this a try ;)

BAKE WITH AVOCADO!

Avocados give you almost 20 vitamins and minerals like Potassium (which is not in many food). In addition, over 75% of the fat in avocados is unsaturated (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats). What it does is that it will lower your BAD cholesterol and maintain GOOD cholesterol. (^O^)/

(Find out more benefits of avocados here)

Many people would say healthy food doesn't taste good and unhealthy food somehow always makes a better treat. Especially in baking, can you imagine how a butter cake would taste like without butter? The answer is: it won't be called butter cake anymore.

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Bad joke, my bad. *cough cough*

But why don't you at least try substituting half the amount of butter in your recipe for mashed avocado and see how THAT would taste like. Avocados don't only give you lower CALORIES, but also healthier FAT, FIBER and MINERALS that butter doesn't have. 

Well, note that avocados also high water content, which means it will make treats more moist and chewy. So once again, DON'T substitute all the butter, try half of the amount and I guarantee it will taste just as HEAVEN but more nutritious♡

HOHOHO  ♪~♪ (⌒o⌒) ♪~♪

Santa's laughter is just round the corner! It's time to get that turkey ready for the big dinner! And of course, some sweets are needed for a sweet Christmas. So I thought it would be nice to share some ideas of how to make Christmas pudding......no I'm kidding. We have enough of that for the past years. Why not try something EASY TO MAKE and PRESENTABLE to lighten up your dinner table. (≧∇≦)

Baking a whole cake can be troublesome. Not to mention decorating a cake nicely requires a lot of skills. But there are tricks to create your own masterpieces with simple recipes and decoration techniques. All you need, is 1 rectangular white plate, 3 shot glasses and a spoon. Then you're ready to rock. (￣▽￣)

Japanese LOVES neat and tidy presentation. And this is what I made 2 years ago for Christmas. The 3 desserts I chose to include are (from left to right) (1) Panna cotta with blueberry sauce, (2) Serradura (Portuguese dessert) and (3) Chocolate mousse, which are all relatively easy to make.

  (1) Panna cotta with blueberry sauce

Measure 6g of gelatin sheet and soak it in cold water until softened.

Heat up 500ml of milk (use full fat milk for a richer taste), add 50g of white sugar and gelatin sheet at low heat.

Remove from heat once the sugar and gelatin have melted completely.

Let it cool to room temperature.

Fill 2/3 of the shot glass with the milk mixture.

Cover the top with cling film then place in refrigerator until it solidified.

Prepare blueberry sauce. And this is the recipe I always use:

    8. Once the panna cotta has completely solidified (better leave it overnight just in case), you can add on that nice thick blueberry sauce on top, and decorate it by adding 2 extra fresh blueberries sinking half way into the sauce. ♪

(2) Serradura

Crush 6 Marie biscuits using a rolling pin (the finer the better).

Beat 200ml of whipping cream until it begins to get stiff.

Add 30g of condense milk and keep beating until stiff peaks form.

Spoon the cream into the shot glass.

Sprinkle the biscult crumbs on top.

Do it several layers.

Place it in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

  (3) Chocolate mousse

Quicker to watch how Stephanie Jaworski from JoyofBaking.com makes it! ヾ(*・ω・)ノ゜

Here's my little experiment to see which topping looks better. ^_^

What I made last Christmas:

Now that you know how to make the Strawberry tart and Panna cotta, why not give this a try as well? （*＾-＾*）

Click me to revise how to make the Strawberry tart! :)

Getting sick of the same old breakfast? Wanna kick off your morning with some instant energy AND feeling good for baking some cuties for your loved ones? Check this out!

Here is another cool recipe I found at Cookpad. I've modified it a little to make it EVEN BETTER!

If you have ever tried Japanese bread before, you will know how SOFT and FLUFFY they are. And the secret is by adding what the Japanese called "Yudane" and Chinese called "Tang Zhong".  It is basically a flour paste made by heating up some bread flour with water.

Here is a video showing you how Tang Zhong is made: 

Okay, making the Tang Zhong is not difficult. But how do you MODIFY an existing recipe into a Tang Zhong version? Here is the formula:

Weight of Tang Zhong needed = 20% of total weight of ingredients (both wet and dry)

Then out of the 20%, the ratio of FLOUR and WATER must be 1 : 5.

Don't like maths? Well, just follow my recipe! :D

ORIGINAL RECIPE: http://cookpad.com/recipe/967559    

      *TANG ZHONG*

       i. Mix 18g of flour to 90g of water in a pan and slowly heat it up until thick.

      ii. Let it cool down to room temperature then it's ready to be used.

*Steps below follow the pictures in the link*

       *DOUGH*

Microwave 150ml of milk and 20g of butter at 500W for 1 minute.

Add ingredients in the following order: 3g of dry yeast → A pinch of salt → 20g of sugar → 110g of steamed & peeled sweet potato. Stir as you add.

Add 240g of bread flour and Tang Zhong.

Stir until all powder roughly mixed in. Add flour if it gets too sticky!

Microwave the dough at 200W for 30 seconds.

Cut them into 8 equal pieces.

Cover them with cling film and let them ferment for around 30 minutes.

~~In the meanwhile, prepare the filing by mixing 200g of steamed & peeled sweet potato, 50ml of milk, 40g of sugar and 3 drops of vanilla essence. Beat until smooth.~~

Stuff in that rich filling you just made into each dough. Shape them as you like. 

Cover them with cling film or damp cloth again. Microwave at 200W for 30 seconds.

Leave it for 30 minutes for further fermentation.

Ready to bake! Sprinkle some black sesame on top.Sandwich them between 2 oven sheets and oven plates. This is how you get the flat surfaces!

Bake for 12 - 15 minutes at 190 C.

↘ Normal version ↘

↘ Tang Zhong version ↘

♡― Strawberry Tart―♡

Thinking of adding a special dish to your Christmas dinner table? How about an adorable looking strawberry tart?

Strawberry is one of the best fruits to go with dessert because the slight sour taste balances out the sugar in the goodies so you can enjoy your dessert until the very last bite. And of course, it looks just adorable!

Japanese makes neat and pretty dishes. I found most of my favourite recipes in this amazing website called Cookpad. But since it's all in Japanese, I decided to do a little translation, adding some of my own interpretation and advice for those who would like to try out some new ideas!

RECIPE: ♡CLICK ME♡

*Steps below follow the pictures in the link*                                      

Here we go!

COOKIE DOUGH

Bring butter (60g) and egg yolk (1) to room temperature. Mix flour (110g) and almond powder (30g) into one bowl.

Beat butter with a wipe until creamy, add white sugar (50g) and mix.

Sieve flour mix once, add into 2. and mix with spatula.

Press with your hand until everything comes together into one lump.

Wrap it with cling film and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

ALMOND CREAM

Beat butter (50g) with a wipe until cream, add white sugar (30g) and mix. Add egg (1) little by little.

Batter curdling problem: Have ever made a cake and when you add egg to the butter/sugar mix, the batter starts curdling? This is what you should beware of next time:

(i) Make sure the egg is at room temperature.

(ii) Add a little bit of the dry ingredients at intervals, it will avoid the batter splitting.

Add almond powder (50g) and mix. Then add jam (20g), red food colouring (few drops) and mix.

(Skip)

Preheat oven to 180 C. Coat the inner side of the mold with butter.

(Skip)

Take out the almond cream from refrigerator and start rolling the cookie dough.

Sandwich the dough with cling films and roll it to around 3mm thick.

(Skip)

(Skip)

Fit dough into mold.

Poke dough with a folk.

Here comes the almond cream and pretty strawberries cut in halves.

Bake at 180 C for around 45 minutes.

TOPPINGS

In the meanwhile, fry some almond slices (10~20g).

Add hot water (5ml) to jam (20g), mix well then spread it all over the tart. Decorate the almond slices as you like.

Finally, cover a thin layer of caster sugar on top using a sieve. DONE!