American Pancake

Its been a while that I haven't made hot cakes. I remember when we were young, we often have this for snack. It's very easy that I task my son to mix and whisk the batter. He loves to help me out at the kitchen. It's good for them to learn the basic cooking at young age.





American Pancakes

125 g plain flour
pinch of salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp caster sugar
1 L egg, beaten
200 ml milk
nut-free vegetable oil for frying

to serve
maple or golden syrup
handful of berries (optional)
lemon wedges (optional)

1 Sift the flour with the salt, baking powder, and sugar.

2 Make a well on the center, add the egg and half the milk and whisk (but do not over mix) to form a smooth, creamy batter. Stir in the remaining milk.

3 Heat a little oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. pour off the excess. Add enough batter to the pan to make a pancake about 5in in diameter, and cook until bubbles appear underneath, about 1-1/2 minutes. Flip over with a palette knife and quickly cook the other side. Slide it out onto a plate and keep warm while you cook the remainder. Heat the pan with a little more oil between each pancake. If you have a big pan, you could cook 2 - 3 pancake at a time.

4 Serve the pancakes hot with maple or golden syrup with a knob of butter, fruits or lemon wedges to squeeze over.

Tip:
The pancakes are best made fresh so keep them warm on a plate over a pan of gently simmering water while you cook the remainder.

Spinach Omelet

Super SPINACH - rich in iron. I have to prepare something with spinach to make my son eat it. He don't like spinach, maybe because of the after taste it left in your mouth. After all the tricks of telling him he will be like Popeye, to no avail no success. Since he likes egg in any way of cooking, I decided to make it into omelet. Oh what a success. He ate it, sandwich with the croissant.


Spinach Omelet

150 g spinach
2 eggs
salt n pepper to taste


Wilt the spinach; chop. Separate the eggs, whisk the whites until stiff. Add the yolks to the spinach, fold into the whites. Cook in a frying pan.

Lugaw, Congee or Porridge

This is a comfort food for me. For some this maybe a food for the sick. I have plain lugaw since I started my solid food. In Hokkien we call lugaw "Am beh". In my Father's home this is always serve as breakfast as in everyday, no miss. We have it with soysauce, salt, sugar, chokolate (like champorado,but its made of sweetrice), dried salted lapu-lapu, century egg,pork floss (only when somebody went to manila and bring it as pasalubong), soysauce with peanuts or tofu. Plain and simple lugaw. Now I'm married and with kids on my own, I carry on on cooking the lugaw for my children. I guess its because I grew up with eating and its just like a habbit. Do I make sense? hahaha.






Nowadays you can see a lot of snack house having different kinds of lugaw. Of course they are called with different names such as Goto, Arroz Caldo, and etc..... I plan to just make it plain lugaw for dinner but since my son requested something with chicken, I decided to just add it on my plain lugaw.



Basic Plain Porridge

2½ L (10 cups) water or stock
½ t salt
250g short-grain rice, washed and drained
250 ml water

1. Bring water and salt to the boil, then add rice, stirring gently until water returns to the boil. Lower heat and simmer, uncovered, for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. After 20 minutes add another 250 ml (1 cup) water. Towards the end of cooking, when most of the water has evaporated, stir frequently to avoid porridge sticking. Alternatively, cook everything in a rice cooker using the porridge setting.

2. When porridge is soft and mushy, remove from heat and serve.



Chicken Porridge

500 g chicken, steamed
2 tbsp light soy
2 tsp sesame oil
250 ml chicken stock
¼ tsp salt
1 portion hot basic porridge
2 spring onions, finely chopped
2 sprigs coriander leaves



1. Shred the chicken meat or chop into bite-sized pieces.

2. Combine the soy sauce and sesame oil, and sprinkle half over the chicken.

3. Heat the chicken stock and salt and mix with the Basic Porridge. Bring to the boil.

4. Stir in the remaining soy-sesame mixture and chopped chicken (if using shredded chicken, serve in a separate dish or piled on top of rice).

5. Serve immediately in small bowls and garnish with spring onions and coriander leaves.

6. Alternatively, serve the chopped chicken separately from the rice porridge.


Note: An alternative to steaming the chicken is to thinly slice raw chicken and cook it in the rice porridge until done.