Month: March 2011

Bowl-licking good layered potatoes.

Layered potatoes – my favourite way of eating potatoes! It’s creamy, salty & peppery all at the same time. It is comfort food at its highest level. It makes me fat but do I look like I care?

If you’re going to get fat, the only legit way to do so is by eating loads of layered potatoes. And guess what, it’s mind-boggling easy to make them. Cooking skills, what cooking skills? As long as you can slice potatoes without slicing your fingers off, you’re ready to make layered potatoes.

All you need are two medium potatoes, one yellow onion, milk, whipping cream (optional), salt and pepper. Easy peasy!

# – 2 medium sized potatoes – peeled and sliced.

# – 1 onion – sliced.

# – Just in case you don’t know what sliced potatoes and onion look like…here you go.

# – Place a layer of sliced potatoes in your casserole dish.

# – Follow by a layer of sliced onions.

# – Season with salt and pepper evenly & generously. Then repeat – a layer of potatoes, a layer of onions, salt & pepper until the final layer ends with potatoes.

Now the next step is totally optional but I highly recommend it because it gives the dish an exceptional creaminess only good, fat, real whipping cream could give you. The inclusion of whipping cream though would make this dish a bit more expensive (for Malaysian) but if you like dairy like I do….make it happen!

# – Pour whipping cream all over it till just about submerging the bottom layers of potatoes/onions. Skip this step if you’re going for a healthier version.

# – Then, pour milk to fill up just below the uppermost layer.

# – Now stick it in the oven for 1 hour at 180 degrees celcius. You could turn it up to 200 degrees for the last 10 minutes to give it a nice browned top crust :D

It is totally normal for the top to bubble while in the oven. Don’t panic because it’s a good thing!

# – Tadaaaa!

# – The soft, creamy, peppery potatoes. O M G!!!

# – The creamy sauce is to die for!

And the only way to finish the dish is this:

This dish is perfect for parties because it’s so easy to make and you can just stick it in the oven and go about doing other things.

I implore you to try this. You will thank me. You will be eternally grateful to me.

The story of profitecakes.

I’m starting a new category under Homemade Recipes and it’s called…..

COOKING FAILURES.

Instead of being ashamed of my kitchen failures, I might as well document these in my blog so that:

1. I can always refer back to these posts to make sure I don’t repeat the same mistakes.
2. I can at least transform my dumbassness into blogging materials.
3. You can laugh at me.

And here, my very first documented cooking failure…

# – Ladies & gentlemen, this is a profiterole.

# – This is my profiterole.

Can you see the difference?? Here’s another look….

# – See the difference??

Yeap, beats me. I don’t know why my “profiteroles” were completely flat.

# – Was it me or the recipe? :(

Kim (a different Kim, not this Kim hehe. All Kims are awesome btw), whom by the way is extremely talented in the kitchen and even has her very own cookbook said I might have invented “profitecakes”.

# – How the name profitecake came about :D

Profitecakes…..hmmm, I do like the sound of it!

Despite being a failure, I do think I might make these not-profiteroles again. They are flat and definitely not hollow but guess what…they’re spongy & tasty too! And I found just the perfect way to eat them too!

So yeah, I’m posting a failed attempt that did not fail, hehe.

# – First of all, grease your baking tray.

# – Boil 25gm of butter and 75ml of water till well mixed.

# – Put about 8 full tablespoons of flour into the butter/water mixture….

# – and stir vigourously till…

# – it forms a sort of a ball (by the way if it doesn’t form into a ball, gradually add more flour and stir till it forms a ball). Let it cool down a bit.

# – After it has cooled down a bit, transfer the ball into a mixing bowl and crack an egg over it.

# – Beat it.

# – Till you get this consistency.

# – Well, you can spoon the mixture onto the baking tray but because I’m preppy like that, I transfered the mixture into a freezer bag (or sandwich bag if you like), nipped off the corner and piped the mixture onto the tray.

# – Then just stick it in the oven at 220 Celsius degree for 13 minutes.

# – Look at them bake!

# – When they’re done. Profitecakes! Beautiful! Ya?

So what is the perfect way to eat the profitecakes? How about with cream and honey!

# – Divide the profitecakes into half. Slather whipped cream and drizzle pure honey all over the first half. In fact you could just spread jam and get profitecake jam sandwiches!

# – Then, lay the other halves on top of the cream and honey and there you have it, profitecake cream & honey sandwiches!

Lovely, creamy and fluffy. This is definitely one of those rare times where I love my failure.

+ Update +

Finally! I’ve successfully made profiteroles. Check them out here :D

Sue.

My bf’s mom. I think of her as my mother from another brother. Ok, that came out really sick but you get the gist.

We have a great relationship. I don’t think many people get to say that about their partners’ mothers so yeah, I feel very lucky :) She’s down to earth, she makes the most awesome desserts and has the same sense of humour she gave my bf, only better.

My blogging during the past 6 weeks had been sporadic because I’ve had enjoyed hanging out with her far too much than to share my mundane daily details on this blog.

She’s taught me a lot about cooking and has bravely sampled my kitchen nightmare after kitchen nightmare after kitchen nightmare with a smile & a glint in her eye. Thank goodness she has an iron stomach!

It’s 5am now and in half hour we’ll be sending her to the airport – back to UK. How fast time passed :(

As a chinese, a big part of me feels bad about my bf’s mom living half way across the world from her son. We’ve told her about the possibility of participating in MM2H but living with our constant heat and the idea of leaving her friends are simply too daunting for her. We’ll probably continue to pester her about migrating but for now, we just got to get our asses together and attempt to visit her more regularly.

Cause obviously, we miss her more than she does us! Love you loads Susan.

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