Tag: slowcarb recipe

Delicious no-cook chinese marinated cucumbers.

I decided to make this after paying about RM5 for a puny plate of chopped 1/2 a cucumber at a chinese restaurant. Well, with RM5 I could get about 10 quality Japanese cucumbers (kyuri).

I can’t believe people (myself included) are actually paying RM5 for something that doesn’t even need cooking. I’m starting to sound like a major tight fisted housewife….but that’s exactly who I am!

This recipe is entirely my own conception, based on how I like to eat it. The marinade is savoury with just a tad of tartness from the Worcestershire sauce and kick from the chillies. I guess you can use ordinary cucumbers (with the seeds removed) but for best results, do use the Japanese sort as they’re more crunchy.

    Ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoon of sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon of light soya sauce
  • 1/2 tablespoon of Chinese rice wine
  • 1 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 red chilli, seeded and finely chopped
  • 1 – 2 Japanese cucumbers, chopped

# – First of all, cut the cucumbers into the shapes you want. By the way, you know how sometimes cucumbers can taste really bitter? There’s this trick that a senior in high school taught me….cut off the end of a cucumber and then rub the surface with it till tiny bubbles form around it, like this….

And you won’t have bitter cucumbers anymore. Honestly, I have no scientific or logical explanation for it, but it works!

# – I soaked the cucumbers in iced water for 10 minutes to crispen them up. Set aside. Honestly I don’t know if this works but psychologically I feel that it does :D So feel free to omit this step.

# – In a bowl, mix the sesame oil, light soya sauce, Chinese rice wine, Worcestershire sauce and chillies.

# – Throw the drained cucumbers into the mixture. Mix. Cover with cling wrap and stick it in the fridge to chill for a minimum of 2 hours. Don’t put in the fridge uncovered as this will dry out the cucumbers.

You could even marinade them in a freezer bag so that all the cucumbers could absorb the marinade more evenly and thoroughly.

# – Serve as an appetiser or even as a vegetable dish of its own to go with rice.

Very tasty, very refreshing and best of all….very accommodating to my purse ;)

Fresh and crunchy salsa anytime, anyday.

This salsa recipe is so simple and delicious that I could just eat it on its own, like a salad :D It’s very good with fajitas or eaten as bruschettas. There’s no fancing cooking technique involved, not even cooking itself. All you need is a reliable knife to chop up all the vegetables!

    The ingredients:

  • 5 medium sized tomatoes, seeded and chopped
  • 80-100 grams of coriander, roughly chopped
  • 2 medium sized red onions, finely chopped
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 3/4 tablespoon of coarse salt

# – The fresh ingredients.

# – Throw the roughly chopped coriander into a mixing bowl.

# – Then throw in the tomatoes.

# – Next in, the finely chopped red onions.

# – Sprinkle the coarse salt all over. Don’t be too heavy handed with salt, do taste as you go :)

# – And top it all off with the juice of 1 lemon.

# – Lastly, mix it all up!! Gorgeous, gorgeous colours!

# – Put in on a fajita….

# – Or even eat it as a salad on the side.

Now, this is a truly healthy salad and that’s why, I’m filing it under “Vegetarian” ;) It’s a surprise how something so simple and healthy can taste so gorgeous!

Kimberly’s Kickass Chicken Liver Pate.

We had a potluck at Suan‘s house on Christmas Eve last year. I flirted with the idea of roasting a duck for the potluck but backed out later because I’m a wuss. In the end, I decided to roast a 2kg chicken and….make chicken liver pate. Will blog about the roast chicken later, for today I’m just going to blog about the chicken liver pate.

First of all, let me tell you the story on how I got my chicken livers. As I don’t have much experience marketing at an actual wet market (I know I got to learn :P) I requested help from my Mom. I knew it costs almost nothing for chicken livers so I casually told her to grab me RM2 worth. How many livers can RM2 get you, right?

Errr apparently RM2 worth of chicken livers can feed about 30 people. I don’t know whether it’s a standard thing or my mom’s regular supplier was just being generous but yeah, in the end I threw away about 70% of all the livers mom had gotten me. Wasteful yeah but I had no idea what to do with them and I just couldn’t bear with the idea of storing stinky, smelly, gloopy livers in my brand new fridge :P

So anyway………….

# – Here are the stuff that you’d need – A bottle of vodka, butter, basil leaves, 5-7 pieces of cleaned chicken livers and black pepper. Okay and salt too!

If you’re wondering what are those pixelated stuff, they are ingredients to make onion marmalade which goes very well with chicken liver pate but which I won’t be blogging about yet because I don’t have pictures of the cooking process FML :P

# – First, melt a chunk of butter. You can never have too much butter…

# – When it’s fully melted, throw in 3 or 4 pieces of basil leaves and cook till very slightly wilted.

# – Next, throw in the chicken livers.

# – You can keep or omit this step but I sprinkled in some paprika for a mild kick. You can use chili powder or cayenne for that Asian wow factor.

WTF am I babbling about asian wow factor bla bla bla bla.

# – Next, a dash of black pepper. Remember to put a dash of salt too!

# – And lastly, the all important step of pouring vodka in. At this point please give your common sense a workout and pour enough to make sure when the livers are blended it’ll become a paste and not soup….

From now on you can probably take the saucepan off the stove but if you don’t like your lives undercooked, then by all means cook them up longer.

# – You may leave them to cool for a while before throwing them into the blender too but since I’m lazy and sloppy, I blended them almost immediately :P Pour entire content of saucepan into blender ya.

# – Blend, blend, blend. Blend into a creamy texture. Make sure no chunks are left behind. If it looked too dry, pour in more vodka hehe.

# – Pour chicken liver paste into a container. Smoothen the top, clean the sides of the containers bla bla bla.

# – Now….melt a chunk of butter again.

# – Pour the melted butter on top of the liver paste. And put a sprig of dill for a classy look wahahaha.

Stick into fridge for about 6 hours minimum or till butter hardens.

# – Slather on baguette or (vegetable crisps for slow carb version). Eat. Swoon.

If you’ve got port wine to go with, even better!