Strawberry Wholemeal Bread Pudding

First off, I apologise for the bad photograph placements to come, I really don't know how to do them properly with the Blogger post composer! SOS! I think I will take a look at and edit with the html next time, when I feel like it.....

I had half a loaf of bread that was going to expire on the day that I made this (last week) and I didn't want to throw it away because it would be such a waste. I didn't want to keep it any longer either as experience tells me that it would become mouldy in a matter of days. So I decided to find simple recipes that made use of bread, and this was the simplest one that I found! The original recipe (click here for that recipe) was a blueberry bread pudding but the blueberries were so expensive at the Tesco Express downstairs (£2.50 for a little box of 250g!) that I bought strawberries instead (£2 for 300g).

Right, ingredients:

400g wholemeal bread (about half a large loaf; white bread is usually used but we eat wholemeal!)
300ml single cream (I used the cream cup/container as my measuring tool)
600ml milk (2 cups measured using the cream cup)
½ cup sugar (again, using the cup the cream came in, ½ of that cup)
5 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
¼ tsp cinnamon powder
300g strawberries
1 tbsp raw/brown sugar
1 tbsp butter (for coating of dish)
(there was supposed to be 1 tsp salt as well but I forgot about that so you can leave it in or out as you wish - it tasted perfectly fine without!)

For the topping:

4 tbsp raw/brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon powder

Gently heat the cream, milk, and sugar in a large pot (or whatever pot that can hold all these ingredients) until it almost boils. Remove from heat.

While it's heating, prepare the eggs and strawberries (don't have to prepare if you are using blueberries).
Whisk the eggs, vanilla, and cinnamon together (the cinnamon wouldn't actually dissolve).
Slowly pour the hot creamy milk mixture into the eggs mixture, little by little at first while constantly stirring so as to avoid raising the temperature of the eggs to abruptly and scrambling them.

Tear the bread into small pieces (or you can cut them into cubes so that it will absorb the moisture better) and add them to the egg and milk mixture.

Remove the greens from the strawberries and slice them then place them in a bowl. Add 1 tbsp of raw sugar to the strawberries, mix them together, and mash half of it, so that there's a mixture of mashed and whole slices of strawberries. Let it sit for a few minutes so that the strawberry juices will collect.

Add the strawberries into the pudding mixture and mix well.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Butter a large baking dish.

Pour the pudding mixture in.

Sprinkle the topping ingredients over the top - 4 tbsp of raw sugar and ½ tsp of cinnamon powder.

Cover it with aluminium foil and bake for 45 minutes. Have another tray under it to catch any leakage as the bread pudding will expand quite a bit (I think it expanded at least 2cm).

 


Remove the foil and bake for another 20 minutes.

At the end, put the pudding near the heating coil and turn on the top heating of the oven and let it heat the top for another minute or 2 to crisp up the top, be sure not to burn your pudding!

Let it sit for at least half an hour before serving!!

The pudding will actually deflate!
Serve with vanilla ice cream!

Couponing

I received some coupons from Tesco the day before and then remembered that I previously received a booklet last month. So I decided to save some money by couponing!

I paid £20 for groceries worth £31.01. So I saved about 33%? YAY!

Chicken and Mushroom Stroganoff

I was supposed to post this last week but I'm a procrastinator, so anyway, sometime last week (or was it 2 weeks ago?) the man decided he wants to cook and this is what he whipped up - chicken and mushroom stroganoff! It was really quite simple since he used the ready made cans of Heinz cream of mushroom soup.

So, ingredients the man used:

2 tbsp vegetable oil (I suppose olive oil would be fine too)
5 shallots
3 chicken thighs (about medium in size)
1 tray of small mushrooms (I think it was around 150g?)
2 cans of Heinz cream of mushroom soup
4 tbsp creme fraiche
whiskey (optional to taste; we didn't have brandy)
pepper to taste (meaning whatever amount you like)

And the recipe is at the back! Really love that they have recipes on the back of most food items now.

Of course before we start cooking, we have to prepare the ingredients.

Finely slice the shallots (or dice if you want) and also slice the mushrooms.

Then remove the bone and skin from the thighs (if you bought the ones with skin and bone on). I kept the bones to make some chicken soup and fried the skins!

After that, dice the chicken thighs.

Now we have all the ingredients ready. Heat up the olive oil in a wok or whatever big pan you have.
Add in the shallots and fry for 2 minutes, then add in the mushrooms and chicken. Brown it on high heat stirring occasionally (when we did this, the mushroom gave out a lot of juices so we had to wait awhile for the juices to evaporate and also not stir it often so that the chicken has a chance to brown). When the chicken is reasonably brown (ours wasn't really, but it doesn't really matter), lower the heat to medium and continue to cook the chicken for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to avoid burning.

Then, add in the 2 cans of Heinz cream of mushroom soup and simmer for 5 minutes!

Add 4 tbsp of creme fraiche and some whiskey to taste and simmer for another 10 minutes.

At the end, add some pepper to taste.
Serve with steamed rice and some vege!

Enjoy!

I actually found the leftovers more yummy when I had it 2 days later!

Simple pasta with hard boiled egg

My gastric was acting up on Sunday night. Not sure why but I suspect was the indigestion from lunch because I walked a lot after lunch, then I ate dinner too early and fast, and then I missed supper time. I was so tired that night (most likely from walking for more than half an hour in the heavy rain - I had a brolly but my boots weren't waterproof so they were soaking wet, and then not going home right after that) so I took an hour nap from 9 to 10pm, and when I woke up, my gastric was feeling weird. After an hour or two, it started hurting so I knew I had to eat something. I would usually just eat so plain crackers but there weren't any at home. So I decided to cook some spaghetti and eat it plain.

I boiled a small pot of water then added a small bunch of spaghetti (I think there was only like 15 to 20 sticks) and an egg in it. Boiled them for 10 minutes, as instructed by the directions for al dente spaghetti. Then I just took the spaghetti out of the water and into a bowl, and added just a little olive oil (really little - like a few drops) because I know my gastric can't handle too much oil when it's hurting. Added some salt and pepper as well so it wouldn't be so blend. I ran the hard boiled egg under cold water for 30 seconds and peeled it immediately. I found that it was always best to peel it right after removing it from boiling water as the shell would be separate from the egg (maybe due to the shell expanding because of the heat?). I usually peel by cracking the shell everywhere and it would come off easily as a large piece of shattered shell as the membrane is holding the shell together.

So tadah, that's my quick supper that took around 15 minutes to cook!

Heavy supper

This is what I just ate! Leftovers from a few days ago when the man decided to cook this chicken and mushroom stroganoff. It's yummier now than it was freshly cooked! Click here for the recipe!

I know it's a little late for such a heavy meal but I was afraid that my gastric would act up again like last night. I wouldn't be sleeping for a few hours yet anyway so I figured I should just eat something to fill my stomach. At least I cleared the fridge of some leftovers too!

Burmese Chicken Curry

Ok, my boyfriend is Burmese. He loves Burmese food and I actually do too (but it's quite oily and heavy on the tastebuds, other than that, I love it). So I have been trying for awhile now to cook the Burmese curry, it always turns out edible, but the taste is not the same as what he is used to at home. Yesterday, he found a recipe online that seems good and asked me to try it for dinner tonight. So I did and it turned out good! It was the first time that he had no complains about the dish. hehe. Click here to see where we got the recipe from! I did not follow the procedure on the original recipe strictly but the ingredients are the same (amounts might differ slightly), so here's what I did:

Ingredients:

3 chicken (medium, i think) thighs

1 small tomato

2 medium potatoes

1 medium onion

3 cloves of garlic

2cm ginger

1tsp tumeric

1tsp chili powder

½tbsp fish sauce

1tsp salt

2tbsp vegetable oil

700ml water (roughly)

Procedure:

Remove the extra skin on the chicken that's not attached to the meat (or just remove all skin if you want, just pull and it should come right off), any extra fats and the bone of each thigh (but don't throw them away!). You can also buy the ones that's already been de-boned and de-skinned. Then dice the chicken into cubes or chunks.

Dice the tomato into small bits. Mix (marinate) the chicken with the tomato. Tomato kind of acts like a meat tenderizer, this way, your meat will be tender! Then add ½tsp of salt and ½tsp tumeric powder to the marinate. The best way to marinate is with your hands so that everything is massaged into the chicken. Wear a glove (or use a small plastic bag) if you are mixing by hand as tumeric will stain your nails/flesh. If you think that there's not enough tumeric powder, just add more, it should stain the meat orange. In my photo, I think I could have added more tumeric powder.

Wash and peel the potatoes, and then dice them into roughly the same size as the chicken chunks. Peel the onions, ginger and garlic as well. Then, if you have mortar and pestle, pound them until you get a paste. Alternatively, use a food processor. Since I don't have a mortar and pestle, and I was too lazy to wash the blender after using it (it doesn't do a good job blending food into paste anyway), I just chopped them into as tiny as I could using my knife. It takes up a lot of time chopping up all the onions and garlic though.

Now we have all our ingredients prepared, we're ready to cook! Heat up the oil in a wok or pan on high heat. Add in the chicken skin and fats and fry them until the fats have melted and the skin is light brown and crispy. Then remove the chicken skin and set aside (it's yummy to eat with just salt and pepper, otherwise throw them in the bin).

Add in the onion-garlic-ginger paste that you have prepared and stir-fry it for 5 to 10 minutes until they start to brown and smell amazing. Now add in 1tsp of chili powder and the remaining ½tsp tumeric powder and mix well such that the paste is of an even colour. (I am sorry I often forget to take photos while I'm cooking so I don't have a photo of these previous few steps!)

Add in the chicken chunks and fry them for about 5 minutes, until the chicken has shrunk a little and feels firmer, but not entirely cooked.

Then add in the potatoes and mix. After that add in enough water to cover all the ingredients.

Season with the remaining ½tsp of salt and ½tbsp of fish sauce (you can leave the salt to the end and season according to your taste). Simmer for at least 30 minutes or until the chicken is tender to eat and the oil that was originally absorbed by the onion-garlic-ginger paste and chicken have surfaced. (The original recipe called it "oil return" - it should mean that when you see a layer of oil floating on the top, usually coloured). I covered the wok as I did not want the liquid to evaporate so quickly and this would take longer than 30 minutes - I took almost an hour. This is what you will see half way through, the liquid should have reduced by half. Stir occasionally to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom and burn.

You can simmer it uncovered (add more water when the liquid dries up before 30 minutes passed) and by the end of 30 minutes it should look like this:

Serve with plain rice, some vegetables and maybe some soup!