Stir-fried rice

Fried rice is best from left over rice; so, when you have plain rice left over from Chinese take-outs, keep it in the fridge and use it to cook fried rice. In the case where you would like to try this using fresh rice, then before cooking store your cooked plain rice, uncovered, in the fridge for at least 2 hours to dry it out a little.

Chinese-style Fried rice
Ingredients
Day-old cooked Rice or freshly cooked, quantity according to portions you need
1 shallot or red onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced

1 cm ginger, minced or slice
1-2 tsp sesame seeds
mix vegetable, according to portions you need
few dashes of oyster sauce
few dashes of light soy sauce
white/black pepper , to taste

Method
1) Heat oil in a wok, put in minced onion and ginger. Cook until fragrant. Then add-in minced garlic & sesame seeds, cook until browned. Be careful not to burn garlic or it will taste bitter.
2) When aromatics are fragrant, add in mix vegetables. Stir-fry for a few minutes.
3) Add in rice, seasoning and mix everything well. Stir fry until rice is "jumping" in the wok because you want to achieve the "char" (not burn) flavour in the rice.
4) Serve hot as side dish or main.

Oat meal cookies without butter

When clearing the pantry, I found a jar of oat meal unused for quite some time. I thought using it to bake would be a nice change. Since I normally do not stock-up on butter, I needed a cookie recipe that doesn't include butter and what a great recipe I found on A Foodie Loves Company .!
I am pasting the whole recipe here. The only tweak I did was totally eliminate the  1 1/2 cups of sugar from the recipe and the result is definitely sweet enough for me .
No Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Adapted from: All Recipes

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder 3/4 tsp salt
cinnamon, to taste  1/2 to 1 cup white or brown sugar 1 c brown sugar
1 1/2 cup oats
3/4 cup canola oil
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 350  2. Stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, sugar, brown sugar, and oats.   3. Make a well in the center and add canola oil, eggs, and vanilla   4. Mix together with a spatula. Form the dough into balls and place on cookie sheet slightly flattening them out   5. Bake 10-12 minutes

Chinese style Angel Hair Pasta

Fried vermicelli rice noodles is comfort food for the Cantonese. We eat them in the morning, afternoon, night and sometimes even during parties as the noodles could be pair with endless flavours. Since it is harder to get vermicelli made of rice flour in my area, I have learned to substitute with angel hair pasta whenever I crave the Cantonese staple.

I will not be including a recipe in this post. What I do is I toast the pasta first either on a skillet or in the oven for maximum 10 mins. on medium heat or until pasta is browned. Next you simply cook the pasta per package's instructions, once cooked to al-dente, you toss it in Asian-inspired aromatics and you're good.

Oven baked Sesame meat balls

Oh, baking meat balls is so easy! Just pre-heat oven at 204°c/400°F/Gas mark 6 for at least 20 mins. before putting your meat balls in. Bake for 20-25 mins. and it is ready! No oil splatters or greasy kitchen to clean ;)
Sesame meat balls
Ingredients
500 ground pork, or your choice of ground meat , you can also mix 2 types of meat
garlic granule, to taste
1/2 tsp cumin,
1 tsp ground paprika
salt & pepper , to taste
1 egg
1 day-old bread
bread crumbs & sesame seed, for coating
Method :-
1) Soak stale bread in milk/stock/water for few minutes. Squeeze out the excess liquid after few minutes and tear into pieces
2) Put ground meat in mixing bowl, add cumin, garlic granule, ground paprika, salt, pepper, torn bread and crack in the egg. Use your hand to mix the ingredients until well combine. Let it rest for 30 mins.
3) While meat is resting, start to heat oven at 204°c/400°F/Gas mark 6 for 20  mins.
4) Shape meat mixture into balls, coat with bread crumbs+sesame seeds. Place on well-greased baking dish. Bake first for 10 mins. After 10 mins. take out from oven , flip over the meat balls and bake for another 10-15 mins., until meat is fully cooked.

Creamy Salad { Francia Saláta }

Hungarian "Francia Saláta", literally translates to "French Salad", is often served in new year's eve party platter. The origin of this salad is unknown to me, but this year I thought why not make my own instead of serving the store bought one.
Creamy Salad {Francia Saláta}
source : No salty
Ingredients (I have halved from the original)
150gm frozen green peas
100gm carrots, diced
1 apple, diced
1-2 pcs of gherkins, diced
185ml sour cream
1 Tbsp mayonnaise
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp sugar, or to taste
1 tsp salt, or to taste
1/2 tsp lemon juice
Method
1) Cook diced carrots in cold salted water. When carrots are almost done (al-dente) add in frozen green peas, when both are ready, drained and set it aside to cool
2) When carrots and peas are cooled, start the dressing by mixing mayonnaise, mustard, sugar, salt and lemon juice.
3) Finally mix in carrots, peas, diced apple and gherkins.
4) Keep in the fridge until time to serve. You can serve this as a side to any main meals or cold cuts.

Ischler Cookies

For this Christmas, I've written Ischler cookies in my baking list, thinking that I would use the recipe featured here before but then I came across this one from The Eccentric Cook . Hers look absolutely scrumptious, so I thought "why not give it a try?".
These turned out crumbly and nutty, just the way I (or we) like it! Since these cookies are better the longer you keep them, you could bake them few days before serving. Just keep in an air-tight container and store in a cool place.
Ischler Cookies
makes about 15 cookie sandwiches (or depending on the cutter you used)
source : http://theeccentriccook.blogspot.hu/2012/12/ischler-cookies.html

Ingredients

200 grams flour

100 grams ground walnut or almond meal

1/2 tsp salt

150 grams butter

50 grams sugar

1 lemon's zest

1 Tbsp rum

for the filling

fruit preserve of your choice

for the chocolate coat

180 grams chocolate

2 Tbsp oil

Process

For the linzer cookie dough, mix the flour, ground walnut, salt and sugar together. Cut the butter in it. Add in the lemon zest and the rum. You can use an electric mixer but I found that after a while you should switch to working with your hands. The dough will be very crumbly but after 5 minutes it will come together. Form the dough into a ball and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Dust a bread board or your counter with flour and roll the dough into about 1/2 cm. I didn't really know how thick 1/2 cm is in a dough form so I just trusted my eyes. It should look like this:

The dough will be very sticky so it will be a bit tricky to roll it out but sprinkle some flour on it and you'll be fine. It's essential for the dough to be this sticky, that's why it will have the perfect crumble to it. 

Preheat your oven to 170C or 350F.

Cut rounds in the dough with a cutter. My cutter was too small so I just used a glass :)

Once you cut all the holes, collect the remaining dough and roll it out again and cut the rounds the same way.

Place the cookies on a baking sheet and bake them for 12-13 minutes. They should have a very light color, don't wait until they brown because it will dry the cookies.

Chill the cookies for 10 minutes. Then take one cookie and spread a fruit preserve of your choice on it lightly.

Press the other side of the cookie on the preserve and repeat the same method with all the other cookies.

When you're done, melt the chocolate and oil over boiling water. Place the cookies on a cooling rack. Put a baking sheet or foil under it. Then pour the chocolate over the cookies.

The chocolate will need time to harden so it's advised not to touch for a couple of hours. Decorate the cookies with an almond or walnut on top! The cookies taste better after time so if you make this for a gathering, make it 1 day prior! 

Hungarian Fish Soup

Hungarian fish soup is a must during Christmas time; however, we love our fish soup, so I try to cook it as often as possible. The recipe that I am about to share might not be from scratch as most Hungarian would cook it, but this is how my late father-in-law did his. And this version is so easy that it is ready in just an hour!

Hungarian Fish Soup
Serves : 4-5 pax

Ingredients
1 whole carp, filleted or 3 frozen fillets of white wish (defrosted)
1 medium-size Onion, sliced or minced
1 medium-size tomato, quartered
1 Hungarian green pepper, halved
3 tsp of smoked paprika powder (spicy or sweet) - you can also mix, eg. 1/3 sweet + 2/3 spicy
1 ltr of water
fish paste concentrate,
fish stock cubes, to taste

To serve : Match stick pasta

Method
1) Sauté onion with some oil in a pot. When onion is soften, remove from heat and put in the smoked paprika. Stir it a bit , add a little cold water and return it to the stove, let it come to a boil.
2) When the liquid boils, you can add in the green pepper,  tomtato and salt. Cook until pepper and tomato are almost done. Then add in fish paste and fish stock cube and simmer further for 20 mins.
3) Add in the fish fillets and cook until done. Do not over cook fish.
4) Serve very hot with match stick pasta.

If you wish to try cooking the soup from scratch, this link may be helpful.