Fried Chicken with Salted Egg Sauce ‘Eggs Benedict’

May 20, 2018 amcarmenLeave a comment

Hello Everyone! I hope everyone has had a good week, and yes I am aware it is only a Sunday night, but I want to be able to share with you guys all the delicious dishes that I’ve whipped up in for the month of May. I do plan out all my recipes so that I know whether to cook 4 or 5 dishes depending how many Wednesdays there are in a month. Because I missed a post last month which is why everything got pushed forward by a week. So I plan to wrap up Eggs Benny month by posting on an extra day so that you’ll get to see everything I prepared for you guys!

Tonight I’ll be tackling a classic combination of fried chicken and waffles with a hit of a Bruneian favourite twist to it. Over the recent year there has been a craze to add salted egg sauce to pretty much every dish possible – salted egg sauce carbonara, salted egg sauce fried chicken, salted egg sauce nasi lemak, salted egg sauce kolo mee, and the list goes on as imaginable! Oh, and let’s not forget those highly overrated and overpriced Salted Egg Potato Chips from Irvins! At the hype of its time, I caved into these overpriced potato chips because they were indeed, as marketed, dangerously addictive. Thank goodness I’ve fallen out of the craze of it all – or have I really? I’m sure when the craving kicks in, I’ll be in trouble *cheeky grin*

The recipe I’ll be sharing with you guys is not something new, in Brunei that is – I guess? Please do share in the comments below if you’ve seen this dish, or something similar, outside of Brunei. Basically, the waffles substitute the classic English muffin while a salted duck egg sauce is made instead of a traditional hollandaise sauce that makes an Eggs Benny. The sweetness of the Belgian waffles pair perfectly with a savoury spicy crispy fried chicken and salty egg sauce – definitely an explosion of taste and texture in your mouth, exciting your palette. Sweet. Spice. Salty. Boom!

PREP TIME 1 HOUR* | COOKING TIME 30 MINS | SERVES 3

*Includes the 1 hour marinating time for the chicken

INGREDIENTS

For the tom yum fried chicken

3 pcs boneless whole leg chicken
8 tbsp water
6 tbsp cornflour
6 tbsp plain flour
3 tsp sesame oil
1 & 1/2 tsp salt
1-2 tsp homemade tom yum paste
Dash of ground black pepper

For the salted duck egg sauce

3 salted duck egg yolks, steamed and smashed
2 sprigs fresh curry leaves (dried leaves can be used as well if not available)
3-4 red bird’s eye chillies, chopped
1 can (350ml) evaporated milk

6 belgian waffles**
3 large free range eggs
Micro-herbs, to garnish

**You can either make your own waffles or buy them in the store – I opted for the latter just because I don’t have a waffle maker to be able to make them myself.

METHOD

Tom Yum Fried Chicken: Combine all the marinade ingredients in a medium-sided bowl and mix the chicken around until well coated. Cover the bowl with cling wrap and leave to marinate for at least an hour to let all the tom yum flavours infuse into the chicken.
Preheat oven to 180C. Heat up oil in a large frying pan and shallow fry the chicken until skin is crispy and golden (about 5-6 minutes per side).
Remove from the heat and place on a baking tray lined with aluminium foil. Place the wings in the oven for a further 8-10 minutes to finish off in the oven.
Salted Duck Egg Sauce: While your chicken is on the go, sauté the egg yolks, curry leaves and half of bird’s eye chillies until fragrant. Reserve some of the fried curry leaves to garnish your dish later. Add the evaporated milk and bring to a boil until the sauce has thickened.
Poached Eggs: Bring small saucepan of water to the boil over medium-high heat, then reduce the heat to low-medium – the water should be just simmering. Add in the vinegar and stir. Crack one egg into a small bowl and quickly, but gently pour it into the water. Repeat with the other egg. A really soft poached egg should take around 2 minutes, but if you want it a bit more firm, it will take about 4 minutes. To check if they’re cooked right, carefully remove the egg from the pan with a slotted spoon and give the yolk a gentle push (you can tell just by your instincts if it is under or over – or perfect)!
Assembly: Top the waffles with the tom yum fried chicken followed by the poached egg. Drizzle a generous amount of salted duck egg sauce and garnish with the remaining chopped chillies, fried curry leaves, and micro-herbs. Serve and enjoy!

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Butter Prawns with Egg Floss

September 17, 2015January 16, 2019 amcarmenLeave a comment

Hello Everyone! Today’s recipe is one of my favourite dishes that I simply cannot resist whenever I see it available on the menu of any restaurant that I go to. To be perfectly honest, it’s not about the prawns (or sometimes chicken) that makes me crave for this dish, but for the yummy egg floss that accompanies the protein. The egg floss is buttery, crispy, and a touch salty. I’m not quite sure as to how to explain it’s flavour besides what I have just said because when you think about it, it’s just fried in butter and oil, and topped over the protein that’s stir-fried in all the other flavours. Nonetheless, I love it.

I’ve not seen this dish in Asian restaurants around Sydney, and I don’t particularly know why since it’s quite popular in Chinese restaurants here. I guess that sort of explains my cravings for them whenever I’m back in Brunei. Since I have a confused and inexplicable love for this dish, I thought I’d give it a go and make it at home. I’ve never made this dish before, and to be honest, I can’t get the egg floss as thin and as crispy without browning them too much, as those in the restaurants, but I think I’ve pretty much nailed the dish in terms of its taste.

PREP TIME 10 MINS | COOKING TIME 15 MINS | SERVES 4

INGREDIENTS

500g prawns, shelled and deveined
50g unsalted butter
3 egg yolks, beaten
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
2-3 sprigs curry leaves
2 red bird’s eye chillies, sliced
3 tbsp vegetable oil
Ground salt and black pepper to taste

METHOD

Heat the butter and oil in a medium-sized frying pan or wok over medium-high. Season the beaten egg yolks with a bit of salt.
Continuously swirl the oil quickly in one direction and then add the beaten egg yolks in slowly from a height. Continue swirling until the oil is foamy and the egg is crispy, about 3-4 minutes. Remove the heat and transfer the egg floss to a sieve to drain out any excess oils. Set aside.
Heat a bit more oil in the same frying pan and sauté the chillies, curry leaves, and garlic together until fragrant.
Add in the prawns and season with a bit of ground salt and black pepper. Toss and leave to cook, about 6-8 minutes.
Once the prawns are cooked through, transfer to a serving dish and top with the egg floss.
Serve immediately with steamed rice and enjoy!

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Tinolang Manok (Chicken & Green Papaya Soup)

July 7, 2015January 14, 2019 amcarmen3 Comments

Hello Everyone! My goodness has it been cold these past few days/nights! Today I didn’t particularly do much besides staying indoors, away from the cold and rain, and cooking up a nice pot of Chicken Soup to stay warm. I made Arroz Caldo, a Filipino chicken porridge, over the weekend seeing as I thought I’d be doing down with a cold, but I was mighty fine the next day. I had some leftover chicken and ginger from that, and so I decided to make chicken soup with it! All I really needed was green papaya and malungay or chilli leaves. Also, perfect as it’s winter warmer month on my blog, and I actually didn’t have chicken soup pre-planned into the month.

Growing up, my mom always made this dish, even though we live in the tropics where we have hot weather all year round, it was still a perfect dish for a rainy day. We usually skip the malunggay or chilli leaves altogether since its not commonly found in the markets, unless you grow your own, and we usually use chayote (or known as chokos here in Australia, which by the way I never knew until I arrived here) instead of green papaya; no real reason for the substitute. My mom also adds glass noodles to the soup rather than pairing the soup with rice (but I still add the glass noodles and have a serving of rice anyway).

I think I may have at one point in my life tried this chicken soup with green papaya, and I honestly could not tell the difference in taste, until today that is. I’m not sure if it’s the particular papaya that I picked or the way I prepared it, or whatever it may be, it did not leave a lovely taste to my buds. It just tasted wrong and I can’t pinpoint what it tasted like. Probably just raw papaya to me, but I believe that I’ve cooked it long enough because it was soft, and I don’t think I needed to do anything with it besides peeling and removing the seeds to prepare it. After this dish of mine, I definitely prefer using chayote/choko with my chicken soup. Anyway, I also tried to look for malunggay and chilli leaves in the markets. No one knew what malunggay leaves were and a lady told me that “no one here sells chilli leaves”. I stopped and thought for a while, and then I saw a sign that said that they sell curry leaves. I thought to myself if I could use curry leaves instead of chilli leaves, and so I bought a small bag of fresh curry leaves. It was a wise decision in my opinion! The curry leaves made the soup even more fragrant, which I didn’t think was possible seeing as the chicken soup alone without it was already fragrant enough. It also added a subtle flavour to the soup which I can’t quite describe. Basically, if you’ve had the chance to smell curry leaves, that smell is the flavour. I don’t know if I made any sense there but that’s what I feel/taste.

PREP TIME 10 MINS | COOKING TIME 25 MINS | SERVES 4

INGREDIENTS

1kg chicken wingettes, washed and cleaned
1.5L water
1/2 small-sized green papaya, peeled, seeds removed and cut into wedges
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 brown onion, diced
Thumb-sized ginger, julienned
Small bunch curry leaves
Ground salt and black pepper, to taste

METHOD

Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high. Add the julienned ginger strips and sauté until fragrant. Add in the garlic together with the curry leaves and continue sautéing until golden brown. Finally, add in the onions and cook until they are soft and translucent.
Add in the chicken wingettes together with a bit of salt and pepper. Give it a good mix, then cover the pot and let it cook for about 8-10 minutes.
Add in the water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add in the papaya wedges and cook for a further 15 minutes or until the papayas are tender. Taste and if needed, season a bit more to your liking.
Turn the heat off and serve immediately with steamed rice. Enjoy!

The secret to making a good chicken tinola is to simmer the chicken for a long period of time. This enables the flavours of the chicken to infuse into the soup and also tenderises the chicken. I’d say cook it between 45-60 minutes, but 20 minutes cooking time is good enough if time is not on your side. Both has worked out fine for me.

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Prawns with Salted Duck Egg Sauce

May 27, 2014December 28, 2018 amcarmen5 Comments

Hello everyone! Apologies for the lack of posts over the week. I assure you all that I am still eating well and I have not gone back to consuming instant noodles 🙂 The lack of posts is usually because I’ve already uploaded the recipe for it, or that what I’ve made is just a simple lunch/dinner that wasn’t photo-ready, and even also because I use natural lighting for all my photos, so when the sun is down, no photo = no post. And yes, my friends can vouch for the existence of many other photos that I have been accumulating over the past 3 years from when I first started to cook. The reason why I don’t want to use old photos is because some of them are out of focus, not presented well, or not the correct lighting, and basically…all over the place? I’m not too sure how to word the last one, but what I’m trying to say is that I’ve kind of adapted to the whole white background scene for my photographs, and I want to keep it consistently like that (unless of course for food that is not my own). I’m a little bit OCD so I like all my photographs to have the same style…for now.

Anyway, enough of the rant, about my apparent perfectionism, today I decided to make one of my favourite dishes, Prawn with Salted Duck Egg Sauce. If you read my previous post last week, I posted a recipe similar to this but with fried chicken instead. I also mentioned that I first tried this dish with prawns but have never actually made it for myself with prawns. So last week Saturday when I went to Paddy’s Market with Lina and Marissa, I bought myself some fresh tiger prawns to make this dish.

I must admit, I love prawns, but I barely cook with it only because I always have this tendency to overcook them. I always end up with dry and tough prawns which is a shame because, when cooked right, they’re just melt in your mouth delicious. I can never cook them to perfection as well because I’m always scared of them actually being undercooked. I am proud to say though that I was able to cook these prawns to melt-in-the-mouth perfection. I have never been happier. Plump, firm but tender, succulent, fresh prawns. Truly foodgasmic. Also a quick and simple dish that requires probably less than 10 minutes to cook. The only down side is that prawns are never cheap. Here at least that is…the ones I used here were almost $30 per kilo while I know I can get even fresher prawns back home for less than $10 per kilo.

PREP TIME 5 MINS | COOKING TIME 20-25 MINS | SERVES 2-3

INGREDIENTS

400g fresh tiger prawns, shelled and deveined (to save time, you can buy prawns that have already been shelled and deveined)
2 salted duck egg yolks, steamed and smashed
2 sprigs fresh curry leaves (dried leaves can be used as well if not available)
2 red bird’s eye chillies, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 can (350ml) evaporated milk
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Ground salt and pepper

METHOD

Heat oil in a large frying pan over high heat. Sauté the garlic, curry leaves and half of bird’s eye chillies until fragrant. Stir in the egg yolks until they start to foam. Add the evaporated milk and bring to a boil until the sauce has slightly thickened. *This recipe calls for 350ml of evaporated milk, if you want a drier dish, then use less milk
Season the prawns with salt and pepper and then add to the sauce mixture. Turn the heat down to medium and let the prawns simmer for 3-4 minutes. Once the prawns have turned pink, remove from the heat and garnish with remaining chillies. Serve immediately with steamed rice.