Raisin Loaf

My brother-in-law and his daughter went for a holiday in China and visited a vineyard where the grower had sun dried his grapes to form raisins. They gifted me with a packet of raisins resulting in me baking a raisin loaf for my breakfast. The loaf was soft and slightly sweet. The raisins were crunchy when I bit into them.  

Ingredients:

• 200 ml warm milk
• 200 ml warm water
• 50 g sugar
• 8 g yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 100 ml melted butter (I use salted butter. Add 1 tsp salt if you are using unsalted.)
• 700 g bread flour
• 100 g raisins

Instructions:

• Activate the yeast:

• Add warm milk to a bowl.
• Add warm water to the bowl
• Add sugar to the bowl.
• Add instant yeast to the bowl.
• Stir and wait for 5-10 minutes for bubbles to be formed.

• Once the yeast has been activated, add salt, egg, melted butter and bread flour to the bowl.

• Knead till window pane is achieved.

• Grease a clean bowl and transfer the dough to it. Cover the bowl with a cling wrap.

• Once the dough has doubled in size, transfer it to your counter top.

• Punch down the dough to degas.

• Form the dough into a ball.

• Roll out into a rectangular dough.

• Spread raisins evenly across the dough.

• Roll up the dough and divide into 3 parts of equal weight.

• Take each part and roll into a long roll.

• Braid the 3 long rolls.

• Place the braided dough into a 9 inch x 4 inch x 4 inch pan which has been greased and lined with parchment paper.

• Cover the pan and let the dough to  double in size.

• Meanwhile pre-heat your oven to 180 deg C.

• Once the dough has doubled in size, egg wash them.

• Bake them for 30 minutes. (Tent your pan with aluminium foil if your oven is too hot and the top of the loaf is turning dark too soon.)

• When baked, remove the loaf from the pan immediately and transfer it to a metal rack to let it cool down. Only then you may slice the loaf.

• Enjoy.

Green Onion Chinese Pancake

 

Green Onion Chinese Pancake is a savoury unleavened flatbread. It is flaky on the outside and soft on the inside. There are 2 ways to obtained the flaky layers - rolling and fold the dough (oiling each fold) to form many layers or rolling the dough, shaping it into circles and flattening it. I have used the second method to make the pancake. To make the dough, we only need flour, water, oil and salt. For the fillings, we need green onion, pepper, salt and a little bit of flour. This pancake is very versatile; it can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It can be eaten on its own or with curry. We can also freeze up the pancakes and take out the required pieces to be fried whenever we want to eat them. 

Ingredients:

• Dough:
• 500 g all-purpose flour
• 300 g warm water
• 25 g oil
• 10 g salt

• Fillings:
• 100 g green onion
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 25 g all-purpose flour
• 50 g heated oil

Method:

• Dough:

• Add all ingredients for making the dough into a mixing bowl.

• Knead till a smooth dough is formed.

• Rest the dough for 10 minutes.

• Divide the dough into the number of pieces you desire. (I divide it into 9 pieces.)

• Grease a container.

• Shape each piece into a ball and put it into the container.

• Brush each dough ball with oil to prevent them from sticking to each other.

• Rest the dough balls for 30 minutes so that it is easier to roll them out later.

• While the dough balls are resting, prepare the fillings.

• Fillings:

• Wash and chop up the green onions.

• Add the chopped green onions to a bowl.

• Add all-purpose flour, salt and pepper to the bowl.

• Mix up the ingredients.

• Pour heated oil over the ingredients. Stir to mix up the oil and other ingredients.
• Divide the fillings into 9 equal portions. (This will prevent a shortage or an excess in the end.)

• Assembly:

• Take a dough ball. Roll it out into a circle.

• Spread the fillings on it.

• Roll up the dough to form a long roll.

• Take the long roll and roll it up into a circle like in the 6th photo.

• Flatten it to form a round flat dough of about 7 inches.

• Heat up a pan.

• Transfer the prepared dough onto the pan (there is no need to grease the pan as the pancakes are oily) and fry till the dough is cooked on both sides.

• Note:

• If you do not wish to fry the pancakes immediately, you may freeze them up.

• Put the fresh/raw pancakes onto a non-stick parchment paper. Put another piece of parchment paper on top followed by another piece of pancake. Repeat till all the pancakes have been layered between each parchment paper.

• Keep the stack of pancakes in a zip lock bag and put the bag into the freezer.

• When you want to eat them, just take each piece out from the freezer and onto the frying pan without defrosting it.

Claypot Tofu with Tomatoes and Mushrooms

Sequence of Cooking:

I have seen this dish being cooked on Instagram and Facebook. Looking at the ingredients, I was sure that the dish would be appreciated by my husband and children. True enough, all of them love it. It is also suitable for vegetarians.

Although no measurement is given, the dish looks easy enough to cook. Since then I had cooked this dish a few times to try out with different quantities of the various ingredients. The recipe below is the result of these trials.

Ingredients:

• 400 g tomatoes, cubed
• 1 packet enoki mushroom (2 would have been better), remove ends
• 4 pcs of large brown button mushroom, sliced
• 1 box of tofu, cut into pcs
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp cooking oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup of water
• 1 tbsp black vinegar
• 1/2 tsp pepper powder
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• Cornflour slurry (2 tbsp cornflour + 4 tbsp water)
• Garnishing - green onion

Method:

• Add cooking oil to claypot. Let it heat up.

• Add tomatoes to the claypot. Fry.

• Add salt.

• Add water. Let boil.

• Add enoki mushroom to 1 side and button mushroom to the other. Add tofu either on top of the mushrooms or to one side next to the mushrooms.

• Beat egg and add it to the claypot.

• Add pepper, black vinegar and sesame oil. (Dont hv to stir.)

• Thicken the sauce with corn flour slurry and garnish the tofu with tomatoes and mushrooms with green onion.

• Serve hot with white rice.