Mini Chicken Quesadillas

These are the tiniest little quesadillas ever- they're bite-sized and fit comfortably in your fingers. And that makes them super-dangerous: you can eat the whole plate and not even realize it. They look like food for dolls- tiny little miniatures you'd find in a dollhouse..

They're also super simple to prepare and if you don't like the miniature size, you can just make them large, normal-sized quesadillas. You get about 35 pieces of minis.

Ingredients
7 flour tortilla wraps
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 red capsicum, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon cumin powder
450g chicken mince
400g can chopped tomatoes
100g cheddar cheese, grated

Procedure
Using a 3cm cookie cutter, cut out rounds from each tortilla wrap. One regular sized tortilla yields around five mini circles. Place them on to baking trays.
Heat half the olive oil in a pot and cook the onion and capsicum until onion has softened. Then, add the garlic cloves and spices and cook for two minutes, until fragrant. Add the chicken mince and the remaining oil and cook for 8 minutes until browned. Break up any lumps. Add the can chopped tomatoes and bring to simmer for around 20 minutes.
Spread one teaspoon of the chicken mixture on half of each round. Sprinkle cheddar cheese on top of each round covering all sides.
Bake in a 180C oven until cheese melts. Once melted, remove trays from oven and fold over to create a quesadilla.. the melted cheese will hold the whole thing together. 


ENJOY.

My friend demonstrating how tiny the quesadilla is. 

Quick Canapes

I was walking home yesterday and happened to look at the window in the building to my left- and there was a guy in his kitchen, chopping some basil leaves and frying some tomatoes in a pan. I actually stopped and stared and had this intense yearning to go cook something. Sigh. I miss cooking up meals. I love those times when you just have to make do with what's the in the fridge. It fuels creativity. And so today, I created two little bites that would be perfect for a snack- or a canape (I feel like being fancy).

First one is crackers with marmalade and feta cheese. I was so tempted to try the marmalade and feta combination and Yasmin at Red Panda Bakes said she has them all the time! And so I piled them on top of little crackers and bit into them.

Marmalade and Feta Cheese Crackers
Ingredients
1 packet cream crackers
1 jar orange marmalade
40g crumbly feta cheese

Procedure
Spoon a generous teaspoon of marmalade over the cracker and top with crumbled feta cheese. That's it!

Next, I made bruschetta. I was GOING to make risotto and bought all the ingredients for it.. BUT, ended up forgetting the onion and garlic. And right now I'm not bothered to go down to the Tesco Express and buy any. And so I sliced up a mini baguette and spread some basil pesto on each slice. I topped each with a piece of sundried tomato and some feta. I thought the whole thing was going to be rather salty but surprisingly it wasn't!

And they looked pretty cute.. If I may say so.

Basil Pesto, Sun-dried Tomato, and Feta Cheese Bruschetta
Ingredients
1 baguette
1 jar basil pesto
1 jar sun-dried tomatoes
20g crumbly feta

Procedure
Slice the baguette.
Spread a teaspoon of the basil pesto.
Top with one sundried tomato slice
Add some feta.
Eat.

Yes, eating is part of the procedure.

http://redpandabakes.blogspot.com/

Spicy Chicken Pitas

This is one of our signature dishes at home and last night I finally learnt how to make it! It was much easier than I expected it to be. The best thing about it is that it's very versatile. You can make it with lamb mince instead of chicken mince and you can vary which vegetables you use.

Ingredients:

2 medium onions, finely chopped

1 garlic cloves, crushed

2 medium tomatoes, chopped coarsely

1 medium green capsicum, chopped

500g chicken mince

2 teaspoons soy sauce

3 teaspoons vinegar

2 teaspoons turmeric

1 tablespoon coriander powder

1 teaspoon garam masala (indian mixed spice)

2 teaspoons cumin powder
2 teaspoons chilli flakes

1/4 cup water

4 lettuce leaves, shredded

1 tomato, extra, sliced

3-4 chopped gherkins

1/2 cup chopped coriander

20 slices small white arabic bread

1/2 cup mayonnaise

Procedure

Heat oil in pot. Gently fry onion until softened. Add chicken and stir for two minutes. Add the soy sauce and vinegar, stir.

Add all the spices, stir until fragrant. Add water, mix well. Place lid on pot and cook for 10 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

Then, add capsicum and cook for five minutes. Next, add tomatoes and coriander.

Slice the bread in half and lightly spread the inside of each with mayonnaise . Fill bread with chicken and top with lettuce, tomatoes, and gherkins.

Creamy Leek, Mushroom, and Pea Pies

I was looking for something light to make today and came across this recipe from Australian Women's Weekly. It's light, healthy, and vegetarian. Only 200 calories per serving which is perfect for dinner!

I've made slight modifications to the recipe.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 large leek, sliced thinly

250g mushrooms, thickly sliced

2 tbsps plain flour

150ml vegetable stock

125ml low-fat milk

120g frozen peas

2 tbsps chopped fresh chives

1 tbsp mustard

3 slices wholemeal bread

cooking oil spray

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 200C.

2. Heat oil in large saucepan; cook garlic and leek, stirring until leek softens. Add mushrooms; cook; stirring, about 5 minutes or until mushrooms are tender.

3. Add flour; cook, stirring, 1 minute. Gradually stir in milk and stock; cook, stirring, until mixture boils and thickens slightly. Stir in peas, chives, and mustard; cook 2 minutes or until peas are tender.

4. Place mixture into Pyrex dish, top with chopped pieces of bread, spray bread lightly with oil. Cook, uncovered, about 10 minutes or until bread is browned lightly.

A Midnight Feast

OK, well maybe the title's a little misleading. It's midnight snacks and not a feast.

The baguette with topping is my own invention that I made a reference to in an earlier post.

http://spontaneous-euphoria.blogspot.com/2010/10/supermarket-series-2-choithram.html

I mixed the chili mayo with olives and spread it over the hot, toasted baguette.

HOW does one neatly slice baguette?!

I then put little sprigs of rosemary to garnish each piece. Not exactly gourmet, but nice, yummy, and filling.

The puff pastry that you see is my hurried attempt at these Nutella Mallow Pillow Pockets

http://picky-palate.com/2010/11/08/nutella-mallow-pillow-pockets/

The shapes turned out all different with me for some reason! I added sprinklings of cinnamon powder to this. If made smaller, this would be perfect to serve in individual dessert plates alongside a scoop of icecream, some chocolate chips, and a lovely decadent chocolate sauce.

Another version that might work wonderfully with this is raspberries with the Nutella. A dusting of icing sugar to complete the look might also look good.

I'm not happy with my photography today but oh, well! *sigh*

Inventing your own dishes!

This is always fun! No recipes, no limits. Maybe not even a trip to the supermarket! It's always a pleasant challenge inventing dishes on the spot but sometimes they can go horribly wrong. Here are some simple, guaranteed things that you can do to invent in the kitchen.

Six wonderful foods on earth:

1- pasta

2- pizza

3- risotto

4- salad

5- soup

6- stirfry

These foods are akin to heaven-sent when it comes to you wanting to invent hassle-free.. But what's the fun in that? Isn't the fun really trial and error? Yes, I agree with you. But when you're short on time and your stomach needs something ASAP, these six dishes are great.

Soup and salad are kind of the safest options to put whatever you want in it... In the past, and to this day, people who are not fortunate enough to have access to a supermarket or food the way we do, place whatever they can find in a huge pot with water and cook it for hours for the flavour to emerge. Lamb, chicken, fish, vegetables of any kind, and even dried fruits can be added to soups.. you just need to know in which order! You must look at the vegetables and try to decide the cooking time of each. You don't need to be an expert for this. Just look at, let's say, mushrooms, and you'd realize that they'd take longer to cook than, say, spinach. (Spinach by the way, wilts to a third of its size when heated and cooked.. it's always a pleasure to observe!)

Meat should always, always be cooked first! That's to ensure that it HAS enough time to properly cook and also, so that the flavours of other ingredients manage to blend well with it.

Pasta is always fun to cook.. and it doesn't have to be boiled penne with bottled tomato sauce if you don't know how to cook or are short on time. Throw in onion, garlic, corn, mushrooms, fresh basil (at the end!), capsicums (always my favourite) and whatever else you have in the fridge!

Today was the first time that I invented with stirfry. I was making a Sang Choi Bow. (Here is a sang choi bow if you don't know: http://bit.ly/dn65aU ) The recipe I was using only included chicken, garlic, ginger, and red capsicum. I, obviously, wanted a lot more in it and so I added vegetables that would go well with oriental flavours... hence, I picked mushrooms, corn, other capsicums, red chillies, pak choi, and beansprouts. I threw everything in the wok at once which wasn't a very good decision on my part, as the stirring and cooking took longer than supposed to, but it turned out fab! And I love how the iceberg lettuce acts as a bowl!

The iceberg lettuce was BELIEVE IT OR NOT, the toughest part! You'd think it would be the easiest, what with just having to separate the leaves and wash them. But their shapes were unimaginable... There were hardly any that looked like "bowls" (as they're supposed to) and hardly any seemed fit to be able to "hold" the mince mixture well!

Food

baby potatoes that I boiled. Cut them open and stuffed them with sour cream and mayo. I just realized they look like Pac Mans.

Tomato bruschetta! Enough said!

Up next, English trifle... custard with berries really. Then, a dish that I cannot remember the name of! I can't even decipher what's in it by looking at this photo.. Aaaand a calzone... the first thing I cooked in 2009. Stuffed pizza.. heaven..