Sausage Roll

It's been cold (well, at least for L.A.) and raining for almost whole week... Perfect weather for something warm and fresh out of the oven.

There's a version of Korean sausage bread my husband just loves.  Kinda copying that I made croissant wrapped sausages.

All from Trader Joe's:

Roll out the dough as described on the package.

 Then just wrap the sausages. That's all you need to do!  But sausages I bought were way too long.. I was too lazy to stop by any other market on the way home.  If it's too long, you can probably cut into halves. Since my hubby loooves sausages anyway, I just left it as it is. =)

Place them about 1'' apart and bake as directed on the package of the dough.

So buttery, salty and warm! You can always microwave it later to warm it up or reheat it in the oven.

Enjoy!!

Lemon-Mint Cake

I have a girl crash on Giada DeLaurentiis.  I think she's so pretty and talented!

So few days ago, I tried this recipe and I just LOVEd it.  Crispy on the top and light yet moist texture.. yum..

Lemon-Mint Cake by Giada

The recipe calls for mint and syrup, but I took those out and it still tasted so good!  I didn't have any mint leaves at home and didn't want to stop by the market.. but maybe next time I will try with it. =)

I won't go step by step since you can see the recipe from the link above.  But few things I want to point out from the recipe~!

The recipe is pretty simple but it does take some time to whip up egg whites.  You want to make sure that eggs are room temperatured and have an electric hand mixer.  You want to try whipping by hand.. I highly do not recommend it.  Even with an electric hand mixer, it took me good 15 minutes to get the stiff peaks.

When you mix egg white mixture with yolk mixture, you have to be careful to "fold" these together yet mix very well.  If you don't fold, egg white mixture will lose its air-ness, and you won't get the light texture from the cake.

 And, don't try to mix all at once.  Half of egg white mixture at a time and keep folding to incorporate all well.

The mixture should look this light and somewhat fluffy.

See how the final mixture still has that texture from egg whites and make peaks??!! =D

 Then pour the batter into the pre-buttered/floured pan.  It calls for an 8-inch round pan, but I only had 12.  So I ended up using a square pan.

You can't tell very well from the picture, but the top of the cake is almost like meringue! crispy!

Let it cool little bit and enjoy!!!!!  It was just right amount of sweet for me without syrup.  But if you like your cake a bit sweeter, definitely try it with syrup!

Simple Chicken Tortilla Soup

This is not my original recipe.. I got it from my friend and I'm not sure where she got it from.

It's called Six-Can Chicken Tortilla Soup!  All you need is 6 cans of food, hence the name.

Ingredients:
  1 (15 oz) can whole kernel corn
  2 (14.5 oz) cans chicken broth
  1 (10 oz) can chunk chicken
  1 (15 oz) can black beans
  1 (10 oz) can diced tomatoes with green chile peppers, drained

You can substitude any of these with fresh ingredients if you want.  I actually used chicken breast I had at home rather than using canned one.

Combine everything in a pan and heat thoroughly.  top soup with tortilla chips and cheese. Serve and enjoy!

All the ingredients.  I used a pack of chicken broth I had.

Since it called for canned chicken, I cooked chicken breast and cut it into small chunks before I put it in with the rest of the ingredients into the soup.

I just stirred once a while.  Once it started boiling, I reduced the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes or so.  But you don't have to.

 One for me one for my husband! I don't like cheese.. so no cheese topping for me.  I didn't have tortilla strips.. but it will taste better if you top the soup with tortilla strips!

This is a nice and quick way to make dinner! Especially if you have a slow cooker, put everything into the cooker the night before.  Turn it on before you go to work, and dinner will be ready when you get home! Unfortunately, I didn't have a slow cooker. =(  But even though you cook this when you get home, even with extra 30 minutes I let it simmer, it took less than an hour.



This is random but I have to share this cuuute picture of Mugen.

My baby!!!!! He's so adorable. =)

Sunday Brunch

One of my favorite foods is breakfast!  Today was a nice relaxing Sunday.. Turkey omelette with hash brown is something I made pretty often on weekends when both my husband and I can sleep in.

One thing to note is that most my recipes are for 2 people.. since I'm just cooking for my husband and myself. If it's for more than 2 people, I will mention it, but otherwise, they are usually for just 2 people.

Here are the ingredients:
1/4 lbs ground turkey (maybe less.. depending on how much you would like)
1 carrot chopped
1/2 onion chopped
1 jalapeno chopped
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 large eggs
1/4 cup water (or milk if you want a bit richer taste)


Heat the frying pan and pour olive oil.  Cook carrot, onion and jalapeno until carrots are almost done.  Season your vegetables with salt and pepper.  Then put ground turkey in to the pan and cook.  Season with salt and pepper.  When turkey is about half way done, break them down with a spatula.  While it's being cooked. whisk 3 eggs and  water in a bowl.  You can use milk, but I just used water. Either one is fine.
Once turkey is cooked all the way, pour egg mixture into the pan and bring down the heat little bit.

Let eggs cook little bit.  Until most of it is firm.  Then start break down so that it looks like this:

I looooove anything that's made with potato.. can't have my breakfast without hash brown!  I buy packaged hash browns from Trader Joe's.

You could bake these too, but it takes longer.. and it's crispier if you fry it anyway!

Here's how I served it.  One for my husband, one for me. =D

And finish it off with macarons! They are from Bottega Louie. so yummy.

I want to trying making these once.. but it looks pretty hard.. we will see.

After brunch, my husband and I both played some video games. I worked on my jewelries a bit then we went grocery shopping.  It was a very nice and relaxing Sunday.. I love these lazy Sundays with the hubby!

Baked fried chicken

I usually like pan frying chicken but it just got hot in LA again.. It's going to be over 100 degrees next week! I guess it's a late Indian summer but god... I want fall to come!! Not that LA has fall.. =p
Anyways, I still had these chicken legs in the freezer and wanted to make fried chicken. But frying in this hot weather is so not fun...

I found baked fried chicken recipe on shape.com but changed a bit and I liked it!
Oh one thing to note is though that you might want to get smaller pieces of chicken.. these thighs were on sale so I bought them without thinking much about it and quickly realized that they are way too big and it takes way too long to fully cook these..

Amount of ingredients were for 4 big thighs, so if you are going with smaller pieces, this amount should work w/ ~6 pieces or so. You can use boneless and skinless if you want to cut some calories too.  I used as it is but I'm thinking of trying with boneless and skinless ones next time

Here are the ingredients:
1 cup buttermilk
6 pieces of chicken thighs
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp italian seasoning
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 cup panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
1 1/2 cups corn flakes

For buttermilk, I use cultured buttermilk powder.. When I buy buttermilk in a carton, I never use it up and end up throwing it away since I rarely use it unless a recipe calls for it... AND it smells sour to start with so sometimes I just can't tell whether it's bad or not.. haha..

This is the buttermilk I use:

Put 1 cup of buttermilk and chicken thighs in a ziploc bag and make sure each thigh is coated! Refrigerate at least 30 minutes, but preferrably overnight.  I just found this recipe today, so I refrigerated about 1 hour but I will probably refrigerate overnight next time..

Meanwhile, put salt, pepper, italian seasoning, poultry seasoning, cayenne pepper and corn flake in food processor.  Pulse until "coarsely" ground. I really didn't pay attention to that little detail and ended up grinding them too fine.. it turned out okay but I think it would've tasted better if I ground them a bit coarsely.  Put crumbs on a flat dish.

It has a bit kick to it. If you don't like spicy food, reduce cayenne pepper to 1/4 tsp. If you want it to be spicier, you can put a bit more. 
When you are ready to make it, preheat oven to 350 F.
Coat both sides of chicken with seasoned crumbs.  I packed on crumbs with hands just to make sure it gets lot of crumbs!
Line the pan with aluminum foil and put chicken thighs on it.

I baked them in a convection oven. And that little room is for potato side dish I made. Depending on your oven power, it might be a bit different, but for small pieces, they should be done in 30 minutes or so.  Just check the inside of one of thighs after 30 minutes and see whether you need to bake them longer.  If you need to bake longer and you think potatoes will burn, cover potatoes with aluminum foil.

Here's a simple recipe for potato side dish:
1 large potato, chopped to biting sizes
1/2 tsp parsley
1/2 tsp rosemary
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Cover chopped potatoes with the rest of the ingredients.

You can bake these together and they will be done at the same time!

My husband got home a bit later than expected so I kinda rushed to finish baking these and ate them right away since we were both hungry... THEN I realized that I forgot to take pictures.. =(
I will post more pictures next time I make it again!

This is a quick fix that can satisfy your cravings for fried chickens without feeling guilty!!

Enjoy!!