My Bastardized Sangria

I could really use some of this right now.
Red wine, diced strawberries, peaches, pears, sprite and ice.
Cheers!

Canned Peach Syrupy Cake

I saw Pioneer Woman's Cherry Cake Pudding and it was instant love. You know my love for anything involving canned goodes? But, remember my inability to follow recipes? Yes, it persists!

Actually (trying desperately to justify myself), it was because I was in the mood for something sweet, but I didn't have canned cherries, pecans or whipping cream. So I just did mine with canned peach. It's easy to make and tasted pretty damn fantastic. I love the crispy top and the fluffy cake, love it more when it absorbed the tangy syrup. A bit of a warning, it's sweet. Sweet sweet, even after I reduced the sugar for the sauce. Too bad I didn't make the whipped cream part, it would've balanced out the sweetness. But we still love it. SC, who claimed that he doesn't like anything sweet, ate the most of the cake ;p


Recipe (adapted from Pioneer Woman's Cherry Cake Pudding)
Cake
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp softened butter
- 1 egg
- 1 cup flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/3 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 can of peach halves in syrup (cut into smaller chunks, drained, juice reserved)


Syrup sauce
- all the juice from the canned peach
- 2 tbsp sugar 
- 1 tbsp flour
- 1 tbsp butter
- a dash of vanilla

Preheat oven to 150C. Butter a baking pan.

Cream sugar and butter (I used hand mixer), add egg, mix well. Add flour, baking powder and salt into the mix alternatively with milk. Mix well. Add chunks of peaches and mix with spatula. Pour batter into pan, smooth out the surface and bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown and no longer jiggly.

A few minutes before the cake is done, make the sauce. Mix all the ingredients into a sauce pot and bring to boil until thickened.

The recipe advised to drizzle the syrup all over the cake, but I did it on each individual serving.

The cake tasted fantastic even without the syrup, the crisp surface kinda reminded me of Indonesian bolu. I am definitely making this cake again, with a different type of (canned) fruit.

Wow. I am so serious in this post, it doesn't even sound like me!

Chicken & White Peach Curry – Food Bloopers

Have you ever had any embarrassing moments related to food?

Although I am generally pretty obnoxious…and won’t get embarrassed so easily…(ya ha!)…but there was a moment which caught me off guard. It was a beautiful day, but I was probably feeling down, that's why I fancied a couple of (one is never enough ^_^) good sandwiches for lunch (what a splurrrrge! They are super pricey), with a hearty soup and a cup of nice coffee to polish everything off. So I dragged my lazy ass off my work chair and marched to Pret-A-Manger to get my fancy treats. I had no idea how to pronounce Pret-A-Manger correctly, I used to pronounce it as “prey-a-man-jer”…until my sis, who learnt a bit of French in high school, told me that it should be “pre-a-mong-cher” (with French curly tongue). These days, I simply call it “Pretend-A-Manager”, to which my corporate pals could relate better (I get “HUH?” a lot when I tried to say “pre-a-mong-cher”. So...don't bother!)

Anyway...when it was my turn to order…

Staff: (checking out my Double Cheddar and Super Club sandwiches)…anything else?
Me: Ehm, a cup of mocha (for mochachocolata-rita) and a cup of minestrone (I pronounced it as “mind-stroun”) soup, please….
Staff: (straight faced, without blinking an eye, barked my order to the kitchen staff) ONE MINESTRONE! (it was thunderously shouted out as… mi-nə-ˈstrō-nē). One
MINESTRONE (again, mi-nə-ˈstrō-nē), right, mam? (PS. don’t you just hate being called “mam”?)
Me: Errr...yah! (Suddenly feeling very conscious of my surroundings and noticed that all the corporate slaves were shooting me Oh-how-could-you-not-know-how-to-pronounce-the-name- of-such-a-humble-common-little-soup? looks)

The heck with them! The sandwiches, the MINESTRONE soup and the mocha were delicious and I’d be damned if I let some Hong Kong corporate once over ruin my pricey lunch. Hehe…

At home, I had some left-over peaches and wondered what to do with them…(not another sweet treat!) so I made some…
Chicken & White Peach Curry

Recipe
- ½ lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into bite sized chunks (or you can use thigh fillet)
- 2 white peaches, remove pit, peel off skin, cut into bite sized chunks
- 1 zucchini, peel off skin, cut into 1 cm thick slices
- 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 5 cloves of shallot, thinly sliced
- 1 cm ginger, crushed
- 2 tbsp curry paste (or more)- 1 cup coconut milk
- salt, pepper, sugar, corn starch, olive oil
- chopped fresh coriander and fried shallot to garnish
Marinate chicken pieces in a bit of corn starch, salt, pepper and sugar (salt should be the dominant element). Saute garlic, ginger, and shallot in hot oil until fragrant, add chicken until a bit browned, add zucchini pieces until a bit softened, add coconut milk, bring to boil, add peaches, heat everything through and quickly remove from heat (not to overcook the peaches and turn them into mush), serve with freshly chopped coriander and fried shallot. Perrrrfect with rice!

Let me entertain Hong Kong’s miserable lunch crowd one more time by ordering minestrone again tomorrow…I’ll pronounce it as “meeenn- struuun” this time. HAH!