Simple Vegetable Soup

I had friends over for dinner the past weekend and hubby was in charge of making the main course!  Yes, he cooks (whenever he’s given the chance!)!! I decided to make a soup as a precursor to hubby’s main course of Chicken Chop! '

It has been raining the whole day and soup was definitely great pick-me-up during such a gloomy day. I’ve always made cream based soup but this time, I decided to make a clear and healthier soup! Vegetable Soup! Hearty Vegetable Soup! It was easy to make (despite the many cutting/chopping!) and my guests commented that it was yummy! Yay! =)

SIMPLE VEGETABLE SOUP RECIPE

Ingredients:

• 3 Cloves Minced Garlic
• 2 Bay Leaves
• 1 Cup Chopped Onions
• 1 Cup Diced Potatoes
• 1 Cup Sliced,Celery (1/2” thick)
• 1 Cup Sliced Carrots (Halved and cut 1/2” thick)
• 1-1/2 Cups Sliced Zucchini (Halved and cut 1/2” Thick)
• 2 Cups Sliced Squashed (Halved and cut 1/2” thick)
• 3/4 Cup Diced Tomatoes
• 1/4 Cup Diced Red Pepper
• 2 Tbsp Chopped Parsley
• 4 Cups Vegetable Broth (or Chicken Broth)
• 4 Cups Water
• 2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
• 1/4 Tsp Black Pepper
• Salt, To Taste

Method:

In a large pot, heat 2 tbsp oil over medium heat. Once oil is hot, add garlic, onion, bay leaves, a pinch of salt, black pepper and cook until onion has soften. Then add potatoes, celery, carrots, zucchini, squash, and red pepper. Stir vegetables occasionally and cook for about 10 minutes.

Add vegetable broth and water and let soup boil. Then add 1 tbsp parsley and diced tomatoes and let soup simmer over medium low heat for about 1-1/2 hour. Season soup with more salt if needed and sprinkle in remaining chopped parsley before serving. This should serve about 4 people.

June’s notes: I had some leftovers and the soup taste so much flavorful the next day! =). If you want to make this soup more filling, feel free to boil some short pasta (i.e. macaroni elbow) in the soup.

Finale Desserterie & Bakery @ Cambridge, MA

 

 

Finale was once my all time favorite dessert place! Whenever we pass by Finale, we will definitely get a piece of their tiramisu and another of their yummy desserts. I’m not sure if I’ve been there to have lunch before but I remember sitting down for some coffee and desserts at Finale’s locations in Cambridge and Natick (unfortunately, closed now). Service was impeccable. Desserts were to die for.

My recent visit to Finale in Cambridge was a little disappointing. I brought my out of town guests to my favorite dessert place for lunch. Having not been there for a sit down lunch on a weekday, I wasn’t sure how their system worked. Instead of sitting down in the dining room, and have the wait staff take your order, etc…… patrons were asked to order (and pay) lunch from their dessert takeout counter. You will then be given a number to be taken to the dining area and placed at the edge of your table for the wait staff to see. Once your food is ready, the wait staff will bring the food over.

Apparently, you would also have to request and take your own drink from the bar (just a few steps from the cashier (where you ordered lunch) and bring it to your table! Our drinks weren’t topped up, so we had to bring our empty glasses to have the bar tender fill it up for us!

Oh yea, upon finishing my lunch… I waited..and waited..and waited (since the wait staff did not remove the “number” from me) for someone to bring out my dessert which I had ordered and paid for earlier. My dessert never came even though the empty plates were cleared. I asked the wait staff only to be told that I would have to get it myself from the dessert takeout counter…….. I definitely wasn’t too pleased with the dining experience and the service. Perhaps they minimize their service during weekday lunch hours?

Now that I’ve shared with you my dining experience……..let me share with you what we had for lunch. Derrick ordered a Roast Beef Sandwich (Bottom left) @ $6.99. The roast beef sandwich is served with horseradish mayonnaise, cheddar cheese, arugula and roasted red peppers on foccacia bread.  I think Audrey went for a Turkey Club Sandwich and Salad Combo (Bottom Right) $8.19. Smoked Turkey served with Gruyere Cheese, Tomato, Lettuce, Bacon and Mustard Mayo on Foccacia bread. I forgot if they liked what they ordered.

 

I ordered a Chicken Salad Sandwich (Bottom Left) @ $6.19. Poached chicken mixed with pecans, grapes, onion, celery and mayo served with lettuce on multigrain bread. This was good. In fact I enjoyed it very much that I replicated it at home the next day!!

And of course, following my regular tradition…I just had to order their Tiramisu (Bottom Right) @ $5.99, I think. The tiramisu wasn’t great. It did not taste like the yummy tiramisu I’ve had in the past. The outer decorative layer was tough and chewy (perhaps stale?). Coffee flavors were hardly noticeable. It tasted like vanilla cream with cocoa powder on the top. And I don’t think they put liquor in their tiramisu. My friends who tasted the tiramisu also agreed it definitely did not taste like one. What was supposed to be the highlight of my lunch was surely a disappointment! Boo!

I would probably drag the husband out for a date night and perhaps share a tiramisu @ Finale’s one weekend. It would be nice to be able to see how their service would be and if the tiramisu would taste better than my last visit!

Check out Finale’s locations HERE and their menu HERE.

Durian Cheesecake / Cheese Tart

I reserved some of the better tasting frozen durian we got from H-mart to make my Durian Cheesecake. The bland ones, I made into Durian Butter Cake. Susanna C emailed me back in October and requested for my Durian Cheesecake recipe I made in February. I had told her that I will share the recipe on the blog once I re-attempt the recipe and make sure the cheesecake will turn out good again!

I’ve probably mentioned it before that I love baking cheesecakes using a tart pan. That way, I will most likely get a nicely baked cheesecake (tart) without the fear of cracks appearing on the surface. Also, I will not feel too overwhelmed with a big piece of cheesecake!

In this recipe, I used about 2/3 cup of durian flesh (Frozen Thai Durian Flesh). Frozen Thai Durians are the only durians I can get in the US and are often not as flavorful as local (Malaysian) durians. Therefore, if you’re using a stronger (more fragrant) tasting durian, you might want to reduce the durian flesh to about 1/2 cup. I would rather eat the stronger, more fragrant, yummier durian than turning it into a dessert. Well, I guess it’s ok if you have had enough of fresh durians! =)

DURIAN CHEESECAKE RECIPE

Ingredients:

Part A (Crust):

• 1-1/4 Cup Graham Cracker Crumbs*
• 2 Tbsp Sugar
• 1/3 Cup Butter, Melted

*Make sure crumbs are finely grounded. Pack them into cups when measuring.

Part B (Filling):

• 2 – 8oz Cream Cheese
• 2/3 Cup Durian Flesh
• 2 Large Eggs
• 1/2 Cup Milk
• 1/2 Cup Sugar
• 1-1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 3 Tbsp Flour

Method:

Mix Part A together and press the mixed crumbs onto the bottom and the sides of a 9” tart pan. I use the bottom of the glass to help me press the crumbs.

Blend milk and durian flesh until smooth. Set aside. Preheat oven to 350F.

Cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one by one and mix until smooth. Add in blended durian flesh and vanilla extract. Finally sprinkle in flour and mix batter well. Pour cheese mixture into tart pan. Bake tart for about 40-45 minutes until the center is set. Remove and let cheese tart cool before chilling in the the refrigerator. Serve cold.

June’s Comments: And of course whenever I need / want / am looking for something….. I couldn’t find it! I was unable to find my faithful tart pan to make my cheesecake. I resorted to making individual mini durian cheese tarts instead! Instead of using graham cracker crumbs, I used Sandies Original Shortbread. I greased my regular muffin pan and drop a Sandies shortbread (fits perfect) in each hole. I then pour the batter until the rim and bake it in a preheated (350 F) oven for about 30 minutes. When it’s done, let it cool before running a sharp knife around the inside edge of the muffin cups to loosen the cheesecakes and gently pop the cheesecakes. This gave me about 20 individual cheese tarts.

The use of this shortbread gave me a somewhat thicker (and softer) crust. I think I ended up with equal portions of cheese mixture and crust. This is probably not ideal if you prefer to have more cheese in your cheese tart. Perhaps Nilla Vanilla Wafers would be a better choice for individual cheesecake crust! And I just found out NIlla Vanilla Wafers are too too small for regular muffin pan.

Alternatively, line muffin pan with baking cupsto ensure easier removable of the cheese cakes/tarts.

Egg In The Basket

Egg in the basket is a chicken egg fried/cooked in a hole of a slice of bread. This is truly a cute and creative way to have eggs and toast at the same time. It’s easy to make and wonderful to eat! If you use the right cookie cutter, you’ll just feel the love early in the morning!! As long as you know how to fry an egg, you’re all set to make a wonderful breakfast (in bed?) for your loved ones!! =)

EGG IN THE BASKET RECIPE

Ingredients:

• Sliced Bread (Your choice, I Prefer Texas Toast)
• Egg(s) – One egg per slice of bread.
• Butter
• Salt & Pepper (Optional)
• Choice of Cookie Cutter

Method:

Using your choice of cookie cutter, punch /cut out the design in the center of the bread. You do want to make sure the cookie cutter is not too big and make sure the sides of the bread are still intact. If you do not have a cookie cutter, you could use a scissor to cut out a circle.

In a pan, melt about 1 tsp of butter over medium heat. Place bread (including the cut-out) in the pan and toast the first side until it’s slightly brown. Flip the bread (& the cutout) over the second side, melt about 1-2 tsp butter and crack an egg into the “hole” of the bread. You may want to use a little spoon or knife to guide the egg so that it covers the entire hole in the bread. Season with salt and pepper if desired. Let egg cook until the egg white is less runny. At this point, you could serve it sunny side up style, or flip the bread (and egg) and continue cooking it to either serve it over easy, over medium or over well! Your choice!

My picture above shows one done over well and one done sunny side up. I also cooked 2 sausages in the same pan while cooking the egg in the basket.

Mayo Shrimp

I’ve had this dish at many Chinese restaurants (and I love it!) but have never thought about making it. If it wasn’t because of my baby brother who recently made this dish and posted the yummy pictures and the recipe on his blog, I would have never made it. At least not so soon. I’m SO PROUD of him to be able to cook such yummy dish even though he’s technically not a baby anymore but he’s still my precious little brother who’s 5 years younger than me. Ahh…it still felt like yesterday when I held my new born baby brother in my arms….and that was a little more than 20 years ago!! It’s funny how we both never really cooked when in Malaysia and here in the US, we’ve learnt to cook, bake and experiment with different stuff. Mummy and daddy will surely be proud of our cooking ability now!! =)
Back to the food…. I think this dish goes by many different names at various restaurants…but the dish is the same. The most common name is Mayo Shrimp. I’ve also heard of Salad Shrimp and my brother has a longer name for it “Shrimp with Sweet Creamy Sauce”. In some Chinese restaurants, they even add candied walnut to the shrimp “salad”, thus making it “Honey Walnut Shrimp”.
Here’s the recipe of the Mayo Shrimp my brother found online to which I made some changes to the sauce part. My brother told me that the sauce was too sweet and suggested to reduce the condensed milk. Since I was only making 1/2 Lb of shrimp, I modified the sauce to accommodate to the amount of shrimp I have. 

MAYO SHRIMP RECIPE
Ingredients:
Part A (Fried Shrimp):

• 1/2 Lb Shrimp, Peeled & Deveined
• 1 Large Egg White
• 1/4 Cup Corn Flour
• 1/8 Tsp Baking Soda
• 1/8 Tsp Salt
• 1/3 Cup + 1 Tsp Oil

Part B (Sauce):

• 2 Tbsp Mayonnaise
• 1-1/2 Tbsp Condensed Milk
• 2 Tsp Lemon Juice

Method:
Mix egg white, corn flour, baking soda, salt and 1 tsp oil in a bowl until you get a smooth paste. Pat dry the shrimp and mix them into the paste/batter. Make sure shrimp is well coated with the batter.
Heat 1/3 cup oil in a small pan over medium heat and slowly drop the nicely coated shrimp one at a time into the hot oil. You do want to make sure the oil is at least 1/2” deep. Add more oil if your pan is bigger. Do not overcrowd the pan with the shrimp. Fry the first side of the shrimp until it’s golden brown before flipping them over to fry the second side. This shouldn’t take too long as the shrimp cooks very quickly.
While the shrimp is cooking, prepare the sauce part by mixing Part B in a bowl until well combined. Set it aside. Remove fried shrimp, drain oil and place them in a bowl. Pour sauce over the shrimp and coat well before transferring onto a serving platter. Serve immediately with some white rice. You could also place the sauce on the side instead of coating the shrimp in them!

June's Notes: If you like coconut, check out my current favorite version of Mayo Shrimp here.