nonya culture

Nonya culture, east meets west. Food loving blog.

Saturday 15 February 2014

Sausage Wee Muffins

These days, I make various muffins for quick and wholesome breakfasts.

I keep these frozen until the night before they are to be served. Then I heat these up for breakfast for the kids before they go to school.

I decided to name my wee little sausage potato muffins after the Wee clan - the Sausage Wee Muffin.

Sausages made from scratch with minced pork, dried sage and mixed dried herbs (any ready to use mixture with sage in it). The muffins have jagged tops because the bread is full of mashed potatoes, after all, we Wees are potato eaters.




Sausage Patty Recipe

Ingredients
500g minced pork. (Thaw before you begin)
2 tablespoons corn flour
2 teaspoons sea salt
2 teaspoons dried sage
1 teaspoon dried mixed herbs
2-3 tablespoons butter
5 cloves of garlic, pounded finely, or use the blender

Method
Mix corn flour, sea salt, sage and herbs in a bowl. Set this dried spice mixture aside.
Microwave garlic and butter for 1 second and let the garlic infuse the butter.
mix the dried spice mixture into the minced pork.
Add the garlic infused butter into the mixture but strain out garlic chunks to discard. 
Mix the butter thoroughly into the meat mixture.
Spoon the sausage mixture into muffin cups, filling half of each cup.
I had excess sausage mixture so I shaped these into patties on the baking pan. oven at 220 degrees celsius for 15-20 minutes.


Once done, turn the muffin tray upside down in a clean, dry tray and the patties should slide out. If not, you can use a spoon to ease them out.


 potato muffin bread recipe

Ingredients.
About 250g potatoes. 
I used 1 large, 3 small potatoes
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 3/4 cups plain flour


Method

Boil. Peel and mash the potatoes.
Mix in the milk and oil.
add salt, flour, baking powder and mix thoroughly.

Put a tablespoon of the dough in each muffin cup.
Press in a sausage patty
top up with more dough.
Bake at 220 degrees celsius for 20-30 minutes, or until the tops of the muffins turn golden brown.





Monday 20 January 2014

My little herb garden

This nonya mommy is planting her little herb garden in her HDB flat.

It all began when a little bawang merah (shallot) that were meant for rempah (to be pounded in the pestle and motar into a paste for cooking) sprouted.

That little green shoot meant the bulb wouldn't taste good, so I found a tiny container, put in some tissue paper, nestled the bulb in it and watered it to let it grow.

It thrived. We could use the spring onions to add greens to our diet, I thought.

Then more little onions sprouted to escape the motar. Soon I was out of containers, but we had a little chive farm and the harvest did spice up our meals. My kids named each pet onion. Gary, Mary, Harry, Sally, and...   I can't remember the rest.

I explained that harvesting the chives was like giving them haircuts.

Window shopping at Jasons, I chanced upon potted herbs that looked sad in the refrigerator. "Why not?" I thought, and bought five.

Fresh leaves picked from our herb garden made a real difference to the food. We're so used to seasoning our food with herbs that when we eat out,  the kids complain about the msg effect.

My dill didn't fare well initially. Its leaves yellowed the next day, so I pruned off almost half of it and used that to make a chicken tonic soup.

A simple chicken soup made with chicken, garlic, onions,  carrots and freshly harvested dill tasted great and has a tonic effect. My family said it was like Brands essence of chicken.

I replanted little dill in a much larger pot to give it room to grow. Google calls it a weed and I hope it spreads like one as we could use a lot more dill. Dill's under a protection order now. We can harvest the others but not Dill.

The others looked so sad in their tiny pots so I have been repotting them, one by one. Waiting for the nursery to stock up on more pitting mix so I can buy more to upgrade the remaining herbs to their new homes.

Meanwhile, I bought more potted herbsband started planting butter lettuce seeds with the hopes of harvesting fresh organic veggies too.

Let's see how it goes.