Japanese Cotton Sponge Cake

I don't bake cakes much. I prefer cookies, and perhaps cupcakes, but not cakes all that much. First is because a cake just feels so big. It seems as if we would take forever to finish it. Second reason is probably because my cakes never turn out all that well, most of the time. I much prefer a fudgy brownie, or a crunchy cookie. Cakes just taste so... cakey. :P

But anyway, that doesn't stop me from fliiping through cake recipe books, wanting to try maybe this cake, or ooh, that one? In one of Ibu's books called "The Creative Making of Cakes" by Alex Goh, one cake in particular caught my eye - the Japanese Cotton Sponge Cake. Not only does it have a lovely name (I am attracted to all things Japanese, haha), the picture of the cake looked especially tempting. It looked really really soft, yet was supposed to be moist in texture. If there's anything I can't stand, it's dry cakes. The four star difficulty rating didn't really deter me, haha. We decided to make it anyway. So here we go!

What you need:
60g butter
80g flour
80 mL evaporated milk
1 egg
5 egg yolks
5 egg whites
120g sugar
Pinch of salt

What you do:

1. Grease and line a swiss roll pan (we used a 10-inch square pan). Preheat the oven to 170 C.
   
2. Melt the butter, then add the flour and mix with a wooden spoon until well-blended.
3. Add in the evaporated milk and mix until well combined.
4. Next, add in the single egg and the five egg yolks and mix until well-blended.
5. In another bowl, whip the egg whites with an electric mixer until foamy. Add the suagr and the salt. Continue to beat until it forms stiff peaks.
6. Carefully fold in the egg white batter with the egg yolk batter. Add in a tablespoonful to the egg yolk batter to loosen it first, then fold the rest in until well-incorporated. Be careful not to overmix and deflate the mixture.
7. Pour it into the prepared pan and bake in the middle rack of the preheated oven for about 25 minutes, or until the cake feels firm.
8. Unmould immediately after it is baked and place on a cooling rack to cool completely.
9. When it is cold, cut into two horizontal layers and sandwich together with butter cream. Serve, dusted with icing sugar, if you wish.
   

Throughout the baking time, I kept peeking anxiously through the oven window (never open the oven door when a cake is baking, a major no-no). To say that I was worried it would not turn out well would be an understatement. At first, I wondered how it would rise without the use of a raising agent in the batter, but that question was soon pushed out of my mind when I saw the cake puffing up beautifully in the oven. I guess those are the egg whites at work. :D

Just under half an hour later, the cake was out of the oven and onto the cooling rack. And as promised, the texture was beeee-you-tifully soft. Pressing your fingertips on it felt like patting the finest grade feather pillow, hehe. When you actually ate it, it practically melted in your mouth - and not in dry crumbs either. I loved the texture of the cake!

The sharp-eyed among you might spot that the bottom part of the cake is not that airy though. I am unsure as to why that is, but am thinking that maybe we didn't incorporate it fully as we were really scared of deflating the egg whites. :P But, doesn't matter anyway, as there wasn't that big a difference in texture as far as I could tell. Also, unlike the picture in the book (ahem), the airholes in my cake were uneven in size. Again, unsure why that happened, but not a big deal, I suppose.

Initially, we were't planning on sandwiching the cake with buttercream. But although the texture of the cake was gorgeous, taste-wise it was actually a bit plain. Quite eggy, from the SIX eggs in there, and not much else. I experimented with different fillings first - tried jam and nutella, but ultimately decided to use buttercream. Which turned out to be a waste as I couldn't actually taste it, even with a thick layer! Sigh. Never mind.

So in the end, I am unsure as to what to think about this cake. While we all loved the texture, it tasted like a plain sponge cake to me. Of the fillings I tried, I actually think jam tasted the best, but since my sisters don't like jam, I decided to go for the buttercream. Which turned out to be a dud anyway. Ah well, you can't win 'em all. :) At least the cake turned out (almost) perfectly.

Quote of the day: Birthdays are nature's way of telling us to eat more cake.

My Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie (v6.55 -lol-)

While me and my sisters have pretty much found the perfect recipe for chocolate chip cookies, we still itch to make palm-sized monsters of cookies loaded with chocolate - but crispy. Our favourite recipe (version 6.5) does not manage to bake up into large crispy cookies, unfortunately.

However, once, while we were making a double batch of the cookie dough, we accidentally added one portion of the flour only. To our utmost consternation, upon baking, our cookies turned really really really flat. Really flat, almost paper thin. And of course, paper thin cookies are *difficult* to remove from the baking tray, even with the use of non-stick baking paper. After much thinking and rehashing what we did, we eventually figured out that we only added half the flour needed. Once that crisis was over and dealt with, everything was smooth sailing. =)

But then, recently, we got to thinking... if halving the flour makes the cookies really really thin, what if we reduced the flour by a little bit, not such a drastic amount? And here are the results of our experiment. =) Here we go!

What you need:
275g plain flour (replace 50g with cocoa powder for triple chocolate cookies)
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon fine salt
170g butter, melted and cooled slightly
200g light brown sugar
100g granulated white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
200g plain chocolate chips (replace 100g with white chocolate chunks if making triple chocolate cookies)

What you do:

1. Sift together flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda, and set aside.
2. Stir together melted butter, both sugars and vanilla. Add the egg, then the egg yolk, beating well with a wooden spoon to incorporate the egg completely.
3. Stir in dry ingredients, then fold in chocolate chips.
4. Cover with cling film and refrigerate until dough is firm - about 30 minutes at least.
5. Preheat oven to 190 C.
6. Drop tablespoonfuls mounds of dough onto a baking sheet, flatten slightly, and bake in preheated oven for about 12-15 minutes, or until the cookies are turning golden brown. Cool on the sheet for 1 minute, then remove to a cooling rack to cool completely.

While I had initially planned on making a plain chocolate chip cookie, Izzah wanted to try one with cocoa powder in the dough, so here it is. :) Main change is a reduction of the flour by 50g, and replacement of another 50g of flour with cocoa powder. We've been reducing the sugar slightly in our cookies, and this recipe reflects that change. We've also used less chocolate chips/chunks, as this looks to be a rich cookie, what with the white chocolate and cocoa powder. =)

We had successfully main CRUNCHY palm-sized cookies (roughly 3 heaped tablespoons of dough) from this, although we adjusted the baking a little, with 10 minutes in the oven before we flipped them over and baked them for another 5 minutes that way. However, for the rest of the dough, we just used one tablespoon of dough for each cookie. Baking time was of course a bit less, and we also flipped them over for the last 5 minutes, because we were feeling a little paranoid. (After baking tiny cookies for such a long time, these larger ones feel like they're not cooking properly - though they probably are. I like to flip them over just to make sure they get really crisp. :P) For comparison's sake, we had also made our usual grape-sized balls of cookie dough.

Anyway, compared to our normal cookies, these are certainly thinner and crisper. So this particular experiment worked, I think. :D Except for the white chocolate. I am not sure what it is about white chocolate. I like eating a square or two on its own, but use it in baking and it becomes absurdly sweet. The ones in the triple chocolate cookies tasted like little lumps of sugar, making the cookie seem sweeter than it really is. Of course, the "white chocolate" they sell for baking in Brunei are probably just made up of oil and sugar, but I had used eating chocolate here. Oh well, never mind. The cookies were delicious anyhow. :)

No, wait, not just delicious. I mean, the triple chocolate ones were good, I must say. But the plain chocolate chip cookies were awesome. They are my perfect cookie, no doubt about that. They're crisp all the way through, but with just a little bit of a chew in the middle bit. Just a tiny teeny bit chewy. A bit like the texture of the summer berry shortbread crumble. And by making them larger than our bite-sized ones, they make people go "Wow! Now those are cookies!" Well, at least that was my reaction, hehe. I haven't really brought them out in public yet. But these cookies are gorgeous. Golden brown discs of chocolatey love. <3 Give only to your special ones. ;) Hehe.

Quote of the day: Ideas should be clear and chocolate thick.

Summer Berry Shortbread Crumble

One of the cookbooks I had treated myself to during my year in London was Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O'Connor. I had hemmed and hawed over it, but the lure of the name was irresistible. It sounded so decadent, and the description of the book didn't help either. So it was with an eager heart that I ordered it. When it arrived, I was (very) slightly disappointed as there were only a few pictures, but was soon appeased by the beautifully decorated pages (almost scrapbook-like!) and of course, the seriously decadent treats. One of the brownies she makes in there has both Snickers and marshmallows, in addition to lots and lots of chocolate.

I have yet to get up the courage to make that, hehe, but the first recipe I tried in the book was black-bottom cupcakes. This was before I made the previous Black Bottom Cupcakes I had posted about. The recipes were similar, but the one in the book used mascarpone cheese, which I like better than cream cheese. To my utter disappointment, the recipe turned out to be a dud. The cupcakes were greasy and the cheese just fizzled away in the baking. :( So for awhile, I stayed away from the book.

But I want to love the book, I really do. So I decided to try out another recipe. But as I was missing a couple of ingredients, and didn't want to make a really thick biscuit, I played around with the recipe a little. The following recipe is based on her Blackberry Jamble Shortbread Bars recipe. :) Here we go!

What you need:
250g unsalted butter
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups plain flour
3/4 cup jam, of your choice - I made my own. See below.

What you do:

1. Combine the butter and sugars in a large bowl. Using an electric mixer set at medium-low speed, beat until creamy. Add the vanilla and salt and beat until combined.
2. Beat the flour into the butter mixture on low speed, until just combined. (I preferred to stir it in with a wooden spoon. Add in more flour, if you judge the mixture to be too soft.)
3. Refrigerate the dough for about 10 minutes to firm it up slightly. Meanwhile, grease a 10-inch square baking pan.
4. Press half the dough into the pan to form a bottom crust. Wrap the remaining dough in cling wrap and refrigerate until very cold and firm, at least 30 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 160 C.
6. Bake the bottom crust until it is firm and just beginning to turn pale brown around the edges, about 20 minutes. (I actually baked mine closer to 30 minutes, as it seemed very very soft, for shortbread.)
7. Remove the pan from the oven and spread the jam evenly over the crust. Crumble the remaining shortbread dough over the jam to form a pebbly, crumbled topping.
8. Return the pan to the oven and continue baking until topping is firm and crisp and lightly goldne in colour, about 30 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool to room temperature.
9. Use a sharp knife to cut bars into your desired sizes. Remove from pan with a metal spatula and dust with icing sugar before serving, if you wish.
   

The main thing I was missing was almond flour, so I decided to replace it with more plain flour. I also halved the recipe for the shortbread, as I was looking to make a really thin shortbread. However, as I was making it, I was really really worried as it wasn't as stiff as the shortbread dough I am used to. I mean, I have never had to use an electric mixer to make shortbread before.... it was usually all by hand. After worrying about it some more, I decided to add a bit more flour to make it stiffer and stuck it in the freezer for about 5 minutes before bunging it in the oven.

Poking the shortbread during various points of the baking made me even more worried, as it was really really soft. I left it in the oven until I realised that it was getting too brown and decided to just take it out and hope for the best. Thankfully, it firmed up after cooling. Phew! After spreading the jam on the cooled crust, making the crumble posed another problem as the dough was just too soft. >_< In the end, I managed, but wasn't quite happy with the results, but never mind. Into the oven it goes. Again, it was too soft and left it in so long, that I almost burnt it. Haha, that would've been a very perfect result, but never mind. All turned out well.

Not expecting much, I cut myself a small slice after it firmed up. And whoa - found out that it was good, really really good! The shortbread was (thankfully) crisp and buttery, but made very slightly chewy by the jam. I had purposefully made the jam not very sweet and that worked well here. Gave a tang to the whole thing, without overpowering you with sugar. Really really delicious! And since the slices were all quite thin, it didn't feel like it was too rich, which was great too. :D

I had expected this to be really popular with the adults, and was right. My parents turned up their noses at the Caramel Shortbread we had made at the same time and gobbled (well, not gobbled. But ate very enthusiastically. :D) these up. Brought them to a family function and they seemed popular there too - again, mostly adult eaters. I even managed to "test" them with a bunch of teenaged girls, and they liked them too! Some of them (apparently - I wasn't there myself) couldn't even decide between the Caramel Shortbread and these, which is really telling, as the younger population generally dislike anything with fruit and love anything with sweetened condensed milk. Just a general observation, haha.

A couple of observations though. One, these were a bit too greasy for my liking. Turned out fine in the end, but the tray had a film of grease as I was cutting them up. Not appealing. I might try another shortbread recipe next time. These are rather similar to the Raspberry Shortbread (which was a half failure) and the Apple Crumble and Custard Slice (not as tasty) I had made earlier. I think what really made the difference here was the jam. Just look at that gorgeous texture and colour! Its all purpley-red and lumpy! Okay, that doesn't sound that appetising, haha, but just have a look at that picture. It looks charmingly home-made, don't you think? ;)

 

In fact, the main reason I had decided to try out this recipe was because we had a bag of frozen summer berries leftover from when we were making the cupcakes last time. So instead of using a jar of jam, what I decided to do was to simmer the berries with a splash of water and enough water to make them taste nice but not too sweet. We simmered them for about half an hour or so, just enough to make them really nice and thick. Yum! You can, of course, blend the jam in a food processor to make it smooth, but I like it with the lumps. I had expected it to turn out purple, but it was instead a deep red, but whatever. :) Still delicious all the same. I do think raspberries look so much prettier, but again, never mind. It had worked out well, after all. :D :D :D

So while this recipe from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey had its sticky spots... the results turned out well enough so I think I will be trying another recipe fro it in the future. :D

Quote of the day: The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.

Not sure what that quote is referring to actually. It's supposedly some kind of proverb... :S

The Cupcake Journey (Part 2)

This is Part 2 in a series of posts I have published on our various attempts at making cupcakes. Click HERE for Part 1.

Anyway...

Bolstered by our confidence in the cupcakes in the previous post with cream cheese icing, we decided to try out a new kind of icing - royal and glace icing. These two icings sounded especially tempting as they set to a hard surface, which means that my sisters would be able to bring these cupcakes to school without any unsightly smudging. ;) The process was messy, very messy. I even managed to turn my teeth green, haha. But in the end, we managed to create these works of "art", armed with just some plastic bags and a whole load of food colouring and probably a ton of sugar. My, that day was fun!

This is my group of chicks, hehe. While Hanisah and Izzah decided to be a bit more creative with their bunch of cakes, all I did was make the same design of chicks. Aren't they adorable??

So nice and colourful! We even made some royal icing that was stiff enough to be moulded into 3D shapes. Which explains Hanisah's unidentifiable purple animal, which is actually supposed to be a teddy bear. Haha!

And this is Izzah's beautiful butterfly. :D

Fresh from the glowing success of our Royal-icing cupcakes, I had planned to make something even more elaborate for Babah's birthday - a cupcake garden, with candy vegetables! Again, this was from the Hello Cupcake! book. I had stocked up the candies needed almost a month before and assembled the cupcakes within two days - almost without any help! Whew, but that was really tiring. Were the results worth it? I'll let you be the judge. =) Thanks to my sisters, who helped make the signs! (Sorry for the dodgy looking pictures... we were in a huge rush)

My pride and joy, candy carrots! =D Unfortunately, they sort of got wet while being stored in the fridge and their shape got distorted slightly.

Here's a slightly clearer picture. Aren't they adorable??

Here are some M&M Peas. =D

A blurry radish....

And a close-up of the signs and the shovel. (Oops, just realised that there are no close-ups of the lettuce. Oh well.) These were a very very last minute job, but not too bad for being that.

These were actually harder to make than I thought. Molding the veggies took longer than I expected, and I had to improvise for the lettuce when the method used in the original recipe did not work for me, as I had used a different kind of frosting. Plus, these do not store well in the fridge, because of the candies. They got all moist, for some reason. Pity. But in the end, the results were delicious. I made a batch each of vanilla and mocha cupcakes (recipe from Kate Shirazi's Cupcake Magic). The icing used was cream cheese icing.

Ooh, lucky! Found an online copy of the recipe. I am almost embarrassed to give it to you, as you'll be able to compare my ahem, less professional results with theirs, but never mind. I did tell you from the beginning, I have no talent in making cupcakes. =) So here you go - recipe for Garden Party Cupcakes from Womansday.com.

After all that effort, I probably won't be making decorative cupcakes anytime soon. Harder to make than I thought, so a big salute to all the cupcake-ers in Brunei. =)

The Cupcake Journey (Part 1)

 This is Part 1 in a series of posts I have published on our various attempts at making cupcakes. Click HERE for Part 2.

Cupcakes, as most of you very well know, are the trend right now, for almost anything - birthdays, weddings, beach parties... any social event, cupcakes are bound to be there!

Me, I'm not such a huge fan of cupcakes myself. Partly because I don't have such a huge sweet tooth, and partly because I have neither the patience nor the skill to create those works of art. ;) Hasn't stopped me from trying, though I do get bored/broken-hearted (due to my cupcakes not turning out as I had envisioned) half-way through.

Anyway, you've seen the vanilla cupcakes with buttercream icing that me and my aunt made in London (click here and here). When I got back Brunei, I thought I'd try to be... slightly more daring - to rather .... different results. =) Feel free to amuse yourselves with our wonky cupcakes. Post has been divided into two because I don't want to bog down your connection to load the pictures. Second part will be uploaded as soon as I finish with this one. =) And no worries! Relevant recipes (except for the decorative cupcakes - too long!) will be posted up soon.

First of all, preeeee-senting.... our Panda cupcakes - recipe selected by our brother Syukri, who also helped, hehe! Very messy job. Not much piping required, but we bungled up what we needed to do anyway. Hence the droopy eyes and dripping noses, hehe. Couldn't find chocolate-flavoured cereal rings, so our pandas have rather more colourful ears than nature intended. =P If you have more skills than we do and want to try this, the directions to these supposedly-simple cupcakes (and many more, besides) can be found in the "Hello Cupcake!" book by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson. And just for your information, that link goes to Book Depository.co.uk which gives FREE DELIVERY WORLDWIDE (including Brunei!), regardless of the size of the order. Very awesome. =)

Because our panda cupcakes, while delicious, were still a disappointment beauty-wise, my sisters and I decided to go for a simple piping job in our next cupcakes. However, since not many of us were fans of buttercream, we decided to go for cream cheese icing, flavoured with summer berries. Some leftover chocolate ganache was used partly for flavour, and partly as decoration for the chocolate cupcakes. Of course, the requisite sprinkle-ables are also there. =)

For this batch of cupcakes, we made a batch each of vanilla cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes. Opinion on which one was better was divided - the younger generation seemed to prefer the chocolate ones, while the ahem, not so young generation thought the chocolate cupcakes were too rich and preferred the relative simplicity of the vanilla cupcakes. Different opinions, different tastes, but all agreed that the cupcakes were tasty. (And looked quite pretty, besides). The beautifully-coloured cream cheese icing was very well-received, I have to say.

For these cupcakes, the recipes I used for both types of cupcakes is from the book "Cupcake Magic: Little Cakes with Attitude" by Kate Shirazi. This one is a fun little book, but sadly, utilising many ingredients that I covet but are not easily available in Brunei. Things such as edible glitter!!! Sigh. Ah well.

And that's the end of Part 1. =) I haven't decided when to do Part 2, surely within the next day or so. And of course, various recipes will possibly be posted up in the next few weeks. See you soon!

Crispy Oat Cookies with White Chocolate and Sea Salt

I've mentioned several times over, I think, on how I like my sweet things to be complemented by a slightly salty undertone. Whether it be a savoury dish,like my favourite Honey Chicken, or our chocolate chip cookies, I like it to have a touch of salt in it. =) So when I came across this recipe for oatmeal cookies that actually had sea salt sprinkled on it, I thought "Wow!" and bookmarked it. And forgot about it for the next year or so... until now, when I decided I really should get a start on all those recipes I've bookmarked. :) So here we go!

What you need:
1 cup plain flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon table salt
14 tablespoons (about 200g) unsalted butter, softened slightly
1 cup white granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
170g good-quality white chocolate bar, chopped
1/2 teaspoon flaky sea-salt

What you do:

1. Whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder and table salt in a medium bowl. Preheat oven to 175 C and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Beat the butter and the sugars until light and fluffy. Scrape down bowl with rubber spatula, then add egg and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Scrape down bowl again. Add flour mixture gradually and mix until just incorporated and smooth. Gradually add the oats and white chocolate and mix until well incorporated.
3. Roll about a tablespoon of dough into balls, place on the prepared baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Flatten each ball to about 3/4 inch-thickness using fingertips.
4. Sprinkle a flake or two of sea salt onto each cookie.
5. Bake until the cookies are a deep golden brown, mine took about 10-12 minutes as they were smaller. Rotate baking tray halfway through baking. Transfer baking sheets to a wire rack to cool.
   

Unfortunately, my cookies did not form what she called a "shell of an oatmeal cookie...". As you can see, mine had spread in the oven and were flat... very very flat. When I read through the comments (boy, should really have done that *before* baking), it seems as though some other people had the same problem, while others didn't. While the cause of the thin-ness is as yet, unknown, someone reported that she had successfully made the hollow cookies after substituting 6 tablespoons of the butter with vegetable shortening. Ah well... maybe for my second attempt.

Anyway. Although the cookies were thin, they were very crispy with a slight chew to them, probably because of the oats. But I really like this sort of texture! :D Which is great. The oats though... I might grind them up a little bit the next time round, as I thought they made the texture too grainy-feeling. Oh, how I wish I had Sainsbury's Taste The Difference Rolled Oats here. I can only seem to find one particular brand of rolled oats, and they really aren't as tasty as the Taste the Difference ones, which featured prominently in my meals last year in Butter Oat Chicken. :) Yum!

Rather surprisingly, these cookies were also an unexpected hit with the teenager demographic. I really thought they wouldn't like it as much because of the oats, but told my sisters to bring them to school anyway as we couldn't possibly finish it all in time before they started to get stale. (Poor schoolchildren, acting as guinea pigs for all my baking experiments... :P) And they liked it. Wow. One even commented that it tasted like Famous Amos cookies... which I don't quite agree with, but hey. Anyone can have their own opinions. :) I rather think that the version 6.5 cookies are closer ti Famous Amos in texture, if not in taste. There were some mixed reactions, of course, mostly because of the oats. Nevertheless, both batches of cookies brought to different schools were finished within the day, so that was a load of my back! :D

Even more so, these being oat cookies. I think they would go soft very easily in Brunei's humid climate. So I was really eager to get rid of them. :P These are the times I wish my brothers were around, so I don't have to worry who is going to eat what. They will be gone by the next morning, haha! Oh well, we'll be seeing them soon, so yay! :)

Quote of the day: If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

Chicken Kolomee (Kolo Mee) (v2)

It has been awhile since my last (rather disastrous) attempt at making kolomee. I have been looking around once in awhile for another recipe to try out, but haven't found a nice looking one. But, recently, I came across this recipe for kolomee at a fellow Bruneian food blogger's blog (haha, that is quite the mouthful), Foodie Tales, and thought... "My, that sounds delicious". Coincidentally, I also came across fresh kolomee noodles being sold, so I thought I might as well try it out. So... here it is, the second version of my attempt at kolomee. More or less follows the original recipe, but slightly adapted to make it easier to make. =) Here we go!

What you need:
(All amounts are to taste)
Minced chicken
Half a chicken, cut into small-ish pieces, for steaming (optional)

Seasonings:
Oyster sauce
Soy sauce
White pepper
Sugar
Sesame oil

Fresh kolomee noodles
Crispy fried shallots, for garnishing
Chopped spring onion, for garnishing

What you do:

1. Firstly, if you wish to have some steamed chicken on the side, season the chicken well with salt and a touch of sesame oil and steam until cooked through.
2. To cook the minced chicken, marinate for about 10-15 minutes with the seasoning ingredients.
3. Meanwhile, make the kolomee sauce by simmering more of the seasoning ingredients with a bit of water until slightly thickened, and set aside.
4. In another pan, stiryfry the minced chicken together with the marinade. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if you wish.
5. To prepare the noodles, it apparently depends on what kind you have. The oil-coated kind is apparently easiest, just dip briefly in hot water. Unfortunately, I only saw the flour coated kind, which is a bit harder to cook. To cook it, boil in hot water for about a minute or so, drain and wash with cold running water, then blanch briefly in hot water to heat it up.
6. To assemble, place the noodles on a large serving platter. Pour over the kolomee sauce and mix well to coat. Top with the cooked minced and steamed chicken, then scatter over the crispy fried shallots and spring onions, and serve immediately.

One of my sisters is sort of a kolomee fanatic. Most of the time, when we go out to eat, she would order kolomee, even in unorthodox places to have it, such as Indian eating places. So my benchmark, this time round, would be whether she liked it or not.

And she loved it! Well, she didn't explicitly say so, but she ate a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean, a lot. ;) Of course, there were a couple of complaints, like how the steamed chicken at her favourite place tastes much better, but they were tiny niggles, not true complaints at all. The sauce was almost exactly how "restaurant" kolomee tastes to me - mostly salty but balanced out with sweetness and more than a touch of sesame oil. Simply perfect. :)

Even with the slightly adapted recipe, it still took quite a bit of time to make. This led to our breakfast being a bit later than usual, but oh well, it was the weekend after all. :) I didn't like cooking the noodles at all, and would love to give the oil-coated version a try, if I can find it.

Anyway, this was definitely a huge improvement over version 1, which was salty salty salty without any balance in flavours. There were some comments which suggested a similar recipe to the one above, but I "forgot" to try it until now. Oh well, doesn't matter anymore, I guess. If I need a home-made kolomee fix, I know where to go now. :)

Quote of the day: The more you eat, the less flavor; the less you eat, the more flavor.