Tangy Mango Slaw

Like i mentioned yesterday, i'll get my hands on the pie tee mold and make some decent looking shells but i wasnt in the mood to test out my patience , so i embarked in this new recipe. 

This is actually the recipe meant to be my new filling (the modern vegetarian filling i mentioned) for the pie tee. 

Instead of eatin it together with the pie tee shells, i decided i should jst eat it like a salad. Besides havin it as a salad, u can use it for a side dish to a pasta, chicken or even seafood dish.

Mango slaw is one really easy recipe. All you need is one shredded  firm ripe mango, shredded cucumber, shredded carrot, slices of red onions, shredded or thinly sliced red bell pepper (capsicum) and some chopped coriander leaves.

For the dressing, its a simple vinaigrette. Usually vinaigrette's a mixture of vinegar and oil with some flavoured herbs, spices and other ingredients.

Instead of vinegar, i used lemon juice with some honey, a dash or two of black pepper and a pinch of salt.

For those who loves honey, you can put more of it to tone down the tartness of lemon juice.

To get a more flavourful salad, leave it a lil longer after mixing it in the salad bowl. The shredded vegies will absorb all the tangy-ness and you'll have a less raw taste to the green vegie. This is most suitable for those who do not fancy capsicum or fresh onions.

For those who wants more stuff in it , you can put it some shredded cabbage/purple cabbage, pineapples, mandarin oranges, you name it. 

The more colourful ur platter is the better!

 

Spicy Honey Chicken

I remembered when i was in high school, we had this Kemahiran Hidup (Living Skills) lesson; it had 5 units to it - Cooking, Gardening, Sewing, Woodwork and Electronics. During the cooking week, the students were required to look for a recipe to try out during class on that particular week.

Some actually thought it was a bane to look for a recipe and to get the raw ingriendents to school and place it in the fridge in the morning when we reach school. As for me i find it really fun but i was more concern bout the cleanliness of the utensils available in the school. So usually before the cooking session starts, we were required to choose the utensils from the " utensils store room". After we got what we wanted, i'd wash the utensils squeaky clean before using it for god knows what was running around when it was stored in the store room or if the previous person who used it even cleaned it properly, didnt wanna risk gettin stomache at the end of the day.

We were expected to work in a pair so i was working with this punjabi girl. I couldnt remember exactly the exact ingredients we used but i knew that we split the ingredients on who to bring what and so on. So for that cooking week, we prepared 2 dishes. One was some masala cauliflower and the other honey chicken or so some masala spicy honey chicken or something.

On one particular morning, mom was lazy to think of what to cook so she got me to cook up a dish of chicken for her. And i was thinking, what else can i do with chicken, definitely not the usual curry or fried stuff, so i thought of the stuff i used to cook when i was in high school. I remembered that masala spicy honey chicken thingy me and my cooking partner used to cook, and i pretty much like how it tasted like but i forgot the ingredients used and since i dont have masala at home, so i did my version of the chicken and i called it the spicy honey chicken.

The pieces of chicken were marinated with a lil salt, egg yolk, sesame oil & a lil cornflour. I left the marination in the fridge for an hour or so and deep-fried it first before preparing the gravy/sauce. For the gravy i used grinded dried chillies + shallots+ garlic+ brown sugar+ salt and top it up with honey before i dish it out.

I personally hate the smell of dried chillies, so instead of having it seeded and pound or grind it, i bought the ready made available in a packet. I've tried both, the home made n the ready made avail, they both have a different effect on the food, perhaps the other ingredients also contributed to the taste of it but since i discovered that the ready made ones didnt' have that dried chillies smell, i've been using it since. Also stir-frying the chilli paste longer till the oil breaks also help in gettin rid of that greenish chillish smell to it.