Kare Raisu : カレーライス

There're many kinds of red curries I used to cook. One of them is Kare Raisu (Japanese curry with rice) and it's my favorite. It tastes somehow milder and a bit sweeter than typically Thai red curry. Easy to cook but really delicious. By the way, if you are a vegetarian just leave out the meat and add more vegetables.

Ingredients

• 300 g chicken breast/beef/lamb/pork
• 1 large onion
• 1 carrot
• 50 g apple (about 1/2 apple)
• 1/2 red bell pepper
• 200 g potatoes
• 1-2 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 650 ml water
• 60g curry sauce mix (approx. 3 cubes)

Instructions
Cut the meat into large cubes. Peel an onion, carrot and potatoes, then cut into large cubes. Peel apple and cut into smal cubes. Cut bell pepper in long strips.

Heat vegaetable oil in a pan on medium heat. When the oil is hot, put cubed meat in a pan and fry approximately 3 minutes or until light brown. Take the fried meat out from the pan and put in a pot.

Stir fry all vegetables in the pan about 2 minutes. Shortly stir in apple cubes and add into a pot. Heat on medium heat and add water. Cover the pot and bring to boil, then turn to low heat and simmer about 30-45 minutes or until meat is tender.



Break the curry cubes into small pieces and add into the mixture. Constantly stir until completely melted. Continute simmering about 5 minutes under permanent stirring.


Serve hot with rice or Tonkatsu. This curry tastes even better if you cook in the morning and eat for dinner or cook in the evening and eat in the next day. You only have to warm before serving.

Isn't it easy to cook Kare? If you're curry's fan, you really have to try it yourself.

Strawberry Swirl Cheesecake

My husband loves strawberry swirl cheesecake. In the past week i had to bake it 2 days consecutively. Anyway I always use a 18cm springform and we gave half of the cheesecake to the parents, so the rest wasn't too much for him.

For the pastry crust :
20g butter
1/2 egg yolks
15g granulated sugar
2-3 drops vanilla extract
50g all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F. Whisk together butter, egg yolk, sugar and vanilla. Then add in the flour just until it mixed. Roll out the pastry about 3 mm. thick and fit for the cake pan's bottom, cut the dough and place the rack in the center of oven, bake the pastry crust about 10 minutes or until it's getting brown. Remove the crust from oven and let it cool completely. Reduce the heat to 175°C/350°F

For strawberry puree:
100g strawberries
10g sugar
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tbsp. corn starch

Blend all ingredients together and pour through a fine strainer in a small pot, press the pulp intensely with the spoon. Place the pot of the strawberry puree on a middle heat untill cooked. Let it cool at the room temperature.

For cheesecake:
300g cream cheese
50g sour cream
70g granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
1 egg
1/2 yolk, the rest from the crust
100 ml whipping cream
20g corn starch
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Instructions:

In a mixing bowl stir together cream cheese and sour cream until smooth. Add sugar, eggs, mix well. Then add all the rest ingredients and stir just until combined, pour half of the mixture over the cooled crust in a pan.

Drop about teaspoonful half of strawberry puree over the cream cheese mixture and pour the rest of mixture cover the puree. Drop the rest of puree over the mixture and carefully swirl with the skewer.

Place the pan in a middle of the oven and bake by 175°C/350°F about an hour or until it set in the center. Let it cool completely in a pan on a wire rack, then refrigerate at least 2 hour until firm.

Remove the cheesecake from the pan and cut in pieces to serve. It was reall fresh and delightful. You've to try it.

Kaiserbrötchen : ขนมปังไคเซอร์

I've tried to bake "Kaiserbrötchen", the typically German bread for breakfast in the past week. The first try hadn't turned out as I hope since the crust was quite thick and the texture wasn't fluffy and tender enough.

The photo above was my first homemade Kaiserbrötchen. Maybe, you can see how thick the crust is. I was quite disappointed with the result. Anyway, it was eatable. The second time that I baked this bread, I left the seeds out and the bread came out better than the first time. Too bad that the quality of the photos I took was really low because it was quite dark and the neon light is never the best for taking a photo.

And this was the third try. Finally I've done it. My Kaiserbrötchen was perfect as I expected. The crust was thin and the texture was real tender and pfuffy just as what I bought from the bekery. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I usually eat this bread for breakfast, topped with butter, marmalade, cheese, salami, ham and so on.

Seafood fried rice with chilli paste : ข้าวผัดทะเลน้ำพริกเผา

Fried rice is one of the beloved one-plate dishes in Thailand. There are maybe a hundred different kinds of fried rice you can cook, and this one is my favorite.

Ingredients : for 2 person

• 4 prawns
• 4 green mussels
• 1 squid
• 2 stick surimi
• 1 carrot
• 1/2 onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 chilli
• 40g frozen green peas
• 1 1/2 tbsp. roasted chilli paste
• 1 tbsp. oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp. fish sauce or thin soy sauce
• 2 tbsp. chicken stock
• 1/4 tsp. sugar
• 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 300g cooked rice
• tomato, cucumber and lemon
  

Instructions :

Clean prawns, cut the head, peel shells and devein. Clean squid, cut one side to open out flat and lightly cut inside of the body like a crisscross, then cut in 3cm piece. Clean and pry mussels, then remove meats from shells. Cut surimi sticks in 3 pieces. Peel carrot and cut into small cubes. Peel onion and cut in stripe. Peel Garlic and finely chop. Wash chilli and chop it also finely.

Heat vegetable oil in a pan on medium heat. Fry onion, garlic, carrot, green pea and chilli until fragrant. Add prawns, squid and mussels. Stir until the color of prawns are changing and squid is getting curl. Then add in oyster sauce, fish sauce, chicken stock and sugar, stir well.

Turn the heat to high heat, add cooked rice, stir until all ingredients are well combined. Serve warm with tomato, cucumber and a piece of lemon.