Sandy's addictive oven-baked spicy BBQ chichen wings-you will want to make them everyday, trust me.

Ingredients:

• 2 kilos of chicken wings
• 1 cup of tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup of worcestershire sauce
• juice of one lemon
• 2-4 tablespoons hot/mild mustard (depends on your taste)
• 1-2 tablespoons of ABC Extra Hot Chilli Garlic Sauce from Heinz (available from Woolworths and Coles. You can substitute the sauce with minced red hot chilli, sugar, garlic, and salt)
• 1 tablespoon of hickory
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar (you can use normal white sugar or raw sugar, but brown sugar will intensify the caramelization process of the sauce, making the wings extra sticky)   
• 1-2 tablespoons of minced garlic (if you have a social engagement to attend to afterwards, you should reduce the amount of garlic to be socially acceptable)
• 1/4 cup of water
• White pepper to taste

Method:

Pre-cook the chicken wings in boiling water for about 5-6 minutes, depending on the size of the wings. Note: this makes a light chicken stock.

Drain and set aside the pre-cooked chicken wings.

Make the BBQ marinade by mixing all the ingredients together. Marinate the partly cooked wings in the BBQ marinade sauce for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Note: the longer, the better, preferably at least an hour.

Place the marinaded chicken wings on a baking dish, pour leftover marinade over the chicken wings. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180-200 C (depending on the type of your oven) for 15-20 minutes, turn and toss the chicken wings to ensure that they are evenly coated in the sauce. Bake for another 15-20 minutes, or until the sauce has caramelized, and wings become tender. Done!

The wings can be served as a main meal with rice and green veggies, or as a snack. The end result should be tender chicken wings coated in a sticky spicy and smoky sauce. These chicken wings are addictive and finger-licking good!

My love-love relationship with country cooking

I have always had a love-love relationship with the good ol’ country cooking. My mother-in-law is a great country cook, and most things she cooks are as ‘exotic’ to me as Asian food is to her. For instance, her ‘goulash’ consists of chopped meat stewed in gravy, and if she feels extra ‘kinky’, she would throw in a couple of bay leaves. My goulash with hot paprika would prove to be too much on the exotic side for her pallet. I especially love her roast pork with mash potato. It is comforting to have a gigantic plant of meat and potato covered in a rich 80%-fat gravy-while your waist line is secretly cursing you out, your heart knows that you are very much loved.  

While most people would say country cooking is comforting because their mother used to cook that way. Well, growing up in a Chinese family with a mother who can’t cook to save her life, I am not in a position to say that. While I cannot say that country cooking reminds me of home, I can say that it reminds me of love and simplicity of the country lifestyle. Country cuisine is also comforting for someone like me with a larger-than-life appetite. Sometimes the only thing that can make me feel better is a juicy pork roast with hearty potatoes and bouncy peas-all 800 grams of them! The pork might not be seasoned with exotic spices, the potatoes might not be mashed with cream and organic butter, and the only fibre you find on the plate might be a couple of overcooked peas, dwarfed by the size of the roast and the all-mighty pile of mash potato, but you find tremendous comfort in knowing that you will feel fed, and that you don’t have to worry about food for the coming days, as there will be enough leftovers to feed an army. Just when you think you have reached your monthly red meat quota in one meal, you are served the leftover stew on toast the next morning for breakfast. Whenever I visit my mother-in-law, I constantly find myself in a ‘should-I, should-I-not’ situation. My health-conscious mind is constantly at odds with my greedy stomach, and most of the time, the smell of her stew or roast ends up too powerful for the mind to resist. So, during this festive season, enjoy your fat-dripping pork roast and leave all the dieting till next year!

If you like eating, go to a diner!

I recently had dinner at Gecko Restaurant and Bar in Brighton Le Sands (for those international readers, it is in Sydney, Australia). The entrees were grilled octopus and grilled halloumi cheese with tomatoes, and my main was seafood risotto. The food was disappointing, especially given the price tag. I could go on for days, but in a nutshell, the octopus was overcooked and rubbery, the balsamic glaze was too sweet to go with the halloumi cheese, the cooked tomatoes lacked the punch needed to balance with the salty halloumi cheese, and my seafood risotto was under-seasoned, and didn't even come with parmesan cheese! My dining experience at Gecko added another disappointing dining experience to my long list of disappointing dining experiences, and further strengthened my preference for diner food. My advice to all foodies out there: if you like eating, go to a diner! And here is why:

First of all, you actually get fed at a diner. On the contrary, you need to eat before and after going to most (fancy) restaurants. I think there is something very wrong about having to eat before and after a restaurant meal, when you go to a restaurant with the intent of getting fed! I have visited many fancy restaurants, where I pay out-of-this-world prices for a plate of food as big as the bits and pieces you usually find caught between your teeth! Maybe it is just me being greedy, as I do have a more-than-healthy appetite, and am capable of swallowing a whole cow when I am hungry, but I am convinced that most healthy people would agree that anything less than 100 grams should not considered a 'main' unless you weigh less than 50 kilos (or have eaten beforehand). I remember going to Jamie Oliver's restaurant Fifteen in Melbourne a few years ago, and feeling so hungry after the two-course meal that I had to rush to a pie shop afterwards to get a quick fix. While restaurants may argue that quality meals come in small portions, my stomach AND wallet would beg to differ. Compared to restaurant meals, diner meals on average are at least twice the size, and less than half the price. For instance, if you ever feel like a refreshing Vietnamese noodle soup, pay Dong Ba in Bankstown (Sydney) a visit. Both your stomach and wallet would love you for it, as you can get a huge bowl of seafood soup almost the size of a small bathtub with lots of salad on the side for only AUD$9!

Apart from the fact that you get a decent meal out of a diner, you are also more likely to be served authentic dishes in a diner than in a restaurant. You local Vietnamese diner or pizza joint probably serve dishes more authentic than those you will find at their fancier 'cousins', for a fraction of the price. I have been to countless restaurants that have the guts to call themselves “Italian Restaurant”, when in fact they serve a mixture of Thai, Italian, Greek, Mexican…to be continued. I don’t call this fusion food-I call it confusion food. The word ‘Italian’ has been abused to the max in the restaurant industry to the point that as long as you cook with tomatoes, you can potentially label yourself an Italian restaurant. So next time you fancy a bit of authenticity but don't want to spend your entire week's wage, pop into your local diner, rather than some fancy ‘Italian’ restaurant that breaks your bank and serves you curries!

My first work experience in a commercial kitchen

A week ago, I dragged my partner to a cooking class at Alio Restaurant and Bar in Surry Hills. I enjoyed the class so much I invited myself to do work experience there. Random, I know. A degree-qualified (not one, not two, but three degrees!) professional seeking work experience in a restaurant only happens when one’s passion for food dominates the decision-making process. Long story short, I shameless invited myself to do work experience at Alio, and Chef Hughes was kind enough to have me.  Next thing I knew, we locked in a time and date, and I finished the cooking class looking forward to my next cooking adventure.

A week later, I was on my way to Alio again, except that this time, I was going to be in the actual kitchen (not the ‘show’ kitchen where cooking classes are conducted) with Chef Hughes and his staff. I was so excited I almost got run over by a car while crossing the street! I managed to get myself to Alio in one piece, on time. So far so good, I thought. The reservation manager guided me to the kitchen, where I found three sous chefs prepping away alongside Head Chef Hughes for the dinner service. It was refreshing to see the Head Chef working so closely with his comrades in the kitchen. One of the sous chefs showed me to my bench top, where a large pile of herbs and green beans awaited. I was so excited about being in a commercial kitchen for the first time that even picking beans and herbs seemed as thrilling as cooking a 3-course feast for the Queen. After I proved my competency in picking beans and herbs, I quickly moved onto more exciting tasks, from making Grissini and Gnocchi to processing seafood. The honest truth is, while I am keen on eating and cooking, I am not so keen on meeting the ingredients, especially when everything is still ‘intact’, like the head. When one of the sous chefs brought out a bucket of fresh whole squid, my fear of processing whole seafood became a real obstacle I had to overcome. I could feel the heat on the back of my neck when looking at those condemning eyes of the squid. Fortunately, the sous chef sensed my fear of eyeballs and heads, so he kindly ripped the head off the squid on my behalf and handed me the rest. Phew~~…The rest was a piece of cake, as the wings and skin can be peeled off with ease. Deboning a smoked trout was quite an enjoyable task, not to mention a rewarding one too! While my fingers were busy at work, running through the coral flesh of the smoked trout for bones, my mouth was also busy at work, producing saliva at the speed of light. I was following the protocol of ‘most for the bowl, a bite for me’, when I would have loved to follow my own rule of ‘none for the bowl, all for me’ then and there. Making Grissini and Gnocchi was therapeutic, as I found comfort in turning the smooth doughs into the familiarly-shaped bouncy potato dumplings with their signature marking, and uniformly shaped bread sticks.

Good times fly, so they say. One minute, I had just stepped into the kitchen fueled with adrenalin, the next minute, it was past 5pm. While I enjoyed every minute of my 4-hour work experience in a real commercial kitchen, my legs were telling me that they need to be put up, and my stomach was starting to take over the brain. Just when my stomach was about to drive me to pick up the smoked trout containers and tip all contents into the black hole of a mouth that is mine, staff dinner was ready to come out of the oven! That was a close call! It was 4 large pizzas with meat and veggie toppings, made by Chef Hughes and his staff. While I felt privileged to be able to enjoy such scrumptious home-made pizzas cooked by professional chefs, I felt even more privileged to be able to learn from beautiful people like those working at Alio. The kitchen was a very different environment to the one I am used to. Unlike a typical office environment, where you are packed into an office space like sardines but alone in your cubical, the kitchen gives a real sense of comradeship (not to mention, you get to play music out loud in the kitchen too, which is always a bonus!). As I finished my shift, and waved goodbye to my new-found friends at Alio, I knew it was not for good, as I would see them again soon!

My garlic king prawn, mushroom and asparagus salad

Ingredients (for 2-4 people) :

• 12 raw king prawns (give or take, depending on your appetite and financial health), de-veined and peeled (note: you can leave the tail on for presentation)
• A large handful of asparagus (note: you can add more asparagus if you wish to bulk up the dish, or less asparagus if you wish to make prawns the star)
• 1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 large red chilli, de-seeded and chopped finely (note: if you want it extra hot, you can use birdseye chilli instead)
• 6 button mushrooms, finely chopped
• 1 small knob of butter (30 grams give or take)
• Olive oil
• 1 lime (for garnish)
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 teaspoon of praprika (note: you can use smoked or sweet praprika in this dish, as both would go well with the prawns)
• 1 small knob of ginger, grated
• Salt and pepper (if you want it extra hot, use white pepper instead of black)

Peel the asparagus and blanch in salty boiling water for 30 seconds. Dump the cooked asparagus in icy water to stop the cooking process. Set aside.

Heat the pan over medium high heat, add olive oil and butter. When butter has melted, add prawns, garlic, ginger, salt, pepper and praprika. Sautee till prawns have changed colour and started to caramelize, it should take about 3-5 minutes (depending on the size of your pan, size of prawns, quality of pan, etc). Add chopped chilli and lemon juice. Cook for another minute or two, and take the prawns out of the pan. In the same pan, cook the chopped mushrooms with a little salt and pepper. You may wish to add a little more butter to the pan at this stage (note: if you cook the mushrooms and the prawns together, the mushrooms would give too much liquid for the prawns to caramelize). Cook the mushrooms till soft.

In a large bowl, mix the prawns, mushrooms and asparagus. Tip the pan juice into the bowl. Garnish the salad with some fresh red chili and a couple of wedges of lime.

Take it up a notch

Keep the prawn heads and shells, as that’s where you'd find most of the prawny flavour. In a hot pan, add olive oil and the prawn heads/shells, and cook them till they turn red. Drain the heads/shells well and squeeze out as much of the prawn ‘essence’ as you can from them before discarding. Use the flavoured oil to cook your prawns, and what you get is a flavour boost!

The best summer salad ever

Ingredients (for 4 people):

• 500 grams of prawns, cooked with garlic and peeled
• 2-3 large avocados, scooped out and chopped
• 1 punnet of cherry tomatoes, sliced
• 1 large cos lettuce, torn
• Cooked sweet corn kernels
• ½ Spanish onion, chopped finely
• A handful of red radishes, sliced
• Deep-fried shallots (you can buy from any Asian supermarket, if you cannot be bothered deep frying your own)
• 1 lemon
• Salt and pepper

At this point, you are 90% there! All there is left to do is mix all the ingredients in a large bowl, squeeze lemon juice and season with salt and pepper, and voilà ! This salad is perfect for summer, as it is quick, easy with readily-available seasonal ingredients, and most importantly, it is SOOOO delicious. The sweetness of the prawns and corn, and the smoothness of the avocado work, so well with the tanginess of the lemon juice and cherry tomatoes, and the spiciness of the red radishes and spanish onion. The crunchy deep-fried shallots and crisp lettuce compliment the smooth texture of the ripe avocado beautifully. This salad can be eaten as a light meal on its own. It can also be eaten as a filling with tortilla.

A story about the humble sandwich

I have always been intrigued by the notion of a SANDWICH. My fascination with the humble sandwich has prompted me to do some online research. The humble sandwich was said to be ‘invented’ by the 4^th Earl of Sandwich, an Englishman who was fond of gambling. As the story goes, during a gambling streak, he instructed a cook to prepare his food in such a way that it would not interfere with his game. The inventive cook presented him with sliced meat between two pieces of toast. Okay, it is probably not the most exciting meal one could expect, but a sandwich could be so much more exciting than people give it credit for. The humble sandwich is often perceived to be bland and uneventful. However, a sandwich can be more than what meets the eye. I guess the saying “never judge a book by its cover” applies to the hero of my story perfectly-never judge a sandwich by its name. Sandwiches are eaten all around the world. They might not all look like sliced meat between two slices of bread, but the idea of a sandwich is a universally-endorsed concept, for example, a soft taco from Mexico, an Indian roti ‘sandwich’, or a pork and steamed bun ‘sandwich’ from Singapore. Here is an idea for your next work event, why not organize a ‘multicultural sandwich’ day, where colleagues from different cultures can showcase their culturally-distinct gastronomic delight? I think its about time that we give the humble sandwich the honour it deserves, as it is a reminder that no matter how different we think we are from the next person, we can always find something in common, in food-Everybody loves a good sandwich! Time to celebrate, peeps!

Red pepper, green bean, red radish and egg salad

Ingredients (for 4 people):

·         A large bowl of green beans, trimmed

·         2 hard boiled eggs

·         2 large red peppers

·         4-6 red radishes

·         1 large clove of garlic

·         Good quality balsamic vinegar

·         Extra virgin olive oil

·         Salt and cracked black pepper

Blanch the trimmed green beans in salty boiling water for 1 minute. Tip the water out and set aside the blanched beans. (Note: if you want extra crunchy green beans, tip the hot water out, and dump the beans in icy water to stop the cooking process)

Deseed the red peppers, and cut in strips. Heat olive oil in a pan, add garlic and sauté till translucent. Add pepper strips, salt and pepper, and a dash of balsamic vinegar, cook till the peppers have softened. Set aside the cooked peppers and garlic.

Chop the red radishes and slice the hard boiled eggs.

In a large salad bowl (note: you need a large salad bowl for this, as a large bowl allows room for the ingredients to soak up the salad dressing), combine the cooked peppers, garlic, green beans, eggs, and red radishes, drizzle balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil to generously coat the ingredients, add salt and black pepper to taste, and bon appétit!!

This mouth-watering salad would go well with grilled meat/fish and a creamy mash, as the tanginess of the salad cuts through the richness of the creamy mash. It would not go well with dishes that are high in acidity, like tomato-based stews, as the acidity in the tomato sauce and the acidity in the salad dressing would almost certainly cause stomach reflux! 

Variations:

You can roast the peppers and garlic to bring out their natural sugar. Garlic croutons can be added to make it a main-meal salad. Strips of grilled beef can be added to the salad. There are many variations you can experiment with, the key is to get the basic flavour combinations right.

The Best Chicken Rice for under $10 in Sydney

If there is one dish I could eat everyday for breakfast, lunch and dinner, it would have to be Hainanese Chicken Rice. While the dish originates from China, it is more of a national dish in Malaysia and Singapore, where it is consumed at any time of the day. The dish is as simple as ‘steaming’ the freshest chicken in a master stock made with those ‘usual suspects’ in Asian cooking (garlic, ginger, shallots, shaoxin wine, soy), and what you get is juicy succulent flavorsome chicken that you cannot get enough of. The dish is often served cold, with rice cooked in chicken stock, cucumber and sauces (can be ginger and shallot, can be chili and garlic, can be sweet soy, etc). While some may prefer to eat their chicken hot, I like my Chicken Rice cold, as the jelly-like texture of the chicken skin compliments the soft melt-in-your-mouth flesh.

While there are many places in Sydney that sell Chicken Rice, my personal favourite chicken rice outlet in the city would have to be: Sayong Curry & Laska, 303 Pitt St (Pittsway Arcade), the foodcourt downstairs of Woolworths. For AUD$8, you get chicken rice, a soup, sauces, and a huge chunk of chicken (you can request leg or thigh). I have struggled to finish my chicken rice on a few occasions, despite my more-than-healthy appetite during lunch hours. I often find balancing a piece of chicken, a bit of rice, cucumber and sauce onto a spoon all a bit too much to take, when all I want to do (everytime I get my chicken rice) is to stick my face directly into the chicken, rice, soup and sauces, dislocate my jaws and swallow whole. As you eat it, the only thought that comes to you can only be: I do not want this plate of chicken to ever run out! If there is ever a healthy addiction, it would have to be the Chicken Rice Addiction!

So, next time you are wandering around the city during your lunch break pondering whether to get a sandwich, or a sandwich, why not give Chicken Rice a try?

Alio Cooking School-Surry Hills, Sydney

A while back I had purchased a couple of tickets to the cooking school at Alio Restaurant and Bar in Surry Hills, taught by Head Chef Ashley Hughes. Always fascinated by the art of bread and pasta making, I dragged my partner along to the cooking class last week (very much to his dismay, as he is not a huge foodie like me). We were seated around the kitchen bench, not long before Chef Hughes came into the kitchen to introduce himself. Chef Hughes is a soft-spoken yet passionate food lover, whose food philosophy is about using clever combinations of simple and fresh ingredients to bring out flavours that make your tastebuds dance. While I consider myself to possess a sound understanding of Italian food, I was keen to learn more about making good bread and the various types of Italian pasta. The Chef kick-started the cooking class by making a simple, yet mouth-watering Focaccia bread flavoured with rosemary and garlic. Despite having made bread myself a few times, I am still fascinated by the magic of bread-making, and the transformation from loose-sand-like flour to a beautifully bouncy yet soft bread dough. Watching Chef Hughes mix the flour, yeast and water, form, knead and proof the dough was a satisfying, almost therapeutic experience with a surprising calming effect. As an energetic person who borderlines hyper-active, I have had friends and family suggest that I try meditation to keep calm. Personally I don't think there is a better way to meditate than making bread, plus you get to eat it at the end of the process! 

While the Focaccia dough sat on the bench with the yeast performing their magic inside of it, chef Hughes transformed a good'ol home-made pasta sheet into more than a dozen varieties of pasta, from spaghetti and fettuccine to ravioli and Tortellini. The star pasta dish was Rotolo of Spinach and Ricotta cheese. What I had imaged to be a filled pasta similar to Ravioli turns out to be a large sheet of pasta filled with stuffing, and rolled to form a thick ‘sausage’, cooked in a tea towel (with both ends tied). It was an interesting pasta-cooking technique that I was not familiar with, yet makes total sense. The end result was a simply yet beautiful pasta dish that showcased Chef Hughes’s technical skills as a seasoned pasta maker.

After over two hours of watching chef Hughes whipping out bread, pasta and a beautiful summer salad from scratch, I (more so my tastebuds) could not wait to tuck into my long-anticipated lunch of Facaccia bread with olive oil and 25-year-old balsamic, Rotolo of Spinach and Ricotta cheese, Persian feta, witlof, wild rocket and pear salad AND my personal favourite, Tiramisu. I was in heaven, eating, sipping, and exchanging food stories with my fellow food lovers. The whole experience was a much-needed boost of ‘happy juice’, after recent deflating events. The cooking class at Alio, the food, and the nice little chat with Chef Hughes confirmed a simple yet important belief of mine: good food makes good living, and I just LOVE it!