Chicken Nugget with CornFlake crumbs

This is the easiest chicken nuggets I have prepared and taste just as yummy. I omit the flour and egg step and the less mess makes a happier me.

Ingredients:

Minced:

1kg chicken thigh fillet (minced up in the Thermomix till resembles mince)

1 large zuchinni

1 bunch of kale leaves

Garlic Salt -a few shakes of this and to suit taste

Dried parsley- another few shakes

Salt and pepper

Crumbs coating:

3 cups of smashed up corn flakes. I use the Thermomix for half of the cornflakes and found it disintegrated into powder form, so for the other half i manually squashed them to give it that crunchy texture when i coat the chicken.

at least 1 cup of breadcrumbs- i used all my leftover breadcrumbs

Onion powder- just a dash

Garlic powder- another dash

Method:

prepare the bed for coating your chicken first. I mixed all the coating together and place it in a large baking tray

Prepare all trays for baking and line with baking paper

Next prepare the mince. I minced all the vegetables in the Thermomix for a good Speed5-6 for couple of seconds. Then in another bowl goes the chicken, Speed 10 and longer as the chicken was hard to get into a nice minced texture. 

Then mix them all up with the seasoning. The mixture should be wet so you do not need to coat with flour and egg and crumbs.

 The mixture goes straight into the coating. I rolled them up in ball sized and dip them in the coating.

make sure they are nicely coated

Bake for first 10 minutes at 200C and the next 10 or until cooked at 180C.

My kids gobbled them up despite seeing all the green vegetables in them. They are truly yummy with the crunchy cornflakes. 

 

Stir Fry Chicken and Kale

Ingredients:
500gms of chicken strips
8 ounces kale (peeled only the leaves and leave the branch)
Handful of Shitake Mushrooms (soaked till soften)

Sauce:
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1-1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon sesame oil
pinch black pepper
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
 
1 tablespoon canola or vegetable oil for stir-frying

Method:
1. Combine the sauce ingredients

2. marinade the chicken pieces in the sauce for around 15-20 minutes
3. Heat a large non-stick skillet or wok over high heat with a tablespoon of the canola or vegetable oil. Add the chicken pieces and stir fry until they are no longer pink, 2 - 3 minutes. The chicken does not need to be cooked through at this point.

4.Add the kale, mushrooms and the remaining sauce. Continue to stir-fry until the chicken is cooked through and the kale and mushrooms are softened, 4 - 5 minutes. Serve hot on top of rice or with a separate bowl of rice. I added a few tablespoon of the water used to soak the mushroom as i wanted more sauce in my dish.

Stir Fry Kale

One of my quick side dish. I am trying to get more vegetables in our family meals. It is difficult with children that despise anything green (or orange or purple...)

I love working with Kale. I just recently discovered this vegetable while having a casual conversation with my sister. I did a quick search and found this vegetable to be very nutritious. The good thing,  it is so easy to cook Kale. It can be used in soups, pasta sauce, and even stir fry. It does not taste bad or smell weird. Just plain simple and a pretty good texture too. 

I did this quick stir fry on one of the weekday dinner meals.

Ingredients:

- whole bunch of Kale (around 5AUD each bunch)

- 2 cloves of garlic

- Seasoning of Soy Sauce, Chinese Wine, Pepper

Method:

- Wash the Kale

- I only use the leaves as the stalk is so hard!

- Chopped all garlic and make the seasoning and set aside

- Heat up oil in pan

- Stir fry garlic until fragrant

- Toss Kale in and wait till it settles (the leaves can consume alot of space before it is cooked)

- Pour in seasoning sauce

- Once Kale turns bright green, it is happy and done. Do a few stirs and it is ready to be served.

This just half of the leaves. I do need a bigger pan to fry this. It was as high as a mountain.

Cover it and let it cook a while. The leaves will soften and there will be enough space.

Look at that vibrant green colour. I just love it.

Done.

Shanghai Dumplings With Pork. Chives and Kale

Both my boys enjoyed the chinese dumplings. They love it so much that they can have a meal just full of dumplings. I think dumplings are one of the very balanced meals. It has all the protein, veggies and carbo from the skin. I try to make this at home as i can put more vegetables but it is a very labour intensive task.

I found some time to get myself ready for some dumplings making. As i am quite crazy about kale recently, i added them as well.

The measurement is really base on taste. No strict rule to it.

These are the ingredients for my dumplings:

-500gms of mined pork

- bunch of kale leaves (only the leaves)

- 2 bunch of chives.

- Garlic- 2-3 cloves

-ginger - i thumb size

-dried chinese mushrooms

- gyoza dumpling wrapper

- Soy sauce

- sesame oil

- Chinese rice wine

- pepper & salt

Method

- minced everything, as small as you can manage

- mixed in everything in a bowl and add in all the seasoning to taste.

You can always mix and match whatever filling you like.

This is the amount of Kale in my dumplings. haha

After mincing everything, a big bowl of filling ready for wrapping

It took me 2.5 hours to wrap over a hundred dumplings. I used the tripple pleat method as it looks very pretty but google has alot of other easy method to wrap

I flour the dumplings and store them in the freezer.

To cook, just simply boil a big pot of water and throw the dumplings in frozen. Once the dumplings are cook, they will submerged to the top. it will be around 7-10 minutes.

We usually have dumplings with a Quick Vegetable Soup. I will post a recipe of this quick soup next.

We tried this dumpling yesterday and the skin i used it not very nice as it was very tough and thick. I will be using this wrapper that my friend recommends next time. Putting the picture here so I will remember the right brand to buy next time.

Beef Balls and soup

Easy soup on Fridays.

 Minced some spring onions and kale together with garlic and seasoning. Mixed together with 500gms of minced beef.

Soup is just made from pork bones, carrot, dried oysters and slow boil for an hour. Throw in the meatballs to cook in the soup and separately cook the noodles.

serve while it is hot.

Macaroni Pasta and Vegetable sauce

Macaroni Pasta with veggie sauce


no recipe for this. Adapted from the Thermomix one. But i added my own veggies and whatever i have leftover in the pantry.
Veggies used - blitz up Kale, Celery, Onion, Garlic, Carrot, Basil Leaves
Sauce - Mushrooms, Tomato paste, Tomato Puree, lots of red wine for the sauce and myself, water, salt, oregano, nutmeg, sugar, fresh tomatoes
Meat - angus minced beef- 500gms.
I used Thermomix to cook this. Added a bit of everything, tasting as i go along.
Cooked the Macaroni last and kids manage to finish up one bowl. They are not a fan of pasta anymore but this is one of the best way to hide the veggies in and i absolutely love it. 

I finished up the whole bunch of kale this week. Next week i will be trying out some other veggies like beets and celeriac.

Kale Soup

Pureed vegetables of Kale and celery and fry some chips for the kiddos.