Onion Bread Soup

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Posted by wendy | Posted in Cooking | Posted on 01-04-2014

Yup that’s right, onion bread soup.

ta da!

I have been baking bread for the kids. It’s pretty easy and save me a trip to the store. Who doesn’t like the bread baking first thing in the morning?!

My mom went back to Taiwan and left a whole bunch of onions and garlic behind. The onion has started to sprout. So I figure I better use them before a garden starts in my kitchen.

I had some left over chicken soup from the Zesty Dublin Coddle I made a week ago when everyone was sick.

Today being a rainy day, it was perfect for soup! I did a search for “Potatoes, chicken soup, onions” and came up with this, “Sweet Onion and Bread Soup.”

I want to say, I love the internet. I can just search for ingredients I have and recipes just magically pop up! What did people do before the internet!

Toasted Bread
Onion

Here’s the 411 on this delicious recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 8 oz sourdough bread (or any other dense, dark bread)
  • 3 large sweet onions
  • 3 large garlic cloves (or 5 medium ones)
  • 2 1/2 cups chicken broth
  • 1 tsp dried thyme
  • 1 cup milk
  • 3 oz butter
  • Couple of slices of Mozzarella cheese

Directions:

  1. Cut up the bread. I used the heel of the bread which turned out beautifully!
  2. Cut up the onion and slice them.
  3. Smash the garlics.
  4. Heat up half of the butter and fry the bread until the bread is crispy.
  5. At the same time, heat up the other half of butter in a pot and chuck in the onion and garlic. Let it cook for about 10-15 minutes.
  6. Once the bread is crisp, turn off the heat and pour the milk in.
  7. Add the chicken soup with the onions and put the bread in the soup and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.
  8. Put the cheese on top of the soup and cover until it’s melted.

I also tried using the broiler to crisp up the melted cheese but that didn’t work too well. So probably won’t do that again next time.

It was so good. I didn’t get to take the after picture!

Pancakes!

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Posted by wendy | Posted in Cooking | Posted on 30-11-2011

While I was at grocery shopping, I saw this little item.

I had to get it! Pancakes, no pan or cooking required. And it’s American! Whohoo. Until now, I never thought about pancakes being American style or not. It was ok. Very sweet and fluffy.

So all this got me inspired making my own “American Pancakes.”

I found this simple recipe on the internet, of course. Internet is like a giant cookbook! UnQAed cookbook that is. I have made some hideous food out of the unQAed internet cookbook.

Anyway, here’s the recipe if you feel so inspired not to eat out of the packet. It’s not hard and it’s fun!

American Style Pancake

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon white sugar
  • 1 1/4 cups milk
  • 1 egg
  • 3 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk, egg and melted butter; mix until smooth.
Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.

So, I didn’t have plain flour, so I used some self rising flour and omitted salt and baking powder. Also, don’t heat up the pan too hot, you will end up with a burnt mess. The pancakes got butter in it so it didn’t really stick to the pan.

Here are some photo evidence of this yummy yummy goodness.

Being cooked!

Flipped!

Ready to eat!

Scone!

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Posted by wendy | Posted in Cooking, expat life | Posted on 10-06-2011

I made some scone this week and they were mighty delicious! It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be too! I had to guestimate on the butter because butter here doesn’t come in measurement blocks. More butter = More better right?!

One weird thing about scones making is that it doesn’t involve eggs! I had to read it twice to make sure I read it right. No eggs! I was sad because I bought eggs thinking I needed them. But it’s all right I love eggs!

Here’s the recipe I used:

3 cups self raising flour; 60g butter; 1 cup of milk. Sift flour into a bowl, rub in butter, add nearly all of the milk at once and mix in quickly with a knife. Add remaining milk if nescessary to mix to a soft dough. Turn onto a floured board and knead by pressing with heel of hand 3 or 4 times. Pat out to a round,2cm thick and cut out into 4cm rounds with a floured cutter. Place scones close together on a lightly greased baking tray. Brush tops with a little milk and bake in a preheated very hot oven 230C for10 – 15 min or until well risen and golden. For soft scones wrap in a tea- towel as soon as they come from the oven, for crusty scones cool on a wire rack. And always for serving, no matter how thick the cream says it is on the container, whip it until you can cut it!

I added raisins I found in the cupboard.

Extreme close up of the scone ready to be eaten!

Ready to eat with butter (of course) and bit of honey.

Not scone related, but it’s cute anyways!

dent-de-lion

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Posted by wendy | Posted in Cooking, expat life, Irish Cooking | Posted on 14-06-2010

Most people think dent-de-lion (aka dandelions) is just some weedy plant that are blithe to their gardens. Our land lord certainly think so for he gave us three bottles of dandelion killers. They used to be under the stairs, but I moved them to the annex (yes we have an annex!).

My sister in law gave me a Irish cook book when we moved here. The book had all sorts of recipes Irish. I was particular drawn to dandelions. I didn’t know they were editable! Apparently the leaves can be used for salad and flowers can be eaten. I was fascinated by the fried flower recipe. Any recipe with the word ‘FRIED’ is by default is delicious in my book!

So today we went out to gather dandelions. I wonder if our neighbors think we are insane!

Surprisingly it was hard to find. I guess people really hate them!

Anyway, feast your eyes on these wonderful dent-de-lions!

Before :

Dandelion Flowers

After:

Fried Dandelion Flowers

Mr said they taste like bland fried vegetable. I will have to tweak the recipe next time to see if I should change the herbs or more salt. It smelled delicious as I was cooking them!

If you want to try it out, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

  • 20 to 30 dandelion – or how ever much you can find in the garden
  • Vegetable Oil for frying (you can use olive oil I just had vegetable oil handy
  • 2 tablespoon of flour (you can use cormeal if you want)
  • Pinch of salt
  • Pinch of black pepper
  • Pinch of dried thyme
  • pinch of dried oregano
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten

Directions:

  • Rinse the flowers and dry them gently. I left them on a plate on top of some paper towels.
  • Mix the flour, salt, black pepper, dried thyme, and dried oregano.
  • Heat frying pan over medium heat with the vegetable oil. You don’t need that much just enough to cover the flowers.
  • Dip the flower in the beaten egg and then in the seasoned flour mixture.
  • Fry the little flowers in batches, stalk side up until golden.
  • Serve

You really want to cut as much as stalk off as possible without breaking up the flower. It’s pretty tricky, but if you cut too deep you just end up with petals. It’s kind of cool but hard to fry.