Broad Beans Recipe 1: Spaghetti 

The season of broad beans has begun. I love spaghetti with broad beans. With the effort to peel the soft skin, the dish becomes very sophisticated. 

Directions for Broad Beans Spaghetti

1. Remove the beans from from the shell.

2. Boil Broad Beans in plenty of water for 3-4 minutes. Then drain the water with a net and put the beans in cold water.

3. Remove the soft skin of each bean. It'll take your time so nice to do with the company of TV.

4. Chop onion and garlic into small pieces and fry with plenty of olive oil. Boil pasta in al dente condition. Add pasta and  broad beans into the pan mix with all ingredients. Add salt and extra olive.

5. Top some Parmesan Cheese and Truffle Oil to serve.

The toddler also enjoyed this seasonal dish. It was nicely chopped with the noodle cutter brought from Japan!

Mmmmmm, Yummy!!

Total time to prepare: 25-40 minutes (depends on the amount of broad beans to peel)
Total cost: 3 Pounds (2 for Broad Beans, 0.7 for Pasta and 0.3 for other ingredients)

Toddler Bento Archive+ (Sometime 21-30 May)

• Panda Rice with sour plum cheek
• Grilled teriyaki salmon with dill
• Potato, asparagus and halloumi cheese butter and soy sauce saute
• Cherry tomatoes

• Salmon was soaked with soy sauce and mirin over night.
• It was topped with mayonnaise for grilling  to attain rich taste.

• Rice with sour plum
• Hash Potato with seaweed powder
• Spinach, Carrot, asparagus and sausage saute with butter and soy sauce
• Halloumi cheese and cucumber

• Panda rice with Sour plum cheek
• Hash potato with Sea weed powder
• Cucumber Salad
• Home Made Chicken Ham
• Spinach, Carrot and Asparagus saute with Butter and Soy sauce

• Hamburger with Tomato and Red Wine Sauce
• Rice with Sour Plum
• Spinach Saute
• Potato and Carrot saute with Fresh Tomato and Dill 
• Cucumber and Halloumi Cheese Salad

Similar ingredients for Mr. husband's bento.

• Curry and Broad Beans Rice with Fresh Tomato
• Teriyaki Salmomn
• Carrot, spinach and avocado saute
• Cucumber and Halloumi Cheese Salad

• Rice with Crushed Dried Sour Plum Leaf
• Karaage-Japanese Chicken Deepfry
• Potato saute with fresh Dill and Tomato
• Carrot, Avocado and Cucumber salad with Mayonnaise 

Salty Eggs

Given the opportunity to have a picnic. 
I prepared:

• Karaage (Japanese Style Fried Chicken),
• Salty Eggs,
• Onigiri (Rice balls) with broad beans and sour plum and
• Strawberry mousse.

Next to Karaage, salty egg is also a popular lunchbox item or a beer nibble. 

This is very easy to prepare, economical and promisingly tasty!!

Just remember to prepare it in previous night (or longer advance) to season eggs well.

Salty Egg Ingredients

• Eggs
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 1.5 teaspoon of oyster sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon of chinese five spices (if available)
• 250-400cc of water

Directions

1. Boil eggs as you like and peel the shell. 

It is easier to peel egg shells in water.

2. Boil all the seasoning with water and allow it cool.

3. Put eggs and the seasoning in a container with a lid or in a reclosable bag. Leave it over a night or longer. 

Time to prepare: 15 minutes including boiling and peeling eggs

Toddler Bento Archive (14, 15, 16, 19, 20 May)

• Tomato&Red Wine Humburg Steak
• Carrot Saute 
• Spinach Saute
• Potato glatin
• Tomato&Avocado salad

• Fried Bihon (Click to see the recipe)
• Corn, Broad beans and halloumi saute
• Spinach with sweet and soy sesame sauce

• Rice with Salmon flake and Seaweed
• Carrot, avocado, bacon and avocado butter and soy sauce saute
• Hash potato

A new bento box

• Fried rice with spring onion and Karaage (Japanese style fried chicken) 
• Hash potato
• Corn, carrot and spinach saute
• Tomato and avocado salad

Karaage (click for the recipe) is the leftover of the previous day's picnic

• Bread pudding 
• Potato, sausage and tomato saute with soy sauce
• Carrot saute 

Bread Pudding Recipe

1. Soak bite sized bread in the beaten egg and milk.
2. Prepare caramel in a baking sheet over a baking tray.

3. Cut sultana into small and add into the pudding.
4. Bake the pudding for 10-15 mints over 160C in the oven.

Chicken and Toasted Cashew Nuts Stir Fry with Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

• Chicken thigh: 2 pieces
• Salt: pinches
• Mirin: 1 tablespoon
• Grated garlic: 1 teaspoon
• Grated ginger: 1 teaspoon
• Corn flour (to dust chicken): 1 tablespoon

• Spring onion: 2 pieces
• Zucchini: 1/2
• Vegetable oil: 1 tablespoon
• Bamboo shoots: 1/2 cup
• Cashew nuts: a handful

<Seasoning ingredients mixed together in a bowl>

• Soy sauce: 1tablespoon
• Oyster sauce: 1 tablespoon
• Chicken stock cube: 1/4
• Sesame oil: 1 teaspoon
• Hot water: 200cc

Directions

1. Cut chicken thigh into small bite sized pieces and dress with salt, mirin, grated garlic and ginger in a bowl.

2. Cut zucchini and spring onion into 1cm cube/length. Heat up a frying pan and stir fry veggies with vegetable oil. Set these veggies aside.

3. Dust the chicken pieces with corn flour. Stir fry them to brown. Meanwhile, toast cashew nuts in a separate pan or in oven.

4. Once the meat is ready, add veggies and seasoning into the pan. Bring it to boil. 

5. Add toasted cashew nuts to mix.

• Deepfried Jerusalem artichoke, asparagus, parmesan and truffle oil salad
• Chicken and Toasted Cashew Nuts Stir Fry with Oyster Sauce
• Tofu miso soup
• Rice

Time to prepare: 25 minutes
Total cost of the dish: 2.4 pounds (1.7 for chicken thigh and 0.7 for the rest of the ingredients)

Toddler Bento: Deep fried plaice with seaweed 

• Deepfried plaice with seaweed
• Grilled potato and meat sauce with mozzarella cheese
• Avocado and tomato salad
• Rice with sour plum leaves

Saved some portion of plaice from previous dinner and soaked with soy sauce and sake overnight. Adding seaweed powder into the deepfry batter is known as "Isobe-age". The hint of seaweed makes normal deepfried fish very tasty and flavoursome.

Directions

1. Cut the plaice into bite sized and soak with a pinch of salt, soy sauce, mirin and sake (or white wine) 1 teaspoon each for a while.
2. Dust plaice pieces with cornflour and  seaweed powder.

3. Deepfry the pieces with small amount of oil (do not have to use a lot of oil to deepfry) until they get nice golden colour.

Direction of  Grilled potato and meat sauce with mozzarella cheese

1. Slice the potato into pieces and microwave for 20 seconds.
2. Put the potato, meat sauce and mozzallera into a baking cup and grill in the oven for 5-6 mints.

Total time to prepare: 25 mints

Sweet and Sour Miso Chicken

To provide readers a broad image of this dish, roughly saying, it is deep-fried chicken and veggies dressed with sweet and sour miso souce with a hint of sesame oil. 

It is a very good company for steamed rice or noodles. 

Ingredients

• Green veggies (mange tout, asparagus, broccoli, etc.)
• Red veggies (1/3 paprika or 3 cm carrot) 
• 6-7 cherry tomatoes
• 2 pieces of chicken thighs
• spring onion (not necessary) 
• 2 tablespoons of sake
• pinches of salt
• corn flour
• Vegetable oil to deep-fry
• (Crushed Chilli)

Dressing

• 1 tablespoon of miso
• 1 tablespoon of vinegar
• 1.5 teaspoons of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of oyster sauce
• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon of grated ginger
• 2 tablespoons of water

Directions

1. Cut the chicken into bite sized and season with sake and salt in a bowl. 

2. Fill vegetable oil in 1 cm depth in a large frying pan and heat up over medium temperature. Deep-fry veggies roughly till they get nice coloured (about for 1 minute) and then set aside over a paper towel.

3. Dust the chicken pieces with corn flour and deep-fry them for 2 minutes for both sides. Empty the oil from the pan and wipe the rest with paper towels.

4. Mix all the dressing ingredients in a bowl.

5. Heat up the pan and gently boil the sauce ingredients (also add chilli if you like) then add chicken chicken pieces to dress.

6. Add the rest of veggies to dress and serve. 

• Sweet and sour miso chicken, 
• Cucumber and Halloumi salad, 
• Dried sardine from Katsuura, Japan, 
• Tofu with wasabi, 
• Seaweed soup, 
• Rice

Total time to prepare: 25 minutes

Total cost of sweet and sour miso chicken: 2.3 pounds (1.6 for chicken and 0.7 for the rest of veggies and seasonings)

Le Cordon Bleu Breakfast Baking Class

I attended to the Breakfast Baking Course at Le Cordon Bleu London. 

It was one day intensive baking camp preparing croissant, pastries, varieties of brioche and muffin from the dough.

Preparing the brioche dough

Pain au chocolat and croissant are ready for proving

The chef shows the technique for brioche moulding

Chocolate brioche pieces just came out from proving

My pastry pieces including Lego (around middle in the bottom)

Croissant and Pain au Chocolat are done!

Part of my work including Lego pastry

Another pieces of my work

As always, the course of Le Cordon Bleu provides heavy input as well as lots of output to take back to home. This course was so informative, well designed, very busy and a great fun!

Total cost: 175 pounds
Total time of the course: from 9am till 4.30pm including 20 mints lunchtime