Blog Event 20 Budget Meal Closing date 27 March 11

Recently while chatting with some facebook and twitter friends about the TV program known as "3 Plus 1 Sr 3(三菜一汤)" showing on every Wednesday, 8.00pm on Channel 8. I realise that the few of us usually have the habit of preparing homecooked dishes either by our own self, parents or helper at home. Especially now when the food pricing is rather high compare to a few years back, I am sure most of the family would rather prepared some simple homecooked food than eat out most of the days.

So here I would like to urge those who loves to prepare simple homecooked meal to join us in this small event in order to accumulated more cooking ideas as well as sharing with each other on how to purchase ingredients with a minimum sum of budget given.

WHO CAN JOIN:

~ Anyone who is interested to help and share more ideas in preparing homecooked meal.

CRITERIA:

~ Prepare any "2 Dishes plus 1 Soup" or "1 Pot Dish" using a Maximum budget of S$20.00. If you are from overseas, you can also particpiate by converting to the appropriate currency value, (ie. US$15.00, RM$50.00, Rp $138,000 and etc)

~ Send in either your blog link with a post of all the prepared dishes plus soup together with at least 1 recipe on the prepared meal.

Or

~ If you do not have a blog, just send in the photos and recipe of your dishes and I will publish on your behalf in my blog, credited to you. (photos can be taken in any form using digital camera or handphone)

~ Please do mention in your blog that you are sharing this post to “$20 Budget Meal” event and link it to this page so as to encourage more readers to contribute.

SUBMISSION:

~ E-mail your "blog link" or "photos with recipe" to ellenaguan@hotmail.com with a subject "$20 Budget Meal" in the following format:

Your Name:
URL of your post:
Name of your dishes + soup:
Estimate amount spent for each dish:
Attachment of your photo in your email (each photo, preferably 500kb or less).

CLOSING DATE:

~ 20 March 2011, 2359hours 27 March 2011, 2359 hours and all entries will be compiled and posted on 30th March 2011.

~ If the respond is good we will held a readers voting event for the best "$20 Budget Meal" family over at Cuisine Paradise Facebook Page for more giveaways.

For example if you wish to cook some delicious and nutritious herbal soup but you do not have those necessary Chinese Herbs in your pantry. Here is what you can do with any purchase of pre-packed herbal soup ingredients from any local supermarket. I bought this FairPrice(Pasar) herbs for S$4.50 + 2 Chicken drumstick for S$3.20 so total I spent S$7.70 for this pot of Chicken Herbal Soup. In this case I will have S$12.30 balance to get ingredients for another 2 dishes.

  With this pre-packed herbs, follow the instructions at the back of the packet and you will have a pot of delicious soup in a few hours time. Before this, perhaps you would like to take notes on a few items when preparing the soup.

SOME PREPARATION NOTES

~ Always rinse the herbs with either running water or warm water in a bowl to watch away any dirt in it.

~ Depend on your preference, get ready either chicken bones, chicken drumsticks, pork ribs or pork fillet. Trim, rinse and blanched them in boiling water for about 5 minutes, rinse well before use.

~ You can use a auto-timer and cook the soup in slower cooker even if you are out of your house so that the soup will be ready during meal time.


Lastly I hope that everyone can help to contribute some of your homecooked dishes so that we can get the opportunities to learn from each other and add on more cooking ideas to our "2 Dishes, 1 Soup(两菜一汤）" recipes bank.

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Chocolate date cake with strawberries and cream

Frú Hnallþóra: So delicious!
Originally uploaded by Netla.

A friend of mine made this cake for her sons birthday party in August.

Heres the recipe:

Chocolate-date cake with strawberries

The most common way of serving this kind of cake is with bananas, but since the photo is of one with strawberries, I am putting strawberries into the recipe instead.

4 eggs
150 g sugar
50 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
100 g dark (semi-sweet is best) chocolate
100 g dates

Whip together eggs and sugar until light and fluffy. Add sifted flour and baking powder by the spoonful until fully mixed. Chop chocolate and dated (raisin-sized pieces are good) and fold into batter.

Line two round baking tins (approx. 22 cm in diameter) with baking paper and put in the dough. Level dough with a spatula. Bake at 180°C on the middle rack of the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until firm when poked gently with a finger.

Filling and decoration:
1 small or medium box fresh strawberries (depending on how much decorating you plan to do) OR 1 small can strawberries in syrup OR 2 bananas
250 ml cream

Whip the cream stiff. Mash a handful of strawberries or one banana and fold into the whipped cream. Put between the layers of the cake. Decorate the cake with the remaining strawberries or banana (sliced). Its good to dip banana slices into lemon juice to prevent them from going brown.

Some prefer to smother the cake in frosting:
3 egg yolks
4 tbs icing sugar
100 g dark chocolate

Whip together the egg yolks and icing sugar. Melt the chocolate over a water bath and mix well into egg/sugar mixture. Fold in 2-3 tbs of whipped cream.
Frost one half of the cake with about 1/3 of this icing before adding the cream. Then cover the cake with it and decorate with strawberries or banana slices.
My friend adds a bit of melted chocolate as well.

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