prawn cocktail.

Since I am not going home this summer, I am trying to recreate some of my favorites that I will be missing out on. First attempt: Mocambo's prawn cocktail.

Ingredients: Boiled and peeled shrimps. Ketchup. Mayonnaise. Lime juice. Tabasco. Worcestershire sauce. Pepper. Heavy cream.

Step 1: Layer a martini glass with a bunch of lettuce. Mix shrimp with equal amount of good-quality ketchup and mayonnaise. Add a dash of lime juice, sprinkle black and white pepper, a healthy dose of Tabasco, a light touch of Worcestershire sauce and mix well.

Top it off with a dot of heavy cream. Serve chilled. 

Not bad for a first try, if I say so myself.

buffalo chicken dip.

Today is SuperBowl Sunday! Yay. I'm more about the wings, the commercials and the half-time show. Anyway, Mr. Sachinky and I decided to have a party. Number of invitees: two. Yes, we're retarded like that, whattodo? We have a massive planned spread of pizza, wings, onion rings, jalapeno poppers, tacquitos, beer for Mr. Sachinky and bottled margaritas for me! I decided to email Mrs. G for her buffalo chicken dip recipe since Mr. Sachinky has been raving about it for days and she emailed me back from Florida where she and Mr. G are spending their weekend with Mr. Sachinky's grandmother.

Anyway, it looked easy enough so I gave it a try. Holy-moly! It came out fantastic and I can't wait to make buffalo chicken wraps with the left-overs. If there are any.

Step One: Gather ingredients. About three cups of a shredded rotisserie chicken, 1/2 cup of Frank's Red Hot Wings Sauce, 1/2 cup of blue cheese salad dressing. 1/2 cup of shredded cheese. And one 8 oz. package of cream cheese. The bottle of Mike's Margarita is just for me.

Step Two: Three cups of shredded chicken in a baking dish. No skin, of course. We used a rotisserie chicken since that was easier but I'm sure you can use uncooked chicken breasts as well.

Step Three: Pour the buffalo wings sauce and blue cheese over the chicken.

Step Four: Add a package of slightly melted cream cheese. Then throw in the shredded cheese as well. We used our regular variety of colby-jack-monterey. I debated between that and blue cheese crumbles but our salad dressing had chunks of blue cheese in it so out of consideration for Mr. Sachinky I didn't want the blue-cheese taste to be too over-powering. (As if there's such a thing as too much blue cheese!)

Step Four: Mix well and bake in the oven (350F) for about ten-minutes. If you're using uncooked chicken, it'll probably be twenty-five minutes before the chicken is cooked and the cheese mixture is bubbling.

Voila!

P.S.: As always photo credits go to Mr. Sachinky.

chicken wontons.

Mummy's going to be so proud of me! I made dumplings from scratch! Okay, that's a lie, I cheated a little by buying some wonton wrappers I spotted at the grocery store earlier today. I decided to document the process, which was way easier than I ever imagined them to be. Instructions and pictures follow.

Step 1: Finely chop onion, mushrooms and green pepper. That is all I had in the refridgerator.

Step Two: Heat oil in a pan and fry garlic and ginger paste.

Step 3:  Fry the onion, mushroom, pepper mixture. Then brown half a pound of ground meat in the skillet. I used ground beef but you can use pork and chicken as well. I then poured some of 'Lawry's Szechwuan Sweet and Sour BBQ' marinade/sauce and cooked the beef mixture in it.

Step Four: Spread the wonton wrappers on a plate. Beat an egg.

Step Five: Line the edges of the wonton wrapper with a little bit of the egg mixture. Pour a tiny spoonful of the meat mixture in the middle of the wrapper. Then seal the edges. We started making them in the 'momo' triangle-shape at first, but gave up soon. Instead, we decided to go with the more traditional sui-mui 'twist on top' -- it's easier and pretty!

Step Six: Heat oil in another skillet. Fry the wontons for a couple of minutes till golden-brown. Flip and fry on the other side as well. The oil was too hot so they came out a little more brown than I would've liked. But they were delicious, nonetheless.

Step Seven: Serve hot with Kikkoman soya sauce as a dipping sauce. Tip: I usually don't like the bitter taste of soya sauce so I mixed a tiny spoon of sugar in to sweeten it. 

ENJOY! We sure did!