Seafood Pizza On Wholewheat Sweet Potato Crust

I have been meaning to post up a pizza recipe for the longest time. A good one that I always fall back to whenever I bake one for my kids. Well, today's THE day! I am sharing this easy, delicious and wholesome pizza recipe that I am sure even your family is gonna love it too. :9 Seafood Pizza On Wholewheat Sweet Potato Crust:

This right here is plain old family comfort food. I guess every mother has their own special recipe that they can cheer their own kids up whenever she whip it up in the kitchen. And this, I say is probably one of my kids' top favortites. :) Com-on ... which kid doesn't like pizza? 

Bare in mind, this recipe serves as a basic guide which I am sure you can use the bread crust recipe and top it with another another ingredients you or your family fancy. :)

Let's have a look at the ingredients for my seafood pizza shall we?


Ingredients for Seafood Pizza (makes a 30-35cm diameter, serves 4 pax)
Pizza Dough:
215g bread flour
60g wholewheat flour
50g egg
50g sweet potato, peeled, steamed then blended till smooth
60-100ml water
1/2 tsp salt
20g caster sugar
5g instant active yeast
20g olive oil

*Note the sweet potato is excellent in enhancing the bread texture. 

• In a large mixing bowl, add in all the ingredients and knead together. I used my KitchenAid to do all the kneading, knead about 10 minutes.
• Once the dough is pulling away from the side of the bowl and it is very elastic, stop kneading.
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• Let the dough proof in a greased bowl till it doubled in size. Takes about an hour.

Ingredients for the toppings

200g salmon steak
5 large prawns, peeled and devined 
salt, pepper and dash of sesame oil
5-6 crab-sticks, shredded
1 ripe avocado
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice 

Bechamel  Sauce
50g unsalted butter
2 tbsp plain flour
180-200ml fresh milk
salt and pepper to taste

300g shredded mozzarella cheese
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

• In the meantime, prepare the topping while the pizza dough is proofing. 
• Marinate the salmon steak and prawns with salt, pepper and a dash of sesame oil, set aside for 10 minutes.

• In a saute pan, add 1 tsp of olive oil and add the salmon steak in. Cook till golden and opaque.
• Next saute the prawns till pink and cooked through. Shred the crab sticks if you have not done so.

• In a small sauce pan over medium low fire, add in the butter. Once the butter melted and starts to bubble on the sides, add in the flour. Give it a good stir to mix in the flour and cook it.

• Once it is slightly thicken, slowly add in the milk and whisk well. The mixture will slowly thicken up in a few seconds, so DO NOT walk away. Add more milk if you find the mixture is too thick.
  
• Next you add in the seasoning, salt, pepper and stir well. So this is basically the Béchamel sauce that will be going on top of your pizza to go with the seafood. :) Set aside covered to be used later.

• At this point, the pizza dough should be ready. Check by poking the dough. If the hole stays and doesn't "bounce back", it is good to go.
• Press out the air and flatten the dough on a prepared baking tray lined with parchment paper. Press it to the thickness you desire, it will poof up a little after baked. Remember to leave a slightly thicker dough edge.

• Let the dough proof for 15 minutes before baking it. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 200C.
• After 15 minutes, bake the dough for 8 minutes till it is slightly golden brown on the outside. Remove from oven.

 

• At this point, you can add the toppings. First you spread the Béchamel sauce over the surface of the pizza leaving an inch on the sides not covered.
• Next you flake the salmon steak and sprinkle the meat all over the pizza top, followed by the prawns and crab sticks.

• Now you can cut the avocado, remove pit and scoop out the flesh. Slice the avocado into thin wedges. Then remember to give it a good squeeze of lemon juice to prevent it from browning.

• Place the avocado wedges on the pizza, follow by the two cheeses.

• Bake the pizza in the preheated oven at 200C for 10-12 minutes till the cheeses is golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes before slicing.

This is seriously delicious, I promise. :9 That crusty wholewheat bread topped with creamy béchamel sauce, and that sweet chunky seafood and cheesy mozaralle....no wonder my kids loved it so much. :D

Check out the sliced section. The fluffy pizza dough....yes it is wholewheat too. You won't want to miss out trying this out. :) If you do, let me know how it worked out for you! ;)


Alrighty, need to call it a night! Thanks for tuning in again. ;) Happy cooking or baking guys!




 

Cheesy Baked Fish with Savory Egg Custard

As a SAHM, besides worrying about the kids' well being, I am constantly, yes constantly thinking of what I should cook for my family. Be it breakfast, lunch or dinner, I'm cracking my head to come up with quick and easy meals to fill those empty bellies. You're probably thinking "Just Da Bao please!" But I am weird I admit, I couldn't get myself to feed my kids those outside food! Too much seasoning, too oily and seriously you know what they put in it to make it taste that good haha! Well occasional weekend dine out is okay with me, but I do try my best to cook daily for my family.

Today's easy one pot dish is kind of a fusion between a quiche and a frittata. Not quiche because no pie crust involve...good, less work involve, heehee. Not exactly a frittata either because I am using less egg and a lot more ingredients, thus you can't serve them in slices. Just a simple dish that contains all the necessary carb, protein and even dairy needed to make all balanced and healthy meal.

Let see what we need:

Okay, I ain't gonna lie...I am just showing off my new Jamie Oliver Glazed Terracotta Casserole Dish. That blue...love! A good cook needs good tools..I live by that rule haha! Got this lovely bakeware from Tangs! Have you checked them out after they reopened their doors after renovations? I just love shopping at their home appliance and bake / cook ware section!

  

Ingredients for Cheesy Baked Fish with savory egg custard :(Serves 3-4)

1 broccoli head, cut into bite size (weighs about 250g)

300g white fish, cut into large chunks (I used Tilapia)

3 eggs

200ml fresh milk

4 strips bacon, but into smaller pieces

3 medium potatos

2 tbsp ketchup

1 cup Mozzarella cheese 

salt and pepper to taste

A good casserole dish for baking this dish.

• Season the fish fillet chunks with salt and pepper. Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Heat up the cooking pan, no need oil, add in the bacon and cook till fat has been rendered out and golden crisp. Remove from pan and let drain on paper towels.
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• Remove the pork fat and add in a tbsp of fresh cooking oil at medium low fire. Add in the potato chunks and cook the potatoes till slightly golden on the outside. Dish out and again drain on the paper towel.
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•  Next cook the fish on the pan and just for awhile to get it slightly golden brown on the outside. 
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•  Lastly, you steam boil the broccoli pieces. You heat up a pot with only a centimeter worth of water inside. Then place the broccoli pieces inside and let it steam boil for a good 5 minutes, then dish out.
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•  Now in a mixing bowl, crack the 3 eggs in and add in the milk and ketchup. Mix well and add in a pinch of salt and few rounds of fresh ground peppers.
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• Add 3/4 of the egg mixture into the Casserole dish.
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• Then place all the ingredients in, that's the broccoli, fish fillets, potatoes and bacon.
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• Then you add in the remaining egg mixture and top it off with mozzarella cheese. Then send it into the preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes till top is golden brown.
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• And the aftermath....yummeh
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• Serve it while it is still hot...with toast or even pasta. :9

Oh that Jamie Oliver dish just baked beautifully! I am so gonna try using it to bake a Christmas roast later! :9

A quick and easy meal you can whip up in an hour. You are welcome to change the fish to chicken too. Anything that you family fancies. Just bare in mind that a good dish requires a good cook/bake ware. Grab yours at Tangs now! Tangs is located at heart of Orchard and VivoCity, happy shopping!

Sustainable seafood cooking class with Executive Chef Lucas Granville of Grand Hyatt Singapore

I was invited to attend a very meaningful event recently, which is in lieu to Singapore's first Sustainable Seafood festival. A cooking class in ToTT with Executive Chef Lucas Granville of Grand Hyatt Singapore! Looks exciting right?

Before we get to the cooking part, you might ask, what is "Sustainable Seafood"? Well, it is basically seafood from either wild caught or farmed seafood sources which the amount harvest do not endanger the Eco-systems it was taken from. Not forgetting that the amount harvest should also allow the remaining populations to be self sustained or increased in future.

Singapore being one of the largest seafood consumer in APAC, eating up a whopping 140 million Kg of seafood a year! ~faint~ With more then 87% of the world's oceans overfished, it is estimated that the world's seafood supply will run out by 2048 if we don't do something about it!

So with this festival, the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) collaborates with over 30 enthusiastic businesses in Singapore to run the exclusive  "Pick The Right Catch" promotions. With this new movement, MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) hopes for responsible consumption of seafood by empowering suppliers, retailers, restaurants and consumers to "pick the right catch". Meaning to select seafood that has been vetted through stringent standards by MSC and Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC). Consumers should look out for signs on the packaging baring the MSC or ASC logos to ensure the products they purchase is indeed meeting these standards.(Oops, sorry about the blur shot heehee)

 

Okay, lets get cooking! Chef Lucas Granville showed us a total of 3 exciting dishes that day using all sustainable seafood. Each dish uses the respective seafood you see below:

Left is Pangasius, middle is Green-lipped Mussels, right is Pink Salmon

First dish was this Spicy fish soup with Lemongrass; Tom Yam Pla.I know, anything Tom Yum already sounds so delicious haha! This dish uses Pangasius(the one on the left) which is a popular and versatile fish that us widely used in Western & Asian cooking and is mainly farmed in Vietnam.

ToTT has kindly sponsored and prepared everything for us at the event, all neatly placed in each individual container, nice!

Recipe for Tom Yam Pla (Serves 3-4)

Ingredients 

200gm basa fish (Pangasius)

12 straw mushrooms

2 sticks of lemongrass

20gm galanga

4 kaffir lime leaves

1 litre chicken stock

25ml fish sauce

25ml lime juice

20gm sugar

2 tbsp Thai chili paste

4 chili red and green

40gm coriander with root

100gm Thai cherry tomatoes 

Method:

• In a pot, add chicken stock, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, galanga, coriander root, Thai cherry tomatoes and straw mushrooms, gently simmer for 1 hour.

• Season with fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, chilli paste and then bring to a boil. Taste and ensure seasoning is correct.

• Add fish and cook for 2 minutes on a low heat.

• Remove from the heat, serve in a bowl and garnish with red, green chilli and coriander leaves.

The next dish Baked Garlic and Parsley Mussels. This dish uses the green-lipped or greenshell mussels, which are farmed on floating long-line ropes suspended in the clear water around New Zealand's unspoilt coastline. Cultured in the least ecologically sensitive areas, they feed off nutrients in the water column to developed into plump full flavored mussels. These mussels literally require no feeding and thus highly sustainable, a highly recommend choice!

Recipe for Baked Garlic and Parsley Mussels (served 3-4pax)

Ingredients:

24 1/2 shell green-lipped mussels

1 large peeled garlic clove

1 large peeled red shallot

Handful of Italian parsley leaves

Zest of a 1/4 lemon

100gm unsalted butter, softened

75gm white breadcrumbs

salt and pepper to taste

Sauce Tarator:

100gm peeled red peppers

2 slices white bread without crusts

80ml milk

40gm crushed walnuts

1 glove chopped garlic

Pinch of cayenne pepper

Pinch of chilli flakes

Lemon juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Method: 

• To make the sauce tarator, combine all ingredients food processor and blend into a fine paste, season with salt and pepper and a few drops of lemon juice.

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• Refrigerate before serving.
• To prepare the mussels, combine garlic, shallots, lemon zest and parsley into a food processor and blend into a fine paste.
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• Add the softened butter and pulse, once all ingredients are combined, then add the breadcrumbs and season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
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• Cover each mussels with some of the garlic and parsley butter.
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• Lay them on a baking tray and bake in an oven at 180C until they are crisp and golden brown.
• Serve immediately with Lemon and sauce tarator on the side.    

Looks so atas but yet super easy to prepare! All you need is a trusty blender haha!

Last dish we cooked that day was Salmon Pastrami, Shaved Fennel Salad, Radish, Lemon and Extra Virgin olive oil. This dish uses the Pink Salmon which is most abundant of the Pacific salmon and is found throughout the North Pacific.Besides, salmon is naturally rich in Omega-3 fatty acids, so eating more of this pink salmon is all good haha.

Recipe (Serves 4)

Ingredients:

Salmon Pastrami: 

4 of 200gm salmon portions

Spice Rub:
25gm salt
25gm brown sugar
25gm coarse black peppercorns
10gm coriander seeds
10gm juniper berries
5gm chilli flakes

Shaved Fennel Salad:
2 fennel bulb
4 whole red radish
Picked dill leaves
Extra virgin olive oil
Lemon juice
Salt & Pepper

Method: 

• Combine all ingredients together from the spice rub.
• Dust the spice rub over the salmon and remove to the side.
• Shave the fennel bulb and the radish with the mandoline into a bowl, add dill leaves, extra virgin olive oil and season with salt, pepper and lemon juice.
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• Heat a non stick frying pan, add a little oil and gently cook the salmon for a minute on each side, depending on the thickness of the fish. Remove and serve on a plate.
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• Arrange the fennel salad next to the salmon pastrami and drizzle a little olive oil over the salmon.

Check out the moist interior of the salmon! It is super flavorful with that spice rub! This has gotta be my most favorite dish among the three, since I am such a salmon fan haha!

Everything looks delicious right? And who can tell from the looks or even from the taste that these were made from sustainable seafood?

Besides having fun cooking at the event, I also learn a lot about being more aware of choosing the right seafood the next time I go grocery shopping. And I believe taking one step at a time to making this happen, to save our ocean. :) 

Okay, that's all folks. Just remember to do the right thing and "Pick The Right Catch"!

 

Crab Meat Omelet and Mixed Berry Crumble Cake

Last week when I went visiting my parents, my mum gave a little surprise. ;) She actually bought me 3 fresh blue crabs! ;) At first I felt a little helpless because I have not handled fresh crabs before and it's been awhile since I last cooked them too. :P Luckily my parents helped me washed and steamed the crabs, then packed them nicely for me to bring home. Lucky me! They told me these fresh crabs have really sweet and tender meat, best eaten that day. My mum gave me a few suggestions and I decided to go with the simplest yet delicious recipe; Crab Meat Omelet.

One of the main reason why I chose to go with this recipe is because my 2 young girls. I can't expect them to get the crab meat out of the spiky shell themselves....they probably be complaining more then eating!

It was not too difficult to get the meat out, because it was really fresh and the meat was plum and juicy. However it was a little time consuming to do all 3. :P These 3 crabs actually yielded quite a bit of meat, which could make 2 BIG plates of crab meat omelet. So I freeze half of it for good use the following week. :)

If you are interested to make this dish, here is how I did it:

Ingredients for Crab Meat Omelet:
150g fresh crab meat
1 tbsp minced garlic and shallot
3 large eggs
1 tsp light soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste
1 ripe tomato, sliced into thin wedges
1 spring of green onion, diced small

Method:

• In a large bowl, crack the eggs in. Add 2 tbsp of water into the eggs and lightly beat it till frothy.
  
• Add soy sauce into the egg mixture and some salt and pepper to taste.
• In the meantime, heat up the wok with about 2 tbsp of cooking oil at medium high fire.
  
• Add in the garlic and shallot and stir fry till fragrant. Add in the eggs and swirl the wok a bit to cover more surface area.
• Moments later, add in the crab meat, tomato wedges in. Leave it for a good 3 minutes to get that golden brown color before starting to flip the omelet to fry the other side.
  
• After frying the other side for another 3 minutes, dish up and sprinkle some chopped green onions over. Serve while still warm.
  

This is really a simple and wonderfully delicious dish, even my elder daughter who is not too fond of seafood, enjoyed it a lot too! ;) The fresh sweetness of the crab meat was tasty with the tender soft omelet, double thumbs up! Some might feel that it's too much 'luxury" to add the crab meat in such a simple dish...come on, who cares if it still ends up in my tummy?! Lol! Hope you all will be able to try it out. ;)

Another lovely recipe that I want to show everyone today is yet another simple recipe that you can whip up in no time. It's Mix Berry Crumble Cake. This cake was actually an order for my neighbors here and since they do trust my taste, I decided to introduce a new cake to them. In fact, after taste testing it, I was really glad I did that. ;)

Since strawberries and blueberries were quite abundant in the past weeks, making this mixed berry cake was not too difficult. And I love using fresh berries to bake, it really makes the cake extra moist and gives it a vibrant color too! ;)

This recipe is actually adapted from my previous Strawberry muffin recipe but made some modifications to it. I replaced 1/3 of the caster sugar with brown sugar, added sweet crumbs on top and also added blueberries on top. Note that I did not mix the berries into the batter this time, merely just sprinkle them on the top.

The contrast in the sweet crumbs on top and moist tender cake below was really good. And every mouth is like almost melt in the mouth...yummy!

With a cup of tea and a slice of this sweet cake and you are golden. ;) If you try this out, you can also use fresh cherries which might also be a good combo with the cake. ;) The next time I make this I will make it in a big round cake pan...enough to last me a few good days. ;) Okay, got to run now, take care all! Have a great week!