Starter - Main Course - Dessert

The full 3-course meal - home-made.

It was my turn to cook this evening, and since I had the day off, I decided to go the whole length and make it a 3 course meal. So on this nice sunny Saturday afternoon, off I went to the local supermarket to do some food shopping for ingredients. Everyone was in shorts and t-shirts, sunglasses and hats, a lovely scene of summertime.

After hours of chopping, slicing, dicing, marinating, frying, mixing and baking, and filling the kitchen with the nice smell of food......

To start, we had the stuffed portobello mushrooms.

Starter

A very easy to make starter, with a bag full of flavours from herbs, seasoning, shallots and garlics. The portobello mushrooms' stalks were removed then put into the oven for 6 minutes while I diced and chopped the shallots, garlic, mushroom stalk and some chestnut mushrooms. The chopped ingredients were stir-fried in a pan until fragrant with olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme then spooned on top of the portobello mushrooms. Grated cheddar cheese was put on top of the stuffing then finally a few shakes of dried parsley was added before putting the mushrooms back into the oven for several more minutes

Starter (2)

The meaty portobello mushroom was oozing with juice while the stuffing was very tasty and fragrant. The melted cheddar cheese with parsley on top was absolutely amazing and complimented the whole dish well. Yummy!

Stuffed Portobello Mushroom

This was followed by a main course of roasted honey chicken pieces, roasted potatoes and fried long beans in some left over mushroom stuffing.

Roasted Chicken

I marinated the chicken with paprika powder, corn flour, salt and pepper then seared it before popping them onto a baking tray. Diced potatoes were put around the chicken on the baking tray then put into the oven to be baked for an hour and a half. After an hour, the chicken was coated with honey then put back into the oven for a further 10 minutes before they were ready to be served.

HHhhmmmm.... lovely, juicy and succulent chicken meat and crispy roasted potatoes. Delicious!


The highlight of the meal - Cotton Soft Japanese Cheesecake.

I came across the recipe for this cake whilst browsing a food blog, who found the recipe here. I have always wanted to try making this cake and decided to do it today.

Cake Ingredients

Baking in the oven

Cake on cooling rake

Side view of cake

Aerial view of cake

Cotton Soft Japanese Cheesecake

Served with Vanilla and Chocolate Swivel Ice-cream

First reaction from my house-mate was:

House-mate: "What cake is this? It looks so soft like a sponge cake, but at the same time, it also looks like a cheesecake"
Me: "You are right on both. This is actually a clever combination of cheesecake and sponge cake created by the Japanese people!"

This cake is indeed an in-between of baked cheesecake and sponge cake.

It has a light and cotton soft texture, as described by its name, but moving towards a slightly firm texture of a baked cheesecake. The cake has a very subtle flavour and goes really well with a scoop of ice-cream.

A lovely 3 course meal on a nice warm summer-like day. Perfect!