Orange-butter pancakes

Hey guys!
Hope you had an awesome weekend!
I sure did-Completely excited about the response I'm getting on my facebook page!
Thankyou for liking and sharing it! Big up yourself!


On that note, I decided to make something sweet. Ever had those evenings you didnt feel like eating anything salty. I decided to make breakfast for dinner with a twist.

 I came up with a simple and absolutely tasty pancake recipe.

I combined the ingredients I had at home, bought some syrup and whipping cream and vuala! I was in pancake heaven.

Ingredients:- [Makes up to 12-14 pancakes]
2 Cups self raising flour
1 cup milk
The juice of one orange
Orange zest/ grated peel
2 eggs
1 cup melted unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Maple syrup
Can of ready whipped cream
Cooking oil/butter

I started off by beating the eggs for about 1 min. The more you beat them the more air you trap in, which in turn makes your pancakes nice and spongy. 

I then added the sugar, half the milk, vanilla essence, the butter and mixed them all together.
After that, I added the flour, the rest of the milk, the orange juice and lastly the orange zest and mixed it well.
The batter at this point is slightly thick and flows easily.

I then put a pan with oil to heat up on the cooking stove. 

Once the oil was hot, I added a big spoonful of the batter.

I didn't move the pan too much to spread the batter since I was aiming for thick and fluffy pancakes and not the usual thin ones, [commonly known as crepes] that most people like cooking. 

Careful not to burn them on one side, I flipped them and allowed to cook for a minute or two until they obtained a nice brown color.

  I then served them with some maple syrup, some whipped cream and some orange zest/grated peel. 

These were absolutely so yummy and I'm eagerly awaiting your feedback as well.  

P.s You can get the maple syrup at most nakumatt supermarkerts & I found the can of whipped cream in the nakumatt uk located in westlands.

BBQ ribs with plantain & salad with homemade dressing

Hey guys!
Hope you're having a blessed week.
Now tell me who doesn't love some spare ribs done with a barbecue sauce. Yumm!!  I had been planning to make them for the longest time ever* well two weeks felt like forever!* I always loved barbecue sauces and I finally got the chance to make one myself.
On top of that I opted to make a salsa dressing since I forgot to buy one for the salad. It came out even better than I had expected, which was to my surprise seeing I hadn't tried this out in yrs. I guess recipes are timeless!!! :-) :-)

So this recipe serves up to 6-8 pple.

Ingredients:-                                                    

1 kg spare ribs
Plantain
1 pack mixed bag of lettuce
4 cloves garlic
5 tomatoes
Ketchup
Dark brown sugar
Worcestershire sauce
Dark soy sauce
Apple cider vingegar
Cayenne pepper
Black pepper
Mayonnaise
Half an orange
1 pack tomato paste
Vegetable oil

Method:
I started of by making the tomato purée for the barbecue sauce. I didn't want to buy any of that in a can cause everything tastes so much better when it is homemade. I washed my tomatoes and put them in a sufuria filled with water and left them to boil for about 10 min or until the peels started falling off. After that I poured out the hot water and started peeling them carefully. *you can leave them in a bowl of cold water to cool for about 2min* Also remember to cut the top hard part off.

I then placed the peeled tomatoes in a blender and blended them for 1 min straight.

In another sufuria I started mixing my ingredients for the barbecue sauce which included 1 cup dark brown sugar * not mumias because it isn't as dark*, half a cup of apple cider, quarter cup dark soy sauce, half a cup Worcestershire sauce, 1table spoon cayenne pepper, half a packet tomato paste and 1cup ketchup. I then put my sufuria on the stove and stirred it continuously as it heated up. Do this for about 5 min or until the sauce thickens and darkens into a smooth dark brown sauce.

Once it is done, put it aside for about another 10 min to cool and then mix half of the sauce over the clean spare ribs and refrigerate for half an hr to marinate.  You can also opt to do this the night before for the meat to marinate well.

[My friend Sheila helping me with cleaning and cutting up the ribs]

As the meat marinated, I placed a cooking pan with oil on the hot stove, peeled my plantain and cut it up for frying.  This takes a very short while if you buy the ripe plantain bananas. Fry them until they begin to brown on the outside. Once they are cooked, place them in a bowl over kitchen tissues/serviettes to drain out the oil.

   [ION: These were the biggest plantains I have seen]

After 20-30 min are up, remove from fridge and prepare another sufuria by cooking some chopped up garlic. Once the garlic is cooked, add marinated ribs and cover. Leave them to cook for about 10-12 minutes and make sure you stir it occasionally to prevent them from sticking in the bottom of the sufuria.

Heat oven to 180 degrees. Once ribs are cooked, place on a baking tray and cover with the remaining barbecue sauce. Place them in the middle of the oven to make sure heat-temperature is moderate. Grill them until they start sizzling which takes about 5 min.

Wash bag of salad and drain out the water. In a small bowl or cup mix 5 tablespoons mayonnaise, 4 tablespoons ketchup, a dash of black pepper, and half an orange until dressing is smooth and tasty. You can mix Tabasco or abit of chilli to spice it up.

 Serve over salad, with BBQ ribs and fried plantain.

If you have any BBQ sauce left you can pour some over the ribs.

Enjoy your meal!

P.s you can use this sauce on other meats such as chicken or beef. Try it and share it with a friend. Awaiting your feedback.

Food review: Open House restaurant, Westlands

Hey guys, hope you had a great weekend, I sure did. I spent my Sunday evening celebrating the birthday of a good friend of mine with some friends at an Indian restaurant. The restaurant was called "Open House Resaturant" and is located in Westlands, opp The Oil Libya petrol station, right next to the uchumi shopping centre. It was my first time there and I didn't know what to expect apart from extremely spicy dishes which is the norm in Indian restaurants. To be honest, I was abit skeptical since I'm not a fan of overly spiced food or chilli in that case. I was ready to play it safe. :-o

We ordered one starter and a couple or different main dishes.
The starters were all dry meals and the main meals consisted of fish, vegetarian, chicken, mutton and beef stews.
Once we sat down, the waiter took our drinks order and placed two salsa dishes in the middle of the table. The salsa dips were in 3 flavors; mint, chili and garlic. Being a fan of anything garlic, I wasn't as impressed by the garlic dip which I found too light in texture.

                 

     

For a starter, we ordered the chicken tikka served over a flame with a shredded cabbage and carrot salad with a nan at an extra cost of 100 Ksh. The starters all ranged between 700-850 Ksh which I found to be too pricey seeing the main dishes costed the same. I'll be honest, for 750ksh I expected a larger portion of chicken :-( All in all the chicken was very tasty and spiced just right. It was boneless and in chunks. I had a problem though with them serving the salad on the dish over a burner and I think it should have been served separately.

           

The nan was served in a small basket. It was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, perfect
for all those chapati or nan lovers. The portion was big and fit for that price and it can be shared in between two people.

For the main dish, we ordered the ginger chicken masala, Goan fish curry and the chicken tikka masala. I must say I rather enjoyed them all and my friends were quite content with the taste and generous portions of each dish. The ginger chicken was very gingery for lack of a better word. The fish curry and the  the chicken tikka masala were both very good and not overly spicy. Seeing I am not a chili lover I was glad that all the meals were perfectly mild as we had asked them, though they can make it as per preference.

The only things I wasn't as pleased about were as follows:
- we weren't offered any water to wash our hands nor any hot towels
- the prices indicated on the menu didn't include 16% VAT or the 2 % service charge which were added on the bill.
-they closed relatively early at 10pm just when we were looking to enjoy some extra time after our meal.
-half our meals were served much earlier than the others, approx 20 min which was strange since the two had ordered their meal before everyone else
-no name tags on the waiters

All in all it was a really good meal and we also enjoyed our drinks. We had strawberry and tangerine juice which were a favorite to everyone on the table. The mango lassi was also very good and it tasted like a blend of mangoes and maziwa mala.

Ambience: 4/5
Food: 4/5
Service:3/5

Bonus was that they served us the cupcakes while singing in a group.
If you happen to be in the mood for some spicy Indian cuisine, I recommend this place any day.