If you can roast a chicken, you’ll never go hungry. That’s what I always say. Once you learn to roast a chicken, you just can’t go wrong even if you lose your Mom’s precious recipe or marinate with the ‘wrong’ ingredients because here, just about anything goes .

Here’s what I do when I make roast chicken. For the seasoning, I use salt and pepper.

I grab a few sprigs of Chinese parsley and a few cloves of garlic and pound them to a paste with my mortar and pestle (just like Jamie Oliver, so there ) .

I love the pungent smell of Chinese parsley but you can pretty much use rosemary, thyme or any other herbs you fancy.

Then I plop a generous dollop of butter into the paste to make a rub. Rub the mixture evenly all over the chicken, including under the skin.

Be gentle otherwise you will tear the skin like I did here. I did this in a rush so I ended up with a not-so-pretty roast chicken . Leave to marinade for 3-4 hours or overnight in the fridge.

When I’m ready to roast the chicken, I preheat the oven to 180 degrees F. Stuff a few stalks of Chinese parsley and a few cloves of garlic into the cavity of the chicken before placing into well-greased roasting pan.

Roast for about an hour or until chicken is sufficiently browned without being burnt. You can test for doneness by sticking a knife into the parts with the thickest meat. If the meat is soft and white, it’s done.

I’ve used estimates of ingredients and roasting time here because the actual amounts you use will depend on the size of the chicken you’re preparing. If you’re thinking of roasting a turkey for Christmas, this recipe works great too. Simply adjust the ingredients and time accordingly and you’re all set! Burp!!

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I’ve been buying baguettes lately because I can never resist the buy one, get one free offers that some of the grocery stores are offering so often these days.

You’d think we’d have gotten bored and run out of ways to eat our baguettes. But no!! There’s always a new and more creative way to eat a baguette.

Me and the kids love baguette dipped in curry. It’s so yummy it’s hard to stop once you get started. If I lived in a cold country, heck I’d be cooking chicken curry every single day !

Never tried baguette dipped in curry? You don’t know what you’re missing. Actually curry is a cinch to make if you use my easy-peasy chicken curry recipe.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Yes, it’s today, the fifteenth day of the eighth moon of the Chinese calendar. Tonight the children in the neighborhood will walk around with lighted lanterns (hence its other name, Lantern Festival) while their elders sit around a table and eat mooncakes (hence it’s also called Mooncake Festival) while admiring the full moon above.

I have treasured childhood memories of playing lanterns with my neighborhood friends on this moonlit night every year when I was growing up. My grandmother used to prepare a small feast to celebrate the Mid-Autumn although technically it’s always summer here.

We’ve kept up the tradition of celebrating on a small scale since my kids are too old for lanterns and we’re not big fans of mooncakes. Nothing special for dinner tonight except for this yeem kok kai, or salted herbal chicken which a friend brought us from Ipoh as a gift.

It looks like ordinary pak cham kai, or steamed chicken but this had been marinated in salt and steamed in aluminium foil with dong gui and some other Chinese herbs. It smelt really good when I opened up the package. The chicken itself is salty with a strong herbal flavor. Yumm.

Well, I wished for rain and I got rain. So I have to cook some rainy weather food to warm up our tummies and to chase away the sniffles caused by the alternating cool and hot weather.

Chicken curry is the best thing ever and my kids love it. They’ve been trained to eat spicy food from young. It’s a gradual process. Just expose them to spicy food and pretty soon, their tastebuds will be conditioned.

It’s not too difficult to cook chicken curry at home. The end-result is really worth the effort. You need:

• 1 large chicken about 1.5kg, chopped
• 6 ladies’ fingers, cut into half lengths
• 4 large potatoes, quartered

• 3 teaspoons mixed spices, usually consisting of fennel and mustard seeds, coriander
• 4 tablespoons curry powder mix (use the prepacked mix for meat)
• santan, or coconut milk from 1 coconut
• 4 stalks lemon grass, crushed
• 4 stalks curry leaves

• 6-8 cups water
• cooking oil
• salt to taste

First thing I do is to heat up some oil in the wok, or pan. Throw in the mixed spices and leave to pop for a few minutes to flavor the oil.

Add the curry powder mix, then the stalks of lemon grass and curry leaves. Fry all together till the spicy fragrance fills your kitchen and gets your neighbors drooling with envy .

Add chicken pieces, then the potatoes. Fry for a few minutes before adding water to the mixture. Season with salt to taste. Cover the wok and allow to simmer till the chicken and potatoes are softened.

Add the ladies’ fingers followed by the coconut milk. Simmer till ladies’ fingers are softened. Use medium heat throughout the cooking process.

Chicken curry can be a one-dish meal if you’re in a rush, We typically eat it with rice and papadam. Papadams are round crackers made from chickpea flour and Indian spices. Very tasty, I tell ya!

They’re sold in packaged sheets at the Indian store and I fry them myself at home. They make a delicious accompaniment to any meal of curry. My kids sometimes eat it on its own as a snack or with a topping, sort of like a nacho.

Some of my Australian friends have developed a routine of eating Indian curry rice on Fridays. They would run to the nearby Indian restaurant to buy back a mountain of Indian curry and rice.

When they come to KL, they will insist I take them out for spicy Indian food. Who says Caucasians can’t take the heat? Some of them are even better than me and I’m supposed to be the resident Chili Queen!

Nando’s at 1 Utama is newly renovated to create perhaps a more cozy ambience. It’s nice, I like it. I just make sure we get one of the tables off the walkway to avoid having passers-by peer at us when we’re eating.

I ordered the Peri Platter, their largest set meal of a whole chicken with 5 side orders (or what they call, sidelines). We finally got around to doing the math and decided the larger set is cheaper.

We used to order individual sets because we have different heat level preferences of very spicy, spicy or mild. Beware, the very spicy is too spicy even for me, the Chili Queen!

Truth is if we order mild for the large set, those of us who prefer more fire in our chicken can always add the Peri-Peri sauce of our desired heat level. So it works out pretty good that way.

The large set comes with 2 bowls of Mediterranean Rice (rice cooked with green peas, carrots and onions) and a bowl each of their Fresco Salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and coriander with a sourish dressing, I love this), Coleslaw and Old Style chips.

The kids wanted to try their Peri Wedges & Creamy Peri Dip which turned out to be just your regular wedges and the dip was, um, ordinary.

I like Nando’s but I consider it just too expensive for a chicken meal, albeit one that’s flame-grilled with their famed Peri-Peri sauce. A meal like this set us back by over rm85 just four of us. That’s over rm20 per head, much too steep for a family meal.

My kids want something to snack on while watching the Olympics. Since we don’t happen to have crunchy snacks around, I suggested making them chicken fingers and french fries. There was a huge resounding ‘yay’ from my kids!

I first made these chicken fingers a couple of weeks back. I was doing a post for Four Foods on Friday about oven bakes when the sudden inspiration for this recipe struck me like lightning.

The chicken fingers turned out to be an instant hit with my kids ! Okay, tell me, which kid doesn’t like crispy, crunchy boneless chicken pieces??

The recipe is very simple. I just use chicken breasts cut into broad strips and marinated salt, sugar, pepper and chilli powder for an hour now.

Again I’m using the ‘grandmother’s method’ of not measuring the ingredients but just using approximates. If you like spicy, add more chilli powder otherwise tone it down, it’s all up to you.

Then I drizzle a little cooking oil over the pieces to lightly coat them. Then dredge the pieces through a combination of flour and finely-grated parmesan cheese. Line up the strips on a greased tray and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or till golden brown.

Served with french fries, the kids tell me it’s just like eating McDonalds or KFC! Thing I love is these are oven-baked so they’re not greasy. They’re crisp and the parmesan cheese is what makes it taste so-oo good. Great Olympic finger food!

Skye, my 12-year-old daughter, stays back after school on certain days of the week and I’ve been packing lunch boxes for her. Chicken pie is a favorite and easy enough to make, especially with ready-made pastry. The weather is so hot and humid these days I try to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible.

This pre-packed Kawan brand pastry I found at Tesco comes in packets of 10 squares but you can use any brand from your regular grocery store. It’s very inexpensive and works like a charm, just be sure they’re at room temperature before you use them.

For the pie filling, you’ll need:

• 1 chicken breast, diced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1/4 carrot, chopped
• 1/2 cup chicken stock + dash of salt, pepper and black pepper

Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil till soft and fragrant. Add carrot and chicken stock. Cook on medium heat till carrots are softened. Add chicken and let it simmer down till there’s very little sauce left.

Grease your baking tray with butter or margarine. Lay one pastry square on the tray. Scoop chicken filling into the center of the square. Remember you need to cover the top of that with another pastry square, so put in too much filling. Otherwise the sides of the pastry might split open during baking.

To seal the edges of the pie, press down with a fork to create a serrated effect. Pierce the top a few times with the fork to let the air escape when baking. Lastly, brush the top of the pie with egg yolk to give it that beautiful golden finish.

Bake at 180C (350F) for about 20 minutes. See how beautiful it turns out. The pastry is really soft and flaky. The filling is entirely made with fresh ingredients so it’s pretty healthy.

You can make this the night before and pack a lunch box to the office. Heat it up at the office and everyone will soon smell it and head to your desk! A great way to save on gas and lunch money too, don’t you think ?