Post #126

lamb rack with crumb or without crumb - which ones better?!

a while back i tried roasting a lamb rack adding a slab of herbed bread crumb on top. combining rosemary, chopped parsley, orange zest, garlic, butter and breadcrumb with salt for the crumb, and slab it on the lamb after smearing a layer of dijon mustard.

like so:



only bad thing about roasting is that it takes time. works great when you're preparing a feast, so you can chuck the meat in the oven whilst cooking other dishes! *doesnt quite work well when you have the stoves on top of the oven (like our home) cos it gets super hot >.<*

roasted rack on a bed of onion, pumpkin + sweet potato dices, ready to be carved. look the crunchy crumb on top!!!



sliced and served with couscous :)


-Lamb rack with orange herbed crust, roasted veg + rocket couscous-

the crust added a layer of crunchiness in contrast. so crumb or no crumb? i think i like both. hehe.

Post #125

its australia day today, which means, for most aussies (including us this year), that its bbq day!! :) its funny how for me, australia day can be visualised as a bloke holding a pair of tongs in one hand and a cold beer in the other, standing by a 'barbie' thats roaring with smoke!

i genuinely felt sorry for these blokes this year cos todays H.O.T. super hot. but the weather didnt seem to have stopped us aussies from having a bbq as barely a soul was seen on the streets. everywhere in a suburban backyard you would find such bloke standing by a barbie, braving the high temperature. great aussie spirit!!!

hubbys friend invited us for a bbq lunch, and the plan was that each person brings along a dish of food or drinks. and when you have a group of 30 generous kind ppl, it means we had way too much food prepared...

i made lemongrass chicken skewers using the same old recipe. never fails :) love that bashing and bruising!


-Lemongrass chicken skewers-

no pic of the cooked skewers :(

also made a corn 'salad'. strictly speaking its a stir fry and maybe 'side dish' is a more appropriate name. anyways, the idea came from jamie oliver's quick corn snack, stir frying some corn kernels in a heated wok, adding soy sauce, grated ginger, chilli and chopped parsley. i added cucumber dices and instead of parsley, some chopped mint and a squeeze of lime juice. great snack dish for a hot day!

i didnt take a pic of the 'salad', but took a pic of a smaller scale version i cooked the night before, minus the cucumber. the ginger, mint and lime gave it such a wonderful intense flavour, it came as a surprise to the tastebuds!

i think this dish made in a smaller scale and without cucumber yields a tastier result. the less there is in a hot pan makes all liquid go so much faster and shortens the cooking process!


-Stir fry corn kernels-
-Broccolini with black sesame sauce-

happy australia day and salute to all blokes standing by the barbie today!!

p.s. to show EVEN MORE aussie spirits, sis and us had yakiniku for dinner tonight with some other friends. a v bbq day we had today...

Post #124

havent posted any chinese food for a long long time. these dishes were cooked a while back now, but were kinda neglected in the archive for future postings. my bad. they were actually quite delicious comes to think of them...

i would not have thought of cooking mung bean flat noodles if mum didnt give me a box-full that shes already boiled through and fridged. i never found out whether they are difficult (or easy) to deal with, but it was tasty stuff! and we always order it at peking restaurants, with white pork meat and garlic vinegar sauce!

my version:


-Cold mung bean flat noodles with century old egg + chilli garlic vinegar sauce-

i loooove century old eggs, eaten raw with pink ginger or with cold tofu, or cooked in congee or with spinach. when you put your mind to it, its hard to link such tasty ingredient with rotten eggs =.=

anyways... the mung bean flat noodles do soak up a lot of sauce, and if you like coriander, feel free to chuck some in. most restaurants put them in. coriander is my biggest enemy and is banned from my household... keke.

the other dish i cooked was eggplant. we sometimes eat eggplant at home cos its one of hubby's fav food. it actually makes me wonder why eggplants always associate themselves with deep frying. i'm literally scared of oil dripping eggplant, just something that i find hard to put in my mouth. especially when i know that eggplants made the healthy way are so much tastier!

apart from cooking eggplant the mapo tofu style (which is also super nice with rice!), i tried steaming them stuffed with pork mince, like eggplant parcels! :)

in the wok for steaming:



and i added some chopped dried shrimp into the pork mince which gave it loads more flavour! sprinkled with some chopped garlic on top before steaming. once steamed, round it off with a sweet soy and sesame oil sauce, and sprinkle with chopped chilli.

Post #123

hubby's gone to wollongong to earn some $$ and i'm home alone, with one mission. and that is to eat as much of the stuff in the fridge as possible!!!

then i realise its actually really hard. there's only so much i can eat a night =.=

tonight, i rescued 2 pieces of old soughdough bread buried in the bottom of the freezer and made myself a soughdough toast, using up some lettuce, carrot, grilled chicken liver *made by hubby's mum*~ sprinkled with some chopped green olive and a little balsamic vinaigrette.


-Chicken liver + salad sourdough toast-

doesnt look v appetising, but it was nice and filling. with a large cup of banana + cinnamon smoothie~ :) and there goes the last over ripe banana in the fruit bowl :)

Post #122

not long after xmas it was mum's birthday. was dead tired after the big xmas feast, but its mums birthday!!! so once again, i flipped open my recipe book, and decided to make a special mousse cake for mums special day :)

summer time is perfect for mousse cakes! all sorts of lovely sweet fruits are the best basic ingredient for making mousses. mango is one of them. then looking through the pantry i saw a box of lemon lime squash flavoured jelly. and straight away, i had an idea :)

layering the cake - this the cake base:



mango and mint mousse and jelly ready:



layering:



tada~~ decorated with mango dices strawberry and chopped pistachio:


-Mango + mint mousse with lime lemon squash jelly cake-

see the layers~



hehe, happy birthday mum~~

Post #121

ha, now that im done with all the xmas food photos, life is back to normal. the start of the year 2011, life is back to going to work, back to the regular cooking routine, and back to the normal blog posting!

what to post first?

recently i had a recap on oliver's twist and one of the episodes jamie made two diff flavoured salt. the idea came from having tempura with diff types of salt in japan. wow, flavoured salt, thats such a cool thing! just with a mortar n pestle, it seems easy enough. but i was WRONG! the pounding was easy enough, but afterwards the sifting of the salt took soooo long =.= anyways...


-Orange + ginger salt and Green tea + lemongrass salt-

flavoured salts are best as light seasoning on fresh ingredients. with the green tea n lemongrass salt, i tried using it on panfried squid *but forgot to take a photo >.<* also tried it on beef tataki:


-Beef tataki with green tea + lemongrass salt, nectarines and green salad-

this salt is actually really subtle, and i could only taste a little bit of it on the first few bites =.=

the orange + ginger salt, however, has a nice citrus flavour, and not as subtle as the tea salt. this salt works best with seafood, and i have tried it with prawns and ocean trout:


-Panfried ocean trout + prawns with orange + ginger salt on orange salad-

the combo was sooo good~ the orange salad made the dish almost like a warm salad. extremely refreshing and with a sprinkle of chilli and chopped mint, it was absolute heaven!

Post #120

so finally the xmas dessert. now, what makes a dessert christmasy?! to me, colour is vital, and red is probably my no.1 xmas colour. and even tho its summer, something warm appeals to me as christmasy :)

i previously experimented on masterchef gary's recipe for a cherry + white chocolate clafoutis. i made mine with dark chocolate, and had mum's official big stamp of approval to make it for our xmas feast!!! and to me, this is MY idea of a xmas dessert!! big fat sweet cherries swimming in a bed of warm gooey pudding *my bad descrption* :)

getting ready:



and the great thing about this dessert is, you can get prepared in advance. when we're well half way into the mains, i poured the mixture into the baking dish with the cherries and put it in the oven for baking.


-Cherries + dark chocolate clafoutis-

with a dab of vanilla cream, indulgence~~

Post #119

xmas day cooking part II.

other than the roasted turkey *which of course was the star on the night*, we also prepared a few other dishes for our xmas feast! this time, we tried to play safe and stuck with whats simple and achievable. afterall we had 18 mouths to feed, its probably not the best time to play around with new adventurous recipes :)

so, mum and i both started preparing in our own homes on the night of xmas eve. lucky i got off work at 3pm! next day i surprised mum by arriving her place early~! *pat on the back!*

so, first on the menu was a cold soup in shot glasses as starter:


-Chilled smoked salmon soup-

little olive nibbles marinated in lemon + spices to go with the cold meat platter:


-Marinated green olives-

sis made this beautiful white wine sangria - sooo good, i dont think we'll ever make the red wine version again!


-White wine sangria-

we also made 2 salads:


-Stone fruits, prosciutto + ricotta with balsamic vinaigrette-

so so simple to make and so colourful! its fabulous time of the year to make this salad as stone fruits are in season! get different types for the contrast in colour and in taste~ we used nectarines, peaches and apricots!


-Squid + green mango salad with vietnamese dressing-

a totally diff type of salad. this one is based on luke nguyen's green mango salad, but i used squid this time. just for fun i also chucked in some mango cubes. this salad is so refreshing its great for a hot summers day!

next on the menu we had lemongrass chicken, vermicelli + mint with sweet chilli sauce in lettuce cups:


-Lemongrass chicken in lettuce cups-

moving on to the hot food, we had prawns ~ halved lengthways *v skillful work of sis*, grilled and finished with a sweet soy sauce:


-Grilled prawns with garlic + sweet soy-

also from the oven we had lamb racks - mum bought these top grade racks, both huge in size and packed with flavours:




-Lemon + thyme lamb racks-

the poor oven worked so hard all day *just like us!!* half way through roasting the turkey, we also chucked in a tray on veg in - its not often that we turn on the oven for more than an hour!! so no wasting energy :) it can roast some veg at the same time! here we had carrots, potatoes, parsnips, zucchinis, green beans, red onions and garlic, tossed with olive oil and sprigs of thyme.


-Roasted vegetables-

enough in one post i think *am getting tired* :) next time i'll post a xmas dessert~!

Post #118

second hit of festive cooking!! *finally got these photos off sis' camera*

we had a big party at mums on xmas day. mum invited some relos and close friends over for dinner, but the numbers grew from 10 ppl to 13, then 15 and then in the end 18!!! if i knew we have 18 in the first place, i would have strongly voted against holding a party at home!!!!

so a lot of "free" time spent prior to this threatening event has been panicking over what to cook, what order to cook, how to cook it and what gift to get for each guest. and to add on to the stress level, mum brought home one day a 5.8kg turkey... well, if it was a leg ham, i would have been a little more embracing, at least the ham is cooked!! (and the chance of stuffing up is so much lower...) the first reaction sis and i had when we heard about the turkey was... o no, can you pls give it away?! but sadly the answer was no. so the search for a good roast turkey recipe was also added to the prep list.

in the end, i opted for jamie oliver's roasted xmas turkey. reason being that his recipe puts the stuffings between the skin and the breast meat rather than inside the cavity, and apparently that is to prevent the breast part (which is the thinner part of the bird) from getting dry. the worst fears we had with roasting a turkey was the dry meat, so this recipe seems to solve the most imminent concern. neil perry's recipe also puts the stuffing in between, so at least its not a wild twist of jamie's.

and the first question i had for each family member *aka mum, dad and sis* on xmas day was, if it takes 20 min to roast half a kg, how long will a 5.8 kg bird take to roast in the oven?! hahahaha... tricky maths question.

so, the bird:



the stuffing cooling down - chopped onions, carrots, celeries, minced meat, dried peaches, bacon, breadcrumb, thyme and cinnamon:



little rosemary garlic and prosciutto rolls ready for use:



massaging the bird with salt, pepper and olive oil:



stuffing the bird - wasnt a v nice feeling... @.@:



all ready for the roast - see the rosemary rolls in the legs?! cute! and the big orange in the cavity?!



when we carried the heavy tray into the oven for roasting, we found to our utmost horror that the tray's too big to fit into the oven!!!! it does make one wonder why mum has a roasting tray at home that is too big for our oven... =.=

so finally... after almost 4 hours of roasting... ta-da~





having had every single finger and toe crossed, i couldnt have been happier with this first attempt!!! beautiful beautiful bird! and the stuffing in between the skin and the meat made it look fuller and bulkier. the roasted potatoes round the end of the bird were absolutely delish~~~

and the next challenge was to lift the bird from the roasting tray onto the serving plate so that i can use the juice to make a gravy. pity we didnt take a photo of the gravy, but it was nice~~!



the turkey was yum, much better than what i expected! and it was v popular too! when mum first brought this bird home, we knew it would take us weeks to finish the leftover. but after dinner, we gave away 3 trays of meat, one to each family, and we had nothing left other than the bones =.= and i kinda secretly wished that i would have some to takeaway too...