Away From Home

Sous-vide Steak

2010-04-02T18:51:00.006+01:00

The trouble with home cooked steak is that you cannot get the meat cooked at the right level: usually it is uncooked or overcooked it. Getting the steak to be cooked at the right level for me is like winning lottery: lot of consolation prizes and none for the big ones. Reading various food blogs, I stumbled across an article that explains how to cook a prefect steak like Michelin chef easily. This article explains a rather peculiar method called "sous-vide" (or "under vaccum"). This requires the steak to be vacuum-packed and soaked in a water at certain temperature over a period of time. Whether it works or not? Well, there is only one way to find out...

Since I have neither a vacuum pack machine nor a sous-vide machine, I have to make do with zip-lock steam bag, a big pot and a thermometer:

oh ya, I marinated the rump steak with garlic, thyme, salt, pepper and a bit of lemon zest over night in the zip-lock steam bag. Sous-vide is not magic. It will not make the steak tasty without marinate.

The most tricky part of the sous-vide business is to maintain the water temperature. For medium-rare steak, it requires the water temperature to be at 60 degree celsius. After several trials, I noticed that big volume of water will make the temperature goes up/down slower. This allows you to control the temperature better especially you are trying to figure out what stove setting you will require. If the water gets too hot, just pour in some cold water. This brings down the temperature, and you might want to turn the stove setting a bit lower. Once you get the right stove setting + water volume, you might want to record the setting down (unless you want to spend your time tweaking it for the next time).

Depending on the size of the steak, the minimum cooking time will vary. For one and half inch steak, it will take at least 1 hour for it to cook thoroughly. Since it is constant temperature, I can always leave it longer if I wanted to. This will give me enough time to prepare elaborate side dishes to go along with the steak.

Once it is ready, take it out from the pot and heat up a heavy-bottom pan with a bit of olive oil. Pan fry the steak till the meat is browned from the outside (This should not take more than 1 minute for both sides, if the pan is very hot.). Here is how it looks like:

Sous-vide steak, mashed potato with fried and fresh leek, and sauté brussels sprouts with smoked bacon :)

Here is how the meat looks like:

I think I hit the jackpot for this one. Every part of the steak is medium-rare. Not even a single part of it was undercooked or overcooked. The meat was tender and succulent. The best part of it, no sauce was needed because it was just perfect! It is definitely the best steak I have ever eaten at home.

This is the article that inspires me to do so: How to sous vide steak

There is a health and safety requirement for sous-vide (undercooked meat will promote dangerous bacteria growth). Please refer to this before you attempt to do anything: Practical guide to sous vide.

If you have some money to spend, you can buy this home edition sous-vide machine:Sous vide supreme. Only 450 USD :)

Project Eden - one year

2010-03-15T23:38:00.007Z

It has been a year since the last post for Project Eden. Many things have happened in the one year. I will keep it short and leave you guys with all the exciting updates...

Throughout last year summer, the chili plants produced so many chilies that I could not finish by myself. It was like 4-5 ready-to-eat every day! I ended up giving the surplus to my colleagues. Words spread through the office, and I was known as "chili" man in the office.

Well, good thing never lasts. Remember the "growing" concern from the management? It seems that chili planting is not something that an IT guy should do in the office, and they claimed that the chili plants attracted some flies to the office vicinity. I did not spot any, but the management claimed they had. Probably the fly looks like this:

or this:

I guess it was latter that sealed the fate of the chili plants: Public urination does not exactly fit with the company's image :) and the plants had to go... It was heart wreaking moment, giving all my plants away to people as I did not have any place to keep them. Basically, 4-5 months of growing was down the drain.

Anyway, I managed to moved the remaining to my colleague's place. He has an abandoned green house in the backyard. It sounded ideal initially, but it was lack of sunlight that those plants need. Well, I guess it was better than leaving them in the trash.

Since then, the plants were not doing very good in the new environment. They were not bearing the same amount of fruits as before. When autumn came, all plants were almost dead. It worsen when we got one of the coldest winter in UK last year. These were the last crop of the chili in late summer:

At this point, you might think that I probably gave up on the chili growing idea. I would have if I was alone, but this time I have several "partners" in crime :) I guess I got them hooked with the chili that they could not live without it (the bad quality office canteen food might help the cause; chili just makes it better). This time, we come prepared... and the management will not know what is coming :)

Caffeine Curve

2010-03-08T12:15:00.002Z

This picture pretty sums up what I feel about coffee every day :)

Nirwana is achieved after 6th cups of coffee :)

To eat or not to eat?

2010-01-26T13:06:00.004Z

I am sure everyone of us has dropped food to the floor before. This workflow might able to help you to sort out the dilemma of eating it or not:

20 things worth knowing about beer

2009-12-01T23:35:00.003Z

Stumbled upon this site and the author did a very good job to make beer so informative that I am compelled to share it with the rest of you guys. A sneaky peak of what you about to see:

The rest is over here: To the site

Bacon Pasta

2009-10-22T00:01:00.002+01:00

Bacon is one of the favourite things I love to cook with. It just auto-magically makes anything taste good. Bacon sandwich, bacon salad, roast chicken with bacon, and the list goes on... Here is a simple dish that I like to cook if I am running short of time but still need a good tasty meal. All you need is lots of bacons (prefer smoked bacon), pasta, two cans of chopped tomatoes and few cloves of garlic.

First, heat up two pots. Fill one of them with salt water and let it to boil. Once the other pot is hot enough, dizzle a bit of olive oil and fry those bacons till they are slightly crispy:

Once the bacons are crispy, throw in some finely chopped garlics. Fry it for a while before you add in the chopped tomatoes. Let it simmers. By this time, the pot filled with salt water will be boiling. Add in the pasta:

Stir the pasta and sauce occasionally to prevent them from sticking to the pot. Once the pasta is about right, drain them and put them aside. The sauce should be thicken by then, if not, just wait another 5-10 mins. Season the sauce with salt and pepper when it is ready. Mix the pasta into the sauce and serve it grated parmesan and a bit of oregano:

If do it right, all the prep + cooking will take around 30-35mins. Probably 4-5 servings depending on the amount of pasta you put in.

Beer Can Chicken

2009-10-15T00:13:00.008+01:00

Shawn and I have been talking about this idea for a while now (inspired by various posts on the internet at that time). We thought of giving it a try this summer. The principle is kind of easy, I think it is best to show it in the picture:

Yupe, there where the beer can goes :) and we made sure we used the best beer can we had - Carlsberg Export. If Carlsberg did a beer can chicken, it would be something like this. Oh ya, one more thing , you need to open the can, drink half of the can , and poke holes on the top half of the can. This could spell disaster in your oven if you used an unopen can.

We put some marination under the chicken skin. This way it will make the meat tastier. Once it is done, just pop it into the oven:

This is picture of me trying to justify why a beer can should be up the chicken's arse:

Here is the result:

I cannot remember much of the details of the chicken now. From what can recall, the chicken was beautifully roasted - every part of the skin was golden brown. The meat, hmm, did not taste like beer. It is definitely something I will be doing again for christmas, probably a beer keg turkey :)

What happen if you eat lot of wasabi peas in one go?

2009-10-09T08:00:00.001+01:00

This pic tells it all:

Happy birthday, yeng yee... purposely keep this for your birthday >:)

Project Eden - 17th Week

2009-04-16T17:08:00.004+01:00

I have moved all of the chili plants out from the Aerogarden, after a growing concern from the upper management with my green activity (they were thinking that I was growing something illegal in the office). I even had the director came over and looked at the leaves of all the plants. Probably he was looking for some fresh supply :)

Anyway, with the help of my colleague, we moved everything to pot now:

The jalepeno plant is growing nicely bearing three fruits:

A few more days, these chilies will be ready for consumption :)

Project Eden - 15th week

2009-04-10T02:32:00.001+01:00

It is spring time in UK now, and the chili plants have grown rapidly. It is a jungle of chili plants right now...

I got my first two chilis:

This is another variant of it, but hard to bear fruit without pollination from the bees...

I need to find a way of getting all these flowers pollinated to have chilis

Coffee Chicken

2009-04-05T01:47:00.004+01:00

Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world today, and yet, it is hardly used in cooking. Is it that bad to eat it. If so, how bad can it be? Well, there is one way to find out...

Roast some fresh coffee bean:

Marinate the chicken with coffee bean, salt, cumin and paprika. Wrap it up and pop into the oven:

After 20 mins in 250 degree temperature oven, glazes it with some honey. Pop back into the oven for 2 mins:

Serve:

Coffee chicken done! :)

Despite all the efforts and coffee, it still tastes like chicken :) The chicken breast has the smell of smoky, barbecue coffee. The sauce is sweet with a hint of bitterness like espresso, but with savoury taste. It feels like having your main meal and after-meal espresso at the same time. It is weird, but it is somehow rather pleasing, especially when the caffeine kicks in :)

Project Eden - 9th week

2009-02-09T23:46:00.004Z

Should have updated this long time ago, when I got back from Malaysia. Well, with lots of things happening in UK (survives the retrenchment exercise, tons of work etc), it is hard to write blog nowadays.. Despite all the bad news, the chili plants are striving under the good care of my colleague, Caroline when I was in Malaysia. Here is how it looks like:

Bacon-wrapped Asparagus

2009-01-07T15:22:00.003Z

After having not posted in monkey-years, I just realized how tricky it is to use Blogger's Post Editor especially when it comes to arranging the photos.

Anyway, moving back to the topic at hand... I needed a quick dinner after a long day's work and the only fastfood that I could find in the fridge was frozen beef pie. That wasn't too bad but I decided to supplement my microwave dinner with some fresh food. Lo and behold, I found asparagus, bacon and lemon in the fridge too.

I vaguely remember seeing a dish prepared by Jamie Oliver that used these ingredients plus a clove of garlic. It's really simple. Leave the bacon uncut while finely dicing the garlic. Get some lemon zest by grating the lemon and wash the asparagus.

Wrap about 3-4 asparagus sticks in a bacon. I actually had more asparagus than bacon so I wrapped 5-6 asparagus instead, giving me two bunches. That wasn't such a bad idea considering how greedy I was but the bacon could barely stay on. On a hindsight, I should have secured the bacon and asparagus together with some toothpicks.

Pour some olive oil over the everything and sprinkle the lemon zest and finely diced garlic on them. Chuck the tray into a preheated oven and wait for about 5 minutes before turning it over. Leave it for another 5 minutes or so and it is ready to serve.

Tadaa!! Doesn't look too bad, does it? Apple for desert. Simple yet filling. Have fun!

Project Eden - 3rd week

2008-12-23T00:18:00.004Z

Good news! the upper management has not raised any concern with the plant, and it is well into the third week. We have so many little chili plants that we have to put it in several pots:

The chili plant is about 3 inches tall now. It is way faster than those in the pots:

At this growing rate, I shall able to see the fruit of the labour (hardly any effort) within 5 weeks time :)

This probably will be the last post for this year. Anyway, have a wonderful Christmas and a smashing New Year celebration.

Pan frying a steak

2008-12-09T00:13:00.004Z

Steak is, by far, the easiest and fastest thing for me. Prep, cook, eat, and wash up within 30 mins. It is ideal for people with busy schedule but refuse to resort to microwave meals and maggie mee.

Well, I must admit that I do cheat a bit during the prep stage, where I pre-marinated the steak with olive oil, salt, pepper, and oregano one day before cooking:

This allows the meat to absorb the favour and tastes better. The tricky bit of cooking a steak is determining how well cook you like your meat. The category ranges from rare, medium rare, medium, and well done.

If you like your steak well done, please do not order it in a fancy restaurant, they will just chuck it in a microwave for you. Seriously, a steak tastes its best with a little bit of juice/blood within it. Personally, I prefer it to be medium rare as the meat is tender enough but not too bloody.

I learnt how to determine how well cook of the meat from this site, and this picture pretty much says it all:

This looks good at first glance. However, this picture has a fundamental flaw - when cooking a steak, you usually using a spatula or something. The feel is total different from what you will be expecting from poking it with your finger. What I usually ended up is poking the spatula to the palm.

Even with this tip, I still did not managed to get the steak at the level that I like (usually slightly overcooked it). After numerous attempts, I managed to get it right. This is how it looks like:

Strangely, seeing this actually gives me more satisfaction than eating it :)

Project Eden

2008-11-30T00:33:00.006Z

A while back, a colleague and I were discussing about growing our own plant using Aerogarden. It is kind of indoor hydroponic planting device that allows you to grow your favourite plant twice the speed of planting it in the soil.

Anyway, my colleague got it from EBay and I bought the seed kit. We decided to leave it in the office ( till someone higher up ask us to remove it) Here it is on my working desk. I am using it as a desk light if someone is asking about it:

Since I bought the seed kit, we will be having chilies for the next 6 months if everything goes well. Here is a close up shot of the future chili plant:

oh ya, my colleague named this project as project Eden. Like many projects in the company, it must have a name. Eden is just aptly for what we are about to create.

I went to YouTube and searched for aerogarden. The search result is rather "interesting". I would spoil it for you, go and have a look for yourself... Well, who knows this might be our next project >:)

Mussels With Beer

2008-11-24T23:13:00.005Z

A while back, I did a mussel dish with pasta dish. One of the readers suggested white wine instead of water. In classic mussel recipe, white wine is usually the choice. Well, I was a bit crazy and went for Belgium wheat beer instead!

I decided all the live mussels a great send off. Gave them a premium Belgium wheat beer to drink before dunking them into a hot pot.

After 30 mins, I checked on the mussels and they were like this:

Judging by the look of it, I guessed they were pretty smashed up by now. All these drunken mussels were ready for cooking.

This is the end result:

It smelled wonderful while it was cooking, this probably due to using beer instead of water. The stock was sweet with a hint of bitterness. This is probably the reason why white wine is commonly being used and not beer. Despite that, I quite like it though, especially with fresh bread.

Home Made Pasta

2008-11-06T00:28:00.004Z

Winter is coming to UK - the day gets shorter, the sky is grey, it rains, the weather is cold and windy. All these give me more reason to stay at home. Well, it is not all bad news too. I finally can find time to do some of the food experiments that I have been wanting to do since beginning of summer...

First off the list, home made pasta! This probably due to my recent trip to Italy. The pasta there tastes so good and fresh that it motivates me to learn how to make it. I learnt how to make it from this link:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-fresh-pasta

The setup:

My laptop was in the background just in case I need to watch the video again.. which I did several occasions.

Rest the dough:

My hand was messy and couldn't take any photo for the kneading process.. it was pretty much like the video.. I hope..

Roll the dough:

This is the hardest part of all. Making a consistent thickness throughout the pasta is not easy with rolling pin. This situation gets worse whenI didn't realise that how big can the dough spread... my dough was bigger than the rolling pin, the marble slab, and I was just half way there. Panic set in and just realised that the guy in the video has a bloody huge table.

The pasta:

After 2 hours of labour, this is what I got. Not 5 stars Michelin rating chef's pasta, but it looks alright for a beginner like me.

The taste:

Cooked one portion of it. Had it with pesto and generous portion of parmesan cheese. The texture of the pasta is alright, not as good as the one I had in Italy - a little bit thicker, and missing the silky smooth texture that I like. The taste of the pasta beats any dried pasta you can find in supermarket, probably it is fresh :)

Is it worth making your own pasta? The answer is yes and don't do it with rolling pin like me. Buy yourself a pasta rolling machine, it will take less than 20 mins to roll it!

Pan fried Duck Breast

2008-10-12T11:29:00.005+01:00

Duck meat is one of my favourite meats due to its richness in taste. It takes very little effort to make it tastes good. A well cooked duck should have crispy skin, moist within the meat. The best way of archiving that within a short span of time will be pan frying it.

The duck breast is lightly seasoned with salt, pepper and little bit of olive oil. It is then fried it in a pan the skin side down:

The heat should be not to high, as we want the fat between the skin and meat to be dissolved into oil. As you can see the picture above, the pan is full of oil from the dissolved duck fat.

While the duck is cooking, boils some water in a pot and add some new potatoes into it.

Once the duck breast is cooked, put it into grill with the skin side up. Grill it for a while. In the mean time, cut the cooked potatoes and fry them in the duck fat:

The potatoes will absorb all the flavour of the duck fat, and make them very crispy. Oh ya, while you are frying your potatoes, make sure to take a look at the duck breast in the grill too. The skin gets burned quickly in the grill.

Here is how it looks like in the end:

Simplified Fa Teow Kai

2008-10-09T00:54:00.000+01:00

It has been a while since the last post. Apart from being lazy to write, I have not been experimenting much lately, just the usual pan fried steak with salads. So, there have not been any interesting stuffs to blog about.

Anyway, I learnt this recipe from Shawn when I was at his place (many many months ago). The dish is very simple to make and tastes quite good. Anyway, here are the the ingredients:

Left to right: spring onion, caramelized soya sauce (this is important), light soya sauce, Shao Hsing Wine, chicken thighs.
middle part: dried chillies, peppercorns, bunga cengkeh, garlic, ginger and mushroom.

I took the liberty of modifying Shawn's recipe by adding some mushrooms, and bunga cengkeh. Why I did that? well, I couldn't remember it too.. probably because I had those ingredients in my cupboard kuar...

Next, heat up a pot with some oil. Saute the dried chillies, peppercorns, bunga cengkeh, garlic, and ginger for a while. Add the chicken thighs in, stir fry for a minute. Cover the chicken with enough caramelized soya sauce, light soya sauce and Shao Hsing wine. Add the chopped spring onion on top, and cover the top with a lid.

This dish has to be cooked in a very low heat for a long period of time ( ~2 hours). Oh ya, stir it occasionally . Don't try to switch to high heat to speed thing up, you will burnt it. Here is mine look like after I waited for two hours:

For those in Malaysia, you can avoid this by taking 2 hours drive to Seri Kembangan to have it there... you lucky fellas :)

Flambé

2008-06-17T23:47:00.002+01:00

Last week, while I was cooking my lovely steak, I decided to do a flambé for a change.

Instead of the usual chinese rice wine, I decided to go with my Monkey Shoulder whiskey for extra kick.. and this is the end result:

morale of the story.. never flambé with one shot of 40% proof whiskey or you will end up with 30cm high fire, a traumatized housemate and tons of fun (given that you don't burn down the house)...

kids do not try this at home >:)

Trip to Italy

2008-04-15T23:28:00.004+01:00

Went to Genoa, Italy with Shawn and Jay. The food and drink were great. I am truly amazed with how simple the food is being prepared, but tastes so good!

Stumbled upon this rather "interesting" restaurant during our quest for good food over there:

I hope "Le" is not "water" in Italian :)

Honey Grilled Rabbit

2008-02-24T22:23:00.006Z

A while ago, I bought a wild rabbit meat from my colleague (his neighbor was selling it). It was a bargain - 2.50 pounds for a headless, skinless and gutless rabbit.

First thing popped into my mind was Guinness rabbit, so I marinated the cute little rabbit with Guinness, garlic and rosemary:

Put the marinated rabbit on the grill:

Just minute before the rabbit is done, glaze it with some honey:

The meat tastes quite nice, too bad it is too little.

Thick Soya Sauce Pork Hock

2008-02-15T01:20:00.002Z

Apparently, I started drafting this entry in July 2007 and only got as far as typing "For lack of a better name, I think...". I honestly can't remember what I was going to ramble about but let's see whether I can remember how I prepared this dish. Keep your fingers crossed that I get to finish the entry this time round.

You'll want to start off with the ingredients seen above. The most important ingredient for this dish is the black vinegar. My first attempt was sorely lacking of something and it didn't occur to me that I forgot the vinegar. For added kick, you could add some dishwashing liquid (Lemon) in case the dish isn't sour enough.

First, marinade the pork (preferably pork belly and pork feet) with salt, pepper, soya sauce, thick soya sauce (for colouring) and a little vinegar. Leave that aside for about 30 minutes.

Chop up a few garlic cloves (not too fine) and chuck that into a pan of hot oil to get the nice garlicky fragrance. Put in the marinaded pork and stir fry every inch of the pork. It doesn't have to be cooked. You just want to seal the flavour in.

Put the stir-fried pork into a electric slow cooker. Add a generous amount of water (enough to cover everything), the black vinegar (a must) and a whole garlic. Set it to cook for about 3 hours. You could use an ordinary pot with a lid instead. The lid ensures that the dish remains soupy (for lack of a better word).

For a healthy compliment to the meat, I whipped up a quick and simple stir-fried vegetable dish.

I also boiled some eggs to be put into the slow cooker an hour before the meat was done. Remove the shell first. At this point, you could add more salt and vinegar to your taste. For me, I like it sour.

After waiting patiently for 3 hours, this is the result of my labour. It doesn't look like much (blame the photographer) but it sure did taste good. I had some

Mussels With Pasta

2007-11-30T00:02:00.000Z

Unlike Malaysia, UK is not blessed with abundance king prawns or meaty crabs. Luckily, mussels thrive in the UK water and they are affordable for me to do some food experiments.

Here they are, fresh Scottish mussels with shells all scrubbed clean for cooking:

Ready a big pot, dizzles a bit of olive oil (butter will be better) and saute some chopped garlics (5 cloves) , diced onion ( one small one) and few sticks of celery:

Once they are a little bit brown, add some water into it. Add a pinch of salt, and let it boils for 20 mins. After that, you should a good vegetable stock to cook the mussels with.

Add the mussels, chopped parsley, and fresh grounded pepper:

Mix it with pasta:

Garnish with more parsley and it is ready to serve:

New Found Hobby II

2007-11-17T00:05:00.000Z

It has been nearly 4 months since my first post of my herb planting. I am pleased to announce that the basil plant is still very healthy and strong. In fact, I have included a few more plants since then. Here is the whole crew:

From left to right: mint, another basil, another type of basil, coriander, and the first basil. Well, basil is just so easy to grow and maintain - all it needs is sunshine and daily watering. If you can handle cactus, basil will not be that hard.

Lamb Cutlets With Coucus

2007-10-21T22:50:00.000+01:00

I did this dish a while ago - it was spring and lamb always tastes the best during that period for some unknown reasons. Anyway, here are two fresh Welsh lamb cutlets marinated with sea salt, oregano and olive oil:

Pan fry them in a very very hot pan:

Lamb meat is very tricky to get it right - overcooked will render the meat chewy like tyre. The ideal cooked lamb meat will be a bit pinkish inside, its texture should be firm but not rubber, and the meat should retain most of its juice. It should take around 3-5 mins a side. If you are adventurous enough, put in a dash of brandy (anything with 40% or more alcohol). The flame will come straight into the pan! Not sure it will improve the taste, but it is definitely fun to watch it.

Once the cutlets are done, leave them aside to cool down. In the meantime, we can make a sauce with it. Put a little bit of butter into the pan. Sautee some chopped garlics. Then, crush two fresh tomatoes into it. Add in a little bit of ketchup, pepper and salt for taste. Add in some mixed vege if you want:

Cook some coucus, and here is the final product:

Back from holidays

2007-10-12T22:32:00.000+01:00

Went for a week holidays in Greece a while back and since then work has been busy (my excuse for being lazy). Anyway, here are some pictures :

taken half drunk under the shade :)

The sea is just beautiful...

Yellow Whatchamacallit

2007-09-19T15:29:00.000+01:00

Show this thingamajig to an Englishman or an Aussie bloke and he wouldn't have a clue what it is or what it's used for.

A strange thing that I've noticed about this thingamabob is that it always come in yellow. I suspect that the manufacturers must have taken Henry Ford's famous quote to heart, "You can have it in any colour so long as it is yellow".

Egg Fried Rice

2007-07-22T22:17:00.000+01:00

Few weeks/months ago my housemate asked me to cook him a traditional chinese fried rice. Fried rice is one of my favourite dish. It is so versatile that you can put virtually anything inside. Left over cooked meat, vegetables, seafood... sky is the limit.

This is the egg fried rice that I learnt from IronChef TV show. Here are the ingredients:

Then, mix the just cooked rice with the beaten egg like this:

Prepare a hot wok, some oil and let the picture tells the rest:

The stir frying part will be the most tedious part of all. Once the fried rice is dry enough (eventually all the beaten eggs will be cooked), pour a bit of chinese rice wine for extra omph. Stir fry for a while and add in the green peas.

Here is how it looked like when it is done:

Atif, if you are reading this, this was the fried rice you ate few weeks/months ago :)

Thai Spicy Pork

2007-07-16T09:09:00.000+01:00

Due to busy workload, I haven't been eating properly. Ready-made pizza, maggie mee, takeaway food and beers have been my diet for the past one week (no complaint with the beer though). The crappy food has driven me crazy, and the only thing that will help is cooking a good decent meal to please my stomach. Here is my take on Thai cuilinary - spicy pork.

Here are the ingredients:

Fresh basil leaves and its stems (bai horapah ใบโหระพา)

Chili (prik kee noo พริกขี้หนู )

Garlic (gratium กระเทียม)

Tumeric (kah min ขมิ้น)

Few pinches of salt (gluea เกลือ)

Pork ( mu หมู)

Fish sauce (nam pla น้ำปล่า)

You can put more basil into the dish. I used less because I do not want to kill my precious basil plant.

Sliced the pork chop ~ 3mm. Finely chop the garlic, basil and chili. Add in the salt and fish sauce. Mix them together:

Ready a hot wok with oil. Stir fry all the stuffs in it. It should be fried till they are slightly crispy from the outside.

Once it is cooked, serve it with rice:

อร่อยมากๆ (a-roi mak mak)!

Note:
- less tumeric will be better as its smell is too strong that it overpowers the basil's fragrant. Alternatively, you can put in more basil leaves.
- I called it Thai dish as it smells and tastes like thai cooking :)

Honey Mint Lamb

2007-07-11T14:20:00.000+01:00

It's amazing how excited you can get anticipating those special moments in your life. Your first Micro Genius when you do well in exams, the first trip to a theme park and for me... Transformers on the big screen. Big ass robots in all their glory... what could you ask for more?

You just have to celebrate moments like these. How else to celebrate than to eat? Live to eat I say. The only problem was, what was for dinner?

So, while shopping for ingredients, I came across one of those pre-marinated meat that came in a vacumm sealed bag and the idea "conveniently" came. The ~~Coles~~ Honey Mint Lamb^TM served with mashed potato and sauteed mushrooms would be perfect.

Lamb
Ingredients

Lamb (obviously)
Fresh mint
Honey
Rosemary
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Lime

Marinade

Mince the fresh mint until really fine. You can use more mint if you prefer a stronger mint taste.

Mix all the ingredients together in a separate bowl (makes mixing easier). I'm being vague about how much of each ingredients you should use. Generally, the amount of each ingredient decreases in the order they appear in the list above. Adjust to your taste.
The additional ingredients you see in the picture were just an afterthought.

Pour the marinade all over the lamb and put it aside for an hour or so.

Method

For optimum cooking, use prime lamb. But since I'm a miser, I got the lamb from the Special (cheap and not so fresh produce) section of my local supermarket.
Arrange the marinated lamb on a tray and place them inside an oven which has been preheated to about 200 degrees celcius.
Leave it for about 5 minutes and turn the lamb over before leaving them for another 3 or so minutes. There's no science to this. Just don't let it cook for too long or the meat won't be as juicy.

Mashed Potatoes (adapted from Planet Food)
Ingredients

Potatoes (obviously)
Fresh parsley
Butter
Cream or milk
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method

Peel, clean and boil the potatoes. When tender and soft, mash them into a pulp.

Mince the fresh parsley until really fine. Add the olive oil to the minced parsley and mix them well.

Heat butter and milk together until everything is nice and creamy.
Add the cream into the mashed potato and stir. Add a little salt and pepper too.
Finally, fold in the minced parsley. Mix well.

Sauteed Mushroom
Ingredients

Fresh mushrooms (obviously)
Olive oil
Mixed herbs
Salt and pepper

Method

Clean and slice mushrooms into thin slices.

Pan fry them in olive oil. Adjust the heat accordingly.
Season generously with mixed herbs, salt and pepper.

All done. I was so excited with dinner that I couldn't even keep my hands steady while taking this shot. Sorry. Dinner was great and so was Transformers. Worth watching. I have a knack for stating the obvious, don't I?

As a side note, my neighbours from China had this misguided idea that if you put a raw egg inside a glass of beer, the alcohol level would be high enough to cook it. Suffice to say, it didn't work. I had to down it... in hot chocolate instead. There was a hint of beer in the hot chocolate.

New Found Hobby

2007-07-06T00:00:00.000+01:00

Sorry for not posting as frequently as I should. These few days, the workload is just crazy - my team lead is off to get married, left with tons of unfinished business behind...*rant*

Anyway, I picked up a new hobby last week: growing plant. This is my basil plant, which is very nice for pasta sauce and thai cooking:

Some bones to keep my plant healthy and strong :)

I hope it will survive for the next few months to come..

Japanese Tetris

2007-06-28T20:19:00.000+01:00

Without realising it, we seemed to have sailed passed the 200^th post a while back. Yipeee!!

Enough of food for once. Here's some variety, for old time sake ;)

Yes, it's those hilarious japanese again. Check out their twist on tetris. Hehhe..

Big thanks to chye for the link

Masak Lemak Cili Api Prawns

2007-06-27T21:47:00.001+01:00

Here's something I pulled out from my ever expanding backlog. This one's from when Chuan was over a while back for a cooking session. In fact, it was so long ago I can't properly recall what went into the food :(

Chuan: if you spot any mistakes/omissions, do edit the post

Can't remember how the situation unfolded, but somehow, only after all the planning, shopping, and prep work we done, did we realise that both of us were working towards a different dish -- Chuan had his mind set on a thai green curry thingy, while I was working towards something like masak lemak cili api.

Whichever the inspiration, they both led to the same ingredients, and one dish :p

To make things green, we got some leafy stuff from the chinese market - a huge bunch of coriander and what we suspect to be curry leaves.

For the ooomph factor, lots of chillies!

Finely chop all the above, ...

... then have Chuan pound 'em!!

The prawns are then mixed into the concoction and left to marinate for a while.

Next, we added in some coconut milk and put the whole mixture to boil, stirring constantly. Once the prawn is cooked, fish them and continue simmering the ~~sauce~~ ~~curry~~ ~~soup~~ lemaky liquid stuff.

We then realised that some asam jawa (tamarind) juice would be require, but of course, I didn't have any lying around. A substitution is in order ....

... OK, this will do.

Simmer simmer.

Stir stir.

When it finally looked good enough to eat, the cooked prawns went back in. Then some sliced lady's fingers. Finally, a little fish sauce to taste.

TADA!

Masak Lemak Cili Api Prawns

Served with crispy fried salmon topped with shallots and soy sauce. (and rice. of course.)

and a couple of ice cold Innis & Gunn

Nostrovia!!

Tuna Spaghetti Carbonara

2007-06-26T13:58:00.000+01:00

So, with absolutely no blogging experience whatsoever, here I am, attempting my first entry. Before we begin, I think formal introductions are in order. Please meet Pinky (right) and the Brain (left).

One of us does most of the preparation and cooking while the other focuses on more important matters like cooking procedures, ingredients and total world domination.

Also, please meet Tom, Little Dick and Harry. Without them, we're pretty much dysfunctional.

It was a Friday and we had neither meat nor vegetables left in the fridge. Notwithstanding that, we still needed our meal before we could go about with our dastardly plans of conquering the world. You can never work on an empty stomach. I decided that Tuna Spaghetti Carbonara was what we needed.

This simple dish just needed some eggs, parmesan cheese, sliced onions, diced garlic, tuna and spaghetti. Nothing spectacular and I'm pretty sure you can find similar recipes elsewhere.

Spaghetti

Bring water to boil. Add lots of salt (it's supposed to increase the water boiling point and therefore ensure that the spaghetti doesn't become sticky; google said so).
Chuck in spaghetti and cook until al dente. Drain water but save some for later.

The Tuna, The Pan and The Sauces

Fry the onion and garlic until browned and then add in tuna. Fry for about 4-5 mins.
Beat the eggs (about two per person) and add parmesan cheese into it.
Put drained spaghetti into pan and mix everything up well. Add the saved spaghetti water to make it a little moist.
Pour in the egg and parmesan cheese mix and stir thoroughly at a low heat. When done right, the egg shouldn't turn chunky. I've yet to get it right.
Add salt, pepper and mixed herb to flavour.

Tada! Dinner is served. Unfortunately, it wasn't as creamy as I hoped it to be. You could additionally add some cream to the egg and parmesan mix to get that creamy texture. Will try that out in the future.

Please excuse me for the lack of photos. You've got to have a certain amount of respect for the other chefs here as they are able to dice, chop, fry and snap photos at the same time. I couldn't even do that even with Pinky and Little Dick's help.

Anyway, with dinner and this entry done, I'm off to enslave the human race. Who's with me??

Skewered Turkey and Bacon Rolls

2007-06-25T00:43:00.000+01:00

This is a classic dish taught by my Irish flatmate long long time ago. It is great for summer as it can be barbecued or grilled. Here are the ingredients:

Turkey slices (~ 1 cm thick, it will be harder to roll if it is any thicker), smoked bacon (smoked gives more flavour to the turkey), pasta sauce, red/green pepper and fresh basil leaves which is missing from the pic.

Put a slice of bacon, spread it with some pasta sauce, and put some fresh basil leaves on top of it:

Lay the turkey slice on top of that. Roll it and stick it with a bamboo skewer like satay. You can skewer some vegetable like onions, mushrooms or red/green pepper, just to make the dish a bit healthier:

Pop it into the grill (150 degree celsius) for 20 mins, and flip it and another 20 mins the other side. Served with cuscus :

Note:
I find it to be a bit dry as it didn't has sauce. I could have made a tomato based sauce for it, but then again, I was too hungry.

It is ideal for barbecue, and it always tastes better with barbecue. If you don't have fresh basil leaves, those dried version is alright too.

Still offline

2007-06-19T17:37:00.000+01:00

I'm still alive.

My broadband kaput since my trip back to M'sia. No posts from me till things get sorted out.

Anyway, just a quick hello to everyone, and a big thanks to bengchuan for keeping the blog flowing with yummy entries. Oh.. I've also invited another kaki as a guest author -- viktor. Will let him intro himself when once he accepts the invite ;)

Bagel with salted beef

2007-06-17T23:32:00.000+01:00

Few weeks ago, I tasted this bagel in a Jewish bakery shop at Brick Lane, London. It tasted so good that I was craving for it when I got back to Cambridge. Since I can only get it from London, and decided to cook it myself. So here it is:

British beef, the one that is free of mad cow disease:

Covered it with sea salt..keep it for days (ideally 6 days) in the fridge:

This is how it looks like after 2 days.. and I couldn't wait any longer. It looked a bit unappeatizing at this time:

Simmer it with garlic and black pepper:

After one hour of cooking, and the meat looks better:

Cut the meat into slices and serve with bagels, mustard and pickles:

Note:
It is not as good as the one in the bakery shop, but it is the closest that I can get. It does taste similiar though.

The meat needs to be boiled a long hour (3-4 hours) for it to be soft and moist. But I couldn't wait, so I had to settle with a slightly chewy meat.

I don't have food poisoning the next day too :) . I guess the salt kills all the harmful bacterias.

Oven Baked Curry Lamb

2007-06-11T00:10:00.000+01:00

Oven cooking is always my favourite - it is easy and less messy. This dish is ideal if you want to catch a tv series while having your dinner cooked for you.

First, lamb cutlets marinated with curry powder, cummin, tumeric and salt:

arrange a layer of potatoes underneath those lamb in aluminium foil. They served as a "sponge" to absorb all the juices, oil from the lamb:

then a layer of onion, a bit of green pea for the colour, cinnamon stick (no idea why did I put it in) and drizzle some oils on top:

Wrap it up and go in to the oven for ~ 40 mins on 200 degree celsius:

End result:

Note:
Those cinnamon sticks do not create any taste to it. Well, at least I could not taste anything.

A Proper Big Beef Burger

2007-06-03T00:10:00.000+01:00

I am kind of dissapointed with the state of beef burger today; It fills you up alright but it is not satisfying. The reason is the meat in the burger- There are more other stuffs than meat in a burger nowadays. Worst till, some of the burger patties do not even taste like beef.

Hence, I am creating a proper big beef burger; the one that packed with so much meat that it will make Big Mac or Double Whooper looks like skinny little kid...

Since most of the stores do not sell the burger patty the size that matches the requirement, I have to make it myself. Here is the ingredients:

Mix them into a bowl. Add in 2 tablespoons of Oregano, 2 tablespoons of Thyme, 1 teaspoon of cumin, sea salt and grounded black pepper.

Once it is mixed properly, make round burger patty from it. Here are my three lovely burger patties:

Each weighs ~130 grams and ~ 1 inch thick:

Then pan fry the patty with a bit of oil. Make sure you use low heat, so that the burger is cooked properly. The hard part is to flip it while retaining the shape of the patty. You may find that the burger might not be cooked inside due to its thickness, just pop it into the oven and continue cooking for ~15 mins on 200 degree celsius.

After the burger patty is cooked, melt some brie(cheese) on top. Served with tomatoes, chips, fried egg and salads:

This is how it looks like when I stacked everything together (~7cm tall):

Note:
It was quite a feat to eat the stacked burger. I had to open my mouth as big as I can to get a bite of it. This hurt my jaw. Having chips with the burger was a mistake too. By the end of the meal, I was laying on the sofa for two hour with a bulging belly and an aching jaw. Right now I know how an anaconda feels like after a big meal.

Coke Chicken

2007-05-27T19:15:00.000+01:00

A reader in the blog suggested me to cook the chicken in coke, after the Beer Chicken post. I do enjoy drinking coke, but cooking chicken with coke is just a little bit too weird. Will the chicken tastes like coke or chicken? Well, there is only one way to find out...

Marinated half a chicken (instead of whole chicken) with coke. This shows how much confidence I had with the experiment..

I was thinking what else can make coke tastes good.. and what will be better than the classic combination of lemon and coke. So, I put in lots of lemon slices:

Added some salts for the seasoning, and left it for 3 hours. Then, I rubbed the chicken with oil and grilled it for 40 mins (flipped it occasionally to get even cooking for both side of the chicken). Once it is cooked, the chicken was removed. Using the juice left by the chicken, I put in the remaining coke to make the sauce (the sauce making step is similiar to the Beer Chicken recipe). To make the sauce tastes even better, I put in a dash of Malibu and here is the end result:

The coke chicken turned out to be quite good. It tastes like lemon chicken - sweet and sour. The Malibu's coconut fragrance reminds me of Ayam Percik that I used to eat so frequently in Kelantan.

Note:
I was so concerned with how the chicken will turn out that I forgot to take photo of the chicken grilling and sauce making process...thousands apologies.

I searched online and tried to see how others cooked their coke chicken. This guy beats me hand down:

Not sure about the taste, but it surely the most creative way of making coke chicken :)

Paella - Spanish Fried Rice

2007-05-20T19:04:00.000+01:00

I served this dish to my Chinese colleague the other day. His comment was that it looked and tasted like fried rice. Well, I yet to eat any Spanish fried rice before, Paella could have been the closest form of fried rice after all.

Anyway, here are the ingredients to make it: fish, prawns, mussels, Chorizo (plenty of it), rice, green peas, onions, sliced green/red peppers and chopped tomatoes.

Heats up some oils (I like it oily, to avoid feeling guilty, I used olive oil). Stir fries the chopped onions till they are translucent. Adds in Chorizo and continues the process. Put in the chopped tomatoes, then the peppers.

Adds in the rice. Stir fry for a while.

Adds chicken stock (enough to cook the rice) and some salts. The water level is vital; getting it wrong and you will be ended up eating rice cracker (too little water) or porridge (too much water). Then, adds in the prawns, fish and mussels. Sprinkles the green peas on top.

Covers it, and let it simmers for 20 mins (it should be cooked by then, if not, simmers it longer). Serves it with lemon:

Note: It is quite easy to cook (takes around 1 hour). The hardest part for me is the water level - being so used to rely on rice cooker to cook the rice, I find cooking rice in a pot can be a challenging task. So far, I manage to get 98% cooked properly, with a bit of burnt rice at the bottom of the pot. Well, more stuffs to feed the cat :)

Beer Chicken

2007-05-17T00:26:00.000+01:00

I had a few cans of cheap lager lying in the cupboard for ages. Instead of letting them rot (or feeding it the neighbour's cat), I thought of using it to marinate some chickens.

I bought a big, fat chicken, chopped it into half. Marinated the chicken with beer, garlic, rosemary and black pepper.

Let the chicken enjoys the beer for 3-4 hours. Make sure it is drunk enough to cook it.

Then, pan fried the chicken, and sprinkled some salt on it before putting the chicken into the oven for 40 mins (~150 degree celcius):

Once it is cooked, remove the chicken, let it rest. In the mean time, use the juices left by the chicken, add in a bit of flour, the beer, and chicken stock. Simmer it till it thicken...

Here is the finished product:

Note:
Lager didn't give much taste to it. The gravy did have strong beer flavour. Strong flavoured beer such as ale, and stout will be a better choice.

* You might notice the excessive use of rosemary in this recipe. I bought a big bunch of it and I had no other means of using it (other than feeding it to the cat again).

Mussels With Tomato Sauce

2007-05-06T10:44:00.000+01:00

Went to this Belgium restaurant the other days with Shawn and Jay in London, and had this wonderful mussels with tomato sauce. Even since then, I have been having cravings for mussels.

In order to please my tummy, I decided to cook it myself. Here are the steps:
Heats up some olive oil in a pot. Once it is hot, throw in finely chopped garlic (3 cloves) and onions(2 medium size ones). After the chopped onions are translucent, put in some thinly sliced celery (5-6 sticks) and fry iit for a while. After that, add a can of chopped tomatoes, a few fresh tomatoes and 2 cups of water into the pot. For seasoning, 2-3 bay leaves and crushed black pepper and salt (to taste).

Then, add in the mussels. Simmer it till the sauce is reduced.

Instead of baked bean on toast, tried it with mussels on toast:

Note:
Something is missing from my version of mussels with tomato sauce; it does not have a slight sour taste in the sauce. This probably causes by not having red wine as part of the ingredients. Ah, well, it is still good, considering it is 3 times cheaper than the restaurant version.

A can, a man and a plan

2007-05-02T23:38:00.000+01:00

If you are running out of time to cook, this might be ideal for you. First step, get this can of pickled lettuce from your local chinese supermarket, and some meats (chicken or pork).

The steps are shown below:

Prepare a pot, stir fry some garlics with the sliced meats.

Once they are cooked, pour in a can of pickled lettuce (or two).

Add some water, grounded black pepper

Let it simmer for 10 minutes

Serve it with noodles or rice. Eat it while watching your favourite TV series, football matches, or snooker matches.

Oh ya, for the Man Utd Fans out there, better luck next time mate ! :)

Stir Fry Beef With Green Chilies and Pepper

2007-04-26T23:48:00.000+01:00

This is a dish that takes that classic stir fry beef with green pepper and modifies it by adding some fiery green chilies. It only takes two steps(Well, big ones).

First, marinate the beef slices (~5mm thick) with soy sauce and corn flour for 30 mins. Deep fry them and keep them for later.

Then, fry some chopped ginger (1/4 thumb size), garlics and onions for 1-2 mins. Add in sliced peppers, chilies, baby corns and chopped spring onions. continue to stir fry for a while. For the flavour, soya sauce, ketchup, and caramelised thick soya sauce (oyster sauce could have been ideal, but I ran out of it).

Stir fry for 2-3 mins, and add in the fried beef slices. Continue stir fry for 2 mins and it is ready to serve.

It went well with rice. It was also good with noodles for the next day, and the day afterwards :)

Note:
It didn't taste hot as what I would have expected it to me. It was more sweet than hot. Well, this was fixed with a little bit of this insanely hot powder.

English mustard sesame seeds pan fried salmon

2007-04-21T03:09:00.000+01:00

This is a modified version of Gordan Ramsay's Sesame-crusted tuna with watercress salad recipe. Instead of tuna, I was using salmon (It had special promotion), and good old english mustard as a replacement for wasabi.

First, marinate the salmon with soya sauce, and cover it with mustard.

Coat it with sesame seed, and pan fried it.

Once it is done, served with roasted potatoes, veg, etc just to make it a healthy meal.

Note: It didn't have strong mustard taste as I would expect it should have.

Lunch Quickie

2007-04-18T21:57:00.000+01:00

I have been swarmed with work lately and this game has made it worse.

In order to save time and avoid eating the same crappy food served in the office canteen, I decided to make my own sandwich. Here is the list of ingredient I use:

Fresh Ciabatta

Chorizo

Wild Rocket

Long Red Pepper (I forgot what is it called)

Grill chorizo, and the long red pepper.

Afterwards, toast the ciabatta with the grill, and put everything together.

The whole process took around 20 mins. This was done while listening to my colleague gossiping about office news :).

Level of surveillance in malaysia

2007-04-12T18:46:00.000+01:00

From this article:

Police and the Home Office are planning a significant upgrade of the CCTV network in a move that will deepen concern about a lurch towards a "surveillance society''. .... Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, said: "Surveillance in Britain has now reached a level equivalent to Russia and Malaysia. If something is not done soon to reverse this trend privacy will be extinct within a decade."

Huh? When did that happen? Have I really been away from home that long?

Mata Gelap: "Hah!! I spy someone who din flush jamban after use!.. Summore squat on bowl like apek in kopitiam like that.."

Credits: toilet photo ripped off from here

Black pepper honey glazed grilled rib

2007-04-04T23:52:00.000+01:00

If you haven't eaten any proper food for days, this might be the one you are looking for. The preparation is darn easy. First get yourself a decent size rack of rib, marinate it with a mixture of crushed black pepper, salt and a little bit of smoked paprika for one hour.

Grill the marinated rib with low heat (130 celsius) first. The idea is to cook the rib thoroughly. You will have to flip the rib from time to time.

After it is cooked, glaze the rib with honey. Grill the rib with high heat (200 celsius). Flip it and repeat the same process. Note that honey gets burnt easily with high heat.

Once it is done, take it out from the grill. Let it rest for 5 mins. Served it with chips and lettuce(optional, I put it in to make the meal a little bit "healthier"). Oh ya, it goes well with an ice cold beer too.

A little too late for thanksgiving

2007-04-04T18:26:00.000+01:00

Here's me sharing my roast turkey dish from a while back. Got the turkey real cheap from Sainsbury's. Pre-marinated too :)

Cooked it as stated on the packaging. Since the turkey was slow roasted, lots of juice got accumulated at the bottom of the pan. Saved the juice and made my own pour over sauce to kick things up a notch.

For the sauce, I caramelised some onions (i.e. fried on low heat till the onions became soft and sweet), then increased the heat and poured in the juice from the turkey. When the juice has been reduced to about half, added in some soy sauce, pepper, and dried herbs. Wala! The sauce is done.

Served sliced turkey on a bed of salad, and drizzled on the sauce liberally. This was the first time I really enjoyed eating turkey :)

Plan while you cook

2007-04-03T19:01:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I had a plan while you cook sessions. Had some free time over the weekends, so I decided to give it a go, just for fun.

The "game" goes like this:
1) Pick at random what's in the fridge.
2) Start preparing and cooking without thinking about the end results.
3) Keep throwing in ingredients till the dish resembles some edible. (things can easily get out of hand. tee hee.)

Here's what I started off with. Onions, ginger, spring onions, a green apple, a tomato, green pepper.

And the result? Apple chicken curry!!

Yeah. It was quite oily. Had to spoon much of it out before eating.

The problem with a Plan While You Cook session is that I can't really remember what went it, which means I can't recreate (or blog about) it if it does turn out nice, and it did!

(of the many ingredients that went it, I can roughly recally using curry powder, chilly paste, turmeric powder, cinnamon powder, eerrr.. and other stuff)

Examples of previous Plan While You Cook sessions where I was sane enough to take notes of ingredients would include Chocolate Chilly Salmon, Crab Celery, CurryDog, and Maggie Murtabak.

Duck tongue anyone?

2007-04-01T18:45:00.000+01:00

Had dinner with yengs and chuan at the Oriental City food court a couple of weekends ago, and chuan and I got crazy and bought this for yengs while he wasn't watching -- Duck Tongue served as a cold dish from the dim sum stall.

The lady at the counter seemed please to finally get rid of the dish (which has been sitting in the fridge for God knows how long).

Here's yengs licking the tongue licking his tongue licking the tongue licking ...

Chuan used it as an extension to his own to pre-taste everything.

Did you know that duck tongue got bone wan ah???

How did it taste like? Ok ok oni lah. Not bad, but nothing special. The texture was intersting, like chewing on skin wrapped around ligament. Crunchy, like kacang. None of use were eager for seconds.

Go Frozen (Part 3)

2007-04-01T18:01:00.000+01:00

(this is a follow up on part 1 and part 2)

Another fast dish I used to cook as a student -- chai pui (vege rice). Something like wa tan hor, but with rice.

Using the same method of defrosting the chicken (chucked into boiling water with some onions, and brewed for a while), the chicken is then deboned and the meat chucked back into the ~~chicken water~~ broth. If the chicken was particularly fatty, you'd have some scum floating on the surface. Spoon it out (and feed it to someone you hate).

Add in some vege, and let it brew a while more. If the chicken has been cooked long enough, the broth would be tasting mighty good by now. Just add in some salt and pepper to taste.

Let it reduce a little, then add in an egg and stir gently to get streaks. Thicken with corn flour if you so desire, and serve over hot rice.

Serve with the standard cili padi, garlic, kicap dip.

[edit]
For the health conscious, did I mention that not a drop of oil was used? Furthermore, much of the fat from the chicken could be spooned out from the surface of the broth
[/edit]

Greek Yogurt with Honey

2007-03-22T00:10:00.000Z

Yiaourti me Meli or in english, Yogurt with Honey is a very simple, yet delicious dessert to make. All you need is yogurt (preferably Greek goat milk yogurt. If it is not possible, just buy yogurt that is thick and not watery), honey, walnut and some cinnamon powder on the top.

Chill it in the freezer for 5 minutes and it is ready.

Reflection

2007-03-21T21:36:00.001Z

"Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people ."
~~ Albert Einstein ~~

go Frozen (Part 2)

2007-03-20T19:57:00.000Z

(continued from part 1)

A quicker alternative would be to boil the frozen chicken as in previous post (while taking a shower?), then taking shreds of the defrosted chicken, add some marinade (with your favourite sauces), and throw it under the grill.

Just before eating, top generously with fried onions, chopped chillies, and some fresh ground pepper.

The "chicken water" and bones? Use to cook instant noodle!!!

Best maggie sup ever!!

Lastly, chicken rice, express version. "chicken water" used as stock to cook the rice as described here, and the defrosted semi-cooked chicken marinated and roasted.

Served with ice cold beer :)

Go Frozen (Part 1)

2007-03-18T23:23:00.000Z

Here's something for lazy El Cheapos like me.

Chicken can be really cheap if you buy them in bulk, especially cuts like the thigh and drumstick. In supermarket chains like Sainsbury's and Tesco, you usually get enough chicken for 6-10 meals with £5 or less. Cheaper still if you get those expiring-soon ones. Why so much for one person? Cannot spoil wan meh??

I freeze them!

Buy in bulk = cheap + no need go shopping so often. Portion the cuts, enough for one meal per-plastic bag. Then throw in freezer. At first, I was defrosting one portion at a time (one day before) by placing it in the fridge. Problem is that once it's defrosted, it won't last that long and should NOT be refrozen.

Din't like the idea of having to decide what to cook one day before, so soon I started experimenting with cooking it straight from frozen.

Here's one version. Come back from work, throw frozen chicken into pot of water along with some slices of ginger, big onions, spring onions, salt and pepper. Turn on the heat, and let it boil while i go have my shower :)

After a refreshing shower and reading some emails, the chicken would be nice and soft with the soup tasting pretty good.

At this point, it would be easy to separate the meat from the bone. Placed the meat in an oven-safe receptacle (don't worry if the chicken is not fully cooked yet), and add in random stuff. Here, I had frozen peas, spring onions, fried onions and garlic, and some chopped chili padi.

Add seasoning. Once again, anything you fancy. Oyster sauce, light/dark soya sauce, tomata ketchup, left over food from yesterday,... anything.

I even cracked over an egg, which I now realise was kinda silly.

Throw it in the oven.

Use some of the "chicken water" for cooking rice. It would smell/taste great! While the rice is cooking, and the meat in the oven, can use the rest of the "chicken water" for soup. Leave it boiling with the chicken bones. If you have some carrots or cabbage lying around, chucking some into the soup now would be nice.

As the rice, meat, and soup cook simultaneously, can go watch news on TV a while. Come back now and then to make sure everything OK :p

When rice is cook, everything should be ready!!!!

Baked Chicken dish.
Tasty soup.

Served with fragrant rice.

Very little effort involve. It takes about 45 mins in total to cook, but you only 5 mins or so of actual work :)

The soup, the chicken and the rice.

2007-01-24T00:25:00.000Z

After countless "threats" and pressure from my foodie gang members, I give you my first post to the blog.

I will start off this post with something traditional, a cosy food that reminds me of home - Hainanese chicken rice.

Step 1: The soup/stock
1. boils a pot of water, adds in ginger(thumb size), some spring onions and a pinch of salt.
2. put the whole chicken in.

3. once the chicken is cooked, removes it from the pot and set it aside.
4. put the cabbage into the stock and let it boils.

Step 2: The chicken
1. take a bowl, mix it with 3 teaspoons of sesame seed oil, 1 tablespoon thick caramelized soya sos, 2 tablespoons of kicap and 2 teaspoons of Yeo's Garlic Chili sauce.
2. Set the chicken into a baking tray.
2. rub the mixture around the cooked chicken.
3. put some sliced ginger, some chopped spring onions and garlics on the chicken.

4. wrapped the chicken with an aluminium foil. The idea is to "steam" the chicken in the oven.
5. put the chicken into the oven at 200 degrees for 30 mins.

Step 3: The rice
1. Heat up a wok with some vegetable oil.
2. Put in the washed rice, stir fry it for a while.
3. Add in some thick caramelized soya sauce (to colour the rice). Stir fry for a while.
4. Once all the rice has an even brownish colour, put it into a rice cooker with some ginger.
5. Take enough chicken soup from the pot to cook the rice.

While waiting for the chicken and the rice to be ready, we can prepare some chili dip. Here we are going to use Yeng's chilli dip recipe. It is simple, easy and tastes bloody good.

This is the end result:

This can serve up to 4 persons, an equivalent of 2 Yengs :)

Minimalist Kerabu

2007-01-18T22:05:00.000Z

Quick, simple kerabu.

All the non-meat stuff from my fridge - Cherry tomatoes, coriander, spring onions, chillies, cucumber, and lemon.

Onions were fried on low heat to make it soft and sweet. Other stuff (except lemon) chopped up and dumped into mixing bowl. Mixed with lemon juice, fish sauce, a little sugar, salt and pepper to taste.

For topping, marinaded strips of meat (chicken or pork) with salt, pepper, and oyster sauce.

Coated lightly with Balacan Chicken flour. Deep fried till crispy!!

Pile on plate and enjoy :)

pork madness

2007-01-16T21:39:00.000Z

woot! this is yeng yee, or yengs la. easier. :)

first of all, must do the customary thank you to yang berhormat tuan punya blog ini. so, many many good fortune to you shawn hehe.

so shawn, chuan and i planned to gather during the weekend for some good cooking and good eating. unfortunately chuan was caught up with his digital fantasy adventures and feigned ignorance to his fellow foodies. not the types to be dismissed, we held our noses higher, flared our nostrils at him and walked on.

chuan, this is what you missed man!

this is only a quarter portion of the ribs we bought. crazy eh? we had this for supper saturday night, and man was it delicious with some beer. i'm gonna let the food pic speak for itself and share the recipe instead.

marinade:

finely chop up some garlic, ginger, coriander, bird's eye chilli. mix them up in a bowl with some fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil. let the marinade sit for a bit to infuse all the flavours, and then pour it all over the ribs. it's best to let the ribs marinate overnight, but if desperate then 10 minutes will do.

cooking:

preheat oven to about 220c. put the ribs in for about 1/2 hr then switch to grill for about 10 minutes, or until you're happy with the doneness.

i must say that this makes an excellent midnight snack. saturday night ended good :)

next day was bak kut teh! whheee! don't know about you, but for me there's not many things better than a good bak kut teh brunch on a sunday. except maybe spongebob or samurai jack.

if you don't expect to achieve best-in-klang-road-stall type bak kut teh, it is actually very simple to cook and can be delicious too. all you need are some pork ribs, meat (belly if you can get it, else chops with some fat in it), garlic, and a good packet of bak kut teh spice.

in our case, it was Lian's for the job. even comes with a separate marinade for the meat. high class man.

put the spice sachets into the wok together with lots of garlic and water. bring all of it to a boil and enjoy the aroma. then put in the marinated pork and simmer for about an hour.

about 10 minutes before serving, put in some dried tofu (tau pok) and some mushrooms. lettuce too if so preferred. toss in some coriander as garnish....and ta da!

those fat fingers are not mine by the way, hehe.

at this point we were ready to return to our caveman instincts. meat! meat! man eat meat! but as any bak kut teh connoisseur worth his salt will tell you, the meal is not complete without a good side dish and an excellent chilli dipping sauce.

enter our kick-ass works of art.

if all these doesn't make your taste buds tingle with love and fill you with orgasmic vibes...you seriously need to enjoy life more. drinking more beer will help.

we finished all that in two sittings, lunch and dinner. well, the sittings were only 2 hrs apart, so it doesn't really count. but hey, it was as good as it gets. i couldn't ask for more.

the beatles said that all you need is love. last weekend, all we needed was pork. *burp*

Pork Chop Rice

2007-01-16T21:19:00.000Z

(Quickie Post... beer and book waiting. hehhe)

Was koreking thru my fridge, and realised I had some of the ingredients needed to make a dish I saw on TV recently -- Spicy Pork Chops!! Well, too be honest, I can't remember what the actual ingredients were, just remember seeing chillies, coriander, basil, and.. err... pork chops. What I do remember is that it looked blardee good and I promised myself I'd try it some day soon.

Here's what I used for my version: Lemon, coriander, spring onions, garlic, ginger, and Chillies (only had 3 left. Yengs ate all when he was over recently :p ).

chop chop chop chop.. squeeze squeeze lemon.

Added in some oil (ground nut oil would be nice and fragrant, but I only had sunflower oil), soy sauce, fish sauce, dark caramel soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, and a dash of cinnamon powder.

Pork chops were first seasoned with salt and pepper, then dunked into a plastic bag filled with the above marinade. Urut-urut the fella a bit, then let it sit (in the fridge) for a while to soak up some flavour.

Onto baking tray and into the a pre-heated oven (200^oC) for 30 mins.

5 mins before done, drain the baking tray of all the lovely juices. Works great as a dipping sauce!!!

Switch oven to grill mode to crisp the surface of the chops.

Served with steaming hot rice and a mata kerbau.

It was good :) Odd thing was it that it tasted as though it had santan (coconut milk) in it. Somewhat like percik. Really really odd. Only think lacking was chillies. Definitely MORE chillies next time.

*burp*

More crazy foodies in the house

2007-01-14T10:54:00.000Z

LIfe has been quite hectic recently, and once again, I have neglected my blog.

So how? play cheating loh... I've invited two of my Kaki Makan to guest author in this blog. They're both crazy over food, adventurous in cooking, and .. errr.. aiya, I leave it up to them to intro themselves lah :)

Look out for Yeng Yee, Chuan, and lots of food.

p.s. I'll be back in Malaysia next month! Woooo!!!

Lights Out

2006-11-23T22:37:00.001Z

DSC00127.JPG, originally uploaded by shawnchin.

Just re-started blogging, now taking time off again. Ciken. hehehe..

Will be going off to Edinburgh for a week starting this weekend, for my convocation! I really miss that place. Can't wait to be there again.

As for this week, I haven't been cooking at all. My parents have been visiting for the past one week. Come home from work, got food ready liao. So nice :) (Thanks mom, dad)

Oh, and happy belated birthday KeYing. Send my regards to Ah 出 :p

Liturn of the Jedi

2006-11-16T22:34:00.000Z

My comeback to cooking has not lead to anything fancy or elaborate.

Started simple with a pile of salad, and one of those pop-in-the-over-and-you're-done chicken kiev.

Next, I opted for something I was comfortable with -- massive sandwiches with lots of assorted stuff thrown in. This one had an omelette, corned beef fried with onions and Maepranom crushed chilly, cheese, ketchup, cucumber, and shredded roast chicken.

Was initially planning to wrap everthing in the omelette, ala Nasi Goreng Pataya, but I got carried away and piled on too much. So end up tak jadi. My egg not tua liap enuff :p

The one I enjoyed most (preparing and eating), was the roasted chicken wing with cheese omelette. Not the most healthy meal, but when has that ever mattered? It hit the spot, and that's what counts.

Chicken wing I play cheating wan, just bought pre-marinated pieces, and throw in my kuno oven.

The cheese omelette is what I like to consider my specialty - crispy on the outside, runny and cheesy on the inside. Enhanced with onions (slow cooked till soft and sweet), spring onions, Death Sprinkles, and mince meat (or lap cheong).

Not a bad start I guess. Hopefully I don't loose steam and end up eating instant microwave food again.

The Sirence of the Rambs

2006-11-14T20:32:00.000Z

OK. To be honest, my cooking strike did not start immediately after I moved in. My disdain over the puny kitchen developed gradually over the course of one week. In the early days of the week, all was sunny.... for I had discovered the local butcher.

Cheap fresh meat. Plain or pre-marinated. Any cut, just ask. Eggs, sausages, burgers, lamb, beef, pork, bacon, steaks, .... I wanted everything. So hard to choose. So I just simply tikam one lah...

My First score. A huge portion of minty breast of lamb for half the price of a Big Mac meal. Not bad lehh..

Nowadays, I always use cooking foil as a makeshift tray. Some origami magic to make it boat-like, use, throw. No washing required. If food cannot finish, can reuse as ta-pau material oso. ;)

Mr. Lamb when it's almost cooked. Switched to grill mode to get a crispy outer shell. Would have glazed it with honey if I had some at the time.

Served with a simple salad of greens and cherry tomatoes, tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, and sea salt.

Eat like crazy, in the end, still got half left. Good lah. Can recycle.

"Brown brown glass, paper blue blue, ...". Bloody jingles!

Recycling: Day 1 - Pan Fried Lamb Sandwich

Jumbo sandwich with an omelette (hidden), lettuce, tomatoes, and slices of lamb pan fried with onions, red pepper, chopped Habanero, and err.. some other stuff I can't recall.

Recycling: Day 2 - Spicy Sichuan Lamb Pasta

Simple ingredients: Diced leftover lamb, red pepper, onions, mushrooms, ...

... Lee Kum Kee Spicy Noodle Sauce, and some Angel Hair pasta to immitate BeeHoon.

Damn Syiok!

Recycling: Day 3 - Maggie Goreng Kambing

Indomee with lamb and Lap Cheong, a taste of home away from home.

*burp!*

Dig dig dig. Ice cream sticks.

2006-11-13T21:59:00.000Z

DSC00109_2.JPG, originally uploaded by shawnchin.

Things are finally starting to fall into place.

Broadband is up and running. Suitcase unpacked. Household necessities purchased. Daily activity starting to converge to a predictable routine. And I'm slowly picking up cooking again.

Yes. Picking up.

I stopped cooking for a month. One whole month of salads and semi-instant food. Just pop in microwave, jampi a bit, and *ding!!*, dinner is served.

Why? I'm not too sure. I've never thought myself as being the fussy type, but somehow, I'm strangely depressed by the state of my new kitchen. It exudes an aura of impotence that I'm yet to come to terms with.

It's crammed. Real estate is scarce on the worktop. There's two small electric slabs that's trying too hard to pass itself off as a stove, ...

... and the oven that has seem way too many winters. It takes longer to preheat than it does to cook anything, and it makes strange noises in the middle of the night as if there's a trapped pixie trying to tunnel it's way out with an ice cream stick.

Oh well. Perhaps all it needs is a good breaking in...

I'm back!!!!!!

Transition

2006-09-05T19:37:00.000+01:00

DSC_0014.JPG, originally uploaded by shawnchin.

Building my new nest soon.... in Didcot

Burger He Wrote

2006-08-16T02:17:00.000+01:00

Was so blur recently I took a bath with shampoo.

I now have dandruff free body hair & pubes :p

Mental state has not improved much since then. Need to catch some shut-eye, so here's a quickie post.

My mosted favouritest meal of late -- Huge sloppy messy burger-like stuff...

Tried many many many different variants over the last month or so, but only managed to photograph three of 'em

Contenst:
* Lovely sundried tomato + beef burger from Sainsbury's
* Egg fried with spring onions, garlic, and cheese
* cheddar cheese
* Crispy fried bacon
* sliced tomatoes and cucumber
* kectup, mayonaise and fresh ground pepper

Contents:
* Spam
* lettuce
* tomatoes
* ketchup
* mayonaise mixed with ground pepper
* Ramson (Wood Garlic) butter

Contents:
* Crispy fried chicken!!
* Fried eggs
* lettuce
* tomatoes
* cucumber
* Red cabbage
* yellow pepper
* Horseradish sauce
* cheese
* ketchup
* mayonaise + ground black pepper
* insanity

KFC Colonel Burger is for pansies... Hah!!!

Wagers and celeries

2006-08-11T11:43:00.000+01:00

This was from way back during the World Cup semi-finals.

I lost a bet to my housemate, H, and the loser had to cook up a new dish using the limited ingredients we had in the fridge.

Outcome: ~~Crap salary~~ Crab Celery

ok. I admit. Lame pun ... and misleading too. No crabs were involved, only crab sticks, which aren't even made of crabs (but surimi).

Anyway, here's a quick run-thru.

Chopped up crab sticks, along with some shredded cheese ...

... mixed well and microwaved till the cheese melted and the c'sticks became mushy.

Stirred in some mayonaise, lime juice, salt and pepper to form a coleslaw-like filling.

Large spoonfulls were then piled generously ~~into~~ ~~unto~~ ~~onto~~ inside the cavity of some celery sticks, and let to rest in the fridge for about 15 mins.

Turned out to be a pretty lovely cold dish. Healthy too... well, sort of.

Did you know that celery had negative calories???

I managed to convince myself that it would somehow magically cancel out the calories brought on by the mayonaise/cheese, somehow. So, yeah... healthy :p

Served with a simplified version of currydogs

I'm back... with Leopard Bananas

2006-08-10T17:03:00.000+01:00

I'm back :)

First, a quick update.

My research is going well, thought I wouldn't mind having a little more time. It's due in a few weeks, and I'm still yet to write up. A torturous period of sleep deprivation is at hand.

I now have a job waiting for me, and will relocate to Southern England next month. I had some trouble making a decision on which job to take on, mainly due to silly bickering between Ego and Ambition. Ego lost, and I'm glad. Pride is a bitch.

That aside, life has been good.

Now.

Food.

I had some fun with today's lunch (so much so that it got me blogging again. Hehhe)

It all started when a huge batch of almost-expired bananas caught a nasty disease, and began morphing into leopards.

No choice but to incorporate them in the next few meals.

First thing I thought of was making pengat pisang. Never knew how to make it, so I just did whatever seemed sensible at that time.

Brewed some coconut milk with a little brown sugar and salt, then added in the sliced ~~leopards~~ bananannanananas.

Couldn't find sago or pandan leaves, so had to use some clementines and mint leaves as replacement.

Halfway thru, for no reason whatsoever, some cinnamon powder found it's way into the dish.

Let it boil till the banananananas were soft, and a 'dessert'y dish was born.

Ok ok lah. Not fabulous, but at least it was something different.

The following dish that came up was very different, but shared some similar ingredients.

Frozen cod....

... placed on a bed of sliced mushrooms ...

... seasoned with salt, pepper, olive oil, soy sauce, and mixed italian herbs ...

... topped with spring onions and peeled clementines ...

... followed by a pile of sliced bananananans soaked in lemon juice ...

.... and shredded mint leaves ...

... sealed in foil and baked for 30 mins ...

... or so ...

.... till it magically transforms into ....

... dodgy looking ...

... Leopard Banana and Clementine Cod!

Served with some express salad and garlic bread as sides.

Turned out pretty good.

Penned down into my mental list of can-try-again-somedays.

Oh.. and I saw this down at Manchester a couple of week back. Can't help but laugh.

NO TIME TO COOK?

Don't worry... have soome FUK U chicken from Thailand!

(those are boxes of instant noodles by the way, not stowaways)

Postage paid

2006-07-06T14:55:00.000+01:00

Dear blog,

Apologies for ignoring you for the last few weeks.

Work has been challenging, and I'm further tied down by job hunting efforts. It has been going relatively well, albeit with some tough decisions that I find hard to make.

I've been eating well. Perhaps too well.

Anyway, I'm eager to be back soon, once the TODOs have been settled and written off.

Till then, may your food stay warm, and your beer chilled.

Burp.

Regards,
Shawn

YMCA, Korean version

2006-06-16T19:06:00.000+01:00

A hilarious rendition of Village People's YMCA, by E Pak Sa (이박사). Kenot tahan... laugh until stomach pain. Hehehe..

From Wikipedia:

"... His reputation started to build based on his unique way of entertaining. While singing, he would imitate the sound of all of the instruments used in the prelude and interlude, and even the sound of the whistle used to gather the tourists. ... "

"... The Korean version of YMCA sounds like the Chipmunks version, and the video, available at Daily Motion, does little to discourage the comparison. ..."

Enjoy the weekends!!

Never too much rice

2006-06-15T21:18:00.000+01:00

Whenever I cook rice, I always cook much more than I need. Mainly because my rice cooker does not handle small portions of rice too well, but also because overnight rice is great for nasi goreng.

Did the same when I made nasi lemak. Lemak rice for frying? why not? (It actually tasted great, especially when fried with eggs)

Rice fried with eggs and broccoli (left over from the salmon chowder), served with home made Char Siew.

Rice fried with beans and pork slices, served with a Bull's Eye (sunny-side-up?).

Other than swapping the broccoli with beans, both the dishes used essentially the same ingredients.

I just realised that the new location of my apartment has altered my cooking a little. Now that the shopping mall is so close, I no longer need to do a week's worth of shopping. Instead, I go more often, and buy enough for just a couple of days.

Points-- : I end up using the same ingredients for a few dishes in a row.
Points-- : I'm spending more on shopping
Points-- : Source of cheap beer is near (temptation!)

Points++ : I use fresher ingredients.
Points++ : I'm more likely to try new ingredients more often.
Points++ : Source of cheap ~~bear~~BEER is near (satisfaction!)

Salmon and Broccoli Chowder

2006-06-14T00:05:00.000+01:00

I truly believe there's a pixie dwelling in my department's server.

It's been toying with my work all year.

Files go missing, and then reappear after a few days...
Code, unaltered throughout, develops peculiar (reproducible) bugs which magically vanishes after a few days...

I doubt I'm the only one who has fallen prey to it's mischieves.

Ciken.... "LEAVE ME ALONE ALREADY!!"

While my work is on hold (waiting for the pixie-effect to wear off :p), here's a dish I had couple of days back - Salmon and Broccoli Chowder .

With low heat, fried some finely sliced onions and garlic in butter

Added in broccoli, sliced green pepper (and leftover cucumber). Covered, and let it ~~swear~~sweat for a while

Turned up the heat, and added in some vegetable stock (I used Knows vege stock cubes + water)

When it began to boil, added in small chunks of salmon. Let it cook for a while.

Then, added it some Double Cream, and some left over Hollandaise sauce mix to thicken

Leave to simmer for a while

Seasoned with salt and pepper. Served with croissants

First post from my new nest

2006-06-11T22:14:00.000+01:00

Finally settled into my new place. It's great - bigger, comfier, better equipped, and cost just about the same!

Life is good.

To break in my new kitchen, I cooked an old time favourite - Nasi Lemak (with the help of new apartment-mate, H).

Going clockwise, starting from the top:
* Boiled eggs (accidentally left it boiling too long, and it turned out HARD! Still edible lah, but it was quite impossible to do the Egg Blowing trick)
* Fried peanuts
* Mixed Seafood sambal (I'm out of anchovies). Cooked using Brahim's pack.
* Fried Belacan Chicken
* Fresh cucumbers.

In the middle, rice cooked with coconut milk and onions (to substitute ginger, which I'm not a very big fan of).

Turned out OK OK oni lah. Better than the 50 sen version you get at mamak stalls, but not too spectacular either.

Got some pics of my recent holiday from Jay.

Had a go at punting. It was great fun...

... and I learnt that I was completely hopeless at it.

Played 3 games of golf in 4 days. Once on a par-3 course, and twice a full course.

I still suck.

It takes a lot of balls to golf like me.

Summer + Barbecue + freezing cold beer = good shit

The Considerate Leader relocates

2006-06-06T14:14:00.000+01:00

Considerate Leader

I am a your ideal boss. Work for me. Be my peon!

Yes, I'm back.

Exercising my procrastination skills by doing mindless stuff on the Internet. I hate packing.

I MOVE TOMORROW!!

New home. New housemate. New kitchen!

Coco Wings & Modified Haggis

2006-06-01T01:59:00.000+01:00

Several weeks back, I was under the impression that life would be fun and relaxing after the exams. I was wrong. Work on my dissertation has been more hectic than I expected. While I do enjoy the work I'm doing now (most of it anyway), my batteries are running flat.

And so, I'm taking a week off. Woohoo!! Will spending the weekend down south, golfing and perhaps trying my hand at Punting.

When I get back, I'll be busy moving to a my new place, so no updates here for about a week I'm afraid.

I've been doing more experiments with chocholate. This time with chicken wings.

Wings are dirt cheap here. Which was a pleasant surprice when I found out. You can easily get 10 pieces for less than the price of a bus ticket.

Soaked the wings in some sweet/thick soya sauce and worchestershire sauce. Let it sit in the fridge for several hours.

I sprinked chocholate powder on two of the wings, and paprika powder on the rest. In case one of it turns out horrid, at least I still had half a meal ;)

Under the grill they went.

When they were almost ready, I glazed the wings by 'painting' on a mixture of honey and olive oil.

Oh, and as a tribute to the "eggsperts" for finally agreeing on an answer, I added an egg to complete the dish.

Haggis.

Some like it; some find it gross; many have never tried it.

I love it.

Well, if it's prepared my way anyway.

Here's a common version you find in most Fisn n' Chips shop here in Edinburgh - Jumbo Haggies fried in batter.

I'd split it in half, add some ketchup and mayonaise, a slice of cheese, and grilled for 3 minutes.

Yummy. I'm getting hungry all over again just thinking about it.

Marmite Mania

2006-05-28T19:43:00.000+01:00

I've never really been a fan or marmite. I would never have bought it if not for Chuan's incessant claim that it's a good addon ingredient for Bak Kut Teh (he was right, btw), and I still wouldn't eat it as a spread for bread.

(though the fact that it's a by-product of the beer brewing process does it make sound more appealing)

I have, however, grown quite fond of it as a cooking ingredient. I've used up the small bottle that Chuan bought, and will probably get more the next time I go shopping.

Here are results of recent marmite-laced endeavours.

Marmite beans with Chilly and Bacon

Fried the fine beans with a generous portion of bacon, shallots and chopped chillies. (The beans take a while to cook, so it helps if you pre-cook it in the microwave for about 1-2 minutes).

When almost done, a mixture of marmite, honey, sesame seed oil, and soya sauce is added, mixed well, and served immediately.

Would go really well with rice, but I had some left over fries (chips, as they call it here) to get rid of.

Baked Marmite Chicken

Marinated some thin chicken breasts steaks with:
* Worchestershire sauce
* Marmite
* Oyster sauce
* Soya sauce
* Honey
* Chopped garlic
* Finely sliced chilly
* fresh groud black pepper

Let it sit in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

They are then placed in a baking tray lined with olive oil. Sprinkled some mediteranean herbs.

(Can't recall adding the chopped shallots, but the picture shows I did. Hehehe)

Into the oven for 35 minutes.

Dinner is served!

It doesn't look too great in the photo, but the chicken actually turn out nice and brown, with caramelised marmite and honey around the edges.

Chocolate Chilly Salmon

2006-05-22T19:43:00.000+01:00

One, two, three, four, five
Once I caught a fish alive
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten
Then I let him go again

"Why did you let him go?"
"Because it bit my finger so"
"Which finger did it bite?"
"This little finger on the right"

That damn kiddie song has been playing in my mind for the last two days! It's driving me crazy... grrrr!!

OK, so I have been having fish for dinner two days straight, salmon to be exact, but why the song???!!

For the first fish dish, I was feeling kinda brain dead so I stuck with the good ol' cannot-fail-one Pan Grilled Salmon.

Prepared a simple salad as a side dish: some Rocket salad, Plum tomatoes (wanted Cherry tomatoes, but couldn't get any), Olive oil, crumbled feta cheese, and ground pepper.

Next, pan fried the salmon: seasoned with salt and black pepper. Oil on the fish, not on the pan,.. placed the fish on the pan presentation side down first. Ideally, it should only be turned only once, so timing and heat control are important.

Served with some Hollandaise sauce (can get it in packet form. Just cook with milk and butter).

Preparation of the next dish was when things took an interesting turn.

Note to self: when talking to self, "why not?" is a dangerous response.

It started off in a normal fashion - my mind was still confounded by work, and so I let my subconscious take over the cooking.

"Ahh... fish! It needs a boat!"
"wait... fishes don't go on boats"
"Aiya.. don't care lah. Ready liao."

The foil was lined with olive oil just in case the salmon decided bond itself to it.

Seasoned the salmon with some sesame seed oil, salt, and fresh ground pepper.

"Take photo first. OK, set! Over preheated liao. In you go fishie..."
"wait.. too plain lah! Paiseh to put on blog."

(btw, yes, I do talk to myself like that, especially when I'm short of sleep or high on caffein :p)

"hmmm... add some onions/garlic?"
"Why not? and some italian herbs too"

"Yup. look better now. OK, into the oven!"

... and this was when sanity left the building.

"Wait! Let's put some honey!"
"sure, why not"

"eii.. I think I put too much. Need to balance out the sweetness."
"Make it creamier?"
"Mayonaise?"
"why not?"

"Still looks a little plain lah"
"Some fine beans, for colour?"
"ok"
"Crushed chilli?"
"yes!"

"err.. heheheh... chocolate????"
"Why Not?!"

Into the oven for 35 minutes, and Chocolate Chilly Salmon was born :)

I expected it to taste funny, but it surprisingly didn't. The honey and chilly complemented the salmon very well, while the mild flavour and bitterness of the chocolate only came up in the after-taste.

Yes, I liked it. Will probably try it again in the future.

"perhaps with some beer and tomatoes?"
"sure, why not?"

Old Man Bites Tenderly

2006-05-20T02:06:00.000+01:00

More crazy japanese vids. I still can't stop laughing. Heheh..

gaki no tsukai @ "Silent Library 3"

What is Net Neutrality? Why?

2006-05-18T20:26:00.000+01:00

Follow up on No Food Blogs day.

Here's a video that explains why discrimination on the Internet is a problem, and how it will continue to be as long as net neutrality rules are not enforced.

... and here's a brief video report on the groups for and against network neutrality, and how it can affect you.

How can you help?

Awesome Asparagus

2006-05-17T17:08:00.000+01:00

It has come to my attention that Asparagus does wonders to your wee.

Is that good news or bad? Hmm.. I can't really tell. I have to admit that I haven't had much asparagus to date, and I can't recall if I liked them or not.

Only one way to find out :)

I've no idea how to cook asparagus. I don't even know which portions are the edible ones. Since they're pretty pricey, I just assumed that everything short of the packaging can be eaten. Waste not, want not :)

After googling around for ideas, I decided on a simple and decent recipe. So simple, even Bubbles couldn't botch it.

The asparagus were cleaned, cut, and arranged on a tin foil.

Sauteed some bacon and chopped garlic in olive oil and butter...

... and coated the mix equally over the asparagus.

Pop them into the a preheated oven (200^oC) for 15 minutes, and it's done!

Served with some Chicken Kiev to form a balanced and hearty meal.

So now, do I like asparagus? Yes I do.

Did it make my pee Awesome? I don't know. I've had asparagus for two consequtive meals, yet visits to my bathroom have still remained pleasant and odour free. Perhaps it's the cold weather.

Yes, weather. Supposedly, pee doesn't smell bad when it's cold. One of the reasons why busy pubs often fill their urinals with ice.

From wikipedia:
Some establishments, often bars, pubs or nightclubs, fill their urinals with ice cubes during peak hours. As the ice melts it serves to slowly flush the urinal, and also cools the urine to prevent smells from rising during use. The ice may also provide entertainment to patrons as they urinate.

I like the part about "entertaining the patrons". Heheh.. What can I say, trips to public loos are often fun, and sometimes complicated for the uninitiated (I aced this test, btw).

And for some dodgy links:
* Does it make sense to install Female Urinals?
* "The best place to piss away your time on the Internet"^TM (warning: some may find this gross)

We aim to please. You aim too, PLEASE!

No Food Blogs Day, May 16 2006

2006-05-16T16:25:00.000+01:00

Big boys in US wanna bully the small fries. Ciken!

I'm so pissed I don't even want to write about it ... so, copy-pasting from others. :p (ok, i'm just lazy)

~ Blindly copied from Food Blog S'cool ~

Have you heard? The democracy of the internet is being threatened. I hadn't even realized that it was possible to threaten the very foundation of this place we use so freely, until I heard about what's going on in the US Congress right now.

Big service providers -or the Pipes as called in the Telecom jargon- such as AT&T, Comcast, and others, are lobbying Congress and the Senate to allow them to create two tiers internet, essentially a fast and slow one. The fast one will be used by companies who are willing to pay for the über speed, while the rest of the little guys can move at a snail's pace on the slow lane.

~ ciplaked from Masak-masak ~

What can you do to help?:
If you're a non USA resident, put this plea put in your blog or write about it so your USA resident readers can read about it and contact their Senator or Congressperson to voice their concerns. You can also sign the online petition at SavetheInternet.com to support Net neutrality and ask your readers to sign it.

If you're a USA resident, contact your local Senator or representative by writing or contacting them to protest against this action.

So, what are you waiting for? Go Save The Internet!

Mountain Patrol

2006-05-15T14:47:00.000+01:00

“If you paint in your mind a picture of bright and happy expectations, you put yourself into a condition conducive to your goal.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale ~

Since my secondary school days, crouching at the desk in the library/room in preparation for exams never was my thing. I've always opted for more radical locations - PCB, seminar room in a Hotel my friend's mom manages, Cafes (Starbucks in IOI Mall Puchong was pretty decent), Hospital foyers, etc.

For the recent (and 'lastest') exams, my study location of choice was Holyrood Park. More often than not, you'd find me on the peak of Arthur's Seat (middle of panaromic pic above) or Salisbury's Crags, mugging away a few hours of my life.

The view from above was spectacular - overseeing the city of edinburgh, numerous lakes and golf courses, the sea, and the highlands some distance away.

Here are some photos I took with my dinky ol' camera phone (resampled, resize, and enhanced):

One of my fav study spots on Salisbury's Crags.

My shadow saying "Hi" to you.

... and other randon shots

Another (panaromic) view from the peak of Arthur's Seat. The bulge of land in the middle of the pic is Salisbury's Crags, and the ~~bulge~~ person on the right is Yeng Yee.

Yeng Yee and Chuan dropped by Edinburgh for a visit a week before my exams. It was great fun - good food, good beer, good company. The day before going up the hill, we spent the whole night designing planes using cardboard boxes.

The mission: launch the planes from the peak of Arthur's Seat. Have it fly as far as possible.
The results: hehehehe.. plane couldn't fly, so we played baseball with it.

I took several unplanned video clips, which maestro chuan later spliced into the trailer of Mountain Patrol.

We now call Arthur's Seat 打飞机的山. *cheeky grin*

Exam food, final roundup.

2006-05-13T19:46:00.000+01:00

Exams have been over for close to a week now, but I'm still yet to go grocery shopping and do some proper cooking. I guess I've been too busy catching up on sleep, and mourning over my camera :p

Anyway, here's the final listing of what's been sustaining me for the last two weeks. This will probably be my last post with decent photos. Subsequent entries will have to rely on shabby snapshots for my ailing Nokia 6600.

Spicy Chicken Vindaloo, cooked using a commercial spice pack. Just add chicken, oil, tomatoes, onions, water, and lots of chilli ;)

Lasted for a good four meals.

Beef Curry, thanks to Brahims. Another four meals settled.

Attempted Marmite chicken several times, and learnt that I shouldn't stinge on the marmite and honey. The most recent version I made was pretty decent.

Fine beans with mince meat and red pepper, fried with belacan (shrimp paste) and sweet soya sauce. I cooked enough for two meals, but it went so well with steaming hot rice that I cleared it in one sitting :p

And when laziness crept in, I usually resort to microwaving my vege. Just garnish generously with salt and pepper, some butter, and microwave for three minutes.

Makes a good side dish.

Toasted muffins with lettuce, cucumber, beef burger and bacon. Sometimes, I add in a fried egg as well. Beats BurgerKing/McD's anytime!

... and finally.

Countless pasta meals. With all sorts of ingredients (and leftovers) thrown in. This particular one was with beef burger, red pepper, and lots of ground black pepper.

Ok. That's it for exam food. Proper meals coming up soon (I hope..)

Evolution of Dance

2006-05-11T23:15:00.000+01:00

Judson Laipply sums up the evolution of dance moves in 6 minutes. Hilarious!

Where is my rainbow?

2006-05-10T23:13:00.000+01:00

First
Fib
The storm,
came and gone.
Where is my rainbow
To lead me to my pot of gold

Good News: Exams are over!

Bad News: My camera is DEAD!

Ciken.

[edit]btw, exams went well. Thanks for all your good wishes.[/edit]

I am a nerd

2006-05-01T22:04:00.000+01:00

One more week of exams to go. Soon I'll be free. Soon. Wheeee!!!

Express Food Roundup #2

2006-04-28T00:40:00.000+01:00

Exams has been good so far. One and a half weeks to go.

Don't worry mom, I'm eating good. I always make time for food ;)

Anyway, here's a quick update on what the kitchen has been churning out (just to keep the blog alive lah).

My first attempt at Marmite chicken.
The chicken pieces were pre-fried in batter to get a cripsy crust. (the supporting ingredients: onions, red pepper, marmite, honey, dark/light soya sauce). As usual, dunno actual recipe so just close one eye and throw in whatever comes to mind.

Grilled Steak with mushroom and black bean sauce.
Used Sharwood's Black Bean & Red Pepper to speed things up ;)

...

and that's it. Other dishes not worth mentioning lah. The standard nasi gorengs, burgers, soups, salads, ...

Question: When cooking beef (fried/curry/grill), if texture come out like I'm chewing my fathers belt like that, does it mean the beef is overcooked, undercooked, or just because I use cheap-ass beef ah??? Never really got the hang of cooking beef :(

Express Food Roundup

2006-04-22T22:23:00.000+01:00

Lack of time != Lack of food

While I haven't had much time to spare, my rushed stints in the kitchen were still fun with the new challenge I chose for myself - cook up something within 15 minutes.

Here's a summary of what I've been up to lately:

Tumeric Chicken Chop.

Ingredients were very similar to Ayam Goreng Garam Kunyit I made recently. Marinated a flat piece of chicken breast with turmeric powder, curry powder and salt. Let it sit for half and hour, then pan fried till golden brown.

The sauce above is Jonkanoo Pepper Sauce. Not spicy enough, but went really well with the chicken.

Eaten with steaming hot rice. Slurp.

Tried to get some balance in my diet, so now and then, I go vegetarian.

Simple salad with lettuce, tomatoes, and Kraft's light thousand island dressing.

Chinese style vege. The greens are boiled and strained. Served with some onions and garlic fried briefly and seasoned with sesame seed oil, soy sauce, and oyster sauce. (this is a recycled photo from and old. Same dish, so might as well use same photo ;p )

Mushroom and tomato omelette.

Fried mushrooms, tomatoes, crab sticks, green pepper and a few other stuff I can't remember. Then, poured in 2 well beaten eggs, turned down the flame, and covered pan with a lid. The idea was to trap the heat so that the top portion would get cooked without having to flipping it over. Heat control was important to make sure that the bottom did not get burnt.

Sprinkled over some shredded mozzarella cheese just before it was done to give it that pizza look.

Turned out better than expected :)

Found more of those dirt-cheap-because-expiring-tomorrow salmons. Yippee. Fish for 2 meals.

Salmon was cooked in roughly the same way I did previously, only this time I messed around with different marinations before frying. I tried several combinations of curry powder, turmeric powder, paprika powder and tandoori spices.

Paprika powder seemed to get charred easily, hence the more charcoalish appearance of the final product.

The first meal I served up with boiled broccoli and grilled tomatoes.

The next with broccoli and a slightly modified Baked Chilly Mushroom.

These dishes took a little longer than the targeted 15 minutes, not because of the fish (salmon cooks really fast), but because of the baked musroom and grilled tomatoes.

Once I woke up really really hungry, and gorged down a huge brunch.

This one took longer than 15 mins, but it was easy; just places the stuff under the grill, and while waiting, cooked the mixed vege in the microwave and scrambled an egg.

Darth Vader Vs. Japanese Policemen

2006-04-19T20:15:00.000+01:00

Darth Vader + Japanese Policemen = Silly + Funny

Q.E.D.

Food is Fuel

2006-04-19T01:20:00.000+01:00

My brain runs on food.

Behold... breakfast of champions.

Baked beans cooked with mushroom and chili. Scrambled eggs with tomatoes, spring onions, cheese, and some other stuff I can't recall. English muffins, toasted and buttered.

OK. I jest. Bak Kut Teh is the only true breakfast of champions; but cooking that takes too much time, and time is something I'm lacking.

Exams. The bane of my life. I've nailed my arse to the chair.

This is me.

"Hi", said Mr. Bones, "It's nice to meet you". "Come sit on my lap, and we shall talk about the first thing that pops up."

Oh my. I better head off to bed.

I am a snail, watch me crawl

2006-04-17T23:41:00.000+01:00

Updates on this blog will be a little sluggish for the next 3 weeks or so.

Exams are here... uurgh!

Ayam Garam Kunyit

2006-04-14T00:08:00.000+01:00

Ayam Garam Kunyit (tr: salt and tumeric chicken) is one of my favourite dishes. It's quite common in Kelantan. In KL, you should be able to order up a plate from some to those Tom Yam restaurants (yeah, the ones decorated with colourful fluorescent lights wan).

Unfortunately, I don't know the proper recipe, and google wasn't of much help either. So hentam oni lah.

Of course, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the main ingredients: chicken, salt, and some tumeric (powder).
I also added in some tandoori spices, a squeeze of lime, and some chopped onions. No particular reason. Fingers itchy I guess.

Marinated the chicken with the ingredients and let it sit for about 20 minutes.

Then, the whole lot was fried and served up with steaming hot rice.

Not bad. All that's missing is a bowl of spicy sambal belacan and some oily telur dadar.

Chicken Tikka

2006-04-13T00:07:00.000+01:00

This is my first attempt at making Chicken Tikka (which, I assume, is just Tandoori Chicken made using boneless chicken strips). I gave myself only 40 minutes to cook, eat, and clean up, so it's admittedly somewhat hastily put together.

Timing started as I set the oven dials to 220 degrees. Pre-heating.

This is what made it possible.
A real time saver - pre blended tandoori spices.

Used it to marinate chicken strips, along with some fresh squeezed lime, and a dollop of natural yogurt (yes, the sour one).

Placed onto a greased baking tray, and into the oven for 10-15 minutes depending on how fast the chicken pieces cook.

While waiting, I layed down a bed of lettuce and prepared a quick Cole Slaw.

Cole Slaw : microwaved some mixed vege, butter, and chopped-up crab stick. Then added in salt, pepper, lime, and mayonaise. Mixed well and served.

The chicken tasted a little bland, and looked albinic.

Next time round, I would probably use more of the spices, and include some salt as well as tumeric and paprika powder.

Not bad for first try lah.

I overshot my 40-minute deadline by 5 mins :(

It's bloody cold

2006-04-12T19:01:00.000+01:00

Something worth a laugh or two.

It's bloody cold -- a parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful".

... and here's the original MTV, for completeness sake.

Updates:
Skyler pointed out two other parodies poking fun at poor James.

This one's by Kevin Sage.

and this by MADtv.

deja vu: Sweet Sour pizza

2006-04-11T22:15:00.000+01:00

The demons demanded an encore.

Made some modifications to this version. Instead of corn, I added lots of mushroom! Too much perhaps. Including the base, the pizza was a good 1 inch thick.

Yes, as odd as it may seem, I still used a little Oyster sauce along with the ketchup. *cheeky grin*

Oh, and another weird ingredient for pizza - crispy fried shallots! Sprinkled over the ingredients just before the cheese went on. Yumm. *another grin*

Sweet Sour corn pizza

2006-04-10T18:20:00.000+01:00

Ever since I came back from holidays, my appetite has been simply bonkers. I'm hungry all day long.

And it's not just plain hunger, but the kind that leads you down Lorong Sakit Jantung (tr: Heart Attack Alley).

Juicy steaks, Fried Chicken dripping with oil, massive burgers loaded with cheese, and grilled ribs covered in fat. These demons haunt my dreams and invade my thoughts all day long. Oh the torture!

With all my will I held them back, but I could do so no longer. I caved in. Exhausted. I needed to appease the devil and claim back some sanity.

This was my offering.

Bought the pizza base from Sainsbury's. It was pretty cheap (cost me just a little more than a trip to the loo in the train station), and was covered with a little tomato sauce and cheese.

The addons were some stir fried mince meat, thinly sliced red pepper, and corn, flavoured with oyster sauce, tomato ketchup and a little salt.

Baked the pizza as per instructions on packaging, topped with the addons and more cheese, then back into the oven till the cheese melts.

The demons were sated.

Gluttony is my sin.

Feed Me.