Pan frying a steak

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 :)

Egg Fried Rice

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 :)

Skewered Turkey and Bacon Rolls

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.

The soup, the chicken and the rice.

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 :)