5 posts tagged “cooking”
So three days have passed and I have been faithfully making myself Bentos. It's a week and I realize that as my cooking time reduces, alot of time is spent making the food look pretty. I guess that is the price I pay for having a very utilitarian approach to cuisine: i.e. it'll look the same on the way out anyway, so why bother with pretty?
Here's a Bento update for the last three days including menus:
Box 1: Fried Chilli Corned Beef
Box 2: Steamed Siew Mai, Japanese Rice with Nori
Box 3: Eggs and Ham with Baco Bits, Stir Fry Vegetables
Rating: 4.5/5 - I <3 Fried Chilli Corned Beef!! Egg was bleh and my burps smelled of bacon bits all day :/
16/9 Menu
Box 1: Siew Mai and Gyoza, Japonica Rice
Box 2: Yakiniku Beef, Mushrooms and Onions on a lettuce bed
Box 3: Steamed Butter Vegetables seperated by lettuce, hard boiled egg, cherry tomato, champagne grapes and a cup pudding.
Rating: 4/5 - nice mix but a bit heavy with the beef. Damn Gyoza edge got hard again -.-
17/9 Menu
Box 1: Fish dumplings, Vegetable Fish Rolls, Chive Gyoza, Heart Eggs
Box 2: Steamed Vegetables, Champagne Grapes, Honeydew Pudding with Nata de Coco
Box 3: Yakisoba with Bean Sprouts, Beef and Chikuwa
Rating: 4.5/5 YAKISOBA RULES, although I know it was a carb overload :/ The vegetable fish rolls were a bit too 'fishy' for me so I won't be having those again <_< Otherwise, was awesome.
Made the sourdough batter according to what he said. Seemed pretty easy. I opened it this morning and noticed the sedimentation of the flour in the water as well. Well, so far it's normal. Stirred it. Tonight I notice that it's... odd. Well, smelling slightly beery, sour but not quite stale.
Was this normal? Singapore is very different from the States where the chef on the video lives. Could it be that the humidity here messed it up? Well... who knows... I emptied out half the quantity of the batter and topped it up with a half cup of flour and water. Stirred it in, smelled batter (/joke drums) after that. We'll see how it goes.
On another note, my tummy hurts. Food poisoning delivered me a tiny package of pain - wind, poop and hunger all in one lovely wrapped box. Totally unrelated to batter but wth.
Herb Butter
3/4 SCS Salted Butter
Masterfoods Spaghetti Bolognese
Zest of a lemon
3 cloves of garlic.
Ground pepper.
Shred the garlic and lemon zest onto the butter. Add the herbs and pepper and just mix it all in.
Lemony Herb Roast Chicken
1 brined chicken*
Parsley flakes
Thyme
Oregano flakes
Basil
3 chopped carrots
3 chopped onions (purple, medium to small sized)
1 chopped celery
1 bay leaf
1/2 lemon juice
Herb Butter
Salt
Pepper
Chicken Stock
Chop the head, butt and feet off the chicken. Wash it out and soak it in salted water for an hour or so. Afterwards, drip out the water and pat the chicken dry. Insert a spatula into the breast meat and gently seperate the skin from the meat, leaving the middle seam attached.
Prop the chicken with its legs up and sprinkle the herbs into the cavity, coating the sides. Fill with the vegetables and lemon juice. There'll be quite a lot of veges left over, save those. Stuff the bay leaf in too. Lay the chicken down and taking a tablespoon of herb butter, stuff the butter under the skin of one side of the breast. Press it down to spread the butter inside evenly. Do the same for the other breast. Rub the chicken with herb butter all over (quite fun to do) and sprinkle all sides liberally with salt and pepper. Prop the chicken up again and fill the cavity with some chicken stock, then truss the chicken's legs and fold the wings underneath.
In a buttered pan, lay the chicken down, doesn't matter if the stock pours out. Cool the remaining stock. Place the chicken in a preheated oven at 170 degrees and cook, basting occasionally, until chicken's internal temperature reaches 90 degrees celcius. (Place the meat thermometer between the thigh and the body, pushing in to get an accurate reading.)
When chicken is cooked, remove the chicken and tent it with foil. Pour out the butter and fat drippings into a bowl and reserve the baking pan and the drippings. Take the remaining vegetables and brush with chicken dripping. Sprinkle with herbs used for chicken and pepper. Toss with hand to evenly coat them. Steam for 10 minutes over boiling chicken stock. Serve the vegetables around the chicken.
Pan Gravy
Used chicken roasting pan
Corn flour
Cold Chicken stock
Heat the baking pan over a medium fire. Add in three tablespoons of flour and stir fat with a whisk. If the roux is too dry, add more fat drippings until it absorbs all the flour. Toast it over a low heat for 5 minutes.
Drizzle in cold stock bit by bit, stirring often to dissolve the roux. Let simmer until there is no taste of starch. Allow to reduce to desired texture and serve warm.
It's nice to be on holiday - at least holidays where I don't have to go in to work. I made cookies today! They were double chocolate chunk cookies with cherries in them. I wanted to give some to Tfmaniac, but like a true male, he talked a bit too much about Nigella Lawson so now he gets none. That'll teach him. He tried to go into damage control but I told him to go cry to Nigela. Then I had to talk him through how to prepare water for mopping the house step by step.
Ben @ Staircase 69 says (5:08 PM):
i don't know if i should nap...
really tired
like i had 2 runs today
Ka Zandan says (5:08 PM):
o-0
why?!
Ben @ Staircase 69 says (5:08 PM):
mop house, vacuum house, clean carpets
Ka Zandan says (5:08 PM):
that... doesn't count...
Ben @ Staircase 69 says (5:09 PM):
i did a good job too.... shifted all the furniture
do i get a cookie?
Ka Zandan says (5:09 PM):
your mom will be proud
no
go ask nigella <_<
Ben @ Staircase 69 says (5:09 PM):
>_>; who's that?
Ka Zandan says (5:11 PM):
nice try lol
Ben @ Staircase 69 says (5:12 PM):
;-;
I also beat Guitar Hero Aerosmith on Hard Mode. I have a feeling it's easier than GH3... I am now merely playing songs in an effort to earn enough money to buy Joe Perry. And because it's the holiday, I don't care if it's 5pm. I'm going to take a post-dinner nap. Jogging can wait till tomorrow.
...with LOTS of help. Whenever Mary Ann said that, her sister and I just kind of quietly glanced at eachother knowingly. Mary Ann - a highly intelligent girl with a big heart and social skills so good she should be a politician or celebrity. However, for all her glowing repertoire, she needs help with some of the basic things in life. Like cooking.
I commit social suicide fairly often, but my mother did train me in the little things in life. My mother was a firm believer in child labour and would thus summon me to her sanctum - the sacred kitchen - to perform the preparation of the sacrificial offerings - peeling taters, onions, cutting beef, etcetera. I guess because of this, I prepare food pretty fast. I can cook, but cannot bake to save my life. I can put a decent curry and vegetable side on the table, but how the hell do you fold an egg into dough? I feel like the fairy Flora who was trying to make Aurora a birthday cake in Sleeping Beauty. Literally - Fold it in.
Mary Ann loves to bake and can do it quite well, but cooking a meal seems to perplex her. She was, nonetheless, going to cook us all a meal, so I decided to help out. She was learning as she went from me and her sister, since both of us had a bit more experience in the kitchen when it came to cooking. Her sister even taught me a few things, since I'd never prepared sweet beans before. I whipped up a beef casserole and butter steamed vegetables in the time it took Mary Ann to make Champ mash potatoes. Admittedly, she was helping us out alot. But I am proud of her for the effort she made. The potatoes were awesome. She seemed impressed by my 'speed' in the kitchen, but I attribute it all to my mother and the servitude she put me through as a child.
Mary Ann's God Save The Queen dinner was a success, and now we're thinking of making these cook-over's monthly. Next one lined up - TexMex! Tacos and Chilli Con Carne Pita wraps! Mmmm~
