The dish that make me in honeymoon everyday…

I cooked this for tonight’s dinner. Taste spicy and yummy. I cooked prawn, garlic, onion, chilli cut and corn kernels with Bumbu Bali. Added bit of water and my secret ingredients is Coconut Cream. I added 1 tablespoon of coconut cream stirred with 50ml boiled water. Fry onion until brown together with garlic and chilli cut. Then add corn kernels, cooked Prawns (just remove the head, keep the shell). Don’t use too much cooking oil, bad for health. Cook for 15 minutes or until the water dried up. I deep fried the prawn head and dried it to remove any excess oil.

Serve together with cooked rice while it’s still hot.

Sometime ago I cooked this dinner for my husband…

Very easy to prepare, doesn’t scrap much of your pocket and whoaalaaa taste like Outback Jack’s steak. With steak, I like scotch fillet where I normally get it from nearby butcher, Avon Valley. I like to buy it fresh with beautiful red colour on the meat,soft and (almost) no fat. I have this blue grilling pan which I love to have it handy in my kitchen during spring. Anyway the ingredients for this meal:

1 Beef Scotch Fillet
Potato Stick, you can get this from Coles in a frozen section
Carrot, diagonally sliced
Cauliflower, cut into small pieces
Frozen Green Peas
Frozen Corn Kernels
Black Crack Pepper
Olive Oil
100gr Butter or bit more, depends on how big and thick is your beef fillet
1 tablespoon of Honey (My fave brand is Wescobee…it’s a WA made)
(about) 50ml Lemon juice or you can put more if you like bit of sour taste which will nicely marry with the honey taste.
1 teaspoon Soya sauce (not the thick one, the salty one). You can replace this with a pinch of salt but I hate salt in my cooking as it would give me hypertension….beside everything else we eat has salt in it. Like my breakfast, 2 slices of bread which already contain certain degree of salt…or my morning tea cake/biscuit which again has salt in it and some other daily food I ate. So I don’t really think the necessity to add salt again in my cooking.

Method:

Mix lemon juice, honey and soya sauce in a container.(If you have glass, ceramic or wooden container would be better than plastic. I don’t know why but mostly I use ceramic and somehow the meat absorb the marinate sauce more than if I leave it in a plastic container.) Put meat inside and crack some black pepper all over the meat. Make sure the meat is marinated inside out by forking it and generously spread the mixture (of honey, lemon juice and soya sauce). Cover with either aluminium foil or lid. Keep it in a fridge for at least 2 hours…if you want a stronger taste, leave it overnight. I tried this before and the steak came out softer with strong taste than if I marinated 2 hours in the fridge.

While waiting for the meat, steamed or boiled cauliflower, green peas, corn kernels and carrot. This will take you only 5 minutes to 10 minutes with minimum heat. (don’t burnt your pot with high heat beside there is no necessity for this anyway.) Drained and put aside to let it cool a bit. Then deep fry the potato stick until crunchy, dried it with paper towel to remove excess oil.

Then take out the meat from the fridge, melted the butter on the grill and grill the meat for at least 15 minutes, depends on how you like your meat done. I like it well done so I always grill for about 30 minutes or slightly longer if the cut is thick. Turn both sides of the meat every 10 minutes and use medium heat.

Serve in a big plate with vegetables and french fries on the side. Drizzled the vegetables with olive oil to add flavour. Enjoy with a nice cold beer in a summer day or in your backyard.

Note: If you are an onion lover, you could quartered an onion and mix with the vegetable.
If you like Kangaroo meat, you could try with it but I won’t suggest Lamb or Pork as the marinate sauce might not go with the meat.

Pasta with White Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
200gr small button mushrooms, quartered
1 tablespoon lemon juice
50gr goats cheese, crumbled (I used feta cheese instead)
1 tablespoon finely flat-leaf parsley
1 teaspoon chopped thyme (I skipped this, I don’t have this in my cupboard)
green peas
pasta
crispy bread
black crack pepper

Method:
Boil pasta to al dente. Put aside.
Heat oil in frying pan, cook the mushrooms over medium heat for 5 mins. Remove from heat. I did not really follow the recipe though as I keep this on very low heat, then mix with my feta cheese, parsley, lemon juice, black crack pepper and green peas.

Once all mixed, put the pasta in and stir well.

Serve with crispy bread cut diagonal.

Doesn’t take long to prepare, easy to cook and yummy.

Pad Thai

I tried page 227 tonight, veg Pad Thai. Not bad at all with little bit   of improvisation. Tried to upload the pic but think that it’s too big. Need to be edited. One thing though, I think I should have not followed the recipe for boiling rice stick without oil. The thing is those rice stick glued on the bottom of my pot and stick to each other. I should have put few drops of olive oil. Peanut oil, if you don’t have then just use whatever cooking oil you have and sesame seed to get the ‘peanut’ sensation of it. Anyway, below is the recipe:

Ingredients:
400gr flat rice-stick noodles
2 tablespoons peanut oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten (I added black pepper and a pinch of salt)
1 onion, cut into thin wedges (I love onion so I used 3 instead!)
2 garlic clove, crushed
1 small red capsicum, cut into thin slices
100gr fried tofu, cut into 5mm wide strips (Actually doesn’t really matter how you cut it. I cut mine into cubes.)
6 spring onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
25gr chopped coriander leaves
60ml soy sauce 

2 tablespoons lime juice (I replaced this with lemon juice.)
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar (I forgot to add this to mine but still taste good. I guess, brown sugar just an icing, won’t give you great different in taste.)
2 tablespoons sambal oelek
90gr bean shoots
40gr chopped roasted unsalted peanuts (I failed to get this from shop so skipped. It would taste better with this, add the crispy bit of it.)

Method:
Cook the noodles in a saucepan of boiling water for 5-10 minutes, or until tender. Drain and set aside.

Heat a wok over high heat and add enough peanut oil to coat the bottom and side. When smoking, add the egg and swirl to form a thin omelette. Cook for 30 seconds or until just set. Roll up, remove and thinly slice. –> For this one, I fried my tofu until half brown then add my eggs, swirled it together with my tofu.

Heat the remaining oil in the work. Cook the onion, garlic and capsicum over high heat for 2-3 minutes, or until the onion has softened. Add the noodles, tossing well. Stir in the omelette, tofu, spring onion and half the coriander.

Pour in the combined soy sauce, lime juice, sugar and sambal oelek., then toss to coat the noodles. Sprinkle the bean shoots over the top and garnish with the peanuts and the remaining coriander. Serve immediately.

Awkward…

I had a corporate Christmas luncheon at C Revolving Restaurant yesterday. Most people had a drink or two…or some three or four! Tipsy and definitely no chance went back to office. I imagined that C would be such an extravaganza restaurant, considering the location in the heart of city and the price is…well I would say overpriced. It is an old restaurant to start with, cable hanging out on the outside roof, chip on the ceilings, crack, old chairs….ooh well perhaps just my standard and expectation of Fine Dining is way too high.

About the food, I had crispy skin fried Barramundi with salsa and what I think is melted butter. I opted in Creme Brulee for my dessert. I thought the fish was alright…slightly above alright. My first bite on the fish was taste little bit fishy but  I can compromise on that for the exchange of nice crispy skin fried. I love the crispy skin, it was so yummy. The salsa, they could have done it better. I have tasted much better salsa than that. The dessert was fantabulous!…fantastic and fabulous 🙂 Though my friendly pretty lovely colleague, BM, thought that it was too sweet and she struggled to finish, I had no hurdle to lick it all in 5 minutes. I must admit though that the caramel layer was not to cracky, you when you crack you could hear the crack sound so crispy. I can forgive that as it was probably the layer way too thin and when they torched it, they didn’t want to burnt it. The creme was light I thought, and delicious. Not too sweet at all for me, in fact, it was a good balance for my Barra which was butter fish taste.

Then I finished my 2 courses lunch with a cup of Cappuccino. It was served by an awkward guy which I assumed a new waiter. Cappucino was good serve with a butter cookie.

Thinking of taking my mum in law tomorrow.

Bruschetta

Ingredients:
Classic Tuscan
6 ripe Roma tomatoes
15g shredded basil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Mushroom and parsley
2 tablespoons olive oil
200 g small button mushrooms, quartered
1 tablespoon lemon juice
50g goat’s cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon finely chopped flat leaf Italian parsley
 
16 slices crusty white Italian style bread, cut into 1 cm slices
4 garlic cloves, halved
60 ml olive oil

Method:
To make the classic Tuscan topping, score a cross in the base of each tomato and place in a bowl of boiling water for 10 seconds, then plunge into cold water. Peel the skin away from the cross. Cut in half and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon. Finely dice the flesh, then combine with the basil, garlic and oil.

To make the mushroom and parsley topping, heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the mushrooms over medium heat for 5 minutes, or until just tender. Remove from the heat and transfer to a small bold. Stir in the lemon juice, goat’s cheese, parsley and thyme.

Toast the bread and, while still hot, rub with the cut side of a garlic clove. Drizzle oil over each slice of bread, then season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Divide the toppings among the bread slices.

Serves 8

Alright! here we go…

I watched the Social Network with a super awesome guy, my hub a while a go. We’ve got the preview screening invite so we watched it before it released in the cinema. At first he didn’t really interested and was pessimist about this movie as another chick flick about virtual world….just like the Net or those movie about some hackers. Well in the end he was so impressed and hardly shut his mouth talking about it. He has been recommended to everyone…literally. Anyway, that’s nothing to do with my journal…just in one of the scenes, they showed Mark Z, facebook founder, used Live Journal at his (not so) early ages. Just thought checking out on this blog…as I guess pretty similar to blogspot but probably more open source.

I decided to create an account, bloggin’ about my cooking journey. Cooking and food, secretly, has been one of (many) my passion. I learned different kind of cooking techniques…thanks to MasterChef show I’ve been crazy about. I’ve been to many fine dining and (not so fine) restaurant, informally and casually criticizing and reviewing their service, cleanliness, (their, sometimes, ridiculous but worth it) price, and food quality. I lost count of how much budget I have splurged to indulge my passion to food. Mostly, my taste bud is trustworthy but not my pocket 😦

I do cooking at home almost everyday. In fact, cooking is sort of my stress therapy after hectic day at work. Cooking is where I can be myself, exercise my coordination skill between cutting and peeling. Kitchen is where I can talk about anything with M …in fact, some of our important decisions are conceived in the kitchen 🙂

Oooh god here I rambled again about nothing. So where was I ? A-ha..yes! then I also watched "Julia & Julie" some while ago which actually inspired me to start this journal. So I picked up 1 of my cooking books collection titled "Vegie Food" bought from Border on special $15 with over than 380 recipes. Here we go…I ll try to cook each of it, blog it and post it. Photo is no guarantee…but will try to upload.

goddamn I missed "Law of Freedom" talk again. Every Wed, Fr Joe Parkinson has talk at my church…ooopss distraction.

Whooaaaa…eeemmm…..it’s 12:27 AM so my comfy bed has been waiting for my body to lay down on. Work tomorrow and start on "Bruschetta". I ll post the recipe 2moro…nitey nitey…