Happy Days May 15, 2012

Home-cooked food for a difference. Have not been cooking for a while, but I’m looking to experiment more in the future! I’ve even downloaded a lot of recipe apps onto my phone.

Okay, so we cheated on the mango peppercorn herrings… next time there won’t be any cheating. By the way, the herrings were the best part of the meal. -_____-”

Tron took me to this lovely little restaurant near my workplace. It’s super quaint, serves really good tea and the staff are nice and attentive. The food is good but not great, but makes up for it for it’s affordability and the portions. Feel like going back there again just for tea and cakes. The person who introduced this place to Tron? Our pastor! It’s called The Teapot Cafe, look it up.

My sister invited us out for dinner at Manhattan Fish Market… but my brother wound up paying! Heehee! We ordered a set meal, but there was way too much food. About 4 different rice sets and there were side dishes of salads and soups as well! I always worry that there’s not enough food to go around when we are ordering, and this tends to cause us to have too much in the end. I need to start “thinking like a slim person”.

MORE pictures of darling baby Ben!

MORE food pictures of all the nice places that Tron took me to. This one was at a restaurant in 1U – forgot the name, but Tron thought they had his fave pork mayo donburi there. Sadly for him, the quality had dropped. I enjoyed my sashimi + tempura set though!

And this is when we ate at Sugimoto. Still one of my most fave Japanese restaurant around. )

This is the Thai place we ate at in 3 Two Square, Jaya One. Not really good, I still prefer Erawan. The Thai ice tea doesn’t even taste like the tea I drink when I’m actually in Thailand and it has wayyyyyyy too much coloring! :X

Cute souvenirs from Fuzzy…

… and my birthday present from Kim. It was so timely, I was just about to buy myself a clutch from Tangs.

Pictures from the Haikara outing with Sookie, Ching and his girlfriend. Haikara is really near my house, but I’ve never been there before. Interested to go there again to try their coffee and this GIANT STUFFED SQUID set that looks awesome! I wanted to try it so badly when I was there with them but I chickened out because it’s stuffed with rice and I was going on a no carb thing at that moment. Ah, me and my 1-week fad diets… now I regret not having desserts with them either. IT WAS SO HARD TO RESIST… but looking at all these pretty pictures fill me with regret!

Lastly, something sweet to end this entry — kiwi jelly cake at our church cafe.

I just noticed that Tron has the same shirt in all the pictures with him in it! Obviously his wardrobe is not as extensive as mine…

Master Chef October November 6, 2011

Stuff I cooked in October…. woot woot

Made my favorite dumplings again…

Good in a soup…

And great when it’s fried! I found the secret to making sure the dumpling still looks so nice when it’s boiled in a soup. Previously the folds tend to “loosen out”. The secret is simple : just make it fresh! Previously I would make the wantan, fold it all nicely.. and then store in the fridge for next day’s meals. Then the folds will come apart easily.

Fancy Schmancy aglio olio!

Mac & Cheese with baby spinach leaves

Fried black pepper fish fillet, beef sausages with mustard

My fave recipe of the month — tumeric fried chicken!! Very simple and very flavorful! I loveddd it. The only problem with this recipe is that the oil REALLY splutters, and then it will stain your stove top with yellow spots!

Made my fav white wine mussels with garlic again… but this time I arranged it nicely for presentation purposes. Lol! Then me and my brother ate it like eating potato chips while watching “She’s Out of My League”. Hehe.

Not cooking, but this is my 2 minute fruit salad…. which is guaranteed to make you ‘lao sai’. Hahahaha!

And finally ~ some baking. Chewy peanut butter cookies, which were quite well received by everyone, so I’m happy. Have not been baking for a long time, and the recipe seemed simple enough. The difficult part is assessing how “chewy” to leave the cookies. Some people might not like it because it is too “raw”, and they’ll think the cookie was not baked properly!

**title meant to be ironic

Things My Boyfriend Tell Me Not To Do, Yet I Do… October 22, 2011

With reference to the post title… ta-daa!!!

Urgh, I was feeling bored because we were having not-such-good-food at Crystal Jade. I don’t even know where it is anymore, but it was a newly opened branch. I’m guessing either Pavilion or Gardens. Anyway, the food really can’t even be compared to Din Tai Foong. I don’t know why it’s so bad, the siu loong pau also not nice. I give it a great thumbs down! My teeth covered with spring onion also better!

((But the Crystal Jade experience I had in Singapore with Ben last time was good!))

Non-descript food #1 and #2

Siu loong pau… ok la, but cannot compare to DTF.

Tron “no eye see” already. Hahahha!

Talking about spring onions, my mom quite nuts wan. I’ve been cooking more nowadays (cos yes yes, still trying to perfect the aglio olio, though it’s quite perfect at the moment), and my mom just randomly told me, “Hey, you cooking what now?”
Me : “Aglio olio! Italian~~!”
Mom : “I got some unfinished spring onion here. Use it in your cooking ok?”
Me : “WTF. Noooo! Where got spring onion in aglio olio wan! It’s ITALIAN mom.. they use herbs! Not spring onion!”
Mom : “You asian, so you use the asian vegetable!”
Me : “No!”
Mom : “So you using up the spring onion right?”
???? Like really didn’t hear me at all!

Another bad dining experience was at Pizza Hut. This Pizza Hut managed to tempt me with their advertisement of dunno what 8-layer pizza. So when Tron suggested eating there, I said, “Cool! I was just thinking about their 8 layer pizza.” Tron said, “Pizza is not to be messed with! Stick to the classic ok. Classic crust, lots of cheese…” (so philosophical, haha)
Me : “YOU HAVE NO SENSE OF ADVENTURE! YOU ALWAYS EAT THE SAME THINGS! I DOWAN HAWAIIAN SUPREME FOR ONCE! LET’S TRY THIS!!” (with less Caps in real life)

Tron gave in, and this is where my sense of adventure took us:

WHAT 8 LAYER PIZZA IS THIS! Four layers also don’t have la, the heck!! And there is so much… I donno… tortilla crap… that it’s like eating more crust than fillings. Where are all the layers described in the menu? In short, this is the most cheat-money pizza they have ever come up with. Pizza Hut… so many other places serving (good!) pizza and you choose to come up with crap like this? What kinda competition you think you coming up with? Such a turn off. And you know what is another turn off? Tron going, “I told you so!”

Darn you Pizza Hut, for giving him that opportunity!

Aglio Olio ala Rachael Ray September 21, 2011

One good reason for me to continue blogging – when I actually get feedback from my friends! Hehheh. Ben saw my entry on the aglio olio I made and he said that the way I make it, it’s almost like aglio alio ala mee mamak. Hahaha! So he gave me this recipe which he said is guaranteed awesome possum. From Rachael Ray.

Now I had a lot of problems with the recipe. First of all, it’s unlike any other aglio olio recipe I’ve ever read before. Anchovies? Is it necessary? I was going to actually leave that out, but Ben said it’s absolutely essential. “It gives it a very … umami taste.” Alrighty then. He also expressed incredulity when I said I couldn’t find chilli flakes, when he said he even bought it before in Kuantan. Impossible that Mercato and Jaya Grocer doesn’t have it! With that, I vowed to search the shopping aisles with a magnifying glass.

I was so excited about this recipe that I went out to grab the ingredients the day after we had the conversation. Actually, I needed to buy a new pair of shoes for my trip (I’m leaving in approximately 5 hours time! Excited!). The shoe shopping will be a story for another day. Anyway, I managed to find the chilli flakes – no it wasn’t with all the Italian herbs and stuff… it was under the local, re-packaged spices section. I managed to find the anchovy fillets though I was doubtful that I could find it. I even bought the “crusty bread” that she recommended to “soak up all the goodness” even though the idea of eating bread + pasta was more carbolicious than I could handle.

This is the result :

As you can see, it’s not as dry as my prevous effort, but it wasn’t drenched in some kinda sauce either. Maybe I got the proportions mixed up a little. I also think that Rachael Ray is afraid of spiciness because her recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon of chilli flakes for a portion serving 4 people. I had 1/2 a teaspoon in this portion for 1 and it’s already sooooooooooo bland. Not spicy at all. Maybe something wrong with my chilli flakes?

The taste? I find the anchovy or “umami” taste that Ben is referring to very weird…. I don’t quite like it. I like the rather gritty texture it gives to the dish, but I don’t like the smell of it or the taste of it particularly… all in all, a weird dish. Ben, if your finished dish looks nothing like the above, then please tell me what went wrong. Is it supposed to look soupier?

Ok, will talk less about cooking in my next entries… gotta get my beauty sleep before the cab comes tomorrow morn! *Yawn!*