Project Eden - 3rd week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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