Project Eden - 17th Week

I have moved all of the chili plants out from the Aerogarden, after a growing concern from the upper management with my green activity (they were thinking that I was growing something illegal in the office). I even had the director came over and looked at the leaves of all the plants. Probably he was looking for some fresh supply :)

Anyway, with the help of my colleague, we moved everything to pot now:


The jalepeno plant is growing nicely bearing three fruits:


A few more days, these chilies will be ready for consumption :)

Project Eden - 15th week

It is spring time in UK now, and the chili plants have grown rapidly. It is a jungle of chili plants right now...


I got my first two chilis:


This is another variant of it, but hard to bear fruit without pollination from the bees...


I need to find a way of getting all these flowers pollinated to have chilis

Coffee Chicken

Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world today, and yet, it is hardly used in cooking. Is it that bad to eat it. If so, how bad can it be? Well, there is one way to find out...

Roast some fresh coffee bean:


Marinate the chicken with coffee bean, salt, cumin and paprika. Wrap it up and pop into the oven:



After 20 mins in 250 degree temperature oven, glazes it with some honey. Pop back into the oven for 2 mins:



Serve:

Coffee chicken done! :)

Despite all the efforts and coffee, it still tastes like chicken :) The chicken breast has the smell of smoky, barbecue coffee. The sauce is sweet with a hint of bitterness like espresso, but with savoury taste. It feels like having your main meal and after-meal espresso at the same time. It is weird, but it is somehow rather pleasing, especially when the caffeine kicks in :)

Project Eden - 9th week

Should have updated this long time ago, when I got back from Malaysia. Well, with lots of things happening in UK (survives the retrenchment exercise, tons of work etc), it is hard to write blog nowadays.. Despite all the bad news, the chili plants are striving under the good care of my colleague, Caroline when I was in Malaysia. Here is how it looks like:

Bacon-wrapped Asparagus

After having not posted in monkey-years, I just realized how tricky it is to use Blogger's Post Editor especially when it comes to arranging the photos.

Anyway, moving back to the topic at hand... I needed a quick dinner after a long day's work and the only fastfood that I could find in the fridge was frozen beef pie. That wasn't too bad but I decided to supplement my microwave dinner with some fresh food. Lo and behold, I found asparagus, bacon and lemon in the fridge too.


I vaguely remember seeing a dish prepared by Jamie Oliver that used these ingredients plus a clove of garlic. It's really simple. Leave the bacon uncut while finely dicing the garlic. Get some lemon zest by grating the lemon and wash the asparagus.


Wrap about 3-4 asparagus sticks in a bacon. I actually had more asparagus than bacon so I wrapped 5-6 asparagus instead, giving me two bunches. That wasn't such a bad idea considering how greedy I was but the bacon could barely stay on. On a hindsight, I should have secured the bacon and asparagus together with some toothpicks.



Pour some olive oil over the everything and sprinkle the lemon zest and finely diced garlic on them. Chuck the tray into a preheated oven and wait for about 5 minutes before turning it over. Leave it for another 5 minutes or so and it is ready to serve.



Tadaa!! Doesn't look too bad, does it? Apple for desert. Simple yet filling. Have fun!

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 :)