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 :)

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!