I received my first copy of the Food Network Magazine that Viv gave me for my birthday last month. I'd been meaning to try one of the recipes but my mum came to stay and since she cooks such great food I had to take advantage of that as often as possible. Although I am still missing pho and I ate instant noodles every day since she left for an entire week because I'd a) forgotten how to cook, b) decided I really didn't want to clean the dishes, c) I was mourning the loss of my mother and d) I was just stressed. Right now I still don't remember how to cook, still don't want to clean the dishes, still mourning and I'm still stressed. But I decided to cook anyway. Who doesn't love Mexican?
This recipe required beer though. Says the recipe, not me. I left out the beer since I didn't have any in the fridge and I didn't want to receive any strange looks if I bought one can of beer. But since I don't like the taste of beer I don't think I really missed out on anything. The steak was great. A little spicy but mostly tangy from the chimichurri sauce. The recipe says that it takes 1hr and 50 mins, but 1 hr is spent just marinating the meat. I don't think the rest of the preparation took 50 mins.
Unfortunately alot of the recipes in this issue were salads or lunch food. Neither of which I'm fond of making.
I'm pretty excited that two movies I'm really excited to watch are coming out soon. "500 days of summer" is coming out in 2 weeks. And "Julie and Julia" which was initially how this all began. The trailer looks pretty hilarious, as all kitchen disasters are (when they happen to someone else).
I've started to subscribe to Women's Health. I find it really interesting and this month they had an easy food guide, and I have decided to try as many recipes as I can. They also have a list of items that everyone should have lying around in their pantry and better food options. I'm not really an expert on health but I have recently started paying attention to how much fat and sugar I am consuming (although I refuse to foresake my can of coke a day habit).
I know I didn't use soba noodles but I don't really like soba noodles and I had these ones lying around. This recipe was really tasty, unlike the fried rice I made last time. Unfortunately I only had enough to make two servings, so I won't be eating this for the next week. I must also add that this recipe took exactly 10 minutes to make. Great for one of those days when I've just gotten home from the gym and too lazy to cook.
Every time I've made fried rice my rice has always been mushy so this time I cooked my rice way in advance so that it would be on the drier side. I don't think this recipe was very good though. I added the amount of soy sauce as the recipe said but something must have been wrong because it was so bland. The bamboo and mushrooms tasted fine, but the chicken tasted bland since there was no seasoning other than the soy sauce. Pretty disappointing. And I ended up eating it for a week, dousing each bowl with some extra soy sauce did the trick.
This book is amazing. Every recipe is so concise, they barely seem like recipes at all.
Recipe: Place 100g dried bean thread noodle in bowl and pour over boiling water. Stand for 5 minutes or until tender, drain. Toss noodles with 1/2 store bought barbecue chicken (shredded), 1 sliced cucumber, 1 chopped tomato, 50g unsalted cashes, 1/4 cup coriander leaves and 1/4 cup basil leaves. Then combine 1/4 cup sweet chilli sauce and 1.5 tsp of soy sauce to make the dressing and toss dressing through salad.
The only reason I would call this a salad is because it is eaten cold, although I heated up the chicken. Voila, a quick meal for under $5. Definitely one of those meals that I will cook again. Although cook probably isn't the right word. I will probably put this meal together again. It was just so simple. For one of those days when you just don't want to cook. And it's a lot healthier than instant noodles. I'm not usually a fan of salads because I often find they can be bland. Maybe it was the chicken on the sweet and slightly salty dressing, but I liked the fact that there was a lot of flavour.
Two weeks ago I was back in Sydney eating some of the best food Sydney has to offer; my mum's. I think everyone who moves away from home misses their mother's cooking (or the convenience of having food readily available) but sometimes the benefits of independence outweighs those of a home cooked meal. If it were possible for me to go home every week just so I could eat my mother's cooking I would. I don't even try to replicate her food because I know it will always seem bland in comparison.
I borrowed a Vietnamese cookbook called KOTO, named after a charity in Vietnam that educates kids in the hospitality and tourism industry. I really enjoyed flipping through this book and seeing pictures of dishes that I easily recognise. When I saw this recipe for tofu in tomato sauce I just had to try it. It's not quite Pho, but it still reminds me of traditional Vietnamese food.
Did I do it justice? Unfortunately not. It came down to poor quality tofu. The tofu I bought was way too hard. The tomato sauce was perfect though, although it could have done with a little bit more fish sauce. Add a plate of boiled okra and it felt almost like I was at home again.
Again this is another recipe from last month. It was a bit of a disappointment because the picture in the book looked so pretty. That'll show me not to judge a meal by the way it looks. The problem with this was that I also made a lot of it! So I ended up eating this for a week. Not fun. The thing is I don't really like cold soba noodles, so I'm not sure why I made so much of this salad. It just ended up tasting really bland and sort of dry. There also wasn't much flavour, i'm not sure if this was because I did not have enough dressing. This is one of the few Japanese recipese that I have attempted that just have not worked for me. I am a little disappointed that I did not take photos of my prawn gyoza now (but I really am not capable of folding dumplings nicely).
I actually made this last month, but I've been fairly lazy about taking photos recently let alone positing them. I love making omelettes because I always have eggs in the fridge so on weekends on the rare occasion I can actually be bothered to make breakfast I know I can whip up an omelette. I don't always have bacon or bread or milk or even cereal for that matter on hand, so that just leaves egg. It just so happened that on this weekend I happened to have all these ingredients on hand (although I had to run out to get the bread roll). Usually when I make omlette I'm not following any particular recipe but this one is actually quite good. Maybe it was the cheese. I don't usually bother adding cheese to omelette. Apart from the ingredients being really handy, it is also really easy to make and it means that when you're really hungry that you will soon have a hot meal prepared.
I borrowed this Women's Weekly recipe book from the library. I'd read a few before and found them quite boring, not enough pictures and the recipes a little too traditional. But this book was actually very interesting with lots of modern recipes. Unlike a lot of cookbooks it also tells you how long it will take you to cook and the calorie and fat content which is always nice to know.
I know that I am technically cheating since I did not provide a photo, but it would have looked like a pile of leaves anyway. I know I don't eat any much green stuff but since moving out I have discovered there are some green stuff that I actually like: cabbage, zucchini, spinach, avocado, lettuce, rocket, even green capsicum (because often it was cheaper than the red capsicum, go figure). Over the Easter weekend I watched Nigella Feasts on DVD and this was one of the few recipes that caught my eye. It just looked so easy to make and it tastes really good. I did have a moment this afternoon where I almost forgot the smoked salmon, but I think it tastes really good with the smoked salmon. Although I don't approve of always just eating a salad as a full meal, I will admit that this was the only thing I had for dinner. I had no idea what else to eat with it.
I love all the separate ingredients that make up this salad: salmon, pumpkin seeds, spinach, lime and avocado. It is really that easy. The pumpkin seeds at crunch to the mushy avocados. The lime adds zest and the spinach adds a little bitter. Nigella says it all, the salmon just adds that little bit of luxe. It took me under 10 minutes to "cook" and it tasted really great and totally guilt free. If only dinner was always that easy to make.
It has been a while since I last posted. My mum and my sister came to visit so my mum took over the cooking, she insisted! Then I went overseas and had such a good time it's been a bit hard to get back into my old routine. But tonight I went back to the gym for the first time in close to 3 months and I cooked a proper meal (not spaghetti) for the first time in what feels like ages. For the first time in a long time I also have the house to myself. It's quite depressing. So I made some meatballs today to eat with rice. Pretty good. Although it took a lot longer to make than I thought and since I got home late from the gym I was sitting around waiting for ages! I'm not sure if they were worth the wait but I made way too much so I will be eating them for the next week. They were very tasty though - a bit spicy with the red curry paste, a little salty due to the chicken broth and tomatoes and a little sweet with the coconut milk. So it was a bit of everything and a little trial and error. Overall the different tastes worked.
My younger sister finally finished her HSC. Wohoo! I rang her yesterday and I think she was still worried about what I would feed her when she comes to stay in Brisbane with me. I think when I told her that I made French toast for breakfast she was pretty impressed. I made French toast for her many years ago. My recipe? What recipe? It involved an egg (maybe 2), a dash of milk and some cinammon. Then I doused it in maple syrup and in her innocent young mind she seems to remember it as the best thing ever (my words, not hers). Since I had half a sandwich loaf sitting in my fridge I decided to make French toast - since I eat my toast at work and don't need to make sandwiches, buying bread is sort of a waste, so I had to buy half a loaf (which makes it more expensive).
I know I haven't made a recipe from The New Best Recipe book for a while now, but I have not forgotten all about it. I still flip through it every now and then. I thought this recipe was perfect! But I think it depends on how you like your French toast. I've always known it to taste pretty much like fried egg on bread. But this recipe was more like custard, and the egg was very subtle. I also enjoyed sprinkling some cinnamon onto it dousing it in maple syrup. Breakfast of champions!
This was one of the cookbooks that I was initially going to buy, but it has no pictures. I think half of the fun is looking at all those pictures. Nevertheless I decided to borrow it and see if it was really worth the hype.
I love a good big breakfast. When I was small I would not have eaten baked beans. I thought all beans were gross and the fact that it came from a can was double gross. But ever since I discovered big breakfast I have loved baked beans. If I had a picture of what egg in a hole look like I'm sure I'd be able to tell you if the recipe was a success or not. I imagined that it would look prettier and you would actually be able to tell that it was an egg. I might as well have made french toast (which is the plan for tomorrow). My first attempt I made the hole a little too big and the second time a little too small. I don't have a circle cutter that is in between those two sizes. I think I preferred the hole too small, otherwise you don't get enough bread.
This morning I rushed out to get my free cup of coffee from Gloria Jeans and got some change for the dryer since I did two loads of washing. Now I will be spending the rest of the afternoon ironing. Fun! God I hate domesticity. Maybe I need to find a guy who would be willing to have the babies and stay at home to cook and iron.
Today was such a hot day and I felt especially sluggish all day even though I had a nap in the afternoon. Even though the news says that the temperature is only 26 degrees, it feels a lot warmer even though it is night time and should be a lot cooler. I did not feel like cooking, but I'd finally run out of leftovers. Since I had some leftover rice I decided to make this recipe.
I have always wanted to try kimchee with fried rice. It's one of those things I have seen people eat in Korean dramas and thought "wow that looks yummy, I wonder if tastes as good as it looks". I have decided it was okay, but nothing for me to rave about. I always forget that I really don't like kimchee THAT much. I think the kimchee I bought was not spicy enough and there was not enough of the sauce since I imagined that it wouldn't be so dry. Since it was so easy to make and easy to eat I will probably make it again. Otherwise the rest of the kimchee will be sitting in my fridge for a very long time.
When it comes to curries I have always preferred Japanese curry but lately Indian curry has sort of grown on me (and I know I just saw Liz cringe). Even stanger is that it is vegetarian curry that I have become obsessed with and I really wanted garlic naan bread. So I just had to make this recipe. It was very easy to make once you've made the sauce. Just cook the vegies (I used potato, mushroom, zucchini and eggplant) and then add the sauce and simmer. But the sauce did not taste as good as the one I had from the Indian takeaway. And I don't think there was enough of it for the amount of vegies I had. Also the garlic naan was definitely not the best I've ever had.
My other complaint with this recipe is that it requires like a hundred ingredients to make the base sauce (so I omitted a few). Next time I'm just going to buy the stuff in the jar.
Just another one of the things that will be sitting in my fridge for the next few days. Maybe I'll look for some better naan bread though, since this one did not have enough garlic at all!
I actually made this on Monday but I never got around to writing all about it. Last week when we went out for lunch some people ordered seafood chowder. I've never had chowder before so I was interested in trying this recipe to see what the difference between sweetcorn soup and chowder actually was. Apparently, not much except chowder is probably thicker. I really have to learn to half the garlic quantities because there was way too much garlic and salt in this so I had to use a lot of bread to help me get through this. And it's weird but bread didn't actually help. In the end I just got so sick of it I ended up getting rid of the last bowl.
Last week I ate a lot of leftovers. I had leftover Chinese from work which I finally finished on Thursday and I made an eggplant stirfry, half of which is still sitting in my fridge. And I probably should have stopped there but I like variety with my rice so I then bought a Thai stirfry because I'd been craving something spicy. And then I had to make something extra today for dinner as well. I can already imagine the things my mum would say about cooking food when there is already food sitting there in the fridge.
With our economy in crisis I'm sure everyone has thought about how it will affect them and what poverty even means.
It is Blog Action Day today. A chance to spread the message about poverty. I know I'm not the best person to be discussing this since today for lunch I had duck breast with sweet potato frittata and brioche bread and butter pudding with coconut gelato for lunch. Did you know that extreme poverty is defined by living on less than $1 a day? I can't imagine $1 buying enough food to feed one person for a day let alone all the things I seem to require in order to live. And moderate poverty is defined by living on $2 a day. It is hard to imagine that the difference between the two is only $1.
During times of famine it is basic foods such as corn, potato and rice that are essential for survival. My dad used to say he thought eating rice with tea or soy sauce was a luxury. I don't think I ever really believed him.
I calculated the cost of this meal I just had excluding the cost of the bowl, cooking utensils, water or gas that was required for cooking. Pack of soba noodles ($3.20/6 = $0.53), soy sauce (14/700*$2.70 = $0.05), sugar ($0.01), chicken broth ($2.50/6 = $0.42). In total that's $1.01 for two tiny bowls of soba with no meat or vegetables, just the bare minimum. To think that one dollar could bring someone out of extreme poverty is very heartbreaking. Especially when I couldn't feed myself on $1 for dinner (unless I ate a pack of instant noodles).
The United Nations estimates that 854 million people are hungry every day. There are currently more than 6.6 billion people in the world. That means for every 8 to 9 people, 1 person goes hungry. Maybe the problem is too big for one person. Instead why not find 6 friends to help you go out there and make a difference to one person's life. The cost of sponsoring a child so that they can recieve a tertiary education is $2000 a year. Which is $0.80/day if you happen to have 6 friends. That is most likely to be the amount sitting in the bottom of a handbag you never use or the amount hiding between the couch cushions. I am not preaching because I have no moral high ground to stand on. I just feel it's a problem too small for one person and to say you're going to donate $20 is not a long term solution.
In this time of economic crisis many of us are going to start adopting a much more frugal way of life. We will probably not rush out to buy a Chanel handbag or a huge plasma TV screen. But how many of us are worried about what will happen when we have no money for food? I can imagine not owning material objects, but I have never considered the possibility of not having any food. The hunger problem is not just about not having enough money for food. With the erratic global climate the possibility that we will run out of food is also likely. But that's another problem for another day.
I know I've had a lot of steak this week. It just happpened that I found one steak recipe after the other so I decided to try them all. This is another Portuguese recipe from the Piri Piri Starfish cookbook. A lot of Tessa Kiros recipes include just cracking an egg on top. Such as egg on risotto or the egg with pan-fried potatos I made a few months. The egg is an amazing ingredient.
After I finished cooking I realised my camera battery was dying so I only had enough time to take this photo. It will have to do. I need to buy another pan. It was very difficult to co-ordinate the cooking of the egg, steak and chips with just one wok.
From photos, it looks like Bitoque is usually also served with salad. But I've always thought salads were a little overrated. I chose this recipe because it is served with piri piri sauce which is the same thing as Nando's peri peri sauce, piri piri chilli and spices in oil. It tastes as good as it sounds, especially when you're dipping your chips in it. This is a very simple recipe, but it is all in the sauce! I loved it, and my egg turned out just the way I like it (slightly runny).
Woohoo! Air-con is finally fixed and the temperature has dropped a bit. Just my luck. Overall I haven't had much luck today. I realised that today was my early start and I was supposed to be at work by 7:30, get to work and my computer malfunctions, still none of the tea bags I like, and I had to go through 2 cans of coke because there was no tea. Maybe all of those things aren't luck related.
This pasta wasn't that great. I think I have lost my taste for pasta recently. I feel like every pasta I've ever eaten has always been just okay. Acceptable. But I can't pinpoint a pasta dish I've absolutely loved except for the lasagna from the pasta factory. And I haven't eaten it in so long, I'm afraid even that probably doesn't taste nice anymore. This pasta dish doesn't taste any different from pasta I've had in the past. Be it at a restaurant, food court or sauce in a jar. Not terrible just not very exciting. It's just pasta. Diced tomatoes, oregano and prosciutto make up the sauce. It even sounds exciting! Nevertheless a healthy and fulfilling meal.
It sounds a little bizarre but wait till you taste it! This was one of the best steaks I've ever had and I don't mean it sound like some exaggeration of my cooking skills because it wasn't me. Thanks to Liz for the link, you'll have to try it next time you're in Brisbane ;) *hint*hint* The recipe is not exactly the most precise because as you can see he sort of just throws random handfuls of spices together and he doesn't taste it to see whether it suits his taste. So you sort of just assume he's made it so many times he doesn't need a recipe.
For one 200g fillet steak I used: 3 tbsp of instant coffee (which I just ground a bit to make it finer) 2 tbsp unsweetened cacao powder (because I didn't know where to buy the beans) 1 tsp mustard powder 1 tsp ginger powder 1 tsp garlic powder 1 1/2 tsp chilli powder (I left out the chipolte and Mexican powder since I couldn't find that either) You mix the spices together and after seasoning the steak with pepper and salt you rub the spices all over the steak. Then leave aside for at least 3 hours before grilling. I just pan-grilled mine even though he has grilled his over hot coals.
I loved the taste, although since I had to wait three hours, hunger might have played a part. After I marinated the steak it looked exactly like dried beef jerky. I was sort of weirded out that raw meet could smell that good. Cacao doesn't really taste like chocolate, it's not sweet at all. The cacao and coffee make the steak quite bitter but it's also very spicy. It is quite unique the taste, and I would definitely recommend you try it (just don't attempt it with real chocolate).
Boy do those chips look fat or what! I borrowed Piri piri startfish by Tessa Kiros a few months ago and this was one of the few recipes that appealed to me. All the recipes in this book are from Portugal, and when you read the recipes they all sound very exotic. I finally decided to try this recipe because Liz sent me a youtube link for coffee steak, which I will attempt to make tomorrow. The difference between the recipes is this one uses espresso as a sauce while the other recipe uses ground coffee as a dry spice.
Today it reached 33 degrees in Brissie. This would have been a nice meal to eat outdoors with family and friends. Although they'd better like coffee. The recipe said to add 1 tbsp cream and about 2 1/2 tbsp of strong espresso coffee. I'm no coffee expert/snob - if it has caffeine then hit me with it. So I put 2 1/2 tbsp into about 1/4 cup of boiling water and used that to make the sauce and since I had no idea what type of cream to use I left that out. The coffee might have been a bit strong, but that's how I like my coffee. Apparently this is a very common dish in Lisbon. So I will have to go there some day so I can figure out if the sauce was supposed to be strong and bitter or if the cream was supposed to add some sweetness to it. Although I made this very much to my taste, I think the amount of coffee will depend on the individual. I have included the recipe, just in case anyone is interested in making figuring out how they like their coffee with their steak.
1. Heat 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp of olive oil in frying pan. When it starts to fizzle add 1 fillet steak (150g) and cook until golden. Turn over and sprinkle with some salt. Cook until steak is done to your liking. Turn steak over again sprinkle with salt. Add 2 bay leaves and 2 cloves of garlic to flavour the sauce. Lift steak out onto a plate.
2. Add the 1 tbsp cream and 2 1/2 tbsp espresso to the pan and let it bubble up and thicken for a few seconds. Turn off the heat and return the steak to the pan, then leave for a minute to let the juices mingle. Grind some black pepper over the top once it's on the plate. Serve with chips.
And for dessert? Passionfruit banana pineapple and cream Weis bar. Yummo!
One of the cheapest meals you can buy at any Japanese fast food store is curry and rice. One of my favourite meals because it is so easy to easy to eat. Just stir it and spoon it. However, this is probably not the best curry I've tried. I prefer it less watery and thicker. Also the recipe said to put apples in which was interesting since the apples were a little sour so they added a little tang. I should have probably just left them out of the recipe. Every time I've bought the curry cubes, the instructions were always quite clear just add meat and vegies to the melted curry cube mixture. This recipe however required a lot more ingredients. But I did not find it to my liking.
I have so much food in the fridge right now. Not only do I have leftover curry which will last at least 3 more nights but I also took some Thai leftovers home yesterday which will probably last three days as well. So if all this food does not go off, I will end up throwing it out because I'm sick of it or not cooking for the next week. I think I will end up sick of eating the same thing all week first.
Last night I thought since my download limit expires at the end of the month I should just download as much as I could. Except I forgot that my limit actually expires on the 4th of the next month. Unfortuantely that means I am capped at dialup speed while trying to stream Heroes. Not that much fun.
