The end of January 2011 and an important era

I am baking a banana cake now.
The kitchen smells lovely and sweet.
My loyal cat Fifi is sitting at his usual place near me.
I have a glass of bubbly in hand.
Charlie is on her way to see me.
I am feeling a little bit strange.

Japanese day

What a weird day! My fab astrology guy Cainer said that I should live my day in a happy mood so the day will pass by sooner. Guess what? I am living my day as everyday; the happiest as I could; by cooking everyday! I am so bloody lucky to be a chef! Sometimes I want to shout out loud that " I am a chef! and I am so happy I cook for a living!" Lovely Stevie gave me 2 books on Scottish cuisine today! I am so glad to connect to people this way. Food is life and you must eat to live! Food is the essential part of our culture and I just love it too much to talk about it with people and cook what reminds them for who they are!

Anyways, enough about my enthusiam about my chosen profession. Let's have a go at what happened today.

I started at catching this unfamiliar rid to work. Made it! At 06:30. I love living in central! So convenient you are allow to be lazy from time to time to wake up 25 minutes before work (that's including brushing teeth and kiss the teddy bears good bye!) and still make it!

All were peachy and I started with cooking the Japanese menu today with my all time fab - Japanese curry. The smell of it reminds me so much of my grandma; the good old fashion wooden drawers with all the mysterious Japanese stuffs and her fridge which forever packed with some pickle jars and random curry blocks. The trick of cooking Japanese vegetarian curry (as I did today) was pre cook all the vegetables before hand and you just throw everything together in a huge pot with a few curry blocks (1 small block is good for about 4!) with enough water to cover them. Leave it to simmer for 10 minutes then you can move the pot away from the stove and keep it in a warm place with the lid on until you need to serve them.

While the veggie curry is cooking I rinsed some rice and leave it to my trusted rice cooker (you'd be surprised with how large a professional catering rice cooker is.) Always do like this: measure with your index finger! The water has to be about 1/3 of your index finger depth above the rice. (about the bend of your 1st section of your precious finger!) Fluffy rice comes easily!

I carried on with blanching some trimmed french beans. You can just trim the top like I would love to do, I often think of the tiny tails of them as tadpole tails. Rather cute! But then I remember the "good lady" who tried to TEACH me about how to trim those beans from the surpermarket packs. I just obediently trimmed off the baby tails as well. Pan fried some tofu cubes in a sorta non sticky pan with a bit of oil. They will brown all over beautifully as long as you remember to turn them- individually. Lazy trick about the wilted baby spinach- rinse those love babies in a large colander in hand warm tap warter then just throw those blanched french beans over with water from the pan. Turn them about like you would to toss a Italian salad. And you can leave the baby spinach, french bean and fried tofu in the same bowl before you add any dressing to them.

I've decided to do a healthy side salad like you would normally get in a Japnese Bento. Nothing fancy just some shredded iceberg or greens with baby plum tomatos, halved hard boiled eggs and some chopped cucumbers. They love to serve it with "thousand island" sauce which is just like the French "marie rose" sauce.

Next I cooked the topping for the steamed rice. Started with cooking those loving little shimps from frozen then add some enoki mushroom. When you see the juice is about dry, add a tbsp soy sauce and a few drops of sesame oil. Pour the mixture over the rice in the dish you wish to serve. Sprinkle some dry seaweed flakes over. That's it! Simple as that.

I did the chicken miso soup with a bit of cheat's way. Boil about 2 litre water in a pan, start chopping 1 carrot to julienne (match sticks shape but don't worry. It doesn't have to be perfect! It is food! Don't get obsessed!) and throw them in the pan. Chop some more greens (I use about 4 small pok choi)and throw them in. When it looked like it's about to boil, stir in about 8 tbsp miso paste. When it is desolved, add a sprinkle of bonito pellets for the taste of sea! I added some chopped green part of the spring onion after I remove the soup from the heat source. (ok, maybe I should not call it like that but if only you know what I am cooking on everyday! We will have time...) Season it with salt if you want. Or with a drop of soy sauce. (Too bad Festival has some problems with soy base food so I couldn't use it.)

The last but the best! The Pork katsu! Simple! Don't be afraid! This is really the last minute food. Think about Fish "n" Chips. Who wants a piece of fish cooked 15 minutes ago? Sad people in the canteen! You can change the meat option to chiken, fish but not beef and lamb. It would be too much of waste! Beef should always be eaten at least medium, and lamb? Pink! Pink! Pink!

Ok, so you would have your pork or chicken or fish properly portioned- about your palm size and 1 cm thick. Prep your beatened eggs- 1 standard egg for 3 pieces of meat. Some bread crumbs- Japanese panko, flaky and light. Some random flours. 1st coat the meat portions in flours all over then dip them into the egg mixutre. Finally coat them in the bread crumbs. Have a pan of oil about 1 cm heated ready on the stove. Fry those babies until they are golden brown in both sides. (May I add something? a thermometer comes handy when you are cooking chicken! You need at least 78C for health and safety reason!) Dry them on kitchen paper towel for excess oil after. A pinch of caynne or parprika in the end.

Here you go: the delicious lunch or dinner for the people you care about! Healthy and crowd pleasing! Hope you love it too!

A day that I didn't want to go to work!

Hey. I know most of you out there have thought about this probably 4 times a week. But it was new to me. I am- as I have time and time again mentioned before- enjoying where I work and those people for whom I cook for, so much. This thought almost never come across my mind. No matter it is 05:40 am when I just woke up or 06:00 pm when I was working on those tiresome data input (registering invoices...)after functioning since 05:40. I have never feel this way. However, last night while I was doing the new menu. I suddenly had this depressive thought coming up. "I DON'T WANT TO GO TO WORK!" I even self-destructively started drinking (of course, a glass of wine- if you must know it was Berrys' House Red, Jean Luc- Terrier & Christian Collovray and very delicious!) at (God knows how!) 01:30.

I am not best at self diagnose but even then I knew, it had something to do with the Dutch guy who single handedly distroyed my professinal pride and comfort.

Anyways, I went to bed at 02:35 and woke up at 05:40 again.

This was today's lunch menu.

Chestnut mushroom and baby spinach soup (Rabbit asked me later how it was made and with ot without OIL)
Roast leg of lamb rubbed with rosemary and garlic (cheat gravy)
Homemade nut (roast) case (that's me!)
Blanched baby carrot, garden pea and sauteed mushroom salad with lemon dressing
Salad of broccoli, green bean and cabbage
Roasted baby potato and parsnip

Everything was easy as peas. And I finished all in time.

Just a little niggering feeling at that back of my head. Mark told me this morning that I should have gone for the Master Chef Competition. I said I would think about it...

Have a mezze menu coming up tomorrow. They are pretty easy as well. I am looking forward to marinated the lamb and chicken and make them into BBQ skewers. NO, let's don't forget about the felafels.

Sunny days in England. Something to cherish.

What I made tonight

Sautéed mushrooms, quinoas and carrots over a bed of baby leaves.

The view from my window

Long time

Well well...

It's been a long long time since I wrote anything here. Not that anyone was in a hurry to know what's going on in my life. Those closest, shall I say, know it no matter how.

Had a chat with C last night after my newly found passion: Jiu Jitsu. I was tired and awfully bruised and feeling seriously in need of some motherly guidance. She was like: na, it's gonna be cool. You will do fine. What's the worst could happen?

The thing is: in my absent time I kind of fell into one of those old school cliche. Through my struggling; I somehow got into Jiu jitsu and some kind of hard Ashtanga yoga after kick boxing.

I am not even sure if this is the aftermath of my much delayed TW trip or the effect of someone who just never cares enough.

So in stead of screaming and shouting. I let myself be bruised and went traveling.

After all, I thought it was my idiotic decision at the first place to bring me here. I'd better to make a wise  choice to take me out of where I don't want to be.

And this brings me to the foolproof shrimp dumpling recipe.

It didn't work the first time and maybe it still didn't work the 10th time.

But No-one, no-one can tell you that you cannot make it work.

As long as your heart is at the right place.  You gotta keep at it!

Here is my heart-felt Har Gau wrapper recipe:

2/3 cup of wheat starch
1/4 tapioca flour
a small pinch of salt
1.5 tbsp oil
1/2 cup of boiling hot water

MIX! with a fork and your hand afterward.

This recipe makes 16 wrappers. Don't roll it too thin and be very careful about it- roll them between the baking papers.

Choose what you want for fillings.

You can do it!

Let's keep it up; in the kitchen and everywhere else!

Lazy lazy lazy....

Super lazy blogger. If I may still call myself one.

Alrighty.

Just baked some LOW G.I. Apple pie flavoured soft cookies.

Here they are. Words are not enough to describe how yummy they are- I am speaking from a true non- sweet tooth person's point of view- I will expalin more on this later on.

And if they don't look very yummy. Forgive me and my blackberry.
This is how I made them.

You will need:

Preheat your oven at 150C.

2 random apples, peeled and grated.
2 packs of small instant oats, I use apple and blueberry ones. But I am sure 80g of any normal oats will do.
100g wholemeal flour, however, I have something far better so in a typical chefy style- ie, we use what we have in our dry store- I used this cool thing: Oat bran and some plain flour mix. Let's say: 90g/ 10g
14 tsp of Splenda or somthing like this- sweetener.
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup ground almond
2 eggs
3 tsp vanilla essence
Here comes the weird bit: 1/2 cup of WHATEVER soft runny sweet things you have in your kitchen. I had hoped to have a small tin of baby apple puree but unfortunately I am not- and probably will never (if I carry on working a lot...) to have a baby in the house so this is a no go. I am talking more like the directions of honey, maple syrup, soft RUNNY jam, golden syrup.... you get it. I have a jar of homemade quince jelly by the lovely French mum of an ex which I don't know what to do about. (I mean the runny jelly...) So I just poured some into my mix.

Mix everything together. Then add 1/2 tsp of baking powder. Mix it in properly again.

And now it comes the easy bit: if you, like me, find it impossible to resist buying all of those Unnecessary kitchen equipments whenever you put a foot in the shops. You will, like me, have one of those, silicon mini baking moulds. Oil those little holes and spoon some heap mix in each of them. If you don't have them- then I congratulate you for your strong wills and your bank accounts. Just line a baking paper over your baking tray and drop a tsp of those mix, with some space apart from each other, like 3 cms.

Bake them for 30 minutes.

Happy late Easter!