Thai Chicken Stir Fry

I saw a recipe today for a Thai Chicken and Cashew stir fry that looks really good. So I decide to give it a go for dinner.

I also saw this other chili chicken recipe and had lots of vegetables in it that looked great so I decide to combine the two.

Only thing is I forgot to get the cashew! Ooops, so guess it's just Chicken Stir Fry.

Sugar Snap peas were in season and they're my favourite :) so I chucked in a handful at the end to keep them crunchy. Added some fish sauce, cooking wine, sugar, lime juice and herb mix in a tube. and of course some chili. toss all in a wok. Easy Peasy Dinner is served.

Everything Udon

So home alone, too lazy to go shopping and with left overs from hotpot couple nights ago, I decide to see what I can throw together for a dinner for 1.

1 packet of Udon noodles,

few slices of hot pot sliced pork

some radishes, handful of salad leaves

half an onion and some korean spicy sauce. and TADA

half an hour later- this is my Everything Udon. It's alrite, the soft smooth udon noodles, crunchy radish, a tad bit spicy, and some meat and veg for a balanced meal :)

Everything Pasta

I remember having some really simple pasta at Cafe Sopra and loved it. So thought I'll give it a go.

Found some Broccolini at the supermarket, so I wanted to build my flavours from there.

And who can say no to Bacon (I could be the president of the I <3 bacon fanclub) and now for some colours, added grape tomatoes, olives and for texture danish fetta.

This is pretty yum, I made it again the week after for my vegetarian bf and sadly had to omit the bacon :( *sigh*

Seafood Chowder

So another cold cold night and I saw a pretty picture of this Creamy Seafood Chowder in my cookbook last night so figured I'll give it shot.

Only difference is though, in the cookbook the chowder was served in a hallowed out bread roll, that just seem too fiddly for me.

I'm usually not a big fan of creamy soups, but this one was really really yum. I made a massive pot - as you do with these things. So plenty for lunch tomorrow

Creamy Seafood Chowder

• Garlic
• Onion
• Butter
• Bacon
• Carrots
• Celery
• Potato
• Parsley
• Seafood Mix
• Parmesan Cheese
• Cream
• Milk
• Stock
• Paprika
• Allspice
• Salt & Pepper

- Melt Butter, brown the garlic and onion

- Add the vegetables

- Add stock, simmer until soft and then blend

- Add corn, milk, seafood, cream and seasoning

- Simmer and then top with parsley and Parmesan cheese and serve

Beef and Bean Stew

Seems like I've been in hibernation mode since the beginning of Winter. I have been cooking but just not as often, and the last dinner party I had was hot pot...aka minimal cooking.

My favourite things to eat during the shivery winter months are stews/soups (plus it's also a one pot wonder)

Last week I made a Cajun seafood gumbo - sorry I forgot to take pictures, but mark my words - it was absolutely delish.

Since then I've been craving Oxtail and beans but was a bit too lazy to shop so I made do with the beef cut I had in my freezer -this actually cut down my cooking time (score!) As I was rather disappointed when I checked the recipe again after I had everything happily bubbling away that the stew would take 4.5 hrs to cook!!! I wanted to eat it tonight!!!

Lucky with the beef chunks diced into bite size, the stew was basically (I was too hungry to wait longer) ready in 2 hrs.

Beef and Beans Stew

• Onion
  
• Garlic
• Carrots
• Celery
• Potato
• Herbs
• Butter Beans
• Butter
• Can of Tomato
• Stock
• Worcestershire Sauce
• English Mustard
• All Spice
• Nutmeg
• Cinnamon
• Pepper & Salt
• Chili flakes (for an extra kick)

Melt Butter in oil, Brown meat, add onion and garlic,

Add all vegetables til soften, add herbs

Add can tomatoes, stock, sauce and mustard

Add seasoning,

Cover and simmer for 35 mins

Add Butter beans, cook for another 20 mins til everything is soft and liquid has boiled down.

Cooking Chinese

So it was one of those rare occasions when I feel like cooking Chinese food. Guess I've been pretty spoilt as a kid. I always like to have my many dishes. Despite just the 2 of us living here, I tend to want at least 3 dishes. But it's such a pain thinking up the various dishes to cook really.

Tonight i invite my new temp neighbour, 50's Babe to join us for dinner. Dr Rats was suppose to be here also, but she missed out coz of work - poor thing.

So my 4 dishes for the night are: "Fish fragrant Eggplant" - this is a modified Sze Chuan dish, then Chicken and Chinese mushrooms, Black Bean & Garlic ribs and also just some ginger stirfried green veggies.

Just enough so there's leftovers for lunch for all 3 of us. Yay! Delious, took me about 1 hr to make everything :)

Black Bean & Garlic Spare Ribs

Ingredients

• Black Bean Sauce
• Garlic
  
• Chili
• Pork Spare Ribs

Directions

• Rinse ribs, cut into bite size pieces
• Marinate with Black with sauce, add chopped garlic and chili
• Place in steamer (I cook mine in my rice cooker as I make the rice)
• Ready to eat :)
  

Cinco De Mayo 2011

Time for Mexican again and it's Cinco de Mayo! Though we steered clear from the Tequillas since it was a school night.

Instead we had some quesadillas, guacamole, salsa and mole pollo. Basically my favourite food.

Did a spin on the salsa - used both green and golden kiwi fruits to give it sweetness to balance with the acid of the lime juice and freshness of the tomatoes.

I think maybe the next time I have Mexican, I'll make some burritos and fajitas :)

Bits and Pieces

Finally finally got my new sandwich press! Uber excited :D

So not satisfied with making just cheesy toast, I decide to put on my favourite Mexican snack, Quesadillas! Which was basically toasted tortillas with melted cheese and whatever toppings you like in the middle. I made it with mushrooms, roasted veg and also some refried beans.

For toppings, I made a guacamole and a pico de gallo. Which is basically just onions, tomato, chili, coriander, lime juice and salt.

May I say... Yummo! So simple and quick! Totally adding it to my weekly favourite snacks list:)

Alongside, I also made some curry fishballs, panfried dumplings and an African sweet potato peanut soup. I think the Africans really liked Peanuts or peanut butter!

For a lot of randomness and lack of consideration of how the various flavours would work together. It wasn't too bad, not too bad at all. But next time. I'll probably give it a bit more thought heh :)

Left Overs and Whatnot

So for the lovely Ms Neverthlands farewell back to the US of A, I made a hasty dinner for a group of us to say goodbye. Lucky it was the Monday after Earth Hour weekend, with plenty of left overs from the bbq we had (which was great fun! Totally doing it again in 2012~)

So I toss some pre-marinated drumsticks in the oven to grill, while I concentrate on pasta that I throw together with whatever I could find in the pantry. Also there's a Waldorf salad - plenty of food for 5.

For the pasta, I had some left over sausages, tomoatoes, parsley, onion, garlic, chili and capsicum.

African Night

Been too distracted lately to update my kitchen, but it's been bubbling away happily. There's been a few dinner parties recently. From one end of the world to another.

First was an African Night I had for some friends, so I made African Peanut Chicken Stew, a quinoa and baked pumpkin salad and Curry Beef. Everything was really delicious. Though I must admit to cheating a little as I got a pack of South African Durban Curry sauce in a satchel. This really cut my work in half - Yay!

Initially I wanted to make a couscous salad, but then turns out my pack of couscous is kinda....past used by date, oops. But fear not, there was a pack of Quinoa readily available in my pantry. I've had this grain-like seed once, and really liked it

. But the salad's recipe is basically from the back of the can of Cole's Chickpeas. It was so easy. I even showed my friend Mr Singerboy the dish, he loved it and made it for his flatmate :)

This was such a colourful salad, I'd definitely make it again.

It consist of:

CucumberCapsicum
Chickpea
Coriander
Cumin
Quinoa
Lime juice
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Just toss everything together!

The African Peanut Chicken Stew was pretty yummy also, actually this was my flatmate's favourite dish actually. This was the first time I cooked with peanut butter. I just love my one pot wonders :) These things usually taste better the 2nd day.

Korean Night

Never been a fan of cooking Asian food, though I do love eating it! So this morning my Asian BF (Dr Rats) told me she passed her full license driving test, (Yay! Congrats! so I offered to cook her dinner to celebrate. And then came the guest list....

Had Singerboy, Ms CrazyChicken, DangerousDriver and The Handsome Welshman (THW).

I remembered I still got most of the ingredients for this Korean dish - Fire Chicken that my flatmate made previously.

And it was really yum. So working along that line, i got the noodles to make Jap Chae (potato glass noodles), got some kim chee, dumplings and Endamame beans and also some Chinese broccoli just in case there wasn't enough veggies.

Being my first attempt, I was quite happy with the results. Dr Rats even said "But thank you for dinner, it was very very good! Very impressed la cause it tasted like the restaurant stuff!" YAY!

And considering it wasnt that hard to make, will definitely do it again!

Spanish Night v2

Can't even remember how this dinner party came about, I was inviting my Asian BF (actually Dr Rats) over for dinner and then, she asked her BF's sister and her fiancée, and then the fiancee's ex flatmates... so somehow we ended up with 7 people for dinner.

And as usual, I had no idea what to make, trying to come up with a menu plan while I was sitting @ a training course at work and finally decided on Paella at 4:00pm. With some bread, salad and mushrooms, should be decent.....and then Dr Rats turned up and questioned the amount of food I had available. thinking I will underfeed my guests! Wat?!? NEVER!

So trying to find something else to make at the very last minute, like 6:45pm (people were suppose to arrive 7ish....) What do I have in my cupboard?!? Seriously not going down to the shops again!

So found the very last 2 half (or less than half) packets of pasta, tinned mackerel, some olives, capers, chili, onion and garlic and ta-da. Everything in my cupboard pasta! It was probably the tastiest thing that night, since I kinda forgot to season the paella....oooops

So with some wines and cocktails, it was a rather nice
despite being rather last minute and unplanned :)

Jan 2011 Dinners

Found all these random dinner pictures from my phone from the past week. so figured I better post them up before I forget.

First off, Mexican Mole Chicken, basically one of the basics I cook pretty often since it never fails me despite me not following the recipe each time. so something must be right? hahahah

Next up, Chinese Fried Rice with Lap Cheung, since my flatmate made like 1o cups of rice the other night. Meaning alooot of left over rice and what better way to get rid of it than Fried Rice? I put in alot of stuff in mine, egg, lap cheung, mix veg, onion, garlic, and some coriander to top it off after seasoning with soy sauce and sesame oil. My flatmate said it tasted even better the nx day. Yes there was that much rice for lunch the next day also!

Tonight's Meal is Pan Fried Barrimundi with Lemon and butter along with an Everything-in-the-fridge-salad. Which was pretty awesome. Very healthy too since it was pretty low carb. I actually tried to bake the fish at first, but it wasn't quite ready when I was ready to eat so off into the fry pan it went. :)

Perfect with little bit of crunchiness on the outside and the flesh was still moist and tender.

I Love Breakfast!!!

Best Meal of the Day, even though I usually don't eat breakfast during the week. Solely because I love my sleep too much, and usually don't get up til the very last possible minute. aka 8:30am (yes I start work @ 9:00am, YouSeemi!)

But weekends are alllll about the Brunch, Big Breakfast for me. Though typically I'm not really a fan of cafe breakfast, since usually I make it better. Exception was the Soft shell crab omelet @ Cafe Ish, that was to DIE FOR!

Anyway so when Muso Dude comes to visit, I make vegetarian breakfast, last time, I had some fetta cheese scrambled eggs, roasted tomato, spinach, garlic mushrooms and tofu (just coz they were around). It was pretty delish and I didnt even miss my meat.

But then the following week I had a girlie sleep over and I made sure I got some Bacon ready. And Avocado! Love love love avocado :) I wanted to fit more on my plate but ran outta space, ooops. Greedy! HA