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 :)