Random recipes in 2013

Baked Buffalo Wings

So last week I tried out a few different recipes to varying degrees of success.

Here's the succesful one, and super duper easy, basically 3 ingredients only

Baked Buffalo Wings
Ingredients

• Chicken Wings
• 1 bottle of Frank's Hotsauce
• Unsalted Butter

Boil Chicken wings til cooked and no longer pink
Heat up hotsauce with butter
and then grill/bake chicken wings in oven and when crispy pour heated hotsauce over and keep adding the sauce to it every 5 minutes til sauce is finished

Nasu Dengaku

Here's another one of my new favourites, Nasu Dengaku. The sweet and salty flavour of the miso goes perfectly with the creaminess of the eggplant. I could just eat this all day long. and it was pretty simple to make.

Nasu Dengaku
Ingredients

• Eggplants, sliced in half vertically
• Spring onion
• Miso paste
• Sake
• Seasame Oil
• Toasted Seasame seeds
• Sugar
• Mirin

First, brush seasame oil on cut side of eggplant, place face down to grill in oven at 200 degrees C for 5 minutes til skin blackens, then flip it over and grill for another 5 minutes until it's all a bit mushy.

At this point, while eggplant is grilling, mix miso paste with mirin and a splash of sake (I used vodka) and heat on stovetop, add sugar and keep mixing til the paste is bit liquidly and spreadable. Take eggplant out of grill, spread miso mix on top and stick it back in oven for another 2-3 minutes, becareful the top can burned quite easily because of the sugar.

Remove from over and top with chopped spring onion and toasted seasame seeds to serve.

Slow-cooker Venture

Jamaican Stewed Peas before cooking

I do love my slow-cooker, especially during Winter. I often just chuck stuff in right before bedtime and wake up to an aromatic house. Honestly I think the smell wakes me up most of the time. LOL

So I've used my slow cooker over 4 times in the past week and a half, because my cooker is so big, I generally make a massive pot enough to feed 6 people - but there's only me. So I get sick of left overs really really fast. My friends and colleagues at work have been dragged into

tasters of my slowcooking venture. So far I have made Chinese Soups, Jamaican Stew and also an Italian dish.

Stewed Peas ah Ready!

Here's the Jamaican Stewed Peas recipe:
Ingredients

• 2 tins of Red Kidney Beans
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 1 ham hock
• 1 pack of gravy beef/chuck steak
• 1 onion chopped
• 3 clove garlic chopped
• 1 tspn ginger
• bunch of spring onion
• bunch of thyme
• Chili (I added lots)
• sprinkle of allspice, cloves, cinnamon
• Salt & Pepper to taste

And basically you just chuck everything in the slow cooker and wake up to deliciousness! This is such a comfort food dish for me and always brings a smile to my face. The authentic Jamaican version would have pigs tail instead of hamhock and also spinners (little doughy fingers that I was too lazy with)

Before: Chicken Cacciatorie

And the other thing I made was Italian Chicken Caccaitore, though it was ok for me. I have friends who raved about this dish, but maybe I used too much liquid and it was too soupy. Even though I left the lid off 2 hours before end.

But the slow cooker is great for Chinese soups! OMG why haven't I been doing this before? I looove soups, my family used to nickname me "Tong Wun" aka Soup Bowl because I would just drink bowls and bowls of soup everytime at dinner. I made Ginseng Chicken soup and also Dried veg with pork bones, carrots and shitake mushroom soup and they were great!

2013 eats! Piggie Returns!

Aaaah can it really be May already? So It's been well over a year since I last posted. ooops. Sheer laziness I tell ya. no other excuse.  So here's a few of the things I've cooked up over the past year and forgot to blog about....

                                                                  

Red Lentil Soup

Cauliflower soup with truffle Oil

Chinese Dinner: Fish fragrant Eggplant, corn egg drop soup, salted bake chicken wings and some seasonal

greens

 

Food Diary Journey

So I've started with a personal trainer recently to get back into shape before my friend's wedding and also my trip back to Hongkers later this year, so I can do some (more) damages to my credit card.
The trainer asked me to record my meals for a week and show her what I eat. I thought I was doing fairly well as I tend to cook pretty healthy stuff and don't snack that much.

But alas! That is not the case, after reviewing my week of eating, she told me I needed to cut out all carbs, dairy, soya and sweets. I was devastated! And I was to be on this diet for 21 days. *sigh* I really wanted to cry after that session. Though I will be strong and creative and come up with interesting and tasty meals. Here's a few of what I've made

Vegetable fritatta and salad

Garlic Prawns with Zuchinni and Pommegrante, goats cheese and celery salad

Falafel Wraps

Mr Shy Guy had this packet of falafel mix in the pantry for a while and I've always wanted to try make them, so with the Gumbo dinner cancelled. I guess tonight was the night.

I've made tabouli and the wraps before in my previous life working in the cafe on campus, but have never tried making the little balls of delicious crunchy bites.

Mr Shy Guy added his own twist to the wraps with shredded carrots and fetta cheese and these were some welcome additional flavours :)

Ingredients:

• Parsley
• Spring Onion
• Cous Cous (instead of cracked wheat)
• Tomato
• Olives
• Lemon Juice
• Salt &  Pepper
• Olive Oil
• Falafel mix
• Fetta
• Hommus
• Carrots
• Pita Bread
• Chili Sauce

Directions

• Add water to falafel mix in a bowl, let it sit for 10 mins while prepare the tabouli
• Chop up all the fresh ingredients, prepare cous cous as directed (Add hot water to them in a bowl) and mix everything together :)
• Form little patties of falafel balls and pan fry them in hot oil
• Spread hommus on pita bread, add tabouli, carrots, feta cheese, cooked falafel and chili sauce and roll into wrap
• Optional to grill them under sandwich press, tada!

Salmon Night

Had a massive lunch today - found this cute little Jap place behind my work called Dontoo and they had such a good value curry, only $6.90! It was pretty good too, I always like Japanese curry, especially on a Not-so-hot day like today :)

So by the time I was nearing the end work and I usually daydream about dinner, I still wasn't very hungry. My bosslady (SeeTouPor) suggest I cook some salmon and salad.

And remembering how easy it was to slap that piece of salmon in my sandwich press - used it like a George Foreman, I knew this was a winner.

Grab a sweet potato for a mash (Inspired by GrumpyOldMan when we were at his place yesterday) while I was there and a zucchini or courgette. Basically my 3 fav vegetables. Dinner was ready and eaten in no time, even managed to go for a walk and checked out the neighbourhood doggies.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Had a lovely surprise this morning, Mr Shy Guy got up early and made me breakfast -he's on holidays at the moment and I usually nudge him a bit when I wake up just coz it's so not fair he gets to sleep in!

Breakfast was great, I'm usually pressing the snooze button half a dozen times in the morning before finally rolling out of bed which leaves me with exactly 20 mins to shower and get out of the house. Never really have time for a cup of coffee even, much less breakfast.

But this was great! Maybe I should get more earlier more......if breakfast was being made for me everyday.

I contemplated on going out for dinner, but seeing signs on the restaurants around time advertising Vday dinner, usually $99 per person. *eeks* I don't think so....

So for tonight, I decided to try a Lemon

& Dill Butter Seared Scallops dish I saw

on my new Epicurious app. It even added a shopping list for me.

Alongside I made a variation of Ms G's Corn on the cob with parmesean and lime (totally forgot about the mayo) but it was great regardless. I could do with another cob.

Just to make it appear healthy and colourful, needed some greens. so there was a pear and walnut salad.

Last but not least, fresh bread with Alio's 25 year old Balsamic Vinegar and olive oil. I could just driiink that vinegar, the dark glossy thick syrup that coats my bread is definitely the star of the show.

All in all a lovely Vday with Mr Shy Guy :)