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Saturday, February 27, 2010

wonderful seafood



maine shrimp, lightly boiled in seawater, bought off the highway from a guy with 4 fingers on 1 hand who drives down from maine.

teeming with eggs under their legs, these shrimp are sweet, briny and amazingly small. that sucks, but it also makes them all the more sweeter. consumed with a vermouth like noilly prat, it is a very wonderful snack/lunch/supper.

lazy friday dinner

There weren't many people home today for dinner so my brother and I threw a bunch of stuff together for an easy meal of mushroom rice, pollo al jugo, and random fried asparagus.

Pollo al jugo:
This was something I learned while I was in Ecuador. Easy and light. Tomatoes, a red pepper, an onion, and some garlic blended together till liquefied. Chicken seasoned with pepper and salt and browned on a pan. Pour puree mixture in together with chicken in pan, add bay leaf and other tasty spices, and let simmer on low for about 30mins till cooked. Try to get most of the chicken covered with liquid. Light and refreshing, remember to salt to taste.

Mushroom rice:
Fry mushrooms with seasoning, throw in uncooked rice, water, chicken cube (if so inclined) and cook. Ok I'm not too sure about this one, my brother made it.

Random asparagus:
Asparagus randomly fried

Friday, February 26, 2010

the last day of chinese new year

house dinner on sunday with bertram and gavin.

from top left, clockwise: eggplant with aunty sophia's sambal belachan (chilli paste with shallots and dried shrimp), andrew's mapo tofu, bak kut teh (literally, meat bone tea. basically a pork soup made with spices such as cinnamon and star anise), wade's steamed garlic chicken with chinese wine, chicken with crispy kale ala dragon city of my childhood and aivi's leeks with prawns.


more closeups of the food.


gavin, when he's expecting. food.

bertram, andrew, vickie and linnea.

how can we forget our main staple?

a flurry of hungry limbs.

a slight pause of politeness for the camera and you.

back to what we do best.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

links beyond the lawn



butternut squash done, cabbage left


 let's try doing this entry in the style of gordon ramsay.

butternut squash, beautiful, sweet, mellow, orange *hand slap*.
skin. off.
chopping board, on.
cut in strips, then cubes.
pour oil. on. add dried thyme.
oven, 450F. bit of apple cider.
in (he's trying to say put it into the oven).

penne, you can find this in the supermarket.
into, salted boiling water. you want it al dente *really hard hand slap*.
it's done.
pour water, out, add oil and stir.

let squash cool.
blender, in.
cream. butter. in.
pulse.

brown butter, add chopped oregano.
toss pasta with creamed squash, spoon brown butter, over.

chicken breasts. organic. butterfly (cut them in half lengthwise).
rosemary, paprika, pepper, in.
skillet, on high heat.
take chicken, place, onto, the pan.

slice, plate with pasta *throws towel over shoulder*.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

GUAcamole anything to do with GUAtemala?

With all the Vege Coop avocados lying around our kitchen table and occasionally dropping on the floor, we decided to make guacamole. From guacamole we figured why no go for some tacos and relive those wild Guatemalan roadside food days. Guacamole, frijoles, homemade salsa, pan-fried steak, and spring onions fried in steak drippings, topped off with a generous helping of Tabasco sauce make for a rather mean taco.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

2/22 monday 630pm

it started with using an over ripe pear from last week's vege co op (we get a share of veges for our house. this forces us to cook creatively and shit powerfully.) it, the pear, will be thinly sliced, and will have crumbled parmesean cheese and walnuts on top, with some extra virgin olive oil (EVOO). it really was supposed to have truffle oil on it, but how would you get truffle oil in middle-of-no-where-town in a snap?

then, i thought, how about some linguini with arugula pesto?

but we had a lot of avocados (left over, again from the vege co op). when i came home to check on stock, i saw butternut squash. no points for guessing where we got that from.

so i made that pear salad.


and then, i blended 3 avocados with some oregano and cilantro, bacon drippings, EVOO and a few drops of lemon juice. of course, salt and pepper. then i tossed it with the bacon and the linguini.

i cubed that butternut squash, simmered it with apple cider and caramelised it with maple syrup.

then i butterflied 3 chicken breasts, seasoned them with salt and sugar and broiled them.


now we just need to wait till tomorrow morning for the veges to do their work.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

what to do with all this broccoli?

Broccoli from the Vege Coop went into this soup. Remarkably simple and refreshing tasting (despite suspicious toxic green color): boil the broccoli till semi tender, blend the broccoli with a little broccoli water to liquefy, salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a little olive oil, walnuts and cheddar cheese. A recipe of Mr Ramsay's found here. Ours was a little too thick but tasty nevertheless!

Since we were still hungry, we had some asparagus sauteed in a bit of herb butter on a bed of Heston's potatoes (recipe in earlier post) and apple sausages, topped off with Kewpie mayo and okonomiyaki sauce. The potatoes were quite a wait, about 1.5 hours of prep and cooking, but damn they're bloody worth the wait.

Kewpie and okonomiyaki sauce, a match made in heaven. Eat it with anything.

Friday, February 19, 2010

best friday lunch on campus

It's a tradition that we eat turnip cakes for chinese new year. On the sixth day of the Tiger year, we finally made (sort of) some in 80 Lawn! Since we are lazy to grate turnips but still want to enjoy some traditional new year food, we cheated and bought some from New York. However, we still have to fry them and make them nice! So we added XO sauce, oyster sauce and dark soya sauce. See, it looks pretty good, right :)

There was also porridge with minced turkey and pan-fried pork in bay leaf infused butter, salt, pepper, and paprika.

summer rolls


I was surprised how cheap it is to make this on your own and how expensive it is if you got it at a Vietnamese restaurant.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

grape juice tasting

Our first long overdue wine tasting session was both enlightening and a little inebriating. We sampled a sauvignon blanc, a chardonnay, a merlot, and a cabernet sauvignon. The first was fruity, the second was buttery, and the third and fourth....well I can't really remember much after the second one.

We experienced a variety of emotions throughout the session.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

leftover lunch

 More leftover ingredients. Stir-fried beef bits with rice wine, oyster sauce, cilantro, chilies...the usual stuff. Glorious bak-choy fried with XO sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce and leftover shrimp. It seems that what makes anything distinctly Asian are the sauces. What will we do without them?

Good basic food.

Monday, February 15, 2010

leftover CNY beef burger surprise

Basil marinated beef patty with sweet onions, tomatoes, and lettuce on bread that Luke baked.

We were too lazy for plates so wax paper served as a substitute, which reminded me of hawker food wrapped in brown paper back home. Oh gosh...chicken rice...mmmmmmmm.....

After watching Food Inc., I am having second thoughts about this basil marinated beef patty. E.coli surprise!

proof that we don't live on a staple of hotpot (pre-blog food)

Going clockwise.... Heston's potatoes, Momofuku-inspired eggs with Ikea salmon roe, my good mother's salmon pate, stale bread, gravlax.

Prawn and pork-rib stock with noodle (we used pasta), together in perfect harmony with a side of fried tofu. This left all our clothes, towels, bedsheets and the entire house smelling like a fish market for about a week, we were also shunned by our closest friends.

Mussels in a lemon-grass sauce which was to die for, Luke's impromptu stuffed chicken breast, tasty garlic bread.

proof of the new year that is chinese

Yes, we only eat hotpot. Our bowls overfloweth.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

fire down below


Sichuan hot pot on a cold winter's night left stomachs rumbling and exit burns on the toilet the following day. A very easy meal to make but the ingredients are hard to get when you live in the middle of no where. Most importantly is the Sichuan hotpot spice, which burns and numbs and makes you gag, the stuff that the fires of hell are probably made of, but you always come back wanting more.