Making sense of culinary art

Dish #9 - Fried mee tai bak

2010-06-08T14:37:00.000+08:00

Ah yes, I finally revived this blog. This is harder than I thought. Looks like 52 dishes is not possible this year eh? I barely have 10 and it's mid year already! :(

Anyway, whipped this up about 2 weeks ago I think.. pretty similar to most of the stuff I did before.

Think I'm finally getting the hang of frying stuff. Now.. I wanna try a little bit of Italian soon. Hopefully.

Nandos! Very peri-peri

2010-06-08T14:00:00.000+08:00

Ok I know, I SUCK. Sorry I haven't been updating much. Goes to show what's happening to my new year's res.. but hey, how many of you have already broke urs? :P

Anyhow, Nandos recently opened its first outlet in Singapore. I had no idea what the big hype was all about, cos everyone seemed excited that there's finally gonna be one here. So the 7ners + 1 + other halves went there for Nad's bday dinner.

We were all hungry when we met up, and since Nandos didn't take reservations, the only way we could get in was to queue like everyone else. The queue was disheartening. Then again we didn't have much choice cos we didn't make reservations anywhere else and it was a Friday night. We finally got in after an hour and a half of queuing!! Starvation.

Well, the staff were pretty friendly despite grouchy customers and I must say, the food didn't disappoint me at all. The sauce was, as they say, 'very peri-peri'! I had the 1/4 chicken with 2 sides, and I chose the 2nd spiciest sauce, but being the chilli queen it still wasn't enough for me. I added the spiciest sauce and it was good! The kind of spiciness that doesn't burn your tongue and kill your senses, but yet gives you the kick you seek. The kind you feel a bit dizzy after eating.. haha. I loved it!

So if you're willing to queue, then please go try Nandos! Else, maybe you could wait till the excitement dies down or smth. :)

My recipe book~!

2010-03-15T15:38:00.000+08:00

Somehow people keep giving me notebooks over the years.. this is courtesy of Grace 2 Christmases ago!~ :D

Dish #8 - Fried Rice version 1.0

2010-03-14T23:05:00.000+08:00

Mum gave me the free reigns today. So I really made this without any assistance. :D

I'll definitely add more ingredients next time. I was actually quite worried that it might not turn out right, as with the po piah incident the last time round... I think I did what all beginner cooks do - the jump-out-of-the-splattering-oil's-way dance... hhaha. But hey, it turned out alright! Mum gave a 7 out of 10. Good enough for me!

My sunny side ups however, were a total disaster. :( I can never seem to flip them properly! boo hoo.

Charly T's

2010-03-14T20:03:00.001+08:00

Ok I meant to do this but I kept forgetting.. I need to start doing more reviews on the places I've dined at so that I can keep track of where I've been! I mean, don't you find it a problem thinking of where to go everytime? I do.

So the 7ners celebrated my birthday 2 weeks ago at Charly T's. It's a really nice place... although the aircon wasn't really well that day haha. The staff were really nice though! You can actually request which part of the chicken you want. At first our mac and cheese didn't have enough cheese, so during the meal when the waitress came to check on us and we feedback to her, she took our mac and cheeses back to add more cheese! :D Soff was pretty miffed cos she had already finished hers by then.. HAHAHA...

Basically the place is pretty much like Kenny Rogers.. sans the corn muffin. I had the quarter chicken!

Pardon the lousy photography, it was taken with my phone cam which tends to overexpose a lot. Sigh.

Anyway, I think the special thing about this place was that they had many different sauces to go with the chicken. Since most of us (or was it all of us?) ordered the chicken, we could all sample one another's sauces.. haha! I think the BBQ sauce was pretty good.. there was another sauce that was good too, but I 4got what it was! :( This is what happens when you don't do a review immediately. Oh well.

Overall,

Food: 3.5/5

Ambience: 3.5/5

Service: 4/5

Charly T's is at the building next to The Cathay ( I think it's Mount Sophia?). If you walk from the back entrance of Plaza Sing to the Cathay you'll pass it.

And I promise to do my food reviews immediately next time.

Dish #7 - Chicken rice... but not made yet.

2010-03-11T12:16:00.000+08:00

And... I'm 4 dishes behind now. ARGH!!!

I observed Mummy cooking chicken rice today.. I didn't participate cos I thought it looked difficult.. turns out the only difficult part is deboning and decapitating the chicken! :P Will try it out next time though.. still have yet to master peeling ginger properly.. sigh.

On another note, I think I'll organize a dinner party for my jie meis soon to try out my dishes.. heh.

Dish #6 - Sambal Kang kong

2010-02-25T11:48:00.001+08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. I know, I'm waaaaayyyy behind schedule! This is what happens to new year's resolution eh? You keep it for the first few weeks and then subsequently life catches up with you (excuses!) and then you forget about it. Actually, I was busy the past few weeks because of CNY and my grandma, so my mum was busy too and hardly had time to teach me. =/

Well, I'll work hard to catch up! I'm three dishes behind, but I'll try and catch up.. next week's term break, so I'll do my best! I've finished one module too, so I only need to go to school for 2 days, which means more time to myself. Looks like my dream of a 5-day weekend and a 2-day week has come true! :P

I digress.

Today's dish is pretty simple. It's the Sambal Kang Kong, my all-time absolute vegetable dish. I've always like leafy veggies, and kang kong's one of the best! Not to mention the spice.. love love..

I've actually tried this dish quite sometime ago before I started this blog, so this is actually my second attempt.

Hee~! :D

Mum actually wanted to teach me a fish and a soup dish, but she prepped all the ingredients waaaayyy before, so I didn't have the chance to go through the whole process, so I guess that'll be some other time. :)

On another note, my sch lappy crashed on me earlier this week, but the guy managed to fix it for me.. and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because he fixed my bluetooth too! That means I can upload pics from my hp more easily.. yay!

Dish #5 - Cabbage Porridge, or 'kiam bei'

2010-01-25T14:01:00.000+08:00

I woke up early for gym today but I was still feeling a little undigested and heavy in the tummy.. not to mention sleepy. I was contemplating whether I should continue for gym, but the decision was made for me. Turns out mum was still feeling quite sick in the stomach since last night (I assure you it's not because of the po piah, see previous entry) and she gave me the task of cooking lunch. With her instructions of course.

So this time, I was determined not to screw up again. Porridge.. how badly can you screw THAT up. HAHAHA..

Cabbage porridge, or what we call 'kiam bei', is my dad's favourite dish. I HATED it when I was young cos it tasted so.. boring. Still don't really have a particular affection for it, but at least I'm willing to eat it more for health conscious reasons.

And I'm glad to announce that.. it turned out well! :D Pretty fantastic in fact. :)

My first attempt at the porridge. :)

Mum was pretty encouraging by saying it tasted good, so hopefully when I do this again it'll turn out the same standard. :D

Dish #4 - Fried po piah (An ultimate disaster)

2010-01-25T13:27:00.000+08:00

Sorry for no posts last week.. not because I've slacked off, but because my mum was under the weather, so she couldn't teach me.

Anyway, yesterday she decided 2 teach me how 2 fry po piah. I for one, love to eat it, and I thought making it wouldn't be too difficult. I mean seriously, how badly can u screw up frying po piah right?

WRONG. Sooooooooooooooo wrong.

She gave me all the instructions and all before she went for mass. The part I hated the most was folding the po piah because no matter how hard i try, mine never looked nice. Either that or the ingredients would all spill out.

So folding wasn't too bad, apart from mine looking extremely fat compared to my mum's. (I have to squeeze in the ingredients more tightly) And then I started frying.

That's when the disaster began.

Firstly, because I piled them all on one plate, they started to stick together because of the weight. So when I pulled them apart, some of the skin broke. I patched them back with cornflour, a little trick I learnt from my aunt before.

The first few po piahs turned out okay.

The fat successful po piahs

Then as I put a rather fragile looking one(by that I mean the skin look like it was gonna fall apart) in to fry, but it slipped and it tumbled in instead, causing a splash of the oil onto the stove a.k.a. mess, and causing the popiah the break.

All the contents spilled out.

ARGH!!

I fished it back out onto a separate plate, trying to clear all the ingredients from the oil, and decided to try again. But no, everything just went downhill from there. Almost everyone that I popped in started falling apart after sometime. I can even recognize the sound the moment it breaks - there'll be a loud sudden sizzle.

The disastrous popiahs.. :(

Eventually I stopped because I knew I was gonna destroy the rest if I went any further.. so I waited for mum to come back to do damage control. :(

I guess I'll attempt it again another day.. :(

Dish #2 - Sa Po Fun & Dish #3 - Black Fungus with minced pork soup

2010-01-15T11:25:00.001+08:00

Hmm.. I figured if Mum teaches me more than one dish per week it's okay too.. so that I can review the dishes in the free weeks...
Today was pretty much a fungal affair. Ok so I didn't feel like revising what I've learnt last week (I'm not the kind who likes to repeat food too often) so I asked my mum to teach me something else first. I was amazed at how easy making soup was! It's almost idiot proof!

Sa Po Fun, also known as claypot rice, is done a little differently in my house, simply because we all hate to eat the hardened and overburnt rice that collects at the bottom of the claypot. Therefore, we do NOT use the claypot to cook claypot rice.. talk about irony.

Anyway, it was only the preparation that was a slight bit tedious, but otherwise it was pretty easy! Still need to learn how to judge by Mum's 'agaration' rule though.

First attempt at claypot rice.. preparations of ingredients were not by me.. I'll do everything the next time round.

I'm considering this dish to most probably be the dish I'll bring to the CNY dinner gathering at Jas's place.. heheh..

This was my soup!

Ok it's a bit messy because my mum was doing the laundry while giving me the instructions. She gave it a tad bit too late, and by then, the soup started overboiling. Oops.

See, I can even screw up something simple such as SOUP. Sigh.

It turns out that it's REALLY REALLY simple to prepare! The only trouble I had was trying to identify the 'head' of the fungus when removing it.. haha.

Pardon the photography. My batts kept dying on me. I SOOOOOOOOO need a new camera. Sigh.

Dish #1 - 'Stewed' chicken with carrots and potatoes

2010-01-06T11:23:00.005+08:00

My mum usually refers to it as the food has been stewed, but according to Dictionary.com,

stew (verb): to undergo cooking by simmering or slow boiling.
stew (noun): a preparation of meat, fish or other food cooked by stewing, esp. a mixture of meat and vegetables.

Well, the preparation for this dish was anything but that really.

Anyway, it is one of my favourite dishes so of course I HAVE to learn how to cook it. :)

Overall, it seemed rather simple. Since it was the first dish, Mum allowed me to participate partially in the cooking process. I got to peel the carrots and potatoes, in which I was as usual, clumsy and awkward (hey gimme a chance, it's day 1!). While I gawked at how efficient my mum peeled the potatoes with a steady rhythm, I could only peel my potatoes slowly, cursing at all the buds. I had it easier with the carrots though. :)

Then came the frying part. By now I have some basic knowledge of frying, so it wasn't too bad. Mum basically instructed me what to do while I just carried it out. Of course, her rule of 'agaration' still confounds me a little. I mean seriously, when's 'enough'? Or how do you tell whether it's ready? All by her rule of 'agaration'.

Great.

Well, other than the fact that I was slow (which she complained of a couple of times), the dish didn't turn out too badly!

She also taught me how to fry tau gay.. simple enough.

So I'll be flying solo next week to review the 'stewed' chicken dish.. Let's hope I dun mess it up. :)

Reasons

2010-01-01T16:18:00.000+08:00

Reasons why I want to learn cooking

1) To impress men. After all, they did say that the way to a man's heart is through is stomach. :) There's been a few occasions where I've lost to a 'rival in love' because I couldn't cook. Which is not good.
2) To feed myself.
3) It's a survival skill.

Reasons why I did NOT start learning to cook earlier

1) No interest. Still not really passionate actually. Maybe I'll be more interested once I get into it. I'm learning cos I have to, and not exactly because I WANT to.
2) I'm a klutz in the kitchen. I kid you not. I can't do a simple chore without spilling or breaking something.
3) My mum usually preps our meals early in the day cos she works in the afternoon. I usually can't wake up in time to actually learn from her so early. Which is why we're gonna set a date to learn cooking. That's gonna be Mondays before I start working (cos I have no classes on Mondays this sem! yay!) and probably Sundays when I start working.
4) My mum's afraid I burn down her kitchen when she's not around. Thus I never get to do much experimenting on my own.
5) Plain laziness. haha.

1 year. 52 weeks. 52 dishes.

2010-01-01T13:01:00.001+08:00

So it's the new year. As with all new years comes new year's resolutions. One of my resolution this year is to learn how to cook... well, it was my resolution last year as well, but it didn't go very far.. and I really want to fulfill this resolution this year and this is why I've set up this blog.

A friend of mine recently asked me to be his 'moderator' for his new year's resolutions. That means I am responsible for making sure he fulfills his resolutions, or at least most of them, where I reward him if he fulfills it, and he punishes himself by giving me incentives if he doesn't. I thought it was a pretty good idea as it's quite motivating. This blog will, in that sense, act as my 'moderator' to fulfill this resolution of mine. Never mind the others.

Anyway, I have almost zero skills in terms of cooking and while I was coming up with a plan on how to work this out, I drew inspiration from the movie Julie & Julia. Of course I'm not so crazy as to stop my life for a year. I decided to start it slow and thus, this is gonna be my 2010 project: I'm gonna learn to cook a new dish every week of this year, and I will blog about my experiences and the dishes. I mean hey, at the end of the year, I'll be able to cook 52 dishes!

Who is going to be my teacher? Mummy dearest of course! My mum has fed me well and my dad and I are suckers for her cooking. My mum is specialised more in chinese dishes though, and I do wanna pick up other cuisines like western and italian and japanese perhaps.. so I'll be experimenting those from cookbooks. I've already got one- The Basic Cookbook, edited by Gina Steer. Among all the cookbooks I've come across, I felt really connected to this one as it really is about cooking for idiots like me.

A word of caution to my readers though. I really have absolutely NO skills whatsoever. I could do anything that's prepacked and instant, put rice into the rice cooker, make a decent toast (not even French), but that's about it. So if I blog about a new found knowledge but it's supposed to be basic knowledge of anyone who knows how to cook, don't be surprised. I really AM quite clumsy in the kitchen. :( This blog is about charting my growth and progress of this resolution, and hopefully, my dear readers, if you have any tips to give me, feel free to comment. I could definitely learn from you too. :)

P.S: Guinea pigs who want to volunteer themselves for me are most welcome. :)