March 2, 2009

Kung-fu Baking

Posted in My Gastronomical Affairs at 12:38 am by hsin

My week has been insane.

My upcoming weeks, will be insaner.

Not cool, not cool.

So imma just do a quick write up about the few cooking/baking episodes I managed to squeeze in between work and visa paperwork hell.

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Cuppacake Attempt #2: Sweet & Salty Honey Peanut Cupcakes

The Pass:

Compared to my previous attempt, the cake finally took on a more cupcake-like shape – thanks to my $18.00 investment in a muffin pan.

*pats self on back*

Also successful was the combination of sweet honey and salted chopped peanuts, which nicely balanced off each other’s taste and flavour without overpowering one another. ^^

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The Phail:

Besides the muffin tin, I also spent (albeit a lot less) on a piping bag and the accompanying plastic nozzles.

Unfortunately, this was one of those times when Cheap does not necessarily = Good Bargain.

The nozzles I had were crooked and extremely small; and coupled with poor icing consistency (the other thing that also Phailed), my frosting job did not turn out quite the way I’d imagined/hoped it to have. T.T

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Cuppacake Attempt #3: Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Cupcake

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To be honest, this is by far my suckiest batch of cupcakes.

I think there’s some sort of lesson in this episode somewhere – possibly something to the lines of “Don’t Be So Bloody Ambitious In Your Third Attempt”. =.=

I was way over my head with this one; which by the way, if done correctly i.e. by someone with a lot more experience, has the potential to momentarily put anyone’s sweet cravings to rest.

It is after all, Chocolate, Banana and Peanut Butter.

That’s like, a banana-infused Reese Peanut Butter Cup – with frosting!

The original recipe called for a caramel glaze; but I’d just bought a new piping set and wanted to use it right away.

And I figured, three rich ingredients were more than good enough for a single cupcake, and if I were to drizzle it with caramel then I’m just gonna inflict everyone at home with diabetes and that’s not good, I think.

So I attempted the next best thing:

Yet despite my new piping set, my frosting once again failed to look anything remotely like what I’d envisioned it to be. And to make it worse, it looks a lot shittier compared to my previous 2 attempts. T___T

I kept adding more sugar to try to thicken it up, and when that failed I even threw in a bit of cream cheese BUT NOTHING WORKED! If anything it kept getting creamier and paler till it no longer resemble the thick, velvety choc ganache frosting that it was supposed to be.

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And then I tried disguising salvaging my botched job by sprinkling some chopped peanuts on top; but as you can see, that did not work out too well either.

/faints

To my consolation though, it didn’t taste as bad as it looked.

And although they took a while longer than the previous two batches to finish off, the cupcakes did eventually disappear into the deep, dark oblivion of many a-stomach pits. Plus, the peanut butter + chocolate combination never ceases to make people happy. 🙂

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Taking a break from baking to indulge in stove-top cooking

I successfully made roasted pumpkin soup! 😀

No pictures to document the process nor the end-product; but it received 3 favourable reviews from 3 separate discerning pumpkin-soup-drinkers, and I’m proud as anything.

My first ever try, and I didn’t stuff it up despite the stress of having to feed 2 new mouths that I’ve never fed before.

One of whom is Quin, long-lost friend from high school, partner of Awesome Chef Boyfriend Mark.

Awesome Chef Boyfriend Mark is an Aussie ang moh whose Malaysian cooking, apparently, can put Malaysians to shame. *_*

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It was quite strange to hear him talk about roti jala and kuih lapis like they were as common to him as pancakes or pies.

And then there was his endless fascination with the concept of  chicken chop (“Tapioca flour battered-chicken! With gravy!“); which, prior to him mentioning it, had never occured to me as being an exclusively-Malaysian thing.

To me, all the chicken chops and lamb chops have always been Western-food staples. Who would have guessed. =.=

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So yeah, while the Southern Pork Roast failed to impress, at least I had the soup to somewhat save the day.

Oh the stress of cooking for others.  m(_  _)m

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Then there was my Aglio e Olio pasta for Mussels Pig-Out night.

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While Uma, Sy and Val sweated and bled over mussel-debearding, I was assigned the simple task of tossing some spaghetti with garlic, olive oil, breadcrumbs, crushed chilli and parsley. ^^

Ever since the horrible episode with the cupcakes, I decided to adopt the “Keep it simple” motive with all my meal-preparation activities.

More so for this pasta since it was supposed to be an accompaniment to Uma’s Chilli Mussels and Val’s Butter & Leek Mussels – both of which have distinctive flavours of their own that shouldn’t be overpowered by the side dishes.

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Having regained a bit more confidence in the cooking department, I’ve decided to venture back into the baking project – keeping in mind to start simple and fully grasp my basics first.

So. In spirit of All Things Simple, here is:

Cuppacakes Attempt #4: Vanilla Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

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The ground zero of cupcake-making. Just plain butter, flour, sugar, milk and vanilla beans for the base; and cream cheese, sugar and butter for the icing. How could it possibly go wrong?

Well you put me in the equation.

This time around, I was so focused on getting the consistency of the frosting right (which I finally did – look how pretty they are!), that I let slip the process of making the actual cake. =.=

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As a result, I ended up with really heavy and moist cakes, instead of light and fluffy ones as I had intended. =/

I don’t know exactly what went wrong, but I have a pretty rough idea that it had something to do with me being too excited about finally getting my frosting the right texture, and must have fished out the cakes from the oven a tad too early. =.=

Seriously, who needs Mr Miyagi’s “wax on, wax off” training to cultivate patience and discipline.

Just send your kid to Patisserie School.

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February 19, 2009

pork and banana

Posted in My Gastronomical Affairs at 10:00 am by hsin

Spotted at the Perth train station:

It’s easily one of the cutest public campaigns I’ve ever seen.  >.<

So I had to stop and take photos of them.

Which, in similar effect of ‘random pedestrian stop to look up in the sky’, prompted passerbys to take notice of the posters on the wall too.

Maybe Transperth should hire me as their stealth marketer. 😉

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On an entirely different note, here are pics of my first attempt, Mmy:

Texture of cream cheese frosting a bit phail, cos I didn’t have enough icing sugar in storage, and I couldn’t be bothered using an electric hand mixer cos I didn’t wanna wash up. =.=

And, I think due to my ingredients ratio and/or the cheapo cake papercups I used which gave no support, my cupcakes turned out a bit flat and wide. T.T

But then again no one complained (I am after all surrounded by people who were happy just to lick off the mixing bowls), and they were being snapped off my hands even before I was done assembling the frosting and the banana disk. =.=

Oh you vultures. Thanks for being so undiscerningly supportive. ^^

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February 14, 2009

yummy yummy yummy i got food in my tummy

Posted in My Gastronomical Affairs at 11:54 pm by hsin

Valentine Menu on a (pretty tight) Budget:

Chicken Schnitzel with Creamy Dill sauce

Rosemary & Garlic Potatoes

Chocolate Pudding

Altogether I think the meal for two cost us around 5 bucks each! 😀 Of course, not including all the painstaking manual labour that goes into the cooking and washing process. =.= Especially the washing process.

And because Dan’s parents are arriving tomorrow, he’s been going on quite a bit of a cleaning rampage (we woke up one morning and it was like… magic!). So I guess the least we can do is try to maintain the spotless-ness of the entire house.

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Recipe 1: The Chicken (adapted from Elise’s Pork Schnitzel recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1 large piece of chicken breast
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 Tbsp milk
• 3/4 cup bread crumb ***
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 3/4 cup chicken stock
• 1/2 teaspoon dried dill (or 2 teaspoons chopped fresh dill)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sour cream

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*** How to make fresh bread crumbs

You can just substitute it with off-the-shelf bread crumbs; but the last time I had a supply of those in my pantry, a family of spiders decided to make it their home. Which was quite strange, since it was stored in an air-tight container, and was hardly ever used. =.= It freaked me out – and that was the end of my love affair with cheap, packaged bread crumbs.

So when I found out that making bread crumbs is actually a lot simpler than I had expected it to be (which was to be honest quite simple to begin with but I never gotten around doing it – I just never lived down my fear of stored bread crumbs), I whipped out my blender and got right to work.

All you need is a few pieces of half-stale bread with their crusts removed; tear them into 1-inch squares, and throw them into the blender/food processer!

4 slices of bread = 1 cup of bread crumbs

No need for first toasting the bread or crumbling them with your hands. I supposed my idea of making bread crumbs stemmed from the pre-food processer era.

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Step by step instruction (copy pasted from Elise’s recipe, with slight modifications to ingredients and, uh, utensils)

1. Use a meat hammer to pound the chicken breast as thinly as possible.  The original recipe called for the pork cutlets to be about 1/4-1/8 inch in thickness, but I don’t know if you can achieve that with chicken breast. Especially if you were substituting the hammer with a potato masher. =.=
2. Set out 3 shallow bowls.
   • One with a mixture of the flour, salt, and pepper.
   • The second with the egg and milk whisked together.
   • The third with a mixture of the bread crumbs and cayenne pepper.
3. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet on medium high heat.
4. Dredge the cutlets first in the seasoned flour, then dip the cutlets in the egg mixture, and then into the mixture of bread crumbs and cayenne pepper.
5. Sauté the cutlets for 3-4 minutes on each side, or until the chicken cooks through fully. Remove the chicken from the skillet and cover with foil and place in oven to keep warm (in other words, around 100 C).
6. Add the chicken stock into the skillet to deglaze the pan, scraping the bottom of the pan to loosen the brown bits.
7. In a small bowl mix the dill and salt into the sour cream. Stir the sour cream mixture into the chicken stock. Heat and stir until mixture thickens (do not let boil).
8. Serve the cutlets with the sauce. Serves 2.

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And the result:

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Recipe 2: Rosemary and Garlic Potatoes

Unlike the other two recipes, this wasn’t an experimental process since I’ve made it many many times in the past, and have fed it to many many people ever since.

But I’ve checked: recipe hasn’t made it to this site yet; so Imma put it up anyway.

And for the record, it’s a simple-as-hell, borderline-cheat version of any rosemary and garlic spuds recipes out there – so it’s a good last minute thing to whip up. 🙂

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Ingredients (for 2 servings of side):

• 1 large potato, scrubbed and diced to about 1-inch cubes with skin on
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, finely-chopped
• 1 tsp of dried rosemary
• 2-3 tbsp olive oil
• Salt & freshly-grounded black pepper to taste

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Method:

1. Cook the potatoes in a pot of salted water until just right (i.e soft enough for a fork to go through, but not overly mushy because we don’t want to end up with mashed potatoes).
2. On a small skillet (fuu, jargon), heat the olive oil on medium high heat.
3. Fry the garlic  + 1 tsp of rosemary till the garlic starts turning light brown.
4. Remove the skillet from the heat, as to avoid burning the garlic.
5. Drain the potatoes, and stir in the garlic/rosemary oil infusion.
6. Season with salt and pepper, plus more rosemary if you want.

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Result:

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Recipe 3: Chocolate Pudding (from scratch)

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Once more, recipe was taken from here. And this website is quickly becoming my new cooking reference, because all the (simpler) recipes I’ve tried out from here have turned out a lot better than I’d expected. 🙂

Which can’t be said for Taste.com.au, my other recipe website which has heaaaps of different food and cuisine. But somehow I just phail like 7 out of 10 times when I pick recipes off this page. T.T

Granted, there were times I didn’t have some of the ingredients and tried to substitute them with what I had in my pantry; or even left them out completely if I convinced myself that it/they weren’t that necessary.

DON’T JUDGE ME. IT’S CALLED EXPERIMENTING FOR A REASON CAN?

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Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 Tbsp cornstarch/corn flour
• Pinch of salt
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup of dark chocolate bits (I used Nestle Dark Chocolate Melts)
• Four 6-ounce ramekins or custard cups (I used 4 whiskey glasses)

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Method:

1. Whisk together the sugar, cocoa powder, cornstarch, and salt in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.
2. Gradually whisk in the milk.
3. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly, and boil, whisking, until pudding is thick, about 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat. (At the point it suddenly turned thick I was so incredibly fascinated)
4. Immediately beat the egg lightly in a medium, heat-proof mixing bowl.
5. Very gradually add the hot chocolate mixture to the egg, whisking constantly.
6. Whisk in the chocolate chips until they are melted and the mixture is smooth.
7. Pour the pudding into the ramekins or cups.
8. If you want, cover the surface of each of the pudding cups with some cut out wax paper (aka baking paper) to prevent a skin from forming on the top of the pudding.
9. Refrigerate, covered, until cold, at least 2 hours.

Optional: I tried adding a sprinkling of cayenne pepper into one of the cups, and the results were terrific. For anyone who has tried the combination of chilli+dark chocolate before, you’ll know how well those two go together. Other options include: serving with whipped cream.

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Results:

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Happee Valentine’s Day, again. 🙂

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