Let's do it! Make poverty a history!

It is after a month coming back from Korea, a lot has been done to pass down my mission to convince my university. It is today not an easy path as a student in Malaysia who had a wild vision of making academic staffs understand engineering education should head to a path to eradicate poverty.

The question is: Is that really necessary to transform local engineering education to deliver human capital in eradicating poverty? Transforming might not be possible as the education has already been in this manner decades ago. But it might be wise for academicians to realize that, life quality of the entire world has to be lifted in order for a higher level of awareness in environmental sustainability can be achieved.

There was once I listen to a keynote speech in Sweden, the speaker mentioned: " You can't stop Indonesians from burning forests."(not to discriminate Indonesians) He tried to address the bigger problem we are facing here today is the problem arises from inferior life quality in developing nations as compared to developed nations. The effort done to preserve the environment is being overcomed by the actions that deteriorates our environmental quality!

Academicians and students in developing nations, think: Is it really necessary to conduct researches on environmental preservation? Should we take a step back, and think how to improve life quality of the extreme paupers? Improved life quality by fulfilling the basic needs such as clean water and electricity enables economic development, which then leads to affordability of basic education, thus improved life quality at a higher level. With sufficient spending power, one can certainly afford clean energy and the awareness can be built from young through education!

We, who desired to develop the bottom billion are inspired not only to solve problems in the near decade, we too sought to preserve the environment but in a very long run and a bigger scale. We do not provide technologies to preserve the environment, but we create people who will walk together with you to preserve the environment in the future few decades.

I'm back

Its been a while I had not returned and posted anything, just because somewhat I was in love for the last whole year and I am too bz to post anything here! Crappy ain't it?

These days I have picked up my new hobby of baking and has successfully baked a sandwich bread roll for my family's breakfast! It was worth praising that I did not had my cooking as my passion just to make my girl happy, but it seems like after breaking up I am still trying to perfect it!

Well, 30th of July, I will be going to aim for baking a Pavlova, an Australian favourite dessert for my family. Hope it works!

Brownies

Do you love brownies? Its not my favorite dessert, but its pretty good food sometimes when its on the house during your pal's birthday, when you feel bored and have someone to share a brownie with, its pretty good thing to do during weekends...

Just because its sweet!!! Yum yum....

Brownies are not always fantastic food... Sometimes you feel sick because there is a whole big chunk of brownie in front of you during tea time and the brownie seemed to be growing endlessly, sometimes you just felt like leaving the brownie to rot after a big meal...

So are brownies your friend or your foe?

My lecture on food photography

Nathelyn complained on the picture I took for my food at last! She said that the food may taste nice but it end up looks like piece of shit! So for this meal below, she had actually cam-whored my food!

Well, take a look, ain't bad for the first dish huh...

Citrus Landmine

As the name suggests, landmine... Its just a simple dish with French dressing.

First munch on the rockets will be great, slight sourness and freshness of fennel will burst in ur mouth.

But eventually you will reach the state where a bite will make the lemon chunks burst in extreme sourness in your mouth! Full of surprises! You will hardly see any lemon chunks inside as they are close to invisible.

Ingredients:

30g rocket leaves,

2 stalks of chopped mint leaves,

1/4 fennel bulb,

one whole lemon(obtain the zest, leave half for juice and half for lemon chunks)

2 tbsp olive oil

Next after the entrée is

T-bone veal in Macadamia nut sauce

8 macadamia nuts (2 crushed, 6 grounded)

2 T-bone veal steak

8 tbsp of thickened cream

1 stalk of parsley leaves to garnish

Well, I do hope that someone will teach me how to make this veal more tender without using meat tendering ingredients

1. Sear the veal on both sides for about 5 minutes each side, preferably with brownish surface finishing.

2. Remove the veal and with the oil and juice remaining, cook the crushed Macadamia nuts

till they turn brownish and scoop in 8 tbsp of the cream and add in the grounded nuts. Add some water if it is too dry.

3. Add in the cooked veal steak into the macadamia nuts cream for it to absorb the flavour for about 2 minutes and serve it with chopped parsley leave or lightly flavoured pasta.

Chicken fillets with parmesan and ham

1 Chicken fillet

1 slice of ham, preferably non smoked ham

2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

flour seasoned with salt and pepper.

1. Dust the chicken fillet with the flour mix and pan fry till cooked, should be about 8 minutes but it varies from different parts of chicken. 4 minutes on each side.

2. Just before topping with parmesan cheese on the chicken, sear the surface or the chicken to be topped with cheese and the ham for 2 minutes then topped the surface with parmesan and sandwich the ham on it! Press the chicken, parmesan, ham sandwich and turn it over and re-sear the surface the surface where ham is attached.

3. Best served with creamy salads.

Hot and Spicy evening!

Todays Menu:

Marsala Lamb Steak

Tom Yam pan friend prawns

Well, does it looks like planting grass on a piece of lamb steak? I wonder if I am able to do that in reality, but I think it sounds like the grass saying: "You and your kind have been munching me through these years! Time for us to suck you dry!"

Its rosemary and garlic, inserted into incisions made on the lamb steak, then wrapped with foil till air tight, no cavities if possible and put into oven roast it at 220ºC for 10 minutes. Then remove it from the oven and add some salt and pepper to give it a flavour, juices inside should not be disposed of coz they rocks! Wrap it back like what you did and send it back inside for another 30-50 minutes till its tender! It ain't gonna dry if you wrap it tight enough for not losing any moisture. Otherwise you can buy a roasting tin instead of using foil.

Pre boil the potatoes, and add in the marsala sauce, of course I can't make marsala sauce, its a tough shit to make a marsala sauce man. Then add the mutton in and cook and let it absorb the marsala sauce!

Tadaa...

Italian food dinner!

Its been kinda long since I updated my blog, well its time to update some food on blog,

Sicilian Cod

It doesn't taste so awesome because the seasoning killed the taste of the cod and this cod fish is nothing like those we get in Malaysia with heavy flavour and loaded with fat. Well, ingredients are : Half a lemon, zest of half a lemon, 1 chilli, a table spoon of parsley. For 1 serving. Well its just marinate and pan fry and top em with the remaining of the sauce afterwards, pretty simple.

Swordfish with olives and capers

This dish cause me some kinda trouble, well ingredients required are: 1 tomato, 4 green olives, 1 teaspoon of capers ,half a red onion, 1 garlic clove(small), plain flour, salt and pepper, a slice of 300g swordfish(400g will be alright too), 1 anchovy.

First soak remove the stalk of the tomato, soak it in hot water for 30 seconds to skin the tomato and remove the seeds.

Heat the olive oil on the pan, fry the chopped garlic till golden brown and next discard em!

Add in the tomato and cook it till its fully soften and looks like a paste, add water bit by bit to prevent it from getting burnt!

Add in the anchovy and mash it, then add in the red onion and cook. Well, its pretty simple because u just need to cook everything till they are super soft then add in the capers and olive and adjust how much you wanna add or reduce. The portion i mention should be cool.

For the fish fillet, mix the flour, salt and pepper. Then dip the fish fillet with flour just sufficiently to coat it, well just a thin layer should be enough. Don't make it like fish and chips. Then pan fry it and top it with the gravy! Its done! Tadaaaa...

Of course you can't miss homemade bread rolls, whole grain breads! The Sicilian sauce is a perfect dipper for this bread!

My teriyaki salmon will beat Sakae Sushi ones!

Terriyaki sauce blended from soy sauce, sugar, garlic and sauvignon carbenet wine! Suppose to use white rice wine... But the salmon today was a blast, superb for easter!

Today is Easter day! Of course, my favorite pass time: cooking! What I made today is basically divided into French and Japanese cuisine.

Starters :

Mild tartar potato smoked salmon salad

Smoked salmon steak in apple lemon juice bath

Thinly sliced chilled salmon with a soy sauce dip

Fresh Oyster!

Soup :

Cream of mushroom(Yucks I failed it!)

French onion soup with croutons

Main course :

Teriyaki salmon steak

Sandwich oyster steak in mushroom cream bath

(No image) but what I did was slice open a 1cm thick beef steak and sandwich an oyster in the middle and fry, of course marinate with Sauvignon Carbenet 2005 wine and Lea and Perrin's Worcestershire sauce, pepper, salt, and sesame oil. Pan fry till medium rare around 50% then bath it in hot mushroom cream!

Dessert :

Strawberry gelato, erm... sorry I will change the picture 1 day when I scoop it nicely and put in a decent bowl.

Cheers! Happy Easter Day!