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!

Fantastic dinner again!

Hoho... not wasting my effort of waking up early and prepare my dishes for tonights dinner! Total satisfaction!

3 dish, Garlic baked fresh Australian mussels, Cold Chicken Salad, Mushroom Onion sauce pork fillets!

Waking in the morning preparing a big hot pot of water just to boil these mussels is so much hassle to me... I even god damn overcooked some of these mussels. Guess next time should reduce the boiling time from 5 mins to 2 or 3 mins.

The pork marinate is simply good with a couple of teaspoons of Lea& Perrin's Worcestershire sauce, grated garlic, salt, pepper, soy sauce, olive oil. After 3 hours of marinate, they taste simply good by just frying them only! The gravy is pretty simple for me. Just stir fry some garlic, onion and mushrooms, then pour in some water and dump in all the pork. Of course. Need to have good portions. Lastly add some water+flour mixture stirred to thicken the gravy! Its ready!!!

Next on is the mussels man! They taste god damn good and juicy! Stir fry loads of onions with abundant of olive oil and spread the paste onto the mussels! Pre-heat oven to 180 Celsius and bake for 15 minutes!

This crap rox man...

Tadaaa.... thats all!

The Grogfather

Grogfather, thats the party spirit!

It's PUBCRAWL!!! One of the biggest party of University of Adelaide organized by engineering society! With attendance of more than 2000 people. THEE PARTY IZ KRAZY!!! Everything started at 5pm at Unibar with loads of starter drinks. Mine started at 6pm with a footlong Italian BMT from Subway! Yum yum...

Following up is the Belgian Beer Cafe for a glass of Hoegaarden as my started drink. Wohohoho! Its been long since I had that crap. But frankly Stella Artois was far much better drink.

Next on the hit list is Elephant Bar&Cafe for a pint of Kilkenny.

Look at the freaking queue

Well, gotta get myself 1 more drink for the bloody long queue to get in here. There comes... Drink of the day... Submarine made by myself by getting a tequila shot and a pint of Heineken. Drop the shooter like a torpedo into the deep sea of Heineken! My mates Taylor, Chris and Dom went crazy after tasting my Submarine, these dudes simply go crazy and get themselves tequilas! They are really tipsy before 9 and now they go far worse crazy.

pigletzZz made submarine

Taylor, Dom, Chris and Jerry! Cheers guys!

Hungry jacks is perfect to fill our stomach with a whopper or angus bacon burger! Wohoho!!! The burgers are just too fantastic to be followed by a shot of irish cream at shotZ!

My mates ditched me at 11pm to go home... left me alone. Thus I head to Griffins for a Jägerbomb! It was such a luck I met Tom, my German classmate there and we had a good time and heads back to shotZ again to hang out there for pretty long time. Met up with a dude and he said that I am not Asian at all coz i just hold a bottle of Stella Artois, walking around and say hello to everyone!

London is down, nothing special. So I head to St. Paul's, the last station of the day! It looks pretty much like a cathedral, but it's a pub man! We had a very good time there, DJ is good, and met another mate from german club, Seb! He is freaking hyper man!

Cathedral or Club? Both are C's

Watcha doing, Seb?

Birth of Honey Chicken and the Downfall of Fish and Chips

Sigh... big big fail on fish and chips! Today I started with my wedges and I was overwhelmed by my success, coz my wedges just taste so bloody good. Good mixture of salt, pepper, flour, coriander and rosemary! It tastes simply crispy!

But just before I dump in the fish, I tried to filter the remains from frying wedges and A HOLE eventually just appear in front of me on the filter!!! HOLY CRAP!!! I have thought it is a metal filter with plastic holder, but did not expect it to be fully plastic!

Anyway, this is the result of fish and chips, still edible thanks to the tenderness and rich flavour of the whiting.

But I was glad that the honey chicken yesterday was a success, served with bacon salad in Italian dressing, potatoes on barbecue sauce and most perfectly a glass of Shiraz wine! But I swallowed a glass of vodka pop(people usually drink tequila pop), and thanks to my house mate that simply cannot finish the Shiraz and poured half into my glass... I felt like puking after a while finishing the Shiraz!

Grilled salmon with homemade onion mushroom gravy on potatoes

Salmon, fillet 200g

2 potatoes

mushrooms

Coriander and Rosemary, amount as you wish, grinded.

Half an onion

Peppercorns

Pepper

Soy sauce

These are the very random stuffs I found in my kitchen inventory today. Marinate the salmon for 1 hour with the soy sauce, grinded coriander and rosemary, perpercorns and pepper.

Meanwhile, I boiled the potatoes. Suppose to bake them, but I am too lazy.

Then started a pan and had mushrooms, half of the onion prepared boiled in shallow water, then add with salt and coriander followed by a very small portion of salmon from the big portion. Then mash the salmons into flakes and add some plain flour to thicken the gravy! Suppose I blend the unthickened gravy so I could obtain a paste, but the blender is dead... Then let pour the gravy all over the boiled potatoes!

For the salmon, pre-heat the oven to around 230-250 degree celcius, and grill it for 10 minutes. I guess i grilled for more than 10 and had the top part burnt because I have forgot to time myself!

What a clumsy chef!

What a day! Trip to Hahndorf for second time!

Second trip to Hahndorf today was pretty rewarding with all the rain, chilling wind, fabulous experiences we get! Hahndorf is a very small town where the German dwells during the days, it is full with country style building on the main streets of Hahndorf. Famous for its Farm Barn, and ideal place for kids to hang around with friendly animals. Beerenberg jams are also production of Hahndorf. For food lovers, it is strongly recommended to enjoy a glass of ice chilled German beer with a German style dinner of German sausage platter in Hahndorf Inn where I have visited on my very first week in Adelaide.

It all started off with a freezing cold morning to Wan Ting, of course not me. Hehehe... Got ourselves ready to depart for Hahndorf by observing the dark clouds that are planning something really fishy on us.

Arriving in Hahndorf at we got ourselves drooling after looking at these sumptuous Queches in a bakery in Hahndorf. FYI Queches are pastries made from ham, tomatoes, eggs, and of course it has a pie like later of pastry. It can also be vegetarian. Just substitute eggs and ham with some vegetable you think you would love. The piece of Queche cost us $3.80, my Chunky Beef with Mushroom pie cost me $3.80 too. The Queche somehow tastes like ham omelet but it taste like a pie too, simply fabulous! The breakfast really kept our stomach warm. It got even better when a cup of hot chocolate runs down my throat, it ain't very good, a bit too sweet, but just accept it!

The one on the left is the pie and the one on right is the Queche

Next we took a stroll on the main streets of Hahndorf. The main streets the buildings are of a theme of country side and it is a peaceful village when nightfalls. Some shops do looks like those toy factories in the fairy tales, some are decorated luxuriously. We went for wine tasting, jam tasting, and lastly we got ourselves some truffles, Crazy Cashew and forgotten the name of the other! The fragrance of the cashew nuts still lingers in our mouth for more than 10 seconds even after we have swallowed the chocolate!

Not forgetting wine tasting, we had Pinot Noir 2007. It isn't a very expensive wine to me, but it is so smooth, there exist a balance between the fruitiness and the sourness in the wine! We also tasted the Tayberry jam! First time heard of that, but its just perfect to serve with crackers!

Next on is Hahndorf Beerenberg Strawberry farm, the famous jam producer of Australia, even in some of the airlines and hotels, they may serve you with Beerenberg jam too! No doubt they produce good jams, but they provide a very lousy strawberry farm for us to pluck and eat the strawberries, not only the strawberries are small, very scattered grow and it cost us $3 per head!

Look at that bottles of jam

Small lousy strawberries

Afterwards, we walked in the rain with all the chilling wind slowly for 30 minutes to the Hahndorf Farm Barn, entrance fees is $8 per head for concession! It is totally a rewarding experience! We get to play with guinea pigs, cuddle the lambs, sheeps and do some milking on the cow!

Smile! He got 8 teeth!

Milk the cow!

Super cute and naughty guinea pig, keep running around and did not allow me to cuddle it at all!

Ngek ngek... Gotcha!

These are the unprocessed wools.

Also we get to go outside the barn to the plains to watch animals roaming freely on the plains! There is the time Wan Ting got her lifetime experience, a deer gnawing her skirt as if she is wearing a grass skirt!

Look such beautiful deers.

Hold you position grass skirt girl! Good take!

Drink up the milk and get fat boy! I'll wait to slaughter ya.

After the farm barn visit, suppose we will go back to the wine tasting shop for a cheese board lunch, I really wanted to go for other wines too, it will cost us $15 for 2 person. But after a series of chilling wind and heavy rain in the bus stop without a shelter for 30 minutes, she ended up exhausted and we departs for town straight after the bus arrive.