Baked Whole Lemon Pudding

Gotta admit, I was sooo nervous in making this, my first in dessert department! Unlike cooking that I can just add much and much chill if anything goes wrong and it would turn edible, with dessert, one mistake and that's it. It's just unforgiving. So I chose the most simple dessert recipe from Donna Hay's recipe book. Eggs, single cream, butter, flour, icing sugar, lemon and mix them together in a food processor, bake for 30 minutes. And yet, somehow the textures wasn't quite right. I mean, it tasted delicious enough and lemony fresh, but a bit… sticky. I dunno, maybe it was what it should be like. Hmmm… 

 

 

~ Tasted much better with a scoop of banana ice cream haha ~

Homemade Burger with French Bread

 .: July 28, 2012. Saturday :.

Over a week ago, after watching a TV cooking show and noted down all the ingredients, I was planning to make my own sandwiches. I love my sandwich with ciabatta loaves but unfortunately, the bakery slash cafe we visited didn't have them at that moment, so we took the french bread instead. I made this in two different occasions. The first attempt, the patty was a bit bland but my sweet hubby said it was nice haha. The second attempt, I put in garlic paste and basil into the patty and it turned out to be really delicious!

The shot here is from the second attempt. Love the french bread, with its chewiness. Next time, it would be with ciabatta loaves.

 

 

 

 

~ Grilled the patties with my new le creuset grill pan ~

Penne all'arrabbiata

I bought a pasta cookbook titled "Pasta *of course…* and decided to follow each recipe in the book until the last page :p Well, this book is a thick one with 391 pages and a recipe almost on each page. So yeah, I'll definitely take more than a year to try out each recipe haha.

So, the first dish is Penne All'arrabbiata.

Ingredients:

~ Olive oil

~ Garlic cloves, thinly sliced

~ Dried chillies, chopped

~ 1 tin of tomato pasta (I added some fresh tomatoes)

~ Penne or rigatoni

~ Basil

 

Mix all the ingredients, and add the cooked penne to the mixed tomato sauce. And there you have it, penne all'arrabbiata. Can't get more easier than that.

 

 

Macaroni Schotel and Wanton Soup

.: June 24, 2012. Sunday :.

It's one of my favorite comfort dish! Dip it in our famous ABC chili sauce and I'm a happy gal haha.

Well, It was time to try out my le creuset bakeware and what better dish to make than this macaroni schotel. We did buy another le creuset's cocotte *ooh I fell in love with le creuset brand!* They are gorgeous. 

I used two cups of macaroni which made for 4 cocottes and 4 cupcake-sized silicone cups. I ended up having macaroni schotel for my dinner for 3 days in a row *I'm not complaining tho*.

 

Another dish made that night, wanton soup. We bought the skins and made the filling. Aah speaking of wanton, which almost the same as gyoza, I remember my ex-Korean room mate in Japan made gyoza and I felt inspired by her, like seriously, her cooking is fit for restaurant. Smell good and taste good. I often felt embarrassed and felt like a kid got caught eating crappy food by her mom, when she asked me what I would have for my dinner, since my reply was always standard. Either instant noodle or instant anything that can be cooked in microwave haha. Well, I guess the real advantage at that time was I always got to eat whatever she cooked.

Onigiri for Bento, Anyone?

.: July 15, 2012. Sunday :.

Oh I love cooking Japanese food. It's super easy, especially when it comes to onigiri. I bought an Onigiri recipe book, hm I don't even call it recipe coz really, it's up to your creativity and imagination when it comes to onigiri filling. Well, this book is a compilation of those very popular filling. 

I shaped my onigiris into small balls and wrapped them individually with cling films :D

The Cutest Bakeware

Owww look at these le creuset cuties… aren't they adorable? With a little spoon and spatula, little apron, silicon baking cups, all in pink!! Haha they are meant for children actually but hey, can't blame me in falling for them. So freaking cute :p

The material is stoneware so it's a bit heavy for children in my opinion.

Looking at them definitely makes me want to bake something. It's settled then, baked pasta for dinner tomorrow.

Homemade Dinners: Wafu Style

Ever since I bought a Japanese recipe book by Kurihara Harumi, cooking dinners no longer seemed a daunting task. Japanese cooking is fast and simple, I cannot believe how simple it is, as long as you have soy sauce, mirin, sake, dashi stock, you're good to go.

At first, I used the dashi stock that I bought from Japanese supermarket and it was way too salty that my first meal was almost inedible. For the next meal I tried to mix water into the dashi stock but somehow the taste was off. Frustrated with the dashi stock, I decided to make dashi stock myself, using dried bonito flake (かつおぶし) and konbu seaweed. Less salty and definitely no MSG.

 

~ April 16, 2012. Monday ~

 

~ April 17, 2012. Tuesday ~

 

~ April 29, 2012. Sunday ~

 

~ April 30, 2012. Monday ~

Homemade Dinners

My bro and grandma spent two weeks plus in SG from late March till early April. During their stay here, we rarely ate outside for dinner, we were having lots of cooking jam sessions :p My brother even invented a new recipe, "Terong Isi" haha. Oohh I will definitely ask him to make this dish again! It was sooo good. The filling was from diced aubergine, minced meat and some bread crumbs. One thing that I admire from him is that he's not afraid in trying out new things, like combining whatever ingredients at hand and turn them into a beautiful and delicious dish. He spread mayonnaise on the aubergine just before putting them into the oven, made them look glossy, loved it.

~ Terong Isi ~

 

This Minestrone Soup was also cooked by my brother. It was fresh and light and delicious. I have to get the recipe from him, it's healthy and such a perfect dish for moi, for diet lol.

~ Minestrone Soup ~

 

Oh this dish, poached pear, also by my brother… I think we both watched too many Masterchef series :D I forgot exactly why we discussed about poaching a fruit, but I remember I did challenge him to make a poached pear since we happened to have some bottles of red wine and he finally agreed and made this dish. The taste was… interesting. A scoop of vanilla ice cream would go well with the poached pear. Alone, the taste of the wine was just too overpowering, but hey, not that I mind it *wink*

~ Wine Poached Pear ~

 

Okay, this one below was a salmon wrapped in a puff pastry, aka Salmon Wellington. My brother made it after watching a cook-along video by Gordon Ramsay. There is a story behind the pastry. Well, at first, we wanted to make everything from scratch, that means rolling out our own pastry. Too ambitious I might say now, this was a puff pastry, not just an ordinary dough. We made the first batch and it turned out so gross looking and the texture was just not right. First glance, I knew it was over and beyond help, yet, my brother tried to fix the poor dough with more butter… the result was slightly better but come on, to wrap an expensive and beautiful salmon with it? Not a chance. So we went grocery shopping and bought a ready-to-bake pastry dough *cheating*. The dish was spectacular, the wrap was flaky, the herb-seasoned salmon, tender and moist.

The rissoles, these are the BEST rissoles in my whole life. I mean, no kidding. Our family recipe. The first rissoles me and my brother ate were those made by our mum. She used to take orders on this rissole when we were kids and until today, our family's rissoles is still unbeatable. I cannot find a better and more delish rissoles.

~ Salmon Wellington and Indonesian Rissoles ~

~ Wafu Dinner ~

 

~ The sauce for the pizza was made from scratch. It was more fresher ~

What's for Dinner?

.: February 7 - 8, 2012 :.

I'm glad we have a Japanese supermarket, all the major Japanese food brands can be found here. So me and hubby went there for our weekly groceries shopping and I decided to try kare udon and katsu don recipes.

Oh well, kare udon is a no brainer really, you just melt down some kare blocks, add beef, put it on rice or udon. But I was a bit nervous about katsu don tho. As always, I hate it when it comes to deep frying. I can't tell if the dish is cooked or not. My idea of making sure it is cooked through, is to keep frying until it's blackened. If it's not dark golden brown yet, it's not cooked haha. And it didn't stop there, there is another stage of cooking involved in making katsu don.

So when I tasted the final dish, I was quite surprised that it tasted good (not to boast or anything, but it did taste good :p). Now, katsu don is our favorite meal (I leave the frying part to my hubby).

All things macaroni

Today I’m taking one day sick leave. Thanks to a tight schedule, I had to work until morning for a past few weeks.

Maunya hari ini santai2 aja di rumah sambil masak2, eeh tau2 jam 1an gitu ditelpon ma org kantor, nambah feature2 and complaint ada beberapa bagian yg ga function well. hhh langsung jd kepikiran d.

But, acara masak2 tetep lanjut donk, jam 12an gitu pergi belanja bentar, sebelumnya uda browsing2 cari resep makaroni. Ga tau nih, belakangan ini ngidam pengen makan macaroni or pasta. Trus akhirnya milih 2 resep setelah struggle hampir 2 jam nyari2 yg pas *geez, i didn’t know that picking recipe is waaayyy harder than the cooking itself!

* Banyak bahan yg ga aku beli, soale masa beli celery 1 pack, iya kalo dipake, wong masak aja klo mood doank hehe, jadilah itu resep banyak yg aku edit sendiri :p Masak macaroni nya juga kebanyakan, I thought I cooked enough, ternyata kebanyakan rebus macaroni. Untungya bakal ada yg bantu ngabisin. I baked 3 bowls of macaroni.. 3 bowls!!!

Hm dunno if after today I would ever want to eat macaroni again >,<

Today’ recipes:

1. Baked macaroni and cheese
2. Salad macaroni with green pepper
3. yg ini ga da namanya, free style a la moi ^^