Pasta Alla Genovese

So we really had nothing better to do  on a Sunday and decided to made pasta from scratch. Good ole President Scholar friend could not resist being cheapo and buying a china-made pasta maker (actually a ban mian maker in disguise) for 100 yuan and hence the adventure. Three hours and a flour-ey table and floor later, we actually produced a bowl of damn yummy pasta genovese! We used Jamie Oliver's recipe and also another of his roast chicken salad recipes. 



Stirring eggs in a flour well



The purpose of this photo is to demonstrate how my new haircut makes my head look like a hairball.

Ball of doh

Using Stef's China-made cheapo pasta/banmian machine




Tada! Pretty awesome and yummy too.

Noms



Pineapple tarts experiment

If I weren't married to a particular Mr Tang, my weekends would be spend lazing around in bed, studying for exams and surfing facebook. But because God should have it so, I end up spending my weekends trying out some weird recipe and cleaning up the kitchen. O< Oh well, I guess life is more exciting this way. This week we had pineapple tarts, first attempt!

Play doughy

Caramelized pineapples (that blooped all over and made a huge mess of my stove!)

Egg yolk wash pre-bake

Egg yolk wash FAIL.

To side track a bit, I decided that this household needed to find a balance between eating in extravagance and eating healthily. So after a week of feasting (Mum's birthday, cousin returning from NZ etc etc), weekend lunch was a blend of celery sticks, oranges, carrots, left over pineapples and lemons.

Recipe for gut cleaning. 

Time for a detox!

Achar!

Spent the morning learning how to make this pickled salad - sweet, sour, spicy, crunchy, soft and fragrant, all in a single bowl! Sat by the stove, pounding the spices with a mortar and pestle. No joke! Can graduate from 小娘惹 college already haha (:

Shepherd's Pie

[EDIT] Here it is. :) Taste test passed. We had guests over and it was nicely finished up. :) [/EDIT]

I didn't have a recipe to follow this time. I consulted people, watching Youtube videos, listened to Gordon Ramsey and looked at websites. Every one was different, and it was altogether difficult to decide which to trust. Eventually I just decided to go with instinct, and here we have it. It was relatively simple to prepare, not much of a hassle. The pie is still sitting in the oven so I don't have a photo of the final product. Neither has it gone through a taste test. See how it goes. :P

Ingredients

• 300g minced beef


• 1 packet (250g) frozen mixed vegetables


• 5 large potatoes


• Tomato puree


• 150ml beef stock


• 100g Parmesan cheese


• 3 onions


• 1 clove of garlic


• Olive oil


• 1/2 cup of Fresh milk


• 30 g Butter

1. Marinate the minced beef with some light soya sauce and corn flour.

2. Wash and prepare the mixed vegetables. my mom recommends Wattie's mixed vegetables, the reason I'm not sure of.

3. Chop up the onion and garlic.

4. Prepare beef stock. I used this really crappy form of beef stock (MSG laden) because I was too lazy to create beef stock from scratch. I only used like a 1/3 block for about 200ml of water for fear of carcinogens entering my body. USE WITH CAUTION, even though it only costs like $1.05 for 6 full blocks.

5. I bought some tomato puree and used about 1/4 of the can you see here. Actually I realise it might not have been puree I used. Hmmmm...

6. Prepare the frying pan/wok and olive oil

7. stir fry the onions and garlic until brown and fragrant.

8. Stir fry the beef

9. Mix in the vegetables and add salt, pepper and condiments to taste. Add in the stock and let it simmer for about 3mins. Mix in about 3 tablespoons of tomato puree. The original receipe uses spices and herbs like rosemary and basil but I don't have those things at home. You're also supposed to use Worcesterchire Sauce but I couldn't find that at both NTUC and Cold Storage. Red wine is optional.

On preparing the mashed potato topping

10. Peel, wash and cut about 5 large potatoes.

11. Boil them for about 20mins in salted until they're soft enough to be mashed up.

12. Slice up about 30g of unsalted butter and mix it into the mashed potato.

13. Heat up about 1/2 cup of fresh milk and mix into the mashed potatoes.

14. Mix well to a smooth consistency and add pepper to taste.

15. Grate your cheese finely. I decided to buy a block of cheese and not the ready grated one because it was cheaper. Cheese is so expensive though, this block here costs $8.85.

16. Put an even layer of mashed potatoes over the pie filling, and sprinkle the cheese shavings lightly over the potato.

17. Bake in the oven at about 210C for about 30mins or until the top turns lightly brown.

Carrot Cake

so...shangjun has been creating much hype on his space with all that experimental cooking and photography. people have been telling me how awesome a chef he is and all, so i thought i had better do something to match up lest people think i'm a useless counterpart.

JUST KIDDING. i just had some expiring rice flour lying around in the cupboard, so i decide to do something with it. also since i haven't had much to do this mid sem break, and i don't have people at home with likings for cakes and such, i decided to cook up a carrot cake. not your atas patisserie kind of carrot cake, but like good old hawker centre cai tou kueh kind of carrot cake.

the carrot cake that you get at hawker centres are like pretty much 95% flour and 5% carrot/radish. doing it yourself gives it greater nutritional value, better flavour and taste. you can add in your own ingredients to suit your own palate as well.

Ingredients:

1. 250g of Rice Flour
2. 1 Radish
3. 1 Carrot
4. 5 Dried mushrooms
5. 3 cubes of dried scallops
6. A handful of dried shrimp
7. 4-5 shallots

1. Prepare a radish and carrot. you technically only need about 300g of radish and 200g of carrot. but i guess the more the merrier!

2. Skin the vegetables and remember to WASH them.

3. Shred the radish and carrots up into nice shredded bits. Be careful not to use too fine a shredder because then everything disintegrates in the mix and you lose the crunch in your cake.


4. Prepare the following and soak them in warm water for about 20mins - 3 pieces of scallops, 5 dried black mushrooms and a handful of dried shrimp (hei bi)

5. Peel and preapre some shallots as well.

6. Chop up the above ingredients into suitable sizes. Dice the mushrooms, shred the scallops, mince the shrimps and slice up the shallots. NOTE: do not discard the water which was used for soaking because that's where the flavour and stuff (and bits of dirt) remain.

7. Weigh out 250g of rice flour.

8. All the prepared ingredients ready to be cooked!

9. First, fry the shallots in oil. don't be too stingy with the oil because you don't want them to burn. don't worry about it being too oily because you're gonna need the left over oil for the frying of the other ingredients.

10. Fry till golden brown. again, be careful not to burn them! drain away all excess oil.

11. next, fry the diced mushrooms.

12. using the remaining oil, fry the carrot and radish for a bit till its slightly soft. add in 1/2 tsp of salt, 1/2 tsp of sesame oil, 1 tbsp of sugar and a dash of ground pepper.

13. Using the water from the soaked ingredients, measure out 250ml and mix in with the 250g of rice flour.

14. stir until you get a consistency of about what you see here. it should be smooth and not lumpy.

15. Throw in all the ingredients (shallots, mushrooms, vegetables, scallops, shrimps) into a pot, and add in 750ml of water. Bring to a boil.

16. Add in the flour mix into the boiling mixture and mix well until you get a dough like consistency.

17. Dish out the mix into a pan, and leave to steam for 40mins.

..........

now the first part is over. after steaming, the carrot cake should come out looking not much different from when you first put it in to steam, just a little softer. leave it out to cool at room temperature and it will begin to set and give you a nice kueh texture. the kueh is ready to be served! but if you'd like to continue with some regular eggfried carrot cake, read on.

.........

18. prepare about 2 eggs and beat them lightly. note that 2 eggs is sufficient for about1/3 of the entire kueh that was made in the above recipe. multiply accordingly to your taste.

19. dice the steamed cake into bite size and fry in a woke till it turns lightly brown.

20. pour in the beaten eggs and fry gently. flip each section of the wok in a systematic fashion so as to coat the pieces of cake evenly. fry till the egg is cooked.

21. the final product.

22. random picture: my maid wanted me to take a picture of the prawns she prepared for dinner. chai po and garlic stuffed prawns. :)