Dinner at Aerins, Marketplace at Raffles City

Pumpkin Soup. Tastes good!


Pear Salad: sugared walnuts and balsamic vinegar giving the pears their flavour without taking away their crunchiness.


Linguine Unagi($20): pasta with peppers and unagi shreds in coriander cream sauce, topped with grilled unagi, leaves and tomato. Delicious but rather rich. The unagi was not just soft but also crispy at the edges. Coupled with the sauce, it was a delicious combination.


Linguine in a tomato-based sauce with grilled cajun chicken, leaves and tomato. Looked rather dry though.


Pavlova: hardened sugar with berries on top, accompanied by a scoop of old-fashioned vanilla ice cream.

Food as Christmas presents

I made Chocolate Caramel Crispy Cakes for my friends during Christmas. It was my second attempt and as a result, I did it in a shorter time. I am glad it tasted good according to one of my friends who bakes. Thanks Sharlene!

Ingredients

• 4 (2-ounce) chocolate candy bars (recommended: Mars Bars or Milky Way)
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter
• 2 1/2 cups crunchy sweetened corn cereal (recommended: Cornflakes)
• Special equipment: approximately 40 mini muffin papers

Directions

Break the candy bars into bits and drop them into a saucepan. Add the butter and melt, over lowish heat, stirring frequently with a rubber spatula. When everything is melted (the nougat-like layer takes the longest to go), tip in the cereal and turn them, with your rubber spatula, in the chocolate mixture until they are all pretty well coated.

Fill the mini muffin papers with the mixture and put in the refrigerator, on a small sheet pan or tray, for at least 1 hour.

Recipe courtesy Nigella Lawson

Show: Nigella Feasts Episode: Chocolate Heaven

Feasting and feasting and feasting!: Joshua Junior's house

Fried chicken wings which are just like KFC's Hot Wings. As you can see, it is very popular. :)







Mini chicken pies which look so scrumptious but are very filling.








Sausage Rolls, yummy!

Food, glorious food! (2)

Jack's Place's Potato Skins: potato in its skin, topped with bacon bits and cheese before being baked.








Fried chicken as part of Cafe Cartel's set lunch on 16th Dec








Christmas Eve dinner at Uncle Jack's house: turkey and ham.








Christmas Day dinner at Garden Grill: Cold Entree of prawn, crab, mango, avocado and salad leaves.








A food hamper of pasta and its sauces.

Canapes presented

I did start preparing this dish early. However, there are some things I can improve on.
1) The bread should be toasted before putting anything on it, so that it is not soggy.
2) Less margarine should be spread.
3) Tuna is too ordinary a filling to be used, so it should not be one of them.
4) More seasoning should be used on the chicken. As compared to the prawn, it tasted a little bland.
5) Let the toasts cool before packing them so that they don't stick together.

I guess they were not really canapes because I didn't cut the slices of bread into small patterns. I used the slices as they were. They were more like mini pizzas. :S

Quick Grilled Salmon

2 salmon fillets
1 tablespoon of fish sauce
2 teaspoons of minced lemon zest
1/4 cup of teriyaki sauce

1. Preheat grill to a high heat.
2. Brush salmon with fish sauce. Top with the lemon zest and marinate for 5-10 minutes; turn fish and marinate for 5-10 minutes.
3. Grill fish for 3-5 minutes.
4. Turn fish and continue grilling for 3-5 minutes or until cooked through, (may vary with thickness of the fish).
5. Remove from the grill and brush on the teriyaki sauce (2 tablespoons)

[Courtesy of Quick and Easy Recipes]

Tuna , Spring Onion and Cheese on Toast

Take two slices of bread.

Toast under a hot grill on one side.

Take out from under the grill. Now turn the grill to low/medium heat.

Spread half a tin of tuna onto each slice, on the untoasted side.

Sprinkle with finely chopped spring onions.

Place slices of cheese on the top of the tuna and onion mixture.

Place under the grill, which should now be on low heat.

Watch it carefully until done to your liking, The cheese should be melted, bubbling and just starting to brown a tiny bit.

[Courtesy of Ryan's Recipe Blog]

Results of cooking craze

The dishes for the party didn't really go too well. The preparations were the starting point. I thawed the ingredients 2 and a half hrs late, and this affected my cooking time, such that I was late for the party by half an hr. Thank goodness I had cut the ingredients the previous day.

The Squid didn't turn out as I expected, in its coating. Instead, the coating looked like grated ginger over the squid. It was soggy too, perhaps due to that fact that I squeezed too much lemon juice over it. The Ham was better and the Bacon was the best, thank God. I want to try the Squid out again. I believe I can do it in the proper way. This time, I will coat the squid one by one. In the future, I will drain the dishes first before serving. I couldn't do so due to lack of time.

I'm trying out Canapes next week, by topping tuna and chicken over buttered bread cuts, and covering them with grated morzarella cheese before toasting them. I hope they turn out well.

I made some bites for my choir mates. I coated mushroom balls in McCormick's Seasoning Mix and dried rosemary before pan-frying them. Then I garnished them with pineapple pieces. I got good reviews for it. :)

Starbucks' Gingerbread Men

Go buy one. It costs $2.90 each and has received rave reviews(alliteration!). It is of course available only for Christmas.

Craze for cooking

I borrowed 8 books on cooking from the library and boy, were they interesting. I perused them alongside recording some favoured recipes in my new recipe book. I had gotten the idea of starting one from Nigella Lawson who collates family recipes.

The books were on chicken dishes, Turkish food, easy dishes, Kylie Kwong's recipes, Buckingham Palace's food and recipes from the literary world.

Now I source for recipes that feature healthy and accessible ingredients, taking into account the fact that some cater to the non-local palate. I also choose those that I think my friends will like, since they are my guinea pigs almost all of the time. Heehee.

I am cooking 3 types of appetizers for a dinner party and hope all goes well. They are: Nigella's Salt and Pepper Squid, Ham-wrapped Pineapples and Minced Prawn wrapped in Bacon. It is rather daunting because the party consists of the family of my friends as well. I really hope they won't find my food tasteless or horrible.

Buffets per se

Buffets can be attractive to the palate and the eyes, but if they serve the same type of food and are eaten on consecutive days, they can turn rather repulsive.

I had dinner buffets for about 2-3 consecutive days on my trip to Turkey. They served only Turkish food and though they were located at different hotels, they served basically the same type of food. It was worse when we had the buffets at the same hotel! Indeed, too much of a good thing can be bad.

Here is what Turkish food is about:
Bread is the main item in a Turkish meal. Borek is a special bread where thin sheets of dough are layered with cheese or meat mixes, folded or rolled and then baked or fried.

The typical Turkish meat item is Kebab. Sis kebabs are grilled pieces of skewered meat. Turkey abounds in 'Kebabci's that serve authentic grilled meat. The dish served is generally an 'Izgara' or a mixed grill dish consisting lamb chops, 'sis kebabs' and 'kofte'. 'Kofte' is ground meat mixed with spices, eggs and onions, shaped into balls and then fried or boiled.

Among vegetables, eggplants are a special favorite. Olive oil is generally used for cooking vegetables A special Turkish food item is 'Dolma'. Vegetables are stuffed with rice or spiced meat fillings and cooked in olive oil. 'Dolma' is eaten with yogurt sauce.

Another category of Turkish food is 'Meze' or dishes to accompany alcoholic drinks as a starter. Fete cheese with bread and cold vegetable dishes are generally served as meze. The meze items vary according to the course being served.

Fish is an important item of Turkish food especially in winter when the summer vegetables are scarce. Each dish of fish is accompanied by a particular type of vegetable.