frutti.gummi

Spaghetti with green peas

It's really quite easy to whip up a delicious pasta in just 10 minutes. When I was in Italy, I learnt that green peas are one of the basic ingredients used in pasta. Instead of just plain tomato sauce, the addiiton of green peas gives a nice color contrast to the pasta.

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I got the opportunity to have the whole house to myself this weekend when my family went out of town. After living back home for about 8 weeks, I'm starting to miss living on my own. So I actually stayed home during the weekend and managed to do the things that I enjoy; cooking, sleeping, watching videos. Hehehhe. I cooked chicken porridge for lunch using leftover chicken drumstick from CNY dinner and some mushrooms from the sea cucumber with oyster dish. For dinner, I finally get to eat a big slab of meat; Steak with baked potatoes and some cherry tomatoes and green peas on the side. The steak took a bit more time to cook than I thought but it's sooooo juicy! :D When I set the table, I found out that my house don't have steak knife so I had to use the smaller meat knife to cut the steak into strips first.

On Sunday, I made bacon and egg for brunch. Although the bacons are over 100g, about 50% of them are purely fat! I don't mind if the fat is between some meat but the ones I bought, 99% of the fat is on one side. Should've looked properly before buying. Anyway, I ended up discarding half of the fat away since I cannot stomach just the fat alone.

I'm on a meat eating mode lately. Lol. Gonna buy more meat.

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This week, I have been eating food that can be cooked in a short time, like instant noodles and fried rice. I thought I would also be very busy this weekend writing the conference paper but since my supervisor is not exactly contributing to the paper and I don't know whether I'm headed in the right direction, I decided to take a break. I was also looking forward to the snowfall but there were barely visible. It started again this evening and now I see about 2 inches. I hope it continued over the night and I'll wake up to a nice white scenery :)
For me, a nice day always consists of a nice meal. Hehe. Since I had to finish the chicken I bought, I decided to try making teriyaki chicken. I didn't have the ready made sauce so I googled for the recipe. It's very easy if you have sake and mirin which I don't. So I made up my own version with chicken stock and honey. It's doesn't taste exactly like teriyaki but quite similar. Slighty sweet on top of the saltiness. :D

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It has been quite some time since I cooked chicken. I guess I ran out of ideas as I've been experimenting with various ways of cooking chicken. This is the first time I ended up with a recipe I really like. :) Or maybe it's just because it's a tomato based sauce. :p And I topped it over plain risotto. I was surprised that the rice still managed to absorb the sauce pretty well despite being cooked 30 minutes earlier and has gotten cold and a bit dry. Oh, I'm also glad that I still managed to cook the risotto just right! :D I haven't been making risotto from scratch during my one year in Italy. That's coz I found instant risotto packets. Hehe.

Happy July 4th!

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I had 3 eggs which expires today so I somehow had to cook them all if I don't want to throw them away. So was I thinking what I could make and I remembered seeing my Japanese flatmate made the egg omelette in an interesting way. I googled for 'Japanese omelette' to check if that's what it was and I found recipes for it. Although it looks easy to make, I find it a bit challenging especially to evenly spread the egg in as thin a layer as possible. This can be eaten warm or at room temperature and should still be good the next day when stored properly. :D

Recipe taken from Basics: Tamagoyaki or Atsuyaki Tamago, Japanese sweet omelette

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Today is the first time I made something new since I moved to Aachen. Well, I haven't been cooking much either. I'm trying to get used to the super small kitchen and very limited utencils that I have. I have also been traveling for a bit so it was difficult to keep fresh ingredients in the fridge. I managed to make this salad with penne, canned tuna and canned mix veg (carrot, corn and peas). I was surprised to find a tomato in my fridge so I made use of it. :D It's a nice cool salad for the rising temperatures. And I'm off to Amsterdam tomorrow!

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Sometimes people add extra ingredients to instant noodles make it more like a proper meal. An egg, a few strips of vegetables, some meat, etc. Well, the same can be done with the ready made stuffed pastas that I mentioned earlier. I've added broccoli and strips of fried spam to the mushroom stuffed pasta. I'm just using what I have in my kitchen at the time. If it were to be a true Italian pasta, then sweet peas and speck would be used instead. I'm sure the Italians will scorn at me for using such ingredients. Maybe that's one of the reason how fusion food comes about; lack of ingredients. Haha.

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When I went groceries shopping a few days ago, I came across thin sliced beef. I don’t remember seeing them before in any of the supermarkets in Trento. I could probably get it by asking the butcher but I don’t what it’s called in Italian. Anyway, I was immediately reminded of Kobe beef and how much I miss Japanese food. So, I bought the beef and that night, I was excited thinking what I should do with it and decided on sukiyaki. Haven't been cooking anything nice this week and am finally in the mood to make this for lunch today. So glad it turned out well especially the sauce, although the beef is not so nice. (maybe I'm expecting too much, it ain't no Kobe beef to start with)

Sukiyaki sauce
2 tbs soy sauce
1 1/2 tbs chicken stock (to replace sake)
3 ts sugar
2 tbs water (according to taste)

Beef sukiyaki with chinese cabbage, mushrooms and egg

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Was trying to make a creamy sauce with this but I ended up using too little cream because I was afraid of the result having a strong cream taste. I guess people would normally use bacon instead of spam but I only had spam at the time so I made thin strips and fried it till crispy. Later, I found this combination on a restaurant's menu in google. Bucatini pasta with mushrooms, bacon, prosciutto, peas and tossed in olive oil, butter and garlic. Sounds delicious. I think I'll give it a try next time.

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Wasn't sure which pasta goes better with the cream so I took a shot at using small penne. The amount of cream it carried was ok except that the taste of the cream overpowered the taste of the slightly spicy tuna. I guess I shouldn't have used the cream by itself. Gotta mix it with something that will blend with the tuna. Hmm..gonna google for some inspiraton. Maybe something like the dressing for tuna salad.

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When I was working in KL, this is one of the dish that I usually order when I dine at Wong Kok Char Chan Teng. I have no idea why it is called French-style though. They use ketchup instead of black sauce. I made my own version without onions and it's pretty good for 1st attempt. Now I just need to remember the portion of light soy sauce to ketchup that I used.

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Made porridge with Surimi (crab sticks) and carrot bits today. I usually cook porridge when I have chicken bones. Been cooking a few variety of porridge and running out of ideas. Oh I miss porridge with century egg!

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This is my first attempt at cooking a pork dish coz I generally don't like pork. I bought some ribs for cooking soup last week and there are quite a few pieces left. So I searched around for ribs recipes and decided to make spicy honey mustard sauce to go with the pork. I boiled the ribs in water for about an hour to soften it. Then I make the sauce and marinade the meat overnight. I don't have a grill in the kitchen so I pan-fried it. After about 5 minutes, I realised that the meat is not as soft I wanted them to be. So I debone the ribs and simmer the meat with the sauce for another 5 minutes. The meat turned out really tasty :D




Recipe for Spicy Honey Mustard Sauce
Ingredients

• For quarter pounds of ribs:
• 3/4 tbs oil
• 1/8 small onion finely minced
• 3 tbs honey
• 2 tbs Dijon mustard
• 1 tbs cider vinegar
• 1 1/2 ts red pepper flakes
• a pinch of salt
• pepper to taste
  

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a pan.
2. Cook the onions well or until caramelised.
3. Add all the rest of the ingredients and stir gently for 5 minutes.
4. Let the sauce cool slightly before using it to marinade the meat.

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Just cooked up something simple...

Lunch - Stir fried chicken and vegetables with white rice

Dinner - Fusili with tuna in spicy olive oil

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After a week of eating lots of meat, fried stuff, and desserts, I decided to have some lighter asian style food with light broth.

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Eventhough this is one of the simplest pasta to cook, I haven't been making it. Maybe because it's meaty. Today I decided to give it a try and made a green salad on the side to go with it. Now I remember how tasty it can be; juicy bits of meat on hot pasta. At first I planned to cook the sauce for 90 minutes like the recipe Christine posted on her blog. As time passed, the smell of it made me more hungry so I only managed to cook the sauce for about 45 minutes and it's already tasty.

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I had a bit of aborio rice left and didn't feel like making plain white rice coz it's doesnt taste nice. Was thinking what I could make from the tomyum paste besides fried rice, pasta and soup. So I thought I'll just try a plain risotto by replacing chicken stock with tomyum soup. And boy it turned out to be delicous! All the soup absorbed into the creamy rice making it very flavorful. Next time, I can add shrimp and stuff to it. Hehe. This would make a very nice warm meal for the cold winter days.

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