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Friday, October 31, 2008

Heard the song?

The song is sung by a group called Rockapella. When i was young, i used to love playing 'Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?' It was loads of fun!

So, when i came across this song and the way that they sang this song was wonderful - very very good. I enjoyed this song a lot and here's hoping that you guys would too!

I found a video of the song on youtube - it is the exact same song as the one i am playing on my blog but you can see little snippets of the game and the criminals. Old school but really nostalgic...Enjoy!

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Chorizo with Tomato and Cream Pasta

Spanish Chorizo is a pork sausage that has a distinctive smokiness a a deep red colour from its spices such as paprika. There are many different variations of chorizo but they are all surely very tasty.

Tonight's recipe is taken from uktvfood.co.uk and is presented by Rachel Allen. I have of course done some changes to the recipe the way Fish and me likes.

I really really like sauces that uses both tomato and cream because i love cream sauces but they can get a little cloying and fattening. I like tomato sauces but not absolutely - so when you put the both together, you get a nice creamy sauce with a tang of sourness from the tomatoes.

Ingredients

Butter/Olive Oil
2 cans of chopped tomatoes - mine has basil and garlic
4 cloves of garlic - or more if you wish - chopped
2 chorizos - around 225g - chopped in anyway you like
175ml Cream
200g fresh mushroom - Not in the original recipe but we love our mushrooms!
500g Bowtie Pasta - or any pasta you prefer
Dried Chilli Flakes - as hot as you like - but its better to start low
Dried Herbs - Optional
Pepper

Directions

Cook the pasta in hot boiling water with a huge amount of salt added - this is essential so that the pasta is nicely seasoned. No worries - the dish does not require anymore salt.

Melt the butter or heat up the olive oil.

Add the tomatoes, garlic, herbs and mushrooms. Cook till the mushrooms are soften and relatively cooked.
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Add the chopped sausages, dried chilli flakes and cream. Cook till the mixture reduces and thickens for around 10-20 mins. Keep stirring. You could check the seasoning now - but if you used the same ingredients etc like mine, i didn't need to add any additional salt at all.

Add the pasta to the sauce, mix well and serve nice and hot!

Enjoy! This recipe serves 6 so what we did was to place the rest in the fridge and it can be heated up to eat anytime!

P.S. We had the pasta with Campbell's Cream of Pumpkin soup. It tastes really good - but Fish added extra water, cream, herbs and black pepper.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Fried Chicken Strips

We decided to try our luck and deep-fry chicken strips.

Some definite items that are needed:

Free Range Chicken Breast - Cut into strips
Plain Flour - with Dried Herbs, BBQ seasoning, salt and pepper
Japanese Panko Breadcrumbs
Free Range Eggs
Mustard - Ours is American Mustard - but any type would be ok.

Steps:

1. Place the chicken strips in plastic bags and pound if you like. Then add the mustard into the bag and mix all around so that the strips are all coated with mustard. - This is Fish's idea! A great idea! Very tasty!

2. Prepare 3 plates. First for the flour, then the eggs then the breadcrumbs. I added herbs and seasoning etc into all 3. So its dip into the flour to get coated, then to the eggs and lastly to the breadcrumbs.

3. Deep fry or pan fry till golden brown.

4. Enjoy!

It's a little messy - but it tastes so very good! Especially with the mustard! We fried all the chicken, ate some and placed the rest in the fridge to keep for any day we want - just heat it up in the oven!

It's really really good!

Grilled Salmon Sushi

I found a sushi that tastes VERY WONDERFUL!

Doesn't it look absolutely delicious? It is grilled using a blowtorch when you order and it tastes absolutely sublime. The top is grilled but the bottom part is still raw and then they have this sauce which they put over and the other best part is the pickled onion they put over (the pink/purple thing on top) - its very nice and it goes very well. We found this at Sushi Roll at ~$3.40 a plate. My favourite sushi now!

Eat Out Day!

We met up with Hui and her 2 friends to have lunch at Marigold Chinese Restaurant for Dim Sum. It is not bad! Actually it is even better than East Ocean. The place is much bigger which means that the queue is shorter. At East Ocean, the queue is so long and it can take forever to get a table. =)

We had a great lunch and then we walked around and then later later we decided that i need dinner! So we walked and i decided on Thai Express. The same one as the one in Singapore - orange and all. So we went in and ate a lot.

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We ate more than what i've shown in the pictures. HaHa..This is the Thai food that i am used to. Especially the red ruby and the tapioca..Oh..They brought back so many memories..They had orange zest on the tapioca, not that its not nice though, its just weird and i don't really like orange orange - so i took the orange zest aside.

I got the Orange card as well - 10% discount - i wouldn't have got it if i did not read it and found out that the card is usable in both Australia and Singapore.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Last Day of School

Yay! Today is fish and mine last day of school offically. FINALLY! I have so been looking forward to this day. Some courses have gone relatively well this sem and some are really quite lousy.

Officially, the sem is over, however, i still have 2 major essays due in a few more weeks. After that.. everything will finally be over. I am so so so happy. I really need to just stop and take a break from the fact that i can't do anything without feeling guilty cause i'm not studying! I need a break from it and then pray for a better sem next year - hopefully more focused and more fruitful.

I also can't wait to return to Singapore to eat eat and eat. and meet all my friends and HAVE A PARTY!

I so totally feel like having a party. However, i am inclined to a Indian Vegetarian Caterer. I have grown to love indian food since i'm here - the food here is mainly from a different part of India - so we don't get roti prata here, we get butter chicken and all the wonderful curries which can be found in Singapore only in restaurants. I might change my mind about it being totally vegetarian - just because i really want you guys to try butter chicken - i don't eat the chicken, just the sauce which is wonderful - although i might be able to work out a vegetarian option with that.

I don't believe in a party needing to eat meat. Of course it tastes great but since i am organizing the party, i think it is all about having a great time with people that matter - whether meat is involved or not is totally not in the picture. Vegetarian food is not as dull as what a lot of people think - you will be surprised and how great you feel att he end of each day knowing that you did not eat meat.

Seriously.

P.S. I am quite pissed at 2 advertisments here. First, is the one that says "We were born to eat red meat." Red meat tastes good and is healthy for us - but i don't believe we were meant to eat it. The other one is that "People who don't eat chicken have something wrong with them." - WHAT?! What the hell are people thinking about nowadays?!

Monday, October 20, 2008

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Breakfast with Fish!

I woke up early this morning at 9am and decided that i am going to cook breakfast! - At the end though - it became brunch! =)

Voila! After an hour in the kitchen, i made a nice little breakfast!

We bought an electrical citrus juicer a while back. So i took all our oranges - around 6 i think and juiced them in no time! Made around 700-800ml of juice i should think. See the orange juice at the back of the picture? Fish ate one of the oranges before and commented that it was not very sweet, however, when we drank the juice this morning, it was very sweet, full of pulp and very filling.

I took 4 cherry tomatoes on its vine and placed in the pan with olive oil. I also thickly sliced up mushroom and fried them on the same pan with the tomatoes. The tomatoes are just left on their own to cook.

Now for the scrambled eggs. I used Gordon Ramsey's way of making scrambled eggs. I placed 5 eggs - cracked directly in the pot. Then i added butter straight into the eggs - as much butter as you like, it makes the eggs creamy. Then place the pot over the fire and stir. Keep stirring till the eggs start to cook. Take it off the fire and continue to stir, then put it back onto the fire and back and forth till necessary.

Do not salt the eggs till they are nearly done as it makes the eggs watery - we don't want that do we?

I added milk - though Gordon adds Crème fraîche, but i didn't have that so i just added milk.

The eggs are of a different texture that i am used to. Its like little bits of eggs all stuck together. I quite like it actually.

Oh, for the bread, i use white bread with 25% of wheat - you can't see the wheat in the bread and can't taste it - so this is good for people who want the nutrients of wholemeal but who do not like the texture - someone like Fish.

I don't like to toast my bread, i prefer to fry them in butter. Melt the butter in the pan then place the bread on top of the butter and turn over to ensure that both sides are buttered. Then leave it on its own and just let it fry and turn over do that both sides are nice and browned. Very nice!

Try the scrambled eggs and let me know if you guys enjoyed it!

Fish Recreates Baked Rice!

Fish decided he would cook dinner a few nights ago and we decided to make baked rice again.

Down to foodworks - our minimart downstairs, we bought pure cream, mushrooms and chicken schnitzel - which already had flour etc on it.

I don't exactly know how he cooked it in detail, but here's what i know.

He cooked the rice longer in the pot with the liquids so it became nice and mushy - not totally.

He fried the chicken first then cut them into strips and placed them on top before adding the cheeses.

He sliced his mushrooms thickly - which works really well and you can taste the mushroom better.

I think he added more stock too.

Anyways, it was nicer than my version. Try it - its really quite simple. A tip though, don't fry the chicken till its perfectly golden brown cause it will continue to brown in the oven - so just a little under what you would call perfect on the chicken!

Here I go again!!

Guess where have i been again! Din Tai Fung! HaHa..

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I just can't resist it. We went back again a few nights ago. Really early dinner though, i think..around 1730.

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They are having a Spring Special now, so they have Xiao Long Baos in baskets of 8. I ate one in the picture already.. :p And look at the soup! Eat these hot and warm - not cold. We tend to leave them and eat them slowly, but i realised that if you leave till they're cold, the soup becomes a little sticky because of the fat content. So eat them nice and warm!

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And of course..my all time favourite! Fried Rice! Look how pretty it is! I really must try Singapore's one again. I still think Singapore's one is nicer.

I sure had my yam dumplings again! Yum!

Thursday, October 09, 2008

New Template

Hello!!

I have just changed my template and added my own header image.

I worked on it last night. The whole picture was drawn by Fish a long time ago. He drew it on paper and i loved it so much i scanned it into the computer immediately. HaHa.

When i was in the toilet (where else do you get inspiration?) it suddenly dawned on me that i could use this picture as a header!

So i took advice from here and downloaded GIMP, a software which is free and works really well. I digitalized the image and tah tah! my header is ready for display! Isn't it cute?!

The website which i provided above has really simple instructions that you can use if you are not a template expert and just want to create a template that you can call your own. =)

In case you didn't notice, green is currently my "it" color. Not all shades though. I really like the darker green which i used to color the letters "S" "I" and "U".

Hopefully you guys prefer this new template. It was created based on Blogger's Minima Stretch cause i can't stand it when my post is all squished into a long rectangular box.

Stay tuned for more of everythin!

Baked Chicken Rice

I made Chicken Baked Rice tonight! I found a recipe here and decided to try it with loads of tweaks. =)
Isn't it beautiful - golden brown on top..MMmmmmm

Ingredients
2 cups Rice
300ml Pure Cream
250ml Chicken Stock
Half a Roasted Chicken, Shredded
Freshly sliced mushrooms - as much as you like
3/4 Big White Onion - any type and any amount you like
3 cloves of Garlic
Grated Mozzarella Cheese
Grated Parmesan Cheese - optional
Dried Italian Herbs - any type you like
Salt
Pepper

Directions
Cook the rice as you would normally in a rice cooker.

Fish bought half a roasted chicken last week and kept it in the fridge. So he took that poured a little extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, wrapped it in aluminium foil and placed it in the oven 220 degrees for around 45 minutes. Then, he took it and shredded the chicken.

It is best if you use a big heavy base pot to fry the onions and garlic till the onions are soft, then add the mushrooms and cook till everything is nice and soft. Add in the shredded chicken, mix well and add the cream and chicken stock. (I didn't measure them accurately as i just added as i went but it should be approximately and you can add more if you prefer it creamy and how much chicken stock you prefer)

Add in the cooked rice and mix well. This is the time to add in all the etc you want like the herbs, salt and pepper and even a little cheese if you are that cheese-crazy. I didn't though. =)

After everything is tasted and perfected, place the mixture into a baking dish - i used a pyrex dish. Place as much mozzarella as you like and i just added a little parmesan but that's not really needed.

Place the dish into the oven at 230 degrees (thereabouts) on fan grill - which means just the top part of the oven - just use whatever settings you have, it will still get you the golden brown top. I think i had it for around 10 minutes - but keep your eye on it for it changes color quick.

Whats left? Eating time! Tuck in and enjoy!!

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Goodbye and Hello

I had a dream 2 nights ago. It was a dream that i felt peaceful about. It was about my first ever boyfriend, Issey.

Till today, i remember every small detail and incident and facial features that we ever experienced together. I remember all the small incidents at KFC, at his old house's void deck etc. I remember the comments he made, the weird stuffs he said..everything! This was when i was in Sec 2-3, so it was around 5 years ago. But i can still remember everything vividly in my mind. I don't know why.

Then the dream came along. And i think i know why now. We parted not amicably, but neither violently. It just ended one day suddenly. Through SMS. We never talked about it never expressed any feelings towards it. It just ended. Maybe that's why i never forget because it never seemed to have ended even though we never contacted each other ever since we left school. I never met up with him and the others in the gang. We sort of even avoided each other like the plague. I don't know why.

The dream was of us. I don't remember it very very clearly now. But i remember it starting off with us arguing and screaming and shouting at each other - trying to resolve the problems that we faced so many years ago. And then we calmed down and smiled. Then there was Yu Ting, she made us each a wallet with 3 pictures of me and him that never existed at all. We were happy. Time seemed to pass really slowly then it seems like it was time to leave. So we stood up - Yu Ting was gone by now. He held my hand and we walked out the room (if it is a room), then we stood outside and we let go of each other hands and went our separate ways.

And when i woke up - it felt so good - it felt like a stone had been lifted. Like the parting that should have happened, happened. It was all a dream but maybe that was all i needed. To break off the ties of the past and to move on completely.

I've moved on surely, but he was always there - a constant nag in my subconscious mind. So weird yet the feeling was so yesterday.

Please - i don't have anymore feelings for him just regret. Just regret that we could have behaved more maturely and carried on as friends - a part of my life which i think i am seriously lacking.

I heard this on Boston Legal tonight. "Friendships are like back yard gardens. We always mean to tend to them, we just seem to put to put them off until next week." We plant the seeds of friendship but sometimes we forget about it or take it for granted that we think - its ok, i can always call her next week - but next week never comes. Maybe not just for friendship - but also to the people we love and care for - like our grandparents for instance. We always say we'll visit them soon - but "soon" never arrives. There will always be something else more "important", more "interesting" to do that sometimes we overlook the things that mean the most but yet are viewed the most insignificantly by us.

I miss Secondary school. I had the most fun - the most friends - the most out of the 4 years. I had great friends whom i might have lost contact with but i will always remember. I had friends that mean so much to me - but i did stupid things made stupid decisions that pushed them away from me - and at that point in time - i didn't care. But i want to care now. I really do.

Some quotes about friendship which i found that really touched me:-

“It is by chance that we met, by choice that we became friends.”

“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.”

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” - Anais Nin

“Friends will keep you sane, Love could fill your heart, A lover can warm your bed, But lonely is the soul without a mate.” This is so true. Trust me. So very true.

“The friendship that can cease has never been real.” - St. Jerome
I'm sure some of you understand this too.

Think about the friends that you have forgotten to "water" and be friends - because that's what the world needs most now.