Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Lupo's Chunky Mash (served raw)

Well, the title pretty much says it all methinks! The context? Well, Lupo's gone on a cooking rampage... kind of. He insisted on planning out each meal for the week over the weekend and then doing a big shop to get all the ingredients. I had to go through the ingredients list and cross out all the items that we already had. The ones that I can still remember include: milk, tinned tomato, fresh tomato, celery, buk choy, onion, lamb cutlets, beef mince and a couple of other items. You see, he's always complaining that we don't have anything in the house that we can cook. But we actually do!!! It's more that, unless he thinks of something very specific to cook, e.g. spaghetti bolognese, he can't look at what we do have and just make something out of it.

Anyway!!! I humoured him. We went to the market and did a big shop. I pretty much followed him around and handed over money to all the stores when he found something that he wanted to buy. Some of the things I really didn't think that we needed, like a 1kg piece of pork belly, 2 big pieces of salmon, a piece of chicken. I mean, unless we hardcore cook every night, we won't be able get through all that meat. So I guess into the freezer it goes! Don't forget the massive loaf of ciabatta on top of the two packs of wraps!!!

I digest. Hahahahahahaha! I mean, I digress.

So, back to the mash. Lupo decided that we would have salmon and mash last night. Which is a nice meal... although it seems that whenever Lupo cooks salmon, it's always the same - some salmon cooked on the pan and a bit of rice. Sometimes with something green as well, if I put it on the plate. Last time Lupo threw the salmon skin side down onto the pan, and burnt it.

This time! He put them flesh side down and kept the heat on medium-low :-) Although, as I walked into the kitchen, Lupo was cooking the salmon and also had the rice cooker going. Lupo did turn around and ask me when I thought the rice would be ready... I said in prob 20 mins. And also mentioned that he probably should've waited until the rice was ready before cooking the salmon! Then I asked where the mash was. And he said that he hadn't made any, which made me sad. Hehe. So he made mash for one.

I made a point of reminding him that I wanted a creamy mash and not a chunky mash. I think he cooked the potatoes for all of 5 minutes before starting to mash them. I tried telling him that they'd still be raw! As a result, they weren't mashed, they were very chunky and had that grainy-not-quite-cooked texture. Ick! I mean, you could see that they weren't being mashed even as he was trying to mash them!

Well, we had our meal. It looked nice enough. Although the salmon was cold by the time everything else was ready... minor issue. We can work on that. In fact, I've been working on the whole timing-logistics thing when cooking with him for awhile... work in progress.

Photos? Here's the chunky mash with the salmon.

Chunky mash
Here's the chunky mash with the spinach and fetta parcels the next day for lunch. I microwaved them and then put them in the sandwich press to crisp the pastry. Yum!

photo to be inserted

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Recipe: Chicken and potato stew in oyster sauce

Here it is! My favourite!

Very simple recipe that can adjust here and there to suit your own taste.



Chinese Chicken and Potato Stew 2
Here's a very gourmet looking version of it - not enough sauce on it mind you! It's suggested accompanying recipe is also far too complicated to be any good. It's just meant to be an easy and simple dish!

potatochickenstew-8
Here's a far more authentic looking version of it! They also seem to have a far more authentic recipe for it.

Here's my simple version the recipe!

Ingredients
  • Half kilo chicken wings
  • 2 tablespoons oyster sauce (or soy sauce - any sauce really!)
  • Half kilo potatoes, halved or quartered 
  • Onion, finely chopped 
  • Oil
Instructions
  1. Brown the onion in the oil until soft. Add the chicken and slightly brown to seal it.
  2. Add the potatoes and enough water to half cover the ingredients.
  3. Add the oyster sauce and mix well.
  4. Bring to boil and then let it simmer for approximately half an hour, or until the chicken and potatoes are well cooked.
  5. Serve with rice.
You can add in whatever else you want really. Salt, pepper, garlic, ginger, mushrooms... whatevs! A bit of cornflour to thicken the sauce. Also works well with pork. Or lamb and white radish with soy sauce. Sometimes I'll also do it in the morning, bring it to boil and then turn the heat off and let it cook while I'm at work. Then crank up the heat again when I get home. Or I put it in our thermos cooker. It's just so easy. And tasty!

Albino Stew

Ah Missy, it's been quiet here at BB. Mostly due to the xmas holidays and barely being at home to cook. Not to say that we haven't had a few dining mishaps. A couple of pearlers from our camping trip, well, already told you about my lean, mean eating machine friend. And if you can't remember, there were things such as drinking the leftover corn flavoured water from cooking the Maggi noodles out of an empty Heinz Beans can (gross!), drinking the leftover green curry from my Thai meal, drinking the leftover long life milk from my coco pops... lots of drinking it seems.

Some proof?
Pouring the corn flavoured water into the baked beans can... at least it wasn't Lupo doing it!
Then there was the night where we just went to Woolies and bought a roast chicken and other stuff for dinner. Now, I'm all for using hands to eat chicken, when it's approporiate. Camping trip? Appropriate. However, Lupo didn't merely daintily use his fingers to hold up a drumstick and nibble on the meat. He, at one stage, used both hands, shoved them in the centre of the chicken breast and then tore the chicken apart - with his bare hands!!!!!!!!!! Seriously! It was disgusting! I was apalled!!!! I'm not even gonna bother trying to describe what I thought of it - I'm sure you can imagine. Barbaric!

Reminds me of the time when we went out for dinner with my family and we had lobster. Lupo, who struggled with the "Asian" way of eating it, was fumbling with the leg bits and stuff. So I told him that it was ok to use his hands. What I meant was that it was ok to use his hands to assist him in getting to the meat. But what did he do? Again, put the leg bit in his bare hands and snapped it in two. I saw my mum's eyes widen and hand go over her mouth in shock! I've since tried explaining to Lupo that it's ok to use his finger tips to pick things up, but to put the entire piece of meat, lobster, chips, whatever, in his hands is a completely different matter!

Anyway, back to this post's heading: Albino Stew. So if you remember the last question of the Ultimate Jam Quiz from our wedding games, it was: "What is my favourite dish?" The answer to which is "chicken and potato stew in oyster sauce". So last night I told Lupo that that's what I wanted for dinner. Didn't give him too many instructions on how to make it, just made sure that he knew to put in chicken, onion and potatoes.

So I came home to dinner cooked, it smelt nice, and Lupo was very proud ;-)

While I was getting changed, Lupo started dishing it out. As I walked into the kitchen to see what it looked like, I was like, "Um, it's white??!!" You see, this dish that I like is always brown, coz of the oyster sauce. And Lupo's like, "Well, what colour is it meant to be?" And I was like, eh??? Coz we've made it soooooo many times!

I asked him if he'd put any oyster sauce in? And he said no, but that he'd flavoured it with salt. So I said that that was cool. But then he insisted on putting oyster sauce in. And I was trying to tell him that there was no need, as it'd just make it taste too salty. But he insisted. I said that he could put in a very small dollop.

Three massive dollops later...

Hmmm.... it was ok! Not too bad. Only complaint was that there wasn't enough chicken in it, so there wasn't enough for me to take some into work today. And I didn't want to just bring in potatoes and rice. Lupo at the rest of the potatoes for breakfast anyway!

I've said that I would like to eat fried rice for dinner tonight (coz we had so much leftover rice from yesterday anyway). We'll see if the fried rice efforts are good (or bad!) enough to make an appearance here tomorrow!

Friday, November 26, 2010

Fresh chips!

Ah, Missy. Remember this one? Lupo went to all that effort of cleaning the house. And when I got home, he showed me how clean the kitchen was. And then he opened the pantry (i.e. Reject Shop 3 tiered cupboard in mocha, which sits on top of the kitchen bench) and pointed at a tupperware container and said, "Look, I even put the chips in there."

What exactly had he done? He'd opened a new packet of chips and poured them into the container for storage...

Why? 'Coz I'd recently done that with a packet that was already open and hadn't been finished.

I think I nearly exploded that day! I had to pointedly ask why he would do that, the chips would now slowly go stale as they were no longer sealed in the air tight bag!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Recipe: Kai si ming

This is seriously a digusting recipe that Lupo so lovingly introduced me to, telling me that his mum used to make it all time. I tried to do a google search on its origins, but struggled to find any helpful links.  There does some to be some mentions of it being an "Asian delicacy" (puh-lease!) and to have appeared in a New Zealand Women's Weekly or something.  I think it's a terrible interpretation of  Chinese "Happy Noodles", which is roughly pronounced as "kai xin mian" in Chinese-Mandarin.

Anyway, there seems to be numerous variations on its spelling (ki si min, kai sing ming, kei si min...) and the recipe ingredients, but they all seem to involved cabbage and mince.

Lupo tried to cook it for me one night (early on in our relationship, when he was still trying to pass himself off as a good cook) and it involved a lot of cabbage, curry powder, and soy sauce - lots of it! Like, half a bottle!!!! I don't really remember there being meat in it - I'll ask him tonight. Anyway, needless to say, it was gross! So, so disgusting!!!! I couldn't believe that anyone would eat it!!!

Regardless, a lot of people on the internet seem to love the recipe and remember it fondly from their childhood! Here's one that I've just plucked from a random website. Enjoy?

Ingredients
2 tbsp butter
500g mince
3 or 4 sticks celery chopped finely
salt and pepper
1/4 to 1/2 cabbage shredded
1 pkt chicken noodle soup mix
1 desertspoon full of curry powder (keens is best)
1 onion chopped
Method
  1. Fry the onions and curry powder in butter and add mince. Brown.
  2. Add soup mix dissolved in water and simmer for 15 minutes. Add all of the vegetables and simmer with the lid closed for 10 minutes.
  3. Eat and enjoy.

Plain 'roo

Ah, remember this? The plain 'roo.

So these days we don't even add salt to our food anymore.  We only add salt when we have other people around for a meal, so that they don't think that we're bland.  Although, as a result, it means that we really struggle the next day if we've been out for dinner a restaurant the night before - not too many salt free restaurants out there!!! But I digress...

Anyway, so we don't add salt to our food, but we do tend to cook with lots of tasty vegies. Or we just go with the natural salts that occur in the meat. You know, it's one big delicate balancing act to make sure that the food tastes nice.

However, one night, we'd bought some 'roo steaks and Lupo was cooking - uh oh! Hehehe. So he pretty much plonks the meat on the (cold) pan and lets it cook. Watching by and doing my usual inspection, I suggested that he sprinkle some salt on top for flavour. But he refused, told me not to meddle and to let him cook. Or perhaps this time I didn't mention anything, given all the previous times he'd told me not to meddle... I dunno. Can't remember.

Either way, so Lupo plates up our meal, we sit down in front of the TV and start eating. Hmph. Man, it was so bland and tasteless, a bit dry and just kinda not very nice. Lupo was very disappointed. And urgh, it was just such a terrible meal! And the meat was so expensive! Ay, ay, ay.

He knows to season and to taste before serving these days.

Friday, November 19, 2010

The pork's a bit too pink!

So by now you've probably realised that no matter the mis-adventure, Lupo is never deterred from the kitchen and always willing to give it another go! So what did he give another go? Cooking roast pork for his friends.

Sugar vs salt? Not a problem - we've got that sorted now!

What was the issue this time? Being hungry and eager and not letting the pork cook for long enough! I suggested 3 hours. Lupo took it out at about 1.5 hours.

The result?

Beautifully cooked pork around the edge - rather pink and undercooked pork in the middle.

There was not food poisoning afterwards.

So, win-win really!