Easy Peasy Fancy Frenchie

This is perhaps one of the fanciest dessert but easiest to make. It looks classy mostly because of the velvety red and its French origin. It's called Poire belle Helene in French. But don't be fooled by the mouthful of Franco-pronunciation, it's merely pear poached in red wine with sugar and spices (I used cinnamon, star anise and clove) and vanilla beans over medium heat for 30 minutes or so. When the pear turn soft and red, remove them from the pot and set aside. Continue to reduce the poaching liquid to a third of the original volume, concentrating the sweetness, spice aroma and wine flavor into a lush thick syrup. Drizzle the syrup over the maroon pear and serve.

It's that simple. Easy peasy and super yummy!

Cheesecake Madness

While I was on my last vacation, I was just crazy about cheesecake, the baked kind. So I was online looking for the best and the easiest and the yummiest cheesecake recipe. And then I put a little spin of my own into it and made these two: mango cheesecake and raspberry cheesecake. Oh heaven!

Accidental Sandwich

Another lazy man meal. It was all done due to a somewhat accidental nature, rather than planned. 

I was preparing the shredded mushroom, onion, carrot and garlic for my vegetable quiche. They were nicely sautéed with a dash of balsamic vinegar and orange juice. Unfortunately, the crust for my quiche was falling apart while it was blind baked. 

So I fried some bacon bits and returned the sautéed vegetables in for a quick toss. Then it was piled on top of slices of whole wheat bread with dijon mustard. Then grated Gruyere cheese was sprinkled generously over the bread and put in the oven for a quick bake. 

There you have it, the open sandwich of sautéed vegetables and bacon with Gruyere cheese melt.

That was my accidental creativity.

15-Minute Pasta

Another quick pasta meal. This one all done under 15 minutes, from prep to chow.

Pasta was put into boiling water to cook. While that was on, bacon, onion, garlic and one dried chili were roughly cut (to save time and for that home cook rustic feel) ready to be use. Bacon was first put into a hot pan to render the fat, followed by chili flakes, onion and garlic to sweat. When all in the pan were nicely caramelized, a good glug of white wine or orange juice was added to deglaze along with a dash of balsamic vinegar. Salt and pepper to taste. I think I also added some smoke paprika powder. By this time the pasta was ready and was off the heat and drained and returned to the pan for a quick toss to get chummy with the sauce.

Let's eat!

Healthy Twist

Another quick and healthy salad that I whipped up. It was a bit of a play off the timeless Waldolf salad, except I replaced the mayonnaise dressing with a simple lemon juice olive oil dressing. I guess it was a healthier version.

Toss the lettuce, celery, apple, walnut and French ham in the dressing. Then give me a fork!

Boy, that was surprisingly filling and of course delicious!

Ready to Crumble

During one of my stay-over weekends in Bangkok with A and LS, I was tasked to make dessert for dinner. I wanted to try something new and sweet and delish that I haven't made before. It also had to be quick to make, easy to impress and difficult to screw up, after all they are French and we know how particular and picky they can be about their food. So I made apple crumble, with whip cream. It was a crowd pleaser. Either they truly enjoyed it or they were extremely sensitive and polite.

Ever since, I had made quick a bit of crumbles when I entertained. The best so far (according to me!) was my strawberries crumble. The crumble is simply mixing and rubbing together brown sugar, flour, cubed cold butter with hands until it resembles pea-sized bread crumbs. I added rolled oat and crushed walnut for some extra crunch, texture and flavor. Then sprinkle the crumble over the strawberries tossed with flour and brown sugar. Bake them in an oven until the crumble brown and the berries bubble. Serve with whipped cream with vanilla. 

Mouthwatering tasty, yes! Sinfully fat, yes!

But then you
only live once. So, live a little!

Yum yum yum!

Almost Healthy

My quest for eating healthy meals continues with this colorful red-green-white veggie-fruit combo salad in a simple 3:1 olive oil lemon juice dressing. Lettuce, celery and red pepper pack a good crunch. Watermelon and pamelo add a delightful freshness. And I couldn't help myself and sprinkled some crispy bacon all over.

Almost healthy, I guess.

Cooking Love

This is my first ever M&M (mom and me) cooking project. Obviously it was a joint effort. We made her delicious and almost unheard of sweet potatoes dumpling. Or was it a sweet potatoes puff? Or somewhat a hybrid? Anyway the last time she made them was definitely no less than 20 years ago. I wanted to learn to make this from mom. I want to catalogue all mom's recipes. 

Essentially it's simply a curry puff with the puff pastry replaced with a dough kneaded with boiled sweet potatoes and glutinous rice flour and the curry filling swapped with a savory minced vegetable and dried shrimp. Well I think curry filling just would not go well with the soft and sweet doughy skin.

There was no glutinous rice flour in the house the morning we made them so mom used the plain flour and corn flour combo. Using glutinous rice flour would make the doughy skin softer but we weren't too keen to make a dash to the shop for it. We just improvised as we cook along. Sweet potatoes boiled till soft and then mashed with a fork. The flour was added and kneaded until it turn into a dough, this one a golden orangey dough. Measurement of the flour? We were just simply eye balling it and feeling it as we go along, a sprinkling of water if it was too dry, pinch of flour if it was too wet.

For the filling, we finely diced the fermented mustard green and sengkuang and they were first fried with a few cloves of minced garlic. Dried shrimps were added to the mix and more frying until they sizzle with excitement and fragrant. We also threw in about a handful of fried shallot to up the fragrant level a couple notches. In a moment of genius I asked mom to add a table spoon of her spicy sambal dried shrimp from the freezer. So we have two types of filling, savory and spicy.

The next step was wrapping the filling in the rolled out sweet potatoes doughy skin. The task requires incredible hand-eye coordination and extremely high motor dexterity. Mom was wrapping and piling them up so quickly I was completely floored and shamed at the same time. Mom waited for me to get done before we move on to the second last step, frying them into golden brown.

And the last step, eat! 

The taste, just as good as 20 years ago. The sweet potato skin was crispy sweet on the outside but chewy soft inside. Mom and I both agreed that the spicy filing was better. The spicy sambal just added a good hot kick as we take a hearty bite. We made so many of them that we shared some the neighbors and my aunts nearby. Still we had enough for lunch and dinner that day, as well as my breakfast for the next morning!

Obviously it was a successful joint effort M&M cooking project. But mostly I was just along for the ride. So, all the we in the above should be replaced with mom.

More M&M cooking project to come.

6-Pack Dinner

Noticing myself that my almost 6-pack abs is turning into a keg, and my sister's snarky remark with an evil smirk over the Lunar New Year at home ("Is there no gym in Juba?"), an intervention is definitely required in the utmost urgency. Upon returning to KL, I signed up at the gym at my condo so I can work out almost 24/7, except the gym is closed from midnight till 6.00 am. 

Working out is only part of the solution. I also vowed to eat healthily. So I quickly whipped up this yogurt fruit-pourri with nuts and honey. To plain Greek yogurt, just add diced fruits and toasted nuts of choice, I have papaya, watermelon, pamelo, walnuts and macadamia nuts. Then drizzle with honey. 

Now give me a spoon!

Simple is Good!

Majority of my vacation time, I spent at home, doing nothing. Sleeping in in the morning, reading, swimming, cooking, all the very simple stuff. The familiarity of the surrounding and the routine of the mundane and of course the no-work part have the hypnotic appeal. Literally life is easy. Possibly, the most challenging question of the day would be what's for lunch. Sticking to my championed philosophy of simplicity, I made sandwich. 

Ham and cheese (melted) on wholegrain bread.

Egg sandwich with melted cheese and sweet basil.

Simple is goooood... 

Grilled Vegetables with Couscous

Another lazy dude meal. Slice the vegetable of your choice, mine were green cucumber, red bell pepper and purple eggplant, and grilled them with olive oil and salt and pepper. While grilling, boil water or broth and pour them over the instant couscous and set it aside for 5 minutes. Then season the couscous and fluff it up with butter and toss in the grilled vegetables.

It was supposedly a quick and healthy meal but I used like the whole block of butter to fluff up the couscous. Oh buttery yumminess

Good Shit

Chocolate truffles, definitely by far the easiest dessert I've ever made. Hands down.

Just bring a cup of cream with a dash of vanilla extract to a simmer and pour it over some good quality chocolate. Stir to combine and put in the fridge to chill. Once chilled, roll them into bite-sizr ball and cover them with cocoa powder. Pretty much that's it.

Voila! Done.

Or... You can let your imagination and creativity run wild with it. Add a teaspoon of coffee in the truffle. Or mix in some sour dried fruit like dried cranberry. Or coat the truffles in melted chocolate and cover it with rice crispy, or crushed nuts, or both. You can have a field day with it and come up with a gazillion ways of pumping it up according to your fancy.

Oh by the way I know mine look very much like cow turds. Trust me, they are some seriously delicious silky and creamy cow turds! Yummy!

Record Time Fusili

I haven't been cooking for quite sometime. It'd be nice making something new and quick and tasty and warm for dinner for the weekend here in Khartoum. So I made the lazy man meal, pasta! Oh, all done in a record time of 12 minutes!

While the fusilli boiling in the pot and bacon strips frying in the pan, a couple of button mushrooms and garlic were sliced. As the bacons got crispy, out they came from the pan and in the garlic and mushroom sizzling in the rendered bacon fat. Then sprinkle of pepper, dash of OJ and balsamic vinegar added. By then the pasta was drained and ready to be returned into the sauce for a quick swirl and then on to the plate. Crispy bacons roughly chopped and sprinkled over the pasta.

Voila, chow time!

Super Simple

A few nights ago I put together, pretty much literally, my dinner. It reminded me of the Korean meals served by the Korean volunteer, A, who generously offered a spare room to me, stuffed me full with Korean food and showed me around town while I was in Ruhengeri, Rwanda. The meal was super simple. Basically it's just bits and pieces of whatever I had, few strips of crispy bacon, an egg fried with the bacon fat, spicy sambal, freshly cut lettuce and tomato and the star of the meal, Korean seaweed, all served with rice.

The meal was super simple indeed, but full with flavors: savory bacon and egg, spicy zingy sambal, sweetness of lettuce, tad of sourness of the tomatoes and salty seaweed, all that tickled my tastebuds with delight as well as rekindled the warmth of friendship and stirred up fond memories of the trip.

Couscous Craze

Another food blog post.

Well this one is more of an assembling rather then cooking. I made the couscous, which I'm totally crazy about because it's soooooo simple to make and sooooooo difficult to mess up, just by simply adding boiling water into the same amount of couscous with a bit of seasoning and letting that sit for a few minutes. That was it! Then I got the chopped fresh vegetables, serunding (spicy meat floss a colleague brought for me from KL during his Eid holiday), sambal of onions and dried anchovies which I cooked and frozen a week ago and leftover fried peanuts and crispy anchovies from my nasi lemak, piled them all up on a bed of the fluffy buttery couscous.

Let's eat!

Another Salad Dinner... and Lunch!

I'm on a salad craze at the moment, making another salad meal. It was super easy, involving opening up tins of can beans: white beans, chickpeas, sweet corn and peas plus some dicing of red onions and carrots. Then a quick toss in a simple dressing of lime juice and honey and extra virgin olive oil.

I made so much that it actually lasted me for 2 meals, piling up on my dinner plate and filing up my lunch box the next day.

Salad Lunch

Getting (was it stealing?) the idea from a friend, I tweaked it a bit and made this avocado cabbage onion salad with honey mustard dressing. I switched the lettuce to cabbage because lettuce is ridiculously expensive here and I added an hard boiled egg for the texture and protein punch. The dressing was super simple with equal part of mustard and honey and then whisking them up in double part of extra virgin olive oil, with a squeeze of lime and pinch of herbs (whatever is available) and salt and pepper to taste.

Love the creaminess of the avocado and the soft bite of the egg with the cabbage and red onions crunch. The sweetness of the dressing and the aromatic olive oil brought them all together very nicely.

And it was surprisingly filling.

Aprikosenkuchen

Plan was laid out to bake last weekend. Ingredients bought and recipe downloaded. I was pretty psyched about it. But then shits happened. Firstly marathon meeting over the weekend (so WTF!). Next, I actually ate almost half of my star ingredient, fresh apricots (hehe). Well next week then!

This time around I double bought the fresh apricots, as well as getting some dried ones, just in case I go on another apricot binge. So this afternoon, I made this fresh apricot cake. It's called Aprikosenkuchen in German. Gingerly the recipe was followed to the t, as I never baked this or tasted this before. No idea on how the batter consistency should be and wandered if the fresh apricots would be exploding mid way baking.

30 minutes into the baking I took a peek. It turned me gleefully happy with the cake puffing up graciously and turning into gloriously golden. And the fragrance of the cake just filled up my kitchen, spilling into the living room. Oh how intoxicating!

The cake was simply delightful. The surface slightly crusty (maybe I over baked it a tad) and the inside wonderfully soft and fluffy and moist from the fresh apricots. The tartness of the apricots balanced nicely with the sweet cake. Holy yumminess!

This one is in the bag. I've got another winner cake in my repertoire, and in my stomach.

Tuna Cheesy Mess

This turned out to be quite messy. But it was so simple in my head that I decided to whip this one up for lunch.

Leftover tuna in a can flaked and mixed with finely chopped garlic and onion. The mixture was seasoned with pepper, herbs of your choice, I used Italian mixed herbs here, and a squirt of mustard (I ran out of mayo). The bagel was spread generously with cream cheese before piling up the tuna on. Then grated cheese was sprinkled generously over the pile. This was where messy started. Cheese all over the counter and more cheese and tuna flake all over the counter as it was being transferred into the toaster oven for a quick bake. It's time to eat when the cheese melted and turned bubbly brown.

Tuna cheesy melt became tuna cheesy mess. Tasty nonetheless, if I may add.

Dauphinoise potatoes.

"What?" I hear ya.

While channel flipping on a late weekend morning, I came across a recipe on this potato dish. In spite of an intimidating name that I can't even pronounce, it was surprisingly simple to make. It tasted even better, creamy and garlicky and comforting. Straight away I sprung into cooking mode.

As this would a test run, I only use 1 medium potato, enough for one anyway. The oven prove dish was generously greased with butter and sprinkled with chopped garlic for the the background flavor. Then the thinly sliced potato was layered on, with seasoning of salt and pepper for each layer. I threw in a pinch of Italian mixed herbs at the last layer, along with grated cheese. For the sauce, it's simply a mix of milk and cream then pour over the spud but not covering it completely. I only used milk as I did not have cream. It was then loaded into a medium heat oven and baked until it bubbled up creamily and the cheese melted into golden brown.

Well my first go at this Dauphinoise potatoes was a tad salty. I think I was a little too heavy-handed in the seasoning, probably not fully awake yet while cooking, after all it was a weekend.