didally.com
Of Food and perhaps a little about me
Archive for August, 2007
August 20, 2007 at 2:14 am · Filed under Recipes: Seafood, Recipes: Pasta
Lemon-flavored pasta? As promised, more pasta recipes. I was searching for a recipe for my garlic prawn pasta and it occurred to me that I ever saw recipes calling for lemon juice. I wonder if the pasta will turn out be a plate of salad instead. Curious and adventurous, I dared myself to try out the recipe I’ve found.
This yellow citrus fruit serves us wonders. Lemons are valued for their many uses in flavoring the food we eat, as a garnish, and for household purposes.
Selection
Choose lemons that are firm and have a bright yellow color. Avoid soft, wrinkled lemons with spots. One medium lemon has about 3 tablespoons of juice and 3 tablespoons of grated peel.
Storage
Store lemons at room temperature for about two weeks. They can keep for up to six weeks in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. Use lemons as quickly as possible after cutting.
Some Quick Tips
Freeze lemon juice in ice cube trays for later use.
Add a twist of lemon to the water in ice cube trays for added zip to beverages.
Use juice on fruit or white vegetables to help them keep their color.
Remove odors, such as fish, onion, or bleach by rubbing with fresh lemon.
Lemon and salt can be used to treat rust spots, and to clean copper pots.
Get the most juice out of your lemon by warming it in the microwave for 15 seconds or rolling it with your hand on the counter if it is at room temperature.
Add a few drops of lemon juice to whipping cream if it doesn’t stiffen.
Use lemon to replace salt in your recipes….you’ll have less sodium.
Halved a lemon and place them in your new fridge before putting any other things in. It will remove the odor from the new fridge.
You can use lemons to marinate your food like what I did for my rosemary roast chicken, as well as fish and other meats. Toss your salad with some lemon juice instead of vinegar. Freshly grated lemon peels add that zest to your baked goods, fruit salads, desserts, and sauces. Or simply just drop a slice of lemon into your glass of water.
I made a mess when grating the lemon peel for this pasta and it took longer than I expect. Why? Because I grated it the wrong way, the peel went flying out from the grater and all over my work area. How embarrassing.
Pasta with Garlic Prawns and Lemon
Recipe from www.taste.com.au (serves 2)
180g dried pasta
1 tbsp olive oil, plus extra to toss
2 garlic cloves, crushed
12 medium-sized prawns, peeled, deveined, tails intact
½ bell pepper, medium sized
chilli flakes
1 tsp dried parsley or 1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
Juice and zest of 1/2 large lemon
1/2 cup (125ml) white wine
50g unsalted butter, chilled, cut into small pieces
Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and toss with a little oil. Set aside to keep warm.
Place remaining oil and the garlic in a pan and heat gently over low heat. When the oil is hot, add bell pepper and saute for 2 - 3 minutes. Then add the prawns, chilli flakes and half the parsley, increase heat to high and cook for 2-3 minutes. Remove the prawns, bell pepper and set aside, then add the lemon juice and white wine to the pan and allow to bubble and reduce for 2 minutes.
Briefly stir in the cold butter and lemon zest until you have a smooth sauce. Return the prawns to the pan to heat through, then add the pasta. Toss together well and serve garnished with the remaining parsley.
I love this zesty prawn pasta! It’s surprising refreshing and tangy. I was afraid it might be too sour. But the lemon flavor blends really well with the prawns and pasta, at least for me. Something different from the usual savory style.
Lemon curd is in my list of to-make items. I’ll see when I can get some time to try my hand on this. I saw this Lemon Curd with Chocolate at Gastronomia. Everything there looks good and of course, sinful. I wish I can bring them all home. LOL. Meanwhile, stay tuned for the next post which will be related to lemons as well.
August 18, 2007 at 3:10 am · Filed under Recipes: Baking
My first experience in baking a real dessert was a banana cake. What I meant by real was because I tested out my oven using Betty Cocker’s chocolate cake and blueberry muffin premix. It’s still real baking, just that a premix definitely tastes good. And baking a cake from scratch is more experimental. Joanne from Kitchen Capers contributed this recipe. It seemed to get good raves from the many members who have tried the recipe, and foolproof was one of the words they use. Ah…. foolproof sounds good to me. This is the one cake that I’ve baked many times for the past year.
This is really one easy cake to bake. Simple and straightforward. You need ripe bananas to get a really fragrant banana cake. Ripe bananas are sweeter, thus you can reduce the amount of sugar as stated in the recipe by a quarter. Don’t get Del Monte bananas or any other similar ones. Use local bananas or what they call ‘pang jio’.
Result is a very moist and fluffy cake. The strong banana fragrance, its scent fills your whole home with a wonderful aroma. Banana Bliss!
Need some energy before you go for your workout? Suffers a diarrhea? Eat some bananas then. It’s low in calories, fat, sodium and is a good source of vitamin B6 and potassium. It’s easily a tropical fruit loved by many. My nieces love them to bits. They can’t see bananas hanging in the kitchen, they gotta eat it. LOL.
Banana Cake
Recipe adapted from Joanne in Kitchen Capers
1oz = 30grams
6oz butter
6 oz caster sugar
2 eggs, large
3 tbsp milk
3 large banana (riped, mashed)
8 oz plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp bicarbonate soda
Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a 8 x 8 inch square tin. Beat butter & sugar together using a mixer until creamy and smooth. Add eggs, one at a time until it’s well corporated. Add milk and banana, mix well. Sift flour, baking powder & bicarbonate soda and add to mixture. Pour batter into the tin and bake for 1 hour.
The oven duration really depends on the oven. My oven took only about 40 minutes, faster if I were to use fan-assisted mode. So set your timer earlier and test the cake by inserting a toothpick. If the toothpick comes out clean or with a bit of crumbs, it’s done. Else bake a while longer, but do keep track of the time. And if you use individual cupcake cases like me, the time needed is even shorter. Perhaps, 20 to 30 minutes.
For a variation, mix in a handful of chocolate chips into the cake batter before baking it in the oven. If you intend to add in chocolate chips, remember to reduce the amount of sugar before you cream with butter, cos you don’t want your cake too sweet. Yummy… chocolate and bananas goes hand in hand. Try it and let me know how it goes, yah?
August 15, 2007 at 1:30 am · Filed under Food Reviews
No, I didn’t queue for the donuts.
There was once the bubble tea, the Roti boy and now the current food craze are donuts. I am not a fan of donuts even when Dunkin Donuts were still available at Far East Plaza. So there was never a craving for them. The crazy 2 hours queue for Donut Factory, I think it’s a waste of time.
A few weeks back, I went Batam with a group of friends with a purpose. Other than shopping, their main intention was to buy back dozens of J.Co Donuts. If you can’t beat them, join them! LOL. It was rumored that the texture of the donuts to be quite close to Krispy Kreme and better than Donut Factory. Well, I’ve never had any from Donut Factory or Krispy Kreme, so I can’t give any comparison.
J.Co Donuts have quite a variety of choices. We stood in front of the trays and trays of mouth-watering donuts. So irresistible! The donuts were really glossy-looking. And they seems to be calling out to us. “Buy me, buy me..”, haha… J.Co Donuts & Coffee is a nice and cosy café where you can have your donuts with coffee and hot chocolate. We could have each bought a different flavor of donuts and have them with the coffee, and then decide which are the better ones to buy home. But instead, we were lured over to A&W for their root beer with ice-cream and waffles. It’s a pity they ran out of curly fries that day.
Verdict: The donuts were generally quite nice, soft and fluffy. On the downside, our throats didn’t feel too good after eating the donuts. They must have used the oil for too long. I bought a dozen home with mainly the chocolate and double chocolate ones. I love chocolate! Their tiramisu and glazzy ones are pretty good. Cheese Me Up looks good but didn’t taste fantastic. I was really disappointed after trying out Copa Banana cos there is no trace of bananas and the banana taste is too mild. I love this combination, chocolate and bananas. Mango Blitz was sweet(artificial mango flavoring I guess), however it tastes like mango pudding to me. The donuts tasted quite good straight out from the fridge. The cream in the donuts tasted like ice cream. The best thing is, the queue is very short. I waited probably 2 minutes for my turn?
Have your tried Summerhouse donuts? They started selling donuts at Burlington Square way before Donut Factory was opened. I missed their savory ones. Hope they bring them back soon. Their cream cheese donuts are pretty good too.
August 5, 2007 at 2:43 am · Filed under Recipes: Greens, Recipes: Poultry
A year ago, when I decided to get an oven for my new house, I thought it would be nice to roast some food other than baking. Watching Jamie Oliver’s shows definitely finalize my decision in getting an oven. I love to watch him cook pasta (my favorite staple) and roast meats. And I go, wow, just those simple ingredients and I get a nice simple meal.
Roasting poultry is a fairly simple technique that yields crisp-skin, moist, flavorful flesh cooked in it’s own fats and juices. Preparing is simple. I used half a chicken, thus only squeeze some lemon juice over it. If you used a whole chicken, stuff the lemon into the cavity. Place a few slices of lemon around the chicken. You can vary the seasonings you use, trying different combinations of herbs or even asian spices and soya sauce. Other than stuffing rosemary into the chicken cavity, I stuff them under the skin as well. Rub some salt all over the chicken, and some pepper if you like. To achieve crispy skin, drizzle olive oil on the chicken before putting them into the oven.
I always roast the chicken with potatoes and vegetables like baby corn, zucchini, bell pepper, tomatoes, etc. Garlic goes into the oven too with skin on. Toss the vegetables with olive oil and ground black pepper. As for the potatoes, I like to toss them with olive oil, salt and paprika. The roasted potatoes turn out abit charred on the sides and I like them this way. Roasted vegetables are so delicious and they taste naturally sweet. If you are serving the chicken with bread, and coincidently also a garlic lover like me, mash up the roasted garlic with a fork and spread them on your bread or potatoes. Garlicky, I like!
A combination of high and low heat produces the best results. I begin roasting the chicken at 180°C and increase the oven temperature to 200°C in the last 10 mins of roasting.
Rosemary Roast Chicken with Lemon
1 chicken, rinsed and patted dry,
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons fresh rosemary sprigs (halved the amount if using dried rosemary)
1 garlic clove, lightly smashed
1 large lemon, washed
olive oil
Vegetables:
1 zucchini
1 bell pepper
8 baby corns
4 – 6 potatoes, peeled
cherry tomatoes, a handful
black ground pepper
olive oil
paprika
Method:
- Heat oven to 180ºC. Rub chicken inside and out with salt, pepper and rosemary.
- Stuff half a lemon inside the cavity. Place the chicken in a roasting pan, with the breast facing upwards. Squeeze some lemon juice over the chicken. Slice up the remaining lemon and place them on top and by the side of the chicken. Stuff some rosemary under the chicken skin.
- Cut potatoes into chunks or wedges. Toss the potatoes with paprika and olive oil.
- Julienne the zucchini and bell pepper. Halved the cherry tomatoes. Toss them with some black ground pepper and olive oil.
- Arrange the potatoes, vegetables and garlic around the chicken.
- Transfer the roasting pan into the oven and roast for about 30 to 40 mins, depending on your oven.
- In the last 10 mins, up the oven heat to 200ºC.
- To check if the chicken is cooked, simply insert a knife or fork into the thickest part, the thighs. When the juice runs clear, the chicken is cooked.
- Remove the roasting pan from the oven and let the chicken cool down for about 10 mins before carving out the meat.
August 3, 2007 at 3:20 pm · Filed under Hamsters
Friday the 13th. The day MikoSan left me. Yes, the lovely girl in the previous sumo post.
She was panting hard again. I started the rescue remedy all over again which happened once 2 weeks ago. 2 weeks before she was gone, I noticed she didn’t eat any fresh food I gave her the night before. That was when I saw her restless and panting hard. So I rushed off to get some fresh thyme, crushed them and wave it around her as I suspect her condition was due to some respiratory problems. And since she was not eating, I fed her with some semi-liquid formula. Despite being weaker, she found the presence of the thyme in the tank intrusive and even attempted to attack the thyme. B suggested infusing some eucalyptus oil to help relieve her breathing problems. She seemed calmer after that and even climbed onto my hand, wanting to come out.
After 2 days of worrying and ‘rescuing’, she was back to normal and gained back her energy. When she started to eat her food, I was really relieved. Even more relieved when she had the energy to even escape when I went out of the house. I reckon she would be weak to come out, thus didn’t cover her tank. What a pleasant surprise when I found her tank empty when I got home and found her chewing on the mattress happily.
It was 2 weeks later when the symptoms are back again, I tried the previous methods but it didn’t work well this time. And then she was gone. Just like that. I hope she didn’t suffer much.
MikoSan was 5 weeks old when I brought her home. She has got a round, pretty face and some fat genes. Different mum from MikiSan and Kimchi, she’s not as active but still pretty energetic. She didn’t give me any problems only till she left. Other than 2 incidents when she fought with Kimchi and got a pretty nasty bite on her face, she was a lovely girl. Her wound healed and she was still as pretty.
Below are some of the photos I took of her.
This was the picture I used where I added the sumo suit on her.
This blog started partly cos I want to share some stories and pictures of my hamsters. But it’s sad that till date I get to blogged about their demises only.
I cherished the extra 2 weeks I had with MikoSan. Miss you lots, MikoSan.
