我的很多第一次 :)

For the very very 1st time in my whole life, I cooked a complete meal (mostly) on my own! It was not a 1-course meal... In fact it was a 4 course meal, enough to feed 6 people! *Proud* Something which I always wanted to do!

I was inspired by the 'Japanese Home Cooking' book by Yoshiro Murata which was featured in the Straits Times sometime back. I managed to get hold of the book at the library and browsing through it just makes me feel like cooking so many many dishes. And I just decided I had to cook a meal one of these days and this was it. A Japanese meal for my family!

I cracked my head a little when planning which dish to prepare first as I was concerned that some of it will turn cold and might not taste as nice by the time everything was ready... which can be quite long with my well-known 'efficiency'. Heh... :P

So I decided to start off by preparing the RICE! My very first time cooking rice entirely on my own and what's more... I was cooking rice in a pot over the stove. Mum nagged at me to use the rice cooker but I insisted on following the recipe instructions! Kinda disappointed that I got the wrong type of rice... never knew japanese rice has got different types. I got the medium grained ones instead of the short grained ones. But I think they taste good too!

The recipe for cooking this japanese rice requires soaking the rice for 20 mins, boiling it for 5-10mins, cooking it on low fire for 15 mins, turning off the heat and leaving it undisturbed for 10 minutes. Finally, you aerate the rice by 'stirring' it before it is ready. Long process compared to cooking normal rice but I guess it was worth it. Mum says she will cook this rice in the rice cooker one of these days. Let's see if it will taste just as nice.

Next up is my first dish for the day:
Steamed Egg Custard aka Chawamushi

I am not a fan of chawamushi. My verdict on this dish was that it was too watery, I guess the proportion of eggs was too little as I did not get the large eggs which was indicated in the recipe. Bro-in-law says it might be because I did not dry my ingredients like mushroom before adding it in.... possible.... shall take note.

Anyway, the chawamushi lovers told me the taste was not there yet. I guess it was because I did not use store-bought chicken broth or home cooked dashi stock. Mum prepared home cooked chicken broth by cooking chicken breast in water as she feels that it is healthier than store-bought chicken broth. But I guess the lack of flavor in my Mum's chicken broth did not bring out enough taste for the chawamushi. I shall be more hardworking and try making Japanese dashi the next time i attempt this recipe.

My 2nd dish of the day was.... healthy vegetables!

This was easy to prepare. I just had to cut the french beans, boil them, shock them in cold water and mix them with the prepared sesame dressing and they are ready!

Although we do not normally prepare in this way, I think it tastes quite nice for a change. They were finished up quite fast too. In fact, all my food was finished up. Might be because I did not cook a lot too. Haha....

Now, my last 2 dishes for the day was....

Both are quite easy to prepare. You basically just have to cut them up, dust them with cornflour, cook them for a while, add in the sauces required, simmer them for a while and tada... they are ready! But one thing I realised when I was cooking these 2 dishes was that I do not know how to see if my food are cooked... had to shout for my mum for help a couple of times. I would say the pork chop was slightly overcooked as they were a little tough.

As for the Tofu Teriyaki, it was a test of my skills. I was supposed to buy firm tofu but blur me got tofu with firmness of 2/5. So... I just had to make do with it. Luckily they did not get smashed very easily and I was able to make decent looking and nice tasting tofus. I tried them the 2nd day using tofu with firmness of 1.5/5 which I had in the fridge and it was kinda disastrous. Anyway, love the bonita flakes garnishing on top. Expensive but they taste GREAT!

Eager to try out the many other recipes in the book soon.... :D

Yet another failure :(

Hopefully 失败真的是成功之母... another failed cake. Decided to make this interesting Pandan Cheese Roll from a blog which I have bookmarked for so long. A simple roll cake which went wrong. The cake turned out lumpy... a result of my poor folding-flour-into-mixture technique.... Grr.... The cream filling was not bad. Overall, it was edible but I wouldn't eat much. I kept them in my fridge for 3 days before throwing them away. Managed to make some guineau pigs eat though. :P Anyway, a photo below showing the decent looking swiss roll.

Looks totally different from the pictures from the blog I took the recipe from :D

Cheesecake again!! :)

I seem to bake a lot of cheesecakes... but they never seem to be able to taste as nice as those yummy ones I get to eat in cafes. Maybe it is time to go for classes or do more research.

Anyway, this time round I made a variation of the normal cheesecake for my sister's birthday.

Yesh... Blueberry Cheesecake... She has been bugging me for months or years. This recipe was taken from the 'Essentials of Baking' by Williams-Sonoma. What I love about this is the hazelnut base. But what I dislike about it is the taste of the almond essence. I wish I had followed my heart and not put it in instead. Being someone who dislikes the taste of almond, the taste of the almond essence was too overwhelming. I couldn't even taste the cheese. Eeks.... But I love the crust... :) My tasters felt the cake was quite okay. If I am going to attempt it again, I will definitely leave the almond essence out!

The outlook of the cake wasn't perfect with the snow powder not evenly distributed due to the lack of proper equipments :P But I love it! Simple and nice. I wanted to deco it with writings on a white choco board but somehow the white choco did not melt nicely.. not sure what went wrong... wasted my $5 worth of white choco. But I really have been having problems melting my choco recently... seriously need to find out what is wrong.

~2 Chefs.8 Hours.4 Bakes~

A weekday afternoon spent baking with Qin on 6 Sept 2010. Haha... not a very motivated baking day though... the rainy weather makes me feel lazy and I left most of the baking work done by Qin. I did the washing up though. This seems to be what happens when friends come over to bake at my place. I do less of the baking and more of the washing up.

So our first bake of the day (if I rem correctly):

The taste of the cupcake was good since it has nutella... but it was overbaked. :P Also, the texture was heavy.

Next up are these Nestum Cookies which you see below:

Hmm... they taste okay but I wouldn't attempt it for another time. Using nestum as the ingredients was an interesting idea though. :)

Our 3rd bake: Cheese Logs

It was fun piping the dough into wordings and shapes but I did not like the taste of the 'cookies' when they were cooled. Too saltish...

And our final bake of the day was the Marble Cheesecake:

This is my 2nd attempt baking this. The texture is pretty similar to my first attempt, maybe a little softer and soggy. Need some improvements and I am keen to master it.

This time round I made the chocolate sponge base and it tastes even better. I am so proud of the springy chocolate sponge cake which you see on the left... tastes a little weird on its own but tastes great as the cheesecake base... :) Most importantly, it is springy! I can press it down and it will return to its original form immediately! Worth experimenting it again.

This cheesecake is well-liked by my family but apparently not so well-liked by Qin's family. Shall let my friends try it the next time and see their response.

So this ends off my baking day with Qin. 4 bakes in 8 hours by 2 efficient chefs... Haha... :P

Another unsuccessful bake :(

I made these cream cheese spirals on a weekday night, after work. They look simple enough to be made in a few hours but... they were not. I realised I am not good with doughs... perhaps there are some special techniques to handle them to make them less unpredictable...

These were basically made up of butter and cream cheese. The filling was brown sugar, cinnamon and almond bits. Somehow, I was not able to roll up the spirals in a neat manner. Secondly, the filling was way too sweet. I only used half of it and I couldn't even make myself finish one. I kept all of these baked ones in a container and instructed my mum not to let anyone eat it. And I threw it away the 2nd day. I just can't bear to throw them away immediately. What a waste!

Looking back, I wonder why I chose to make these. Maybe they look good in the pictures which I saw. Lesson learnt-Never be deceived by outlook in future. Haha...

My 1st Attempt on a Healthy Recipe

Don't they sound healthy? They taste healthy too, except for the fact that I used sweetened cranberry. Hee... recipe was adapted from Happy Home Baking once again. I replaced the walnuts with diced almond. I wanted to use almond flakes initially but I realised it was spoilt when I was about to use it.

The cookies were well liked by my family and friends.... positive feedbacks. They like the texture of the biscuit and the fact that it is not too sweet, Some like the ingredients. But I guess, it is not to everyone's liking as it tastes like muesli bar. Working towards a healthier baking/cooking journey... :P

我们家的肉粽

Everyone in the family took part in the 肉粽process, be it preparing the ingredients, wrapping it, starting the fire or eating it... Lol... But of coz, the main chefs are my mum and 三姐.

Below are some of the ingredients for the 肉粽:
And of cause it includes seasonings like salt, dark soya sauce, pepper and some powder which I can't remember.

Making 肉粽 is tiring... Haha... I was suppose to make my Nonya 粽子in July, after my busy work schedule... but... I did not get down to it. Maybe soon? :P

If I remember correctly, we made more than 100 肉粽. Of cause we did not eat everything... some were given to friends and relatives of our family. The 肉粽this year is much much better than last year's tasteless ones which I did with my mum.

And I like it coz I made 8 肉粽 with my favourite ingredients=no chestnut! Yeah... so I enjoy them more. Below are the ones I made....
Hopefully I'll get down to doing my Nonya 粽子soon! :)

A Simple Cheesecake

I haven't been baking much recently... missed out on alot of birthday cakes this year.. Grr... But still, I managed to squeeze some time to do a simple one for Qin in June.

Somehow, I like this photo of the cheesecake in baine marie :)

The completed cheesecake with simple decoration doesn't taste as nice as I hope it could be. I actually went Hokkaido recently and tasted one of the best cheesecakes at LeTao... It tastes like ice-cream cheesecake... Yummy... if only I could reach that standard...

Marble Cheesecake

This is a light, souffle type of cheesecake (Recipe from: Kitchen Corner). The original recipe calls for a chocolate sponge cake base but being too lazy to bake sponge cake which are so unpredictable... I gave it a miss. :P The cheesecake turned out to be quite nice but could be lighter. Worth making it again, maybe with a base on my next attempt.

On a side note, my posts are becoming shorter and shorter... let the pictures do the talking. :)

Portuguese Egg Tarts again! :D

Same recipe as my previous attempt - taken from the book "Irresistable Pastry" by Alex Goh. I like the outlook of the tarts this time round but the crust was not crispy enough. I suspect it might be the oven temperature or the too thick containers or maybe the process of making the puff pastry itself. Hope I'll get some answers during my next attempt. :)

Tarts for Sale?!? :P