Brekkie by the husband

Husband made me brekkie in bed on Saturday, so I woke up (around noon ... lazy, I know) to 2 lovely poached eggs served on top of some tiger bread, and ketchup.

He sure knows my taste!

NABM cooks - Zucchini Slice (courtesy of Tanya's Aunt)

In the previous post, I mentioned that I'd met a new friend. This new friend, aside from being my food-chat buddy, also gave me a recipe from her Aunt in Australia which she'd tried and tested, and felt it good enough to recommend to me.

You say zucchini - I say courgette. Whatever. The outcome's the same.



Below is a picture of the recipe - in all its original glory. I have been nice and typed up another version for you below, but that's just because it's you.

Zucchini Slice From Down Under (with my modifications in brackets)

Makes about 1 small lasagne tray
375g grated (julienned) zucchini / courgette (I used about 3 zucchinis and it turned out OK)
1 large onion (Mine was diced)
3 rashers bacon (I fried mine up first before slicing it)
1 cup grated cheese (I used extra strong cheddar for maximum taste)
1 cup self-raising flour (Tanya said to add a teaspoon of baking powder if you want it to rise more)
1/2 cup oil (I used plain sunflower oil)
5 eggs (I used 6)
Salt and pepper

You can probably tell from the above that I don't follow recipes too well, but for your own sake, please try to follow the photographed recipe.) What the recipe says to do:

1. Grate zucchini
2. Chop onion and bacon
3. Combine all together
4. Lastly add eggs
5. Mix thoroughly
6. Bake 30 - 40 mins at 170 degrees Celcius



I did almost the same as per the recipe, with the difference being I cooked the bacon first to get it all crispy, and also softened the zucchini in the bacon grease to maximise flavour before mixing it all in a bowl.



Using a lasagne dish, I lined it with foil (no washing up!) before pouring the mixture into the tray, and then baked for the recommended time. To test if the mixture is cooked thoroughly, you could try poking it with a chopstick, and if the chopstick comes out clean (ie no sticky mixture on it), it's most probably cooked.



I ate some of it there and then, and cut the rest up into 3 x 2 inch slices to be kept in the fridge. Over the next few days, we had the slices (warmed up in the microwave) with a tomato and chicken stew. With enough gravy, this was almost similar to dumplings, or a savoury muffin. Gonna try making it again soon for a friend's BBQ, so we'll see how that goes.

Christmas 2010

I know a post is REALLY late when I have to title it by which year the meal was had. Yes, this was last year’s leftovers, but I have been busy (not really) so haven’t got round to posting about it.

But now I have, and that’s all that matters.

So, sometime last year, to be precise, on Christmas Day, we had our lovely, very delicious Christmas lunch. We’d been to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and felt absolutely starvin’ marvin’ after it, so the fiance, his mom and I stood in the kitchen eating a WHOLE cheese and onion quiche between us.

No wonder I was so hungry the next day. But then, as traditional on Christmas Day, you’re not supposed to have breakfast. That would absolutely ruin the appetite for lunch. (On a side note, I read somewhere that on average, people consumed about 4,000 calories on Christmas – mainly because they have a greasy fry-up to begin with, and then continue the day with bulk-buy boxes of chocolates and more bottles of wine than you can imagine.)

Anyhow, onwards and oven-wards with the meal preparation. The vegetables were peeled, chopped, and put in the pan to be boiled. Parsnips went into the oven to be turned into lovely, creamy roasted parsnips.

This is almost like real-time blogging. Why? Because while the vegetables were cooking, I had to stare at this cake. Staring and wondering why I had enough manners to stop myself from biting into it whole.

And if that was not enough, I was asked to put these chocolates up on the Christmas tree. A few of them ended up in my mouth.

The few that made it up to the tree. Counted themselves lucky.

And with all real-time postings, we had to while the seconds away while the turkey roasted in the oven. Oh why is it not lunchtime yet.

Because we usually have a vegetarian meal with the main meal, this was the Noughts and Crosses pie of the day (or Tic Tac Toe depending on how you like it). The filling was a creamy, slightly curry-ish vegetable mix which worked really well.

When the turkey felt it was ready to hit the red carpet, I knew it was nearly lunchtime. OK I know it looks like it spent winter sitting indoors, but it’s because we cooked it with the foil covering it, and since we don’t eat the skin off the bird during the meal, it didn’t really matter.

This is the plate of turkey (which I hungrily put on the plate) and Cumberland sausages that were cooked with the turkey.

But enough about the bird already – let’s get to the Sideshow Bobs. Here we have the roasted parsnips. As far as I’m aware, parsnip is the only vegetable which gets better with overcooking. Like, alot better. Raw parsnips taste like carrots – and I don’t like carrots. Boiled parsnips taste like sweet potato. Hmm. Roasted parsnips taste like creamy, fluffy, slightly sticky and chewy potatoes. Probably didn’t sell it too well there, but you get the idea. I like it.

Bacon roll or sausages wrapped in bacon. The fiance had slightly under 20 of these little things.

Because I was tasked with making the bacon rolls, and because I do this two times a year, I got all the quantities wrong and ended up with a lot of extra sausage meat. So I rolled them up into little sausage meatballs and chucked them in the oven.

The items in this bowl could possibly be the fiance’s all-time favourite of the meal.

After a few hours of cooking, staring, self-restraint and maybe some nibbling in between, the Christmas lunch is finally ready!

Get the bubbly out, toast toast, open some Christmas crackers, read the jokes, and … come on, hurry up, I want to eat this!

Mmmmm Christmas lunch, meet me. Me, meet Christmas lunch. Me, eat Christmas lunch.

Once all the eating is done, we then sat down to open the presents, eat more chocs and watch a lot of TV.

Lack of sunshine = sulk = don’t wanna eat out = Chap Jae

As daylight becomes harder and harder to come by (ie when I go to work it’s dark, when I come back from work it’s dark), all the pictures I take of when I’m out will pretty much mostly be quite rubbish. I know there’s all sort of things you could do with ISO adjustment, aperture, shutter speed, etc. but I’m so rubbish at that, thus the pictures will be rubbish too. 

On that note, however, I came up with an excellent idea yesterday, while trying to digest the large amounts of Korean food I had for dinner. Here it is. Since it’s so cold (some places in the UK were –17 Celcius yesterday. Erm, what?) I’m beginning to dread the whole going-out-in-10-layers-of-clothing thingamajig. It’s seriously tiring, and that’s even before I’ve left the flat. By the time I’ve put all those layers of clothes on, and tried to waddle out the door, the thought of having to remove all of it once I get indoors is just not very exhilarating. Anyhow, this means that I won’t be eating out that much (yes, even less than I have been doing recently, which is quite a feat for a supposed food blogger).

Since I still have to eat, and since the food has to come from somewhere, I thought, why not feature a post each week about where the food comes from? It’s not that exciting really, most of the food comes from supermarkets. Thing is, it’s better than a blank page with just the banner of good food previously eaten, so why not.

Also, if I do enough features of stuff I’ve bought from supermarkets, and then what I’ve made with it, Sainsbury’s / Tesco / M&S / Asda might decide to sponsor my weekly groceries and that would be the main objective of this blog fulfilled. Yes, the main aim of this blog is to one day, enable me to get free food. I’m not fussed which supermarket / mini mart / reduced to clear aisle wants to give that free food to me, so sponsors, if you’re reading this, please feel free to e-mail me.

Sainsbury – if you’re reading, this one’s for you.

I’ve tried to hide the frozen products behind the fresh(er) ones, but because I have so many frozen products, it wasn’t very successful.

Because we had Korean for dinner, and because the smell of kimchi is still lingering on my hair and coat, I had cravings for more Korean food again today. Since we weren’t going out for food, and since the M&S ‘Dine for £10’ range wasn’t too inspiring, we decided to try our hands at making ChapJae, or the Korean version of yam noodles stir fried with meat and vegetables. I Googled for a recipe, found nothing quite believable, and decided to make something up. This is what I made up earlier.

Ingredients – please know that I don’t like measuring things, so every item here should be added as you go along, to the amounts you feel are sufficient (this is why I eat out so much)

• Chicken (something like 300g or something) cut into bite-sized pieces and then marinated in Korean hot pepper sauce, sesame oil, sugar and Maggi seasoning (good for most things)

(the red pepper sauce)

• Courgette (zucchini), red pepper, onions and carrots (all julienned)

And, not pictured because I forgot about them until I’d kept the camera away:

• Garlic
• Yam noodles (possibly found in most good Oriental supermarkets, ask someone for the Korean version)
• Some concept of how it should taste like

Because I did the prep and all that during the day(light) (ie before 4.30pm), and the cooking later on during dinner time, the pictures below look quite different. I told you I don’t know how to do that whole light / aperture thing.

Cooking method – or this is how I did it anyway.

First, I threw the onions into the frying pan. While that was frying away, I chucked in the chicken pieces and that created a sort of sizzle in the pan which made me look for the anti-bacterial spray to wipe it off the hob. A bit of degreasing later, and I was set to then throw in the rest of the vegetables. Little tip here, you might wanna throw the vegetables in maybe only when you’re about to serve the dish, depending on how soft you like the vegetables to be.

While all this throwing and wiping of hob was going on, I was also multi-tasking by soaking the yam noodles in a bowl of hot water. As they get soft quite easily, I wasn’t gonna cook them before throwing them into the pan with the chicken as that would have made them go all mushy.

When everything has been effectively chucked or thrown into the pan, and some frying has been done, it should look something like this.

The transferring of the noodles from the pan to the bowl is another skilful matter. I suggest the use of chopsticks and frying spatula thing.

It tasted surprisingly good, and I’ll be making this again, but without carrots I reckon because that lent a weird taste to it.

Eggs for breakfast

Here’s something quite stupid. When I was a young kid, I used to associate certain types of meals with certain textures. For example, dinner to me usually looked like something out of a Western; complete with wood fire cackling with a tin of baked beans bubbling away above it. So, dinner was usually beany.

Lunch was usually mash-y in texture (this was in my mind, not in reality, of course). For someone who read alot of Archie comics as a kid, lunch in those comic scenes usually looked like a plate with nothing but mash on it, so for me, lunch looked like a plate of mash.

(It might be worth noting here that I did not have beans for dinner and mash for lunch. It was usually dishes with rice, but still, that didn’t stop me from picturing different types of food to represent different meals.)

Breakfast, now breakfast to me was always eggs.

Eggs in any form was good to me. It didn’t help that I used to be allergic to eggs, so the opportunity to actually eat the round little things became one of rarity. Scrambled, fried, boiled, half boiled, poached, anyway you made it, eggs were my favourite food.

How many eggs are enough for an eggselent breakfast?

Clearly, about four. Served atop buttery crumpets (M&S are the best for those), these lovely little quivering yolks break at the slightest touch of the fork, oozing into the waiting bubbles in the crumpets. Eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Eating in – brekkie

Been so busy that I’ve not been having breakfasts … actually I don’t usually have anything for breakfast so it’s not an excuse. However, that said, one Saturday some weeks ago, we found the leisurely time to have a nice home-cooked breakfast.

Half (more on the hard) boiled egg with soldiers (Western version) vs half (ie hard) boiled egg with soy sauce and pepper (Malaysian version).

Which was better? Well, they were both fantastic as I love eggs in all forms, so can’t really choose. The only difference is that one is more savoury than the other (soy sauce makes it slightly sweet also), and the Malaysian version was eaten on its own where as the Western version was eaten with soldiers (ie toast but cut into little rectangles).

Then I had some peanut butter and strawberry jam on toast. One of the nicest combinations for toast – aside from Marmite and honey which is also nice. I also like Marmite and marmalade, strangely nice with the combination of bitter salty Marmite and sweet citrusy marmalade. Milo and condensed milk, another great option. You gotta try it to believe it.

Then we moved on to smoked salmon and some soldiers (not necessarily eaten together, but we had extras from the half-boiled egg.

OK gotta say, been eating out less than usual, but I still like taking pictures of food. When I start taking pictures of chocolates, you know I’m short of material.

This is a picture of the leftover meatball spaghetti that I had in the fridge. Whilst having breakfast, the lighting was really good for pictures, which is why I took out any food I had, even leftover non-cooked food, and starting snapping away. Looks nice, huh?

Cooking from scratch

As in, the freezer is named Scratch.

Ikea frozen meatballs with ready-made (but fresh) tagliatelle and ready-made spicy bacon tomato pasta sauce.

Not exactly blog-worthy (to some), but it tasted nice, looks nice, and took about 15 minutes to make so here it is.

Fish stew made from tilapia, prawns, plum tomatoes and fish stock, served on ready-made, fresh tagliatelle.

Been eating lots of fresh pasta recently, ever since we discovered how quick they were to cook, and how little sauces of flavouring was needed to make it nice.

We went to the fish market (Billingsgate Fish Market, Canary Wharf)

This going to the fish market business is tiring stuff, you know. Most weeks, we say, let’s go to the fish market this weekend, we’ll get loads of fish and make lots of seafood stuff. Sounds great, definitely, let’s go.

Come Saturday, the alarm rings, we snooze, get up at lunchtime, no fish market.

Last weekend though, we managed it. Despite snoozing half an hour after the original set-off time, we managed to get to the fish market, find a parking space, dodge the people carrying rucksacks of fish, and find our way to our fish. Didn’t get the scallops though, but nevermind.

Most of the people who come here (when we’re usually there anyway) look like individual buyers, ie for private consumption. Mostly tired-looking, everyone is here for a good deal. Whether it is cheap fish, or bigger fish, or fresher fish, the main thing is to get something you can’t get from the supermarkets. The industrial buyers have probably been and gone by the time these individual buyers get there, so even though we think we have it fresh, the REALLY fresh ones have already been bought.

Anyway, quite fresh is better than not fresh, hey.

Something fishy is going on.

Lots of tired, fishy, grumpy people.

This was our catch.

Tiger prawns £12 per kg

Squid £8.50 per kg

This was what we made for dinner with our (quite) fresh fish.

Chilli and garlic tiger prawn tagliatelle

We bought some fresh pasta, finely chopped some garlic and chilli, threw in some flat leaf parsley, threw in some prawns, and voila. (Not so) fresh prawns and pasta. Lovely. Until it makes you feel slightly sick. But while you’re eating it, it’s fine, so no worries.

Deep fried squid – Gordon Ramsay style (for recipes, click here)

This was actually really nice. The first batch went slightly soft because the heat wasn’t on high enough, but the second batch went a lovely brown colour, and crisped up nicely too. The five spice really adds to the flavour, and makes it taste a little more savoury than if you marinated it the usual way.