Cooking for Cheats - Poached Egg Over Ham and Toast

My kitchen has seen a fair bit of activity lately.

with JJ taking up most of my time and no additional help, i now have even lesser time for chores and caring for the household.
since i breastfeed, nutrition is a major concern. i didn't want to resort to reaching for chips and cookies to curb my hunger pangs, so i have been on the prowl for speedy recipes that put food on the table in less than 20 minutes.

i have always been a fan of simple, straightforward cooking because anything that takes more than 5 ingredients and longer than an hour to prepare is really best eaten at a restaurant.

these days, in addition to taste and speed, the amount of time needed for cleaning up after has become another important requirement when i cook.

meals that taste great, cook easy and clean up fast after are certainly not easy to prepare, but i realise that with a little bit of cheating, the challenge becomes pretty enjoyable.

i have been wondering about eggs benedict ever since i saw them on television, but in my present state there would certainly be no pottering around the kitchen for hollandaise sauce.

so my curiosity led me to make the best of whatever i had in the fridge, and the results were fast, dead simple and very delicious.

1. i started by toasting two slices of bread while browning two slices of ham in a frypan.

2. in a small pot filled two-thirds with water, i added a tablespoon of vinegar when the water came to a boil and reduced the boil to a gentle simmer.

3. after cracking an egg into a bowl, i gently slid the egg into the pot of water before covering the pot and waiting for four minutes.

4. i then stacked the ham on top of my toast, and topped it with my poached egg.

with some freshly cracked black pepper, this made a quick and yummy breakfast!

Cooking Up A Storm

I think I am on a roll today.

i rose bright and early this morning, thinking i should make the best out of my final week before work at the university begins next monday.

since i probably wont have much time for idle pursuits like pottering around the kitchen in future, i decided to put an end to my years of procrastination and get round to making my own gyoza.

gyoza are the japanese adaptation of chinese pot-stickers, little pan-fried dumplings filled with minced pork, chives and chopped cabbage. personally i am a huge fan of the japanese version because the dumpling skins are much thinner, which means crispy goodness and juicier morsels.

the cooking book said i could make 20 dumplings, and that was exactly what i ended up with (you really have to hand it to japanese recipes for their sheer precision).


fried eight of them to go with a bowl of chinese vermicelli soup for lunch:



i then proceeded to bake a lemon gateau cake with lemon sugar frosting for tea.

the recipe was dead-easy but the frosting was a little tricky because i didnt have any icing sugar at home. googled for substitutes and realised that i could actually blend regular granulated sugar with corn starch to create my own icing sugar.

the frosting turned out to be a little rough for my liking, making the cake five points short of perfection, but still it was moist with just the right amount of tangy sweetness. perfect with a hot mug of tea on a rainy afternoon!

Basil Me Silly

On a whim, I brought home a huge bag of them from the fresh fruit and vegetable market in downtown naha.

i didn't know what i could do with such a mammoth pile of leaves, so i tried making my own basil pesto.

40 basil leaves, two tablespoons of finely grated parmesan cheese, 100ml of olive oil and 4 cloves of garlic were blended to yield quite a handsome portion of homemade pesto.



tossed in a saucepan with some penne, shiitake and bacon, the basil pesto made for an effortless, lip-smacking lunch.

the rest of the larger leaves were left to dry in the sun. i figured dried basil could come in handy for soups and oil-based salad dressings. plus, they'd make good company for the jars of rosemary and lemongrass sitting on my kitchen window sill.





when all the work in the kitchen was done, i caught up on some overdue reading (i know i know, it's a magazine and not quite such an intelligent read) over a hot cup of lemongrass tea.



best way to combat a headache, if you'd ask me.

The Bread Factory

All thanks to Ros, actually.

She descended upon my serangoon apartment like a stork bearing gifts, quietly dropping off her much pre-loved breadmaker at my doorstep before leaving for new york.

back when she was in sapporo, the little japanese breadmaker would fill her tiny apartment with the smell of freshly baked bread on cold, wintry mornings. ros thought she would do a good turn by passing her mobile bread factory to the one who resides in okinawa, since the breadmaker would be far too heavy to make the trip to america and rendered useless in singapore because of the different voltage requirements otherwise.

buoyed by her happy memories of crispy onion and bacon bread, i decided to give the breadmaker a test drive. with an electric current transformer my dad salvaged from his workplace, my mom and i succeeded in baking our first loaf of bread this afternoon!

ros, say hello to Walnut Bread:

and this is the nifty little box that made it all possible:

Big Thank You to Ros! : )

My Wanton Skins - Part II

I had 7 left and I didn't know what to do with them.

ken had tired of the cheese wantons and grating ginger and garlic to make just another seven wantons seemed like a silly idea.

so i made siew mai!

okay, granted they dont look very good since i didnt top them with colourful green peas or shaved carrots, but it looks pretty close to those sold in japan, since the japanese think siew mai come with white floured skins, instead of the yellow egg-based ones we're used to seeing at home.

taste-wise, i think i did a pretty good job : )

okay, no more buying of wanton skins for the time being.

ご無沙汰

It isn't because I've been busy.
i havent been posting for close to four months and as a result, i've developed something of a writer's block.

so to re-orientate myself, i'll be taking the bunny slope by telling my stories with more pictures and not-so-many words.

with more time on my hands these days, i decided to try out new things in the kitchen.

two weeks ago, i attempted to make a batch of wantons.
i stuffed the skins full with mushrooms, minced meat, prawns and scallions.

ten wantons got turned into soup, while some others were pan-fried to crispy goodness.

the rest of the filling was tossed into a steamed egg dish.

the more than half a packet of unused wanton skins were wrapped around pieces of cheddar cheese and pan-fried. perfect for staving off a mid-afternoon hunger pang and dead easy to make.

ピリ辛豚どんぶり

I'm not quite aiming to be the next domestic goddess, but there is something about sitting in front of a PC for hours on end, draining your brain juices over an academic exercise that makes you take sudden and renewed interest in cooking and eating.

i'm not a fussy eater and i dont like complicated, time-consuming recipes because if it takes you up to an hour to prepare and cook it, you're better off heading straight to the restaurant for the real deal. i also like hearty and tummy-filling meals, so thats why most of the dishes that i've blogged about so far are big on carbs and meat.

i came aross this recipe in a local magazine while waiting for the car to be washed at the gas station, and i gave it a go that very evening. it was simple, quick and surprisingly good so i thought i'd share the recipe here.

ingredients:

100 gm of sliced pork

chives (i didnt have any so i substituted with about 10cm of scallions)

lettuce (about 3-4 large leaves)

cooking wine (half a tablespoon)

doubanjiang (half a teaspoon)

cornflour (half a tablespoon)

sugar (half a teaspoon)

soy sauce (one tablespoon)

salt, pepper

1. lightly season the pork with salt and pepper, and add the wine, sugar, soy sauce, cornflour to the meat. slice lettuce and cut chives.

2. add cooking oil to a frying pan and lightly fry the doubanjiang on medium heat.

3. add the pork and stir-fry on high heat. add chives when meat is fully cooked.

4. fill a deep bowl with rice, lay the sliced lettuce and top it with the pork.

and this is what you'll get:

Serinah's Fried Chicken

Move over Kentucky, SFC is here.

i think i've managed to figure out how to make my very own colonel's fried chicken! and what's better, my version's baked in the oven so it's probably a healthier option.

here's how i did it:

preheat oven to 220 degrees.

while oven's warming up, mix three tablespoons of fine breadcrumbs with three tablespoons of grated cheese (powder version is completely fine as well) and three tablespoons of olive oil. add a generous amount of chopped basil (dry version also okay), a pinch of salt and cracked black pepper.

cover one large piece of chicken thigh meat completely with the mixture above and pop it in the oven for 20 minutes, skin side down. (no turning over required)

if you want to make the meal healthier, toss in some cherry tomatoes ten minutes into baking. the above mixture also works for white-meat fish.

an extremely simple and easy recipe. the end result was baked chicken with crispy skin and very juicy meat. and it really tastes like KFC!

Amusement

Just when you think the state of English in Japan cannot possibly get any worse, this arrives in your letterbox.

the irony? the guy who sent the wedding invitation actually majored in english in university.

made myself a jumbo sandwich the other day and crammed it full of lettuce, bacon, sliced tomatoes and topped it off with a sunny side-up and cheese. it's hard eating a sandwich this size without messing things up but i was kept full the entire day!

Stuff

Thought the nice people who read my blog might like a look at my life as it unfolds.

here's a picture of my work desk right in the heat of action:

most people know that i love my chicken, and when stress levels climb, the girl must find ways to get her mitts on some good poultry.

here is what i made for dinner last night:

there were six wings in total and i finished them all!!

Random Tidbits

Everyone living on their own has a few tricks up their sleeves on how to clear leftover food from the fridge.

so far, my favourite solutions are fried rice (anything and everything goes!), stir-fried noodle dishes and sandwiches.

the other day i had a box of rapidly dying mini tomatoes, some rocket lettuce leaves, frozen minced meat and a slice of cheese. so i turned it into taco rice, the okinawan take on mexican tacos. i didnt have worcestershire sauce at home, so i substituted with oyster sauce and it still works. plus it's healthy so i didnt have to feel bad about finishing the entire plate on my own.

in between daily stabs of painful torture also known as thesis-writing, i have taken comfort in trying on the new shades of nail polish that i bought from the face shop on my last trip to singapore.

cheap, fast, good and goes on easy. it actually looks like i had it professionally done if you dont look at it too close.