More keep warm chow... Nabe

Pile the ingredients in, add some stock and bring to boil. Spinach, prawns, mushrooms, carrot, scallops, konnyaku noodles, tofu and belly pork! Not quite enough for 3 hungry hippos so we tossed in more.

I like mushrooms!

A variety of fungi has been mushrooming in supermarkets. I got some from a local grower, Mycofarm. Looked fresher than the imported ones. The Chinese shitake I've gotten in vacuum packs have a very strong chemical-like taste. I've been wondering if it's just the flavour perculiar to those mushrooms or if they have been processed. These ones were great! I love king oyster mushrooms!

Mutton Biryani to warm things up

Little Miss J has always appreciated spice... but now she won't even eat plain biryani and meat without a generous portion of that curry sauce!

Yu Sheng thanks to the Benriner Cook's Help

Mum was very curious about the Benriner turning slicer we got, so she paid a visit and I did a demo yu sheng, this time without the konnyaku, and with jellyfish and wakame. I showed her the long noodlely strands that spewed forth from the gadget's bottom and she was really impressed. I did warn her that the Benriner Cook's Help has it's quirks and takes some getting used to. There were times that the hunk of veg did not catch on and the teeth blades got bent! But it seems like from the reviews I've read, it is one of the better turning slicers around. She vowed to buy the contraption this Saturday.

I am not happy about the pictures taken with my mobile phone! But my digicam is so power-hungry, never satisfied with any kind of rechargeables I put in it.

Yu Sheng

We just bought a turning slicer over the weekend and I've been very eager to try it out. It was fun cranking out all those oodles of vegetables, but it wasn't incredibly easy to use.

Here is the cobbled together Yu Sheng with carrots, cucumber, radish, konnyaku noodles and my home-grown alfalfa and sunflower sprouts. I made the dressing with equal parts of lemon juice, yuzu jelly, tsuyu, sesame paste and macadamia oil. With a sprinkling of bonito (which made up for the yu). Super yummy!















More about the turning slicer later...

Frozen Tiramisu... oh so decadent

I've learnt that half a kilo of Marscapone and another half a litre of double cream makes quite a lot of Tiramisu. After taking the bulk of it to a party, I decided to freeze the rest to see how it would turn out. Only to have hubby say "Better eat it up!" only 4 days later when I mentioned that we had some left over.

I was quite eager to try it frozen, so we sank our spoons right in, and couldn't stop! This batch was made with a whopping amount of Sheridan's Coffee Liqueur (the only thing that we had in the fridge). I've developed a sensitivity to caffeine so my sponges weren't soaked in as much expresso as I would've liked. More liqueur did the job! Little Miss J enjoyed it almost as much as her Papa did. "More pease.. pease..." Hmm... wonder why she was dancing around in circles while watching China's Got Talent. She must have liked the peacock man!

Can Alfalfa sprout in Singapore's climate?

Now that hubbs is quite well again, and baby is almost 2, I can get back to tornado-ing about in the kitchen, and in the "garden".

I've caught the sprouting bug... my first attempt in sprouting alfalfa was very successful, much to my surprise. I ate the whole lot at one go after I greened them up!

Instructions:-

1) Soak about 2 tablespoons of seeds in a glass jar overnight (use a jar which holds about 800ml of liquid)

2) Drain the water the next morning and leave in dark place

3) Wash and drain the seeds on the same evening; repeat the rinsing and washing every 12 hours until the sprouts are about 1 inch in length

4) Put them near the window to green the leaves

5) Shake off the hulls and store in the fridge

I didn't quite get to the last step coz' I was too eager to try my sprouts and they tasted great!

Dredful pics taken with my mobile phone. I made a bigger batch of sprouts, now sitting in the fridge coz' they taste better chilled. I alfalfa in my sandwiches!




















Day 2
















Day 5 -- All done!

I'm now sprouting sunflower, even yummier! I haven't managed to get the black seeds for sprouting and growing sunflowers, so I'm trying with birdseed from the pet shop... hope it works! Getting them to a grow to a crunchy green is quite tricky, requires soil and all. I managed to get mustard, lettuce, tung o and corriander seeds today! Time for more experimentation! :D