Tea Leaf Eggs

Today when P stepped out of the house, I threw together the materials for this in half an hour. And left it there for a long while. And then it was done! Easy!

Tea Leaf Eggs

6 eggs
3 bags of black tea (chinese and english tea are both fine)
1 cinnamon stick (about 2 inches)
1 tsp chinese five spice powder
5 cloves
5 tbsp soy sauce
3 cups water

Boil eggs in plain water for about 3 minutes until solid.
Crack with the back of your spoon. These will form the marbled patterns on the eggs.
Put in the rest of the ingredients.
Simmer on low fire and steep for at least 2 hours.

DONE!

Mini-steak

I wonder why I did not explore the mysteries of steak earlier. This turned out far more tasty than I expected. This may have also been because I put the beef in this improvised/made-up marinade for a few hours longer than I expected to have it marinade because Mr P was packing in the house like crazy so cooking was delayed but in the end these were very easy to prepare and the results were unbelievably tasty.

Perfect Steak Marinade

2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 tsp of butter, melted
thyme or italian herbs

1. Marinade for as long as you can possibly bear (1-3 hours)
2. Fry in a skillet with butter for 10 minutes or less for medium rare steak. Timing depends on thickness and requires some estimation. As a general rule, do not exceed 10 minutes.

As for the sides...

Boiled Potatoes

1. Skin the potatoes and cut them into large chunks.
2. Throw them into a big pot of water with a pinch of salt. Boil for approx 20 min.
3. Heat a small sauceboat of butter. Pour butter over potatoes as required.

Caramelised Onions

1. Cut up onions.
2. Fry in pan at moderate heat. Add cracked pepper and a pinch of sugar. If feeling fancy, make a red wine reduction along with the remnants of the sauce produced after pan frying the beef.

Spicy Tofu Soup

Made this a while ago because I thought it would be nice to eat some tofu. Recently discovered the awesomeness of SILKEN TOFU. DELICIOUS SILKEN TOFU IN VEGETABLE BROTH! The dill adds an interesting dimension, although to be honest I added the dill because now i have used up all the Turmeric from making curries out of everything.

4 cloves garlic
2 carrots
2 tomatoes
2 onions
1 packet of Silken Tofu
1.5 Vegetable Stock Cube
1 tsp cumin
Some coriander
Chilli Flakes
1 tsp dill weed

1. Cut up all the vegetables
2. Fry all vegetable components in a bit of olive oil
3. Add the spices. If it is getting very dry at this point, put in a bit of water.
4. After onions and vegetables are slightly softened, add around 2 litres of water
5. Now cut up the tofu while its in the box. Then throw it all in.
   
6. Bring to a boil, then simmer for as long as you want.
   
7. DONE
   

Fried Potato and Scrambled Eggs

My usual way of making scrambled eggs is to heat a bit of butter till really hot, then pour in the eggs which have already been beaten. The rest is the same, watch it carefully and stir continously, take it off the fire to prevent overcooking, and throw in a bit of milk/cream/creme fraiche at the point just before you consider it done, in order to slow the cooking process at the end and keep it soft and creamy.

The Gordon Ramsay method of scrambled eggs differs slightly from mine; he cracks the eggs whole straight into the pot, throws the knob of butter in. The rest is the same. For some reason I feel it tastes different. I prefer having the butter heated up on its own because I think it imparts some sort of 'nuttiness" to the scrambled eggs. But it could just be me....

1. Cut potatoes into cubes, season with salt, paprika and thyme
2. Fry in a little olive oil, stirring from time to time, until potato starts to fall apart
   
3. Meanswhile cook the scrambled eggs in another pot (see above methods)
   
4. Test the potato cubes if they are cooked through (this will depend on the size of cubes)
5. Serve when everything seems cooked

On hindsight: MAKE POTATO CUBES SMALLER

Cheese and Broccoli Pasta

Repurposed yesterday's broccoli soup creation - added half a cup of cheddar cheese, a dash of milk, and called it a pasta sauce. It was okay I suppose. I wish it were greener. I kinda wish I had some green food colouring. I really wanted to make green eggs and ham today. Or green anything food. I keep googling for things like "GREEN FOOD COLOURING SUBSTITUTE" or "BUTTER SUBSTITUTE" or "TURMERIC SUBSTITUTE" due to the supplies slowly running out because I keep cooking.

Broccoli Soup

TODAY WE FIGURED OUT HOW TO USE THE BLENDER

1. Cut up some cloves of garlic, one large onion, and two heads of broccoli
2. In a large pot, along with some butter, gently fry the onion, followed by the broccoli
3. Pour in about a litre of water, and season with salt and pepper
4. Stir broccoli so it is all evenly cooked
   
5. When broccoli is soft, put everything in a blender and blend into soup
   

Deviled Eggs

This was an attempt at deviled eggs or some form of stuffed eggs in the absence of mayo AND butter. Not intentionally omitted, but we had just run out of everything. Nevertheless, although it was not particularly creamy, it was still quite tasty.

1. Put 8 large eggs in a pot of water. Make sure the eggs are all covered by at least an inch of water.
2. Put the egg pot on the stove. When water comes to a boil, start the egg timer for 5 minutes.
3. Meanswhile, in another bowl, combine 2 tablespoons olive oil, a dash of paprika, and 2 thinly sliced shallots.
4. At this point I suddenly panicked that the raw shallots might be too intense with their oniony flavour so I put this oily mixture into the microwave and zapped it for two minutes while lightly covering the top of the bowl - so that the oil wouldn't explode out (from the moisture of the shallots). This last-minute intervention seems to have done it no harm, but also didn't seem to cook it that much.
   
5. By now, after all this running about, the eggs should be done. Take them out of the water and peel them all. Cut the eggs in half and take the yolks out.
6. Mix the yolks with the shallot/oil mixture. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and paprika.
7. Spoon it back into the eggs.
8. Sprinkle with paprika.

Now you can have breakfast fingerfood party.

Tom Yam Soup

NTUC sells "Tom Yam sets" consisting of the various things you will require to make a tom yam soup! I had never made a tom yam soup from scratch before, and I used very vague measurements for this, but it turned out brilliant. (with the total cost of ingredients being less than $6)

Along with 2 litres of water, I put in:

• Garlic, roughly cut up
  
• Lemongrass (the white bits were pounded into mash, the long hard green bits i left intact)
• Lime Leaves (torn up by hand)
• 1 lime (cut up and squeezed into the water)
  
• 3 small green chillies
  
• 2 dried red chillies
  
• about a dozen unshelled prawns
• a bag of fresh fishballs
• silken tofu
• tomatoes, sliced
• a sprinkling of coriander if you have some
  
• 1 chicken stock cube (if i could have used real chicken stock i would have!)

I put all the vegetables in along with the stock cube and allowed it to steep for as long as I could humanly bear, while I deshelled the prawns (i removed only the body shell but retained the head because the flavour is in the head!) and deveined them (all the gunk you find inside prawns!).

Finally after a long simmer, I brought it to a boil, and gently added in the tofu and fishballs followed by the prawns. You don't have to cook the prawns very long as they overcook easily, but cook them until they are pink all the way through. Simmer for a while more and serve.

Ten-minute Omelette Race

For those mornings when you want to eat a breakfast that does not just consist of a boiled egg and toast. Substitute vegetables as you see fit or as your vegetable supply levels rise and wane.

In order to make cooking more exciting, the goal should be to complete this entire cooking process within 10 minutes! TEN MINUTES! Its tight but you can do it! And then you can eat your breakfast egg and vegetables! And then go to work on time!!! (Yes the 10 minutes includes peeling and cutting up all the vegetables and everything)

4 eggs

3 tsp light soy sauce

3 Long beans

2 cloves garlic

1 tomato

1. Cut up all the vegetables into little bits.
2. Beat the eggs along with soy sauce. Season with pepper if you fancy. Or paprika if you've run out of pepper.
3. Fry the garlic followed by the long beans and then tomato.
4. When vegetables are cooked, turn down heat to medium, pour the egg mixture over the pan. Allow to set for quite a few minutes and put the lid on to retain heat.
5. When most of egg seems solid, flip over. Just before you think it's done, turn off the fire. The remaining heat will suffice to cook the omelette.
6. Cheese shavings optional, but goes well despite the Asian style seasoning of this omelette.

Potato Curry

I made up a new potato curry recipe today because I wanted something spicy to clear the sinuses.

Ingredients

12 cloves garlic
2 medium onions
3 potatoes
1 dried red chili
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp coriander
1 tsp mustard (whole grain)
soya sauce

1. chop the garlic finely, slice onions thinly, and cut the potatoes into small cubes
2. saute the garlic in a pan with some oil
3. fry the spices before adding onions
   
4. when onions are soft, add the potatoes, turn the heat high and throw half a cup of water in. quickly put the lid on the pan, lower the heat after a short while. this helps the potatoes cook faster.
   
5. add soy sauce to taste, about 2 tsp will do. repeat the adding water and then putting lid on process about twice.
6. when potatoes are soft, its done.
   

Avantgarde Breakfast Starter

One day when I was very hungry in Berlin and P hadn't fed me in a while, I made a snack from the random food things in Gunnar's house.




SPAGHETTI MONSTER

Ingredients
Cherry tomatoes
Spaghetti
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Impale tomatoes with spaghetti
2. Boil in water until spaghetti is cooked
3. Season and serve
   

The taste was exactly how you would expect a tomato and some spaghetti to taste like, however I guess it looked somewhat impressive.

Prawn Cocktail Potato

Recently while visiting friends in London, we made some tasty baked potatoes. If i had an oven in Singapore I'd eat a whole lot more baked potatoes, but sadly I do not have access to oven facilities. Therefore this will just be reminiscing till I get an oven one day in the future....

This is pretty simple so I won't even write a ingredient list or step-by-step guide to it. Simply bake the potato however you like and put the prawn cocktail on top. Since everyone has their own method I'll just leave it to you to do it anyway you like. Whether you want to throw it on the middle tray of the oven and wait somewhere between 40 minutes to a few hours or when you've gone insane with hunger.... or if you just nuke it in the microwave after poking holes innit with a fork. Keep the prawn cocktail in the fridge up till the very last moment so its really cold. And remember to butter up your potato before you slap on the prawn cocktail.



"Can I really taste the difference?" You may be asking yourself. The answer, where store-bought prawn cocktails are concerned, surprisingly, is YES. Similar taste tests have been done with Sainsburys basics like butter and vodka and other daily consumables, and most of the time the basics do not fare too badly compared with the premium version. But not for prawn cocktails.If you must buy pre-made prawn cocktails then you must go for the best... this "taste-the-difference" version has apparently got traces of anchovies in it and other exotic brown sauces innit. As opposed to just mayonnaise with a bit of pink in it.

Anything Curry

Through a process of trial and error, I have found out that you can actually make a curry out of anything as long as you add the following ingredients into a frying pan with the other things you might want to put into a curry, such as potatoes, or even when you are desperate, pasta will do. Curry Pasta? Curry Toast? Curry Onions? Curry Carrots? Curry... Broccoli?

This makes a sort of actually indian tasting curry if you must know. Not a nonya curry, not a japanese curry, not some english "curry", but a rather distinctively indian curry like the stuff you might get in the prata shops.


ANYTHING CAN BE MADE INTO CURRY

Ingredients (for Anything Curry base)
Onion
Garlic
Tumeric
Cumin
Coriander
Paprika

1. Cut up the onion and garlic into very tiny bits.
   
2. In some cooking oil, fry garlic first, followed by onions. Finally, add all four spices in more or less equal quantities and mix it in to make some sort of paste. Now you feel like a real cook dontcha? Who needs curry powder, mysterious curry powder which you have no idea what its made of? Anyway so you fry the spices a while so they will be tastier.
   
3. Finally after the spices are prepared, just put in whatever else you meant to put into the Anything curry.

Also see: my recipe for Spicy Okra Something

Chicken Soup Without the Chicken

Both me and P are feeling slightly under the weather today so I made a chicken soup that turned out pretty well. P thought it made his stomach feel better after having it, so something must be working. This is what went into it.


CHICKEN SOUP WITHOUT THE CHICKEN

Ingredients
1 litre chicken broth
1 leek
3 onions
5 potatoes
Butter
Thyme
1 bay leaf
1 cup milk
1 tbsp cornstarch
Spring Onions

1. Cut up everything into small cubes.
   
2. Saute the onions and leeks in butter until soft.
3. Season the onions and leeks with some thyme.
   
4. Combine the Chicken broth, soft onions, leeks, potato, and bay leaf in a large pot.
5. Bring to a boil.
6. Allow it to simmer for as long as you can humanly bear to wait / or when potatoes are soft.
7. Prepare the milk and cornstarch in a seperate cup and stir it well.
   
8. When potatoes are soft enough to spontaneously turn into mush, pour in the milk/cornstarch and stir.
9. Simmer for a while more until you can't wait to eat it anymore and then serve with garnish of spring onions.
   

Cold Somen Noodles

Somen is a thin, fragile wheat noodle that can be bought at Japanese/Asian supermarkets. It often comes in bundles of about 100g (which amounts to one serving). You can also get the bog standard Kikkoman Somen Tsuyu (dipping sauce) and keep it in the fridge. This is suitable as a summer dish when it is unreasonably hot like it is now in Singapore.

I first encountered Somen noodles in some Korean supermarket in London's Soho; it must have been really cheap so I bought loads of it and resorted to googling for information on these noodles. I don't even recall where I first read about the technique for cooking Somen now, but a few years on I think this is indeed the perfect method of cooking these noodles, which are rather easy to overcook.


COLD SOMEN NOODLES

Ingredients
100g of Somen noodles per person
Spring onions or Chives
Somen Tsuyu

1. Boil a large pot of water
2. When water comes to a boil, put the somen in pot and stir vigorously. By this point the water will have stopped boiling because of all the somen that's been added in.
   
3. When the water has the audacity to start bubbling and boiling again, throw in a bowl of cold water to retard the boiling process so it stops boiling. Repeat this process twice. This allows the noodle to cook evenly from the inside.
   
4. Test the noodle to check that its cooked right - and if its alright then drain under cold running tap water.
   
5. Steep noodles in ice water for a few minutes, then drain again.
   
6. Serve with a small cup of somen tsuyu and garnish with thinly cut spring onions.
   

Welcome to Making Tasty Things

I like building and making things, and I also like to eat tasty food when I do eat (for I do not eat very much), so I figured my new interest could be to Make Tasty Things. In hunger or desperation, I often resort to cooking with almost nothing in the kitchen, from slivers of pasta scrounged from corners and ancient garlic, armed with the internet on my iPhone, trying to invent new things that are still edible and tasty.

This will be a documentation of my attempts to become AN AVANT GARDE CHEF.

But of course, first we start with the basics.