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.