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.