Potatoes potatoes potatoes..

Again, hope Tiffy is feeling better and i think she should be quite done with Rome by now lol.

The last entry was about steak and man.. How can I leave out the classic potatoes that goes with ur steak hehe

Well of cos if u are weight concicious u can always have grill veggie instead of potatoes hehe
Ok let's see what I have done so far with my potatoes to go with steak. There are no hard rules but here are the options;

Roasted potatoes ; crunchy , to the bite

Mashed potatoes ; creamy , goes well if ur sauce is wholesome

Potatoe anna ( potatoe layer cake) ,

Sauteed potatoes; nutty,similar to. Roasted but takes slightly shorter time to do

Actually the list could go and go,but I doubt whomever is reading this actually wants to know the whole potatoe family so let's look at rough guide on 2 of the recommendations based on how easy or how long you wana stay in the kitchen while making them haha.

Roasted potatoes; 6-8mins to parboil, and another 30-40mins to roast in the oven
Skin them, parboil in salted boiling water for 6-8mins.
Drain them, cut into chunks, season with salt n pepper,drizzle with olive oil.
Put on a roasting tray, into an oven on abt 175-180deg for 35-40mins
Done!

Tips; always take a look at ur oven, ans learn to know its "temper", not all ovens give u perfect roasting based on reciepts, so stay around, look at the colour n make ur judgement call.

Mashed potatoes :15mins- skin them , cut into chunks, into boiling salted water for 10mins,
Test with fork to see doneness, once can go through easily means done.
Drain them, add sour cream, salt pepper to it n start mashing!
In short time u should end up with a creamy n delicious REAL mash you have ever tasted.

Rule no.1: never as in NEVER EVER buy those powdered mashed potatoes u find in supermarkets, those stuff are atriocious & might possibly be evil.. So stay away

Alriteee, I think that's quite alot of reading for 1entry, remember if ur sauce is very wholesome, go with mash, otherwise anyother is pretty fine. Till next time foodies!!!

p/s I dont really take pics of just potatoes so this shall be my 1st post without pics :)

The perfect steak sauce ?

Tiffy was on MSN the other day and asked me how to make a good steak sauc, and I was like "haha finally I have a very good reason to update my blog since 6 mths ago LOL!"

Ok now back on track, let's talk about steak first, many ppl have certain flavour preference when it comes to their choice of food, just like say.. Pasta , some like it in tomato based sauce, some creamy, others maybe just in olive oil herbs.

So a steak sauce is just like how u prefer to eat ur steak, but the basic concept of a sauce is still there; remember always, a sauce is meant to compliment a dish by adding or enhancing the flavour, NEVER drown ur dish in a sauce ( like what those coffee shop western food store always do to their "steak")

So if ur goal is to make a steak dish , the options of sauce are plenty, there's diane sauce, pesto sauce, mushroom sauce, red wine ,marsala etc.
Since tiffy asked for a recommendation that would not mask too much of the steak itself, I would go with a red wine sauce.

Ok now HOW to make it,
Steak first
Season it with salt n pepper,herbs like rosemary parsley garlic etc. never add salt too early, always a few mintues even its about to go into the pan or grill, reason is if u add salt early, it will extract water or blood out of the steak, making it very wet n dry later on

Sear ur steak, remember, no colour, no flavour..so yeah..and yes i love the sound of it ..only nemo hates it..she likes to stand at the kitchen door and shake her head LOL.

After u pan fry ur steak to ur prefered doneness, let the meat rest in a foil for a few mintues, what this does protein will relax and the juice will "come back" evenly later when u eat it.
So u get a juicy n delicious steak later, anyway, if u eat well done steak.. Pardon me but I think you dunno how to eat steak LOL

Ok while the meat is resting, its time to work on the sauce, see those brown marks or stains in the pan after u take out ur steak? That's where a lot if the flavor is, so what u do now is add red wine into the pan.

This is call deglazing, be careful if there's lots of oil in pan,
Reduce the wine till at least 1/2 are gone, this pretty much cooks off the alcohol but retains the flavour. Add salt n pepper, beef stock or lemon zest if u like to it.

When reduced till it can coat the back of ur spoon, that's pretty much about it.
Now ur meat is well rested, ur sauce is ready, add friends , wine , laughter and time to serve :)
so yeah, a simple n delicious red wine reduction sauce to go with ur steak dinner hehe
Here are various pics of steaks I did in the past 6mths LOL
Fillet mignon steak with dauphinoise potatoes

Rib Eye Steak with marsale sauce accompanied by dashes of hollandaise

yeahhh tats how i like my steak..medium rare. this is a garlic and parsley ribeye in teriyaki sauce.

maybe i have a fetish or something but pics like these makes me wana dive in and eat up tat MEAT!!! arghhhhhh lolol
OK thanks for reading if u bothered to read so far and maybe i shall talk about potatoes or grilling in my next entry.hehe
Cheers and stay hungry !! haha

Lamb chops french cut & Baileys cheesecake!

I think this is going to be, or might going to be a new trend in my blog...which is starting a new entry with APOLOGIES LOL!!!

omg, so sorry to anyone that bothers to check out my blog, (dear frds..arghhh) i was too busy with my new stuff lately tat i forgot to update my blog at all...(wat a lazy excuse lol)

So here are some updates on wassup dave before i go into the food part :

I just got a new toy, the Apply iphone, manage to hack it with another genius GS call jeev haha. yes we did ourselves, didnt pay for any software, with all the help from online forum and stuff. Total number of Iphones bought and successfully hacked : 6 :) cost of each is 399 and yes for me, i am willing to do it for free for my frds if they ever got an iphone :)

Or even better, i might consider posting the exact instructions tat work here haha (oh well)

Other than tat, i have been playing alot games or game...most of the time Team Fortress 2 from the orange box on my laptop. If you are a 360 person, DO NOT, i repeat DO NOT buy the 360 version cos the online match is only 8 vs 8 ..(VERY BORING) its an awesome game, and yes its a FPS , if u are interested, check it out at here

ok , enuff of wassup with me, lets check out this week menu :) I did, Lamb chops marinated in wine,garlic and honey mint finished with balsamic reduction and also, i manage to learn and baked the japanese style fluffy and light cheese cake yayyy!! ok here they are :

i marinated the lamb chops for like 2 hrs in the food saver thingy i got from sydney so it works super fast as compared to conventional marinating haha and panfried it to the point when its got no blood but just slightly pink on the inside hehe, and yes mint and balsamic reduction taste pretty good on these. I actually got the inspiration of this dish from the hotel at Istanbul when i was there last month, taste pretty good actually but kinda expensive, so i decided to try to make it for a small party of 5-6 haha.

As for the cheese cake, i finally get the idea of beating the eggwhite till it stiffened idea (haha how blur can i be) and manage to bake this fluffy and cotton light Baileys cheesecake Japanese style , its very light and of cos less sinful than ur new york cheesecake etc, some ppl (nemo and me) love this kind while ppl like kenny prefered the more heavy duty ones hahaaha
alriteee, see ya next time and thanks for check my blog out man!!

Baked chicken in mustard butter !

Haha, got some extra prosciutto ham left over so its a very nice way to finish it by wrapping it around, panfried it with some mustard butter in the chicken, then baked it in the oven hehe and the best way to serve this? with some "probably the best" mash in the world!! hahaha Kelvin knows this cos i taught him how to make it, so its probably not the best in the world already LOL.
here you go, Shunda and kenny was around the night so they had the chance to taste this :)

Pork CHOP in STROGNOFF sauce :)

YO YO!i know , once again, i have been very lazy and didnt update my blog for ages, so what i have here are a salad and a main course that was made when my dad came over the other night hehe

Pork chop was marinated in salt and pepper and panfried and drizzled over with mushroom strognoff sauce, i dunno why but this sauce seems to work quite well with a lot of poultry haha.
If you have no idea wtf a strognoff sauce is, well it involves garlic, dijonese mustard,cream,white wine and of cos some salt and pepper..and yes the mushrooms! i used brown mushrooms, i remember Andy once bought me shitake mushrooms when i asked him to buy some shrooms and i was so pissed cos i dun really eat shitake hahahaha poor andy!



as for the salad, this time i decided to make something i enjoy..as in REALLY enjoy. If you have been reading my blog, you would know that ROCKET leaves and parma ham is like my bread and butter hahaha ( i know it wont happen cos these 2 items are really expensive!!!)
so here we go

Rocket leaves with parma ham in balsamic vingear, honey, dijon and extra virgin oil!! and to make things a little interesting, i added some feta cheese too woot!!!

BANGERS n MASH!!

Thats it man, i had enuff of the stupid powder form of mash potatoes and decided to make my own mash, which i call it.."the best mash in the world" , u cook potatoes, mash them with butter and some sour scream..salt n pepper and some basil ...ooo yeah..tats some real mash man, so , to match that, I decided to make what i was always wanted to eat..bangers and mash!

I got some sausage (swiss cheese and pork, beef, and chicken/mushroom) and grill them with some sourkraut, and of cos i made some onion brown gravy to go with the mash...yum yum

Ding kitchen invited Kenny and Andy over for this dish, :) cheers!

Alaska Salmon steak in bourin cream sauce!

woot! back to back posting !! haha i think Lyn had too much chicken recently that when i offered her a choice of fish or chicken, she took the latter without much thought, so.. the i remember the last time i did a fish dish, it was a snapper fillet..

so this time i decided to go for some Salmon steak in cream boursin sauce, (Boursin is kind of soft cheese with garlic and herb infused) so it taste pretty cook, and yes, those are tiger prawns sauteed and added to the sauce with some rocket leaves and ground oregano for tat extra flavour hehe) and damn....the mash is really dumb cos neither me nor lyn could finish it after eating the salmon and prawn LOL

Enjoy the pic(since u cant enjoy the food hehe)