I cooked Christmas brunch for two of us. It was a lot of food. I did well.
Nick bought me a lovely Tiffany bracelet.
Flo was over spoiled! Everyone got her presents!
Ma and Pa both the cats some yummy Christmas presies!
It was the second last picture taken in our first rental apartment - Annandale St, Annandale. I was packing for the move. It was such a tiny apartment. But we managed to still stay together after a year there. I cried on the day we moved out despite the fact we both hated living there.
I found this receipt in Nick’s Margaret Fulton book. It tastes alright. But doesn’t look very good. I should have left the dough under the sun for a little bit longer.
Anyhow, here is the receipt.
Ingredients:
4 cups of plain flour
1tsp sea salt
2 tsp sugar
1 sachet dry yeast
freshly grounded black pepper
4 tbsp olive oil
2 cups warm water
¾ cup black olives, pitted and roughly chopped
Sift the flour in a large bowl with salt and sugar. Stir in yeast. Make a well in he center and add the pepper, olive oil and warm water.
Gradually incorporate the wet ingredients into the flour mixture. Mix to a soft manageable dough, adding more water if necessary. Turn onto a floured surface and knead for 5-10 mins until the dough is smooth and elastic. Incorporate the olives until mixed through evenly. Place in a greased bowl and sprinkle with a few drops of water. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, the a tea towel. Leave in a warm place for 1 hr.
Preheat the oven to 200 °c. Grease and flour a baking tray. Lightly knead the dough again, and shape into 2 loaves, each 25 cm long. Leave for 15 mins, until doubled in size and make slashes on the tops of the loaves with a sharp knife.
Bake the loaves for 20 mins then reduce the oven temperature to 180°C and bake for another 25-30 mins, until the bread sounds hollow when tapped and is well risen and golden.
I saw a picture of this dish in a magazine couple years ago. It looks so simple but also very tempting. For a Wednesday night like tonight, nothing could be better than this.
Poached the eggs in the boiling water than serve them on the cooked linguini. Be generous with the cheddar cheese or anyone cheese you like. Grate it on touch of the poached eggs. Sprinkle a little bit salt and pepper. It’s good to go!
Just remember don’t over cook the eggs. For an egg lover like me, as I said, nothing could be better than this on a Wednesday when you are only in the middle of the week, still have two days to go for the weekend. It’s simple but so yummy!
Damn, I wish I know how to use this camera. How come all the pictures I took are so dark? I need to read the instruction soon.
Anyway, I had this dish with Angie in Royal George the other day. I was surprised when I actually had it. It’s simple to taste great.
Slice some mushroom, depends on how much you like it. I LOVE mushroom. So I put heaps in mine. Sauté the mushroom and onion in a frying pan until it’s soft. Remove and set aside. Cook penne in boiled water.
Mix penne, mushroom, onion, olives and feta cheese all together. Served with some grated Swiss cheese or any kind of cheese you like.
I used wholemeal penne here. That’s why it looks quite dark. According to the low GI diet book Anne gave to me, wholemeal pasta is not too bad.
As I said, it’s a very simple dish but will definitely surprise you.
Yes, we just came back from a trip to Christchurch! And it was totally awesome!
We went away for our 1 year anniversary. Seeing neither of us had many leaves and we couldn’t really afford to go to Paris (I want to go) or Shanghai (Nick want to go, to see my dad). So we chose Christchurch. It’s such a beautiful city and everything was so cheap too!
We spent the first day wondering around in the city, had some local pub food and Mrs. Huggins cookies. They were so yummy! On the second day, we jumped on the bus and got to this really cool Japanese Spring called Maruia Spring. It’s about 3 hours bus ride from CBD and we saw the snow in the mountain! It was totally awesome! The Spring was cool too. They’ve got outdoor rock spa and indoor private spa. I loved the indoor private spa because there was beautiful mountain view literally outside of the spa while it’s all warm and cosy inside. I didn’t like the room too much. Mainly because there was no TV in the room. I got so bored at night. We had dinner in the Maruia Spring and it was a massive hot pot. Nick got so excited.
We caught the bus back to the city on the next day and spent another day walking around in the city. I was very impressed to see so many verities of cat foods in Pack & Save. And the housing price in Christchurch is shockingly low too! Funny enough, after we came back, we actually seriously looked into getting a job there but had no luck.
Our flight back was delayed for 6 hours, and we didn’t get the msg until we got the airport at 4am! It was a pain indeed! But I had a great time shopping in the duty free shop in the airport. The one in Christchurch airport is tiny compare to the one in Sydney. But I still managed to get all what I want. We can back with 4 bottles of rum and heaps of other stuff.
I could never think a better way to spend 1 yr anniversary. It was perfect. Thanks to my dear Nicky Bear! Love you forever!
We watched MasterChef couple nights ago and contestants need to make beef stroganoff to impress the judges. Nick kept saying none of them used the right recipe because none of them used the sour cream. Anyhow, he showed me this Margret Fulton recipe he used before and I gave it a go. I think he is right. It must be the best beef stroganoff ever!
Firstly, season the beef stripes (750g fillet steaks, cut into strips) with salt and pepper then toss in the plain flour(1 tbsp). Melt 30g butter in a frying pan, add onions (2, sliced), stirring, slowly, till they are soft. Add mushroom (250g or more if you like, sliced), fry for a few minutes.
Remove the onion and mushroom from the pan, add 30g more butter, fry beef strips briskly when the butter is hot. It would take about 4 mins.
Return the onion and mushroom. Season with plenty salt and pepper. Mix all ingredients well for 1 min. Add tomato paste (1 tbsp) and sour cream (2/3 cups), then cook for couple minutes longer until they are all heated through. Serve immediately with rice, pasta or even hot buttered toast!
Yes, I made it! Well, it doesn’t look that good due to multiple reasons but Nick said, it’s way better than the one he made first time. Anyway, here is the recipe, from Margate Fulton originally and I changed a little bit J
First thing comes first. Having a big, nice Paella pan is essential! Unfortunately, I didn’t have it, so the whole cooking process turned out to be a bit messy in the end. Mine is a deep frying pan but I reckon it didn’t work as good as paella pan.
To prepare the sauce, bring saffron (1/2 tsp) and chicken stock (5 cups stock) to boil, set aside.
Heat the olive oil (1/2 cup) in the paella pan, fried chicken (4 large chicken fillets, roughly chopped into 2cm cube) until it’s golden. Remove it from the pan, set aside and add capsicum (1 red capsicum, sliced into strips), cook it till just turned soft. Remove from the pan, set aside.
Add onion( 2, chopped) and garlic ( 2 cloves, chopped) to the pan, cook till they are soft, just turning brown. Quickly add Arborio rice (2 ½ cups) fry for 4 mins, stir constantly. Reduce heat, add chicken, capsicum, anchovy fillets (6 or 7, or even more if you want it to be a bit salty. I put 10 in mine.), tomatoes (2, peeled and sliced into 6), green peas (1 cup) and seafood (100 g, any seafood will do. But usually people use scallops, prawns, mussels, baby squid, etc). The idea is cooking seafood in order, rather than having something under cook or something over cook in the dish. Add stock gradually. Let it simmer gently until rice is done. It will take about 25 mins. Serve 6 to 8.
I didn’t bother to add seafood in order because I got the marina mix from Coles and it would take me ages to separate them. But Nick made it to me once, and he cooked all the seafood in order, it was mind-blowing. Anyway, enjoy!
Nick wanted to impress me with his cooking skills, so he made me this Thai roast pork with garlic over the weekend. Let's just say it's very tasty and if he has left the pork in the oven for couple minutes longer, it would be perfectly cooked and he wouldn't have had food poisoning.
Rich and Marcus came for dinner after the footy. Neither of them are big fans of seafood and I was inspired by the MasterChef I have been watching. So here it comes : my first pan fry breaded chicken breast.
Went to Luke and Libby's place for BBQ on Easter Saturday. Libby made this amazing salad which was absolutely awesome. Had to share it with everyone. It's that simple. You just can never go wrong with it.
Luke came over for dinner. We had the lovely stuffed mushroom , aglio e olio and pancetta salad. Nothing fancy about aglio elio and pancetta. I think I've mentioned both of them in the previous blogs. Just wanna leave a quick blog about the stuffed mushroom. My very first stuffed mushroom. :)
It was Victor who reminded me the existing of wonton and how good it could be. We went for lunch on Friday. He ordered a wonton salad which looks awfully strange. I was like" What the heck is that, Victor? ". He was like" It's wonton salad. " I was like" Duh?" 
I broke Nick's camera :( It won't flash anymore. Please forgive the unclear picture. I tried my best. =\
Anyway, really really simple recipe.
Baby peas, corns, carrot, celery, mushroom, tomato, onion, all washed and chopped. Boiled the water. Put all of them in till celery was cooked. Gave it a good pinch of salt before it is served.
Some people may not like it because it tastes quite plain. But I love it. It's that simple and that veggie-ish. And it's warm. All what I need is just a comfy couch and an old movie. It could be my perfect night alone.
Yes, Nick is not home tonight.
I miss him, terribly.
Wish you were here, Nicky Bear. xoxo
