Practice for Tuesday

OK, so stingray is best eaten with sambal .... well not really. Today I decided to cook stingray but leans more to the French way of cooking.... with BUTTER! :)

Anyway, today's cooking is for my practice as some mates would like to take professional photos of me food and I was sooooo happy!! Come Tuesday, I would be able to make this even better.

How simple is this dish to make:
- clean the stingray
- rub some salt on both sides of stingray
- sprinkle some herbs as well
- put a slice of butter on top of the stingray
- lace some olive oil as well
- dilute some honey and 2 tablespoons to be drizzled
- whack into a grill oven at 200 deg for 30 minutes and 250 deg for another 10 minutes for that crackle

Buttered Stingray with Honey and Herbs

In a shallow serving plate, lay the stingray in the center and just drip all the juices into the plate and you are done.

A glass of white wine accompanied this dish and on a cooling evening night was total bliss. Ahh.... it's a good Sunday evening :)

Eggs again and again and again....

I've got nothing much to say today. Still at home and just lazing around watching TV and will be swimming very soon.... need the sun to make me healthy although all my mates said I am now very tanned. Well rather be tanned than fair as a guy... to me that is!

Before going for the swim thou, the tummy asked for a small meal. I decided to pop my head in the fridge again and what else do I have but eggs?! I had 3 eggs yesterday, and the day before!! Really!? Is slimming this tasteless!? So I decided to party up the egg dish. I also found some leftover Old Chang Kee fried fish fillets.

Parma Cheese Egg Pouch

All you need to do is to mix and steam the following:
- 2 eggs beaten in an oiled bowl
- 1 tablespoon of parma cheese
- 1 teaspoon of soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon of full cream milk
- 2 tablespoons of water
- mix all together and put in a steamer for 10 minutes (cover the bowl in the steamer)

When done, use a teaspoon and pour that amount into the bowl and encricle the circumference of the egg for easy removal. In a shallow bowl, after carefully loosening the eggs, overturn it and place it unto the bowl. As a garnish, a splash of ground chilli, dried chilli, parsley, pepper. If it sounds tourblesome, trust me, it's not! :) All these care is required so that the eggy center does not break and for you to enjoy at the last minute.... it's worth it! You may want to company this with some toast.

OK!  The sun is back!!! time to cook myself. I can't find my babyoil for tanning thou... now, do I have enough olive oil....... yup... babi guling in human form = ME!

This is the wife's comfort food

Firstly, a big THANK YOU for all of you who come and visit my blog often enough to help me attain 500 hits!! Thank you very much for your support. :)

My Mrs is a simple person who likes simple things in life and that goes the same for her taste for food.
Tired and stressed out from work, she said she wanted something light and comforting. Well she likes kang kong and she also likes Szechaun soup and these are what I happen to have in the fridge :)

Sambal Belachan Kang Kong

This is really a simple dish:
- cut the kang kong into smaller strips ( we had 2 clusters)
- take ready made sambal belachan in the count of 2 tablespoons into a bowl
- add half a cup of water into the bowl
- plonk in a teaspoon of honey
- a tablespoon of soy sauce or more based on your preference
- broil the kang kong in boiling water for 1 minute
- in an oiled frying pan, add a teaspoon of chopped garlic
- add the kang kong now and cover the pan for 2 minutes
- stir the mixture together and at this time, add the sambal mixture and add cut chilli padi
- cover the pan again for another minute or so and done!

Home-made Szechuan Soup

I made this with what I had also and it's quite simple:
- 500ml of water into a pan
- 8 table spoons of dark vinegar (depends on your ability for sourness....I suck....geddit? ;p)
- 1 teaspoon of Tobasco
- 1 tablespoon of light soy sauce
- 1 beaten egg
- small bits of dried shrimps (put in bowl and add boiling water and leave for 3 minutes, it'll be done)
- wasabi seaweed bits
- tablespoon of corn flour (pre-mixed with water)

What you can add to make the soup better:
= strips of salted veg
= strips of carrots
= dried scallops
= chives

To make this soup, all you need to do is to whack all of thge ingerdients into the pot. Just leave the addition of the corn flour and beaten egg to the last minute! Simple yes?! :)

Into the mouth went down the soup and also the kang kong.... took me about 1 hour to make all but 1 minutes to finish all..... wow.... she is a whale shark in a body of an ikan bilis (asian anchovy). But yet she still looks like a chopstick! Damn.... I'm still on my diet!!

protein no carbs... just protein...

Honestly.... i actually hate to do the daily run, swim and sauna. it's painful!!! but thats slimming i guess?
Still, last weekend, we decided to eat something light and cardless! so we decided on seafood again. No fats but i am sure my cholesterol has spiked up faster than petrol prices here in singapore.

Anyway.. here was the spread that we had and they are all either grilled / steamed / boiled / lightly stir fried.

Egg panckes with shrooms and ham drizzled with teriyaki sauce.

Broccs with diced prawns and xo sauce and 3 eggs laced freckled with salted fish

Squid and shrooms melody with black pepper

Grilled sambal stingray

All simple dishes and cheap too. Our muscle head friend was there to lend his tummy and all the food was killed within 30 minutes. No carbs slogan stayed true and we did not feel hungry even by dinner time. But truth be told, i still have my carbs... once a week. Sigh, food is cheap to eat but damn!! do i hate the slimming process!!! arrggghhhhhhhhh

Under the Seaaaaaaa..........

Hey Folks..... a quick update on what went down the tummy just now.
The Mrs naturally jumped for joy and whilst I was blasting Bad Romance Remix... she came skipping up the stairs and looked at the food like little girl in a Barbie shop.

Gastromically speaking....... I did GOOD today... :)

Garlic + Ginger with Milk Gravy Greens

Drunk + Spicy Glass Prawns

Salt + Pepper Fried Squid

Grilled Sambal (Chilli) Crayfish

Ok guys.... I guess this is it for tonight. The Mrs just burped and DAMNNNN did it smell foul!? -_-

you want SEAFOOD? I'll GIVE you SEAFOOD!!!

Well maybe not in that an angry a tone but you get the drift... :)

The Mrs was hopping around mad with request of yet another seafood meal. My burnt pocket smelling its ashes, I give in. If you know my wife, she has a face that the word 'NO' cannot be given to. So unwillingly, willingly I agreed to cook that seafood dinner for her tonight.

Prawns in XO again she said..... she IS an alcoholic actually... WHAHAH but hey... what can I say? She is my wife afterall... I just need to hide all the alcohol in the house, but her nose, trained to sniff out the slightest even of alcohol, will be able to find out where the stash is hidden. So I'm not even going to try.

Uncooked... yes, these are just the prep pictures, but I know they will turn out great! Well, I hope they do or else, I have deproved. Next is Crayfish with Sambal sauce. These puppies will be grilled and then served with thier own juices. Simple enough preping - mixture of sambal + honey + soy sauce + garlic + a bit of water and there your have the dressing, simply laced all over the crayfish and let the marinate get into them buggers and grill..... you'll be crayfish heaven.

Squid, I love squid... LOVE. I decided to strip these suckers down and no more pigments on them but just the white, fair sexy meat of the tentacled wonder. I cut them to size and diamond cut them. Give this a slight dash of oil and let them rest. Later, they will be dipped into a batter of egg + flour + water + dash of sugar. Quick fried in DAMN HOT OIL.... and then removed and cooked again with salt + pepper over high heat with a LITTLE.. and I do mean LITTLE bit of oil and toss these suckers until the smell of burnt salt + pepper fills the air.

This rice dish is a simple dish. The tenticles of the squid, I sliced them and added them into a rice cooker with garlic, teaspoon of the following - soy sauce and chinese black vinegar. A drop of sesame oil, 1 sliced chilli padi and add a table spoon of white wine. Let the rice cook on its own and when you hear the 'click' of the rice cooker, you know it's done!

Sprinkle chilli flakes, dried chives and dried garlic bits. Serving? What serving? You see the spoon? Right, pick it up and open your mouth. There you go... now scoop the rice and shove the spoon into your mouth. Now, tell me..... you mentioned serving style? Not all is about serving it nicely, sometimes, it's all about enjoying what you have in front of you... :)

I'll post the cooked results of the above mentioned food. Well, I have tried the prawns before, but the other 2 dishes? Fingers crossed, they will turn out as per my normal standard.... EDIBLE!

Weekend as a freeloader...

I can't help it, I admit, it does feel good to be a freeloader... :)

A freakin loaded mate asked us for Nonya Buffet and what can I say? NO?!? Of course I jumped on the offer... so did the Mrs and also another friend.... now he is a different story altogether.

Anyway, we had a good dinner at King Coperthorne Hotel and my goodness... what a dinner. The food there was great and the company was also enjoying. Chatting and laughing made us loose track of time but made our memories of school in UK immortal.

After the dinner we went to Sopranos. It's at 7 Portsdown Road. The pictures that I took here were during the afternoon but of course, we went after dinner. But the place is as relaxing in the afternoon as it is at night. We had thier house red which was smooth to the taste and as I prefer Medium bodied wine, this bottle was perfect. Get this... it's SGD 29 / bottle. WHAHAHA...... How can we not order it?!

Anyway, Sopranos has an awesome array of Pasta. Pages and pages of pasta (mind you... it's not like the crap from Pastamania). The different styles of cooking and types of pasta as well... lovely! Inspired, here is a pasta spegg dish that I made from before:

1 Squid 1 Portion Pasta

- Pasta is simple ya? Just make sur eto boil to al-dente
- Clean and cut a whole squid.. make sure you remove the beak and clean the ink sack properly (we are not cooking squid ink pasta today)
- Making the sauce by adding 5 tablespoons of the pasta water and add a teaspoon of pesto sauce
- Quick fry the squid in a little puddle of olive oil
- Add garlic and the the pesto mixture. Add parsley into it as well and a dash of pepper
- Add the al dante pasta to the mixture

Serving this dish is not rocket science and just add parmesan cheese and more parsley.

Did I tell you guys that the whole was FREE for me as it was me mates who paid for the dinner and the drinks!? :) If only every weekend was like this.... perfect and I'll save tonnes!