Cooking for Dad

I need to learn how to blog faster.

Many unfinished entries are sitting in the draft folder and I need to get these out before I send my computer for repair.

In order to celebrate for my 65 yrs old dad's bday, since we had done the up-scale dining with friends and relatives already, the kids decided to keep dad away from the kitchen for once and slaved themselves to make a home cooked meal.

Apparently we were not that good with planning and collaboration... we proposed what we wanted to make, and later on figured we had too much protein on the menu. Oh well... with my limited knowledge of savory items I put aside the nutritious aspect and try to replicate the recipes as much as I could.

The menu includes: herb crusted rack of lamb, clams with aioli, steak with caramelized onions, grilled pacific saury, sautee mushroom and brocolli, and warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream.

We got our rack of lamb from woo hing (和興行) which is frozen meat vendor in causeway bay... can you imagine the same item can sell at double the price at citysuper or other upscale grocery stores? what a ripoff to shop there...

Our two massive steaks - one rib eye and one sirloin.

OK, I didn't handle the steaks myself... AM stepped in and used salt and pepper and dried herbs to cook the meat the chef way.. you got to use butter to glaze the surface...

I copied gordon ramsay's recipe of clams with aioli.. this was very good the first time I cooked it.. and it's still good for the second time. As you can see I used a lot of thyme and garlic for seasoning. The mistake for this time around was I was a bit heavyhanded on salt.

A little drama at first with the herb crust... at first I forgot to buy the packaged bread crumbs from grocery store and decided to make my old with stale bread.. that didn't work out well, and then rushed to the grocery store to get the exact product... and figured I used too much bread crumbs and wasted my other seasonings... I need to remind myself next time - Read the recipe and find out the exact measurement for ingredients...

The herb crusted consisted of rosemary, thyme, parsley, and pamarsan cheese. The method is to sear the rack of lamb first to seal in the juice first, and then put into the oven to cook for 10-15 minutes, brush on dijon mustard and then pad on bread crumbs mixed with herbs, and then put back into the oven and cook until done.

Steak made by AM - how beautiful they looked.

Veggie dish made by sis.

Okay.. by now you would think why only 5 of us were eating so much... and that's not all of it...

We had 6 pacific saury to share to finish off our meal. This is super easy to make.... since one would use only salt for seasoning and oven to cook... most important thing was to get the fresh saury from the market.

I made the molten chocolate cake to finish our meal - the quickest warm dessert to make on earth. The most exciting part is to see the melted chocolate flooding out once you break the shell. Combing with vanilla ice cream, it's the most whole-hearted comfort dessert that everyone should make their own at home.

We had our all time favorite Lynch Bages 2001 to go with our meal.

Admittedly we made way too much food and meat that night... and surprisingly we were managed to finish everything! just that we didn't want to have any left over sitting in our fridge. Next time I need to better manage the balance of nutrition, make smaller portion, and have more variety of food on the menu.