Japanese home cooking

Another day at cchw's apartment for a home cooking dinner, we transformed ourselves into japanese aunties making a home style japanese meal minus the curly auntie hair style, floral aprons, and slippers with white socks.

First we had the sake flavored pomfret. The sauce which was cooked with dashi was extremely tasty.

Miso soup with clams. Clams were very sweet with light miso taste. This is so easy to make.

Sauteed gobo and carrots in dashi sauce. I always like gobo because of its bitterness and crunchy texture. the dashi sauce did lighten some of the bitterness of gobo, it was perfect with a hint of sesame oil and lots of sesame seeds.

Instead of grilling the yakionigini we used a frying pan to sear the rice balls. We made two kinds of nigini - cured plums and miso paste. A bit tricky to make the miso rice balls since it was easily burnt with miso on the surface.

For dessert something quick and easy. Sesame shiratama with vanilla ice cream with kinako dusting.

What a successful cookout again.. we were becoming more efficient and managed to finish cooking within an hour... our skills were just getting better and better!

Roasted beef with yorkshire pudding

A few weeks ago, we reconvened at MC's place for our regular cookout after resting for summer. It's been awhile since our last gathering and I have to admit that it was my fault to keep postponing our date. Thanks to MC and EW, after a long chain of emails exchange and my minimal contribution, we pinned down on what we wanted to make the day before. We went for something masculine, homey and satisfying - a recipe of roasted beef and yorkshire pudding by gordon ramsay. To be honest I had no idea of what yorkshire pudding is before I saw the recipe, they are english muffin like creature made with egg and milk and flour that go with meat dishes.. apparently these are traditional english food just like the american mushed potato..I felt so ignorant..

What makes a great steak?? A grill pan!! What a great investment to have a grill pan at home.... it heats up the steak at high temperature to seal in the juices and get you that perfect grill marks.

The making of the gravy sauce. Trust me, this is really delicious. Normally I don't like gravy too much since the sauce tends to be too thick and overpowering, but this gravy sauce is indeed a very good compliment to the steak. The ingredients are simple, comprising of thyme, garlic, onion, tomatoes and port wine, and as GR says: REDUCE.

We also have the tomato soup to go with the meal. A simple hearty vegetable soup that stimulates appetite.

It's our first time making yorkshire pudding..the key is to preheat a greased muffin pan at very high temperature, and then pour the thin batter into the sizzling hot pan and pop that back into the oven. Within 15min we got our delicious and chewy yorkshire pudding.

Our roasted beef was slightly overdone.. but the marinate and gravy made up for a slight misstep.

Probably is the age thing again, I really enjoy home cook dinner party with close friends rather than hanging out at karoke and getting drunk at pubs and clubs.... food is a great bonding factor for people, and I am grateful to have friends who enjoy food as much as I do.

One Sunday cookout

HK doesn't  really have house party culture.. i am not talking about the let's get high and drunk with a whole bunch of strange people house party, but really the wine and dine at one's apartment and friendly conversation type of house party.

Don't know what got on my nerve I suddenly craved for cooking at home. It was originally a small family dinner turning into bigger group ultimate cook-out. I have to thank big charcoal head for fast thinking and magically created two delicious dishes with short notice.

Me - love cchw's paella recipe, I decided to make this again.. turned out I cooked for too long and didn't get the al dente texture of arborio rice, but that's perfect for bb chu. the taste is very addictive, the turmeric and saffron did give a kick to the flavor.

Big charcoal head's creation - steak salad and parma ham and fig salad with reduction of balsamic vinegar. Yummy!

I also made sangria and side dish of saute mushroon, and ming siu's signature chicken wings.

It was so much fun although the preparation part could be somewhat choatic with too many people cramping into a small kitchen.. I am so going to do this again.....yet I am starting to realize Sunday is not a holiday anymore while reviewing the current schedule.

Japanese cookout

It's cooking time again! This time around the theme is Japanese home cooking. We've made quite a lot of food this time.. and we barely be able to finish everything..

What we have made as starters:
Saba shio yaki - simple grilled saba
Mixed mushrooms with tarragon
Cabbage and bacon salad
Entree - Japanese style eggplant curry. I reckon Japanese curry is really not spicy enough.. I wish to add more chili pepper into the curry paste.
with lots of minced pork.....
For dessert, too lazy to think what to make so made a simple combination of sesame ice-cream with red beans, kuromizu and kinako.
Next theme is Thai.. my first time making thai food.. that's what I am talking about, we need some spicy food to sweat off the heat.

Cooking again

What can be better than staying at home and making a perfect meal during a typhoon and rainy day? We gathered together again and made a scrumptious meal, like french we dined for four hours and having wine and small dessert between courses.

First course - seared scallops salad with aged vinegarette.

Second course - mini pavlova with vanilla ice cream and strawberries.

Third course - braised ox cheek in wine and tomato sauce.

I am not really a big fan of beef, but this ox cheek blew me away.. we were a little bit extravagant here b/c we were using the japanese wagyu ox cheek. We braised for about 2 and a half hr and the meat was super tender and juicy, like a soft pillow you want to sink your head in. The sauce was well flavored with red wine and veggies, you can easily have two bowls of rice with the sauce and meat. I think this is truly a guy's meal.
Fourth course - Seems like we never get tired of chocolate souffle.

I came home with a bloated stomach and feeling satisfied. This is what we like to call the comfort food.

Home cooking

Being professional working women it's so difficult to cook decent meals by ourselves during weekday. Because it is usually 7:30pm by the time we get off work, and it is such a turn off when we start thinking about what to cook, doing the grocery shopping, preparation works, dish cleaning, sore shoulders, next day morning meeting... basically we like to come up with all sorts of excuses to avoid going through the hassle..

But we got to realize that eventually we are going to be professional housewives, leaving the labor force, with nothing else to do but feeding the husbands and kids all day and what makes you proud is when they compliment your delicious food with big smiles on their faces.

We launched our mission to do home cooking on a regular basis. We try to do something new every time that involves a three course dinner and of course with alcohol. The first time we made a simple salad with japanese dressing, steak and sauteed mushrooms, and a chocolate souffle by following my favorite recipe. The second time we made salad again, seafood saffron paella, sangria and apple crumble. We were so proud of ourselves with the paella, the arborio rice was well soaked with saffron and seafood flavor and the clams were cooked perfectly. What a successful 1st attempt! Didn't realize paella is actually quite easy to make yet look sophisticated. We randomly put the apple crumble together without following a recipe. It still tasted very good but just a bit too sour as we didn't put enough sugar but the combination with vanilla ice-cream is very satisfying.