Grilled Fish with Asparagus Rice.

seeing as how i will be without a computer for a while, i thought i experiment with another person's recipe. completely stunned by how beautiful lara's recipe looked, i decided to adapt it to whatever's available in my kitchen.

Ingredients.
(for the grilled fish)
4 cut, fish (i'm using trout)
1 tbsp, salt
1 cup, rice wine
1 inch, ginger
1 tbsp, black pepper

(for the asparagus rice)
4 stalk, asparagus
1, onion
3 clove, garlic
3 cup, rice
4 tbsp, butter
4 tbsp, black pepper
4 cup, fresh milk

(optional side of salad)
5 leave, lettuce (iceberg)
1 capsicum
4 tbsp, balsamic vinegar

Serves.
4

Step 1: Preparing the Rice.



dice the asparagus, onion and garlic. wash the rice, and leave it to soak in water for about half an hour. drain the water after.

Step 2: Preparing the Fish.



chop the ginger up, then toss it into a bowl with the fish inside. rub the black pepper and salt into the fish as well, then pour the rice wine in. leave the fish to marinate for about 20-30 minutes.

Step 3: Cooking the Rice.
fry the garlic, asparagus and onion with the butter in a wok over a small flame. this lasts for about five to ten minutes till everything's nicely cooked. then throw the rice in and fry it for a while before you pour the milk in. put a lid on and leave the rice to cook for about 20 minutes.

Step 4: Grilling the Fish.
Preheat the oven at about 150degrees for about 5 minutes, then set the fish to grill at that temperature for about 15 minutes.

Final Serve.
after setting the rice, i sprinkled black pepper on it. i'm serving the fish and rice with a side of capsicum and lettuce, doused in balsamic vinegar.



Verdict.
the fish was quite nice, but the rice turned out to be really bland! i recommend some cream cheese to be added to the rice in Step 3 if anyone were to try my recipe. all in all, dinner turned out to be beautiful but not too exciting taste-wise.

stick to lara's recipe.

p/s: there will be no updates from me till i get a new laptop.

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ETA: 1 2250 Oct 2006, Sunday
i better add that i only just realised that i had burnt the wok i cooked the rice in. because of this, i suggest people either a) keep stirring, or b) transfer the mixture into a rice cooker instead.

argh.

effortless ABC Soup for the busy student

Right.

I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now, and i didn't have the time to take any pictures of tonight's meal, so we're going to have to use a little bit of our ... IMAGINATION.

this meal is by no means imaginary, it is rather economical and very delicious when you have no time or variety of ingredients to cook for 4 people.

and you serve it as is.
no fuss, no frills, minimal washing up.
one pot, one person's problem.

so here goes, a recipe for what some people call: ABC SOUP

--------------------------------------------
Ingredients (serves 4)

4 carrots (regular sized)
4 potatoes (medium sized)
4 onions (medium sized)
1/3 chicken cube
1 slab of lean pork (wholly optional add only if u want some meat. can be substituted by any other meat really. just be aware of how to prepare the meat beforehand.)
salt & pepper to taste

step 1
peel and wash the A-carrot, B-potatoes and C-onions.

step 2
cut everything into bite-sized chunks and dump into the pot.

(Optional step)
cut up pork into bite sized cubes and marinate with soy sauce for about 10 minutes. then throw it in the pot with everything else.

step 3
fill the pot with water to reach about 2 litres of water (or a little more if u want more soup), throw in the 1/3 chicken cube and let the pot cook till al the ingredients cook through and the soup becomes infused by the sweetness of the now tender carrots, onions and potatoes. add salt and pepper to taste.

-----------------------------------------

this dish should take about 30 minutes to cook itself. just rememeber to check on it on occasion, so your kitchen doesn't burn down by accident.

safety first :) we actually had to run out of the building for 10 minutes beacuse of a badly timed firedrill. you can always turn your cooker off and come back to it later. its so simple a recipe that even that works.

so, with our IMAGINATION,

visualise a piping hot pot of tender vegetables in a sweet and savoury broth with succulent chunks of meat ...

best served with steamed rice and chilli padi in soysauce dip.




and thats ABC soup.

back to paper writing! try it!

Roast Salad with Parsley Butter.

my housemate-cum-regular-dinner buddy, sio, requested to have some chicken tonight. we bought ourselves Woolworth's Herb & Mustard Marinade last night and figured to try that out, so my contribution for today is a side dish instead.

Ingredients.
1 capsicum (red, for color)
1 pear
2 baby carrot
3 clove, garlic
8 button mushroom (i normally prefer cup mushrooms)
1 onion (i prefer spanish, but i only have brown)
3 bunch, parsley
1 inch, butter (sorry, don't know how to measure this properly)
3 tbsp, black pepper
2 bunch, spring onion/ scallion



Serves.
3

Step 1: Choppity-Chop-Chop the Salad.
dice capsicum, carrots, pears, mushrooms and onions. toss them together to get a nicely colored salad.



Step 2: Parsley Butter Sauce.
mince the parsley and garlic together into a fine grain.

melt the butter in your microwave for abt 10 seconds, and stir that into the parsley and garlic mixture.



pour all of this into the salad and toss well to get an even coat of sauce on the salad.



Step 3: Prepare your main.
this will be a good time to prepare your main dish because the salad will roast quite quickly. our main for tonight is chicken thigh in an off-the-shelf herb & mustard marinade. three pieces of chicken thighs marinaded and left to soak in the flavour for about 20 minutes. Roasted at about 180 degrees for about half an hour (but i'm really bad at roast/ grills in the oven, so please check your meat yourself).



(sio wanted to have some roasted garlic, so she threw those in with the chicken.)

Step 4: Roasting the Salad and Final Serve.
into the last 15 minutes of roasting my main, i set the salad into the oven at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes. the salad should look nicely browned.

when the roasting is complete, bring the salad out and mix the black pepper in. chances are, the salad is going to taste very sweet, what with the butter and pear. so you'd want to adjust the amount of pepper accordingly. i topped it with the spring onions for added flavour.



Verdict.
we like it! but it really is quite a sweet salad so make sure your main appropriately balances that out.

Coriander Pan-Fried Lambchop.

this is actually an alteration of what EDible suggested, however i've replaced chicken with lambchop, and cilantro with coriander.

don't ask.

Ingredients.
3 clove, garlic
1 inch, ginger
2 lambchops
3 tsp, black pepper
2 tbsp, olive oil
2 tsp, salt
6 bunch, Coriander
*some* chinese rice wine

Serves.
2

Step 1: Preparing the Lambchops.
rub salt and 2 tsp of black pepper onto lambchops. normally, this would do, but i love chinese rice wine with my red meat. so i splashed about 4 tbsp of rice wine onto the lambchops.



set aside for about half an hour.

Step 2: Preparing Coriander.



MINCE!

if like me, you don't have a mincer/ food processor, cut your coriander into a cup and start cutting it up in the cup. (i stole that food processing idea from learning how to mince some inedible leaves for erm... other purposes.)

ANYWAY.

chop the garlic and ginger up, and throw those into the cup and mince along. then throw the rest of the black pepper and olive oil into the mixture.

heat up a small pan over a small flame, and throw the mixture into the pan for a slow simmer. (Edible's instructions for the Cilantro doesn't require this, but i like to release added fragrances with some heat.)

heat for about a minute or two, then remove from flame.



Step 3: The Rest.

pan-fry the lambchops to whatever degree you like it. over a medium flame would be good, anything bigger would cause it to burn before it even cooks in the middle.



serve on plate, and coat top of lambchop with the coriander mixture.

for this dinner, i'm throwing some edam cheese and oysters!



Verdict.
my housemate, sio, says she "really like(s) it".

i thought coriander might have been a good substitue for mint and parsley, but clearly i was wrong because coriander just doesn't have strong enough a flavour. the garlic seemed to overpower the mixture a little, so if you're a fan of coriander like i am, perhaps you'd like to try less garlic.

Honey Mustard Roasted Chicken

YaY!

Here's something i never knew i could make ...

only the video ... because the pictures look crappy ... no sunlight la. twas dinnertime.

enjoy:



(Serves 2 hungry students in 1 hr.)

here's the recipie:

2 chicken thighs
4 large white mushrooms
1 large white onion
2 red tomatoes
1/2 a brocolli
6 tbs honey mustard sauce
salt & pepper

step 1.
defrost and rinse chicken thighs. then spread honey mustard sauce liberally over chicken thighs. leave aside. turn on oven roaster to a reletively high heat just to get it going.

step 2.
slice mushrooms and lay them at the bottom of the roasting pan. sprinkle with a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper.

step 3.
cut up tomatoes and slice onion into rings. leave aside.

step 4.
place chicked thighs and whatever remaining sauce onto bed of sliced mushrooms and spread tomatoes and onions around and onto chicken in the roasting pan. place into oven and turn the heat down to a modest semi-high for 30 mins. (check on chicken at 15 mins to see that its sizzling.)

step 5.
after 30 mins, start blanching brocolli. you will add this to the roast later. (if you add it in any sooner without blanching/boiling) first, its gets all hard and rock-like.)

step 6.
check on the chicken, it should be turning a nice yellowy brown ... if you want, you can glaze the chicken wih more honey mustard to keep it moist. now, take your brocolli and place them in the remaining crevices it in the roast pan around your chicken. close the oven door and cook for another 15 minutes or till the chicken skin is a crisp golden brown. its ok if its slightly charred in some areas ... that happens.

step 7.
serve if your chicken looks done!
(if not .... eat the cooked parts then throw it back in the oven to cook again.)



its really very nice ....
kelvin gave the thumbs up.
just the mushrooms alone .... wah lao eh.

plus, i sound terrible in this video. must endeavor to speak like, nigella lawson.

yes must.