Archive for 2016

Fusilli is one of my favorite pasta. Because of its twisted shape, fusilli tends to trap more sauce compare to straight or flat pasta such as spaghetti, fettuccine of linguini. Any sauce will be great to go with this pasta. We all know the easy way though, buy a jar of spaghetti sauce, brown some ground meat in a pan, add the jar of sauce, mix and simmer a bit, and there you go. But for me, I would prefer for an extra mile. How - by preparing my pasta sauce from scratch.

A feast for the eye as well...

Ingredient (for 1-2 serving)
Handful of cherry tomato, halves
1/2 cup of ground meat
1 stick of sausage, diced
1 slice of chicken ham, sliced in long strip
2 tablespoon cooking oil
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 tbs of cream cheese
1 cup of tomatoes puree
1 tbs of sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Served and ready to be eaten...

Method

In a large saucepan, over medium heat, fry sliced chicken ham until it is crisp. Drained and set aside. Using the same oil, sauteed an onion and garlic. Add on ground meat, sausage and cherry tomato. Stir frequently until tomato soften.
Add in tomato puree and cream cheese to thicken the sauce. Bring to simmer until most of the liquid evaporated. Add in sugar to reduce the acidity of tomato puree.Season with salt and pepper as per your preferences.
Served over pasta of your liking while the sauce still hot and garnish with crispy fried chicken ham for a crunchy texture.

Hearty crab and sweet corn chowder is a healthy and delicious way to warm up on a cold rainy evening!! Coupled with crunchy garlicky crouton sprinkled with a pinch of paprika will instantly warm me from inside out. It is always been my favorite and further more, this chowder is so easy to put together, and without a doubt, it is amazingly tasty, soul comforting and very filling...

Hearty corn and crab chowder, hot milo and sure it make my day

For the ingredients, I used these following

500g of sweet corn (equivalent to amount of kernel removed from two cobs of medium size corn)
3 cups of chicken stock
200g of crab sticks
1 medium sized potato (diced)
2tbs of cream cheese
Pepper and pinch of salt for seasoning

Crouton add an extra crunchy to the chowder

Method

Combine the kernel, crab sticks, chicken stock and potato in a large saucepan. Heat over medium-high heat and bring to the boil. Cook, uncovered, for 5 minutes.
Reduce heat to low and stir in the cream cheese . Taste and season with salt and pepper. Leave for 2-3 minutes under low heat
Once done, scoop about 3/4 of the soup and pureed until smooth consistency. Add back into remaining 1/4 of the soup and leave on low heat for another 2 minutes. (I purposely did not pureed all the soup because I want to have a chunky bit on the remaining corn kernel.)
Removed from heat and your corn chowder is ready to be served.

For additional kick, sprinkled with paprika

For garnishing, I simply add on garlic toasted crouton that I had prepared earlier on and sprinkled with paprika. For more creamier taste, may add splash of cream on to the chowder.

Lamb Shoulder is the most economical cut, carved from forequarter of a lamb and quite often, it is cut into chops. Having a few chops in my fridge, I decided to have grilled lamb shoulder for my diner. As a side dish, I had creamy potato gratin and oven baked vegetables mixes.

For the lamb, I simply marinated it with dry herbs composed of curry powder, all spiced powder, coarsely ground black peppercorn and a few pinch of salt. Leaving the lamb on dry marinade for almost 3 hour, it will ensure the end result would be nice, tender lamb shoulder. While waiting for the lamb, I had prepared myself a creamy potato gratins. The recipe for my potato gratin can be found here.

To complement the grilled lamb shoulder, I had prepared creamy cheesy mushroom black pepper sauce. So what’s my secret? Well as the name implied, I guess you can determine easily the ingredient for the sauce.
Ingredients (single serving)

1 tsp unsalted butter
3 medium sized shiitake, sliced
1/4 cup of water
1 piece of cheddar cheese
1 tsp of cream cheese
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper, or more to taste
Salt as appropriate

Instructions

Heat oil in saucepan over medium-high heat. Add sliced mushrooms and stir-fry until they are lightly browned, reduce heat to medium.
Add cream cheese, salt, pepper, water and bring to a boil. Cook for 5-8 minutes, stirring occasionally and watching that the cream doesn't over boil.
Once the sauce has reduced by half, add cheddar and cook for another minute. Remove from heat and serve over your favorite lamb chop.

Bon Apetite...

Its has been ages since I have the luxury of a day off. Starting from last Jun, most of my weekdays spent in office or elsewhere where the services need my presence. Given a hard well earned day off, I think it is a good idea to have earthy home cooked meal. After getting all the ingredients I need, my journey in Slyvester's Kitchen once again unfurled. For this evening, I had prepare microwaved biryani rice served with grilled chicken and sauteed vegetables.

Biryani Rice (2-3 serving)

a cup of Bhasmati rice
equal part of lukewarm water
1/4 cup of dark raisin
1/4 cup of cashew nut
150g of salted butter
pinch of all spices
2 cloves of garlic, 1 medium sized shallot, thumb sized of ginger (blended together)

Method

In a deep covered ceramic cooking ware, combined 50g butter, spices and pre blended garlic, shallot and ginger.
Cooked in microwave oven under full power setting for 2 minutes with the lid off. The mixture should give off pleasant aromatic smell that wafted around the kitchen.
Once done, add the rice grain into the mixture, combine well. Add equal amount of lukewarm water into the pot and covered with the lid.
Microwaved the rice under full power setting for total 10 minutes, stirring the rice to cook evenly once or twice during the process.
After the microwave process done, removed the rice from heat source. Stir in remaining butter and allow another 8-10 minutes of standing time prior to serving. (*take caution as steam emanated from the pot can cause severe scalded)

Time to enjoy the meal.... chap..chap...

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