Making chocolate pudding

Had 2 boxes of Valrhona dark chocolates squares in the fridge and discovered they were reaching the expiration in a few weeks - so decided to do something with them that would constructively use them up.

Used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen - followed the recipe closely except for pure vanilla extract - couldn't locate anything apart from artificial vanilla flavouring and I looked in four supermarkets.

Still very Valrhona chocolatey, and was a cinch to make.

Using garlic again - glorious anchovy spaghetti

Tonight, I made anchovy spaghetti - salty, savoury, incredibly pungent and fishy (but in a totally delicious way).

The long and short of it is, you take pasta (the long ones go best, not the short type) and you have anchovies and make it chock full of minced garlic. I had it for the first time at Big D's Grill when he was in the Bedok coffee shop in Singapore and loved it to bits, and then suffered terribly for the enduring garlic after taste. Nonetheless, recently I begain craving for it, and decided to try making it tonight.

Found a super simple recipe from allrecipes.com, and modified it from what I remember from the Big D version and the feedback from the readers on the site.

One seemingly obvious lesson I took away from the classes at CIA is that you have to taste, taste, taste your food during the cooking process - I used to have the rather odd habit of barely tasting my food as I cooked and hoped for the best at the end. Crazy, I know. These days, I follow the recipe proportions to some extend but rely on my tastebuds and personal preferences to add and subtract appropriately.

First, I added a generous handful of chopped and crushed chili padi, and instead of minced garlic, I used 4-5 largeish cloves which I smashed with a knife (if they were oversmashed I'd discard them and start with a fresh clove - don't want to risk toooo much bits of garlic scattered everywhere). Instead of water, I used chicken stock. Also added some tinned diced tomatos (sans water) that I had leftover from the chicken jambalaya the other night.

When the garlic and chili padi came together with a dash of olive oil in a delicious and nose tickling aroma, it made me cough uncontrollably, but that soon passed. Then, threw in anchovies including some of the oil it came in, and chopped parsley. I wasn't sure how salty the anchovies will end up (during the cooking process, the anchovies get broken up into quite tiny minced pieces), so I added them gradually as I went along. Finally, the tomatoes, and the chicken stock, and simmered for around ten minutes. When it tasted a tad too salty and didn't have enough of the chili kick, I added more chili and a little water, as well as a lot more fresh parsley than the original recipe called for.

Then, after a bit more simmering, I ensured I removed the garlic pieces (which had softened considerably) as I felt it had given up enough of the garlic flavour and then added the cooked spaghetti and tossed it over medium heat to ensure it's evenly distributed before serving immediately.

I loved it!!!!! and would cook it again in a heartbeat!! Enjoyed it lot more than the Big D version because it only had a touch of garlic and I guess, because I couldn't believe I made something so delicious with my own hands - possibly a biased opinion of course.  J said it was delicious but grumbled that there wasn't any meat - apparently anchovies is not counted as... perhaps the next time round I will toss in some boiled shrimp or serve it together with a separately done piece of chicken or steak.

And I still have some of the anchovy left - considering cooking this again in the next couple of days while J is travelling, and I may try it without garlic this time just to experiment with the outcome.

Pad Krapow Moo: minced pork with basil rice (and garlic!!)

I love this spicy, basil-y porky dish to bits and this is a must-have each time I go to Bangkok - has it been nearly two years?! And it’s good no matter where you have it in Bangkok - dingy food courts, roadside stalls, restaurants. Is it because it’s so easy to cook?

We shall find out tonight as me, the novice, attempts to cook it. And in fact, to honour this dish's authenticity, I am using garlic for the very first time in my little kitchen - not chopped up as the real version would be, but in whole cloves (not even smashed) to get a Touch of garlic flavour but not toooo much.

It was a challenge locating Holy Basil in Hong Kong, I’m sure it’s available because there are many Thai restaurants here, but the one thai grocery store I knew in Central had a basil that was either Thai Basil or Holy Basil. Apparently both work, even though Holy Basil was the preferred one if you could find it.  

I used this recipe from Chez Pim and added two fried eggs for J and one for me on top. I also faithfully asked for pork butt to be minced from the local wet market.

The result? Yumms!! There are a few things I would do differently next time to make it even better though: 

• chopped up the chili into finer pieces and add a little more chili (it wasn’t spicy enough). 
• Smash the garlic pieces a little 

Otherwise - an easy, savoury, comforting quick stir fry that takes minutes to whip up.

Paella and the Jumping Prawns

Paella, the making of, has been on my mind since dear KH convinced me how easy it is to make, especially with a paella pan. So when I visited her last month, I got one from Chef’s Hat - the kitchen supplies store in Melbourne, and have been eager to try it.

The pan has been challenging though - after being scrubbed clean, it turned rusty immediately - turns out you need to wipe it with a kitchen towel in oil to keep it rust free. After finally getting the rust out, J coated it with oil and it remained pristine until I was ready to cook.

Scoured tons of “authentic” recipes and finally arrived at this one that didn’t require oven baking and didn’t sound too complicated. If paella is the staple food of the Spanish, wouldn’t it be like fried rice to the chinese or pasta to the italians? and if so, surely it can’t be toooo complex.

Well - the moment I put olive oil into the pan, the entire pan started seriously smoking up - and more alarmingly, the oil turned Black. Erm, wasn’t sure if I should continue to use it after this... I desperately tried to wipe off the blackened pan (apparently normal - though I’m sure blackened oil isn’t) with towels but it didn’t stop coming up black. J wisely said, let’s just use the regular non-stick pan - I reluctantly agreed - couldn’t work out why this pan didn’t work when KH had always been using this one for her paella. But not wanting to poison us on new year’s eve, I switched.

Now - the live prawns. It was my first time cooking with live prawns - tips from the internet and experienced cooking friends say that I should put the live prawns in the fridge for about half an hour, so that when I remove them, they’re slightly stunned and I should be able to wash them/shell them etc without much drama. However, once the prawns were doused with water while I was washing them, they started twitching - I tell myself to be Brave, and quickly finished washing them, and put a plate over the bowl they were in.

When it was time to put in the prawns and the clams on top of the rice and other ingredients, I put in the prawns first - and well, expectedly, they started to leap in startled fashion from the pan - luckily I was quick on my feet (hands rather) and slapped the lid on top. They banged (poor things I know....) a little more against the pan, as I quickly piled in the clams, and finally surrendered to their paella fate. 

Followed ingredients and cooking instructions closely, and the recipe was pretty accurate, except for the part where it says 10-20 minutes to cook - it took me about 45 minutes. 

The result was heavenly - perhaps even more so because it was the most complicated recipe I’d undertaken to date (me the seriously beginner non-cook). The rice was moist and nicely infused with the stock and spices, and the seafood was fresh (well, they -were- live). We gobbled everything up.