Molten Chocolate Lava Cake!! in a Microwave!! for ONE!!

it was another sleepless night and i was trawling food blogs (as usual) which made me amazingly hungry (as usual). when i found this recipe i was SO excited~!! i made the conversions, and rushed straight to the kitchen at nearly 3 in the morning to make it. heh. yeah, not good for the waistline, but i was having a baking craving and we all know how that turns out.

don't we?

when i made this recipe, i cooked it a bit too long, and it turned out to be chocolate cake! no photos, cause i was so excited i ate the whole thing in 5 minutes flat (while the log was sleeping). i'm going to do a few flavours tonight, in preparation for making it for my guardian angel, since this is her favourite cake :D

anyway! i'm making this post to record my conversions since the original recipe makes about 6 ramekins' worth.

side note: i found out my ramekins in Perth, along with a lot of other kitchen stuff was thrown away after a flood in a good friend's place. HEARTBROKEN! but i have to move on. and think about my future kitchen and the things i will fill it with!

Adapted from Fun and Food Blog (makes ONE)

one chocolate bar, chopped ( i think dark chocolate would work best, a bar is 43-45 g or 1/2 cup)

same amount of butter, softened a bit and chopped (but i would lessen it by a teaspoon, the trial run was too oily for me)

1 egg (mine is the normal smallish Asian egg :D)

1 teaspoon cocoa powder (i use Van Houten's that i found in the Macau supermarket, i think the flavour is quite good)

1/8 cup granulated sugar (or 2 Tablespoons, i would use less, just guesstimate it)

1/12 cup plain flour (omg really miniscule, 1.3 tablespoon, again, guesstimate, you're not going to serve this at a Michelin restaurant and if you are going to use this recipe, i would guess that you are not some gourmet food critic person :D)

1. Butter your mug. Use a brush or some paper napkin edge and er.."moisten it" with butter then rub the insides of the mug. Melt chopped chocolate in mug (i have a cheapass mug specially for these things, make sure it is microwave safe) on medium in the microwave for about 20 seconds (til it's soft enough to stir around). Add butter, and melt for another 10-15 seconds. Take out and stir. Careful! The mug may get HOT!

2. Beat eggs and sugar until it starts to whiten (according to orginal recipe. i was planning to put it in a small bottle and shake it! :D). Pour into chocolate mixture. Sift flour and cocoa powder together, then add to chocolate mixture. Stir gently to combine. COMBINE! not whip! hehe.

3. Now comes the fun bit! now i don't know what watt is my microwave, i searched high and low and all around it, but i didn't see anything. but what i did on the trial was to use the Medium setting, and microwaved for 2 minutes. 

what i did wrong was 

1. i covered it. so about 1 minute 10 seconds into the cooking process, i could see the cover start to rise above the mug! i'm a baking noob, i didn't know plain flour could rise that much! i stopped the microwave, took the plate off and let it continue to cook for another minute. 

2. That last sentence was another mistake. I'm going to try for 1 minute 30 seconds later. this is the original tip from the blog:

"Touch the top of the cake with your finger. When done, you should be able to press down slightly on the cake and have it spring back but when you insert a toothpick into the cake, the toothpick should come out with wet batter on it. The trick is to cook the cakes as little as possible for a liquid center yet long enough that a firm cake-like exterior forms that won't fall apart when you take it out of the pan."

So! good luck to me later tonight! :))

time is funny

today has been a day of lots of memories. i just wonder, if i could erase the last 10 years of my life, would i do it the same way all over again?


mistakes in studies. mistakes in love. mistakes in career choices. 


they would probably say that mistakes and the experiences you gain, good or bad, will teach you something. but i feel like everything is still the same. i don't think i am a better person.


i remember about 6 or 7 years ago, when everyone was still on Friendster, i posted a shout-out (read: status message for FB-ers) "am i doing it right?" (why georgia-john mayer). i'm still asking myself the same question.


if i didn't have technology to remind me, would i still remember? songs on my iPod. photos on Facebook. SMSs(es?). emails. 


would i still remember you? or you? or even you? 


it's funny to me how our lives intertwined so closely, i knew your deepest secrets and fears, your family and friends, your hopes and dreams. and you knew mine. and now, we may as well be strangers. 


i wonder if, in the event i am lucky enough to have a family one day, i should tell my daughter of all the things i know. and warn her. if you make the decision to enter someone's life, be aware that the consequences may sometimes be too much to bear. 


but would she listen? 

image taken from http://www.mystudios.com/artgallery/paintings/128001-128500/128113/size1.jpg

i'll put in words tomorrow

morning thoughts

i was having my morning coffee on the balcony when i noticed a lone red-hooded figure on the beach (?). he/she was standing on the rocks and seemed to be bending over them, searching for something. looked around for an accompanying person or dog, but there was none. reminded me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where he meets Clementine for the first time. the intro song started playing in my head...

then i saw a piece of plastic bag floating in the air about 10 storeys up from the main road below. reminded me of American Beauty....

damn. my life is not a movie. back to work.

again with the last minute-ness!

so i haven't been posting a lot lately because i didn't get a chance to cook or go anywhere because my GA is sending me food almost every night, and because i am lazy to go out. 


my family has dinners at my house every Sunday. i really REALLY miss those, and i got to join in unexpectedly the week before when my aunt had her birthday. even joined in singing Happy Birthday! my dear aunt, she is the most good-hearted and generous person i know. and OMG her food. OMG is all i can say. 


yes yes, i did it all on webcam. the wonders of technology! it's made me feel a lot less alone here, being able to connect with family and friends. 


i came up with this brilliant idea of attempting to recreate the dinner my aunt would make on Sunday, and have dinner with my family via webcam. BAD idea cause i procrastinated and went to the supermarket late and then ended up cooking late with my family watching on as they had what must surely have been the most stupendous fried rice in the world. 


i, on the other hand, under-fried my chourico, forgot to add egg and most of all, enough oil so that the rice would not stick to the wok. i ended up with eggless, un-salty fried rice that had 30% of it stuck to the wok. sigh. 


actually, to my known memory, that is the first time i have ever cooked fried rice. if not, then it must only be the second. so i have an excuse. right? :D


after the sort-of disastrous dinner (to be honest it didn't taste that bad heh) i discovered i could easily scrape off all the rest of the fried rice off the wok. it was so crunchy and yummy! (yes, i'm ignoring the fact that there was probably a ton of carcinogens in that!) so i put it in with the leftovers, determined to make a better (if not fresher) dinner the next night.


so, because today was a highly unstressful day at work (snigger), i managed to come home, leave the leftover fried rice out for a while from the fridge, get the egg beaten up (LOL! yes, i'm easily amused!) and ready, and have chicken stock at the side, ready to add. picked out and fried the pieces of chourico first, remembering to add about 2 tablespoons of oil, then dumped in the leftovers, stirred it around for a while, then put the egg in and *BLISS* everything slid around the wok beautifully, nothing got burnt and i finally got my fried rice dinner, albeit a day late.

that bit at the bottom is not chao-da-ness lah! it's chili oil! fabulous stuff! :)

my tastebuds are getting quite confused. one minute it's the same food for three days straight, the next it's OMGTODIEFOR cushy meals at The Kitchen at Grand Lisboa. These expensive dinners are seriously getting me FAT.

i wanted to take a photo of the mashed potatoes but i was too paiseh. hell, i wanted to take a photo with the mashed. i wanted to MARRY it. it was. i don't know the word for it. the best damn mashed potatoes i ever had in my LIFE. and i only had two tablespoonfuls. it was like eating something that was made of half mashed, half butter. SO creamy, SO smooth, SO...sigh~.......

i miss it.

anyway! lunch post will be done tomorrow i am too lazy now. bye!

first of many.

western fried rice. MOP$18. actually not bad la...i'm tapao-ing half for dinner cause i've had 2 stressful days. sighs. want someone to massage me...:)

three.

she called me ah ma and i called her ah lien. just because she would wear jeans like this.

it's very very weird. very very very weird not having you around. cause you were quite loud. and panicky at times. guess i got that from you. i need you so much in my life now. is this part of growing up? feels just like yesterday we were in Singapore, we were lying on the bed, early in the morning and you were stroking my hair. that is my best and most precious memory of you. 


i miss you. every every day i miss you. 

Last Minute-ly

so, as per usual, i waited an hour til before dinner to decide what to do with my first quarter of Angus Beef that i bought at Royal the other day. i'd already decided on the spaghetti, and maybe some sort of salad. was searching for a black peppercorn sauce thing online and looking at the ingredients required (oyster sauce?none!cream?none!) when the Old Man called!

"what are you having for dinner?"

"i dunno i bought some steak the other day...so cheap!" (enthusiastically telling him it was US nicely marbled beef)

he then proceeded to tell me how to cook steak, as if i hadn't done it at least 20 times already. i was mmm-ing all the way then he asked what i was eating it with. i told him about my idea, then he suggested frying onions also, with the browning from the steak.

OMG Genius! too bad i don't have blue cheese to re-enact PW's droolsome recipe.

damn. i hope she doesn't see the link..and my cooking. so malu. cincai la, i want to promote her anyway. 

this was my initial ingredients to use. i'm always like this one. halfway will pull out something else. i'd already decided on salad: sliced shallots, salted to take off the tang, with tomatoes and cucumbers; buttered-garlic-chili spaghetti and of course the steak. i saw the mushrooms as i was taking out the butter! so i decided to make my favourite - garlicky mushrooms, sans herbs this time cos stingy/kiamsiap don't have any. 

i've made all of these things before ok. many times. simple shit. :D

Rolling boil (read: lots and LOTS of bubbles), almost a tablespoon of salt and some oil. i need to get olive oil! and stop being stingy. :P 

after that i was supposed to go cut the onion and stuff but i got lazy and went to play Facebook. heh. 

then i salted, peppered and oiled both sides of the steak. ya i know, so much marble already, i only put a biiiitt of oil ok. i love coarse black pepper! just the look of it...classy classy heh. should have brought some back from home :( Sarawak Black Pepper is the best!

yes i do admit, the steak is a bitbit grey but hey, it's cheap!

started dicing up garlic and chili and went thru the whole freaking-out-over-seeds again. i was on Skype with Diehard the whole time, he made deseeding sound so easy, but now my fingers are slightly tingly again. sigh. anyway, sliced up shallots bowl is for salad, with some salt, and more for the steak sauce :)~

i arranged it all neatly for display only! but really it does make for easier cooking and no need to wash so many bowls after :D the mushrooms were so nice and spongy, i had 2 slices raw...yumm..i think they're the chinese type mushroom? not too sure, i couldn't read the packaging :P about 14 for RM4..cheap/expensive?

i was cutting everything really slowly ok. i'm still getting back into cooking. so by the time i was done, i figured the onions must have been salted enough. added the tomatoes and cucumbers, salt and pepper. actually some lemon juice and olive oil should go in this, but no olive oil and i only had that lemonade thingy, so i put that in. lucky it had a bit of sugar, which i wanted anyway! after mixing, i put it in the freezer to chill.

started on the spaghetti first. i'd boiled it for about 6 minutes already (yes i know that sounds too long but i like mine mushy, got a problem?) so i just needed to fry the garlic and chili. got the butter and oil foaming just a little on medium-low heat (?)...

then dumped in the garlic and chili. note to self: too much chili! should have stopped at one and put more garlic instead. i'm lousy at agar-ration, always have been. 

now the garlic is turning a nice nutty brown (not chao da yet!!)

we both agreed Diehard's mother would scream at the amount of butter i was using :D

then i put in the spaghetti. see! too much spaghetti, not enough garlic, dang it! was trying to mix it to coat, but that's hard to do with a wooden ladle :P i wasn't trying to fry the spaghetti, just long enough to warm it up again, maybe 45 seconds or less. 

finally scraped off at least a bit more so it would look close to what i had in mind. heh. ok, spaghetti done!

*rubs hands in glee* mushrooms next! same concept, foaming butter and oil on med-low(?) heat, added chunky garlic, fried til nutty (?) :D

here go the mushrooms! they needed a lot of oil ler..i had to add a bit more halfway. but as long as you keep turning them, they're alright. 

yay! just nice, not too soft, about 3-4 mins on medium-low. or whatever. i don't know. i remember how the flame looks like. that's enough!

now, the steak! mmm...ok la see i didn't use so much butter this time, only a thiin slice. butter is good for you ok. makes you strong and healthy!

added some oil to butter, got the flame quite high and let it foam for a while, then dropped my steak in with a satisfying sizzle! 

ok lah i laid it down la. i don't want to get drops of hot oil all over my arms ok. i bet tons of food writers have used the phrase 'satisfying sizzle'. it's late. i'm in no mood to be original :P

1 min 20 secs on one side and 20 secs on the other, and done! look at the yummy juicy yumminess! hrm..maybe i should have cooked it a bit longer. :P oops

with the remaining butter/oil-brownbits thing..

i started frying the shallots with LOTS and LOTS of coarse black pepper in med-low (i guess) heat til they were pretty soft and pretty brown (like a doe? O.o)

..or your eyes...mmm...yes yes...:D

"your eyes are as brown as fried shallots.." sounds romantic enough to me! heh. 

now for the freaky part. i wasn't too sure how this was going to work. in the end i just put 1/4 teaspoon tapioca flour i found in a drawer, with about 3ml (?) of milk. 

and then! OMG! the magic happened! it thickened without getting too lumpy! YAY!!

ok la. it was a bit too thick. should have put in 2 tbsp more milk at least. but what the heck! i got me some sauce!

and there you have it! my dinner! yay to me! looks a bit extravagant but i've been living off the stew for 3 days ok, give me a break. ya i put too much chili in the spaghetti and the steak sauce was a bit too thick, but i pretty much did it! a nice dinner for myself.

and Diehard who was playing HoN. bleh. i'm used to it :D

kitchen was hell to clean after though. :P

LOST!

and i didn't take any photos cause i was sweaty and tired and exhausted and sad and thirsty and....
yes. i have a bad bad sense of direction. i need my GPS :(
i did have enough time to take a photo of this:

observe the corners of the roof....

Macau is the land of the devil! all those casinos...no wonder....

yeslah. at the time i took this photo i was damn annoyed with all the steep hills and freakin mountain thingy slap in the middle of the city that i had to go around just to get to the computer place. in the end i was so hopelessly lost and tired that i just hailed a cab and got ripped off. great day huh. 

enough complaining! it's a beautiful city really, great architecture :) ahem ahem. just need to do some more exploring. and bring a map. :P

never mind. i'll do better next time! yeah! positivity!

time for dinner~ i'm starving.

Cooking Class with SSOL (NOT!!)

when i first started blogging, it was on Friendster (gasp!) and the blog was called '(mis)adventures of cooking' or something like that. Evryone knows i loVE food and a few have even dared to brave the waters of my home-cooked meals. 


so, based on what i've told you, it should be clear that this post is NOT intended to teach you how to cook this dish. it's just chronicling my experience and serves as a reminder of any adjustments to make, should i attempt this dish again. actually, a confession is that i was quite nervous the whole way. i've no idea why...i cooked for about 2 years(?), almost everyday. it's been more than 3 years since then, so i am terribly rusty. 


if anything, you'd want to try this dish out for yourself and have a few laughs at my expense while reading this post :D


i'm living in Macau now, and it was
 only logical i start with a Portugese dish. i had a HUGE can of Portugese chourico that i was supposed to bring back to Malaysia but left it out at the last minute cause it was too heavy (700 grams!). i got the recipe here at one of my favourite go-to sites for dinner (thanks John!). Portugese Chourico is not to be confused with Spanish Chorizo, they're different things but i guess you could substitute one with the other if you're super-cincai like me. 


Portugese Chourico Stew...here we go..

the actual ingredients called for chourico, onion, garlic, tomato sauce, potatoes, red pepper flakes, paprika and green beans. i only heeded four of the ingredients! omg! yes, i'm stingy, paprika cost almost MOP30 (RM15!) and i don't like green beans and the onions were going at about RM1 EACH! so i used 

• shallots in place of onion, 
• tomato paste instead of sauce, 
• chili flakes/seeds from chilli oil instead of the flakes, (from the red jar)
• carrots instead of green beans

yeah i know. i'm not staying true to the original dish. it's a bastardised poor version. what the hell! i'm cooking for myself only. so i don't care :D

(see the small red plastic bag behind? thats for my rubbish. ya i'm gross and throw my rubbish on the same top as the one i prepare my food. told you, this is NOT a cooking guide! be prepared for more disgustingness!)

                                         

i was so excited about eating something new that i took out the chourico and started dicing them first. ok i admit, i already cooked with them earlier in the day, nothing fancy, just fried them with shallots, tomatoes and scrambled eggs for breakfast. they were DAMN salty but that's my fault. they came in a can that i'll show you later. they were in oil with some peppercorns and cloves, which i thought was so cute :D

i used about one and a half, and after i had started cutting up a half, i realised that i should have taken the casing off, so i started pulling them off with my fingernails from the small diced bits. feeling pleased with myself, i started cutting up the whole one, only to remember that i forgot to take off the casing again. (insert Hokkien expletive here) so i had to peel them off the small diced bits instead of just cutting the chourico in half and pulling it off the whole thing. 

then i started chopping up the veggies. then i remembered you should prepare veggies before meat to avoid contamination. then i didn't care and continued. :P

i decided to throw in some chilli for i-don't-remember-what-reason, maybe the added vitamin C or antioxidants? heh. recipe called for one small onion so i used 3 small shallots and 2 cloves of minced garlic. 

i have bad bad memories of stinging, painful hands in secondary school ERT class while using chili so i was DAMN freaked out when deseeding the chilis. i actually washed the chili ok i was that scared! 

then i remembered i read somewhere that if your hands are oiled, it will protect your skin from the c-something in the chili seeds. i forgot la. MissC has a DAMN funny (not to her i think) story about that on her blog and i didn't want to end up like that. my fingers were already oiled from the sausages so i did a little 'yay' in my heart :D yes i live alone but i don't want to start talking to myself yet ok!

i didn't peel the potatoes cos, as i told you, i'm gross. at least i washed them ok! so i didn't think to figure out if the apartment had a peeler but thank God i found one! at first i only peeled halfway and diced that part up. then i decided i needed more and peeled the rest. 

i'm so indecisive that way. and bad at agar-ration. 

suddenly i had this great idea of putting mushrooms! yet another bastardization in progress! it's opened weirdly cause i don't know how to use the can opener and two bits of the cover were stuck to the can still. whatever lah. as long as it can get half-open enough already for me. i used half a can cos I LOVE MUSHROOMS and it's precious to me!

so here we go. two medium potatoes, diced, one carrot, diced, and half a can of mushrooms, quartered. :D

this whole food blogging business. not easy lah. added like half an hour to the cooking!

i used 1 1/2 tablespoons of oil from the sausages, and one teaspoon from the chilli oil, just for flavour and kicks :D got the cookerhood going (that word is just really weird to me) and started by frying the onions garlic chili for a bit. 'just to get the flavour out' or whatever that means.

can you see the end of the black plastic spatula? mann i hate using plastic to cook. i couldn't find anything else in the kitchen. freaks me out cause last time i checked, the one at home was all melted at the end. eeeeeee.....

then i dumped in the diced chourico (i keep wanting to type chorizo, ishish) and fried that for another minute (plus? plusplus? who knows!). the smell was GREAATT because, other than that rich meaty flavour, the chourico has some other smoky yummy spices in it that delivers a mouth-watering smell..hey i was cooking really late ok! so hungry at that time!

cheap! tomato paste. forgot how much but i remember it was cheap. heh. i used the whole can! and regretted it. tell you why later. 

in goes the paste with some water, enough to cover the chourico..

after stirring it around, i dumped the potatoes, carrots and mushrooms in. i REGRET! i think i should have fried it like i do with the Japanese curry thing. as in, fry onions etc, add chourico and fry, then add potatoes etc and fried, then add water and stuff. dang nammit! oh well, next time :P


by the way! i finally found a wooden spoon thing in a drawer! the shape is kinda weird for cooking but at least it's not plastic :S ewww..

here is where the red pepper flakes and paprika goes in. so, in my cheapo version, here is where my red chilli oil bits-of-thing goes in. cheap ler! only rm3! i love chili oil, not easy to get in E. Malaysia :P

let it all boill.... that black bit is the chili oil, in case you're wondering. i tasted it and it was kinda lacking something...some ooOMPh...probably cause i skimped on the paprika..sigh..

then i had a brilliant idea! powdered chicken stock! you can't live without this man. but...why oh WHY did i buy knorr's?? i think maggi is less salty. i have no idea what i was thinking..anyway i dumped about less than half a teaspoon in..

it says to leave it for 25-30 minutes. then i suddenly remembered i hadn't cooked rice. heh. :D at least that's one thing i know how to do right :P

oh yea, this is the can that the chourico came in. yes i opened it upside down. oops. i kept the can cause i thought it might be useful for something (yes i'm stingy that way :P) and it was! i dumped my wooden ladle in while i was waiting for the stew to cook. heh. 


do you know how much this can of chourico costs!? ZOMG ok. it's like a bit over RM30, or MOP63, according to Royal Supermarket's price. about six large sausages inside. so maybe it's ok la. about rm5 for one sausage? i used that for breakfast with the eggs and all, lasted me til dinner...so i guess it's cheap? 
weird rationalization, i know.

while waiting for the food to cook, i decided to take some photographic evidence for you, that i did buy fruits! see! i listened to you! hehe. rm2.50 for bananas and rm5 for the apples (8). ok or not?

this is some other stuff i bought last night. RM7 for sesame oil man. my heart just breaks. i don't think they have that brand i usually get at home. maybe it's malaysian? the lemon drink is a desperate attempt to use it for lemon juice. but i tasted it and i don't think it's going to work all that well. first off, it's kinda fizzy? and it's a bit sweet. might work for some things but definitely not salad :(

so after 25 minutes, this is what it looks like. all globby! then i realised....i should have used tomato PUREE! what la. tomato paste is just way too thick for this. sigh. next time. it was a bit sour for me so i cut it by trying a tablespoon of the lemon drink i got, and some sugar. it was okkk lah.

i finally gave up on trying to tweak it when the rice was done. too hungry already! i think next time i really need to use a REAL onion, just for that sweet tang. this is what you get for being stingy. 

are you mad? of course i don't normally eat like this! this is just for display. normally i would mix up everything in a bowl and just eat. that's the kind of girl i am :D the cucumber would have remained in its original state and i would have just chomped off it in intervals to cut the richness of the stew. but for you, i did it all up, so you'd have even more of a reason to think i'm a good girlfriend :D and hurry up and come visit!

sorry this photo is upside down! can you spot the difference? made it just for you ;) don't ask me why there's no G, i was too lazy :D


the result? it wasn't too bad, i usually don't like my own cooking anyway. except on really rare occasions. cause by the time all the cooking is done, you're just tired and hungry. heh. definitely tomato puree next time. or a mix of puree and paste. and definitely use an onion. DBS is probably going to complain i didn't use enough meat. 


okay off to lunch. guess what i'm having? the leftovers! :P