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 

cold cold cold~

means i'm having a hard time drying my clothes...argh..luckily my 'guardian angel' in Macau got me one of these

so paiseh ok! she didn't even let me pay her...grr...i don't know how am i going to make up for her kindness...wish i could bring back durian for her since she seems to love it a lot...hehhe..
yea it looks weird right...DBS christianed it as R2D2 after i showed him a photo online LOL. works pretty okay though it doesn't really evenly dry the clothes, which i'm guessing is my fault...i might have put in one too many hehe.


anyway this

MGM Lion's Bar image from http://www.macau24.com/data/1252565395.07412_lions_bar.jpg

and this is where i went on saturday night...so happening ler! ahha...lucky to meet friends like that...very kind and generous people..

Cubic at AIA tower; image taken from http://www.hongkonghustle.com/wp-content/photos/club_Cubic_Macau_nightlife.jpg

it's cold and raining and i've a ton of things to do...sigh..home in 5 days! whoopdeedoo~!!

back in civilisation!!

yess~~ after three weeks of 'toughing it out' i'm finally back in Casinoland. happy~!!

soo many things to sort out. least of all my computer. running on Safe Mode is the only way i can get it to work. hence no photos cause can't use the Bluetooth. i'm soo sorry Satellite..i promise i'll try to treat you better! you're my only lifeline to home..

worst thing happened today. i finally resigned myself to the fact that i must have left my lipgloss pouch in the hotel i was at in the beginning of my trip. there must have been at least ten glosses in there. *heartbreak* my Bloom lipgloss in Watermelon...my two Diors...OWHmygosh...kill me...how will i ever show my face at MGM tonight? all i have left are the Bigelow, Sportsgirl and two lipglosses from Mommy Dearest that i hardly ever use cos God help me, i was never even close to being as fair as she was.

never mind. gives me an excuse to stock up again. but oh, the moolah involved..

miss you guys back home. see you in a week!!

leaving again

apologies for the mosquito netting in the way. someone conveniently put it there as soon as i was ready to snap the photo :P

so. another great adventure. have a feeling it's not going to be so great. all the loose ends untied..not that it hasn't happened before. 我不能放心走, you get what i mean?

dammit. why does it have to be so hard? i've already planned this ages ago. i'm leaving. don't give me any more shit please. just give way a bit la. will die kah?

love all of you anyway. anyone who knows me relatively well and is reading this now. see you soon..