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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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1 comments
yummmy! i miss ur madelines so much i had to go delifrance and get them myself! BOO!
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"my" latest theory :
"When change = 0 , the ease of doing anything is directly proportionate to the time spent doing it."
In other words, "practise makes perfect" or “熟能生巧”.
My body is getting accustomed to the daily workload + gymming on alternate days. That is why i can update my blog again! I seem to be getting better at making my own meals. Chinese cooking is not as scary as i thought it was.
~
After getting some professionl photo-editing help, I managed to SAVE 2 of the photos my brother took of the last major-dinner i had with my family. The previous photos were either seriously over-exposed or too dark. (er i think bro can start thinking of a new hobby to pick up)
The meal was supposed to be a cook-for-my-mum's-bday feast but i realized i probably can't better her main courses so she had to do those still. But still, i managed to churn out 3 appetizers and 2 desserts for 5 of us!
The french onion soup was not spectacular. I think my mum has a better recipe (and of course she reminded me of this fact over and over again. hurhur). I liked the sprig of thyme and red wine addition but i didn't really do the baguette slice and cheese procedure properly. I baked them in advance and just plopped it into the hot soup. The bread was soaking up 80% of the soup! Should have really toasted them to dryness and then place it on the soup . THEN ADD CHEESE and then bake each bowl of soup (with bread) again. There was also the problem of using a too-generous slice of bread. Not thinking yi! Oh but melted swiss gruyere on onion soup is SO good.
AH. Personally i was much more excited about the foie gras. I was just feeling a lil generous and adventurous when i bought mini duck/goose foie gras portions at The Butchery (Holland V). When i told mum about it, she was (for the first time in a long while) apparently elated! And dad knew about it later and they decided to.... BUY a whole chunk of liver. -.-. cos they thought mine was too meagre to satisfy their craving. I was very slightly peeved cos my gesture then became very insignificant but happy too cos i get to make bigger portions of the condiments (which means more fruitful labor) to go with it!
Now, i was planning to replicate the JG foie gras i had for a loooong while and this was the perfect opportunity to share tt experience with the family. The foie gras was to be panfried by mummy who was much better at meat than i was. But i get to do the less technical cool stuff , heh.
JG's foie gras used candied pistachios, dried sour cherries and white port gelee. I had no white port or sour cherries so i had to settle for store-bought cranberries whose scent was too distinctively cranberrish that it weakened its complementing powers ; as for the gelee, i found a grape juice gelee recipe online that sounded authentic and had the most exciting steps : crushing grapes, filtering its juice, adding white port........Wooo~ i like recipes that have infinite steps! I tried it, everything went well until i was supposed to add white port wine. Erm. I din have that. Nor was i about to open an entire bottle of white wine for this. So i had to settle for mum's cooking white wine! THAT WENT BAD. for a moment it smelled like i added shaoxing wine to mi juice. i was so afraid of ruining the gelee that i grabbed additional grapes and squeezed their juices into to stop that foul wine! I think it worked. Or the heating killed that smelly thing.
One mistake i made was trying to cube the gelee before the dinner so i could cut the predinner workload. BUT it turned out that cubing it made it melt a lil, so when i put all the cubes back into the bowl in the fridge, the cubes coagulated into one odd looking lump. Next time, just cube it before u serve la! Oh and the foie gras was served straight from the pan so it melted my gelee!! The photo above captures a glossy layer on top of the liver, its my gelee melting. Next time, serve at the side, far away from mr. hot liver.
As for candied pistachios, we happened to have some leftover pistachios from CNY so it came in handy. Candying things is pretty fun actually! I didn't know we could boil pistachios without ending up with soggy nuts! So the pan-frying actually dehydrated them later. Coooooooool.
Mum, mi bro and his gf liked the little additions but DAD was being AWFULLY rude by eating the whole liver WITHOUT touching any of them. He said he liked the foie gras straight. GROSS. *rolls eyes* Coming from the man who likes his russian vodka with caviar! I think i should have just dunked his foie gras in beer and let him gulp it down.
The cracker platter was fine. Anchovies were too darned salty this time round. I wonder why. Same brand lei. The salmon, tomato puree and cream cheese went well.
Dessert was lava cake AND purin. I used my good Valrhona choc from Shermay's! (thanks to random virtual friend who left tt recommendation!) but it was a BAD idea to use paper muffin cups to substitute my pudding cups. Don't ask. But it was nice to see bro's gf scraping the dish clean anyhow. Bro loved the purin. a little too sweet though! (never add additional egg yolks, ruins the texture - so i learnt recently)
The Angus and foie gras per se was as usual good! Mum's right. Angus is much better to steak than wagyu. W is too fat. Mum has her way with panfrying meat. Must learnnnnnnn.
And finally:
Mum and i at the dinner table!
(it was funny how she was so bored right before dinner cos i was cooking and she kept pacing up and down and settling all the stuff before i could get to it, like washing dishes - thank god)
~
BTW, TMD, 30 minutes after i wrote the first part of the blog (read) , i burnt my dinner. And in dismay, ruined all the later dishes. Now im eating them. RETRIBUTION!! Cannot blog and cook at the same time LA.
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