泡芙日记

我和HG都喜欢吃泡芙。先后读了小米桶和Carol自在生活关于泡芙的做法，最后选定小米桶的，因为感觉比较容易，对我这种新手来说应该比较可以上手。（小米桶的泡芙食谱和做法链接）。于是乎就照着食谱做抹酱和泡芙。泡芙的高筋面粉我也替换成低筋面粉（小米桶的博文里说可以，那么我就不用买两种面粉）。

泡芙的面糊要一点一点的加入蛋液，然后用力搅拌

呈倒三角薄膜垂滴，这样应该是了吧？

放进烤箱里

看它们静静地长大

出炉！

看起来还不错。颜色，和那美丽的裂纹。

只是怎么感觉好像有点扁平而不是膨胀鼓起来的？

而且里面好像就不够puffy呢？

上米桶的博文troubleshoot 一下：
1.烤出來的泡芙寬廣平坦：
●麵糊太軟
●烤爐溫度太低

2.泡芙內部沒膨漲出空洞：
●麵粉加入後，加熱不足
●烤爐溫度太低.
●麵糊攪拌過度(蛋分太多次加入.要先 1/2 再剩餘1/2的1/2=1/4.依此類推)

3.表面沒有龜裂：( 我就是犯了這個錯，為了拍照  麵糊溫度都變冷了!)
●麵糊太冷
●麵糊太硬
●表面沒噴水

4.麵糊分離：
●粉水內的油脂比例過多
●第一次加入蛋量不足 

我的问题应该是属于1和2，而可能的原因有两种：面糊太软或者烤炉温度太低。我自觉面糊没问题。因为软硬就像米桶描述的那样。如果烤炉温度太低，那么HG，给我换个新的，大一点的烤炉吧？（哈哈！）

无论如何，涂上自制的香草味抹酱，滋味还真是不赖！

Cooking in August

Home style cooking last Sunday...

Udon On Independence Day...

Pasta again

My third attempt with different ingredients and sauce (this time with onions, a 'must' as advised by Sze Hui after reading my entry on pasta cooking)

Outcome 1

For HG. With sausages, minced pork in tomato sauce.

Outcome 2

For myself. Vegetarian style but with eggs, butter and cheese.

HG said this time it tasted better (because he's a carnivore) but the sauce a bit salty. I tried mine and I think not bad so I'm rating myself a 3 over 5 to show that there's some improvement since last attempt. ^_^

Cooking Spaghetti

My second attempt cooking spaghetti after my first failure several years back (horsey being the victim). The ingredients:

After 1 hour in the kitchen dicing up the pumpkins and abalone mushrooms, and cooking the pasta sauce... Chiang Chiang Chiang Chiang....

Vegetarian style for myself

HG's a carnivore, so some crabmeat and meatballs for him to add onto

 Leaving only the pumpkins behind. Carnivore!

I rated myself a 2 out of 5. The flavours didn't get into the pumpkins and mushrooms. The sauce was a bit diluted. The texture is not rich, feel like something is missing but not sure what's it. Maybe if there's some butter and onion added to the sauce, it'll taste better? Anyway, HG was generous enough to give me a 3. Thanks to the commercially available sauce. I'll try it again sometime...

Cooking at home

After married for about 3 weeks, we decided to cook at home. You know, to experience so called 'family' life. Haha. Since yesterday was a public holiday, we invited Nana and Tom over for dinner (Tom cooked us some nice spaghetti before our wedding). Mum and bro Antz were invited too as dad and Horsey were away. It was a dinner meant purposely for gathering and watching our wedding video, so we only prepared some simple 'home cook' dish.

Nana asked earlier on if I would prepare Sushi (cause that's the only thing that she knew I could do) but I did not have ample time to prepare the ingredients as I needed to go to temple for some activity that morning. So instead she requested for me to cook something. Sweat~ Well, cooking is not a big problem for HG since he is used to it but for me, it's a great challenge. You see, the one and only thing that I can cook well is Maggie mee. The most being maggie mee with egg. Ha! Anyway, I flipped through my recipe books (I have those books on my bookshelf just for the sake of 'enjoying the pictures') and did some research on what to cook. In the end, I decided to come out with 2 dishes. HG cooked us lotus root and peanut soup, as well as chicken with capsicum whereas I prepared deep-fried mashed potatoes with cheesy eggs and a tofu dish.Chicken with capsicum by HG
My potato+eggs dough taken out from fridge just before frying

Ta-Da! Deep fried mashed potatoes with cheesy eggs (some fried nuggets to standby in case my work failed)

and egg-tofu with mushrooms

the happy faces of Nana and Tom. So I guess my cooking is still 'boleh tahan'. At least they were edible. Hahahaha!

Sunflowers sushi

I attempted 'sunflower sushi' last weekend. I called it sunflower sushi not because the ingredients involve anything to do with sunflowers, but just that the look of it reminds me of sunflowers. I mean the yellow ones.

Don't you think so?

Cooking Udon

HG came across udon noodles the other day while he and Lulu went shopping. He thought of giving it a try someday and so the two of them decided to cook udon over the weekend. Lulu was given the responsibility of looking up for recipe whereas HG would pay for all the ingredients needed (haha). Lulu decided to try the Nabeyaki udon. And so they went shopping on Saturday afternoon and did the cooking last Sunday night.

The ingredients needed:
It took Lulu about 2 hours time to prepare the Daishi stock and also the cooking. The outcome?

TA- DA!
And Lulu's udon was served in a claypot, thus the name 'Nabeyaki'.
After 2 long hours of cooking and having no time to concentrate on watching the 'International chinese debate final' live from TV2, Lulu finally got to try a bite of her own cooking. Ita taki mas!
HG generously rated a 4 out of 5 stars for Lulu's cooking. But Lulu gave herself only 2 stars. She overdid the soup with a little bit too much soy sauce added. And some of the ingredients were overcooked. Although it took them two hours to cook, and the udon tasted not as good as those ordered from a japanese restaurant, it was a fulfilling experience. At least it was Lulu's first attempt to 'COOK' something rather than to 'ROLL' something (as in sushi). Haha.

HG also did try to cook 'teriyaki chicken' (he claimed it). It tasted okay but not really 'teriyaki' style (to Lulu) but more like a chinese style of cooking. Anyway, the two of them were so full last night.
p/s: to try it out yourself, go to this link for the recipe http://japanesefood.about.com/od/udon/r/nabeyakiudon.htm

Sushi

Two weeks ago, Horsey asked how come I never try to do sushi other than maki? So, today besides the usual maki, I tried experiment something new.

The result?
TA DAAA!!!!!!!!!!
The bottom rolls are the usual thing i do. But this time, instead of cucumber, i used asparagus. The above, from left to right: nigiri sushi-egg, turkey ham; gunkan sushi-mixture of corn and crabmeat; rice dumpling. Of course, if you compare my work with this:
there is definitely still room for improvement, but i think for someone like me (who doesn't know how to cook but merely enjoy eating sushi thus learn to make sushi) it is considered not bad. Don't you think so?