Pork Yogurt with Scallop Potatoes

Inspired from the chicken yogurt hot plate that I ate at the Indian restaurant on Friday. The chicken was marinated in yogurt and it's so tender and soft, so why don't we try it on pork?

What you need:
200 gr lean pork meat, cut big chunks or cubes
1 potato, cut thinly (about 1mm)
1/2 bunch chives, chopped
1/2 onion, sliced thinly
1 tbsp dried chili
150ml plain yogurt
seasoning: thyme, salt, pepper

How to:
1. Marinate pork in yogurt and thyme (about 2 tsp) for 2 hours (24 hours will be best)
2. On a wok, heat up oil and add in dried chili. Once fragrant, add on onion and chives and cook until soft
3. Add on potatoes, cook until half done
4. Add on pork and the marinate sauce, cook until pork is well done and add seasonings

Enjoy!

Just Another Curry Rice

I guess there will be a never ending quest in adding extra stuffs into your curry concoction. This time it's what I saw in the drama that I'm currently watching. On the last scene of the first episode, the main character is serving curry rice to his siblings and they're raving about the curry rice, and he told them, 'it's miso and honey'. Me: OOOOHHHH, I never thought of that, sasuga, curry block endorser!

So, here we go and I gobbled this baby while watching the drama's 2nd episode haha... and it's the best curry rice that I've made so far...

Ingredients:

Curry Sauce:

2 big carrots - sliced

2 Russet potatoes - cut chunks

1 medium sized onion - cut chunks

150 ml chicken stock

200 ml water

1 apple - peeled and mashed

2 tbsp honey

1 tbsp miso paste

1/2 curry block (from the block packet for 4 people)  - thinly chopped

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 red chilli - seeded and thinly sliced

Topping:

100 gr pork lean meat - cut strips

1 red bell pepper - charred, filmed and sliced

1 yellow bell pepper - charred, filmed and sliced

2 tbsp corn starch

seasoning: salt, pepper, dash of dried basil

How to:

1. On the soup pan, heat up the oil and stir fry onion and red chili until soft, and add on carrot and potatoes.

2. Pour in water and chicken stock and bring to boil.

3. In a bowl, mix in apple, honey, miso and curry block until well mixed and add them into the pan and stir in until it's dissolved

4. Change to small fire, simmer it until potatoes and carrots are soft.

5. On a bowl, mix in the pork with the corn starch until the meat all coated

6. On a wok, heat up the oil and dried chili until fragrant.

7. Add in meat and stir fry until well cooked

8. Add in bell peppers and seasoning, stir fry a bit and done.

Enjoy!

Nectarine Compote

You saw the fruits that you like is on sale and you happily bring home 2 boxes of it only to find out that they're too dry. Have you experienced this? this is what happened to me with my 2 boxes of totally not juicy nectarine. The first thing that I tried with these fail fruits is nectarine crumble and it didn't worked so well because, well, they're already dry and crumbles need juicy fruits to become a nice one, which explains why apple makes a very good crumble. So, how to make these fruits edible? You can try make it into a compote! So, what is compote? When we hear the word Compote, the first thing come to mind is pear compote, but if we dig more recipes to it, we'll see lots of varieties of fruit compote. So, Compote means fruit plus liquor, be it wine or hard liquor, boiled until the liquid is reduced to certain consistency. Off course if you have nice fruits, making it into compote will result in a very wonderful one, but if you have a fail fruit, this dessert also will do because it'll soften the fruit and you'll have liquid to help the fruit glide down your throat :d, and it's easy to make too ;)

It's so glossy and soft in color, right?

So without further a do:

Ingredients:

4 nectarines cut 6 wedges each

500 ml water

100 gr sugar

2 lemon, take the juice only

40 ml cointreau

How to make:

1. In a sauce pan, boil all except cointreau under small fire. After about 10 minutes, add on cointreau and let it simmer until the syrup reduced by about half.

Tips:

- can be served warm/cold.

- add on oats and vanilla ice cream, it'll become another different dessert.

Enjoy!

Weekend Desserts

I love it when there's some fair at either Taka or Isetan because that means there will be some yummy desserts floating around there. This time it's Hokkaido fair at Taka and they have Petite Merveille. It's not local Hokkaido, it's from Tokyo, but... I couldn't care less, they have yummy stuff. Their 3 main products are Mel Cheese (petite size cheesecake), kabocha purin (pumpkin pudding) and choco rolled cake. I sampled the cheesecake because I don't feel like buying 1 box of it, but I brought home the purin and the rolled cake.

They also have the kabocha purin that's layered with fresh cream, but I opted for the plain one because of guilt LOL... But the kabocha purin by itself is already so fluffy and soft, well, basically it just melt in your mouth on every single bite and without you realize it, you finish the whole ramekin (don't worry it's not that a big ramekin too). And, yes, you get that tiny porcelain ramekin too, so for 6SGD each, they're not really that expensive at the end, especially when the taste makes up for it too.

Well, what about the rolled cake? As, usual, it's fluffy, and the cream is not that really creamy so it's easy to eat. My fave, poured rum over it and you get a very yummy dessert :) :) :)...

Pepes Tahu ~ The Lazy Way

I had a sudden craving of pepes tahu. For those non-Indo people, pepes is something like the lor mai kai dish, but instead of glutenous rice, it's either tofu, mushroom, or even fish and condiments, all wrapped with banana leaves. It's one of my fave Indo dish, but I never thought of making it myself because of the ingredients (you won't have problems if you live in Indo). Google 'pepes tahu' and you found tons of recipes with all different combinations of those ingredients, from the mega simple one (here) or the more complicated one (here).

The must have items in pepes are daun salam, lemongrass, and kemiri. OK, lemongrass is not that hard to find but there's no way I'm gonna search high and low for daun salam and kemiri, let alone pay the ridiculous price for those items. But... I still want my pepes :p. Hence, it's modification time. I still retain the essence of the making process, BUT, I sub all the ingredients with the easier to find and not necessarily cheap but it's all in my pantry. And, the taste? it's not that much different from the ones that I used to eat, only it tastes cleaner LOL...

Ingredients:

500gr tofu - using spoon crush it. I like it to still have some big chunks

3 red chilies - seeded and thinly sliced

3 green chilies - seeded and thinly sliced

2 eggs

1 bunch Thai basil leaves - plugged w/o stems and this is the sub for daun salam

1 tomato -- seeded and thinly sliced

2 tsp salt

Condiments:

1 whole garlic (about 10 cloves)

1 medium sized red onion - you can cut all those small shallots, but I don't like peeling those tiny shallots, waste energy

10 gr macadamia - this is the sub for kemiri, fancy eh?

1 red chili - seeded

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

For wrapping - baking paper or aluminum foil (they're cheaper than banana leaves and can do the job)

How to:

1. In your food processor, add in all the condiment ingredients and grind them until it turns to a paste. If you have the energy (which I don't), you can use that old fashion stone bowl and pound them. The difference between the 2 method is that by using food processor, your condiment will be more watery compared to the traditional way. BUT, why would you want to waste your energy if you can squeeze the water out a bit and use OR, just bake ur pepes a little bit longer?

2. Mix in both condiments and all ingredients except basil leaves and tomato in a big bowl until well mixed.

3. To assemble: On cut baking paper, place basil leaves on the bottom then add the tomato slices and top it up with about 100 gr of the tofu mixture and wrap it tight. I'm lazy so I make jumbo (about 200gr each) size ones.

4. Bake it for 45minutes at about 160C. They look like below when they're done:

*I staple the sides using yeah, the regular stapler. It's a legit item in the kitchen, you won't eat them anyway.

Enjoy!