Doesn’t TaZte Like Chicken

Location: My tiny kitchen

Watching the melted cheese oozing out of the sandwich is always fun - who says grilled cheese sandwiches are only for kids?

ET does quite a bit of business travel and when he’s out of town, I like to prepare simple and quick dinners that could be conveniently eaten while I read a good book or magazine on the couch. Grilled cheese sandwich is one of my favourite quick dinner choices. It’s almost impossible to make a bad grilled cheese sandwich. The combination of melted cheese, crusty bread and tasty ham always promises successful results.

I use Canadian bacon in my grilled cheese sandwich because I like the meaty texture of Canadian bacons. Because Canadian bacons usually have a milder flavour than regular ham, I picked a 2-year aged white cheddar that has a very nice and strong flavour.

Place the bacon and cheese on a slice of bread. The thickness of the slice is a personal preference. For me, I prefer thinner slices rather than thick because I can taste more the bacon and cheese than just the bread. If you are like me who likes to stuff up a sandwich, then make sure the cheese and bacon are covering the entire slice (if they are not hovering over the bread!). And yes, this means there are no white corners.

Butter the top and bottom of the sandwich. As a tiny effort to be healthy, I used margarine instead of butter this time.

Heat a non stick pan. Place the sandwich into the pan by placing side with cheese into the pan first. Turn the heat to low and cover the pan, grill one side until golden brown, about 1 minute. Gently flip the sandwich to the other side and grill with the pan uncovered for another minute.

Cut the sandwich in half, watch the cheese oozes out, and eat!

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Location: My tiny kitchen

Reduction is the magic - this sauce has such an intense flavour that only a small amount is needed to make a dish of pasta very tasty.

In the weekends or during holidays, I always enjoy cooking complicated dishes that takes a lot of patience. For some reasons, I feel ultimately relaxed when I’m carefully dicing ingredient after ingredient, or when I’m patiently waiting for a roast getting cooked in the oven. Once in awhile I like to make a bolognese sauce. Although time consuming to make, the rich flavour in this meat sauce always defeats any ready-to-eat pasta sauce that comes in a jar.

This cream of tomato sauce recipe is very similar to a bolognese sauce recipe. I have tweaked the bolognese sauce recipe by adding a large amount of cream in one of the final steps. By doing so, the sauce becomes thicker. Reduction is another key to this recipe. The sauce is reduced twice, resulting in an intense amount of flavour. I have been a fan of chef Heston Blumenthal, owner of the renowned restaurant Fat Duck, and this recipe is inspired by his way of preparing the bolognese sauce through the method of reduction.

To make 4 servings of the cream of tomato sauce you will need:

- 1/2 of a medium onion, finely diced
- 1 minced shallot
- 2/3 of a carrot, finely diced
- 1 stalk of celery, finely diced
- 5 cloves of minced garlic
- 1 cup of Italian sausage meat, with casing removed
- 2 American bacon strips, finely diced
- 1 cup of chicken stock, preferably unsalted
- 1 cup of heavy cream with at least 33% of milk fat
- 1 can of diced tomatoes, about 400ml

I diced my onion, celery and carrot until they are very fine. The finer they are, the easier to get their flavour into the sauce while they are being cooked.

In a quart pan, put in the bacon bits. Render the fat of the bacon bits by sauteing them over medium heat for a few minutes.

Turn the heat to high and put in the sausage meat. Saute the meat until cooked and golden brown.

Put in onion, celery, carrot, shallot and garlic. Grind in some black pepper. Saute the vegetables until soften. Deglaze the pan with the chicken stock and diced tomatoes.

Bring everything to a boil and then turn the heat down to a shimmer. Cook the sauce until it is reduced to very little amount of liquid. This took me about 1 hour.

Put in the cream and bring it to a boil. As soon as the cream boils, turn the heat down to medium low. Remember to stir occasionally because once the cream is added, the sauce can get burned very easily. Let the sauce reduce until very thick. This takes me about 1/2 an hour.

The sauce is now ready. Although traditionally a bolognese sauce is served with spaghetti, I don’t believe the sauce won’t taste good if other kinds of pasta were served. I’m using fettuccine for this recipe but you can use any pasta that you like - penne, rotini, or even the German spaetzle.

Following the instructions on the pasta bag or box, cook enough pasta for 4 people. When I cook pasta, I usually use a lot of water and I put a lot of salt into the water after I put in the pasta.

When the pasta has been cooked, drain them and mix them with a few teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil.

To assemble:

- Place pasta on a dish.
- Spoon some of the cream of tomato sauce on the pasta.
- Put in some freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano.
- Sprinkle with parsley.

This pasta dish is best eaten hot or warm. Unlike other pasta recipes in which the sauce is always mixed into the pasta in a heated pan, the sauce in this recipe is mixed into the pasta during serving. This is because the cream of tomato sauce is so rich that it clings very well onto the pasta even without the help of heat.

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Location: My tiny kitchen

Filled with a cup and a half of dark rum, a bite of this walnut rum cake could make you drunk. This is a little piece of heaven exclusively for grown-ups.

I have a baking teacher at work and her name is L. I have written about her quite a few times in the past because she always has wonderful cake recipes that are easy, which is a very important factor to an amateur baker like me. I was always told that baking is an exact science; you must be precise with all measurements and follow every step in a recipe. L is quite the Harry Potter when it comes to baking. She can simplify a recipe by changing the steps without changing the end results.

This walnut rum cake recipe is based on an amazing chocolate cake recipe from L. Learning from the master, I tweaked the ingredients and turned the recipe into a rum cake recipe. With some luck, the cake turned out okay. The texture was somewhat spongy, which is not what I expected, but the cake was enjoyable and I would make it again.

These are the ingredients for the cake:

- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups white sugar
- 1 cup of chopped, skinless walnut
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 cup full fat milk
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup dark rum
- 2 eggs warmed up to room temperature
- A dollop of room temperature butter and 2 tbsp of flour to grease and dust a bundt pan

Here are the simple steps:

- Heat oven to 325F.

- Except the walnuts, shift all the dried ingredients into a large bowl.

- Mix all the wet ingredients in another bowl.

- Mix all wet and dry until just combine. DO NOT over-mix.
- Gently incorporate the walnuts into the batter.

Pour batter into the prepared bundt pan.

Bake for 60 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean after inserted into the cake. When waiting for the cake, make the rum syrup, which needs:

- 1/2 cup of sugar
- 1/2 cup of butter
- 1/2 cup of dark rum
- 1/4 cup of water

In a quart pan, bring sugar, water and butter to a boil. MAKE SURE THE LIQUID DOES NOT FILL UP MORE THAN 1/4 OF THE PAN. Lower the heat and let the syrup simmer until it thickens and turns golden brown, about 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. Turn off the heat and put in the rum.

*** BE CAREFUL: Make sure you TURN OFF THE HEAT when you pour in the rum. If you are using a electric stove, lift the pan off the stove and place it on a non heated surface. When you pour in the rum, the syrup will bubble vigorously, which is why a tall pan is needed. Stir the rum into the syrup. ***

Using a knife, make a few insertions into the cake. Pour the syrup onto the cake. Slowly, the syrup will be all soaked up by the cake.

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Location: Any Save on Foods in Vancouver, BC

“Moist and fluffy, this black forest cake is one of my favourite cakes”, says the girl who tells everyone that she doesn’t desserts.

Not everyone would agree that the black forest cake purchased from a chained grocery store such as Save on Foods is irresistible. But taste is a very subjective thing, I just can’t help liking this black forest cake. I don’t like it just a little; I like it a lot. The texture is soft and rich, but the best part is the cream - it’s silky, buttery and yet light. It’s seldom that I would finish one piece of cake, but I would be glad to have seconds for this one.

If I could be objective for a second, then I can’t say this is the most perfect black forest cake in the world. After all, ET doesn’t care for it (and yet he managed to eat half of this 6” tower). “There isn’t any kirsch in this cake, and they really skimmed on the cherry filling”, said ET as he shoved another mouthful of cake into his mouth.

Besides this black forest cake, I also like the “High Five” from Death By Chocolate. The “High Five” is a rich five-layer chocolate cake filled with decadent chocolate ganache. Oh, and also there is the expensive rum cake that must be flown from the Caribbean.

Yes, and I still tell people that I’m not a big fan of desserts.

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Location: My tiny kitchen

A plate of Yeung Chow Fried Rice with the classic ingredients: BBQ pork, shrimp, peas and egg. There is so much ingredient that I can hardly see the rice.

One of the best ways to understand someone is by watching how they do a task, and I always learn a lot about someone when I watch them cook. Recipes are often written with room for imagination, and it’s rare to find two persons interpret a recipe in exactly the same way. Fried rice is one of those recipes that can be easily changed to suit individual preferences, and I have noticed people who are alike tend to cook fried rice in a similar way.

My brother and I both love cooking fried rice. He loves salmon and one day he created a delicious fried rice using salmon. He used so much salmon in the fried rice that even he laughed and said “I’m making fried salmon, not fried rice.”. We both like things in abundant; we are the type of people who like a lot of fillings in a sandwich and we refuse to eat sandwiches with “empty corners” - when the four corners have little or almost no filling.

Just as we thought everybody should be like us, liking fried rice with a lot of ingredients, we met a friend who is the opposite. When he tried my sandwiche, he took out the extra ham and cheese. When he tried my fried rice, he picked out the extra shrimps, BBQ pork and peas. He likes to keep things simple in life. He’s the type of guy who is happy with a TV at home and never considers building a home theater. He is a die-hard believer of “less is more”.

It’s funny how our personalities make who we are. When I was small, I always thought what I like is what everyone likes. After all, who doesn’t like fried rice that has lots of things in it? One of the best things I like about cooking, which might also explain why I’m also so crazy about it, is to understand different tastes and create dishes that satisfy different tastes. Having said that though, I still think my friend is somewhat strange.

To make my loaded version of Yeung Chow fried rice, you will need:

- 1 1/2 cup of diced BBQ pork
- 1 1/2 cup of cooked small shrimps
- 1 cup of green peas
- 2 eggs
- 4 bowls of cooked rice (to see how rice should be prepared, read Portebella mushroom fried rice)
- 1/2 cup of diced green onion
- Soy sauce
- Freshly ground pepper

In a non stick pan over high heat, stir fry BBQ pork for a minute.

Add in shrimp and stir fry quickly.

Add in green peas and freshly ground pepper, stir fry for a minute. Put all ingredients into a bowl

Put 2 tbsp of oil in the pan. Put 2 bowls of rice into the pan. Using a spatula, gently loosen up the rice. Turn the heat to medium and fry the rice until each grain is separated. Turn the heat to high and crack an egg in the middle of the rice. Very quickly, scramble the egg and mix it into the rice. Stir fry the rice until the egg has been cooked, about 1 minute. Put 3 tbsp of soy sauce in the middle of the rice and mix the soy sauce into the rice.

Put half of the shrimps, BBQ pork and peas into the rice. Stir fry until the ingredients and rice are mixed well together. Turn off the heat when done and mix in half of the green onion.

Repeat with the second batch and you are done.

How do you like your fried rice to be made?

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Location: My tiny kitchen
Original recipe taken from epicurious

In addition to L’s deliciously moist chocolate cake that I wrote about earlier, L also has an easy strawberry cake recipe. I’m now calling L the “cake diva” as she always has wonderful and easy-to-make cake recipes. Like the chocolate cake recipe, this strawberry cake took almost no time to make at all.

I was a little disappointed on how my strawberry cake turned out though; it wasn’t as moist as it should be. I brought a piece for L to try and we both agreed the texture should be more fluffy and moist. Regardless, I will try this recipe again because L’s fluffy version proves that this recipe does work.

The cake is baked between two layers of sticky and sweet strawberry sauce. To make the strawberry sauce, you will need:

- 3 cups of chopped fresh strawberries
- 1/3 cup of sugar
- 1/4 cup of water
- 1 1/2 tsp cornstarch

Heat oven to 400F. Butter a 9” square glass baking dish.

Put 2 cups of strawberries, cornstarch, sugar and water into a quart pan. Cook the strawberries over medium heat until they are soften and reduced to a sauce. Stir occasionally. This takes about 20 minutes. Stir in remaining 1 cup of strawberry into the sauce at the end. Let the sauce to cool to room temperature.

To make the cake, you will need:

- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup of sugar
- 1 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and sugar in a bowl.

In another bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, melted butter and vanilla extract.

Mix the dry and wet ingredients together until just combined. Be careful not to over mix; otherwise, the cake will turn out tough. I suspect I over mixed my batter and my cake turned out a little too dense than I would like it to be.

Pour half of the strawberry sauce into the bottom of the glass dish. Spoon the cake batter on top of the sauce. Pour the remaining strawberry sauce on top of the batter. At this stage the cake batter looks very wet and L and I both thought it would never get baked! When we saw the cake rose in the oven, we knew we didn’t have to worry.

Bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean after it is inserted into the cake.

This is one of the easiest cake recipe I have tried. I like how fast all ingredients can be put together. I can bake this cake right after dinner and when it is baked, it’s just the right time for dessert.

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