studying the habits of snarks and boojums

Also, I baked. Chocolate chip, rum and raisin cookies. They didn’t turn out quite as they should. Neither did the quality of the photographs, which I still find quite aggravating. Ah well.

*blows dust off her Tumblr account*

Daring Cooks post featuring stuffed savoy cabbage leaves is now up here. The stuffing was gorgeous. I’m still not convinced about the leaves.

Pierogi for the Daring Cooks August 2010 challenge finally up. Hurrah.

So the food used in those pictures were actually made months ago, but anyway. Recipe dump for yam/taro ring (above) and Hakka abacus seeds (below) here!

And since we’re talking recipes, the recipe for the orange duck thing I posted a couple of entries below may also be found here.

They’re all recipes I developed, so the usual might-not-be-of-cookbook-certainty disclaimer applies. However, I think I’ve made them all often enough that I can guarantee that they should work, and I have it on good authority from the people I’ve fed it too that they’re good, so hopefully that’ll be reassurance enough.

Cooked dinner last night for a group of dear, dear friends. One of them, F, was generous enough to open her kitchen for the afternoon/night, and certainly kind enough to be my food-washing/chopping minion of the day.

Clockwise from top left: fried sutchi fillets to be eaten with the mango salsa beside it, stir-fried chye sim with sliced calamari and shimeji mushrooms, sweet stir-fried pork ribs, and what was meant to be the piece de resistance of the meal - a Morrocan-inspired meatball stew with dropped eggs, inspired by / improvised from something I’d watched during one of my many long plane rides.

Salmon and ebiko cabonara pasta for my sister, who said she wanted Japanese-style cabonara pasta, which in turn explains the poached egg on top. Sadly, the poached egg leaves much to be desired. I’ve never ever quite got the hang of poaching an egg properly. Woe.

Apparently, this is now my sister’s favourite of my pasta dishes, replacing the cheese-and-tomato ravioli one I sometimes do for her that had previously occupied this spot for a couple of years.

Avocado pasta, adapted from the recipe provided here. Omitted the grated ginger, and in addition to the mashed avocado + soy sauce paste mixed the following into the pasta instead: a couple of teaspoonfuls of ebiko, a generous sprinkle of parmesan, a good crack or three of black pepper, a decent sprinkle of dried chilli flakes, and a nice dash of sesame oil. Finished with the juice of one (small Asian) lime in lieu of lemon juice, tossed in diced avocado and plenty of sesame seeds white and black, and sprinkled some dried shredded nori as was suggested.

The ever-generous and very lovely S was kind enough to let C and me invade her new kitchen today to cook lunch. I went taro/yam-mad and prepared two yam-based dishes: Hakka abacaus seeds (left - I’m sorry you can’t quite see the distinctive shape of the seeds/beads!) and a yam ring (right). C did this gorgeous, gorgeous oyster sauce-based mixed mushroom and vegetable stir-fry, which you can just see behind the abacus seeds in the picture above. Lunch was rounded off with an apple pie from F that was absolutely to die for, and earl grey and fig ice cream from the Ice Cream Gallery.

There was also cupcake-decorating later in the day, the cupcakes in question baked that afternoon by S. I expect C will have a more detailed account of this lunch on her website some time in the near future. *looks meaningfully in her general direction*

The abacus seeds, or 算盘子,  were stir-fried with minced pork, green bell pepper, shitake mushrooms, beancurd skin, and whitebait. 

The filling of the yam ring was a simple cashew chicken stir-fry of chicken, cashews, baby carrots, baby corn, French beans, swiss mushrooms, and oyster mushrooms.

I’m sorry the pictures are rather yech. I’m absolutely awful at making most Chinese dishes look good.

And stir-fried hoisin chicken with couscous for lunch. Been ages since I last cooked something this Chinese-y tasting. Hurrah for fridge- and larder-clearing.