An eggy dinner

Did a frittata in my dutch oven. This is accompanied by a quickie salad (knife shredded cabbage, spinach leaves and cherry tomatoes. And rosemary roast potatoes.

Meatless Weekday dinner

45 mins end to end (not including pesto, which was made previous day).

The croutons in the salad were very nice (roasted in oven with extra virgin olive oil, pepper, fresh rosemary, and using mw's bread from the bread maker). The vinegrette was a simple olive oil, vinegar combo with sugar and salt.

The pesto mushroom pasta not bad (though slightly oily). I fried the mushrooms in a bit of butter and garlic before adding the pesto (which may have contributed to the extra oil). Goes well with the grenache shiraz wine.

Beef pot roast

I saw a 1.9kg slab of Australian Ribeye for $57 at Giant Suntec and I had to buy it. Seems really cheap (almost made me wonder if the price tagger thought this was chuck or something).

Anyway I used about 1.2 kg of it to make a pot roast, sous vide style. I cooked the meat at 63C (didn't want to scare the family with a "bloody" piece of meat) for 10 hours in beef stock, orange juice, pepper, salt and rosemary twigs. Then I coated with pepper and seared it in my cast iron dutch oven.

Sauce is mushroom sauce : sliced mushrooms and onions with some of the braising fluid and creme fraiche.

Result. Texture is good but could be better (possibly a few more hours of cook time). Meat is strangely not as tasty as I would like, rather blander than I expected for some reason. Maybe the price was low for a reason 8-).

Poached egg

Did a breakfast yesterday using my left over homemade bread.

What's notable about this is the poached egg. Did it 75C for 14 mins (79 g egg - very large egg) straight from fridge. Quite nice texture.

(large egg : about 65g needs about 13 mins).

Steak au poivre

Did French style pepper steak (Poivre = Pepper). The sauce was brandy and cream over the pan juices.

mw said steak was nice. Curiously, I liked my mashed sweet potato better. It has thyme oil, creme fraiche, milk, dash of balsamic vinegar and salt in it.

This week is sandwich week #3

This time, using the same dough, I tried a flat bread. The bread was fried dry on my cast iron skillet.

Ingredients : Mayo (again! :-) a thin spread though), 1 slice of prosciutto ham, and tomatoes. I drizzled a bit of my thyme oil on to the ingredients. The flat bread is the main ingredient really, so I didn't want to overwhelm it with loads of stuff.

Tastes good (including crust). However, the crust was a bit too thick - it may have been the bread flour in it that resisted my attempts to flatten the dough. Maybe I should have aimed for a crusty crust (like a pizza).

The black bits were nice - perhaps I should have burnt it more.

This week is sandwich week #2

This time I used the Kraftkorn bread (multi-grain) from SwissBake for the bread.

Ingredients : Mayo, pork tenderloin, shredded Japanese cabbage, and cherry tomatoes. 

The pork tenderloin was fried in thyme oil.

Mayo recipe

I think I like this variant. Therefore documenting the mix.

1. 1 cup neutral oil (sunflower, canola).
2. Half a teaspoon salt
3. Juice from half a lemon.
4. 1 egg
5. 1 tablespoon djion mustard.
6. A good glug of extra virgin olive oil - perhaps 100ml.

Make the mayo the usual way with first 5 ingredients. Then stir in the olive oil and mix into the emulsion.

Adjust salt, lemon juice or olive oil to taste.

Post-Note: The recipe for kewpie mayo (Japanese brand mayo) can be found here : http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/10/sauced-japanese-style-kewpie-mayonnaise-recipe.html

Based on a taste comparison, mine has a lemony taste that I like. Kewpie has a stronger, more savory finish (prob due to MSG and Hon Dashi).


 

Thyme infused oil

Had leftover fresh thyme (20g). Combined it with 1 cup of sunflower oil, and a piece of dried orange and then cooked it in a water bath for 3 hours at 55C. Then strained.

Result, a very green looking oil. Can't wait to use it.

This week is sandwich week #1

I declare this week to be sandwich week. More to follow later.

Bread was a bit dense and tough (though tasty). The bread was my usual recipe without rise and with sesame seeds. Sandwich ingredients were pretty nice :

1. spread of home made mayo (slightly more lemony).
2. small sprinkle of finely chopped raw onion.
3. salad leaves + sliced cherry tomatoes.
4. smoked salmon.

I also made another variation of my pumpkin puree from leftover pumpkin. This time, I caramelized less of the pumpkin, then just added salt, cinnamon and lemon juice (to taste) and mashed it by hand (instead of blending to a smooth  puree). Mw declared this to be tasty as well. Basically this variation is not so "desserty" and more savory.

Topped off with a salad with dressing from pre made sesame dressing and ground pepper. Note to self : leave dressing till last minute - the leaves were soggy and compressed by lunch time.