A long long weekend

Took 2 days of annual leave to rest for 5 days this week ( Thursday to Monday.. hee). Its a welcomed rest. Gotta clear my leave before baby comes.

Feels good to sleep till the sun shines brightly outside the homeland. To pop some movies and soapy korean dramas into the disc player. To just walk about in the shopping malls. To forget the stressfulness of work. A short respite before the demands of motherhood sets in full time. Even had time to cook pancakes for brekkie today. Life's good.

Making Tiramisu

I was at Vivo City some time back and got some lady fingers biscuits ( Savoiardi biscuits) at Candy Empire. So, moi decided to try making Tiramisu. Managed to get the requisite Mascarpone at NTUC Finest, plus some brandy and cocoa powder. So, I followed a rather simple recipe. The dessert was yummy, although the lady fingers could be more well-soaked in the coffee mixture. I used very little of the lady fingers biscuits and the cheese mixture was spread rather thickly too. Will try to improve with a more complex recipe the next round. Buts..Hee, the dearie likes it!!

Pasta Tonight

We brought some fresh chorizo sausages from the supermarket over the weekend. The chap at the counter mentioned about cooking the sausages with Pasta. So I did, for our dinner tonight. I was afraid there would not be any vegetables in the pasta, so i threw in some carrots, diced tomato and button mushroom to balance the saltish spicy sausage. Hee.. used up my sun-dried tomato sauce.. gotta go grab more. I quite like the pasta paired with the sausages combi. Will definitely be rustling up more sausage pasta soon.

Pasta for Dinner

The dearie is on afternoon shift and i din wanna pack dinner back. So i rustled up some pasta with portobello mushroom. Erm, the sauce came in a bottle lah..and we're out of spaghetti , but at least its half home-cooked..

Feels good to do abit of cooking in the kitchen. It made moi feel more domesticated. Off tomorrow.. feeling happy (despite the work piling up in the inbox at work.. aiz)

Wifey cooks: Home-styled Roasted Chicken

We've been wanting to try out roasting meats since we got the oven. So, when there was a rather good recipe which i found online, i decided to try roasting a chicken for our weekend dinner. We got a chicken and some potatoes from the market yesterday with the intention of doing up "Oven Roasted Lemon and Rosemary Chicken". However, this silly donkey subsequently found out that she did not have rosemary for the marinate. Urrghh..

Chicken marinated with lemon zest, salt, pepper, honey, and thyme

Oh well, so i replaced the rosemary with thyme instead as i had a bottle of it in the kitchen and hoped that the substitute would work as well. I also added a bit of honey to the marinate. The chicken was marinated for a few hours before it was popped into the oven for roasting.

Potatoes to be roasted with the chicken

Potatoes tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper was placed under the chicken. The entire roasting process took about 80 mins but the finished product was well worth the wait.

Into the oven this goes...

Wifey's roasted chicken, with slightly burned skin.. opps

Overall, the roasted chicken was rather yums. The dearie rates it as a good attempt by the wifey.. which can be further fine-tuned for serving guests. The top part of the roast (chix skin) was a tad over done, but the meat was great. Even the breast meat was juicy, and very tender. The potatoes were quite burnt.. so i would probably twig the cooking time and remove the potatoes from the pan after the first flipping of the chicken. Hee, can't wait to try the recipe a second time, with rosemary instead.. :)

Our first attempt at Steak

We brought 2 pieces of sirloin steak at the supermarket a few days back, with the intention of conjuring our first home cooked steak meal. We managed to whip up a fairly decent meal of steak for our first attempt tonight. We din manage to thaw the meat fully before cooking and had to recooked the meat after starting the meal..opps. The button mushrooms were meant for the home cooked mushroom soup which din materialize coz we forgot some ingredients in the recipe. So, we had vegetable soup from a can, with pan fried mushrooms and some country walnut bread to go with our steak. Plus red wine to complete the meal. Oh..and the meat sauce came from a packet too.

Our first steak meal

Hmm.. although the dearie thinks its easier to simply pop by the western food stall downstairs for steak at cheap prices. Moi thinks its an entire different homey experience in rustling up an entire meal ourselves.. will definately try to do the mushroom soup the next round.. :)

The Wifey Cooks

Since i'm on vacation, there's no excuse not to get hot and sweaty in the kitchen (pun intended hee..).. by cooking lah, and trying out new recipes which I can easily replicate for our dinner. Must be good wifey mahz, cannot make the dearie cook all the time..So for today's dinner, ta dah.. old cucumber soup and rice cooker claypot chicken rice.

Beri simple meal.. Coz the mother in law pre-prepares various cuts of meat in ready to cook packs which i just need to defrost. I had a pack of chix meat and used part of it for the soup and the other half for the rice. Just add chix, red dates or sweet dates and old cucumber and the soup is done. The rice is also easy, using a recipe i saw on a food blog i read, whereby you just have to marinate the chicken with light and dark soya sauce, sesame oil, pepper and ginger slices and simply add the marinated meat and mushrooms into the rice cooker and cook! A beri simple and easy one dish meal which i will definitely be whipping up often. Will prob throw in abit of wax sausages to make it more claypot chix ricey for the next try.. yums.