Yum Cha for Dinner

I don't have to go out for yum cha now - well, maybe. There's only one restaurant that does yum cha at night in Perth: The New Moon on James Street.

I sometimes have a craving for mini siu (烧麦). I used to buy this specific brand of pre-made frozen siu mai. Basically, you snip the package corner & just microwave for 2-4 minutes. 12 instant mini siu mai as a snack! Easy much simpler than driving out for one bamboo basket of 4 pcs.

Ok not the healthiest snack: there's probably additives and very little actual meat or prawns in the pre pack.

Tuesday nights are my non-TM work night. So I cheated with what I had on hand to make this! It's not restaurant standard pretty... But I can work on that.

The Taste of Asia has the recipe p. 72. I didn't have prawns on hand, so my variation contains:

350g pork mince

4 spring onions (white & green bits all chopped finely)

1 tspn of Massels vegetable concentrate powder

1 tspn of chicken stock powder

20-30g of soy sauce

2 eggs

Wonton skins (used 1/2 a large packet)

Some Chinese cabbage (inner heart leafs roughly broken/chopped)

Method:

- you can use the TM to mix but I found it pretty easy by hand.

1. Boil 1ltr of water in TM bowl (7mins, Varoma temp, Sp3-4) cover lid w measuring cup.

2. Meanwhile, spoon mince mixture on to sheet of wonton add small pinch of leaves to cover top of siu mai. Squeeze tight flatten bottom. Place in Varoma tray/receptacle.

3. Repeat 2 until mince all used or receptacle filled.

4. Remove measuring cup.

5. Place Varoma receptacle set on TM bowl, cover with wet clean towel. (18mins, Varoma temp, Sp3). Chinese steamers always 'seal' so less steam escapes. Wonton skins are sometime dry so if not enough steam soaks in it will be chewy!

6. Sides:

I roughly chopped 1 bunch of bakchoy and added that to the bowl's remains water (3mins on 100C), removed vegetables as side dish/garnish. You can add some oyster sauce on top of the vegetables but I like the plain which went well with my siu mai.

I had the left over liquid as a clear soup :) what you might call "short soup" in restaurants. The flavor/oils from the siu mai had dripped down. If you had left over mince you could add to this with left over Chinese cabbage for a delicious 'longer soup'.

If you followed the steam rice recipe in EDC, you can definitely have this & vegetables with the rice. If this is the case and you want soup left - consider adding more water in the beginning (start with 1.5 ltr).

Tips:

1. Lightly greasy the Varoma receptacle.

2. Don't pack the siu mai too tightly!

3. If using soy sauce either use only the chicken stock or Massel. Both I found to be too salty to eat without rice or soup.

Honestly, sometimes life gets in the way of living.

Sometimes, life throws us curve balls to test if we still have the tenacity and elasticity of mind to bounce instead of *k-splat* on the pavement. Two interest curve balls these past two weeks to 1. excuse my lack of posts and garner sympathy, 2. to just share what's been on my mind:

Curve ball 1:
There's been a restructure at my day job. My position / role is fine, but... it's a different environment now to work in. This is the second one I've been through in approx. 6-8 months. Well honestly, was in an environment previously that had the "restructure" thing hanging over my head for over 10-12 months, it's nearly 1.5 years of pending "redundancy" feeling. I'm a bit over it and just over-exhausted to even pep myself up.

Curve ball 2:
Recently, I woke up one morning and couldn't turn my neck and move my left arm. This is not to do with any sports injury - I'm not a sportswoman by any stretch of that word. It freaked me out - still in quite a bit of pain and can't lift anything with my left hand. Tingly sessions sporadicly go through my arm. Overall an uncomfortable experience. Yes I've seen a doctor, there was a pinched nerve, some vetebrae adjustments and inflammation of the muscle/tendon groups around the area.

I'll bounce but... it just means I will be spending more time else where for the time being. With that being said, it's likely I'll use cooking as a way to de-stress. Lifting the TM bowl on my left hand is a bit difficult right now...

I'll fix up the previous posts on receipes and maybe add a little something to my other "dining out" blog. don't give up on me, I'll still keep posting. So keep an eye out and I'll surprise you later.

Baking night: Mighty Muffins for Puffins

Ok honestly who feeds puffins? I don't even work in academia.

I made banana muffins & savoury cheese scones/muffins! Post on recipe variation later here's some photos to tempt your taste buds.

The smell is driving me mad despite having a full dinner out! I don't know how many of these would actually make it to work.

Banana Muffins:

I read up on various recipes and here's what I used & did:

Ingredients:

2 large ripe bananas

100-120g Butter (room temp)

100g Brown Sugar (more if you like sweeter - original recipe said 180g, I nearly died from a heart attack. Bananas are generally pretty sweet already)

240 Self rising flour

2/3 tspn of bi-carb soda

1 tspn of vanilla essence or you can use vanilla pod ground/extract

2 eggs

3 tbspn of warmed milk

Method:

1. Add Sugar + Butter, Sp 4, 30 seconds to mix in

2. Add all other ingredients, Sp 4, 25 seconds.

3. Canola spray/grease up muffin trays. Pour in. / otherwise, use little cupcake paper wraps and just pour straight in! No greasing required.

4. Bake for 20 - 25mins on 180C.

5. Leave in tray for 2-4 mins, remove and cool on a cooling rack.

You can probably combine Step 1 & 2 together and have no problems!

I really like Savoury above Sweets. So Savoury Cheese Scones were next.

Ingredients:

Method:

Recipes Galore

I've been spending too much time eating & Facebooking instead of blogging and sadly this means less posts. I tend to cook a number of favourites often or variations - i.e. Pumpkin soup: Thai curry pumpkin soup, Sweet potato & butternut pumpkin soup, Ironbark pumpkin soup (I hate peeling pumpkin). Also Borscht or just beetroot soup variations - with carrots, raddish, Spanish onion, cream, sour cream, TM Butter. Soups are so easy when you have limited time. That and baking cheese & vegemite scrolls. These are all sort of average easy recipes plus it all looks average :( Shall have to try something novel this weekend.

On a side note: why I'd make a very bad vegetarian/pescetarian:
I've been trying Meatfree Mondays / Meatless Mondays & Pescetarian Tuesdays (sadly my alliteration skills failed to follow the high steps of Paul McCartney). I tend to make up for it on other days... Oh and damn, I've got a Mondo's Cooking Class on next Monday - which breaks my 2 week Meatfree Monday :(

 But do not be discouraged by my lack of posting food p0rn my limited readership - here's something to spice up your Thermomix kitchen:
 Where can I find more Thermomix Recipes?

If you think I've run out of ideas, don't worry - click on the link and take a step outwards and discover more ways to use your Thermomix!!!

The more advanced bloggers have more professional food p0rn!

Quick update: life, love & manic-depressive mayhem

The Vegan Boy and I broke up near the end of March. Found out I have atopic syndrome or commonly known as hyperallergic. No this is different from being a hyperchondriac thank you! This means, I may have allergic reactions to food stuff unexpectedly. So I'm not really allergic to prawns or shellfish or pollen. I can just be allergic to anything! YAY! Great medical discoveries abound, I'm slowly developing a fear of being allergic to something while out eating. Oh, and then my day job became a lot busier - hence the post title. Yup, no excuse. Actually it makes not much of a difference to my TM adventures. I am a self-confessed stress baker - see the previous posts on bread and hot cross buns. Plus I have been cooking LOTS, just not keeping up with the blog posts. Photographing less of the stuff I cook, I tend to forget during teh cooking process and only have "end results".

Shall post up some of the stuff cooked in the last week - Easter being a holiday, I took a break too! From the Internet.

•  I've done several cocktail slushies over the weekend out of town with some friends *(we were so busy drinking it and having fun that I don't have pitures of it except with people holding the glasses drinking!)
• Made my own butter! (EDC recipe)
• Made Hollandaise sauce using the said 'fresh' butter! (EDC recipe)
• Soffritto in the TM (my way... sadly over estimated the amoutn of liquid which results from soffritto and ended up cooking on the stove anyway)
• Pizza dough (I am proud to say I followed the EDC recipe to the letter!)
• TM'd my own cheese blend for the pizza
• Made a garlic & chives cream cheese dip (minor variation to herb dip - I really don't like parsley)
• re-made the mushroom soup, again with my variations (using the TM butter and additional cream)

I have my first demo coming up soon! Quite excited, trepidated and well, in general hoping everything runs well without major mishaps that's all.

Just because I'm no longer in a relationship with a vegan is no excuse not to explore alternate healthy food option where I can. In the plan for this month:

• re-doing the chilli mussels sometime this month, it was fantastic except for the washing of the mussels - anyone know an easier way to de-beard and clean these things?
• the char siu pork recipe to be tested
• gluten free scones (I'm thinking will cheat and use pre bought gluten free flour and then do this recipe again with TM made gluten free flour)
• pineapple sorbet
• try a pasta recipe my "I'm not picky" father will eat.
• Brazil Nut & Banana Brownies (vegan & gluten free)
• tempted to try TM Milo (two links, I've yet to find the original post by Cathy), I think I'm missing the Rapadura. I didn't know the 'English' term for it until now.

I think that's all ambitious enough for the rest of the month - to be juggled with my day job and other social commitments. It's definitely hard to juggle the pre-existing life/free time with being a consultant. Some days I just want to 'vegge out' and do nothing and I find that I can't *sigh*. Ahhh commitment... I'm so c-phobic. Wish me luck!

What are you cooking this week?

Pasta e fagioli à la neko style

Of course I made changes to the EDC recipe. I changed only portions of content and so of course it can't be called a pasta e fagioli any more.

Ingredient differences, I:

• used Cannellini beans and Butter beans instead.
• used a can of Roma tomatoes instead of 2 fresh tomatoes.
• 2 small brown onions,
• 2 cloves of garlic.
• lessened the chilli to 1/2 - we're not a spice-centric Asian family.
• added 1/2 smoked chicken breast and 1 cooked chicken breast.
• chopped some fresh parsley.
• used risoni instead of ditali pasta, and
• added baby spinach in the TM server.

Method:

I did poach the smoked chicken a little bit, the smokey flavour is quite strong and you should add it in last with about 3-4 minutes to spare on the final cooking time. This just mixes it through and allow the subtle smoke flavours to mix in but not permeate all the risoni.

I also added 1 minute to the onion cooking time. And at least 2-3 mins to each batch of cooking time due to the increase in ingredients. The risoni remained al dente upon serving into the TM server.

The smokey flavor completely changed what sometimes can be a plain dish. Other alternatives to add flavour included placing more parsley in the initial stages and red onion. I'm not a huge fan of parsley so I usually like to refrain from using it too much. Other than the chicken this could be made into a vegan dish :)

Recipe success: 5 out of 5 stars. My father ate it! Ok, he eats most things I cook but he's "picky". He liked this, so I'd say the variations worked out fine!
Taste: 4 out of 5 stars. Personally, I don't like smoked chicken that much. It's mom's favourite.

Baking night: Five seed bread (EDC)

We always buy the Helga's Five Seed Bread so I decided to try my hand at this recipe. Making the dough was easy enough, watching it rise and fall has been heart breaking. Still not ready but the seeds on top looks a bit burnt ;(

Learnt my lesson with the Hot Cross Buns. I pre-heated the oven, and left the dough in these baking dishes next to the oven to prove. It did double in size. Photo on the right was after 15 mins.

Lowered the temperature. We'll have to wait and see how this turns out.

Update: 9:15, ok have taken it out. Looks good... How am I going to get it out. Just realized I forgot to grease the trays.

Update: After midnight, it was cooled enough to slip a butter knife in to 'pry the edges' and then "turn it upside down to get it out. Of course I lost a bit of "seeds" from the top surface.

Hmm I wonder where the photo of the slided bread is...

Receipe success: 4.5 out of 5 stars (only because I forgot to flour the dish, the slightly burnt seeds actualy didn't mean it was burnt at all!)

Taste: 5 out of 5 stars. I'm so making this on a regular basis.

There is egg in this so for strict vegetarians/vegans - you would have to substitute with Ogran egg substitute or something similar.