A fine savour on simple pleasures

My aim is to reduce the tension in my mind by sharing my thoughts and experiences in the things that I love; which I could not express openly due to circumstances. Be it in doing stupid things, experimenting on new recipes, failings in research work, writings..just some doodle ranting stuff

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Homemade tomyam paste

Preparing your own tomyam paste

Ingredients
- 4 tbs vegetable oil
- 3 lemongrass (2 of em must be smashed a lil to get the aroma out)
- 3 tomatoes*
- 2 big onions*
- 2 x 3 cm galanga (the greater one - do google it to check)/ lengkuas - julienne coursely
- 2 handful of chile de arbol/cili padi*

Method
1. Blend the ingredients with (*) with the addition of 1 lemongrass until smooth (cut the lemongrass in question into small pieces)

2. add in oil into skillet and heat it up at medium level

3. pour in the blended paste into your skillet. At this point, you must stir continuously until the oil came to the surface in small bubbles at the edge of the paste

4. add in yer leftovah lemongrass and galanga and stir summore

yep its done, you'll get the aroma by then..this paste is to make 4 servings of tomyam soup :)

Chili paste

How to make chilli paste for cooking

-fresh chillies - grab handful of fresh red chillies (no matter whats the number), cut to small parts (around 1-1 1/2 inch) and blend them with minimal water (make it around 1-2cups). YOu can remove the seeds if you want. Make sure its in paste form, if its not, add more chillies

-dried red chillies - cut the dried chillies to small pieces, boil them at medium heat until all the seeds come out and sink to the bottom. After the wrinkled dried chillies started to look like fresh chillies, close the fire and scoope out the surface using a ladle with small2 holes. You can also use a small seive. Blend with minimal water. Usually I use the whole bag of chillies and turn them to paste and keep in fridge. But remember this chilli paste won't last long if you didn't fry them first.

Tamarind juice preparation

How to make a tamarind juice for cooking

- fresh tamarind - break the pod and take the fill within, put in some water and knead with your fingers (make sure not cuts on ur deinty fingers, coz it'll be oh so much pain since its acidic). The right final result would be to obtain a viscous brownish liquid, extremely sour. Use more tamarind if the liquid is not viscous enough. Then seive! Take the liquid only.

- tamarind in a ball form - take out like one handful and dilute with water. Do remember so seive the solution in order to separate all the impurities

Friday, November 12, 2010

Chocolate Ganache

Suddenly i remembered about this sweet liquidy purrrfection when i feel like eating ice cream. Maybe not everyone knows how to prepare this. Chocolate ganache is a term used for liquid chocolate prepared from double boiling procedure that is usually utilized in preparations of cakes or cookies or toppings of anything sweet (personal definition ni.. XD). I used to put this on my steam cakes and ice cream :) An example of a readily substitute that can be obtained from the supermarket is Hershey's liquid chocolate. I think its about rm15-20? to me that's quite expensive.

The catch is, i used to prepare chocolate ganache from leftover chocolate from my fridge :P normally we use cooking chocolate lah. nonetheless, it still tastes good. Hence, this is my version of ganache, i think a bit more healthy and cost saving haha :)

Ingredients
1/2 chocholate bar - the biggest one (cooking chocolate or juz abt anything u have)
2 tbs butter
4 tbs sweetened creamer (susu pekat manis)
2.5 tbs coco powder (i use vanhouten)
1/2 teacup water

Procedures

1. Use a deep pot and fill it with 1/4 of water, and put another small stainless steel bowl of any kind on top (it must touch the water). Your chocolate will be made inside the stainless steel bowl. Hence you must make sure the amount of water does not boil off, or the splashings from boiling doesn't reach your hand when you handle your chocolate. At the same time, the water shouldn't be too much until it drowns your chocolate when your steel bowl gets heavy.



2. chopped your chocolates to small pieces, dun put in the whole bar! it'll take longer time to dissolve :P i usually chopped em to pieces of 3 mm like that.

3. put in the chopped chocolate and a small piece of butter (i use about 1-2 tbs) into the bowl before the water started to boil. (in my case, i prepare the choco 1st in the bowl and set up the double boiling pot when everything's ready)

4. use a spoon on one hand to whisk the melting chocolate gently while holding the bowl with another hand (please wear your kitchen mitt)

5. add in sweetened creamer, about 2-5 tbs, depending on the sweetness of ganache that u'll like to prepare.

6. add in cocoa powder, about 1-2 tbs, depending on the bitterness of your ganache that u'll like to achieve. (i love to make my ganache to a more bittersweet-like taste, feels more adult, and my mother-in-law likes it that way) You must adjust accordingly.

7. lastly put in water little by little while mixing it gently with a spoon. dont make it too light..must be a bit more viscous except that if you want to drench your cake to be a chocolate moist cake :)





The liquidy chocolate toppings on top is chocolate ganache (not considering the chocolate rice yea). 1st time i made a steam chocolate cake abt 2-3 years ago XD

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Banana Split Ice Cream

Easy receipe w/o cooking, the banana split ice cream i made using wall's ice cream if im not mistaken, with rainbow colour hoho

What you'll need will be;
- 1 banana, slice to half
- 2-3 scoops of ice cream (just use a big spoon or a ladle will do, make sure to maintain the shape to roundish
- honey
- chocolate rice
- chocolate ganache (*optional, not shown in pic)

Preparations

Arrange following the picture; banana first, ice cream, honey and lastly chocolate rice..its really nice if you put crushed almonds or any kinds of peanuts :)

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