Beef Bier Stew and chestnuts

The veggie uncle had chestnuts for sale. What was interesting was that the nuts came half-shelled. I'd prefer if they had been fully de-shelled. Still, it had been a long time since I last had any, and a bag of butter roasted chestnuts is dreadfully expensive, even those sold by the illegal hawkers.

I asked him for some instructions. He directed me to just boil them as they were, and peel the shells 20 minutes later before eating. So I cooked some beef stew and made a salad. I was going to have the chestnuts to go with the salad.

Turns out Bobo doesn't like chestnuts, and I had such an awful time peeling them (I do not maintain long nails, so I scrapped my nails badly while trying to peel the stubborn shells off) that I was a bit sick of them by the time I ate them. After peeling the shells off, I fried the chestnuts in butter. They tasted quite yummy, but half a kilo by yourself is no joke. Sure cured me of my craving.''

I poured a whole can of Asahi bier in with the beef before dumping ketchup. Really easy dish to make, though Bobo was really angry when he found out his bier had gone into dinner.

Did you say "semen" cake?

I wanted to bake blueberry muffins on Sunday, but I was engrossed with delivering and helping to write Vater's rice dumplings. Fat bears do not do well on bicycles. Bobo said my wrestling with the foldable bike everytime is like watching a bear performing at a circus. I think wrestling with the bike made me so tired that was why I took an afternoon nap.

So I tried again yesterday evening except I was too lazy to refer to a recipe (I did google some, but decided to trial and error). I opened the can and poured half a can of blueberries, sans juice, into some butter which I mixed a bit too enthusiastically... until the whole mixture turned into a grey mixture. I just poured some milk, an egg, pinch of baking soda and sifted flour and mix the whole lot together. Still looked a bit grey, and I did not add much sugar (only like 20g, because I thought the syrup might be sweet), so I poured in the syrup.

Well, it still looked cement-like so I told Bobo, who came into the kitchen to make some honey lemon water, so. He said "what? Semen cake?"

>.<"

Anyway it came out pretty tasteless, even though it did rise a little in the oven.

Roasted and fried chicken dinner with boiled corn

I tried to confit the whole chicken for hours before frying it to seal in the juices and give it a nice sheen. But I didn't try to fry it at too high a heat because I had used olive chicken and not butter in the confit.  Thereafter I roasted it in the microwave oven so that it would cook properly. I also fried the veggies in the leftover oil and born some corn to go with the meat.

Vanilla cupcakes with loads of chocolate chips

Borrowed this book from the library, and the recipes looked easy enough to try. I chose to make "Our Favorite Vanilla Cake", except I halved the recipe, converted the recipe to metric and made cupcakes instead.

Original Recipe

Makes a double layer 9-inch round cake/ one 9 by 13 inch cake or 24 cupcakes

3/4 cup butter

1 cup + 2 tbsp sugar

4 eggs

2 1/4 cups flour

2 1/4 tsps baking powder

3/8 tsp salt

3/4 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350 deg F. Grease two 9 inch  pans or place cupcakes in a 24-cup cupcake pan.

2. In a large bowl or mixer, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time.

3. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.

4. In a measuring cup, combine the milk and vanilla.

5. Add the flour mixture little by little to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk and vanilla and mixing as you go. Do not overmix.

6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 to 35 min (18 to 20 min for cupcakes) or until a toothpick comes out clean.

7. Cool the cake completely before removing from the pan. Run a butter knife along the edges to help ease the cake out of the pan. Ice with the frosting of your choice.

My attempt

Makes 12 cupcakes

115g butter

100g sugar

 2 eggs

150g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

400ml milk

1 pinch salt

1 tsp vanilla extract
Loads of chocolate chips (which I mix with a little bit of flour)

1. Preheat the microwave to 160 deg C (I may try 170 deg C next time). Prepare 12 paper cups.

2. Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy and pale in color, then mix in the eggs one at a time.

3. Double sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. 

4. Beat the milk and vanilla extract.

5. Mix in the flour mixture and milk mixture into the butter and sugar mixture, alternating mixtures.

6. Pour in the chocolate chips and fill the cups. 

7. Bake for 20 minutes.

Almost vegetarian Kway Chap

I love the kway chap sold by the vegetarian stall at *censored*. I am trying to replicate this dish. This was attempt 1.

I was too lazy to buy all the spices needed for kway chap, so I tried to buy the ready made spice packet. Went to my favorite market stalls, but they only sold ba ku teh (pork rib tea) mix. Ok, I thought about it, it tasted close to the vegetarian stall's, which had a nice herby flavor (not like the actual kway chap), except that it had a lot more peppercorns in the sachet.

So I bought that, thinking that I will not steep the sachet into the soup too long, and add the other condiments necessary for kway chap (like soya sauce). While I got water boiling, I chucked in the ba ku teh sachet. Once I smelled the peppery fragrance, I poured in dark soya sauce (for color), and light soya sauce for taste. For ingredients, I put in squares of tofu, chinese yuba, tua pok (another kind of soy product), oyster mushrooms, and bumanji mushrooms. I initially wanted to make it a all vegetarian dish, then I thought about Bobo (who would complain that I am starving him), and put in some pork slices and meat balls.

I also put in some mirin and the rice noodles (I couldn't buy the big square kind, and ended up with kway tiao) towards the end. Ok, it didn't really taste much like the kway chap sold by the vegetarian stall but it still tasted pretty nice.

I can't remember when I made this?

That's the problem with being too  many things to think about. Took the photo, and forgot about it until such a long time later. Still it looked pretty yummy, so I decided to upload it still...

I really like roast chicken, especially since I only need to clean the microwave and not wipe down the whole fucking kitchen. Besides this is the only thing that my menopausal microwave can cook without burning the damn thing.

HamBagel

I bought some frozen bagels at ION's Jasons (I am still pretty shocked that Ms Bear told me that she has never gone to ION before. She said she is waiting for the hype to die down. Good luck with that, considering that the MRT is connected to the building. I must say most of the human traffic is underground though).

One lazy Saturday I took them out because I wanted a quick breakfast before heading to Mutter's garten. Zapped one, tasted eh... a little bit of salt. Bobo hated the taste, but I have like 4 more (I ended up chucking the last 2). So what did I do?

I made a hambagel, using minced pork. I shaped minced pork which has been marinated with mirin, sesame seeds and garlic, into patties before frying them. I really like to have eggs on my patties, so naturally I topped one on my patty. Accompanied the whole thing with some stir-fried duo miao with garlic, and lightly fried turnip squares. If not for the butter on the bagels, I would say it looked pretty healthy.