Braised Lamb Shanks with Rosemary

If you're planning for a dinner party but don't have much time to cook on the day of the party, here's a good recipe for you. This braised lamb can be prepared days in advanced - in fact, its probably better because the sauce will taste richer.



A braise is like a stew, but requires less liquid and has a longer cooking time. Allow about two and half hours for the lamb to cook.

Pour with a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Serve 6

Ingredients:
6 lamb shanks
2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 medium onions, chopped
3 large carrots, peeled, cut into 1/4 inch-thick rounds
10 garlic cloves, minced
3 slices of bacon
1 750-ml bottle dry red wine
1 800 g can diced tomatoes with its juices
1 400 g can low-salt chicken broth
1 400 g can beef broth
5 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
2 teaspoons grated lemon peel (the rind of 1/2 a lemon)

preparation
Sprinkle shanks with salt and pepper.
Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add shanks to pot and cook until brown on all sides, about 8 minutes.
Transfer shanks to bowl.

Add onions, carrots, garlic and bacon to pot and saute until golden, about 10 minutes. Stir in all remaining ingredients. Return shanks to pot, pressing down to submerge. Bring liquids to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cover; simmer until meat is tender, about 2hours.

Uncover pot; simmer until meat is very tender, about 30 minutes longer. Transfer shanks to platter, tent with foil. Boil juices in pot until thickened, about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Spoon over shanks.

Adapted from epicurious.com

Salad with pomegranate

Lovely Jane made a salad with pomegranate the other day. It was absolutely delightful. I have not had that combination of salad before. The sacs are juicy, slightly acidic but not as sour as passion fruits. Plus, if anything, the lovely combination of colours make a pretty picture. Inspired by her, I made that dish tonight.



Ingredients:
Rocket salad
Baby spinach
Pomegranate
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
Organic honey

Here it goes...

And I'm not suppose to be doing this. Blogging that is.

But I haven't written in this space for an awfully long time. I would like to say real life happened but really, not much has been happening on my end. Well, either nothing too interesting or nothing that I can write publicly about.

So, here's what I've been up to in random order:



Hm...let's see, I cleaned a crab the other day. My first crab~! I was really scared at first because it was still alive - moving and kicking. And, i felt bad being the one that ended its life =( But dad showed me how and I was stabbing it in glee. I'm a sadist sometimes =)




I decided to cook the crab sweet and sour style. Oops, I think I've gone a little too far with the coriander (I love coriander). It's really easy to cook this dish.

Here's the recipe in steps:

Oil the wok

Put in 8 diced garlic pips, 4 shallots and 2 big chillis.

Fry till fragrant

Add tomato sauce (hm...to your liking. Im bad at proportions)
Thai sweet chilli sauce (if you like it spicy)
Water (the amount of water depends on how much sauce you like. If you add more water, then you add more tomato sauce and other ingredients)
Vinegar (not too much, the dish should be more sweet than sour)
Sugar
Salt
Cornstarch (to thicken the sauce. Remember to mix the cornstarch first with a little water before pouring it in. ALso pour it from a great heigh to achieve a smooth texture)

Put in the crabs
Cover it and let it cook for about 15 minutes (or till it turns red)
Just before you dish it out, add a beaten egg (quickly stir the egg the moment you pour it in before it becomes one hard lump)

Dish the crabs out and add the coriander (don't over do it like me =) )


Here's some photos from my trip back to KL. I hardly took any photos this time round because my camera is always out of battery (i have this knack for not charging my things) or I leave my camera at home.

One main reason I'm never bored back in KL is because I have these two silly gooses to entertain me. Look at how we entertain ourselves when we line up to buy our cinema tickets. It was a long queue mind you, probably lined up for 45 minutes.


"Act surprised!"


"Gen has made the girls upset but he is oblivious to that fact"


"Think about our upcoming enticing seafood dinner"


"A hot girl walks pass" When a really hot girl walks pass, Wei Chee and I would normally just give each other THAT look. Its a common understanding. No words are needed to be exchanged. We read each other pretty well. Hm...while Gen drools??!?


"A hot guy walks pass" haha, check out Gen's bored look.

Cooking 101 - thai-style steamed fish

One of my favourite dishes. Its quite easy to cook but its full in flavour - sweet, sour, salty, spicy, all in one dish. Plus, I love the aroma of the kaffir lime leaves~! They always give an added zest to a dish.

Ingredients:

1 Onion
Lime juice
Kaffir lime leaves (crush it slightly to release the aroma)
Hot small red chillies (chilli padi - remove the seeds, otherwise your tongue will burn in pain~!)
Sugar
Fish sauce
Coriander leaves (for garnishing)

1 small barramundi fish (silver bream is a good alternative)

p/s: Not sure if it's exactly Thai-style but I tried to imitate the Thai restaurants to my best abilities.

One-dish recipe

Stir fry chicken, french beans, baby corn, capsicum, cashew nuts, Lebanese eggplant with soy sauce, Japanese soy sauce, fish sauce, vegetable stock, oyster sauce, a little cornstarch plus Chinese rice wine


This is my favourite one-dish recipe that I usually eat with rice. I usually cook this dish when I'm cooking for myself and I want a simple, healthy meal. I love the variety of colours in this dish - it makes me feel happy looking at it and a variety of colours generally mean a variety of nutrients?!?

Going Italia

I've been craving Italian food as of late. So I decided to make pizzas - can't get more Italian than that =)



The first batch. I made a caramelised pumpkin, baby spinach and mushroom topping for half of the pizza and a traditional Hawaiian topping for the other half. I was happy with the toppings but not with the pizza base. It was too thick and had a bread-like consistency. My bad. I'm terrible at following recipes.


Because I wasnt happy with the first batch, I decided to make a 2nd batch of pizza. This time with salami, pineapple and mushrooms. Much happier with the thin-crust base =)


This is what I've been eating for the past two days. I had leftover ham and sliced pineapple. So i decided to make fried rice out of it.

Will be cooking pasta marinara tomorrow =)

Pork-ed out

I decided to go Jap for dinner tonight. Yesterday, for some strange reason I was craving for pork. I normally never crave for red meat. Perhaps the time of the month is coming and I'm lacking in iron?? Who knows. Anyway, I bought pork cutlets and cooked them for lunch today. I just cooked them with whatever ingredients I had at home. Then, I decided to try cooking it tonkatsu pork cutlet style. Basically, its crumbed pork cutlets with a Japanese flavoured sauce on rice. So, this evening, I went to the supermarket, purchased more pork cutlets, got some bread crumbs and whatever necessary ingredients to prepare my meal.

The first batch of pork cutlets were burnt because the oil was too hot~! I had to scrap off the burnt bits and refry them. The 2nd batch turned out alright - the colour was perfect but it wasnt crispy enough. I made some sauce, (The sauce turned out great, if i may say so myself =) ). added some seaweed, cooked some veges and then finally placed the pork cutlets on rice. My first Jap meal this week. Home-cooked this time.

I'm dissatisfied with the crust of the pork cutlets. I read somewhere that if you refrigerate/freeze them before you fry them, you get a crispy crust. I'm gonna try that next
time. Probably next week. I cant eat anymore pork this week. I'm not a huge red meat fan. So, pork-ing out twice today was really pushing the limit. Speaking of which, I have one more piece of leftover pork cutlet sitting in the fridge right now. Urgh.

p/s: No pics this time. My camera hasnt been fixed yet. Plus, I wasnt 100% satisfied with it. Practice makes perfect. Will try to refine this recipe before giving it out.

pps: I bought a huge tub of choc plus vanila ice cream~! Initially, i grabbed a box of 4 cornetto ice cream cones. But as I walked down the aisle, my eyes were fixated on the boxes of ice cream cones that came in 12~!. Hey, why buy 4 cornetto cones when you can make lots and lots of your own cornetto ice cream. So, i happily traded the boxes and dumped the huge tub of ice cream into the trolley.

Tonight's dinner'

After living off charity and outside food for the past one week, I decided to cook dinner today. I resumed my weekly Victoria market routine today and came home with 1 dozen oysters, yellow tail fillet, 2 mullet fillets, some greens and fruits.

Tonight's dinner

Entree

Mains

I give you... zebra fish recipe. Ok, that was my weak attempt to be funny. I made that up.

Pan fry the mullet. Mix oyster sauce + hoi sin sauce + chilli oil + cattlefish oil + sesame oil. Pour sauces on fish. Wrap seaweed around the fish. Sprinkle sesame seeds. Its a pretty easy dish to make. Preparation and cooking time of 10 minutes.

I made that recipe up on the spot =) Jus said it tastes pretty nice.

I didnt take pictures of the yellow tail fillet because it was really plain. I like it plain because the flesh is sweet.