Tag: cooking

Posted in Life & Happiness

Avocado Pasta

Posted on by Jinavie

Pasta with homemade sauce is one of the best meals to cook at home, because it is often easy, makes a large portion and tastes delicious despite its simple recipe. It is also easily adaptable, such as this avocado pasta recipe which is an alternative to pesto, if avocados are in season and cheap.

When cooking pasta, remember to heavily salt the water (“as salty as the Adriatic Sea” as Italians might say) for extra flavourful pasta and to save 1-2 cups of pasta water for additional starchiness to the sauce.

Ingredients (serves 4):
2 avocados
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup basil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/3 cup olive oil
1 cup cherry tomatoes
100-150g bacon/pancetta/chicken (optional)
350-400g pasta (any, but recommend fusilli or penne)

  1. Cook pasta to preference (suggest 12-13 minutes in salted boiling water)
  2. Chop avocados into medium-sized chunks to make it easy to process
  3. Add avocados, peeled garlic, basil and lemon juice to the food processor
  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste
  5. Start blending all of the ingredients in the food processor and add olive oil in a slow stream (or intermittently and pulse)
  6. Blend until all ingredients have fully emulsified with no pools of oil
  7. Cut cherry tomatoes in half
  8. If using bacon or pancetta, pan fry until lightly crisp
  9. Tomatoes can be cooked in the bacon/pancetta oil if you prefer
  10. If using chicken, cut into strips or cubes, season with salt and pepper, then pan fry until fully cooked
  11. Combine pasta, avocado sauce, cherry tomatoes, meat and splash of pasta water (avoid making the mix too liquid)
  12. Garnish with basil leaves and serve
Posted in Life & Happiness

Flipping Pancakes

Posted on by Jinavie

There are life skills that are crucial to being a functional adult, such as doing taxes and time management. Then there are life skills that are not necessary, but can bring you great joy. Being able to flip a pancake without making a mess falls in the latter category. You could use an instrument such as a spatula or a plate to help, but it takes away much of the satisfaction. Here are some tips on how to flip a pancake successfully.

Firstly, the bottom side of the pancake needs to be cooked enough that it will maintain its shape during the flip. You can judge this by looking for bubbles rising to the top surface and checking that the top is not runny. 

Secondly, the pancake must not stick to the pan. Use plenty of oil to start with on a non-stick pan, then slide the pancake around in a circular motion to confirm that it will easily slide off the pan.

Thirdly, the flip must be a smooth, rounded motion so that the pancake flips just the right amount. Tilt the pan forward so the pancake sits near the rim, then flick your wrists upwards so that the pancake slides up the rim, making an arc in the air, flipping 180 degrees. With careful hand-eye coordination, catch the pancake in the middle of the pan just when the uncooked side is facing the ground.

But above all that, the most important factor is confidence. 

If you are not confident enough and don’t flick the pan enough, the pancake will not make a full 180 degree turn. It will quickly fall back into the pan on an angle, crumpling or folding it. If it wasn’t flipped high enough, you won’t have enough time to catch it properly and it may land on the edge, making a big mess. 

If you are overzealous and flick it too hard, the pancake will go flying off or it will turn too much, causing the same problem as above.

Much like so many other things in life, finding the balance and having just the right amount of confidence can bring you great joy in the form of a delicious pancake.

Posted in Science & Nature

Dinosaur Meat

Posted on by Jinavie

Did dinosaurs have red or white meat? Typically, we think of white meat as coming from poultry, such as chicken, duck, turkey, while red meat come from large mammals such as cows, pigs and deer. So if you were to hunt down a stegosaurus or a triceratops and cooked it over a barbeque, what colour would their meat be?

The redness of meat comes from a protein called myoglobin, which carries oxygen from the blood to the muscle cells. It is similar to haemoglobin, which gives blood the characteristic red colour. An important note is that when you see reddish water drip from meat from the butchers, you are seeing myoglobin, not blood (the blood is drained when the meat is prepared).

The difference in colour between red and white meat come from the type of muscle fibres and their myoglobin content.
Red meat is made from slow-twitch fibres, which are useful for sustained activities such as walking or to keep standing. They exert a smaller force over a longer period of time, meaning they require more oxygen for aerobic respiration (a more efficient way of burning fuel using oxygen). Ergo, red meat is full of myoglobin, hence its deep rich red colour.

On the other hand, white meat is made of fast-twitch fibres. These fibres are better suited for quick bursts of energy, such as flying or quickly responding to a threat. These fibres use anaerobic respiration (no oxygen), which allow for a quicker, faster burn of energy, but only for a short time. In birds, the breast muscles are typically very white, but they do have some slow-twitch fibres in other muscle groups such as their wings and legs, which is why there is a distinction between light and dark meat.

So how about dinosaurs? Dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds and reptiles, so it would make sense for them to have had white meat. However, the majority of dinosaurs, especially large ones such as sauropods, would have had very powerful muscles with slow-twitch fibres, making their meat quite red. A good example are ostriches. Even though they are birds, their meat is as red as beef because they have powerful leg muscles for running.
Smaller animals such as raptors probably had more white meat akin to modern poultry, as they would require sudden bursts of energy for ambushes.

As for how they would taste, that is something we could not answer until Jurassic Park becomes a reality.

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Posted in Life & Happiness

Dull Knife

Posted on by Jinavie

Which is more dangerous in the kitchen: a sharpened knife or a dull knife? Common sense would dictate that the sharpened knife is obviously more dangerous as it can cut you more easily. But as every chef will tell you, a dull knife is much more dangerous.

This is because a sharp knife will cut through your ingredients with ease and as long as you handle it with care and pay attention, the risk of cutting yourself is very low.
A dull knife on the other hand, will often slip and slide over the ingredient because it can’t cut straight through. This makes it more likely that it will slip off the food and slice your fingers instead.

Think of your relationships as a knife. Like with anything, we become used to and comfortable with our partners and friends over time. We sometimes unintentionally become lazy and careless around them, forgetting basic etiquette and the effort we put in at the start to cultivate that relationship. Much like a dull knife, we can easily make a mistake and deeply hurt the other person in this state. It might be because you accidentally said something hurtful or lost interest in their passions. In general, it is easier to become less attentive and thoughtful of the other person because you have been “dulled”.

No master chef would keep their knives unsharpened, for how could they prepare a delicious meal if they did not care? We expect our relationships to be immortal in the face of time thanks to the power of love, but the heart and soul will wear out like anything else without proper care and maintenance.

So how do we know how often to “sharpen” our relationships? It’s simple: stay mindful that your relationship is something that needs constant care.

Be attentive to the other person, be generous with your kindness and never take them for granted. The best way to prevent you from being dulled to something is constantly reminding yourself how grateful you are to have that person in your life. That way, your metaphorical knife will stay sharpened and it will be much harder to hurt your loved ones.

(Image source: Puuung http://www.grafolio.com/puuung1)

Posted in Life & Happiness

Oreo Fudge

Posted on by Jinavie

The following is a recipe to making a simple yet delicious fudge. Because it is a “cold fudge”, it requires little baking skills and can be made even by a rookie in the kitchen.

Ingredients:

  • Icing sugar 4 cups
  • Cream cheese 225g
  • White chocolate 425g
  • Vanilla extract 1.5 teaspoons
  • Oreo cookies (chopped) 14-15 (1 packet)

Instructions:

  1. Beat cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla in a bowl using a mixer until smooth
  2. Heat white chocolate in a bowl set over a pot of simmering water (double boiler) until melted and smooth
  3. Stir melted white chocolate and ¾ of Oreo cookies into bowl of cream cheese mixture
  4. Spread mixture evenly into a baking dish lined with baking paper
  5. Press the remaining chopped Oreo cookies onto the surface of the fudge to decorate
  6. Chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours
  7. Cut into small squares (2-2.5cm size), serve chilled (store in fridge)
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(Recipe and image source: http://www.bunsinmyoven.com/2013/12/13/oreo-fudge/)

Posted in Science & Nature

Salt And Flavour

Posted on by Jinavie

A well-known cooking fact is that salt “brings out the flavour” of foods. This not only applies to meats and vegetables, but also unlikely foods and drinks such as brownies, watermelons, coffee and chocolate milk.

Salt (sodium chloride) will dissolve in water to form sodium and chloride ions. Sodium ions interfere with the way your taste buds sense flavour, suppressing bitterness. This is why adding a dash of salt to coffee and chocolate milk will make it taste fuller and smoother.

Furthermore, the sodium ions enhance flavour by making taste buds more sensitive for other flavours such as sweet, sour and umami (savoury). Lastly, in the case of chocolate milk, the slight salty taste gives a greater contrast for the sweet flavour, making the drink taste slightly sweeter.

Posted in Life & Happiness

The Perfect Toast

Posted on by Jinavie

Toast is one of those simple meals that anyone can make. Bread goes in, toast comes out. But some scientists decided to embark on a quest for the “perfect” toast. After spending a week toasting and tasting over two thousand slices of toast, the scientists came up with some figures.

The perfect toast should be:

  • 14mm thick
  • Made from pale-seeded loaf of bread taken from a fridge at 3°C
  • Cooked in a 900-watt toaster set to 5 out of 6 power
  • Cooked at a temperature of 154°C evenly from both sides
  • Cooked for exactly 3 minutes and 36 seconds (216 seconds)
  • Transferred gently to a plate that is pre-warmed to 45°C
  • Immediately slathered with 68.2mg per square centimetre of butter
  • Sliced once diagonally

The result of this formula is a perfectly golden-brown toast of 12:1 exterior to interior crispiness, with the “ultimate balance of external crunch and internal softness”.

Posted in Simple Pleasures of Life

Simple Pleasures of Life #5

Posted on by Jinavie

Having some experimental fun in the kitchen.

(Doing tomorrow’s tonight instead just because of my kitchen adventure)

Today I had my third go at baking (brownies again lol) because it’s my turn to bake for the team this week for O&G. See, I’ve always treated cooking like a bit of an…artistic science experiment. Baking more so because of the more precise measurements etc. In the process, I managed to:

  • Have 200g of butter explode in the microwave. Literally. The mug completely flipped out inside with a loud clatter and spilled all the butter…EVERYWHERE. Took a freaking hour to clean it all up… Luckily I had just enough butter left.
  • Guess (rightly) which setting to put the oven on. Seriously, those symbols might as well be hieroglyphs.
  • Improperly cool the brownie. I didn’t know I was supposed to take it straight out and put it on a cooling tray. Instead, I left it in the tin to “cool”, leading to the bottom being gooey and the top being cookie-hard OTL 
  • Creatively rebaked the brownie by flipping it over, re-molding the gooey brownie to fill the spaces left on the “bottom” (now top) of the brownie, then sticking in the oven with top heat.
  • Ultimately make a pretty tasty Oreo brownie! Not nearly as good as the one I made last time but this’ll do…

Anyway, baking is fun lol. But I think I’ll stick with cooking for now… And pancakes.

(Basically what would happen if I tried baking it)

Posted in Simple Pleasures of Life

Simple Pleasures of Life #10

Posted on by Jinavie

Watching new episodes of your favourite shows and laughing so hard that all your worries and troubles melt away.

The new (and final) season of How I Met Your Mother started today!!! I’ve been so excited for this and the season premier (double episode) lived up to my expectations~ Had some good laughs hehe. I’m excited for what the rest of the season will bring, and I’m interested in the format of the season (won’t spoil anything). Also, there was a new episode of Adventure Time and that’s always welcome! 🙂

My good mood today is brought to you by what I said above, 9:30am finish from hospital, good nap, pumpkin soup (success!), nice salmon, new Magic cards (woo!), stormy weather and essentially no study. Daddy needed a break day after 34 hours of hospital over the weekends and Monday…

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Posted in Simple Pleasures of Life

Simple Pleasures of Life #13

Posted on by Jinavie

Cooking without a recipe.

I love cooking. My mum is a super-pro cook and one of my happiest memories of childhood was eating homemade meals (still is). Cooking in general is fun because you get the instant reward of eating it, but what’s even more fun is that you can do whatever the hell you want… within acceptable limits. Cooking by a recipe can be fun, but going by feel and changing around stuff is even better! And best of all, you can make your own recipes.

What I find the most fun regarding cooking is that you can get creative with various ingredients and see how it turns out. It could be you’re making something from scratch, or trying to recreate a meal you had somewhere else. I mean seriously, it’s like Lego that you can EAT. How much better can it get? Sometimes I look at the limited supply of food in my fridge and take it as a challenge.

For example, you can go from easy things like fried rice where you can pretty much dice up whatever and toss it in a pan:

…to more complex things like sweet & sour chicken, which I always have fun experimenting with (it’s really not that complicated tbh…):

But of course nothing beats the joy of making…

FRIED CHICKEN.