Japanese !

Fresh from my attempt at cooking Thai (which didn't go too badly at all), I decided that tonight I would do Japanese.

The Menu

Miso Soup

Ebi and Sweet Potato Tempura

Japanese Rice

Dish 1 - Miso Soup

Anyone can mix paste with water, so I decided to make it a little fancier.

Ingredients: Miso paste, half a white onion, enoki mushroom, tofu, nori

METHOD:

1. Don't worry, you only have to chop the onion roughly into cubes; it won't take very long and therefore, won't leave you all weepy. Put them in a pot with some oil, and saute for awhile. Use only a wee bit of oil or your soup be really oily.

2. Pour in some water quickly while standing as far as you possibly can from the pot. There will be a slight cackle and pop from the initial contact of the water with the pot.

3. Bring to a boil then lower heat and simmer for about half an hour.

4. Add miso paste, nori, tofu and enoki mushroom. Stir till cooked. If you find that the nori and enoki mushroom are a little too chunky, you can do what I did. Which is to take a pair of scissors, put it into the pot and just snap randomly.

5. Tada, ready to serve !

Dish 2 - Tempura

Ah, this one takes lots of skill. One which I have yet to master. But I'll try, try again. You can use anything you want, but I used sweet potato and prawns today.

INGREDIENTS

Sweet potato

Prawns

Tempura flour

Tempura dipping sauce

Check out this mother-of-all sweet potatoes, it was ginormous !

And it took me a good 15minutes to slice it all like so. I kid you not, this takes some real arm strength. Lucky for me, handygirl Kim has been working out by way of assembling my Ikea furniture. Ignore the darker-coloured ones in the foreground, those are steamed sweet potatoes that were left over from my mom's lunch.

Prawns, which should be curled like so for optimum freshness.

It occurred to me as I was taking the prawns out of the packet that tempura prawns are usually served straight. By that logic, the me-before-learning-that-fresh-prawns-are-curled would have gone straight for the stretched out prawns. But now that I know better, I had another dilemma on my hands. How does one get their prawns straight ?

So naturally, I googled it.

Literally.

"How to straighten tempura prawns"

And what do you know. I'm not the only one who wonders that !

I came across a few sites which basically told me to make 2-3 slits at the bottom of the prawn. So I did. But that didn't make removing the veins very easy at all, so I decided to just slit the whole of the bottom. What is the deal with 2-3 slits anyway. By the time you do that, you've practically slit the whole bottom.

2 to 3 prawns in, I noticed another black thing dangling off the top portion of the prawn. I didn't realise there was another one at the top ! I guess you learn something new everyday. Anyway, de-veining prawns isn't something I normally do. I only did it because they said to do so in the recipes I came across. I never really saw the point to it though.

Once all that's prepared, we can start !

METHOD

1. Mix tempura flour with cold water. I read on one of the sites that you should put an ice cube in as well to keep it cold, so I did. I also read that you shouldn't mix the batter too evenly, and that it should have some lumps in it. So I did that too.

2. Heat the oil.

3. Dip the sweet potato / prawn in the batter, and slide into the wok. Let it sizzle and swim around till golden brown, or whatever the colour usually is when you have it at restaurants.

4. Remove and set on a plate laid with paper towels to absorb the oil.

5. Serve with tempura dipping sauce.

This was the sauce and flour I picked up from Cold Storage.

Dinner! Admittedly the prawns didn't quite turn out the way it's supposed to, but it tasted alright I think. Better luck (and skill) next time !

A Thai Attempt

Fresh from my Phuket escapade, I decided to attempt a Thai meal for dinner.

The menu:

1. Pineapple Chicken with Oyster Mushroom
2. Deep Fried Morning Glory
3. Tom Yum Seafood Soup
4. Rice

I'm not a particularly expert cook, but I figure that I've grown up watching enough people cook (mom, aunties, sisters, Yan - of 'Yan can cook fame') so how hard could it be right ? I can just go on gut and a little improvisation, like I normally do with just about everything.

Dish 1 - Pineapple Chicken with Oyster Mushroom

INGREDIENTS
Fresh pineapple (cut into cubes)
Chicken breast (cut into cubes)
Oyster mushroom (randomly sliced)
Garlic
Oyster Sauce
Corn flour
Water

METHOD
i. Coat the chicken in some corn flour and deep fry in a wok, then set aside on a plate that's been laid with some kitchen towels (paper not cloth) to soak up the oil.

ii. Oil in pan; for some reason, I don't seem to have a frying pan at home. It's a recent development. I suspect my mom threw it out as part of her 'new year spring cleaning' routine. She's quite strange, she throws out/gives away things we need, and keep the things we don't. For example, no frying pan but we do have 5 pots. So anyway, I heated up some oil in a pot and fried the garlic. I didn't use the wok because it was filled with oil from the earlier deep frying, and too hot for me to clear.

iii. Add the oyster mushroom, some water and continue frying. The oyster mushroom that my mom got from the market was of a curious variety, it's huge ! I've never seen anything like it. At least the size of three of my fists.

I wasn't sure what to do with it, so I just sliced it up randomly like so (see below).

iii. Add chicken and pineapple cubes, some oyster sauce and water and let it simmer for a bit then it's done !

Dish 2 - Deep Fried Morning Glory

INGREDIENTS
Morning glory
Tempura battter
Sweet chilli sauce to accompany

METHOD
i. Mix your tempura flour with some ice water - that's what I gathered from the couple of recipes I read on 'how to make tempura'. It's supposed to add extra crisp to the final product I think. For good measure (and because the weather was so hot), I decided to toss in an ice cube as well and let it slowly melt whilst I took my time coating and frying the morning glory.

ii. Heat oil lots of oil in a huge wok.

iii. Take a bunch of morning glory, sort of fold it into half and then coat it in the batter. I used tongs to hold on to it coz I wasn't sure how it was meant to be done. And if you were me, you'd fry this one bunch at a time because the oil splatters like crazy. So take the bunch of batter-coated morning glory drop it into the oil (gently), and then step away while it splutters. After about 30-40 seconds (or when it stops spluttering), it's safe to step in and turn it around. When it's slightly brown, take it out and let the oil dry again on some paper towels.

iv. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

v. Serve with sweet chilli sauce.

It should look like so.

Dish 3 - Tom Yum Seafood Soup

INGREDIENTS

Tom Yum Paste

Shallots

Lemongrass

Tomatoes

Prawns (with head)

Squid

Straw Mushrooms

Chicken Stock

METHOD

i. First, prepare all your ingredients like so, so it's all handy.

Straw mushrooms, shallots, lemon grass, tomatoes

Squid (again, wasn't sure how it should be cut, so I just sliced it into random bite-sized pieces), prawns - separate the heads, and de-shell the body. Just a tip from my boyfriend the Nat Geo geek, when picking prawns you should also pick those that are curled up. It means they're fresher than their stretched out counterparts. I can't remember why though.

METHOD

i. Some oil in a pot, stir fry the shallots and lemongrass and prawn heads. Add water, chicken stock and tomatoes then bring to a boil.

ii. Add tom yum paste, I used this that I got from the airport on the way back from Phuket - we had some spare Baht. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

iii. Add the seafood, and you're done !

Tom Yum Soup and Pineapple Chicken

Tip: If for some reason your tom yum soup turns out too spicy or sour, just add some Oyster Sauce. I know it sounds weird, but I learnt this from my good friend Den back in Uni. "Oyster sauce fixes everything!", he says.