Cooking

Spoon included

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spoon

There is no a spoon! smirk

This is a pleasant surprise, albeit a rather funny one. I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw the spoon.

She actually packed a home-cooked dinner for me – complete with prawns, beans, and a fried egg at the bottom of the rice. It’s very nicely done, packaged and delivered.

I opened the paper bag and saw the Tupperware containing the dinner.

…with a spoon.

Me: You even packed a spoon!
Her: Haha! Used to it dy.

I do have spoons at home, contrary to popular belief. I do appreciate the effort though and seeing the spoon made me laugh.

homecooked rice box

I love you dear. <3

Caviar and chocolate on wholemeal crisp rolls

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chocolate caviar rolls

I’ve been down with the flu for the past few days and just woke up totally ravished after not eating for almost 24 hours. I rummaged about in my severely diminished pantry and decided to go with something very salty which doesn’t require much preparation as I’m still a bit sluggish.

Enter the tube of Smogaskaviar I got a few days ago. It’s not real caviar (cod roe, salthe roe, pacific cod roe for 51% of the total contents) but it is extremely salty. Heh.

It comes in a tube that I’ll rather call fish roe spread and I squeezed it all over a bag of wholemeal crisp rolls. I wanted to break the salty monotony (and monopoly) after the fifth one so I decided to top it off with a piece of dark chocolate.

chocolate caviar crisp roll

It’s surprisingly good, but would taste better if I had melted the chocolate.

It ain’t chicken soup for the soul but it sure is another one for the continuing bread story. smirk

5 exotic tropical fruit sandwiches

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tropical sandwiches

I call this the Silat Buah Edition of my continuing bread story! smirk

1. Mangosteen sandwiches

mangosteens

It’s the season for mangosteens now. Mangosteens season is the end of the year and the smaller ones do not have seeds, making it perfect for sandwiches!

mangosteen sandwiches

It’s a refreshing experiment but to be honest, not all that good.

2. Starfruit sandwiches

starfruit

I saw this jar of local government FAMA produced belimbing (starfruit) jam on sale once and bought a tub of it. I then sauntered over to the fruits section and got myself 3 starfruits.

I decided to slather the starfruit jam and then cut starfruit slices on top of it to make a starfruit sandwich with real fruit.

starfruit sandwich

I had to choke it down – the jam is crappy and almost inedible, full of sugar and a weird flavoring that has little to do with starfruit. Another one of my failed experiments. I still can’t bring myself to eat the jam – it’s still sitting in the fridge after another try on it’s own. Vile stuff.

3. Jackfruit sandwiches

jackfruit

You can get the fresh ones at SS2 night market. I found it much better than the ones at the local hypermarket. It’s one of the more expensive fruits around at over RM 9 / kg. I just slid the fruit between bread since it’s quite flavorful by itself.

jackfruit sandwiches

It should probably be noted that seeds should be taken out before inserting into bread. It’s pretty good – especially when paired with cream cheese spread!

4. Durian sandwiches

durian

It might be heresy to some to use the precious durian as a sandwich filling. It’s expensive (recently bought a Holo durian for RM 33 with less than 10 seeds, costing over RM 3 each) so I used the more common D24 strain (RM 6 / kg) for this experiment.

I thought since it works so well with glutinous rice (seriously, durian and mangoes are perfect with glutinous rice) I reckon it might be okay with bread.

durian sandwiches

Nope, I still consider it a waste – I had to use about 4 seeds to gather enough flesh for a sandwich – it’s good, but durians deserve better treatment.

5. Jambu sandwiches

jambu

I saw this juicy local fruit at RM 8 / kg from a local roadside stand and it turned out to be one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever made! 🙂

fruit sandwiches

The secret is chunky peanut butter.

Jambu with chunky peanut butter has a very complex texture – the pure water squirting out of the fruit, the stickiness of peanut butter and the chewiness of bread. The flavor profile is amazing too – kinda like eating an apple with peanut butter (used to do that as a kid).

This is the tropical version – salty and buttery and sweet with refreshing bursts.

I did a lot of tongue-in-cheek sandwiches for fun but this…

jambu sandwiches

…this is the eureka moment, I discovered something I’ll really continue eating. It’s truly a great fruit sandwich! 🙂

3 survival meals made with leftovers and bread

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I call this slightly tongue-in-cheek post the Vagabond Edition of my continuing bread story. smirk

Anyway, if you’re in strict budget mode these are some meals with bread that you can go with and it’s still quite tasty…in it’s own way. 😉

1. Bread with ketchup / chilli sauce

bread ketchup

I read Roald Dahl’s first biography – Boy as a kid and there’s an anecdote about his growing years inside. He and his mates ate sandwiches with just a dash of ketchup to give it a bit of flavor while one greedy individual had his full of pork and wouldn’t share. I distinctly remember the meat being bigger than the sandwich.

I did this with those small leftover single serve packages of chilli sauce I found at home. You can eat it with the same packets of ketchup too. It tastes rather good actually, especially if you have an egg to nibble on.

I had sandwiches with a fried egg and chilli sauce when I was in primary school and those were my absolute favorite! This reminds me a bit of that. 😉

2. Bread heaped with Milo / Ovaltine / any powdered malt drink

This is again another one from my childhood…and it tastes fabulous, but rather messy.

bread milo

It’s for those times when you’re sick of dunking it in a hot malt drink and wants a different texture. The trick we used to make the powdered drink “stick” to the sandwich is sweetened condensed milk as a kid.

However, I found that kaya works too and the grainy texture of the powdered malt drink is delicious on bread! 🙂

3. Bread with wine

People have been eating this for well over at least two thousand years…B.C. time. Jesus himself gave the last supper with bread and wine (albeit his was unleavened bread to conform with Jewish traditions at that time).

bread wine

Just generously anoint the bread with wine and savor it.

It’s surprisingly delicious! The wine is one I haven’t even tasted myself, it was opened ages ago and I was half afraid it had turned into vinegar! It hasn’t. It works best with red wine, chilled. The dates are correct, Anno Domini means Year of our Lord but He was born long after 1 A.D. – there’s a dating mistake somewhere along the line during the switch from Before Christ to AD, it’s 6-7 years off.

I reckon it’s a fitting one for Sunday too with the Eucharist and all that. 😀

3 affordable and essential spreads for bread

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I eat a lot of bread and this is my Top 3 list of essential bread spreads:

1. Cream cheese

cream cheese

This is a spreadable cream cheese that I’ve grown to love. It retails for about RM 7 for 200 grams – the same weight and price as those “mystery cheese” individually wrapped slices. I can’t say this is 100% real cheese either but it sure tastes a helluva lot better.

It’s creamy and savory! Made in Australia, the best thing about this small tub of cream cheese is that if you don’t consume it within 10 days it turns into sour cream – another *new* spread for your bread. smirk

I’m kidding, I don’t know what it turns into after 10 days coz I love the stuff.

2. Kaya (coconut jam)

kaya

Yup, this is a bread spread that we can count as our very own – made in Malaysia, something to be proud of. The word itself translates to English as “rich” and that’s exactly what the texture feels like. It’s a sweet concoction made of coconut and tastes like custard.

I usually get locally produced original ones (none of the pandan infused flavors for me) for RM 2.50. I also noticed that kaya goes better with softer bread e.g. the bran and wheat-germ types instead of 100% wholegrain.

3. Peanut butter

peanut butter

This is another staple of my fridge. I always go for chunky peanut butter – I’m not a huge fan of the smooth/creamy variety. I don’t like it cloyingly sweet either and I found this brand called Steffi’s Delight that’s made in the United States with no added sugar.

It really makes a lot of difference – it’s almost slightly salty and this brand also has visible chunks of peanuts. It’s cheaper than a lot of local brands too at RM 11 for over 500+ grams.

This kind of peanut butter works well with tougher breads like grain fortified 100% wholemeal/wholegrain. Lovely stuff, the only downside is the slightly disturbing use-by date of 2014…it’s gotta have a lot of preservatives inside for that kind of shelf life. 😡

I still eat bread with the stuff in 3 delicious and dirt cheap meals with bread but have bought a couple of spreads to spice things up a little. This is just a continuation of my…er, bread story after the DBKL spectacle.

What spreads do you like and are you a chunky or smooth person? 🙂

3 delicious and dirt cheap meals with bread

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I never eat white bread. It’s nutritionally inferior and I prefer the taste of brown bread nowadays anyway. I go for wholemeal/wholegrain (including the fad ones that has “enrichments” like Canadian Purple Wheat). It’s more expensive at RM 2.80 – RM 4.50 but definitely worth it for the additional vitamins for a balanced (hmm..) diet.

1. Sandwiches with surimi, sausages and boiled eggs

bread sausages surimi

This is considered a treat in survival mode. Heh. The surimi is store brand and family pack sized for extra savings, the sausages are the ultimate manifestation of mystery meat (plus it’s on sale at under RM 2) and eggs are eggs – you need them.

Coincidentally, these are the same items I use to cook ramen. smirk

2. Bread with milk

Ah! The staple since time immemorial. I’ll suggest fresh milk – it’s well worth the price premium for the fortified essentials – fat, for one. 😉

bread milk

Just plain bread goes a long way with flavorful fresh milk. Don’t skimp and go the reconstituted crap or low fat variants – if you’re in survival mode, you’ll need those extra calories.

3. Bread dipped in raw egg

This is a surprisingly delicious combo that I discovered. You can do it with balsamic vinegar and olive oil…so why not raw egg?

bread raw egg

Just crack one (chilled – leave it in the fridge for at least 24 hours) egg into a saucer and it can last for 4-5 slices of bread.

You can eat it by it’s own too, there’s taste and texture in some of the nut enriched ones and that’s what I do most of the time. These are just 3 examples are just to break the tedium of eating bread alone.

You know how it goes, man shall not live on bread alone. 😉

Ghetto microwave a.k.a. Cooking with an electric kettle

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ghetto microwave

Yup, it functions almost exactly like one. Heh. Okay, let’s say your microwave suddenly stopped working and you need to heat up something in a jiffy.

Ideally, you don’t have to clean up anything too, which you’ll need to if you use the traditional method of a wok and boiling water with the food suspended above.

This is based on the same principle – the steam from an electric kettle (hereby dubbed a “ghetto microwave”) will do the same thing.

electric kettle

I did it with an awkward sized food item (in this case a sandwich/burger) that’s been in the fridge for a day. I just put some water in the ghetto microwave and turned it on. You don’t even need to hold the food there, just let the lid clamp over it.

There are only two downsides to this:

  • You need to rotate the food item to ensure thorough heating
  • You have to pop in and check on it once in a while coz the auto-shutoff mechanism won’t kick in when the lid is propped open like that

smirk

Stewed pig’s tongue

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cooking pig tongue

I figured a pig’s tongue would be rather long, considering the size of the greedy animal, but I was still surprised by the sheer length of it. It prompted me to do the Gene Simmons pose – reckon this pig’s tongue beats his anytime. 😉

pigs tongue

Well, since pig’s tongue is considered offal – it’s pretty cheap. I got it for RM 3.90 for the entire muscle. Tongue used to be a common food in England but they use ox tongue instead of our porcine friend. I don’t know how to cook it, but I figured I might as well give it a shot and see how it turns out.

slicing pig tongue

I have worked with pig’s heart (both sliced in soup and with the entire organ in pasta), pig’s tail and even pig’s ears (which is quite delicious but missing from my archives due to a catastrophic category mishap). I’m not quite sure what to do with pig’s tongue but that’s never stopped me before. Heh!

pig tongue

I settled on slicing up the muscle into bite sized pieces after it has been defrosted. Give it a tongue lashing. Discipline it with your knife! It’s all muscle so I decided to marinate it first before stewing it.

pigs tongue muscle

You will need:

  • Pig’s tongue
  • A sharp knife (seriously)
  • Soy sauce (dark and light)
  • McCormick’s Season-All Salt
  • McCormick’s Italian Herbs
  • Ground black pepper (coarse)

pig tongue marinated

I mixed everything into the sliced pig’s tongue and gently massaged the condiments into it. I don’t know if it makes a difference, I just felt like doing it. This is left for about 2 hours before the cooking process started.

frying pigs tongue

Stewing pig’s tongue is easy – you just need to dump the marinated muscle into a pan and cook it slowly on low heat. Whenever you see the gravy evaporating, just add more soy sauce. I left it for about an hour, turning it over once in a while. You can still see the papillae and taste buds of the pig on the tongue! Amazing!

stewed pigs tongue

The finished dish tasted rather good to be honest. It’s not as tender as I’ll like it to be, but I reckon that can be remedied by smashing it with a hammer (or using meat tenderizer). It has a nice texture to it – it’s yielding, but firm. The chewy stewed pig’s tongue goes very well with steamed rice.

…and besides, there’s just something about introducing another animal’s tongue to your own that’s very appealing in itself. 🙂

Pomelo

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pomelo

I bought this freakishly huge pomelo on a whim while grocery shopping last week. A friend of mine saw this in the produce section and said it looks larger than my head, which prompted the photo above. It really is larger than my head – by quite a fair bit. I have never seen such a gigantic pomelo before so I got it and its been sitting in the pantry ever since.

I am no stranger to pomelos – my maternal grandma had a pomelo tree in her yard and it seems that the damn things seem to fruit every single fucking day!

There will always be a bountiful harvest of pomelos, sliced and served on a plate whenever we went to visit. I hated fruits back then and I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of pomelos since I was a kid. The bountiful harvest wasn’t to blame – my paternal grandma had a mango tree and I loved mangos. I still do.

The problem with pomelos is that it has a tart and bitter taste that didn’t agree very much with my youthful taste buds back then. I would eat it but not on its own.

…but why are we talking about pomelos anyway?

Well, coz the damn thing has been there for almost a week, taking up space and I’m looking for a recipe to use it in.

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