Italian Tomato Stew

Click to Enlarge the pictures.

I have not been blogging much due to up coming exam. When the study session gets tensed I will blog to release stress. Just anything that pops into my head and share with everyone. I like to do things in a quickie manner. Fast and well-done.

Today I am going to introduce something different for Tiffany's Experimental Kitchen

The Italian Tomato stew. ( recipe I gotten from magazine)

This is purely for tomato lover. It is truly really thoroughly TOMATO. It can go with toast or spaghetti or it can even be pour on top of rice and baked with cheese. Look at the picture from Left to right , top to bottom. I am sure you will be able to figure out which step of the cooking process it is.

The Basic ingredient:
-Vegetables: capsicum, tomato, broccoli.
-Meat: chicken or beef
-Some dry chili and fresh chili
-Garlic
-Tomato puree can

Cooking:
- Heat up oil and garlic till fragrant
- Stir fry the meat till cooked
- Pour in the already cubed vegetables.
- Add in tomato puree
- Stir, stew over low fire till the water form vegetable come out.
- Then add some herbs and it is ready !
- Add Salt, sugar, pepper to taste.

Tiffany thinking about the yummy tomato...and getting hungry.

Cat poop Chocolate biscuits

Or simple called " Cat Shit" chocolate biscuits. Valentine's day is coming and I am trying out something new for a change. Hand-made chocolate maybe nice.

Maybe I do suck at making cookies, cakes and chocolates. Somehow I am just not friend with melted hot lava-like chocolate. It is so hard to mold it in to the shape I want it to be. Ok....or I should have read up more on how to bake and cook chocolate.

This is " Cat Poop chocolate."

Ingredient : one pack of cooking chocolate, some biscuits and paper holder.

Step: 1. Boil some water, get a pot ( metal) and put into the hot water.
2. Break up the chocolates into pieces and place in the pot which is floating in the hot water.
3. Melt it and break up the pieces of biscuits and throw them all in. ( best break those biscuits into finer fragments. )
4. Stir and mix them up well.
5. Use spoon or what ever utensil you have to shape the chocolate mixture to your liking.
6. Place them one by one on the plates to cool.
7. Put in fridge for hardening. Then you got your chocolate biscuits.


It is simple and easy but my experiment did not go well. It is my own expectation and preference. I like rich chocolates better. But I got the wrong ingredient when I was in super market. I bought the Giant Rm2.99 cooking chocolate and turn out just as expected. Not nice. Compare to other brands of cooking chocolate which are around Rm7-8, this one is only Rm2.99 of the same size. Quality same as the price too. Chocolate not strong enough and kind of diluted. Do not have the rich creamy milky chocolate taste.

So if you intend to make chocolate and give to a love one I suggest you buy the more expensive cooking chocolates. The taste is more guaranteed. Have fun making chocolates. I am thinking of a new recipe to make better chocolates.

White Round Balls

Life back home during the holidays are always the best. So peaceful and stress-free which is also bad I will never be able to study much.

That day when I got home it was just nice: Dong Zhi= The day when Winter comes according to Chinese calender.

Our simple comfy kitchen. with Whiskey the cat lying on the floor ready to take a bite of any goodies.

Ok....Let me try my hand at this. Mix, press, pull, snap, roll.

Mum keep complaining my white balls are too big...>_<......And she forgot to get the pink colour ones. So we end up having only white balls.

Lala~~ ready to be served. Tang Yuan. Tuan Tuan Yuan Yuan. Wish every year our family will always be happy together.

As all of our family members hate the sweet tong sui type of Tang Yuan. We cooked the Chinese salty type. With mushrooms, pork, vegetables, spring onions, prawns and delicious soup. I hate 2 bowls of this and trust me it is really really filling!!!!!! Ok...time to diet again......-_-.....ate too much last Xmas and New Year.

Tiffany's Experimental Kitchen: Stuffed Curry Sotong

Lala~ Here comes another one of weekend experiments. Stuffed Curry Sotong.
Ingredient: Curry ready pack, coconut milk, vegetables of your choice or what ever that suits curry, sotongs ( best to be smaller, it turn out this time when I use the bigger sotongs the meat end up very tough), tiny prawns or rice ( this is for stuffing up the inside of sotong).

1st: Cook curry sauce ready, make sure it is thicker and flavor is stronger ( as we will be having it with rice) throw the prawns in or rice in to get the flavor. Cook for some time.

Here I use the prawns as stuffings. For convenience sake I bought the ready shelled tiny prawns. But didn't know it smell so fishy............ -_-

The Veges ^^~
Sotongs.
Cut out the eyes. Ok....I am not the one doing it so don't ask me how. I will just chop the head off.... who cares about those yucks eye balls. It is still a terror to me to prepare the meats ready for cooking. I always have to breath in deeply and get myself mentally ready to cut any meats up. That's why i always choose those ready pack pieces. Somehow I don't really dare to handle the whole animal. Part of it is fine with me. At one time the feeling is so great I almost want to be a vegetarian permanently.

Wash and clean the sotong inside and out. Put in the prawns that was cooking in the curry just now. Here is the trick for the sotong to look really cute and let your guest wonder how you stuff the fillings in.
The important part is: Dig out the eye ball and after stuffing the prawns into the sotong attach the tangles back and pin it in place with a tooth pick. Cooking the sotong and veges in the curry sauce. There is no need to add any water as we put in quite a lot of veges. Add salt and sugar according to taste.

Here it is ready to be eaten. After cooking the sotong will shrink and looks turgid.

Tiffany: the home maker in training. Haha... I just love to shop and cook for my love ones. Just think of the smiling faces on their face when they come home. I like the simple joy of life.

Tiffany's Experimental Kitchen: Pan fried Potato cake.

One lazy afternoon as I was reading through some books I came across this recipe.

Pan fried Potato and pumpkin cake. It is actually not the traditional cake, cake but more like some snacks. Wish we can all mix all the languages up as different language describe its own culture and background the best. I am not sure what culture this dish come from but I got it from Japanese recipe book.

Ingredients: potato, pumpkin, soy sauce, oil, corn starch. That's all. ^^~

First, chop the potato and pumpkin into cubes of around 4 cm thick.
Potato cook in a pot with water. Pumpkin use steam. When a chop stick can go through means done.

When potato is done pour out the water and just hold the pot by its 2 ears and heat it over the stove. While doing so shake the pot and let the potatoes roll around a bit to evaporate off some of the moist.

Now mash up the potato and pumpkins. As i do not have the proper tools I just use my wooden spoon to mash it in the pot.

Add around 1: 4 ,corn starch : potato or pumpkin. ( if got pumpkin it will be sweeter but as my fridge only got potato I use it only.)

Stir stir mix mix
Now wash your hand , dry it and get ready to roll and mold. ^^~ it is fun and I made some cute shapes too. I think round round is still the cutest.

Put a bit more oil to pan fried them.

I love the ring shape most. Look like mini doughnuts. And it is very easy to use chopstick to pick it up and turn around. When the sides are a bit more transparent and swell up means it is almost done.
See there are bigger now right?

Put them on paper to get rib of excess oil.

According to recipe you can dip you cake inside vinegar soy sauce Or...

You can pour the vinegar soy sauce on top. But after tasting I think best pour soy sauce inside the pot while frying.
Haha
smells good, it is chewy when you bite into it. Quite nice too. I am not sure everyone likes this type of stuff or not. But I am the type of person who like pure plain fresh stuff.

Tiffany's Experimental Kitchen: Stir fried Capsicum Beef

Tiffany's Experimental Kitchen is reopened again. ^^~~ Haha... Have more free time on hand and the leisure to cook. Always feel very sick of the outside as they are always too oily, salty and some time maybe is the place, it always look very dirty. The night market stall looks even cleaner than the coffee shops around. Ok enough of that, today I tried capsicum beef. This is some thing I think up and modified. As I just anyhow cook according to my memory of how this dish is usually cooked.

First, slice some beef around 300g-500g.
Marinate it with: Diced garlic, soy sauce, salt, sugar, a bit of red wine. Then I put in the fridge in a plastic container. After that I go on to prepare other ingredients. Today i am cooking 2 dishes. Just some simple home cook meal.

Second: wash and slice some capsicum. I only have green, if you have red and yellow it will look and taste even better. Oh ya, next time I am going to spend a bit more money and buy the genetically modified new capsicum. IT is as sweet as fruits, like apple like that. I tried that before in Taiwan and I think I saw some the other day in the super market.

Start Cooking: Heat up some oil, throw in the beef without the sauce. Stir fry till just cook. Take out.
Add a bit more oil, stir fried the capsicum till almost done. Add the beef back in. Now pour the sauce you have marinated the beef just now. Taste the dish, if not enough add a bit more soy sauce, salt and sugar to taste.

Serve.
Second dish is the common stir fry cabbage. I simply just love stir fried cabbage. Usually I always use the round , bright green cabbage. I hate hate hate the flat elongated cabbage, it is tasteless compare to the round ones.


Heat oil, add garlic. Fry till fragrant and a bit light brown over medium heat.

Throw in chopped cabbage and carrot, stir fry till soft and nice smell come out. Usually you can smell whether the food is cook or not. Then add Vegetarian oyster flavoured sauce. ( choose vegetarian, it taste the same anyway and it is not only animal-friendly, it is also environmental-friendly and disease free. Seafood sometimes can pass some water borne diseases.)

My Dinner. Yummy. ~~~ Only when I am free. Wish I have a cook .
Sob......

First Time making SUSHI >_< !!!

I have always love to eat sushi so....the other weekend I give my hand at sushi making for the very first time. I had seen my aunts and God mother making it before but I never make it myself. My duty is to eat eat eat and say :" Hao Chi." Hahaha...

So I went to Isetan that day and got the sushi starter pack, some Japanese rice ( which is round and not elongated like South East Asian rice. Btw Malaysian rice is very rare too, as always import from Thailand. So you can only find it in Kampung. )

I just cook according to instructions and other information I have gotten from the internet. Sorry....I am just lazy to type out those steps. Just show show here how it was made. The most important thing for sushi is actually : The RICE and seaweed. That's all. Cook the rice well everything is great.

Soak the rice for 30mins to 1 hour before you cook it. After cooking that it out and add the Japanese vinegar. And try cooling it off by doing cutting motions over the rice. Do not mix and stir the rice. If possible stand a fan beside the rice to speed up the cooling process.

p/s: I wonder what is Kat kat thinking. Cats are always such busybodies.


Tea Time. I love these hard french bakeries.

Eggs fried, crab stick cooked, store bought Unagi ( hehehe....), Japanese cucumber ( This is super sweet and very different from SEA cucumber. ), washabi, Jap soy sauce. Everything else and tools are all the starter pack. Very easy to make.

Leave 2 cm above your seaweed. Roll roll, press, roll.


Cut cut.. Lala... here we have. Cute right???

MY first plate of Sushi. IT taste great!!! However my rolling skill is skill not good...sigh.. But never mind.
Recently , finally get to enjoy a bit of holiday. I really miss and treasure these days where I can really lie around and roll around on bed and be worry-free, stress-free......... Nice weather ........feels so good and nice and sleepy....ZzzZZZZZzzzzzzzzz......

Rice cooker fried rice from recipe book

There is not much "frying" being done around here but it is still called the " rice cooker fried rice". This is a famous dish for the poor students or I would rather say lazy and donno-how-to-cook students. It is healthy, easy and taste not bad. I think it taste great though. Not sure about others.

Step 1: Get a rice cooker. Anything will do. Measure how many cups of rice u gonna have. 1 or 2 is enough for a start. Then add the normal of water accordingly. Different types of rice need different amount of water to be just right.

Step2: Throw in a cube or 2 of chicken stock. Chops some cabbage and cover rice+ water with it. Add some frozen mixed vegetables ( usually consist of sweetcorn, peas and carrots). At this point can add tuna in water becoz I don'y have so I didn't add.

Step 3: Cover the rice cooker and press the start button for cooking and wait...........

Step4: Once the cook button jumps and becomes warm. Take out the butter from ur fridge. Take a big spoonful of it and stir into the rice.

Step5: Stir stir stir... I think it is this part that makes this dish qualified to be a fried rice. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Step 6 ( OPTIONAL) : Eat with spicy tuna.

Conclusion: in the end the fried rice smells nice. I am still on my quest for searching and experimenting the : " Simple, fast, healthy and tasty way of cooking:.

Experimental Kitchen: Vegetable curry

This is the first I ever attempted to cook curry. While I was wandering around in the market I noticed packets of ready mix, ready to cook, ready to eat packs. Been always wondering how does it taste like? Will it turn out to be amazingly delicious as the advertisement always claims or ?? Just the diluted version of the home made food.

At first I was keen on cooking the fish curry. ( I love fish. ) I went to the fish counter, raising up my metal clippers and starting poking the fish meat and observe the fish eye balls for freshness. ( a skill learn from Mummy) Then all of a sudden, as I stare at the fish eye, a chill went down my spine. I felt and I know the fish is staring at me!! All of a sudden the hundred fishes on the fish counter are all staring at me. I got scared, drop down the clipper and ran.

It was just what it is always shown in the movie. I am consciously having the feeling that the fishes are staring at me in hatred. Sending this message: why you want to eat me??
I don't know. All of a sudden i got this phobia against whole fish. Actually i do have some problem with dead animals in whole. If it is all chop up nicely into pieces I don't mind. But with the head and eyes attached..............scary.........

Mum never let me help in the kitchen. Her philosophy is : once u are married or when the time comes you will automatically know how to cook. No need to learn and mess around her kitchen.
No idea..Thats what she always told me. So I never really get the chance to come in direct contact with raw fish, meats.

Back to the vegetable curry. ( ok that's why I decided to cook vegetable. someday due to phobia I may even turn vegetarian. Save the animals~) Buy whatever is written on the package and cook accordingly.

Bought the coconut milk, pour in. Amazingly the vegetable curry turn out to be very nice. Brother even commented: delicious. He and I were both very amazed at the outcome.
It is more than edible it is delicious.
Haha...Now with these ready-packs I can cook like a pro too~~~ yeah~~

Experimental Kitchen: Home Cook Meals

Not in a good mood, very unhappy...So started blogging. Guess this is a place for me to release stress and try to remember that life still goes on. And no matter what the future is bright and everything will be wonderful.

Ok...back to my Experimental Kitchen. I am a very new cook. Just trying to learn from the big chefs how to cook from the basics. Somehow lucky for me almost 90% of the time, the food come out not only edible but actually very successful and tasty.

Sunny egg + pickled radish. I finally learn how to cook this properly without breaking the egg up. I can some more flip it over like roti canai too ^^~

How cook meal: for myself on a vege day. I am not picky and I really enjoy a simple light meal.
Vege, egg and kimchi. OK...looks like really 'poor' but it is very healthy. Eat less meat. ( from here can observe my partiality towards glass wares)


Another day: Stir fried tomato base spaghetti . This is a real success. Taste really good. Think in the future I will cook this more often and make it one of my ' na shou chai'.

Close up look. Maybe is the lighting, the pic did not justify the delicious food and vibrant colour.


Not cook by me but was one of my dinner during the weekends. I love Japanese food like mad. Oh no.....my stomach is starting to make a lot of noise and I can feel the gastric secretion increasing....... Food food. Today is the first day of dieting/ changing to a healthy lifestyle ( this way sounds better. Ha. Maybe can help in weight reduction.)

I am not dieting, I am trying to lead a healthy life style. ^^~~~~

Recently been feeling very tired due to the busy time table and sigh.......too much trouble. .. Just tired. Better sleep early. Or else I will not be getting enough sleep.