Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts

Augustdiners Breakfast Club: (PT 3)- Made With Drunken Love

Monday, December 19, 2011

After our sore experience at the latest breakfast joint, Red Bean Bag, I still think that Augustdiners breakfast club serves the best breakfast in town- because it’s made with love. *laughs*
One pregnant lady craves, and my chance to have a chill Sunday brunch session brought us to another episode of our breakfast club, but what not expected is me waking up with some awful hangover from the previous night out, so I was strongly contemplating on cancelling our brunch dates, but boy am I glad I went through with it, because a good breakfast is all it need to cure those aching headaches of mine
Refer to our other breakfast cookout 30/11, 19/01, 1/10
This time round, we did something quite simple, homemade potato hash, light salad dressed with Dijon mustard, honey and olive oil, some sauté mushrooms with onions and spinach, ham slices, and some poached eggs . We forego hollandaise sauce this time, because we were lazy and underprepared.

Ingredients with plenty of eggs, yums!

Freshly baked Sourdough

Toasted

I'm normally not happy with healthy eating, but this salad is worth the stomach spaces

Potato Hash

More greens

Hash Brown in the making

The messy wonders

More Messiness, and those Eggs! yum yum yum!

Random Shots

Happy Pregnant Woman who's satisfied with her breakfast cravings

We’re heading towards end of 2011; time passes by with a blink of an eye it seems!! Augustdiners would like to wish everyone a Merry X’mas! Enjoy your holidays (or work) and have a safe one! Thank you for your continuous support despite us being in the slacking department this year

On a side note, if you are interested in Whole Roast Turkey Takeaways for this festive season, Silver Spoon Trattoria is selling them at RM188++, pre-booking required!! =)

Augustdiners Cooks (NOT!): Gourmet Dinner @ Home

Friday, July 22, 2011

We're grateful knowing that you are still keeping it up with us and our post, here's another one to share with you, i mean two post within a week could be our new record, that's super frequent for Augustdiners style whom seem not be able to cope with one entry per month.

We’ve recently got our hands on some gourmet ingredients- the larger than palm sized foie gras, few kilos of Spanish ribs, and the o-so-tempting pork loin. We’ve also given some really good imported Spanish pork belly which I’m probably going to make char siew later (any good recipes to share?)
So Crazieapple was heading the kitchen that night because she’s still living the life of a jobless bummer. Whilst I came whizzing in after work to assist her with the dirty work, i.e. cutting and shredding vegetables =P

1/Crazieapple preparing to baked her ribs

2/ Foie gras- yums!

3/ *loves*

4/ Pork loin in the making

5/ Almost there

6/ I claimed the biggest piece!

We started our family off with some dips and crackers- 4 types including smoked salmon, caviar, tzatziki, and cream & chives. The dip goes really well with Tucker’s natural crackers, you’ve got to try it! It’s so addictive.

Our menu of the night was pan-seared foie gras with caramelized apple, which had a wonderful combination of flavours. It was an easy done dish, and with Crazieapple doing re-runs on how to properly dissect the foie gras on youtube more than 10 times, it’s safe to say she’s a pro in the area already.

Then there was the Jack Daniel’s spare ribs, which we ran into minor hiccups, but in the end it just turns out so beautifully that I was eating while licking my fingers at the same time. Mr. KFC would approve because it’s so finger lickin’ good. *laughs*

Then the pork loin was expertly wrapped with bacon and stuffing, the presentation was enticing as the bacon was baked to a sexy brown tan, the downside however was that the pork loin was slightly over-cooked for my liking. I enjoyed mine with some slight pinkness to the flesh. But again, she’s hit jackpot with the flavours

Some Roasted Veges on the side: butternut squash, capsicums, and tomatoes.

Also on the side is the rosemary flavored mashed potatoes.

For dessert. =)

Check out the mess we made =)

P/S Just a little excitement to share. Whilst we were pan-searing our foie gras outdoors with the portable gas stove (2 of them), the gas leaked and our whole pan caught major fire, whereby we were all rushing to find water or ways to diffuse the fire (only to find it inflamed bigger), in the end, we manage to kill the flame by throwing two big bucket of water from the swimming pool. But, what is really noteworthy is how all of us re-acted to the situation.

~The ever so smart Chyn puts her hand into the fire to attempt to turn off the gas

~ PK was nowhere in sight….

~ Mom, being the one who always know what to do, ran all the way to the sink area (which is super far away) to get a bucket

~SY gave dad half a glass of water from our dining table as if she thinks that the mere glass of water can save the situation

~ Lil Twin sisters screams “mommy… mommy….!”

And what was Augustdiners reaction?

Ms. Jazz: “It’s GONNA EXPLODE, GET AWAY FROM THAT PLACE”*whilst hiding in the dining room as far away from the fire as possible”- Damn Dramatic OK…hehe

Crazieapple, on the other hand was the classic one…..

“SAVE THE FOOD, SAVE THE FOOD!!” she screams- whilst flapping her hands up and down.

Lucky for us, dad manage to push most of the food away from harm before the mom’s buckets of chlorine filled water came splashing down. But unfortunately, 5 pieces of foie gras had died in vain.

So all excitement aside, the dinner was thoroughly enjoyable. If I knew Crazieapple can deliver a meal so well, I would be willing for myself to sit back with my knife whilst she graces the wok for our next cooking project.

Augustdiners can cook (NOT!) : CNY dinner

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

As you may have already been well aware of this, Augustdiners are not particularly a good cook, not exactly the best wife of the year candidate here, but once in a blue moon, we will feel inspiration pouring in and decide to cook for the family. So on the 3rd February after spending long hours watching Junior Masterchef Australia (they are blardy amazing), we felt totally inspired, and start working out a list of what to make for the family. Turns out there will be some guest joining us for dinner, and so the pressure is on to cook an (EATABLE) meal that serves 15pax.
I ordered most of my main ingredients like chicken, seabass, tenderloin etc through my restaurant, and for the rest of the ingredients we merrily went to BSC for some grocery shopping. I LOVE GROCERY SHOPPING IN BSC! As we happily topping away food onto the trolley feeling extremely generous with ourselves in conjunction to the Chinese New Year celebratory mood, everything on the shelves seems to be “necessary” to make this dinner. After a good hour of intense muscle flexing from shelve to trolley, shelve to trolley, we felt so accomplished!!!

The only problem of this joyful exercise is probably the cost. I shall not disclose the exact amount but it’s definitely a four hard earn figure. I dare not think of the RM130 bucks saffron sitting on top of my kitchen counter right now, especially since my attempt of making seafood paella was a failure.com

So as the clock is ticking away, and a good 6 hours ahead of us for preparation, not a single minute was wasted. Chopped the vegetables we did, clean the gooey (and May I add disgusting) chicken butt I did. We roast, we cook, we broil, we grill, in the end of it all, we were ready to throw in our white towels and call it a night.

The menu is a feat on its own, Crazieapple and I repeatedly had a heated argument on what we would be serving to our guest. She was to be in charge on appetizers and desserts while I can focus on my main course. But being a control freak who likes to take control of situation and make sure everything is perfect (yep I’m a true virgo) I crossed off every single thing she propose or had in mind until a point where she refuses to tell me what she’s making. So there you go, we have two chefs here who refuse to communicate and collaborate.

So how will this night turns out, you wonder?

THE PREPARATIONS

One of many ingredients~

The notes.. =)

The Chefs...

The concentration on camwhoring

tomatoes and capsicums sitting on the baking tray ready to be roasted for one of the triple-play soup.

*scroll down to see what this is all about!* =)

Lesson of the day: DO NOT soak a good slab of beef in the water in hope that it will soften faster!

Baby Back Ribs

In the making..

My adorable assistants..

DINNER AT THE NG’S

Appetizer: Warm tomato bruscetta and creamy mushroom on toast

Appetizer: Triple play soup (which crazieapple names it in some Chinese prosperity bull-ah, something which I care not to translate) a combination of peas and asparagus, roasted tomato and capsicum, and cauliflower soup with cheese grissini. This was the one dish that i strongly disagreed to as it takes up way too much effort.. But im glad that Crazieapple insisted to stick to her plan cause these were absolutely divine!! Each of the soup brings up distinctive flavor altogether..Crowd favourite was definitely the roasted capsicum and tomatoes.

Appetizer: Baby Back Ribs with Whiskey Sauce Décor with sauté asparagus wrapped in prosciutto

Main: Jamie Oliver’s perfect roast chicken (HELLO, MR. HUCK if you are reading this, mine was way better!)

I joke of course. I roasted two but only manage to serve one as my guests were all stuffed by now…

Main: Failure.com seafood paella. I never dealt with paella before. And I cheated the recipe by substituting Spanish rice with risotto rice.

To be fair to myself (also as a comfort for my expenditure of the RM130 saffron that I no longer need) the paella DOES taste like paella. Only mine was a soggier version, and I think I was a wee bit greedy with the saffron and put three handfuls of it when the recipe only require one.

Main: Tray Baked Lemon Seabass (perfect lemony flavor and the right doneness with a nice flaky texture)
The Grilled Rosemary Australia Chilled Tenderloin didn’t manage to make it to the table as the guest called TIMEOUT. Oops, so we did overdo our portioning a little.