My First Lentil Soup

The fast inspired me to try out new recipes that I don’t normally do in my cooking experiments. This lentil soup was heaven-sent. Found this on http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/lively-up-yourself-lentil-soup-recipe.html. Its my first lentil soup ever made! Very easy & pretty fast! I made some modifications to the original recipe. Here’s my adaption.

Ingredients:
2 cups black beluga lentils (or green French lentils), picked over and rinsed
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
2 cup water (or vegetable broth which you can buy pre-packed organic vegetable broth or make your own)
3 cups of a big leafy green (chard, kale, etc), rinsed well, deveined, finely chopped
a pinch of saffron (30-40 threads)
4-5 bay leaves
3 red potatoes, chopped into cubes

To make vegetable broth:
1 bunch of celery
2 sweet corn, chopped
4 carrots, peeled
2 yellow onions, peeled
12 cups of water

Bring the water to a boil in a large pot. Add the vegetables into the pot. Once the water boils again, reduce the fire to small-medium. Cook for an hour at least till the water reduces in half. You can prepare the broth in advance and refrigerate for use later.

To make the soup:
Bring 6 cups of water to a boil in a large saucepan, add the lentil, and cook for 20 minutes, or until tender. Drain and set aside.

Heat the oil in a heavy soup pot over medium heat, then add the onion, salt, saffron and bay leaves and saute until tender, a couple minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, lentils, potatoes and soup broth (amount depending on how thick & hearty you want) and continue cooking for a few more minutes, letting the soup come back up to a simmer. Stir in the chopped greens, and wait another minute. Taste and adjust the seasoning if need be. Ladle into bowls and serve with bread.

Vogue’s 8 Steps to Hamburger Perfection

Columnist Jeffrey Steingarten attached his obsessive, fertile food brain to the hamburger in this month’s Vogue magazine, and the results were mouthwateringly insane. Since Vogue doesn’t put Steingarten’s pieces online, I am going to share his findings.

Nearly Universal Truths
Some of these AHT readers know well (but I digress):

1. Chill Out: “Before grinding chunks of beef, before forming a hamburger, and before cooking a hamburger, make sure that the beef is ice cold. Otherwise, the fat may melt and separate from the lean.”

2. Grind or Else: Steingarten concludes you must either grind your own meat or have a trusted butcher grind it for you, for reasons of taste and safety (or, perish the thought, be sentenced to a life of consuming well-done burgers). “Never buy supermarket ground beef unless the butcher there grinds it specially for you.” He explains in painstaking detail all of the ways supermarket ground beef can be contaminated. His solution, if you have any questions about the chopped meat you’ve just bought: “Drop the meat into a pot of boiling water for a minute, fish it out, and pat it dry. Yes, it’ll turn gray, but only on the outside, and this will get ground into the rest of the meat and vanish.”

3. Fluff that Stuff: “When forming a hamburger, don’t compress the meat. The fluffier, the better. A raw burger should be airy and full of tiny holes that can hold the juices released during cooking, when the fat melts and water is squeezed out from between the proteins.”

Steingarten quotes Harold McGee on this issue: “The gently gathered ground beef in a good hamburger has a delicate quality quite unlike even a tender steak.” Steingarten decides that one of the many reasons much of his hamburger experiments had gone awry is that “I don’t think I had ever gently gathered!”

4. Just Add Water: Adding the liquid is literally the secret sauce that will make any burger sing. Here is Steingarten’s eureka hamburger moment. Forty-eight hours before the Vogue article was due, he discovers that adding a tablespoon and a half of liquid to the ground meat immeasurably improved the burger. He tried cream and water, and they both produced a superior, succulent, juicy, crumbly (which, Steingarten discovered, is a good thing) burger.

5. Season Well: “Don’t salt hamburger meat either before or after it is ground. Just before you cook the burger, liberally sprinkle salt on both sides of each patty, and press it lightly. After they’re cooked, sprinkle with freshly ground pepper.”

6. Flip Side: Searching for the proper and most delicious burger-cooking technique, Steingarten ends up asking for advice from Kyle Connaughton, the head chef of development at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck in England. Connaughton follows Harold McGee’s finding that if you flip a burger or a steak every fifteen to 30 seconds, the outside surface will get nicely browned while the inside stays relatively cool.

7. No Pressure: “While cooking your hamburger never press down on the patty with your spatula or with anything else.” An esteemed New York City chef, Lee Hanson, of Balthazar, Pastis, and Schiller’s Liquor Bar, further advises Steingarten that broiling from above is much less likely to dry out the burger.

8. Buns and Brains: In searching for the perfect bun, Steingarten notes that “An article in Cook’s Illustrated said the best hamburger buns are Pepperidge Farm’s Farmhouse Sandwich Rolls (not the company’s classic hamburger buns). He tries them and finds them to his liking, though he says “they do need to be compressed a bit before using.” He does not tell us if he has found a hamburger bun compressor, though I am sure if I had 15 minutes to go through his kitchen, I would find a reasonable facsimile.

Steingarten on Hamburger Greatness
What do we demand of the perfect hamburger? That the meat patty be profoundly beefy in flavor, mouthwateringly browned on the outside, and succulent (a combination of juicy and tender) on the inside. The bread or bun should not interfere with any of these virtues. It should be soft, mild, and unassertive; its job is to absorb every last drop of savory juice trickling from the meat while keeping the burger more or less in one piece and your hands dry. Mouthwatering, beefy, juicy, and tender–not too much to ask from life, but entirely elusive, at least to me. It’s not as though I haven’t tried. God knows, I’ve tried.

The Daily Grind
Steingarten discovers that most of New York City’s great hamburgers are made with a blend of chuck (specifically the chuck flap) and brisket. Some chefs ask that short rib or hanger steak be thrown in. [Editor's note: I had a very tasty burger last night at a new New York restaurant, Shorty's 32 made with hanger steak, short rib, and brisket. It had tremendous beefy flavor. With a better sear it would have been a top 3 New York burger.]

Steingarten tries to develop his own signature blend. A Waring blender is destroyed in the process. He fails, so in his words, he decides to “forge somebody else’s signature.”

Jeffrey’s forged signature blend is two parts chuck, two parts boneless short rib, and one part brisket. He notes that “fat is extremely important to excellence in the hamburger arts because most of the beefy flavor in beef is in the fat.” (Who knew the lowly hamburger had arts associated with it?)

Tetsuya’s

S told me about this restaurant years ago.

Known for its degustation set menu that changes frequently. A typical meal could start with a plate of hors d’oeuvres — a gazpacho with spiced tomato sorbet, west Australian marron with asparagus and truffle mayonnaise, tartare of tuna with fresh wasabi, marinated fillet of trevally with preserved lemon set on sushi rice and tataki of venison with rosemary and honey. Tetsuya’s signature dish follows, confit of ocean trout served with unpasteurised ocean trout roe, followed by double cooked de-boned spatchcock with braised daikon and bread sauce, followed by a grilled fillet of grain fed beef with sansho & shiitake mushrooms.

To dine here, you have to book about 6 months in advance!
Lately, the restaurant has been on my mind.
Next year. I’ll be in sydney.

“Tetsuya is part of an elite group of international chefs that has influenced other chefs through their personal styles and unique approaches to food. His culinary philosophy centres on pure, clean flavours that are decisive, yet completely refined. His amazing technique, Asian heritage, sincere humility, worldwide travels and insatiable curiosity combine to create incredible, soulful dishes that exude passion in every bite.” Charlie Trotter.

Boccone Dolce (Sweet Mouthful)

My favourite dessert is the Boccone Dolce
First tasted it at Papa Haydn in Portland
And love it ever since
Finally got hold of the recipe

Its not difficult
But time consuming
the meringue takes 2.5 hours to bake

Turned out pretty good
Eventhough i overwhipped the cream
And made it too wet
Also a bit sweet i thought
But the rest disagreed
Not a single bit was left

@ the House

A bunch of us celebrated J’s birthday at the House a few weeks’ back.
its at Dempsey Hill, one of newest joint on the block with a ‘touch’.
While we were having our lunch, 2 massaeus came in to give a 5 min teaser.
The waiters/waitresses looked like they just came out of school
And the dessert was served in an army food box.

The food is pretty good i must say, though the place will not be one that i will frequently visit.

Baked olive rice

To make the stock:
1 cup fresh milk
1 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup plain yoghurt
1/2 cup finely chopped black olive (can)
4 shallots
2 garlic
3 tablespoon of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper

Fry black olive with chopped shallots and garlic with olive oil. Add fresh milk, chicken stock, yoghurt, salt and pepper.
Once the stock comes to boil, take it off the stove.

To make the rice:
3 cups of long grain indian pastrami rice

Soak in water for 1/2 hour. Drain well.
Put in baking pan and pour the stock into rice.
Cover with aluminium foil and baked in oven at 200 degrees (preheated oven) for 20 minutes. Bring down temperature to 120 degrees and continue to bake for 10 mins.
Take out the pan from the oven but leave aluminium foil covered for 10 mins.
Serve with panfried salmon with alfredo sauce, rosemary chicken, black pepper beef or any meat of your choice.

going french

Lately, i have been reading up on french cooking. One of the books i definitely want to get my hands on is ‘The French Laundry’ Cookbook. This is a compilation of over 150 recipes of Thomas Keller, one of America’s finest chefs.

Avocado shake

I tried this at a vietnamese restaurant and love it. It costs $6 per glass. Decided to try it at home and it worked! Also brings back good memories of Karma cafe at Portland where they serve the yummiest avocado smoothie with bubbles.

1 avocado (ripe)
2 tablespoons of honey (according to taste)
1 cup fresh milk
ice-cubes (1 glass or according to the thickness you want)

Mix the avocado, honey, milk and ice-cubes in a juice blender till smooth.
Pour it out to serve.

Rosemary chicken

This is one of my dad’s best recipes. I had it since i was a kid and its my comfort food when i was in Melbourne. I can’t tell you the measurement coz’ its all according to taste. You just have to try it and modify the quantity according to what you like.

The marinate:
1 can of tomato puree
Honey
Oyster sauce
Sweet chilli sauce
Olive oil
Rosemary leaves (fresh or dried, McCormick brand will do)
Roast chicken seasoning (McCormick brand)
Salt
Black course pepper

4 boneless maryland chicken thigh
Small shallots, peeled and smashed

Marinate the chicken with the sauce and leave it in the fridge overnight.
Lay it out on a roasting pan and add the shallots.
Roast in the oven at 160 degrees for 50 mins, till the skin is brown.
Serve with baked potatoes or mashed potatoes and salad/cooked vegetables.

Bread & Butter pudding

half an unsliced white loaf
butter for spreading 

brown sugar 

1/2 pint milk, full fat is nicest 

dried fruit or other soft fruit (fig, sultanas or bananas)

pinch of ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg

An oven proof dish/casserole 



Slice the bread into 3/4 inch thick slices and remove the crusts. Butter the slices all over, both sides and line the dish
Sprinkle over the dried fruit or other fruits. Sprinkle some brown sugar over that and add a cover of more buttered bread, covering all the fruit. Pierce the bread a few times and then slowly pour over the milk, letting it all soak into the bread before adding more. When the bread is really sopping with milk sprinkle more sugar over the top and then a little cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Bake in a low oven, approx 140 c, 275 f, gm 1 for a couple of hours until it rises up and the sugar caramelize s on top.


Serve hot with ice cream or cold with custard