Big Bang Theory

I think one of the things that inspired me to experiment with cooking was when I saw Iking tasting the pasta sauce that he made, then he looked up to us and said: "It lacks oregano."


He said it with such precision. I wanted to be like that.

Secret hide out of best Roti Prata

Su, Ramon and I took a walk in Macritchie one morning, where we saw

monkeys

larger than life plants

After the 9-km trail, Su took me to Casuarina (136/138), where they allegedly served the best roti prata in Singapore.

I took Indian food with hesitation because the flavor manifested on me..

But as usual, Su did not disappoint. It was by far the best prata I've had, considering, however, that my selections were limited to Food Republic and Little India. Their prata was thick at the middle and crispy toward the end. I loved it.

She loved it, too =P

Casuarina

138 Casuarina Road

Singapore

Tel: 65 6455 9093

Frog legs

Jho, Nix and I were looking for the secret restaurant of superb beef noodles in Lorong 13 Geyland when we saw a shabby restaurant under a signboard that said FROG LEGS. We took an order and prepared ourselves for a whole new world.

You know how when you are something weird, and told yourself that it tasted like chicken? Well, this really did taste like chicken. It was like young spring chicken with its white flesh softly falling off its bones.

Clark arrived shortly after, and, famished from a day's work, he ate the rest our adventure.

Ravioli

Ravioli would be any another pasta if I got the cheater's Ravioli from Giant, so I made my own sauce from fresh tomatoes and kneaded my own pasta with flour. I kneaded for 3 hours and turned the kitchen tops white. My land lady came over to help out, then we did the baker technique of slamming huge balls of flour on the kitchen top!

The pasta sauce required that I heat the tomatoes till their skins broke. This made it easy peeling the skins out.

I forgot to separate the pieces of ravioli by putting olive oil in between them, so most of it lumped together. It was a disaster. No worries, I thought, I was the only one eating it.

=|

My land lord and land lady saw me working on it, so they suggested that we had it for dinner. THE HORROR. I tried to talk them out of it but they were insistent. My heart sank.

We had starch for dinner. =|

Marga's bday cake

I baked chocolate cake for my friend Marga's birthday (2.19.09). It was the thought that counted..!

This was as far as I went with the pictures because the icing did not turn out well.

Good enough to be eaten!

Sending my love across the miles.

Shepherd's pie

Chili con takes a while to cook because the spices need to seep in the beef and it needs a lot of work cause I had to stir constantly. I smelled like lemon and cumin, but I was a happy smelling lemon and cumin.

My land lady and I were supposed to make vegetarian Shepherd's pie the next day, but figured that we'll just have the Chili con as filing instead of a bag of red beans and mushroom slices. But it totally destroyed the concept of vegetarian Shepherd's pie.

We gorged, then I remembered that I needed proof of life.

She really thought it was yummy. Honest!

Ted's kare-kare

This entry was for dedicated to my good friend Ted who made cooking good food look suave and easy. While Ted taught me a couple of tricks (i.e.the secret substitute to vinegar and the secret hide out of Pinoy ingredients that is not from the overpriced Lucky Plaza), I strongly opposed his use of cheater's Mama Sita Kare-Kare mix. Ted, the cheaters who win are the ones that don't get caught. You cook delish food, and by the taste of that kare-kare, you didn't cook it.

I'm not a KK purist that chef I-King is, but my stuff aren't swimming in sodium!

As Iking advised, kare-kare should be a product of hard work - toasted and ground rice, toasted and ground peanuts, cooked in oxtail, genuine atsuete.


The sauce needed a lot of work, cause I can't seem to attain my grandpa's malaput one. This was grainy and darker cause I used brown rice. Figured it'll pull down the kare kare later? Haha.

It was not the best thing in the world, but I loved how I am now unshackled from Kabayan's oily kare kare.

Risotto

This was my first "team-up" with my land lady. The key to Risotto was the rice. The rest are the regulars.


We could not find real Risotto rice, so we had got the cheater's rice from an obscure Cold Storage in Tanjong Pagar. Although I preferred my food in fresh ingredients, this rendition turned out yummy because we added scallops (not pictured, cause when we added, then ate it immediately!).

The Food Family

Some easy stuff I made. So easy, that I made them all the time.

Brown rice salad. I am freed from Spinelli's superb brown rice salad

Tuna pasta sauce. I eat this too often I wouldn't be surprised if I grew fins.

Tuna spread. The fins, I tell you!

Fried eggplants

I recalled our helper slicing the eggplant and throwing it in for pan fry, but just to be sure that I was going to eat cooked stuff, I steamed it first for around ten minutes then threw it in the pan.

I drained mine of the moisture because I like my skins at its crispiest.

I ran out of sesame seeds so I used the greens lying around.

Su Ann's pesto

This was what jumpstarted the madness.

Sick of Subway sandwiches, Kopitiam and hawker food, I took control of my life by asking my friend Su for the easiest pasta recipe. Without batting an eyelash, she recommended Pesto. It only needed olive oil, garlic, basil, wheat pasta and then there you had your next meal.

I went over Ramon's, reigned over their huge and hardly used kitchen and turned my friends into my minions. They sliced, diced, crushed and drained. And then - the first batch.

Charles was the first to tread over unchartered territory, and when the pasta and the sauce settled in his taste buds, and he thoughtfully said, “It's ok...”

It sounded comforting at first, but then it hit me that I should not trust a guy who has never had Pesto.

I tasted it myself, and my first thought was, Earth, swallow me now. It tasted so much like garlic juice that it could have killed a vampire. Jho remedied the sauce by putting the rest of the olive oil and basil leaves in the blender (effectively, there was a bottle of olive oil within the sauce!), and then we came up with something more edible.

Behold - the first taste testers. The ones who dared.