Happy Valentine's Day: Me and My Steak!!

~My Beautiful Work~

Today's Menu: Roasted Vegetables, Spinach & Tomato Pasta, and Steak

Happy Valentine's Day, Everyone~~~

After a long day of sending out Anti-Valentine's threats to my fellow couples, I decided make myself a well deserved dinner. Cheers!! Glory to Anti-Valentine Federation!!! and Damn you stupid Lovers~~ Booooo~~~~

With the hate out of my system, it seems like this year's Valentine's rather depressing. Many of my friends aren't celebrating it or having trouble deciding what to do. Could this be the aftermath of last year's year-end massive break-up terror? It's a troubling time for people in love. Perhaps, the wedding heatwave in May will flourish those who seek love. Damn, I think I will have to attend those weddings by myself. Aaaaah that sucks.

This is Wiii-ly Wuwu reporting Live from Brownies-less Home

Chicken strip w/cheese filling and ZB pasta

This experimental recipe has been cooking in my mind for a while now. I decided to put it to test today.

Ingredient:
Zucchini: 1/3
Bacon: 1 strip
Chicken thigh: a few chunk? haha
Mozzarella Cheese: a few slice
Pasta of The Day: Fettuccine

I am still working on experimental procedure. I will post once I got something going.

For the chicken strips, I sliced chicken 1cm thick and sandwiched it with the cheese. I used egg and flour to stabilize the shape and seal in the flavor. I fried the chicken slightly and cook them in the oven.

For the pasta, I wanna go with something lighter. First, I stir-fried the garlic with the bacon. When the bacon is half cooked, I took the strip out and chop them into bacon bits for the color, and then throw them in with the sliced zucchini. I mix them well with the pasta and add salt and pepper to taste.

The soup of the day is French onion soup, accompany by a glass of white wine.

Shrimpy Mozzarella Pasta v1.2

Yesterday, I attempted to improve my mozzarella recipe by altering some of the ingredients and cooking order. The result was rather interesting. First, I tried to blend in the flour with hot water first and stirred into the melted butter. It didn't work out well. Once I mixed the flour with the hot butter, the flour formed little pieces of pastry-kind mixture instead of fusing with the butter. I decided to go back to the original plan with less flour, but, this time, I melted the cheese into the paste before adding milk. It was a big mistake. I don't know if I didn't have enough heat to fully melt the cheese or the cheese became little clumps(similar to first flour trial) due to the saturation. Tmd, I was rather pissed off. The sauce wasn't thick enough as well. Still need a lot of work.

With the disappointment aside, the new ingredients were quite pleasing. I decided to added 1 piece of bacon, and few slices of zucchini. First, I blasted the bacon, cut them into bits and throw them into my sauce. I used the remaining oil to cook my vegetable. Good pork fat really makes stuffs smell nice. However, my attempt to "grill" the vegetable did not work so well. Maybe I need a real grill. (cough, birthday gift? *pointing @ brownie master*) I definitely need one more pan just for the sauce. I find mixing everything at the end, makes it look kind of disgusting. :P It tasted good though. Anyways, I will post a picture next time if I manage to perfect it. I got my dish layout and camera all ready!!

Shrimpy Chicken Ravioli with white mozzarella sauce

This recipe came to realization as I wander between reality and the emerald dream. I have been experimenting with white sauce on several occasions, but I was unable to create something remotely close to an acceptable level. Hopefully, this attempt will result in something more favorable.


Ingredient: serving 1 person
Shrimp: 6 ~ 8
Red bell pepper: 1/4 ~ 1/2
Button mushroom: 1 ~ 2
Garlic: 1 clover
Salt: sprinkles
Dried Basil: sprinkles

Sauce:
Butter: 3cm of bar
Mozzarella: 2cm of bar ( they both come in a shape of bar block)
Flour: 2 tsp
Milk: 1/2 cup
Cognac: 1 tsp

Pasta:
Chicken Ravioli: amount of your liking
Olive Oil: 3 tsp
Salt: 2 tsp

Proposed Experimental Procedure:

1. Boil a pot of hot water and pour in the olive oil and salt. This is to keep the pasta from sticking to each other and an extra flavor. Cook it for about 5~10min, depending on the type of pasta. In this case, I cooked for the full 10 min.
2. While the pasta is cooking, melt the butter into a sauce pan with low heat. You don't want to burn the butter.
   
3. Slowly stir in the flour and keep stirring to make the paste look silky smooth
4. Time to add in Cognac, milk and mozzarella, slowly. The difference in the new addition will make the sauce kind of blocky. Same thing, you want to keep stirring until they melt with the sauce. sprinkle a little salt to your tasting.
   
5. Turn off heat and let it thickens.
6. Minced the garlic. Slice up the bell pepper and mushroom at size of your liking.
   
7. heat up the pan with cooking oil and medium heat. I have habit of overcooking my garlic. Once heated, throw in the garlic.
8. When the garlic looks brown, lower the heat and throw in the sliced bell pepper and stir it for a few min. It seems bell pepper requires a certain amount to burn away the raw smell and to bring out the natural sweetness.
   
9. Throw in mushroom and shrimp and sprinkles the ingredients with salts to your liking.
10. Pour in the drained pasta into the pan, and turn on the heat back up to medium to cook off the extra moisture. Sprinkles in the basil for extra flavor. Don't cook it for too long. 30sec should be ok.
    
11. Pour the sauce back into the pan and mix them well at low heat. That's it.

Result and Comment:

This time, the flavor of the creamy sauce turn out to be pretty nicely. Mozzarella really bring out its taste once heated, mild but savory. I was really surprised because I tried the cheese in its solid state and tasted like nothing. I wonder if I should have added more Cognac next time. I wasn't able to smell the fragrance of the Cognac. Aside from the flavor of the sauce, the texture of the sauce is still something that bugs me. I can still taste little sandy kind of texture in my cream sauce. Is it because I did not stir hard enough for the flour to fully blend in? or I am using the wrong type of flour? or should I use different type of medium to thicken the sauce?

Bell pepper turned out a lot better than my previous attempts. However, I was unable to bring out the same flavor as the roasted bell pepper I had at Antons. I wonder if I really have to roast the outside skin to have that kind of flavor.

I still need to work on the amount of my ingredients in a more detailed measurement. So far, I am working off a feeling. ha ha