It seems every other day I'll try cooking. Just because~

Today I tried my hand at Bavarian bread dumplings and beef goulash, with maple rice pudding as dessert. The bread dumplings and beef goulash were an astounding success with all four of us. The maple rice pudding will be death of me. T_T"

Clockwise from above right: garlic bread, bread dumplings, beef goulash and leftover schnitzel.

The bread dumplings taste like a cross between pau and bread, and the ones I made were soft and smelled good. Not sure how it's really supposed to be, but -hey- it tastes a-okay to me!

The cross-section of the bread dumpling. Looks like I didn't add enough parsley in.

The beef goulash was soooo good... I couldn't use the red wine the suggested in the recipe, so I replaced it with grape juice+vinegar, and it worked just to perfection. The meat was soft and easy to chew, which could have been down more to the hour and a half stewing and not specifically to my cooking expertise, but if it tastes good, who cares?

Maple rice pudding... now that was a disappointment if I ever saw/ made/ tasted one. It wasn't as simple as the recipe made it out to be. After double boiling for 35 minutes as instructed, the rice was uncooked and crunchy still, so I kept adding in more and more milk till I was sick of adding milk. One hour after double boiling started, it still wasn't done. And I didn't want to make it even more fattening than it already was by adding in MORE milk (albeit low-fat). In the end I added hot water and microwaved on high a few times at 2 minute intervals. I couldn't be bothered to cover with plastic to stop film from forming over the rice pudding, so it became a little more glutinous-y than I think it's supposed to be. It also tasted a little bland, which could be because I used pancake syrup (only 2% maple syrup) and not pure maple syrup. Hmm. I suppose this whole thing is a learning process after all.

The maple rice pudding, bless it's heart.

It tasted bland and okay, but a little is more than enough for me. I still have more than half the original dish left. :( btw, those are cranberries and raisins. Just in case you thought they were roaches infesting my horrible cooking.

I also re-heated leftover spaetzle (egg noodles) and mushroom gravy from two days ago. But the Bavarian bread dumplings and beef goulash were so filling, I was the only one who ended up eating these poor has-beens. Tasted great still though.

You poor dears.

Okay. So ends today's cooking adventure. I shopped at NTUC a while before beginning the cooking at 2PM. I ended around 7 because of them bloody rice pudding. The goulash and dumplings were actually already done by 5, but the rice pudding took soooooo long...

I don't really care that the pictures really don't look a treat haha. It's only to remind FutureFina how her cooking used to look. By the future (hopefully) she'll have improved and can look back and laugh at her former follies. And anyway, I'm not much of a photographer. I'm a Jack, not a master.

t-N-oodles!

p.s. I wasn't lying when I said the goulash was deeevine. Shall use that recipe again soon!

So, in the end, on Wednesday the 19th of May 2010, I decided not to make all those potato/ bread dumplings or goulash.

I thought long and hard about it, and since I thought the above wouldn't taste good without goulash, which I didn't feel like making, I decided only after arriving at NTUC that I'd make schnitzel and spaetzle!

They sound like such a pair, don't they? Spaetzle is basically German egg noodles, short fat and Twisties-looking. They smell really like Roti Jala (which I adore), and taste a little like spaghetti except more flavourful. Below is an example I didn't make:

And since most of the recipes say spaetzle goes with schnitzel, I decided I'd try making chicken schnitzel too. I made mushroom gravy to eat with the spaetzle just in case it tasted too bland or something.

They don't look at all appetizing from the low-res cam phone picture, but they mostly tasted quite good! The surprise was how long it took to make the spaetzle (which has a pretty easy recipe) compared to the other two. The mushroom gravy took 30 minutes to simmer after all the ingredients had been added, and I was perplexed by why the recipe said to add flour to a dry-ish pan of dehydrated mushrooms. But boiling the spaetzle... it took me quite long, because of the difficulty in using a modified roti-jala colander to make them into noodles. I had to hang my arm over the pot of boiling water (they're boiled, so they're healthy = yay!) for almost a half hour waiting for the flour egg mixture to drip into the pot. I washed my colander-wielding arm every 5 minutes so it wouldn't get too hot. And the noodles didn't turn out pretty either. But they did smell and taste good. Leftovers can be sauteed in butter the next day, and they'll still taste as good.

Chicken schnitzel was simpler to make in terms of method. Salt and pepper, flour, dip in egg, smother in parmesan-breadcrumbs-seasoning mix, and then just fry over low heat in butter. No need for mixing, no flour, no weird put-together utensils. Crispy, tender, and tasty. Yumm.

Now, I never claim to be a good cook, because I'm so accident prone and I cook without thinking about the actual flavours. I guess I'm just good with following recipe instructions. At least I get to eat excitingly! Recipes can sometimes lead you down the wrong path - something my family learned today when the mushroom gravy turned out to salty. The recipe just said "salt and pepper to taste". I'd used chicken stock to make the broth before seasoning, but how was I to know that chicken stock was already so salty?! I'd never used it before :S And so I added a quarter teaspoon of salt to already salty gravy. Presto! Over salty mushroom gravy, which remained that way even after adding so much water. Hopefully it'll taste better tomorrow when I re-heat with more water and potatoes to absorb the saltiness. Also, I used Swiss brown mushrooms instead of white button or portobello just because it was browner than the button ones and cheaper than the protobellos. It tasted fine in the gravy, but I'm guessing picking the cheaper or prettier variety may not work out for all other recipes. So research and experience (which I sorely lack) is important! Must take note, must take note...

Okay, so ends my cooking adventure for today. Stayed in the kitchen for over 3 hours making these things, but the meal was good and filling. I was alone the entire cooking process, hence the little mishaps, but thank goodness my mum helped a little by boiling broccoli and carrots to complement the schnitzel and spaetzle. Added a little bit of "healthy" to today's dinner.

Friday: Bavarian bread dumplings next! Maybe with beef goulash...

Sweet talk.

Ooooh by the way, Jay released a new video, which has him smiling more. Freaking adorable! I really liked when he sang "Watcha Say", which is the second song. And he announced that he has a twitter now! So we can send him suggestions for his fanclub name, and he'll personally call up the person who suggests the best name.

T.T I know I don't stand a chance. I'm crying on the inside at the idea that some other huge Jay fan will hear him speak honeyed words into her ear (even if it's via telephone bits). Howwwwww unfair is this world? (Follow him at: https://twitter.com/JAYBUMAOM)

and without further ado, here's Jay in all his glory and cute dorkiness!

sigh.

Joyride.

It's been a loooong time since I've ventured into the ghost town known as my blog. And the past few times were laughable attempts at a conversation with myself. I've had better luck self-conversing through twitter, but sometimes I suppose I miss the ability to word-vomit and not worry about having to have understandable yet entertaining one-liners. I'm too lazy to be creative at twittering. So voila! I'm back in the old blogosphere, attempting to explain my activities of the past month to my future self re-reading my thoughts.

Since exams have ended, I have been learning more and more about myself. I have gone through exam hell, extreme elation that exams were extinguished, pure self-indulgence, and non-repentance.

Right now I'm still at the pure self-indulgence stage. Exams have been done almost three weeks now, but I'm nowhere near tired of staying at home. There's driving to learn, comics to read, shows to watch, knitting to do, household chores to finish... I'm just not done with my holiday. Which explains why I'm kinda leaning towards passive job-looking. Meaning I don't look for ads, don't actively send out resumes. If I find one, then it's by total chance. If I don't find one, then -hey- all the more fun for me.

My only problem is that the activities I get up to are not doing me any good physically. I'm cooking more nowadays, but my only motivation to cook and bake more is so I can eat! I don't remotely enjoy the act of cooking itself, I just enjoy the fact that I get to eat recipes that I can't find anywhere in Singapore, and that nobody will make for me. Like rice cakes, and the meatier variation I made, and minced meat patties, and peanut butter-nutella brownies (which, I'm sad to report, are down to the last 3 pieces. I may decide to have a farewell, savouring ceremony tomorrow in the presence of milk). Tomorrow for breakfast I'm also planning on making rice griddle cakes, wherein the rice is cooked in milk and honey first, and for the main meals either German potato dumplings called kartoffelkloesse, Bavarian bread dumplings called semmeknoedel, or German egg noodles called spaetzle. What a mouthful. I hope they taste great. But that's the thing. I cook so I can indulge. T_T I've created a monster!

One thing I'm sure of: this phase will eventually pass. Just like how the K-Pop cloud is actually leaving me a little behind, and romance novels have lost their glitter, and swimming has become so troublesome (not pleased to report that I completely stopped swimming since the time I got sick THREE months ago. Completely lost my momentum, and it's a lonely affair anyway).

Random weird fact: in my head I'm dictating my thoughts to my fingertips in a pseudo British accent. Can't say whether it sound believable or not, because it all comes out garbled the soonest I open my mouth to try speak the words. So for now I'm content to let it simmer inside my skull. Bubble bubble bubble.

dot . dot . dot .

Went to the zoo last friday with B.L.U.E. Marx! (Consisting of Pat, Aishah, Mel and me. Duh! We're like, only the most famous people in the solar system!) Superduperbananalicious fun. I will type out the "Friends-of-BLUE-Marx" post soon! Just... let me finish procrastinating?

And then on Sunday I had a picnic at East Coast with my lovelies Syaz and Diana! We had packed Nasi Sambal Goreng which was omgosh-so-good brought by Syaz, some of the meaty rice cakes, and some brownies. And of course, Sprite. Had fun despite (or maybe because) of the little drizzle that persisted our last half-an-hour there.

Then I had to zoom-zoom off early (sorry guys) to a family gathering at Sakunthala, 20-odd people altogether including my grandma who seldom goes out to eat with us. If you'll look at the tagged photos of me on Facebook, you'll see several unglam pictures of me eating and sulking and whatnot. I'm so over being embarassed by them. I'm just an unglam person, period. I've made my peace with it. Though I have to say the Khulfi or North Indian ice cream that I was wolfing down unglamorously, was laced with pure silver which, while not contributing to the taste at all, made me feel like I was eating MAGIC! Sorry, my exaggerating mode got accidentally switched on. It tasted of nothingness, the ice-cream was okay, but at least it looked good.

Now I shall end my word vomit. I think I went too overkill on the amount of parenthesis and extra, unnecessary descriptions. Oh well. It's the little British voice in my head that keeps egging me on. It actually sounds a little like an old English grandma. Or a Cockney tranny. I shall add this to my old Texan grandma repertoire of accents. Cool. American and Continental. I shall next learn how to think in the Hong Kong tai tai voice! ... Shh... I could literally hear myself losing that British voice. Now I'm thinking Singaporean again. Makes a noticeable difference in the way I type, doesn't it?

Better end now before it comes back, annoying old bat. Ohmygosh, I feel it creeping on me!...

fina.