Phad Thai noodles

Have been craving a little Thai food recently, hence, a trip to the Asian market saw me home with some rice stick noodles and pad thai sauce. As a poor student, I can hardly afford to buy fish sauce and tamarind paste separately to make my own phad thai sauce. Thus, I bought a pre made bottle of phad thai sauce to fry my noodles with. Delicious again as usual :)
I cooked bacon with eggs and some pork (marinated with charsiew) and while preparing, soaked my noodles in warm water for 15 mins till it was al dente. The next part was simply throwing everything together in the pan with a little water and noodles and sauce and taa dahhhh! A delicious thai noodle dish in less than 30 mins. Since it was so simple to cook, I would probably do it in days I'm famished. What was missing was ground roasted peanuts as a topping.

Say bye bye to restaurant food and hello to I-can-cook-my-own-restaurant-food-right-in-my-own-kitchen! :)

Theodora's Baked honeyed baby back ribs!

This was my first time baking ribs and even the logical me will say that this is definitely the best ribs I have ever eaten. Way better than what i usually get at BBQ express, bobby rubinos or even the horrible cafe cartel. I'm not sure if the portion of the meat contributed to the delicious-ness of this dish but everything fit well together. The meat was succulent and tender, the marinate was a perfect mix of natural sweetness of honey and salty flavor of the meat. I marinated the meat for 10 hrs in the fridge with honey, oyster sauce, soya sauce, dark sauce and lots of smashed garlic in the ratio 2:2:1:1:as many as you like respectively. I baked it in a pyrex dish, uncovered and it took me 45 mins at 200 degrees celcius. Half a slab was definitely not enough and I'd be cooking more of it in future!

I had some vegetables and egg as accompaniement, and the resulting texture was good as well. The crunchiness of the long beans fits very well, complementing the flavour of the meat.

The colour was perfect.

The caramelized honey gave the ribs the nice colour.

In it's full glory! The steam from the food made the picture look blurry.

A bag of bones, no rather, a plate full of the cleanest bones you can ever find. Compliments of a hungry diner - yours truly :)

Bee hoon and Oyster sauce pork

Been missing home so I decided to make some bee hoon! Simple and homely meal. I went to the Asian market and bought a pack of 500g bee hoon for SGD$4 (enough to cook 10 meals). I took 100g of marinated pork (Oyster sauce, soya sauce, onions, bellpepper, black pepper) and fried it first before adding in the noodles which I had soaked in warm water for 20 mins. I then added dark soy sauce, which I purchased from the Asian market today, to get the nice brown colour of the noodles. Preparation and cooking time was less than an hour, maybe about 30 mins. 15 mins to chop the onions and marinate meat and 15 mins to fry everything. Will cook this again some time soon.

I also bought char siew sauce, flat rice noodles (planning to cook phad thai), phad thai sauce, dark sauce and roti prata today from the Asian market. Restocked my supply of pork in the fridge and now I'm good to go! Char siew baked chicken wings and sunshine egg for tomorrow coming up! :)

Croque-monsieur or Honeyed sugar french toasts anyone?

So I got a little bored today with rice and decided I needed some bread! As always, I am a bread lover so I am always up for some toasts! This time around, it was simply Croque-monsieur, simple enough. It's basically just melted cheese and ham sandwich with a fancy french name. But, it never goes wrong. Just bake in the oven for 10 mins and you're good to go.

Next up, honeyed sugar french toast. I drenched my bread in a mix of honey, sugar, egg and milk and fried it for 1 min on each side. Had a delicious dinner :)

Finished with rye flakes and yoghurt and ice cream!

Oyster Soya fried Pork with onions and bell peppers

Ok, so this was another simple dish I prepared. Something like the sweet and sour pork, only this time with oyster and soya sauce. It tasted really good again. A hearty meal when eaten with steaming hot rice.

I've also taken to cooking simpler meals like bacon egg fried rice. This time, the rice I bought was a little sticky, like sushi rice, which I adore. I love rice whose grains are indiscernable, a little stuck together. So in the end, my fried rice was half glutinous rice with bacon and eggs. Yummy! It helped that I added a spoon of oyster sauce into the rice, and alot of dashes of flavoured pepper. You know what guys, my taste has become spoilt in Europe. I no longer like plain pepper. I love pepper with garlic and other kind of spices in it. It tastes so good! Ordinary pepper is boring now. You all should try getting it over at your side or I wouldn't mind sending some stuff over :)

I recently bought rye grain as well, a huge bag of it. Its very healthy, even better than muesli which has alot of sugar in it. Trying to lok for rye grain recipes since the bag is too big for me to eat all by myself. Thus far, I'm using it as a topping for ice cream and for yogurt as breakfast as well. Works better than nuts or chocolate or other topping because it is crunchy and healthy. So thats it, my dessert thus far has been yogurt with rye flakes and I love it.

More pictures will be posted next time when I cook an elaborate meal, though that will hardly be so since I have little time on my hands and only I am eating my meals unlike you guys. So continue posting what you all have cooked. I like my home cooked meals, it makes me feel healthier and happier. Bye bye cakes and pastries! :)

Bacon & Mushroom Aglio Olio with Bangers

Hey, I cooked dinner for Jason and I!

Here's my aglio olio, one of my favourite pasta because it is so easy to make and relatively healthy compared to the creamy ones. All you need is garlic, olive oil and dried chilli flakes.












Anyway, CNY is 3 weeks away. I'm thinking of making pineapple tarts again! And I don't mean to do this, but I went into JB yesterday and bought the arrowroot chips! Remember the one we bought last CNY when you went in with us? I bought love letters too! Heh. Been eating non-stop again! Can't wait to make my tarts. Hopefully it'll be as good as last yr's!

Will update soon! Do continue cooking! Don't slacken!

Baked Fish & Potato Salad

Hurray! Our first meal since the start of the blog!

We finally got down to cooking Theods!

We decided on fish and potato salad and I worked on looking for some recipes and viola! Everything was done in 10 minutes. We had all the ingredients at home, so we didn't have to spend on anything except for the Dijon mustard. We even had dory fillets at home, the frozen kinds though. But seriously, they taste just as good as the fresh ones, and definitely much cheaper!

For the grilled fish, Mom marinated it at home while I was in school. We left it in the fridge after marination for about 4hrs. We marinated the fish with minced garlic, olive oil, rosemary leaves & dill, salt and pepper to taste, and a few drops of lemon juice and lemon zest. It was marvelous! The flavours came out so well. It was really tasty and moist and the burst of flavours in your mouth was great! The herbs really make a difference! Before putting the fish in the oven, we added big onions on top of the fish.

Before it went into the oven





This is what it looks like out of the oven




We also made potato salad! The recipe called for mayonnaise, but I substituted sour cream for it since it is healthier. We boiled the potatoes, cut it into cubes. There were hard-boiled eggs too and we mashed it up with a fork. I then added dijon mustard, sour cream, salt and pepper and dill. You'll realise I love all these herbs! They make everything taste good instantly! I'm tempted to get lemon-pepper, garlic powder soon! Sounds good yeah! I mixed the eggs, creams and seasoning evenly before adding it into the potatoes. I chilled it for about an hour and before serving, we mixed some crumbled crisp bacon and tosted almond silvers. Ooooh, super good! I've never been much of a potato salad person, but I finished every bit of this!





Added a little cayenne pepper.



We also cooked up the last 2 portobello mushrooms that I had. We just stir-fried the big onions and bell pepper for a long time till it was sweet and fragrant and sweet, and then added in the mushrooms to fry a little while more.





Everything was really good!

This is our end-product. With a glass of white wine!







Mom & Dad looking satisfied! As usual, dad said it'd be better with soup & garlic bread. Tsk tsk! I buttered him a slice of brown walnut raisin bread after his meal.





We had fun cooking, and hope you're having fun cooking there in Sweden! I'm really glad we can share our cooking joys here on this blog. This is a really good idea! Keep the photos and posts coming!

We're thinking of cooking something Asian this week. We'll think about it again!

Lots of love from back home
Tabi, Mom & Dad

Honey Mustard Baked Chicken!

In the midst of marination. I used honey, soya sauce, mustard, onions and garlic to marinate the chicken for an hour. I sprinkled a dash of curry spice as well. After that, I baked it for an hour and a half while I spent 2/3 of that time cleaning the apartment and the rest, bathing.
One hour into the cooking. I stake the 3 chicken like a tepee, all propped up supporting each other. Sort of like how you use sticks to make a bon fire. The purpose was to allow them all to be evenly cooked, especially the skin. And also because I want the juice to drop into the middle and cook the onions.

The perfect chicken! This was the best meal I've ever had so far. It smelt so good, I'd recommend it to you to cook! The onions were so soft and it absorbed the natural flavour of the chicken and mustard and honey. The meat was so tender, drenched in the natural goodness of honey mustard.
I cooked long beans with egg as an additional side with my brown rice. What a fantastic meal. I'm only cooking once a day because I don't have time to plan 2 meals a day to cook. Notice how my dinner is getting later and later, not exactly a good plan. Last night's dinner was at 2030 and tonight was at 2130. Have got too many things to do I don't have time to eat at proper times but nonetheless, I am still exceptionally happy with this meal :)

Do cook it too and let me know how it turned out.

Some tips: The ratio to follow is 2 Honey: 1 Mustard: 2.5 Soya Sauce

I don't like to follow metric or whatever system. Especially because portions differ. Most importantly, ratios count. Remember, don't add too much honey. Chicken taste better salty than sweet. Plus, the onions are sweet. Make this dish and you will not regret it :)

By the way, you can replace chicken wings with chicken thigh and bake potatos or pumpkin in the sauce as well. The chicken wasn't dry because of the natural juice from the chicken.

Verdict: 9/10. The best dish so far!

Sweet & Sour Pork

Sweet and Sour pork with onions and bell pepper

I marinated the meat with soya sauce and garlic pepper then added half a bell pepper and half an onion. I later added some water into the pan and mixed it with sweet and sour sauce (packet) because I was too lazy to make my own sauce. Might try making my own next time though and adding pineapples, though it is too much of a hassle for one person. Everything was cooked without oil, proving that yes, it is possible to cook delicious food without oil. The initial start was quite dry because the pork was very lean and didn't ooze any natural oil, however, it helped that I used a lid to trap the steam and generate some moisture. The egg was cooked the same way, without any oil and it looks good and taste good as well! I felt good after eating so healthily! :) I ended the meal with a dessert again, strawberry yoghurt!

Our Christ*** Meal!

Here's our Christ*** meal Theods!

Lamb chops from a butcher. It was already marinated and mom grilled it. Super delish! The marinade was really good.

I bought ribs from BBQ Express coz we were afraid there wouldn't be enough food. We cooked 2 sausages too from the butcher!

I made my yummy salad that I just learnt! It's really wholesome and tasty, with my homemade dressing!

The yam slices were out of place. Mom just included that because she had some on hand.

And we had red wine to go with the meal!







No New Year's dinner pics because the pizza did not look too appealing, though they tasted good. Mom insisted on putting everything in the pizza, so although they were meant to be different flavours, they tasted almost the same because she put the same stuff! Haha!

Ok, will update again!

Healthy Eating Begins

Grilled Salmon with Caramelized onions and garlic.
Pardon the ugly shot but it tasted better than it looks. I used the frozen salmon I bought from the supermarket, marinated it with honey, garlic pepper and soy sauce with onions and garlic for 3 hours in the refrigerator. I was too lazy to bake it so I fried it (without oil) on a non-stick pan. The smell was great! But the mess on the pan afterwards from the honey wasn't that great, though it was easily cleared up. Simple and light :) I topped it later with yogurt muesli for dessert!












Minced chicken patty with hamburger buns .

I never liked chicken in a patty and would probably not use chicken again. The taste of chicken is so boring, the texture is too similar. Think beef is definitely a better choice. I used chicken instead because I had it in my fridge and wanted some bread for lunch. Topped it with emmental cheese, sorry, no veggies! Oh, and because the raw patty was so sticky to my hand, I had to coat it with flour before frying 9without oil again)!

Going to try sweet and sour pork for dinner, look out for it!

Let's get started!

Hey Theods!

I've started this blog for our discovery into cooking!

I came up with a random blog address. We can change it if we think of a nicer one!

Saw your message on FB! So you cooked huh! Did you take pictures? If you did, you can get started by posting your pictures here!

Let's make this a success and motivate each other to look for healthier food options!

XOXO
Tabi