Cookies

I baked some cookies today, not quite satisfied with the way they turned out (despite the nice visual). Chocolate chips and walnuts, as usual. I found them tastier accompanied by a cup of matcha milk.

Army of cookies

Sweet and Sour

A sweet and sour tomato sauce I made today to eat with fresh white bread from the bakery. I looked up a couple of things online, then went by instinct ^^.

Sorry for the bad quality. iPad camera
just doesn't work as well as a Canon.

Ingredients:
- Sugar
- Water
- 1 can peeled tomatoes
- rice vinegar (I find it less strong than regular vinegar, and it matches the flavor better as well)
- Snap beans (I had to use it up, so... traditionally, green bell-peppers and pineapples are used)
- Cornstarch or potato starch (I used potato starch)
- Salt, to taste

Procedure:
1. Boil/steam the snap beans.
2. Mix sugar and water and heat until dissolved.
3. Add in the tomatoes. For better results, squeeze the tomatoes or crush them so there aren't too many "lumps."
4. Add a little vinegar.
5. Mix the starch with a little water. Add in and stir. If using potato starch don't let it boil.
6. Taste test and add flavor as needed (I went for a bit more sweet)
7. Add in the veggies.
8. Enjoy with rice, or like me, on bread ^^

Celery casserole

Sept 16, 2012

Original recipe
The recipe below is my own tweaking. I didn't have time to measure everything out, and I didn't have all the ingredients. Also, my cousin and I aren't too fond of bell pepper, nor do we eat spicy food. I just had quite a bit of celery left (for 2 people) and I needed to make something or it would've gone bad.

Ingredients (2 servings):
- 4 branches celery
- 1 carrot
- 2 mushrooms (more would've tasted better ^^")
- cooking cream
- shredded cheese
- butter
- 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
- salt/sugar to taste
- olive oil

1. Cut celery in thin slices. Dice the carrot.
2. Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan. Lightly sauté the carrots. Once near tender, add in celery until soft.
3. Add cream, then diced mushrooms. Add cheese and stir until melted.
4. Pour into pan/baking dish.
5. Soften some butter (I had about a tsp size lump), and mix with the breadcrumbs. Spread over the casserole filling.
6. Bake at 175°C for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown on top.

I didn't have much expectations for this dish, but it turned out pretty good, nice and creamy. I most likely will do it again, though with different vegetables.

Enjoy~

Potato salad~

Sept 16, 2012

- Potatoes

- Carrot

- Celery (green celery makes it prettier, but I only had white)

- Lemon

- Salt, pepper

Dice the veggies. Boil the potatoes. Slightly cook the carrots until they aren't raw, but they aren't soft either. If you want to, do the same with the celery.

Mix everything together, add salt and pepper to taste.

My proportions:

3 medium potatoes + 1 carrot + ~1 branch celery + 1 lemon

Cookies and Cheesecakes

Cookies~
Baked on Sept 1st, 2012. Chocolate chips and walnuts.

Cheesecakes~
Sept 9, 2012

~Red Clock cheesecake~
**Rose and raspberry** Strawberry decorations with my cousin's help (center strawberry).

~Peach cheesecake~
**Vanilla peach** Center lemon and strawberry with my cousin's help once again.

The peach one was too dry because not only was the topping just fruits, so not much juiciness/fruit sauce like usually, but by my cousin's urging, I tried to brown the top of the cheesecake a little, but it didn't really work out...

The two cakes together:

And packed together with another cousin's banana cake as packed leftovers for yet another cousin to bring home ^_^

Random onigiri

Filled with vegetarian soy fluff. Topped with roasted white sesame. Too bad I couldn't get my hands on some nori (seaweed), it looks a little bare. Otherwise, the best shaped onigiri I've made so far. And the first (or second) in which I actually mixed the rice vinegar stuff into the rice.

Onigiri = rice ball.

One bite

We had bread, cheese, nuts, celery, and fruits for dinner the other day, and I randomly added a slice of grape on top of my gorgonzola. I'd already cut the bread into 16ths.

It was delicious~

Tiramisu v.2 and 3

Here are the tiramisus I made, using the same recipe as last time's.

Instead of putting it in cups, I just made a pan of it. I used a bigger pan than planned for, so the actual pieces were super thin.

This one I made while at an apartment near the sea. I had forgotten to bring chocolate powder, so I took a couple of speculoos cookies and crumbled that to sprinkle on top.

Here it is, served with an additional speculoos for decorative purposes.

Soup and Tofu

I made lunch today, for a bunch of people (we were 7 around the table).

Potato Soup:
This was based on a soup one of my teachers used to make which was delicious. However, I didn't have the recipe, and tried making it from memory... there wasn't enough potato, and there was too much spices.

Since it wasn't quite there yet, I won't post up the recipe.

Sweet and Sour Tofu:

I tried imitating my aunt's tofu. Again, not quite there yet. My cousin helped me a lot.

Italian

A pasta salad I made because I went on a trip where there wasn't much vegetarian food available, so I brought my own. Simply penne pasta, eggplants, fresh spinach, feta cheese, with a side of tomatoes and kidney beans. The dressing is homemade, with mustard, salt, sugar, pepper, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.

Then today, my aunt made homemade pizza ^^

The trick for the aromatic oil (much like those found in restaurants). The first time I made the oil, it wasn't very spicy. Actually it barely was. So this time around, I took a certain amount of oil, and crushed dried chillies into it. I also added some dried-up rosemary, but it wasn't very fragrant. Covered it and left it to marinate for over a week, then strained the oil into the bottle. So this oil was spicy, but not too much.

I also recommend keeping a branch of rosemary whole, and stuffing it into the bottle for decorative purposes. Mine isn't very pretty, because the only rosemary I had was half-dead and dried up. But it still serves its purpose.