Cook.Core

I just finished making myself noodles and diced chicken in a sweet and sour sauce and tomorrow I'm making a coffee cake for my girlfriend. And good man, curry is the best ever. You could also try one of my mums ideas involving fajita wraps, diced chicken, lettuce and a sauce combining mayonnaise and cranberry - it's awesome.

i try to only eat what scooby suggests:

Haha I watch scooby too, he's awesome.

I'm planning on cooking some Ruby Pork chops tonight, if i can be bothered to go and buy the stuff i need .

lately i've been making a good soup. a curry cream with good amounts of black pepper. while warming/mixing the soup, fry some shrimps and or fish. mix and eat.

also, steamed-then-fried chicken with fried wok vegetables or fried aubergine is nice. the tenderness of the meat is like, perfect.

had roulade today. 24h of cooking to get it top notch delicate. filled with tomato mark, mustard and some mixed stuff. potatoes cooked, pealed and oven dried and green beans in tomato-basilicum cooked. use the roulade water to extract some sauce with pepper and fried onion extracts. served with carrot-salad, refined with an apple per pound carrots and citron-sugar sauce (no mayonaise, ruins the lightness of the salad). for desert: vanilla pudding with melted chocolate couverture and pears in sugar-water bedded. wiener herrentorte (marzipan layers, vanilla-wine-cream layers and fine sliced cake batter bottom, all wrapped in chocolate coating) as cake...

i got to admit my father did most of the cooking though, he's a born kitchen chief... it's a good change to the usual university kitchen or the 15 minutes pizzas. it's good fun to work in the kitchen with friends and family but cooking for yourself only is not very satisfying...

last night I made some of my owner-lasagna =)

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Chilli is on the books tonight

I make what I have money for Today that was toast with just cheese and some tomato beans. Probably the same tomorrow

But I enjoy making pizza, it's so perfect since you can marinate the meat in whatever way suits you, so you can basically have pizza all week and never have the same kinda meat. Besides, if you buy finished bottoms, it's real quick.

Also, chicken wrapped in bacon is lovely. Can't remember what I have on the side, but whatever that mixes with chicken is ok (which is everything).

don't you get all your eating at the army or have you quit there?

Quote from e-freak

don't you get all your eating at the army or have you quit there?

Finished in December, so now I live alone. And my student loan haven't arrived yet

Hmm let's see, lately for me it's been egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam; spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam...

...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.

I usually go for dishes I can make in woks or sauter pans (which is practically everything if you're creative, really), namely thai food and lately, since it's winter, some wok sliced beef with root vegetables in a nice chili oil (sunflower oil with whole chilies in it to extract the flavour. Can use other kinds of oil too, but I prefer this one). The great thing about doing thai curry dishes is you have a lot of different options and choice of vegetables at your disposal, ranging from different kinds of curry paste, with or without coconut milk, different kinds of shrimps (I prefer black tiger prawns) as well as different vegetables and even fruits depending on the overall feeling of the dish. I've had luck doing it with different kinds of meat too, but personally, I don't find pork goes very well with the curry. Chicken is great though, if you want to keep it on a more affordable level.

The traditional I do is 2-3 tablespoons of red or green curry paste, wok sliced beef, tiger prawns, asparagus, mini corncobs, mushrooms, sugar snaps, some oyster or fish sauce, depending on your preference and anywhere between 3-10 chopped chillies, depending on how spicy you want it to be. You also need some rice.

When preparing the tiger prawns, take off their shell, cut them up on the back so they curl and you don't get that black string of shit they sometimes carry around, remember to rinse them with water. Don't cut all the way through, halfway through is more than enough and will make them look nicer.

First you set over the rice, for obvious reasons. If you don't know how to cook rice either learn how, or use the ones in cooking bags.

Usually, I go with frying the curry paste first, then when it's caramellized, add the prawns prepared as stated above, let them soak it in and curl up. They're gonna end up being realy delicious and full of taste that way. Then you add the beef along with some oyster oil. If you like, you can add a bit of soy too. Add some spices of your choice. I usually go with some powdered or whole chili, coriander, ginger, cayenne pepper, NO SALT, let the sauce and soy take care of that and sometimes powdered garlic too, if you're into that sort of thing.

When the beef starts becoming semi-rare, I usually add the chillies first, then the vegetables. Make sure you shift it around a bit in the wok to let the thick sauce get around and soak up a bit. Then, when it's nearing completion, add a teaspoon of sugar to sweeten the dish a bit and add contrast to the spicyness (And you'll need it, but believe me, those sugar snaps do a great job too). Whatever you do, don't mix the rice and main dish if you went with the more spicy variant. Once the rice soaks up the sauce you're lost, since you need the rice to contrast the spicyness. So serve the wok dish on a plate, with a side bowl (or plate in lack of better) with rice.

If you like, you can take a good red wine to it, too. I usually go with a cheap, but good Ripasso from the valpolicella district in Italy or a cabernet sauvignon, either from Chile or Australia to complement the meat.

I really do a lot of other cooking too, but this is what I do best If you're having a girl over, you might want to cut down on the curry paste to perhaps a third of what you're using, as well as only add a single or two chillies to the dish. And make sure she likes spicy food. It's a dish that's full of flavour, it looks good since it has a lot of colour and if you serve it with a good wine, it just tops it off as downright delicious. If you like fruit in your dishes you can add things like mangoes to it. Avoid things like pineapples and citrus fruits, since they can ruin the taste and they tend to soak up all the sauce, leaving you with nigh-inedible fruits. Also, their citric contents don't go well with the curry. Another nice addition would be using whole ginger. Experiment as you please

For two people I'd use about 4-500g of meat, rice to match and maybe 10-15 prawns. Of the vegetables, I usually make a rather even distribution of everything. You can leave it frying at a high temperature to get a small amount of sauce (gives it a cleaner look on the plate, usually), or you can turn it down a bit towards the end to make it simmer a bit more and it'll extract the juices a bit. This is all personal preference and doesn't make much of a difference.

Anyway, don't forget to have fun while cooking, remember to give it a taste every now and then, have a good feel for and know your spices and most of all - Enjoy!

Tonight on CoreTv, cooking with Cybbe.

Oh, also, I found this recipe in Deus Ex the other day. Replaying it on realistic, it was in Tong's kitchen. Haven't tried it yet. It's some sort of bread.

Chinese Silver Loaves.

3 T. sugar

2 T. Vegetable shortening or oil

6 cups plain flour

2 T. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

Add suger and shortening to hot water, stir till sugar is dissolved and allow to cool until barely warm.

Sift remaining dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl, and gradually stir in sugar mixture.

Mix well and gradually draw dough together with your hands. It should be soft, but not sticky.

On a floured board, knead dough about 5-8 minutes, or till smooth and elastic.

Return to bowl, cover with damp cloth and let rise at least 1 hour.