The Return of Chef Lolls!

I'm baaaack....

And I'm trying to perfect some of my favourites. Today's attempt was some Hummus, using a recipe from a book I purchased in England - see photo. However, as usual, when I followed their instructions, I wasn't happy with the outcome, so I then improvised.

Simple Hummus
Ingredients:
19oz can Chick Peas
5 Tbsp Tahini paste
1.5 Tbsp lemon juice
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 Tbsp water

3 Tbsp olive oil
3 shakes of cayenne pepper
2 shakes black pepper


Method:
Drain chick peas. Blend in blender until nice and smooth. Add tahinni, then garlic and lemon juice. Blend. Add water, then olive oil. More blending. Add cayenne and black pepper. Still more blending.

The original recipe was for a 14oz can, and I had a large one, so I just up converted. However the results were a bit off - I should only use 3 cloves of garlic, and definitely need at least 3 Tbsp of olive oil.

I served it with some cut up baguette, baby tomatoes (from my Dad's garden - yum!), cucumber and carrots. I think this was a good mix of flavours and textures, and did help disguise the strong garlic bite. If you like garlic, definitely keep the 4 cloves, but if you want to interact with humans within the next 24 hours, I'd say only do a max of 3.....

incinerator plate

So I am not having much time to do inventive cooking because I'm working around 10 or 11 hours a day, plus another 2 hours of commuting.. when I get home it's 9pm and I just want a quick meal, so in goes a microwave dinner...

However this past weekend I did try cook... and I learned some valuable lessons. 1) my 'hot plate' is an incinerator plate (technically I already knew this, but now it is confirmed). 2) you can't boil rice in soup. Or at least not 'cream of chicken' soup. I was going for a psuedo rissoto thing... in my mind it was going to be fantastic... but it just didn't work and I created an epic burned up mess.

No photos, sorry.

Perhaps this weekend I'll do something successful, like a stirfry or something. Otherwise me and the microwave will continue to be best friends.

Micro-Cooking

Well exams are finally over and I'm exhausted. I don't think I'll be picking up cooking for a few days.

Then it will be an adventure in Microwave cooking. I'll be in London (UK) for June, July and August, living with a mini-fridge and a microwave. I'm determined to be inventive.. not just eating the micro dinner every night, like I did last summer...

So if anything interesting is created, I'll post it up here! Stay tunned!

pressing pause

Well obviously I've had to press 'pause' on the cooking stuff... school has just taken over, along with a small thing called the 2010 Olympic Games, and having had a nasty cold back at the start of February...

I still intend to continue this epic journey of learning to cook, but it's on hold until my exams are over.

So check back in... June???

Cake.. well not really...

So my Aunt turned an important age this week (see how nice I am, not saying the age??). For the momentous occasion my Uncle stealthily planned to steal her away to Las Vegas (and area) for a week. This involved a night at our place in Vancouver, so I saw it as an opportunity for my blog...

That being said, I've got a sniffle and am behind with school, so wasn't able to actually find a 'scratch' cake recipe, so madam crocker assisted with the cake itself.  However instead of the 'water' I usually add to the mix, I added milk, and it was an interesting, and tasty, outcome. The cake was more dense and creamy, not as 'sticky' as water based cake is. Anyway.

I did make the frosting from scratch. I used a different recipe than last time at Mum's request. I followed all the instructions to the T, but something was wrong - it was too watery. I added more icing sugar, and then it was suddenly far too 'sugary'. So I added more butter.  In the end It tasted fine, but I know it wasn't quite right. Who knows.


Butter Frosting
Ingredients:
(From Five Roses)
1/4 cup butter
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons milk
2 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Method:
Cream butter with pinch of salt. Gradually add milk and icing sugar, alternating. Then add vanilla.

As I say, I added more icing sugar, and then more butter, to try get the right consistency. Mum thinks that she usually adds all the icing sugar, and then later puts in the right amount of milk, watching the consistency as it goes. Who knows, I'll just have to experiment later.

mmm Frosting

So I found a frozen cake in the freezer (half a cake, leftover shrapnel from Mum's trifle over Christmas). Since the weekend prior to this I'd eaten some lovely wedding cake, I was inpsired to eat it (that's my story and I'm sticking to it... nothing to do with stress and developments with school, nothing at all...).  All the cake needed with icing.

So I looked in my Five Roses cook book and found an easy butter icing recipe.

Rich Butter Frosting
Ingredients:
1/3 cup butter
1 egg
2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla


Method:
Cream the butter then add the egg. Slowly add in the icing sugar, and finally the vanilla.  This icing is delicious!

success!!

I have finally successfully made a mac and cheese sauce!!! wooo!!!!

So I followed the same recipe as below, but halfed it, and went super super slow. I made the roux properly and added the milk and cheese super slowly and it worked like a charm!   This time I used regular cheddar and spicy jalapeno cheddar and I'd definitely reccomend it.

So the only problem? I forgot to take a photo as I ate it too quickly!

WOOO! Finally, success!