Chopped Pork Burger

Continuing with the theme of  "insatiable appetite for burgers", I finally took some time out to attempt a pulled pork sandwich. Yes a PULLED PORK BURGER that ended up being a chopped pork Burger thanks to some errors in recipe interpretation. I had assumed by going slow and low at 100 degrees C, I would be able to achieve the "fall apart" effect. Sad to say, I left it too long in the oven

I still believe the recipe works. I just need to confirm it another time but for now lets just see what I did to trouble shoot.

The recipe comes from here with lots of pictures.

 

The spice RUB mix that will go over the pork. Got most of the items from tescos. This tub of spice mix was probably 20% more than enough for my 1.5kg pork.

 

My "porkie" (in no particular reference to any living being) after soaking in the brine mix overnight and then dusted with more spice rub. 

This was the bit when I realised that it had gone wrong. The recipe had recommended

" Place baking pan uncovered in a 225F degree oven on the middle rack. Insert a probe thermometer into the center or thickest part of the shoulder, but not touching the bone. Monitor the temperature throughout cooking (a digital thermometer with an alarm function is the easiest way to do this). Do not remove from the oven until the center of the shoulder reaches 200F degrees. When the shoulder has reached 200 degrees, shut off the oven and let the roast cool for a couple of hours before removing from the oven. If the bottom of the pan is dry (or crusted with dried spices) then cover the pan with foil to retain internal moisture of the meat during the cooling period. When the temperature drops to 170F degrees or slightly lower, remove from oven."

BUT instead I went for 100C for almost 6 hours..  sighz... The meat was really quite tough.

 


Rather than endure a painful dinner with TMJ arthritis the next day, I proceeded to exercise my rusty surgical skills
So it was back to the stewing pan for another hour, with all that meat juice for an extra moisture boost plus more rub mix + trusty Heinz BBQ sauce for added flavour.

Whilst doing that I started making my coleslaw and baking the curly fries. Homemade coleslaw IMHO is one of the best things available. Cabbage + mayo + pinch of salt + celery seeds is all you need. I threw in some carrots to make it abit healthier. ahhahaha



End Results


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A pretty darn good juicy burger with loads of extras extras overflowing.
It was juicy, meaty with enough fibres to give you that bite yet soft enough to be pleasurable. The mushrooms not only provide flavours but also helped to balance out the saltiness of the meat. The cold coleslaw creates more temperature textures which seems to cut through all that fattiness.
Last but not least curly fries for a bit of crispy effect and all of that washed down with good old traditional root beer.



I am feeling hungry again..


Ok time to sleep.






P.s: exciting times ahead.

Coleman's Season + Shake: Tried and tested

Seeing that there was an offer Coleman's Spicemix (2 packets for 1pounds. normally 1.49 per packet -__-"), I decided I shall continue being lazy at the weekend and throw some chicken in the oven and let the spices do its magic.

Suprisingly tasty despite not having any MSG, Preservatives or Colouring. Perhaps its because there was 8g of salt in each packet.

Anyway.... highly recommended since its on offer now.

When you have Pandan Leaves, You make Pandan Chicken

What a find. They actually do sell pandan leaves in SeeWoo. 2 quid for a huge bunch. Considering these grow like weed in my backyard. 2 quid is actually quite expensive.
Can't helped it. these leaves took the long haul flight from Thailand to UK.


After deboning some chicken thighs and drumsticks, I simply rolled the pandan leaves over them to make little flat parcels. You could either fry, bbq or bake them. I went for the fuss free option of baking them.

Taste wise I would have prefered them pan fried or bbqed. Nevertheless, these batch turned out marvellous.

The remaining leaves were used to make Nasi Lemak. YUM YUM YUM



Check out the recipe I got off here.

My Pasta alla Carbonara

For a dish whose origins are obscure with some saying that it was a dish cooked for the Coal miners of Italy, I am half certain that most of us associate it as a dish consisting of bacon and grated cheese simmered in a cream based sauce.

If pasta bolognaise was the black version of chai tau kway, this must be the white version.

If the cream based carbonara was the soup version of mee pok , my version would be mee pok tar.

My dear UK friends, are you lost? I'm sorry if I have confused you but this 8 month abstinence has started me comparing the local delights with my home favourites.

To be accurate, when I mean dry I do mean the egg sauce version which consists of no cream. My rationale is that the cream will overshadow the aromatic flavours of the charred bacon and freshly grated cheese.

Ingredients
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1 packet of streaky smoked bacon
100g gram (half a triangular block) of grated parmesean / grana padano
8 close cap mushrooms
4-5 cloves of garlic
3 eggs
500g pasta (my current favourite is de cecco)



1. Mix grated cheese with 3 whisked eggs. What you want is a thick gooey mixture
2. Bring to a boil 1L of salted water. Throw in the pasta
3. Start cooking the rest of the pasta once its in the pot.
4. Stir fry garlic, bacon until charred and then throw in mushrooms.
5. Drain pasta after cooking it as per the recommended cooking time minus 1 min
6. Throw it into the pan of bacon and mushroom. Stir through once.
7. Turn off the heat. Pour in the egg cheese mixture onto the pasta, avoiding the pan. Stir it through and let the heat from the pasta cook it just enough before it coagulates.
8. Finish off with more grated cheese and pepper. the Salt from the cheese and bacon should be enough to make savoury .

Fresh from the WHoleSale Market

Many many years ago (actually only 3) I remembered watching this cooking video on youtube about this chef who was trying to make Jamaican food in Glasgow. One of the dishes required the use of Mangoes and for some reason, he actually had to go to a wholesale market in Glasgow to get it.

Somehow or rather shopping in Costco where things are huge and excessive has stirred up my curiosity for seeking out this food heaven.

The motivation was so strong I actually woke up at 6am to drive to the market. Thankfully its not that far away from my place; quite near the Royal Infirmary in fact.

Turns out the market wasn't the food heaven I was hoping for. Bustling vendors, throngs of traders,s piles, basket, crates of vegetables and meat produce... none of which was to be seen. Sighz... At one point my heart almost sank because the seafood wholesale market that I wanted to explore was not to be find. One of the lads pointed out to me I was in fact in the wrong section of the compound.... I had to drive up the hill.... -__-"

And as I arrive at the top , seagulls and the familliar smell of the seafood reignited some hope. I had indeed found the seafood mecca in Glasgow. There were only 3 stores that were operating. I in particularly had loads and loads of styrofoam boxes filled with all sorts of fish laid out over his shop. My instinct told me that had to be the store to buy from.

John Vallance was the name of the store. The man himself wasn't Mr Vallance but the 3rd or 4th generation of fish mongers. No prices were available here, everything was by word of mouth. I take it the more you buy the cheaper it becomes.

My intentions really were to get some langoustines. The experience in Lochleven really left me craving for more. The going rate was 15 pds/kg. With little to reference from, I had to ask him how many pieces I would get with each kilo. 10 - 12 medium - large crustaceans apparently. The last time I ate at Macullums, it was like 6 pieces for 15 pounds. Unhesitatingly, I scooped up all the langoustines he had that day. 2 huge kilos of it. To top it off, I got another kilo of clams from him.

All the prep for the seafood feast was done in an hour that I got home but it wont be until 10pm that night before I'll get to eat them. Thanks to Aa who was on call...

Here's what we had.......





1 Giant plate of chilled langoustines with homemade garlic mayo and warmed smoked salmon lemon vinaigrette salad. It was really satisfying having so many of them to eat. Though the taste wasn't as intense as the ones from Lochleven, these ones will do for now. Personally, 8 out of 10.





The tails were not small at all. None of that shrimpy business. Its the big boys we are talking about here.

The clams were soaked for almost a day in salted water to get rid of the sand. I decided to make a spagh vongole out of them to supplement our crustacean starter.

Here's our massive spaghetti ala vongole for 3. A little salty and alittle less garlicky than I would like. The next time I'll nail !!!

All in all, it was a worthwhile trip. Perhaps some lobsters next time ? hahaha

20110730-197, originally uploaded by jiapui.

Good bye to another friend

Time of the year where peers move to another part of the country and My dear friend WY is finally moving down to London. In many ways I am happy for him as he embarks on his new life down South.

As we chowed down the salmon over some F1 action, it dawned upon me that I actually shared this dish with him way back in 2nd year.

and if you are wondering what those funny pear-shaped liked veggies are, let's just say they are the remnants of the potatoes that I used to make Rösti .



P.s.: Been too busy to blog recently. Hopefully I'll get more time to post in my next posting kekeke.

MacCallum’s of Troon Oyster Bar

It seems that every time we make a day trip somewhere, it always ends up with a big meal of some sort.

Our curiosity in a car auction brought us close enough to Troon to visit one of the most talked about restaurants in the area.

MacCallum's of Troon !!!





This former engine house is now a restaurant beaming with pride as one of the most iconic part of the habour. Sitted right next to the Troon Fish Market, the restaurant is likely to benefit from the tonnes of fishes that pass through this historic habour





I especially love the high ceilings and aged walls adorned with pictures of sailboats. There is no mistake that one is in a seafood restaurant after looking at these pictures.

Some complimentary bread to get our appetite going !!!

I started off with a large plate of grilled langoustines. The portion looked large but there were only 5 langoustines. As long as the taste was good I wouldn't have minded BUT... my suspicion got the better of me when I realised that they might not even be fresh. The texture of the meat was powdery and they came out of the shell in bits rather than whole. Sorely disappointed that I had spent 17 quid on this. Its only consolation was the garlic herb sauce.

The cullen skink was a much nicer starter. Well balanced smokiness and fishnesses with large chunky fish meat.

C insisted on having some oysters since we were in an oyster bar. No one's going to stop her.
I don't eat oysters btw.

The mains were the star of this luncheon. I had a sea bream pan fried with some herbs and lemon. Absolutely smacking delicious. My mum's probably thinking in her head right now what's so special about the fish. Afterall, she's been pan frying fish in the household for umpteen years. haha.

I have to emphasise though that the Scottish style of eating pan fried fish lends its taste from the use of olive oil, fresh herbs and lemon juice. That I am pretty sure is different from the CHinese way of pan frying the fish in purely ground nut oil or sunflower oil.

C went with the lemon sole which was once again delivered with perfection.

Aa went for the big kill and settled for a 1kg lobster. It was huge !!!

This giant prawn fared much better than the tweenie langoustines.


I firmly believe that the hallmark of a good seafood restaurant prides itself on sourcing the freshest seafood. For me, Maccullum's almost hit the mark if not for its langoustines.
If you like fish, this place should not disappoint you.

MacCallum’s of Troon Oyster Bar
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Harbourside

Troon, Ayrshire
KA10 6DH

Tel: 01292 319339




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Mobile Food War

It started with me sending C a picture of this during her weekend shift





I got no reply so .......


I sent her another cheeky picture

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A week later..... during my weekend shift....whilst she was in London.


She sent me this

followed by this

AND this ........

Grrr...........

Its not Eton mess if it ain't messy

What do you think? Meringue, strawberries, blue berries, homemade blueberry whipped cream and lemon cheesecake icecream?

Summer Caesar Salad

I love Caesar Salad. Its got Great taste, Great texture and Great Colour

But wait for the anti-climax...

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Its got nothing to do with The Great Julius Caesar

Back in e Takeaway Business

Hey Hey we are back in business again. Quite glad I manged to get some soup cups this time around





Photo Courtesy of Lyn


All the best for the exams. I still believe you'all will be fine.



P.s. : ?

Pears Poached in Red Wine

My humble attempt at making this look very "Atas" (high class)


Here's what I did with my remaining red wine. Its honestly as easy as it looks.
I choose Bailey's to continue with the alcoholic theme. The creamy texture also helps to contrast with the tangy texture of the wine reduction.

To bring this one level up, I highly recommend a sprinkle of honey comb or some baked crumble to give it that extra mouthful sensation

Lamb Stew

My First time making a lamb shank stew... Reason being... I find lamb to be one of the more pricey meats. Its not like chicken, beef or pork where you get alot more meat. Plus... if you don't cook it correctly, it can turn out to be rubbery and tasteless... ( <-- Not always true)


It was a combination of "I wanted to try something new" and the availability of cheap lamb that led me to this dish.


No regrets and very simple if you follow this recipe that I used . The only things I omitted were the bay leaves and bay leaf.


I don't normally praise my own cooking but i really really fell in love with the flavour of the stew. And the goose fat potatos were gorgeous. YUM YUM.
Just need to remember to use slightly leaner lamb and to skim off the excess fat the next time.
Although I am sure a nice loaf of artisan bread will do the broth a good amount of justice.
*Brown you meat. Charred bits give you more flavour.


P.s: I'll show you what I did with the remaining red wine in a another post.

The White Chocolate

The joys of cheesecake making and photography summed up in one photo.


^ ^ hehehe

Tesco Finest Sausage Feast

These may look like cheapo 90% reprocessed meat sausages but I reassure you I got them out of a Tesco Finest Packet. We had three flavours: Leek, Bramley Apples and Red pepper. Bramley apples led the race with 2 votes followed closely behind by red pepper haha....not a very exciting poll ... really.. haha

To complete it off, we had some sauerkraut, gherkins, cherry tomatos and fried potato cubes.

Pho Bo. ... Beef Fur?

Lunch today was a nice departure from the standard indomee, tomyum noodles and 出前一丁

Say hello to another classic noodle dish so iconic of Vietnam. Pho!..

Quite embarrassingly, this came out of the instant noodle packet. Forgive me, I don't have time to make beef stock from scratch plus.. I don't know how to make pho beef stock.

Thankfully, there was some left over black pepper beef ribs, basil and lime to allow me to transform this into a gourmet instant noodles. hahaha




Now that Vietnam is conquered, perhaps I should try some instant Singapore noodles the next time round?

Lazyman Sambal Kangkong

Yes.. I am lazy... but I can't help it.. I m so busy at work..

I was intrigued by this sauce packet when C flashed it in front of me. Haha it was advertised as a sauce mix for fried rice but at the bottom right u can vaguely see that it can also be used as a sambal kangkong stir fry too.. Amazing...

It does fare well on the taste front...and I got a good kick out of frying it in my new gigantic stir fry wok that mom bought for me.

The only issue I have was that the vegetables cooled so quickly that it lost its flavour soon after reaching the table.. Haiz..

Do I care? nah..... Jia pui Oh!

Happy Birthday YR!!!

Happy Birthday to you !!!! Happy Birthday to you !!!
Happy Birthday to you !!!! Happy Birthday to you !!!

It may not be my best creation so please pardon my "lack of sleep" effort on accord of our weird and wonderful friendship over the last few years. $$ can't buy it you know LOL~~!!






P.S: 1 st weekend in 3 weeks..... cant wait !!!!!

Happy Birthday to ME!!!

Work's been extremely draining recently... but I thought I should probably show myself a bit of love by making myself a cake... It was in fact pretty therapeutic.

When I said make.. I really do mean construct lol... Basically, its a 5 x 5 x 2 construction of a large brownie cake with philly cheese filling in between covered with rich dark chocolate cream and finally overloaded with berries..

I suppose its fair enough to call it Alfie's Brownie Delight lol

Happy Birthday all August Babies

CRAB!!!

If you pester me hard and long enough (like 3 months), I'll probably be convinced/forced to cook crab for you lol.... Nah... Actually I was meant to do this when I went back to Glasgow 9 weeks ago but just never had time to do it with all the p4p stuff and misc. appointments. Quite relieved that I finally managed to procure some crab from See Woo and whip up this famous Singaporean dish.

There were a choice of 3 crabs namely, the canadian crabs which cost 18 pounds per kilo, the wee tiny crabs with no name and no price and the English/Scottish Crabs priced at 5 pounds per kilo. No idea why the crabs were given an identity crisis but I believe these are what Wikipedia calls Edible crab or cancer pagurus. I call it brown crab because it looks brown when cooked. We eventually got 3 crabs for a total of 12 pounds 25 pence. The uncle was kind enough to chop up the crab ladies. I would have done it but I doubt Aa will be happy with the crab blood bath later lOL!.

So we got 2 sauces. Both of which from Singapore.. NO idea what they taste like but hey .. it can't be that bad rite. 2 pounds for the black pepper sauce and 5.25 sing for the prima taste chilli crab sauce. The instructions are given on the back of the package and are pretty straightforward.

Give it a good wash in cooking oil. I was waiting for the shell to turn bright red but I found out after a while that not all crabs change colour like cooked mud crabs .

Tada !!! Cooked BROWN crabs lol.

Here's the Black pepper crab. This sauce packet is very easy to use. Just fry up some onions and then the sauce and then the crab. Taste of the pepper sauce was AWESEOME!... I wasn't a fan of black pepper crab when I first tried it in SIngapore (maybe its becos they overdose on the black pepper) but this sauce packet had the right amount of pepperiness and seafood flavour. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this sauce pack for u black pepper crab lovers or any kind of seafood or meat.

Chilli Crab!!!.. The prima taste packet had more sauces to work with but if YR can do it. I am sure u can too.. I preferred the taste of the black pepper crab to this sauce. Guess its the sweetness which I din fancy. We had mantou as well to mop up the sauces.

If you ask me about the taste of the crab meat itself. I'll say..... stick to your flower crab or mud crab. This crab ain't the most sweet and needs a bit of seasoning or sauce to bring out its flavour. Maybe I'll steam it someday and give u a better perspective of its taste.

We had spicy chinese chicken wings as well..

and mee siam which was a total failz lO!L

Arms made orange cake. Lovely orange aroma from the peel.

VERY VERY GOOD chocolate cake. From Arm as well.

YR made lychee jelly.





All in all a very nice dinner...