My Recent Failures

I have to admit, this post is a little embarrassing but below is a a small collection of shitty ass dishes I've made in the past; some tasted bad, some looked horrible and some were both. Personally, I think it's a bit silly to think that every dish you will make will go flawlessly or will taste delicious every time. These days I've gotten good enough that it goes alright most of the time but there are some days where I feel like I'm hugest noob of all time LOL. I've never claimed to be amazing at cooking and below is a small showcase of why. Enjoy :)

Spanish Omelette

So this is a dish I copied from watching Jamie At Home. There was no recipe but the whole thing was easy enough. It looked delicious on the show and was made of seemingly delicious ingredients so this one should've been a win/win. Nah B. For starters, the chirozo sausage and potatoes are baked in an omelette but the omelette itself was bland as hell. The rosemary didn't go well with the dish, the potatoes were decent but didn't add any flavour to the omelette. Also, this was the first time I've ever had chirozo and my first impressions were not great. Maybe I had a bad batch but these sausages had a really bad smell to them. I'll try them again before I make up my mind. Jamie, you are boy but this dish sucked my balls.





Double Chocolate Cookies

I think I found this recipe on the Martha Stewart website. I modified the chocolate chip cookie one I found to make it more chocolatey, I cut some ingredients to include more cocoa powder and things like that. As you can see from the picture, I don't make cookies that often. Cookies and cupcakes aren't things I usually make although I love them. There are enough girls around me that make those things so I don't really need to :) Sometimes I have a huge craving though and then shit seems to go terribly wrong lol! In terms of the cookie itself, it tasted alright but I'm not really sure how to make the cookie more gooey and soft. I also don't know how you get the chocolate chips to show on the top. My shit just melts. Iunno. Whatever. I'll work on it.


Spiced Banana Crepe Suzette

To be honest I don't really know what this tasted like because I had the hugest allergy attack while I was cooking it and by the time it was done I couldn't taste it :( However, I feel that it didn't taste as good as it could have. For starters this was the first time I ever tried to cook crepes and I was not very successful. The pics below can attest to that lololol. Next I had to make a citrus sugar syrup with lime and orange and from what I could tell it was WAY too sour to put on top of this dish. Other than the fact that my crepes were mediocre and the sugar syrup was too sour, this dish was probably alright. FYI I had to flambé the whole thing (when you light alcohol on fire in the frying pan) so that was pretty sweet. The banana's were spiced with pumpkin pie spice, and the whole thing was topped with lime zest, coconut and vanilla and hazelnut gelato. I'll work on this one cuz I think it will taste delicious after I figure out how to stop being a noob.

Left: First crepe (pan was too hot, batter was too think) Middle: Second crepe Right: Third crepe (batter was loosened and heat was lowered. Still too yellow for some reason but it tasted alright.

Banana Fritters

This is probably the worst cooked and presented dish I have ever made and I didn't even make it that long ago. Maybe like a month LOL. I got this recipe from the F Word and Gordon just made it soooo much better than I did. To start, the banana fritters were grossly under cooked. I don't deep fry that often so I had no clue how hot the oil should've been. Basically the oil was WAY too hot and when I put the battered banana's in they burnt sooo fast and the result is in the picture. PROTIP: heat the oil slowly and test it with something small, it should slowly sizzle with bubbles. Next I was gonna sprinkle some melted chocolate all around it in a circle. I fucked up bad... I messed up the first circle and then I just gave up and tried to go for a messy yet artistic look... obviously that didn't go well LOL. The cherry on top was to sift some chocolate icing sugar all around it. Since I'm retarded, I prepared the sugar right above the plate so when I put a few table spoons of sugar in the sifter most of it just fell through and there is a giant pile of sugar in the bottom left of the plate. Shit like this just happens sometimes.... UGH 

I don't know why I keep cooking with bananas :P Until next time!

Spiced Pork Chops

So I made this little dish on Valentines day... Or what I like to call, Tuesday...UGGHGHGHHGH #foreveralone

Anyways, I'm still on my quest to eat more veggies and so far, its going ok, I still haven't brought myself to make a salad yet. I really want to too... fuck. Maybe next time.

Roasted Asparagus w/ lemongrass, ginger, and tea vinaigrette
From (Gordon Ramsay's Maze)

I would probably charge about $26 for this appetizer

This was a really complicated little appetizer. Took a while to make cuz it was pretty finicky to assemble. Also this dish was way out of my league. Haven't ate anything like it yet so I have no idea if I did it right lololol

Ingredients
- Asparagus, bay leaves and thyme
- Lemon ginger tea vinaigrette
   -  lemon grass, ginger, lemongrass tea, rind of lemon, lemon juice, black tea, white wine vinegar, sugar, salt olive oil

Cooking
- For the asparagus, I had to blanch them which is a technique that you can use to cook veggies. Basically, you cook your veggie in boiling salted water for a brief period of time until they are just tender, then you take them out and plunge it into an ice bath to remove the heat and stop the cooking process. This allows you to to keep a vibrant colour on your veggies as well.
- After I blanched the asparagus, I had to skewer bay leaves and thyme through the asparagus (which is a huge pain in the ass holy fuck) and then baked them with some salt and pepper, more bay leaves and a few thin slices of butter.
- With the vinaigrette, I just put all the ingredients together, brought it to a simmer and took it out and strained the result. The vinaigrette was interesting because it had a slight hint of tea flavour. However it was way too sweet so I should've put more white wine vinegar and a little more salt I think.  

Spiced Pork Chop (From Gordon Ramsay's Healthy Appetite)

Pork chop with garlic potatoes and rainbow carrots

I spent so much more time making the sides than the actual pork chop. Shit took forever cuz of all the boiling I had to do lololol

Ingredients
- Pork chops: chili powder, paprika, salt and pepper, thyme, olive oil, garlic, star anise, coriander seeds
- Potatoes and carrots yo

Cooking
- For the pork chops I just marinated the pork chop. I found that if you marinate meats on wax paper instead of doing it in a bowl, you can wrap the meat in the wax paper when you are done combining the ingredients and save space by not having to put the bowl in the fridge or wasting a zip-loc bag. Gotta save mother nature man. She's beautiful and you people are turning her into a whore!
- One note about star anise is that it is a pretty strong flavour. The seeds are taste a little "aniseedy" and that ain't me. If you ever try to marinate with them, make sure you crush it finely, that's my tip.
- For the garlic potatoes I boiled the potatoes for about a million years and when they were done I sliced them up and fried them up with butter, seasoning, coriander seeds, and garlic until they were crispy. Pretty delish.
-For the rainbow carrots, I blanched them an cooked them with some butter, seasoning and coriander seeds and tossed it with some fresh coriander. PS I nutted when I saw there was such thing as purple carrots. Shit got intensely real for me after that.

As a fun fact, coriander is also called cilantro. Don't ever say I don't like to have fun. Proof. Word is bond yo.

Raging My Dream 2012

Near the end of 2011, I put my cooking slightly on hold to focus all my attention on Skyrim and getting fresh to success. I did start to miss cooking though so by the time 2012 came around I put everything else on hold and I have been cooking like some sort of mad man. No time for going to school or doing any kind of studying. No time for work and chasing that paper. I haven't even had time to meet sexy single ladies... not that I have some sort of waitlist or anything lololol I still have time for tennis though, I mean, I am the Prince of Tennis :D

This post will be less informational I think since I'm gonna be talking about so many dishes lolol.

Beef Satay w/ Peanut Sauce (From Gordon Ramsay's Maze)

I made a lot more than the four but it didn't look good on the plate. Anyways, I'm still perfecting my beef cooking skills so I accidentally cooked this beef tenderloin to medium rare instead of medium like I wanted. Still so fucking delicious though, so tender and melt in your mouth. I'll never go back to buying meat at the grocery stores. I mean meat is often the highlight of you meal, the main thing. You should go and buy from a place that cares about the quality of your food as much as you. You'll pay a bit more though but its definitely runs laps around that shit you get at Zehrs or whatever. Plus it is highly likely that the animals were treated much better than the ones at the grocery store so that's always a bonus :) The peanut sauce was pretty easy to make but peanut butter is super oily so there was a lot of oil floating around. Not sure if there is a way to avoid it, too lazy to look it up lol. Maybe I should emulsify it or something

Puff Pastry Pizza

This dish came out on a whim for me. I just sat here one day and I was like, "I wonder if I can make pizza from puff pastry" and I did. And it was so fucking delicious. You can basically top it off any way you want, I just used a bunch of different salamis (gypsy, hungarian etc). A couple of key points though, try to look out and buy good quality mozzarella. Not that pre-shredded shit that is so dried up. Good mozzarella will be super soft, and packaged in its own milk. Totally worth it. Second, there are a few things you gotta do when you prepare puff pastry. In a nutshell, you gotta thaw it (don't bother making it lol), then flour your surface, you COULD roll it out, then poke holes with a fork all over except where you want the crust, brush it with some eggwash if you want, bake it at 180 C for about 8 min or so, then put your toppings on. At this point you could wrap the pizza's and put them in the freezer or just bake them and eat them. Delicious yo. PS I made my own sauce, but in the interest of length I'll post that up another time.

Herb Crusted Cod w/ Silky Mash (From Gordon Ramsay's Maze)
I'm trying to make an effort to cook seafood and so far shit is going well lol. Cod fillet is super expensive though fuck. Anyway, this is the first time I made mashed potatoes and it wasn't as silky as I would've liked lol. I think I should invest in a potato ricer and pass the potato through a sieve more than once. This little dish tasted pretty good, but I think I'm going to add in the optional tomato paste layer in-between the cod and the herb crust. 


Mango Soup w/ Lychee Granita (From Gordon Ramsay's Maze)

My first little attempt at alternative desserts. This dish was very simple and super tasty. The "soup" was overripe mangos (for extra sweetness) and a bit of lychee juice and passed through a sieve to remove all the fibers. As a bonus, there was lychee granita (with mint) which is basically like a snow cone. To make the granita, you are supposed to make the ice really granular and/or super fine. I got it pretty good, but I think next time I will use my food processor and that should work much better. Anyways, super delish :)

Black Angel Linguine (From Jamie Oliver's Cook)

So this is a pretty cute little dish...If you do it right LOL. So you are supposed to use black pasta (it's tinted with squid ink) but I used this dark green basil pasta. And the "angels" are supposed to be the scallops but I coloured them too much during cooking and they ended up loosing the whites lolol. Other than that, this was a really good dish.  





Chicken Pesto Pizza

This was a little dish inspired by my boss. As some of you know, I had lunch made for me everyday last term :D This little dish is really quick to make. Just fry up your chicken anyway you want (garlic, salt and pepper is simple enough). I bought pesto sauce (too lazy to make it lawl) spread that on to garlic naan that I bought too. Then put the chicken on with whatever toppings you want. Put it in the oven, finish with some parmesan, pepper and olive oil and Boom! You're done.

So I never really understood why all the chefs would dress the dish with olive oil at the end of cooking. Basically its to keep the food moist and it totally works. Plus olive oil is super healthy for you (especially extra virgin) so that's a huge plus too. 

Also, I noticed this before but this just reinforces things. I need to make more fucking veg for my meals lol! I'm gonna make a conscious effort to make salads and shit from now on... its gonna be tough lololol