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