Category: Homemade Recipes

Cauliflower macaroni cheese recipe.

The BF has been bugging me to make him cauliflower cheese for the longest time. He grew up eating them and it’s one of his favourite comfort foods.

I don’t know why I haven’t gotten around to making it. I guess I was intimidated by the vegetable?

I’ve never cleaned and prepared cauliflower before. And it’s white. That’s just abnormal. Vegetable is supposed to be green or at least in darker shades of colours. White is creepy.

Then, one day while out grocery shopping, he plonked a 1.5 kilograms worth of cauliflowers into our trolley. I had nowhere to run. I had to make cauliflower cheese or else…

I decided to chuck in some macaroni, so I didn’t have to cook a carb to go with :D

# – Cauliflower macaroni cheese.

The ingredients:

  • 300 grams of macaroni
  • 800 grams of cauliflower, cut into florets
  • 1 onion, sliced
  • 180 grams of grated parmesan and a bit more for the topping (you can use cheddar or any crumbly hard cheese too)
  • 300 ml of milk
  • 6 cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 3 tablespoons of mustard powder
  • Salt & Pepper

# – Prepare a deep pot of boiling water seasoned with salt. Throw in the cauliflowers. They take about 8-10 minutes to cook through. Depending on how long your pasta takes to cook, chuck them in at the appropriate time too so they cook together with the cauliflower.

# – Put your baking tray or heatproof dish over the stove, heat up a bit of oil and throw in the sliced onions to brown.

# – Pour in the milk.

# – Then the grated parmesan. Stir till mixture’s combined.

# – Next, put 3 tablespoons of mustard powder. Stir.

# – Followed by the drained cauliflower and macaroni.

# – Give it a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper (Actually you can season the cheese sauce first before adding in the cauliflower/pasta but I forgot :P). Stir.

# – Sprinkle more grated parmesan all over the top.

# – Place the halved cherry tomatoes all over the top.

# – Stick it in the oven, on a top rack to grill at 210 degree celcius for 10 minutes or till the top is browned.

# – Cauliflower macaroni cheese, DONE!

Cheesy, creamy and soft but most importantly, easy to whip up. The ultimate comfort food! I guess you can say it’s quite healthy too as there’s no meat involved.

But who am I kidding? Something that tastes this good CAN’T be healthy, hahaha.

Malaysian devil chicken curry recipe.

Contrary to what the name of the dish suggests…..no, it’s not evil. It does however, pack some heat.

By some, I mean LOADS. Be warned you should only make this if you’re a lover of spicy food. That said, I imagine you could reduce the amount of dry chillies and substitute with more shallots for something with less heat.

# – Malaysian devil chicken curry.

For the curry paste:

  • 30 shallots
  • 30 dried chillies, seeded and soaked for 15 minutes
  • 2 1/2 tablespoons of tumeric powder
  • 1 inch length of galangal, chopped
  • 2 stalks of lemongrass, chopped
  • 1 teaspoon of brown mustard seeds, soaked for 5 minutes

The other ingredients:

  • 2 onions, quartered
  • 2 inches of ginger, sliced
  • 5 cloves of garlic, sliced
  • 2 red chillies, seeded & halved lengthwise
  • 2 teaspoons of salt
  • 1 teaspoon of light soya sauce
  • 4 tablespoons of sugar
  • 4 potatoes, peeled and quartered
  • 3 chicken thighs with bone, skin removed & chopped into serving pieces
  • 125 ml of white vinegar
  • 1 litre of water

# – Seed, soak, peel whatever you need to do for the curry paste (refer to ingredients list above).

# – Chuck them all in a blender or food processor and blitz.

# – Add some oil while at it to smoothen the paste. I’d say about 2 – 3 tablespoons.

# – Set the curry paste aside. By the way, you’re working with tumeric here and that stuff stains everything! So becareful.

# – Heat up some oil in a pan and fry up the quartered onions, sliced ginger, sliced garlic and halved chillies.

# – Remove from heat and set aside when they’ve browned & wilted slightly.

# – Now heat up about 4 tablespoons of oil in a saucepan and chuck the curry paste in. Fry for about 3 minutes.

# – Add 2 teaspoons of salt.

# – Followed by a teaspoon of light soya sauce.

# – And 4 tablespoons of sugar. Stir.

# – Now throw in the chicken.

# – Don’t forget the potatoes. Stir till everything’s coated by the curry paste.

# – Pour the white vinegar in..

# – And then the 1 litre of water.

# – Stir till combined and allow to simmer for 30 minutes or when liquid has reduced by half.

# – When the liquid has reduced by half, throw in the onions, garlic, ginger and chillies fried earlier. Stir and simmer for a further 5 minutes.

# – Malaysian devil chicken curry, DONE!

# – Serve with piping hot plain rice. Yums!

It’s also very helpful if you’ve got a helper to seed 30 dry chillies for it’s not a very pleasant task. My hands were still tingling 5 hours later. I found it much easier and faster to seed the chillies after they’ve been soaked in water and softened up. With a pair of kitchen scissors, do it under running water to quickly flush away the seeds.

Really, if you want to make this, make sure you’ve prepared the ingredients earlier on otherwise you may find your poor back on the verge of breaking by the end of it all. But…it’s all worth it. Because it’s interesting! It’s complex! It’s mind-bogglingly delicious!

The curry tasted better too after a day. The BF ate it with bread. He ate it all. He didn’t leave me any -_-

Macaron Attempt Episode 1

I had gotten a bag of ground almonds at a steal last weekend. All I could think about was macarons. I made them, I was very clear about the flavours…I wanted After Eight inspired macarons.

I whipped some melted dark chocolates and cream for the most decadent chocolate ganache filling.

My macarons actually didn’t look half bad out of the oven. They were puffy and more than half had feet! I was thrilled. The peppermint scent emitted was simply gorgeous.

# – Peppermint macarons.

I let them cool down. Then I began the process of assembling the macaron sandwiches. A big smile across my face. I gently eased my thumb and index finger around a macaron. Lifted my fingers and….

CRAP. Bugger was stuck. I tried another one….stuck. All of them were stuck. I started sobbing. Yeap, I broke down. I cried like a dumbass.

Dramatic? You wouldn’t understand until you got a decent batch of macarons and they got stuck to your waxed paper.

# – I pried and pried. But to no avail :(

Lessons learnt:

1. Grease the damn paper.
2. Go easy on the peppermint essence, it’s a macaron, not breath mints!
3. Never ever, ever have too high an expectation at your first try at making macarons.

Thanks for reading.