Category: Homemade Recipes

Fresh raviolis for idiots with bacon tomato sauce.

I have a confession. Any cooking with flour involved often scares me. Perhaps it’s my total lack of talent, chronic lack of patience or even a genetic malfunction, I can’t seem to ever get pastry right.

I know, I know, practice makes perfect and I’m sure one day I’ll be able to produce decent looking and usable pastry but right now is sadly, not the time.

I however have a knack for cheating in my cooking, regularly skipping steps that would make any established cook/chef gasps in horror. Just because my bird brain feels that it’s “unnecessary”. Needless to say, more often than I prefer, I find my cooking inedible or as my BF put it….nauseating. I’ll feature more of my inedible, nauseating creations but right now is fortunately, not the time.

This is a post about how I cheated, succeeded and most importantly, how my BF ate everything, right down to the last drop of sauce. Ladies & gentlemen, I present the “FRESH raviolis for idiots”. You don’t even have to know how to roll out a pasta ;)

For raviolis:

  • 60 gm of chinese salted vegetables (“choi bou” in cantonese)
  • 80gm of any soft stinky cheese (I used Blue Jack)
  • 1 chilli, chopped
  • 1 packet of wonton wrappers

For sauce:

  • 4-6 pieces of streaky bacons
  • 1 chopped yellow onions
  • 1 tablespoon of dried basil
  • 1 can of tomato in juice
  • 100gm of chicken stock (you can make do with chicken cubes though I used homemade ones)

# – First of all, soak the salted vegetables in water for 1/2 hour. Remember to change the water at least twice during that time. Drain.

# – Also, take out the cheese and let it sweat and soften in room temperature.

# – Chop up the chili into as tiny pieces as possible.

# – And then you mix the salted vegetables, chillies and cheese together till thoroughly blend.

# – Lay out 20 pieces of wonton wrappers.

# – Put a teaspoon of cheese mixture on a wrapper each.

# – Use your finger to dab water all over the edge of the wonton wrapper.

# – Now use another wonton wrapper, lay it on top and press it down the edges. If you can, try to press down around the filling too so that there’s no air trapped inside.

# – If you fancy, you can use a ravioli cutter to cut around the edges to form nice scallop designs but since this is a recipe for idiots, don’t bother…hehe.

# – Wooohoo, raviolis for idiots. DONE.

Now…to make the bacon tomato sauce to go with your raviolis..

# – Cut up the tomatos if it’s not already cut in the can.

# – Heat up a pot and throw in onions and bacons to brown.

# – Pour in the cut tomatoes with its juice and chicken stock into bacons and onion mixture. Stir. The weird looking block in the picture is a piece of frozen homemade chicken stock by the way.

# – A dash of basil.

# – A dash of black pepper. Leave it to simmer while you cook the raviolis…

# – Boil a pot of water. Throw in a dash of salt. When it’s bubbling throw in the raviolis 5 at a time. It takes less than 2 minutes to cook. When cooked, they will float up to the surface and look very silky soft.

# – Prepare a plate, drizzle olive oil on it. You can omit this step but I don’t want to risk my raviolis sticking to the plate.

Also, instead of oiling the plate, you can just dump some bacon tomato sauce on it and place the cooked raviolis on top. Obviously I could have done this but it was my first time making this hence I was playing very, very safe.

# – Scoop up the cooked raviolis with a straining ladle and serve with bacon tomato sauce.

There, fresh raviolis without touching flour or eggs! I admit, they don’t rank very high when it comes to looks, but the taste?

Wow, I was prrrretttty impressed with myself. The salted vegetables (which had lost most of its saltiness from the soaking) gave the filling a good light crunch while the blue cheese contributed a creamy & savoury taste only a good cheese can. The chopped chilies gave the raviolis a kick and kept the dish interesting.

As for whether wonton wrappers can be passed off as pasta? My BF really thought I had made fresh pasta from scratch! The wrappers were thin but strong and they were silky and light after cooking. One of our best dinners to date!

Oh! And it was dirt cheap to make this too ;)

Spicy Beer Cottage Pie My Way

The BF has been dropping hints about cottage pies & shepherd’s pies since forever. So one day, because I’m just so unbelievably awesome, I decided to materialise his wish.

It’s definitely not the type of cottage pies he grew up eating. For one the ones he’s accustomed to pies that have no chillies. And, it’s nowhere near the standard of his grandmother’s (which according to him is the best cottage pie in the whole wide world) BUT mine was juicy and delicious ;)

So if you’re interested in making an impressive looking, impressive tasting but impressively simple dish, here goes:

For the filling:

  • 1 chili, sliced
  • 1 large onion, roughly chopped
  • 1 carrot, grated
  • 2 handfuls of frozen peas
  • 1 small bottle of beer
  • 300+ gm of minced beef
  • 3 tablespoons of ketchup

For the crust:

  • Peeled & chopped 8 small potatoes, or 2 large ones
  • Some milk (or whipping cream, which I naughtily used :P)
  • Salt & pepper

# – First of all, heat up some oil in a pot and brown the minced beef.

# – Throw in the onions. Stir.

# – Throw in the chillies. Stir.

# – Throw in the grated carrots. Stir.

# – Pour in beer till it covers the top of mixture slightly. Stir.

# – Throw in 3 tablespoon of ketchup. Stir.

# – Throw in 1 tablespoon of salt. Stir.

# – Throw in frozen peas. Stir.

Leave mixture to simmer till everything is pretty soft and the liquid reduced by half. If it’s too dry, add more beer :D During this time, boil some chopped potatoes for making mash. I steamed mine though cause I’m just preppy like that.

# – Mash the potatoes, add some milk, salt & pepper. Throw in some cheese if you’re not on a diet, why not? If you’ve got your own favourite version of mash potato, use it.

# – Pour the beef mixture into a casserole dish.

# – Spread mash potato all over the surface of the beef mixture, making sure there’s no hole in the crust anywhere.

# – Looks good enough to eat but it’s not done yet!

# – Stick it in pre-heated oven for 30 minutes at 190 degrees celcius.

# – After 30 minutes, bring the cottage pie out to rest.

# – Or dig in immediately, like what we did :)

This cottage pie is very juicy and flavourful. There’s no need to make any stock as the liquid is all from the beer. There’s a good kick from the chillies though if you can’t take the heat so well you can always omit the chillies.

# – YUMMMS!

My favourite thing about this dish? It’s a complete meal all in one bowl which means, less washing up! Hehehehe.

My first tarte tatin – a tale of accidental excellence.

This recipe is from Oliver Rowe, someone I stumbled upon on BBC website. If I had read the recipe thoroughly, I probably would not have made it. But like most Malaysians, I don’t read everything and hence found myself completely horrified half way through making this tarte tatin.

That said though, I’m so glad I pushed on and followed the recipe to a T. Okay…..maybe not to a T because I accidentally missed out putting a dollop of butter in one of the final steps. Still, the tart turned out extremely delicious. I’m not kidding, look at this:

# – Does this not look delicious to you?

What is tarte tatin? Basically, it’s an upside down tart of caramelised fruits such as apples or pears. I halved the recipe because there were only two of us. The tart still turned out perfect, so I have now promoted Oliver Rowe to my list of trustworthy chefs (as in those that dish out reliable recipes), joining the ranks of Gordon Ramsay and…and..Gordon Ramsay :P

Anyway, these are the ingredients you need for making tarte tatin for four. And yes, it only took two of us to clear up a dessert for 4. Now you know why I’ve been lamenting about buying a treadmill on Twitter.

    For the pastry:

  • 115g of plain flour
  • 113g of ice-cold butter
  • 55g of icing sugar
  • 1 egg yolk
    For the filling:

  • 2 Royal Gala apples (I totally veered off from choice of apples. What’s that phrase? Yeah, local limitations :P)
  • Juice from 1 lime (Also, instead of lemon, I used lime)
  • 55g of caster sugar
  • 55g of butter

And lets begin…

# – Peel and core apples then cut into wedges. Toss them around in juice of 1 lime. Stick them into the fridge.

# – Combine flour, icing sugar and butter in a bowl…

# – Then beat until resemble bread crumbs.

# – Now, pour in the single egg yolk. Beat again till combined.

At this point, the mixture will become somewhat of a cross between dough and batter – soft but not too soft. Now switch off your electrical hand mixer and use the very hands that your mother gave you to pack the mixture into a ball.

# – Then stick the mixture into a freezer bag.

# – And shove the bag of dough/batter in your freezer for an hour.

Basically you have about 45 minutes to kill, while waiting for your dough/batter thing to harden. Watch some TV, stalk someone online or play with your dog. As for me, I made cottage pie. You may now go sob in a corner.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock…

45 minutes later…

# – Heat up the castor sugar in a pot on medium heat for 10 minutes. Turn the pot all the time and keep a watchful eye as you want the sugar melted, not burnt.

Oliver Rowe used a saucepan that can be used in an oven, which greatly decreased dish washing duties. As I don’t have such acclaimed saucepan, I poured my melted sugar into a flan tin that I got from Daiso for RM5.

# – Pour melted sugar or jeng jeng jeng, CARAMEL!!!! into flan tin and make sure it’s covered all surface.

# – Now, take your chilled apples out from the fridge and lay them on the bottom of the flan tin, over the caramel. Just one layer because less is more. Less is more…

Something must have distracted me here because I don’t have any picture to illustrate but you have to stick the flan tin into the oven at 250 degrees celcius for 10 minutes, to bring out the juice in the apples.

# – In the meantime, prepare a grater, a bowl of caster sugar and a heatproof stand. You’re handling a really hot flan tin here so you don’t want to be scrambling for your stuff.

# – After 10 minutes, bring the flan tin out from the oven, put it over the heatproof stand and sprinkle caster sugar all over the apples. You’re supposed to put a dollop of butter now too but I forgot and it didn’t matter one bit.

And now, you must be thinking about the pastry right? Yeah, we’ve come to that stage…

# – Take out the hardened dough from your freezer…and grate it over the flan tin.

Say WHAT?

# – Yeap, grate the effin dough over the flan tin till you can’t see what’s underneath and it’s about 1 inch thick. DO NOT press the grated dough down.

Now stick the flan tin back into the oven for 20 minutes at 220 degrees celcius. Please don’t leave the tarte tatin in the oven to rest after 20 minutes because it will continue cooking. A mistake I made that caused my pastry to burnt slightly :(

(Though it did not hamper the taste of the tart one bit, not even a little.)

Put a plate over the flan tin and turned the tarte tatin out.

# – My first tarte tatin.

# – Juicy, caramelised apples on a buttery pastry…hmmmmm.

# – Great with a dollop of whipped cream but perfect on its own too ;)

Thanks Oliver for such an excellent dessert! My man loves me a little bit more thanks to you, hehehe.