Pho soup from scratch adventures :)))

Ginger, garlic and onion was dry fried till black and then peeled. Sweet lumps of goodness were produced.

This is my homemade flavour bomb. Star anise, cardamon, cassia bark, black pepper corns, dry fried and powdered. 

(I went looking for the dried sand worm but no one in the shops had heard of this)

 This is the stock boiling.- ox tail and broiled chicken- I tried for marrow and brisket but Sunday stocks were low.



To the left is the scum scooped from the top in an attempt to create a clean stock.

Stock must be sampled!

Some extra last minute flavours.

 Stock is strained through a muslin cloth.            

Approximately 5 hours later. This was not a stream lined process. For example, there is still the question of what to do with all the stock, as our fridge is quite small. Don't get me wrong, I love our fridge, but this is a lot of stock and a fridge can only take so much. Anyway, things were dribbled and spilt everywhere and there were debates about the best way to do things. My rice noodles ended up al dente instead of soft and the soup was eaten cold as opposed to the usual piping hot. 

It was delicious!!!!!

Final touches like temperature will be fixed for the next bowl (and I will be eating this for the next week)

My best picture yet: Chicken and Cashews(under cooked)

The photo is quite nice but the chicken is suspiciously under cooked, a common theme in my cooking lately.

Marinate chicken in dry sherry (2 tbsp) and a bit of corn flour, water and salt. Sit for about 30 minutes.
Pre-cook chicken, put aside, then cook cashews and a heap of garlic and then add the chicken again. Throw in some more dry sherry (have a sip) and then add veggies. Cucumber is added to this. Cut in half length ways and then scoop out seeds before cutting finely. Nice and crunchy!

Deep-Fried Whole Fish with Spring Onion, Ginger and Vinegar Dressing

The recipe suggests fish such as, snapper, sea bass or ocean perch. I used COD. It was pretty bad. I had to spit mine out. First of all it wasn't fried for long enough (as you can see in the picture). Cod is thick and needs longer in the pan. After re-frying, it then tasted like cooked fish oil tablets I take in the morning. Yuck.

The Banquet

If you can handle the stress of soft boiling multiple eggs while preparing a banquet then this salad is worth the effort.
Soft Boiled Eggs with Tomato and Chilli Salad

• 6 eggs, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 2 tbsp water, 3 tsp light soy, 2 tsp malt vinegar, 1/4 iceberg
• 1 tomato cut into wedges, 1 large green chilli

Soft boil the eggs (place in boiling water for 4 minutes, take out and run under cool water).
Dissolve sugar and water in a warm pan and then add soy and vinegar. Stir and remove from heat.
Arrange lettuce leaves, tomato, halved eggs on platter. Spoon over sauce and garnish with chilli, salt and pepper.
Chinese Broccoli with Oyster Sauce

• 1 bunch Chinese broccoli, 1 tbsp vegetable oil, 2 tbsp oyster sauce, dash sesame, 1 tbsp peanut oil

Chop up broccoli and place in a pan of boiling water mixed with vegetable oil. Wait until bright green and tender and then remove.
Drizzle with sesame oil and oyster sauce. heat peanut oil until hot then pour over the top.

Absolute shit

Fresh ingredients are always the key.

Steamed prawns with ginger could have would have should have, BUT the nice seafood man in Turramurra sold me OFF prawns and the result?????????? BLAH, acidic, texturally sluggish. I almost convinced Pat that the prawn man must have squashed together lots of off- cuts, squished them into a prawn shape and drawn orange lines on them. Disaster, massive fail.

Mongolian Beef

I went terribly wrong with this one- no flavour!
It's a whole lot of trouble for no gain.
Buy it from the Chinese shop.

Fire Up - Beef Oyster

 Okay so the photo is quite poor.
Enjoyable it is cooking Kylie Kwong,  but generally a rushed experience of trying to:

• minimise washing up 
• gorge food 
• flake on my pillow.

With this dish, marinate the meat for 30 minutes with dry sherry and salt.
Pre-cook meat for 30 seconds in  hot wok.
 Add oil to wok, stir in some onions, cook till brown and add meat. Then splash in the sauce:
dry sherry, oyster sauce, malt vinegar, sugar, soy and sesame oil. Use a ratio of about 1-1 for all splashings except for the vinegar and sesame. Just a small splash of those.
Chuck in some spring onions and done.

Eat, flake and do the washing tomorrow.