Poached Chicken

I love chicken too!

In a large pot, fill it half full with water. Add in a whole large onion (quartered) , a couple sticks of carrots (you don't need to peel, just scrub the dirt off and chop into large pieces) and 1 or 2 heads of garlic (if you want to peel it, that is fine). You can also add a sprig of celery, some leeks or any other kind of aromatic vegetables.

Time to add some herbs! Western style, you can add bay leaves, thyme, black peppercorn. Asian style, try lemongrass, black peppercorns (and some thai basil, lime juice and fish sauce when it's done).

Bring to a boil and add the chicken. You can use a whole chicken or chicken breasts for a healthier meal.

Bring it back to a boil and lower the heat and let simmer.

The cooking time should be 15 min per pound of chicken.

Salt and pepper to taste.

There are a couple ways to serve this meal.

Place the meat in a bowl with some noodles and add some broth.

In a separate pan, sauté some sliced mushroom with butter and add 2 – 3 ladles of the broth and let it reduce by half. Add some cream (table or whipping, depends how rich you want the sauce and how fat you want to look, haha!). Or don’t add it at all if you want to be skinny…

Pour the sauce over the meat with rice or pasta.

What to do with the leftover broth or meat…

You can add any kind of pasta to the broth, boil for 7 mins and there you have Chicken noodle soup.

You can use the broth as a base when making other soups or risotto.

Or just drink it!

Cream of Mushroom

What's better than a bowl of hearty chunky cream of mushroom when it's getting cold outside?

Dice 1 whole onion, 1 sprig of celery and some leeks. The amount is roughly 2 part onion to 1 part of celery and 1 part of leeks.

Sautee all of them with butter over medium heat until they are translucent. Of course, don’t forget to salt and pepper.

Add the sliced or diced mushroom.

The amount of mushroom is roughly 5 – 10 times the celery (depends on how strong you want the soup). You can use regular white button mushroom as it is relatively cheaper.

Just don’t use shitake mushroom!

Continue cooking the mixture until they are soft. You may need to add more butter as mushroom tends to suck up fat pretty quickly.

Stir in about 3 – 4 tablespoons of flour and cook for about 2 mins. This should thicken the soup when it is done. You can add more if you prefer a thicker consistency.

You can add in some dry white wine if you want, but if you do add wine, let it cook for another min.

At this point you can add liquid until it covers the sautéed mixture. You can use chicken or vegetable broth for a stronger taste or you can just use water. I recommend vegetable broth or water. If you use one of those boxed broth, get the low sodium one.

Bring it to a boil and simmer for 30 mins. On another pot, heat about 500mL of whipping cream. You can use table cream, I just like it richer :)

Do not boil!

When the soup base is done, pour into a blender in patches and puree. Add the hot cream to the pureed mixture. Adjust the amount of cream you want to use to your like.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve 4 – 6.

Enjoy!

Beef Carpaccio

I love raw beef! So here you go:

Use sirloin or tenderloin.

Remove any fat tissues (those silver skin) or tendon from the beef.

Heat a pan until it is very hot (almost smoking) and sear the beef on all sides with butter or olive oil or better its own fat about 45 secs per side.

Remove the seared beef from the pan and let it cool down.

Chop 1 part of rosemary and 1 part of sage.

Combine them with salt and pepper and a little bit of olive oil to form a paste.

Rub the paste to the beef and wrap it with plastic wrap.

Refrigerate.

Put it into the freezer for about an hour before serving.

To serve, slice the beef thinly and arrange on a plate.

Use the back of a spoon to flatten the beef if slices are too think (haha!).

Add fresh ground pepper, tiny bit of salt, a bunch of arugula (those peppery taste salad greens), a couple slices of parmesan, and drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar on top.

1 pound of beef should serve 6 ppl.

Enjoy!

10 Minute Truffle Cream Pasta

This is another recipe I learnt from Mr. Fatos Pristine, owner of The Cheese Boutique (Yes! My favorite shop all time!), when I was living in Toronto, Canada.

I got the luxury, back then when I was in Canada, to have access to fresh black truffle. No luck in HK so far, so I substitute with Truffle paste (white or black, whichever turns you on...).

My choice of pasta is Spaghettini. Well, cook them in a lot of salted water until "al dente". If you don't know what that means, it is when you cut through a string of pasta (I bite mine), the middle part is not cooked through (yet... about the size of a hair line). So it has that chewy texture. Please note that if you are going to continue to cook your pasta in your sauce, it is best to stop the cooking about 1 min before it reaches the "al dente" state.

In another sauce pan, heat a few scoop of clotted cream (or whipping cream). Do NOT boil! It gets burnt easily! Just heat it gently with low heat and shave as much "Parmigiano Reggiano" (Parmesan cheese that is...) Use as much as you like, I would go easy on that because you don't want to overwhelm the pleasant scent of truffle (which cost you an arm and a leg already). The cheese is going to thicken the sauce and add saltiness. I am a big time pepper lover, but I would avoid using any in this recipe.

So when the pasta is almost done (reaching "al dente"), and the sauce is ready, strain your pasta and dump it into the sauce. Stir! The pasta is going to suck up the sauce (you just need enough to coat the pasta without excess sauce running on your plate... same idea with salad dressing).

Plate it! Shave as many slices of Truffle until the wonderful smell knocks you out! Or add a generous spoonful of the truffle paste (or drizzle nice truffle oil) and start stirring on your plate...

Ah... I miss this recipe... :)

10 minute Gnocchi Recipe

This is something I learnt from Mr. Fatos Pristine, owner of The Cheese Boutique (my favorite shop all time), when I was living in Toronto, Canada.

About Gnocchi... I finally remember the name of the cheese... torta mascarpone... it is a marbled cheese with mascarpone and gorgonzola :)

Just cook the gnocchi with a lot of water until they float... strain... and while it is hot, scoop a few spoon of the torta mascarpone on top... pepper (you don't need salt)... the cheese will melt and form a cream sauce :)

Enjoy!

Really Interesting Theory of Hell

As quoted from Dave Snowden's Blog... thought I might borrow and share with friends:

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+