SUCCESS! Lemon Curd!

I made lemon curd and it didn't fail like last time (A sour experience that I would like to pretend did not exist)!! I followed the recipe from The Really Good Life, a blog I found today when I was searching for "savoury food". I might have mentioned this before, but I've been preferring savoury food over sweet food for the past semester. Though, I suppose I'm (almost) always in the mood for lemon curd!! :D

Her site is pretty neat, by the way.

Since I had 75 g of butter, I made less lemon curd, which is alright because I don't want to have leftover lemon curd when I leave for Penn again (because if/when I come back during Spring break, it will still be in the fridge). So, nearly direct from The Really Good Life, scaled down, with my own verbose comments (for my own future reference, so I won't worry about the ratios being incorrect/stuff not thickening):

Makes about...800 g

2 lemons
2 eggs
75 g butter cut into smallish chunks
120 g sugar
2-3 tsp cornflour aka cornstarch
vanilla

1. Grate off lemon peel. Highly difficult for me because my grater is quite blunt.
2. Squeeze juice!! Mix sugar and vanilla with the juice! It's fine if the sugar doesn't dissolve.
3. Stick eggs in a saucepan and mix eggs with a spoon (I lack a whisk...) or fork, and add in butter.

4. I was really cautious and had everything on low heat. I vigorously mixed the egg/butter mixture on low heat for about a minute, and saw that the butter had started to melt slightly, so I took the pan off the heat, and poured in the lemon/sugar/vanilla mixture. I kept stirring vigorously, and added 1 tsp of cornflour. Then I put the pan back on the stove on LOW heat and kept stirring.
5. Two minutes later (still vigorously stirring because I was so scared that the eggs were going to become scrambled), the mixture was still thin, like the consistency of milk. So I threw in another tsp of cornflour, cranked up the heat to MEDIUM and kept stirring.
6. Two minutes later, the mixture was still the consistency of milk! I threw in another tsp of cornflour, and wondered whether this would be a good rice topping as opposed to actual lemon curd.
7. By then, I was stirring once every 5 seconds (as opposed to 5 stirs/second).
8. SUDDENLY, THE MILK-THIN LIQUID STARTED TO THICKEN! I increased my stirring speed to 2 stirs/second, and the liquid became the consistency of ketchup, and then applesauce, and then light pancake batter. I turned off the heat and stirred for another 5 minutes or so (when I took these pictures).

9. Pour into jars. Cool. Refrigerate. Consume within 2 days (not necessarily, but that's what happens because I love food...)

IT THICKENED! IT'S SWEET! IT'S SOUR! IT'S CURD!! IT CURDLED! IT'S SPREADABLE! I CAN HOLD A JAR OF IT UPSIDE DOWN AND IT WON'T PLOP DOWN! YAY!!

Not on my non-existent list of New Year Resolutions, but lemon curd is a pretty sweet ending to 2011. Have a meaningful 2012, dear readers (the 0 to 2 of you).

Soybean Curry!

Ingredients
Some oil or butter
Soybeans! --SOAKED OVERNIGHT!
LOTS OF minced GARLIC!
1 small diced red onion
1 cut tomato
1 tbsp curry powder
Dried coriander
50 ml milk
Chili flakes/powder (or real chilies, which I don't have)

Method
1. Stick everything in a pot and let simmer for some 20 minutes, until the soybeans are cooked.

International Dinner

I never got around to posting about my dorm house's International Dinner! Oh No! So here are some pictures. I was near the mid/end of the line, so a lot of the food was undergoing peristalsis, digestion, or absorption.

 Plum tart. DELICIOUS CAULIFLOWER AND LENTILS!

 Balsamic strawberries, vegetable dumpling, an olive bread thingy, crepes, and a cheese bread.

DELICIOUS CHEESE BREAD THING!

Risotto (from Year 10)

So I decided to fashion my plate of risotto into something like this. Obviously the kitchen needs better lighting...

In year 10, I made risotto in Food Tech. It's pretty ironic that I now want a career in something food-related; Food Tech was an elective that I chose slightly grudgingly; at that time, I honestly would've preferred Textiles Tech/fashion design stuff. Alas! 2 months into Food Tech and we moved from HK to the US... but within those   2 months, I did make risotto and since then, I haven't had plenty of delicious risotto, only because I don't understand how restaurants can make a fresh batch of risotto in 20 minutes. Risotto takes a full hour to make, and more if you're more patient and want softer rice. The one made by me, my GA and my dorm friends was really gooey and delicious, though but that was just mushroom. The one I made today had milk, celery, peppers, cauliflower, and firm tofu. A delicious meal...

The recipe came from some cookbook, but I used the modified version that I created in year 10 for my class. Actually, I adapted that too because we didn't have vegetable stock cubes or tomatoes. Although this recipe apparently serves 4-6, it really serves 6 in my family.

Ingredients for risotto for ~6 people
50 g butter
1 red onion
2 garlic bulbs (less if you don't like garlic)
1 tsp dried basil (or a lot of fresh basil, but it's winter now :( )

A bunch of vegetables and/or animal pieces. I used: 
1 green pepper
1/3 of a giant head of cauliflower
4 stalks of celery
150 g firm tofu

400 g Arborio rice
1 L water
1 packet vegetable soup mix or vegetable stock cube or just plain ol' vegetable stock
700 ml milk

50-150 g of Cheddar and/or Parmesan cheese (however much you like)

METHOD --takes about an hour
1. Chop up everything. I don't like grating cheese so I cubed the cheese.
2. Throw butter, onion, garlic, and basil in a huge pan and let it sizzle for a bit. SMELLS SO GOOD!!
3. Throw in vegetables and rice but not tofu yet. Unless you really want to. Note the small grains of rice.

 4. Mix water, stock cube/vegetable soup mix with milk and pour in ~250 ml. Stir occasionally. Bring to a boil and keep it on medium-medium-low heat.

 5. After a while, that liquid will b absorbed by the rice! The rice will get poofier! Add in another ~250 ml of liquid. The mixture should remain bubbly.

 6. Let rice soak up liquid. Stir occasionally. Add ~250 ml of liquid. Keep going!!

(I have flash on all my pictures because my kitchen has bad lighting. The image below is the pot without flash). You can see the texture better, but everything is all grainy looking. Haha, of course, due to the rice (a grain...get it? ha...)

 7. Last ~250 ml of liquid! I love how the rice just...soaks it all up! After adding the last bit of liquid, add in the tofu and cheese.

8. When your last liquid is nearly all absorbed and looks something like the image below, you're done! This was about an hour after I had started with the onions. The rice should be soft, there should be really gooey thick sauce, and the kitchen and upstairs should smell savoury.

In addition I got my sister to eat green peppers (which she dislikes for some reason) by telling her that it was celery.

Boiled Dumplings

Delicious savoury food!! For some reason, I've been consistently craving savoury food throughout the last quarter of the year. Today my mum made egg and carrot filling for dumplings!! My sister and I filled the dumplings with the filling. Actually, my sister made one dumpling and I made the rest. Her dumpling looks like a bag (it's the second one to from the left in the image below). We had some dumpling skins left over, and my sister cut tiny holes out of one of them and made a "snowflake" design.

 I'm not sure how to make boiled dumplings look appetizing. So here they are, dripping with soy sauce, like mini brains dripping with blood... well, not really.

 SO DELICIOUS. Reminds me of childhood. Of being 5 years old and helping my mum make dumplings from scratch...and not being able to crimp the tops correctly...