Jamie Oliver's "Oliver Twist" blues

Mr. Oliver -if I am not mistaken- is a chef who is quite well-known in the other part of the world and also (from Newsweeks or Times) a food activist. I had the privileged of seeing his show recently in a bus after school. It was awe inspiring.

He is entertaining, funny and (no doubt) know his forte well. He made the dishes in not more than 4 steps.
1. Get a lot of unidentifiable leaves and chop it well.
2. Add in a lot of oil and lemon and mashed the whole lot together into a sauce.
3. Pour the sauce over ingredients to be baked and the salad.
4. Serve the baked ingredients with that sauce and blocks of cheese.

I thought that if that is the way to cook civilised western food then the good taste must have came from the extraordinary ingredients he used. As a beginner in cooking, I was willing to try that. However, my situation made it impossible to even imagine it.

Firstly, I'm penniless. Hence, it is impossible to even get a leaf which was used in the show. However, in the events that I manage to get the money or the ingredients (beg, borrow or steal), there is the 2nd big problem.
The stove, or the lack thereof. It is not THAT bad actually. I have a common microwave in the common pantry. The microwave had been oozing blackish liquid and fishy stench. I'm afraid that if I try to use it, I will die of food poisoning. This comes from a girl that have encountered baked rat and fried arthropods (I mean bugs, spiders, centipedes, millipedes etc) with indifference.

In summary, I could only stare at the TV and wish I have all those stuff here.

IMBB 18: Summer's Flying, Let's Get Frying!

I wanted to make perkedel, you know the traditional perkedel kentang and perkedel jagung. However, if I'm not wrong they already have it somewhere.
So I go with the hamburger.
I'm not really sure with the amount of stuff I use. It is really easy and has been a habit that I don't need the original recipe. Of course, we will need a good logic to see that the onion and friends is required in a much smaller amount than that of the beef.

ground beef
onion, clove and garlic. Chopped or slice (anyway you want)
flour
1 egg (this one I'm very sure)
salt and pepper
Mash potatoes
butter
garnish (fried potatoes, vegetables)
maizena

1. Put the beef, onion and friends, flour, eggs, salt and pepper together in a bowl.
2. Knead it. If it's too wet, put a little bit more flour. Knead until it does not stick too much to your hand when you shape it.
3. Take a handful of the beef dough, flatten it and make a cave in the middle of it. Do not poke a hole through the beef dough.
4. Put some mash potatoes into the caving.
5. Cover the potates with somemore beef dough, or the same dough, and make a ball out of it.
6. Flatten the ball. Step 5 and 6 should not exposed the potatoes inside.
7. Melt the butter on a pan. Fried the beef dough we have made. The frying is up to you whether you want it well done or charred. Put it on a plate.
8. After all the frying, there should be butter and beef juice left on your pan. Use this to make the sauce by adding salt, pepper and maizena (dissolved in water before hand. Or simply flour) to thicken it.

Serving:
Put the hambuger in a plate, garnished it and pour the sauce over it.

The mash potatoes inside it will retain some of the beef juice, making it more tasty.
Now I really miss my kitchen. It's not a very good article since I'm rushing through it. I promise to make it neater when I get my computer back.

IMBB 18 is up. It was about frying. Hmm.. I was thinking of making burger stuffed with potatoes, will it be considered or should I just stick to the norm.
Sigh, I just wish I have my recipe books here.

Tea Pudding

Ok. I do not have any digital camera or handphone camera, so I can't post the picture of the finished product. But here is the recipe:
- 4 eggs
- 5 oz sugar
- 21 oz milk
- 2.5 oz hot water
- loose tea or tea bags
- caramel sauce

Set the oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
Mix the eggs and sugar well together until smooth.
In a bowl, brew (for 3 minutes) enough tea to create a thick tea in the hot water.
Boil the milk until it reaches 100 degree Fahrenheit
Combine hot milk and tea. Mix well then strain it.
Add caramel sauce at the bottom of each cup, then slowly pour in the hot milk and tea mixture.
Place cups in hot water layered pan. Bake the pudding for 1 hour 20 minutes. After 1 hour or so, try to check the cups to see if they are stable.

For this recipe I like to use darjeeling tea or Japanese green tea. However, any type of tea could be used as long as it is thick enough.

It can be found in A La Cuisine! page.

Since Clement from A La Cuisine! had been kind enough to put up my entry for IMBB 17th: Taste Tea, I felt very guilty about it and decided that I will have a blog. So that I would not need to trouble others for my future entry to IMBB or others.
I will put up my IMBB 17th recipe on my next post.