I am back

I've been a neglectful blogger to this poor old blog, not for lack of cooking and food, but a general sense of lethargy and malaise, a total lack of concentration, and days whizzing pass and not enough hours and minutes in a day to do everything I want to do. I owe 2 important emails and pics to someone, and have promised pics on a disc to 2 people and I seriously do not like outstanding issues and a general sense of losing control. These tasks will be COMPLETE before the end of next week.

Ok, let's see - I cooked this for my kids on the day I came back from Spore (26th Feb) - a very very simple recipe of grilled salmon cutlets marinated with mixed herbs, salt & black pepper, lime juice/skins and olive oil, topped with shallots and garlic. Put in on the highest shelf in the oven and as close to the grill as possible on high heat.

It's done in approx 10 minutes. Don't worry if it looks too pink and raw when you remove if from the oven, the residual heat will finish it off. This was too much for my kids, so the next day I removed skin/bones from the salmon, added fresh mushrooms and onions and cream, and turned it into salmon cream sauce over pasta.

Mum cooked this for dinner on the day I came back from Spore too - a lovely gently braised whole baby abalones with brocolli (yummyssssssssss),

and 'sticky' pot consisting of fish maw, sea cucumber, black moss, dried oysters and mushrooms. I love this too and ate a LOT. To the uninitiatied, this looks quite alarming with crawly jellylike stuff crammed into a dish, but you must try it to appreciate the different textures and tastes, each complementing the other beautifully. Adding a small cup of abalone stock (from the tin abalones) made the entire dish burst, no, explode, with flavour.

We also had some 'kau yuk' - the lovely meat stew with yam. Mum was determined to feed me after all that food I had in Singapore and I willingly obliged! ha, so much for the detox - but I must admit I have been good since then and have shed some of the bloatiness (is there such a word??) since I came back.

(This pic was taken earlier). Mum made 3 pots of this lovely stew and we froze 2 portions.

I was too tired to mess around with table cloths, etc, so we ate on a bare table as on 'normal' days. My kids know enough that when they see a set table with a table cloth (and there are different cloths for the scale of importance of the meal), to ask "oh is it fancy tonight, Mummy"? when they see the table set.

My detox started soon after and this was just one of my meals - sayur manis soup with egg, with dried fried whitebait. So refreshing and light after almost 2 weeks of rich restaurant food.

I roasted a turkey last week, which turned out pretty well - we still have some delicious turkey gravy which I have frozen in the freezer but no turkey. Today the turkey carcass will be turned into a lovely soup with whole onions, carrots, cabbabe and whole white peppercorns.

S came round for drinks on Tuess and we were extremelyx3 naughty - I made 2 trays of cheesy potato wedges and served a turkey salad. We also had a lot of Doritos, peanuts, and pistachios. The garden was filled with the sounds of 3 screeching hyenas (I led the pack that evening). PT and Mum joined us later, it was a case of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em". And when cigarettes are taken out and smoked by non-smokers, you know it was a bad bad night. (I must say I did not touch them). And Eno ended the evening for me.

Wine over - tea now.

Look at the mess we left behind.

And lastly, here's Hazel with a fresh new look.

Tonight's (8th March) dinner:

Turkey Soup

Fried Calamari

Prawn Fritters

Braised Pork with Bean Curd

Soft Shelled Crab and Butter Prawns (from TH)

Vegetables

Mum is leaving us on Weds, sniff...