About cooking dinner

I enjoy cooking whenever I have the luxury of having "free" time. I love spending time in kitchen preparing food: slicing, dicing, chopping, butchering, mixing, and cooking it: sautéing, pan frying, roasting, stewing, boiling, as long as I don't have to deep fry.

I seldom deep fry for few reasons. Firstly, my kitchen is not near window, the whole house smells bad after deep frying food. Secondly, it is such a waste of oil. There are so much to do with keeping the oil for re-use such as filtering the food particles, storing in cointainer and ohhh think about washing those oily strainer and container. Recently a study found that a toxin called HNE formed when vegetables-based cooking oils are reheated. Hence, I never reuse oil.

I often spend time in kitchen cooking simple dish and present it nicely for the photos taking session. Inspired by Wokking Mum, I too cooked the vegetables and arranged them nicely. Since then, food presentation has been a major part of my dishing process.

Here are some food that I have cooked sometime back.

Steam fish with fry ginger and mushroom.


Stir fry mushrooms with tofu. I used King Oyster mushroom, Shiitake and Enoki mushroom. There is nothing fancy, just normal stir fry but I arranged it nicely.


I cooked Tofu Steak from what was left from the dish above. Deep fried the tofu with potato flour. The sauce is combination of sake, dashi and soy sauce. I don't have recipe, most of the time I just simply google recipe and look at the ingredients but never follow that closely to the "amount" used but simply used them as a quick reference.

A few days ago, I suddenly felt like eating Couscous. Couscous is a coarsely ground semolina pasta and is a staple in many North African countries. Walking down the vegetables section in supermarket, I often look around to get ideas how to make my food look better? Couscous is not a pretty dish, hence I decided to stuff them inside cherry tomato (hide it). But what about the topping/ decoration? Do I want to use a sprig of herbs leaf, beans, nuts or something else? What else can I use? My eyes caught sight of the mushrooms ...

I cooked kind of "same but different" food with 5 main ingredients: cherry tomatoes, baby bella mushroom, corns, chicken and instant couscous. Here are the menu:
- stuffed cherry tomatoes with couscous, then topped with baby bella mushroom.
-miso roasted chicken with couscous (corn, chicken, diced mushroom, tomatoes and feta).
-miso roasted chicken with corn, tomatoes and mushroom.


And the fun began, a lot of work to do. Marinating chicken, cutting the top off tomatoes, cutting mushrooms, cutting the corn off kernels, boiled water, cooked couscous, pan fried tomatoes, corn and mushroom, pan fried chicken, washing, roasted chicken, stuffed the couscous and more washing. Made sauce for chicken, more cutting and more washing. Arranged them in plates for the photos, adding more to the washing load. I got so tired at the end, especially cooking in summer, it was already so hot and humid, definitely hotter in kitchen. It took me 2 hours to cook, to wash and to clean up the stove and oven, it only took 15 minutes to eat. While washing the last pile of plates, I was thinking if I was out of my mind spending 2 hours cooking for two in hot summer?

Prepare some for his lunch too.


I love the stuffed cherry tomatoes. It is a nice and pretty dish as an appetizer. Jon commented that the natural dryness of the couscous together with the sweet tasting tomato topped with the earthy taste of the mushroom were fantastic! In his own words: "mouth watering fusion appetizer dish, less the toothpick!" I also got chance to use my appetizer plate. Can also stuffed the tomatoes with corn, rice or mince meat.


Despite all the troubles and lots of washing, will I do it again? Definitely!