Roast Pork...with Crackling!!!

Who doesn't love a good 'siew yuk'?. When I was young I steered clear of this because of the layers of fat in each perfectly cut column of meat but as I grew older I began to appreciate this more and more. Suffice to say, I've come to love a good roast pork paired with crispy crackling- you can't have it any other way ;). I never thought to attempt this dish at home but one day I just felt like making it. Sure, I could've gone to Pacific House (who do a really good 'siew yuk') but nothing would've curbed my urge to get busy in the kitchen experimenting and trying to get it right.

The Internet is my cookbook when it comes to looking up recipes but a search for 'Roast Pork with Crackling' turned up more variations of how, what, when, why to do it than I could count on both hands. So I did what I did best- opened up a couple of recipes and combined all the sensible bits together. 

Before I chopped up the pork belly...see how juicy and moist it looks! Of course you can trim the fat before placing on a serving plate.

And after- yum!

Of course, it's not complete without the crackling..

And last, but definitely not least, bird's eye chillies to bring everything together.

Ingredients:

1 kg pork belly

Copious amount of sea salt

1 tsp of five spice powder

1 tbsp of light soy sauce

A pinch of sugar

A few teaspoons of olive oil

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200°C (fan forced).

2. Rinse pork belly under cold running water. Pat dry. Using a sharp knife, score the skin all the way across (approximately 1 cm apart for each incision), repeat until the whole skin layer has been scored.

3. Rub a copious amount of sea salt into the skin and incisions (the more the better as salt helps draw out moisture from the skin). Prepare the marinade by mixing together five spice powder, soy sauce and sugar. Stir well and coat meat with marinate. Be careful NOT to let this touch the skin as you want the skin to be dry. Place uncovered in fridge for 2-4 hours, depending on how much time you have. Some people recommend leaving it overnight to completely dry out the skin.

4. Remove pork belly from fridge, wipe away excess salt and let it warm to room temperature. 

5. In a bowl, mix a handful of salt to olive oil and rub this mixture all over the skin, and into the incisions. Remember, the more salt, the better.

6. If you have a rack, place the pork belly on a rack and put this onto a baking tray and into the oven. I just used a baking tray as I didn't have a rack.

7. Let it roast on  200°C fan-forced for 20-30 minutes; drop the temperature to 180°C (non- fan) and roast for a further 40 minutes, or until pork is moist and tender in the middle.

Tip for a good crackling:

When I cooked this I opened the oven a couple of times to keep adding salt to the skin but what I learnt was that you can slice the layer of skin off the meat once the meat is cooked, brush some olive oil and sea salt onto the skin and pop the skin back into the oven at  220°C (fan-forced) for 10 minutes- please hover around your oven and keep an eye on the progress...I will not be responsible for any fires started by this recipe! While you are waiting you can chop up the meat and place on a serving plate. 

The sound of the skin crackling is like music to your ears. When this happens you know you've done it right! You have to constantly watch the oven as you are cooking on high heat and there is a lot of smoke involved. Make sure your windows are open when you open the oven doors, otherwise your smoke detectors will have a field day. Once the crackling has been cooked to your desired crispiness, remove from oven and let cool in a warm place. Slice and place on top of the meat. Ta-da! All done, and easier than you thought ;)

Enjoy!

Domestic Goddess

I've recently gone from working full-time (and more) to sewing buttons onto the bf's shirts and ironing his work shirts. Hmm. Something's not right here!

I've also been cooking much more lately...I made Hainanese Chicken Rice, Bak Kut Teh and Butter Chicken  (with some help from our instant friends, of course :D ) and been baking muffins. I made a batch of yummy raspberry and white chocolate muffins the other day, only to realise when I was mixing in the pack of frozen fruits that I bought blackberries, blueberries and strawberries. Clearly, I left out the crucial ingredient and happily left the supermarket thinking I'd bought everything I needed. So today was round 2! I made a new batch of raspberry and dark chocolate muffins this time, with a little bit of leftover white chocolate from the other day's baking efforts.

Mmmm....gooey chocolate in the middle.

Hmmph. The bf just came into my room, stole a peek at my computer screen and said, 'Soooooo you did a bit of work and want to show off?' He's just gone off to bed, gone to play Doodle Jump -_- ..Ok, now he's finished and he's mimicking me writing this post ,'I sew, I bake, I cook...hrmm what else..' Grr....if you're reading this now hun, iron your own shirts from now on :P and I think Hungry Jacks does a mean takeaway so you're all sorted for dinner. Hee hee. *smug smile

I've made a reservation at Cutler & Co  this Sunday and I can't wait! It was awarded 2 hats by the Age Good Food Guide 2011 so I expect a good dining experience. Watch this space.

Off to bed now, it's a Monday tomorrow. Sucks being Monday huh? Everyone just hates you. Gnites!

The comforts of Hainanese Chicken Rice

Absolutely delicious- freshly cooked from my kitchen......


......using sauces from a pack hahaha.

Not letting you in on the brand but it's so true to the taste that I haven't found anything close to it in any of Melbourne's restaurants.

The grated ginger, the soup base, the seasoning for the rice and chicken.....yum.

kitchen conversations...

Me (washing dishes by the sink and had my back turned towards the stovetop): "The water in the pan looks like its boiling, the pasta can go in now."

Bf opens packet of pasta and throws pasta in the boiling water, pauses for a splitsecond, then looks at me and asks: "Throw everything in, right?"

I turn around and see that he has literally chucked the whole packet of pasta into the pan.

The pasta was meant for a family of four.

-_-

Masterchef influence

Every night at 7.30pm without fail, I'll have my TV tuned into Channel 10 for Masterchef. Best show on earth (errr ok maybe only in Australia since there are other awesome shows like 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family...ra ra ra). One night on the show, the contestants were asked to make pizzas and there were some pizza combinations that really stood out and made me want to try them. So armed with a recipe I found on the Internet and around $12 dollars poorer I managed to make a Pear, Walnut, Prosciutto and Gorgonzola pizza.

Here's the recipe I used:

1 pizza base (haha I cheated cos I don't know how to make pizza dough, or rather...am too lazy!)
1 pear (sliced relatively medium thin)
A handful of walnuts, the more the better!
2-3 slices of prosciutto (I got mine from Prahran market)
Honey
Gorgonzola cheese

1. Preheat oven to 230 degrees celcius
2. Lightly brush pizza base with olive oil
3. Scatter chunks of gorgonzola cheese on the pizza base at random
4. Place slices of pear on the pizza base, on top of the cheese
5. Add walnuts
6. Drizzle everything with honey
7. Finely slice the prosciutto and add them last to the base (if you prefer thicker slices of prosciutto then you don't even have to slice them)
8. Leave it in the oven for 13-15 minutes or until golden brown (I left mine till the prosciutto became crispy like bacon mmmmm)

I've never had gorgonzola cheese before so I had no idea what it tasted like but while making the pizza I could tell it was gonna be a very, very strong cheese. I love blue cheese but gorgonzola is even stronger than that....maybe a little too strong for me. Now I have so much gorgonzola leftover I have no idea what to do with it *scratches head + puzzled face. The pizza itself was amazing. I loved how the sweetness of the honey and pear nicely complimented the saltiness of the prosciutto, and these flavours were balanced by the nutty flavour of the walnuts. Yummy! I will definitely make this a second time (in fact, I've already gone to Coles to get me a second pear!) but without the gorgonzola.

I also found the taste of the prosciutto I bought too 'porky' when eaten by itself. I initially had them with rockmelon (as you do). But once I tasted them on the pizza after they've come out of the oven the taste was more moderate- a little like bacon as mentioned earlier.

So sleepy now...it's a public holiday tomorrow (Happy birthday to the Queen- thanks for the holiday!), maybe I'll find some time to blog about Mart 130. We'll see. Good night!

Southern obsession

I had this sudden urge (like there was a pixie sitting on my shoulder coercing me the whole day) to make....of all things, Key Lime Pie. Seriously, I have never ever tasted it before in my entire life but there I was, sitting at my desk, thinking about the taste. Upon Googling it, I found an easy recipe and off I went huntinggathering my ingredients. I thought it was something that came from the Southern states of USA (just like Red Velvet). And Wiki tells me it's the state pie of Florida- so this comes from the South too! Mom, here's the pic you requested.

Looks just like any other lemon cheesecake, right? I was surprised when I ate it because there's no cheese involved in the making of this pie....but who's complaining? It's pretty darn tasty yum! Recipe here.

Off to The Point at Albert Park Lake for dinner tonight- will post pics later! Excited to see what the 'best steak restaurant in Victoria' serves up :)

hello, it's been a while!

I've been busy clicking my mouse- refreshing webpages. Online shopping is HEAPS of fun! But not so fun when I miss out on $1 deals on the Outnet.com. Visited Strawberrynet twice in one week and I'm pretty impressed with their delivery. It's sooo quick- both my parcels have probably taken a maximum of 1 week each to reach me. Replenished my favourite perfume:

Stella Sheer- everytime I use this I get asked what perfume it is. It IS that amazing.

Bought a cheapie- couldn't resist. Mom bought this years ago and I love how it smells so I just repurchased.

Made triple choc muffins a few weeks back (I cheated- they were straight from a box) but I topped up the milk chocolate buttons so it was all gooey on the inside. Yum.

I have plenty of pics from when I went to the Grampians and stayed at Royal Mail. You might remember hearing me talk about Royal Mail here. Stay tuned for the next blog post!

Chipped nails :(

...are a direct result of preparing ingredients, cooking and washing the dishes. I really want a dishwasher! Just a short post today- not feeling 100%, but we were good and ate healthily (well- we tried to!) at home.

Sourdough toast, spinach and mushrooms cooked in butter and garlic, and the usual suspects- roma tomatoes lightly tossed in the pan, rindless bacon, honey baked ham and baked beans. See the dark shadow cast over the bacon? Looks like I'm not the only one who knows how sinful they are *looks around.

First attempt at homemade chicken and sweet corn soup and pizza! I always order chicken and sweet corn soup at Asian restaurants- now I know how to make it....I never knew it was soooooooooo simple! My pizza looks unbelievably awesome doesn't it? :D I love that there's heaps of fresh ingredients on there- tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach...yum.

Have a good week ahead everyone!

Squid Ink Pasta

My yearning for a taste of squid ink pasta led me on an elusive chase for the pasta itself. Finally managed to track some down at Jones the Grocer @ Chaddy and boy, was I elated! The hunt was finally over. Whipped up some calamari with really, really hot red baby chillies, parsley and baby roma tomatoes- all dressed in extra virgin olive oil and dry white wine to go with the pasta. Seasoned with a touch of sea salt and pepper (both black and white), it was healthy and yummy. Mmmmmm...the chillies were killer though, sister and I were both gasping for air and water after a plate of this. The pasta tasted ordinary and was a teeny weeny bit sweeter than the normal variety- what is squid ink pasta meant to taste like?

Cooking time was minimal but it was a pain to prepare all the ingredients. Imagine having to peel and chop up garlic into tiny pieces, peel and slice onions, chop up a handful of chillies, quarter the mini tomatoes...and finely chop up the parsley (which I had to do 3 times cos I used so much!). And then let's not forget cutting up the calamari...

This morning I felt like bruschetta so I made some! Mixed in a lil pesto to give it some flavour.

Can't believe it's Monday again tomorrow but thank goodness it's a short week. Arj Barker on Tuesday should be fun :) Have a good one people!

Update time!

Yeah I ran out of title ideas cos obviously I haven't done anything exciting for a while (but that is about to change in the next few weeks- yippee! More on that later...). In other totally unrelated news, more than 14 people at work have resigned over a period of...one week. Yes it's a mass exodus and we're literally bleeding people. In other, other news, I have yet again purchased 2 more bottles of nail polish- bringing me to my grand total of 12 bottles in less than a month :D

allure turned out to be a pretty colour <3

Cooking last week produced drunken chicken a.k.a chicken in wine with black fungus, goji berries and heaps of other stuff. Now I know to use ginger wine or glutinous rice wine instead of normal Chinese cooking wine. 

Sis got a lil busy in the kitchen as well and made an onion/cheddar/egg tart (Picture #1) and focaccia from scratch (Picture #2)

Ok so now on to the exciting stuff...in the next few weeks I'll be heading to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

to check out Arj Barker! One of the top comedians of our time, and one of the more popular ones too.

Then it's off to Dunkeld which is a 3-hour drive from Melbourne (260km west of Melbourne) to visit the Royal Mail Hotel and taste the culinary delight that is the Royal Mail Restaurant. It was booked out the last time we tried booking and this time we made sure we booked 3 months in advance for a chance to eat at this famed restaurant. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) the average waiting time is 2 months if you want to make a reservation.

Look at how beautiful this dish is. Pic credited to Tummyrumbles. The Royal Mail Restaurant has been touted as Australia's answer to El Bulli. 

Here's a little snippet about El Bulli from trusty Wikipedia: "El Bulli (as of 2008, the restaurant refers to itself with the orthography elBulli^[1]) is a Michelin 3-star Spanish restaurant run by chef Ferran Adrià.

The small restaurant overlooks the Cala Montjoi bay, in Roses on the Costa Brava in Catalonia, Spain, and has been described as "the most imaginative generator of haute cuisine on the planet"^[2] and does a great deal of work on molecular gastronomy.

Restaurant has judged El Bulli as Number One on Restaurant (magazine) Top 50 list of the world's best restaurants a record five times — in 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.^[3][4]

The restaurant has a limited season: the 2010 season, for example, will run from June 15 to December 20.^[5] Bookings for the next year are taken on a single day after the closing of the current season. It accommodates only 8,000 diners a season, but gets more than two million requests. The average cost of a meal is €250; the restaurant itself has operated at a loss since 2000, with operating profit coming from El Bulli-related books, and lectures from Adrià.^[6][2] As of April 2008 the restaurant employed 42 chefs.^[3]" 

^{Now I really want to eat at El Bulli too! But one step at a time :) It will go on a 2-year hiatus from 2012 and reopen in 2014.}

And after all that, I come back to watch...

Lady Gaga in the flesh!!!

Can't wait for next weekend- let it begin already!

Giving the kitchen a good workout..again!

Been wanting to try to make these for a while now and ever since I discovered we have an electric hand mixer at home it gave me even more motivation to try whipping up a batch of lovely Red Velvet cupcakes! Shopping for the ingredients was easy as I had half of it at home from making these peanut butter cookies.

On their own they taste ok, next time I think I'll add in more cocoa powder to give it that extra chocolatey taste.

Had to wait for them to cool before I put icing on them

I went easy on the icing instead of piling it on cos I know what goes in there and let me tell you- there's enough butter, sugar and cream cheese to feed you for days! I would have liked my icing to be a little bit more creamy but I ran out of butter and put less than what was called for in the recipe.

Here's the recipe I used (taken from Paula Deen of foodnetwork.com):

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cocoa powder (more doesn't hurt!)
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 tablespoons red food coloring
• 1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 1 pound cream cheese, softened (I'm assuming this is roughly 454g)
• 2 sticks butter, softened (rougly 8 ounces, or 1 cup)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (I only used 1.5-2 cups)
• Chopped pecans and fresh raspberries or strawberries, for garnish

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (about 175 degrees C). Line 2 (12-cup) muffin pans with cupcake papers.

In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder. In a large bowl gently beat together the oil, buttermilk, eggs, food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla with a handheld electric mixer. Add the sifted dry ingredients to the wet and mix until smooth and thoroughly combined.

Divide the batter evenly among the cupcake tins about 2/3 filled. Bake in oven for about 20 to 22 minutes, turning the pans once, half way through. Test the cupcakes with a toothpick for doneness. Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting.

For the Cream Cheese Frosting:

In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla together until smooth. Add the sugar and on low speed, beat until incorporated. Increase the speed to high and mix until very light and fluffy.

Garnish with chopped pecans and a fresh raspberry or strawberry.

Cook's Note: Frost the cupcakes with a butter knife or pipe it on with a big star tip.

Try it and let me know what you think!

Healthy kickstart to the weekend!

Slept early yesterday (yes, on a Friday night!) but it felt so good to wake up at 7.30am on a Saturday. This allowed me to roll around in bed for half an hour before deciding to wake up. It's now 10.18am and I've already done so much! I've washed my clothes, hung them out to dry, ironed the creased items which came out of the wash, made brekkie, ate brekkie, blow my hair, cut my nails (am about to put nail polish on them) AND update this blog! *proud of self :D

Mmm can you guess what I made?

Spinach, apple & walnut salad

1/2 cup walnuts

1-2 Royal Gala or Red Delicious apples

1 tbsp lemon juice

2-3 stalks celery, finely sliced diagonally

75g baby spinach leaves

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp wholegrain mustard

Honey to taste

1. Preheat oven to 180 or 160 (fan-forced) celcious. Spread walnuts on an oven tray and roast for 4-5 minutes until fragrant. Let it cool.

2. Core apples and cut length ways into thin slices. Toss with lemon juice (to prevent oxidisation). Combine apple, celery and spinach leaves in a large bowl.

3. Place vinegar, olive oil and mustard into a jar and mix. Pour over salad and toss to coat. Add walnuts and honey and serve immediately.

Enjoy peeps! Have a good weekend :)

ETA: Here are my painted nails

This went on my toes

I know my toes look like the silhouette of Bart Simpson's head somehow...and they're quite tan due to all I walking I do in my Havaianas.

I've got envy on my fingers! They're a bronze base with very very fine silver glitter in the bottle but look more silver on the nails. I <3 ulta3! They're easy to apply, dry within 5 minutes and only cost $2 a pop! What's not to love?

Off to Ikea soon to buy another shoe rack (if you looked in my apartment and saw the shoes you'd think 20 people lived here) and a breakfast-in-bed table for lazy old me. I can foresee that I'll be having Swedish Meatballs for lunch, yummay!

More noms...it never ends, does it?

Le Petit Gateau on Little Collins Street- heard so many good things about this place but have yet had the opportunity to try. My sister brought home some cakes one day and it is awesome. So very very awesome!

Look at this Cosmopolitan goodness- made up of layers of carrot cake, white chocolate cheese cake and topped with delectable raspberry jam. The boy and I gobbled this down in under 5 minutes at 11pm on a Monday night. *guilty face

I made peanut butter cookies today, but they taste more like the peanut cookies we usually have during Chinese New Year than actual peanut butter cookies!

Just had the most awesome ice-cream mochi ever.

10 fingers painted plum violet by ulta3 to induce happiness for end-of-week relaxation, why not?

Time for a little bit of Financial Review before hitting the bed in anticipation for HAPPY FRIDAY! :D