Big Eating Day

I did loads of cooking today.  Even before my friends arrived I was already feeling tired!  Good job I made the cake above last night so I didn’t have to rush around measuring and whisking on top of all the other stuff I had to do.

My menu for today was white fungus and papaya soup, choi sum (veggies), thai green curry, boiled sui gaw (prawn dumplings), roast duck (GM bought this from a Chinese restaurant) and I also made Ah Ma’s assam prawns!  How does it look?  I think it was quite close to Ah Ma’s but not as good.  Nobody can make assam prawns like Ah Ma.

Another dish on my menu was Di’s beef with pineapple!  Does it look like how it’s meant to Di?  It was nice, very tangy.  I think my friends enjoyed it.

This is my cake after it’d just come out of the oven last night.  This must be the first cake I’ve baked in my unevenly heated oven that didn’t come out lopsided.  I didn’t even turn the pan round midway, how amazing.  It was a strawberry buttermilk cake, practically foolproof to make and had a good crumb.  The only thing is the strawberries were too heavy for the cake bit so they sank to the bottom and where the strawberries were it was a bit soggy, otherwise it was good.  My friends enjoyed the cake, some even had seconds.

Food Diary

Lunch – A bit of leftover mee siam

Dinner – All the dishes mentioned above with rice

Dessert – One slice strawberry cake with small scoop vanilla ice-cream

Snack – Doritos, 4 Ferrero Rochers, some sweets

Drinks – English tea, Chinese tea, water

Exercise – None except loads of cooking and housework in between cooking!

Strawberry Tarts

I’ve had such a busy day!

I’ve been feeling like I was playing catch-up all day.  My lack of time and tardiness  were probably compounded by GM and I having a really long lie-in in the morning.  We like to sleep really late on Friday nights, just because we can, but that invariably means that we get up later than usual on Saturdays and in today’s case we got up a lot later than usual!

We did loads of grocery shopping this morning in preparation for my dinner party tomorrow.  I am NOT looking forward to the cooking I have ahead of me.  Sigh.  My cooking is seriously really hit and miss.

I fixed us a late lunch of mee siam.  This is from one of those kits that you can get at chinese supermarkets.  I used the chicken rice set last year and it was so good that I bought a mee siam set to try – I hadn’t had mee siam in years so I thought it’d be nice for a change and for nostalgia’s sake.  I’m happy to report that the mee siam kit is also very good!  I love that brand of seasonings, it’s so easy to use and everything tastes so authentic.

After lunch I set about making my fruit tart to bring over to GM’s parents’ place tonight.  I promised them mango puddings a while ago you see, but remember I left my fridge door open last week and they melted in the heat?  I thought I’d make good on my promise of giving them some kind of dessert and I’ve been wanting to make a fruit tart for ages AND bought myself a new tart tin recently so I decided they were getting strawberry tart.

In addition to the big tart I also tried making little puff pastry tartlettes with ready bought puff pastry, just for fun.  They looked really sweet unbaked but once baked they weren’t as pretty, unfortunately.  And they tasted only alright, they’re missing something.  My everything made from scratch big strawberry tart on the other hand was pretty good.  The only thing I’m not happy with is that I had to roll the pastry really thin because my recipe was for a 9″ tin and I have a 12″ tin… I know, why don’t I check the recipe and increase the ingredients or buy a smaller tin?  I like making things difficult for myself, that’s why!  So if you’re thinking my tart looks a bit skimpy on crust and pastry cream you’d be right!  Since my pastry cream recipe was also for a 9″ tin.  I must say though that the pastry cream was delicious, the best I’ve made yet.  I’m definitely going to use that recipe for all custards from now on.

Everyone told me my tart was really nice.  Whether they were just being polite or not, I don’t know.

Jo and Di requested pics of my shopping last weekend.  This is one of the pairs of shoes I bought, I love them.  They’re really really comfy!  I also bought another pair exactly the same in a bronze-y colour.

Food Diary

Lunch – One huge bowl mee siam with fried tofu and boiled egg

Snack – 6 little strawberry tartlettes

Dinner – One third of a pizza with some salad

Dessert – One slice strawberry tart

Drinks – English tea with skimmed milk and water

Exercise – None!

I baked a cake when I got home from GM’s parents’ house.  It looked really good when I took it out of the oven and smelt gorgeous.  Not sure what it looks like now since I haven’t checked it, might have sunken for all I know.  Anyway I was too lazy to take a photo of it but if it holds up well and I remember, I will take a photo of it tomorrow!