Category Archives: Home Cook Food

Cucumber drink – healthy

25 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by in Gastronomy, Home Cook Food

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When we were younger, my mum used to grate a jar of cucumber and leave it in the fridge for us during the hazy season. She claims that it will help to detox and re-hydrates our body, keeping us healthy. If you Google the health benefit of cucumber, you’ll be quite surprise how good this humble vegetable is for us.

So last weekend, I decided to make myself a jar of the cucumber. It took me only 10 mins to finish grating 3 large cucumbers (the local variety). Use the thickess grating setting you have and store it in a clean jar. Remember to keep the juice you got during grating. I think this jar can easily last me and hub for a week!

Jar of grated CucumberLast night going home after work was scary. The visibility was quite bad. Even in my car, I felt as if dust were clogging my throat up… I saw some people even wearing mask inside their car. I did thought of wearing one but I get a bit dizzy wearing mask for more than 30mins. No choice. The only alternative solution is to make sure I keep myself as healthy as possible.

Reaching home, I made myself a large glass of cucumber juice.

  • 2 large spoon of the grated cucumber
  • 1 spoon of the cucumber juice
  • some sugar syrup for taste
  • fill it up with nice cold water.

Quite refreshing and yummy too.

Refreshing drinkCucumber pieces Sometimes, I use honey instead of the sugar syrup. But, hubby hates honey (weird guy)… It’s really good for children too (I think), as we drank this stuff since we are wee lass… And, we are still healthy alive and kicking. LOL.

Please keep well everyone. Drink plentiful water…

Happy Mama day 2013

27 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Australia, Gastronomy, Home Cook Food, Travel

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It was a blessing that I get to spend Mother’s Day this year with mum. Normally we would find each other in different continent. So, for mother’s day this year, I decided to prepare my family an elaborate dinner.

Surprisingly, mum was more than happy to surrender her kitchen to me. Normally, it’s pretty hard to convince her to let me use her kitchen because she always say I make a huge mess and she need to clean it up after. LOL.

Being in Melbourne makes it easier for me to hunt for great and fresh ingredients (you can get almost anything from Vic Mart). I had some ideas what I would like to prepare for dinner but I was still playing around the menu in my head. I prefer to look what are the freshest products that morning before deciding the dishes I would like to prepare.

While in the deli section of Vic Mart, I saw a huge varieties of cheeses. It was amazing. After discussing with the lady boss, we finally settle on some locally made goat’s cheese. The texture was really smooth and creamy with a mild after taste. She also told me that it’s a good melting cheese.

So, ta-da… May I present, Goat’s cheese toasted on baguette. I marinated the cheese with some olive oil, sprinkle of salt and pepper, fresh thyme and tarragon, and drizzle with some honey lemon. The combination of taste was so really good.

Toasted bread with Goat CheeseFor Mains, I made cold basil beef and Magret de canard à l’orange (Duck in orange sauce). Nom nom nom… I am salivating looking at these pictures. LOL.

Cold basil beef

Magret de canard à l'orangeBoth mains are convenient as I can per-prepare in advance.That way, I can kick-back and relax before the dinner and not look like I have slave away in the kicthen the whole day. ;p The orange sauce turns out so beautiful. It’s the orange I tell you ! These babies are pack with real ‘orange’ smell and taste, unlike the oranges I get back in KL.

For sides, I made Pommes Anna (forgot to take picture of this one – must check if my sis took ’em)

Pommes Anna

and mum prepared Avocado Salad with toasted walnut and pine nut drizzled with light vinaigrette dressing.

Avocado Salad with toasted walnut and pine nut drizzle with light vinaigrette dressingWhat an awesome meal with great company. We end the meal with dessert. And, the best dessert is ice-cream. My beastie (Ms. SL) kindly brought over a tub of New Zealand ice cream which all of us just dig in from the box. hehehe.

ICE CREAM !!!

On top of that, we manage to get hold of some amazing bubbly during our trip to Yarra Valley a few days back from Yerring Estate and Domaine Chandon. Yummilicious !

champagne- bubblyHappy Mama Day 2013. Luv you loads, Chuletz.

Quiche Alsacienne

02 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Gastronomy, Home Cook Food

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Quiche (read as keesh) is hailed as a typical classic French savory pastry (even though the origin of the word came from Germany). You can practically find quiche anywhere in France, kind of like a staple food there.

My first time eating quiche was in Paris when I was rushing to catch a train. I grab the first interesting item from the kiosk to go. From then on, I was hooked. To me, quiche is such a clever way of rolling all things I love about breakfast into a handy pie-slice format. So easy to eat, healthy and not to mention, taste amazing.

You’ll find many variant of quiche, and perhaps the most famous being quiche Lorraine. It’s truly a very flexible dish and no strict rules to it… So, have fun and throw in whatever you feel like having.

This is my version of quiche Alsacienne (which is basically quiche Lorraine with onion).

Ingredients

  • 1 pcs of short-crust pastry (store bought)
  • 5 slices of bacon (sliced)
  • 1 yellow onion (sliced)
  • 4 eggs
  • 250ml of cream (1 cup)
  • Salt and Pepper to taste (careful with salt as bacon is a little salty)
  • ½ tsp of Cayenne powder (some prefer Mustard powder)
  • 2 tsp of dry herbs (I used a combination of Oregano, thymes and Basil)
  • 1 cup of grated cheese (I use 5 slices of Comté and chop it finely)

* The classic recipe calls for Gruyère. But, you can always substitute it with Emmental, Comté or any similar hard cheese which melts easily.Gruyère originate from Switzerland. Comté is the French version of Gruyère.

Take the short-crust pastry out from your freezer and let it rest for at least 5-10 mins before draping it on your pie tin / bakeware. Good thing about short-crust pastry is that you can actually tear out the edges and patch back on shortage area… Short-crust pastry in pie tin

Look at my poor patch work. Ho ho ho…so ugly. Sigh…Don’t worry too much about it since it’s going to be covered later anyway. ;p Let it sit in the fridge to harden a little while you prepare your other ingredients.

Sauté the bacon (No oil required as these babies release tons of yummy oil as it cook). Scoop up the pieces and let it rest on some oil absorbing paper. Using the same oil, sauté the onions until it is soft. Use this time to bake the pastry for about 15 mins at 175 degree C.

For the eggy custard, whip the eggs and cream together. Mix in the salt, pepper, cayenne and dry herbs. It should have the consistency similar to yogurt.

Bacon and Onion

Spread the bacon and onion all over the crust. Sprinkle the cheese evenly and pour the eggy mixture slowly on top.

Quiche getting ready to be baked

The Quiche is now ready for baking. I allow the whole thing to bake for about 20 mins at 175 degree C to get the even browning which I like. If you don’t like the browning, just cover it with aluminum foil and steam-bake it for 15 mins at 175 degree C. Then, uncover and allow it to bake for another 5 mins at 220 degree C.

Quiche AlsacienneDinner time. Nom nom nom.. yumz.

Dinner slice