My Bastardized Sangria

I could really use some of this right now.
Red wine, diced strawberries, peaches, pears, sprite and ice.
Cheers!

Athena's Bday Party - How to Host A Bitching Party?

You're not having a dejavu, there was really another party at my place, and the title of my post doesn't mean that I am good at hosting party (this was only my second time), it's a question, not a statement. Please share your party tips, pretty please?...

I remember my first time attending a "casual" dinner at my friend's place, in Singapore. I typed casual between quotation marks, as to me, it was really a stunning dinner. She was serving simple and delicious home cooked meal of tomato soup and lasagna, but the table was beautifully set, decorated with gorgeous flowers and candles.

Did I learn from that experience? Ehm, judging from how my party spread looked like (disposable plates and cups? Really?)...gosh, I still have a lot to learn.

What did I do prior to the party?
Is my place normally that pristine and immaculate? Do I always have fresh flowers at home? Of course NOT!
Not really, so here are the things that I do when preparing for a party:
- A week before: thought about the menu (Order in? Take away? Home cooking? What style? Western? Asian? Indonesian? Chinese? Who doesn't eat what? Are the guests big eaters/dieters?) Any other activities to be done after dinner? Xbox? DVD? Games?
- A couple of days before: menu should be pretty much decided, create a list of ingredients to purchase)
- The day before: purchase ingredients and prep or cook dishes which can be prepared in advance, tidy up my mountain-high piles of dirty laundry, collect and throw SC's game weekly magazines from every room, stash any messy tidbits into empty drawers
- The morning and afternoon before: roughly dust visible places, clean floor, and prohibit SC to throw more dirty laundry everywhere, arrange flowers into various vases and station them several rooms
- One hour before the party: start cooking rice, and prepare all ingredients for dishes, ready to fire up, and prepare to heat up dishes which had been cook the day before

What did I serve this time? Just simple dishes I knew I could handle.

Italian Herbs and Lemon Zest Grilled Chicken Wings

- I prepared about 2-3 pieces of wings per person
- Italian mixed herbs (rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage)
- Zest of 1 lemon, juice of 1 lemon
- Salt, black pepper, olive oil

The day before the party, I defrosted the wings by quick boiling it (dip them into boiling water until the skin changed color, but not necessarily cooked through), drain and pat dry, coat wings with all ingredients, store in fridge. You can opt to skip the quick boiling.
On the day of the party, preheat oven to 220C, grill wings until the skin turned golden brown.

Corn Kernels with Bacon and Sausages

- 1 large can of corn kernels
- 3 slices of bacon, cut into small chunks
- 3 chicken franks, cut into 2-3 mm thick chunks (or any other sausages of your choice)
- 2 pork and herb sausages, cut into bite sized chunks
- black pepper

Defrost sausages and bacon since the night before, if necessary. About one - 2 hours before the party (or the day before, if you didn't need to defrost anything), slice bacon and sausages, then keep in the fridge before cooking. When ready to cook, heat up frying pan, add bacon and sausages (with no oil), cook until golden. Meanwhile, open the can of corn kernels and drain. Once the bacon and sausages are nicely browned, add corn kernels, cook until a bit charred, add black pepper. No other seasoning necessary, all the ingredients are already very flavorful.

Initially, I planned to add raisins to this dish, which will add another dimension of flavor, but I...forgot. Opps, maybe next time.

Grilled Chicken, Pineapple and Red Pepper in Coconut Milk

- 3 pieces of chicken upper thigh fillet
- 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 1 onion, thinly sliced
- 1 can (around 200ml coconut milk)
- 1 small fresh pineapple, or 1 can of pineapple chunks
- salt, black pepper, fish sauce, sugar

In the afternoon, or 1 hour before dinner starts, start preparing the ingredients, all the slicing and dicing. When it is time to serve, heat up frying pan (with no oil), season chicken fillet with salt, black pepper and olive oil, and grill skin down until you get some color. Flip once, cook until you get some colorage, set aside and slice into bite sized chunks. Saute garlic and onion, add chicken pieces, add pineapple (without the syrup if you are using canned pineapple), add coconut milk, and use some of the syrup of the canned pineapple (if using), season with salt, pepper, sugar, fish sauce and serve.

Beef Brisket Stewed in Red Wine

The birthday girl wanted to try this dish, so I did another encore of Beef and Red Wine combo. This time using brisket. I cooked this dish the night before, to get the beef to be more flavorful the day I served it.

Sauteed Black Pepper Mushrooms

- Mixed mushrooms
- Butter and olive oil
- salt and black pepper
- 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

Saute garlic in olive oil and butter, add mushrooms until they turn golden and slightly charred, season with salt and lots of black pepper. It was really that simple.

Poison of the Day:
Mandarin Orange, White Wine and 7Up Drink

I should've named the drink with something catchy like sex on the beach or screaming orgasm, but my creativity veins are blocked today (this is Monday!)...so I just called it what it is.
Suggestions please....^_^

- 1 small can of mandarin orange sections in syrup
- white wine
- sprite/7up/soda water

Fill a jug with the mandarin orange sections, including the syrup, add ice, fill up to 2/3 with chilled white wine, top it off with sprite/7up/soda water, stir and serve.

The birthday cake's from a bakery called Zoe, it's very chocolatey, rich, and satiny smooth delicious! Served with cups hot of earl grey tea.


Capturing Joe's cute gestures and expressions such as this one? Priceless!


The perfect party souvenir: Polaroid pictures!
Useful tips:
- If we're anything other than svelte, hide behind those who are ^_^
- If you wanna appear more fair skinned, move to the front
- If you wanna appear ridiculous, do my pose

A birthday isn't a birthday without some gift giving action. The gift which shocked Joe to the core...original soundtrack of Boys over Flowers and SS501 album (birthday girl's current favorites).

Guess what he was thinking when he saw the CDs?

Check out birthday girl's blog post to find out what her husband said about her outfit, at Athena's Little C9 (in Chinese).

Duck & Red Wine - The Double Sequels

Making a sequel of something fantastic is surely challenging.
It kinda reminded me of how I recently fell asleep watching Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, despite loving the first one and losing interest in Gossip Girl Season 2, despite going crazy over the first season. Gosh, I wish I could do a legendary sequel, just like the Dark Knight (sequel to Batman Begins).

Sigh...*pressure pressure*

After doing a fantastic Bebek Kalasan, what else I could do with the rest of my duck?

I remember seeing an episode of Martha Stewart's TV show, where the guest chef did something with duck and red wine...his duck legs looked fantastic, they glued me to my morning TV and I ended up arriving late for work. However, I also remember it for being rather labor intensive...with multiple steps and long period of marinating and braising. So, I decided not to do his recipe, but simply do an encore of my previous beef and red wine, I bet the flavors used on the beef would work well with duck too.

So there you go, double sequels!
Duck and Red Wine

Recipe
(adapted from here)
- duck breast, halved (mine with bones, or half a duck, or duck breast fillet)
- 4 cloves of garlic (peeled, crushed)
- 1 whole onion (cut into large chunks)
- 2 sticks of celery (cut 1 cm thick pieces)
- 1 carrot (cut into 1 cm thick pieces)
- thyme (I used dry)
- 3 bay leaves (I used dry)
- chicken stock (I used powdered version, 2 tsp)
- red wine (the recipe called for 1 whole bottle, but I used just 1-2 cups)
- bacon (I skipped this, cos I didn't have any, but it's still delicious)
- olive oil, hot water (just enough to cover everything), salt (1 tsp), black pepper, sugar (2 tsp)

While preparing the ingredients, I browned the skin of the duck breast pieces. Lightly season the skin with salt and black pepper, then lay them skin down on a frying pan, no oil necessary, until golden brown, set aside. Keep the duck oil if you wanna use it for other purposes later.

Once the rest of the ingredients are ready, saute garlic and onion in olive oil, add duck, I kept the skin side up so it won't get soaked so much, add carrot and celery pieces, add seasoning, stock and wine, cook until meat is tender (again I cheated by using pressure cooker for 20 minutes ^_^).

Once done, crisp skin by quick grilling under high heat (I used 220C oven, in an oven proof bowl lined with foil), include a bit of juices to keep the duck meat moist.

To serve, you can slice the duck breast into thick chunks, but nothing beats gnawing on the tender bits of meat between the bones.

It was quite a successful sequel, but to me, Dark Knight is still one of the best sequels ever. Maybe I should eat this sequel while watching it.

Minute Steak with Red Wine & Raisins Sauce

I guess there's no going back.

For me, it's like...
- peanut butter and nutella
- burger and fries
- potato chips and coke on ice
- cake and hot tea

Yes, once I've tried the beef and red wine combo, I think I got hooked.
I kept craving it and had to use the flavor combo again, my apologies, guys.

Minute Steak with Red Wine & Raisins Sauce

If only there's a nickle for every dinner menu which was decided by whether or not the ingredient was on sale...

Recipe
(serves 2)
Steak
- 2 pieces of steak (I chose rib eye because...they were on sale!)
- salt, black pepper, olive oil
I learnt this easy way to do my steak from chef Michael Smith. Heat up frying pan, until really really really hot (you'll see smoke). Rub olive oil, salt and pepper on the meat right before frying. Fry each side until you reach the desired level. I like my meat medium to medium-well with a bit of brownage outside. Just flip once, let the steak rest on the side.

Red Wine and Raisins Sauce
- 4 cloves of shallot (or half an onion), thinly sliced
- red wine
- raisins (soak in a bit of water while preparing other ingredients)
- sugar, salt, black pepper

Reuse the steak frying pan, add a bit of olive oil, saute shallot until a bit browned, pour red wine, add raisins, add sugar, salt and black pepper (sugar should be the dominant component, although we should balance it with salt), until thickened, pour over steak when serving.

I served the steak with zucchini and oyster mushrooms, simply sauteed with garlic.

Now what do I do with white wine?
(I have a huge bottle left in my fridge and no seafoodness left)

Beef Shin in Red Wine with Baked Potatoes in Cheese, Garlic & Herbs

I hate wine.
Red. White. Rose. Champagne. All of them.
To those who appreciate it, wine might taste fruity, chocolatey, oak-ish, sending them back to a chateau in France or a valley in California, whatever. To me, wine tasted sour, bitter, and smelt weird.
Oucchhhhhh! (Got hit by gadzillions of saute pans thrown at me by avid wine fans. Opps)
I'm sorry but it was my truth. Was.

Sous chef, recently enlightened by the great health benefits of a glass of red wine a day regime, which apparently is greater than a cup of broccoli a day, started bringing crappy cheapest-of-the-bunch bottles of red wine home, and insisted that I drink half a cup a day. Boy, it was a torture.

Later on, I thought I've found a great way to enjoy ruin wine. Ehm, by mixing it with loads of sprite and ice. All the sugar I drank probably exceeded the health benefits of red wine, antioxidants and all. Opps again. But after my recent cheddar cookies and red wine experience, I discovered that to enjoy wine, I gotta drink it with something I love, something that's gonna make the wine sweeter, something which magically gets rid of all the sourness and bitterness. Something like what I had last night.

Beef Shin in Red Wine

Recipe
(adapted from here)
- 1 kg beef shin (you can change this to other parts of beef, the original recipe called for chuck steak, but I only had beef shin :p)
- 4 cloves of garlic (peeled, crushed)
- 1 whole onion (cut into large chunks)
- 2 sticks of celery (cut 1 cm thick pieces)
- 1 carrot (cut into 1 cm thick pieces)
- thyme (I used dry)
- 3 bay leaves (I used dry)
- chicken stock (I used powdered version, 3 tsp)
- red wine (the recipe called for 1 whole bottle, but I used just 1-2 cups of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, just until it's fragrant)
- bacon (I skipped this, cos I didn't have any, but it's still delicious)
- olive oil, hot water (just enough to cover everything), salt (1 tsp), black pepper, sugar (2 tsp)

I used pressure cooker, so "slow cooked" beef turned "fast cooked" beef. Hehehe. In the pressure cooker, I sauteed garlic and onion, threw the beef in, threw the rest of the ingredients, close the lid and pressure cook for 20 minutes, adjust flavors before serving. If you don't have a pressure cooker, simply bring to boil and cook on low heat until the meat is tender.

I served this dish with...
Baked Potatoes in Cheddar, Garlic and Herbs

Recipe
- 2 large potatoes, halved and sliced thinly (about 3mm thick pieces)
- grated cheddar cheese (or parmesan, just enough to cover the top of the potatoes)
- italian mixed herbs (oregano, rosemary, sage and thyme)
- 4 small cloves of garlic, crushed with skin
- black pepper, salt, olive oil
- lime/lemon zest (optional)

Preheat oven to 200C. I lined a baking pan with foil (lazy to scrap bits and pieces off the pan), scatter potato pieces (if possible in 1 layer), drizzle olive oil, season with salt, pepper and herbs, grate cheese all over, bake until the cheese's golden brown and the potatoes are soft. Grate lime/lemon zest when serving.

Cheers to good health and better sleep!

Savoury Cheddar and Black Pepper Cookies plus Red Wine, My Almost Perfect Sunday Evening

Is there anything more perfect than...
Delicious savoury cheese bites + a glass of red wine (cheap french merlot from a supermarket downstairs) + hilarious Sunday nite TV shows (Gourmet Secret Agent at 8, Beautiful Cooking at 9.30) + a sous chef who is not really into savoury snack (which means I get to finish all the cheese cookies myself) + a starry, breezy, perfect 26 degree Celcius Sunday night?

YES. There IS!
Well, what is it?

It would've been even more perfect, if...I did NOT need to work the next day.
Yuck, I hate Mondays.

Anyway...these deliciousnesses helped easing a very reluctant me into the dreaded Monday.

Savoury Cheddar and Black Pepper Cookies

Recipe
(source: Epicurious)
- 1 cup (250 mL) all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp (2 mL) baking powder
- ½ tsp (2 mL) salt
- black pepper, Japanese chilli powder (I added until I can see black and red speckles on the dough)
- ½ cup (125 mL) cold butter, cut into small pieces
- 2 cups (500 mL) grated cheddar cheese
- 3 to 4 tbsp (45 to 60 mL) ice-cold water

Preparation
I threw everything into a food processor (with a metal blade) and pulse until the dough clumped together. Take the dough out and lay on a working space, shape into a log with about 4 cm diameter, wrap with a plastic cling wrap and refrigerate for one night.

Baking
Preheat oven to 200C (400F), slice the log, each 5mm thick, this yields a softer bite, or thinner if you want it crispier. Lay the sliced dough on a lightly greased or parchment paper lined baking sheet, bake for about 10-15 minutes (or until slightly golden), cool on wire rack. Although it keeps well, I think they taste the best when freshly baked, so just bake a small batch for each serving.

I like my cookies soft, so I sliced em thicker. Savoury, cheesy, peppery, soft, rich, and they made the normally hideous wine tasted beautiful.

Damn, I should've taken Monday off.