Takoyaki

Few months back, I bought a Takoyaki maker from Groupon at $29.90 and I finally get to use it. Anyway, let me review the pros and cons of this machine.

Pros:

• Sturdy metal pans (Yes) The 20-holes pan is pretty heavy with a solid feel.
• Easy to clean. I really thought it would be a hassle to clean but surprisingly, the leftovers on the pan came off easily with a wet sponge.
• Easy to use: Only on and off switch
• Cheap!

Cons

• The is only a single temperature to it. Takoyaki took awhile to cook, around 10-15 minutes. (pretty slow for me) Wish there were a few temperature settings available.
• The white plastic gets really hot! 
• The first I cooked it, there was a plastic smell but the second and third time was fine.

I bought all of the ingredients from Meidi-Ya market in Liang Court (except for the spring onion). Meidi-Ya do deliveries too so you can check it out here

Address: 177 River Valley Road #B1-50 Liang Court Shopping Centre

I thought some readers might be interested in the prices so here is a price list:

Marutomo Katsuo (Bonito flakes) - $5.30
Nico Anori (Seaweed) - $1.90

Octopus - $6.10

Nissin Takoyaki flour - $7.10

Ikari Takoyaki Sauce - $5.30
Laughing Cow Belcubes Cheese- $3.95

Spring onion - $0.80

Takoyaki Ingredients ( 25-30 balls)

1) Octopus cubes - (depends on you)
2) Bonito flakes (Marutomo Katsuo)

3) Seaweed (Nico Anori)

4 Takoyaki flour - 150g
5) Takoyaki Sauce
6) Mayonnaise
7) Spring onions - 1 stalk
8) Water - 450cc
9) An egg
10) Oil  (to grease the pan.)

Prepare the ingredients.

Step 1) Cut the octopus into smaller cubes.

2) Sieve the flour to prevent lumps.

3) Mix the 150g of takoyaki flour, 1 egg  and 450cc water together. Stir the batter well to prevent lumpy texture. Add in spring onions. (Note: no need to add salt or other seasoning because the takoyaki flour already contains them)

4) Grease the pan with oil to prevent sticking (Makes it easier to flip.)

5) Pour the batter on to the metal pan. You should flood the pan with batter (unlike the picture shown here.) It takes a while to cook on these pan.

6) Add in the toppings (octopus, cheese) into batter.

7) When the underside of the batter brows, turn the ball 90 degrees.

8) The trick is just to fill the holes and keep turning until it becomes round!

9) Top it with Takoyaki sauce and mayonnaise.

10) Sprinkle on bonito flakes and seaweed.

Personally, I like my takoyaki balls to be crispy on the outside and a little moist and soft on the inside and I'm really glad it turned out well. Very delicious! The best part of making Takoyaki balls on your own is that you can have a generous amount of sauce, octopus and cheese. Yummylicious.


Check out how to make takoyaki by runnyrunny999 too.




Try it!

Sushi

All the ingredients are bought from NTUC, Fairprice @ Jurong point.

Shokaku premium rice - $9.40

Tamagoyaki (Sweet egg roll)

Cucumbers, carrots and pickled radish.

Avocado. (Really creamy!)
Tip: Choose softer and darker skin avocados.

Salmon - $8.40 The best part about making sushi is that you can cut your sashimi really thick! Remember to buy raw ingredients on the same day you are making the sushi (For freshness)

Chuka Kurage (Seasoned Jellyfish) - $5.42

Chuka Hotate - $6.59

Chuka Wakame (Seasoned seaweed) - $5.82

I forgot the take a picture but the Tobikko (Flying fish roe) cost $5.90 Noticed the strange prices of the ingredients? That is because they are measured by weight so each pack will differ.

Mizkan sushi mix - $4 per pack. The sushi mix is actually vinegar powder.

Instructions (while the rice is hot):

1) In a large bowl, evenly sprinkle 1 pouch of Mizkan powdered sushi mix on 700g of cooked rice(290g of raw rice)
2) Mix thoroughly, then cool the rice mixture.
3)Spread rice on seaweed top with temaki sushi ingredients (salmon, avocado, cucumber, etc) and roll.

I think the key to making a good sushi is the rice!
Tip: If the rice is too wet, leave it on the table for a few hours and the moisture will be gone.

Generous spread of whatever stuff I like.

Tip: Remember to moisten the knife before you cut (Prevent the pearl rice from sticking on to the knife) and do not add too much ingredients or you will end up getting the ugly sushi like me. Haha.



























Cut the seaweed into strips to make these! Pretty messy! The sushi are surprisingly awesome! (Big portion of salmon)


Making sushi can be very expensive as the ingredients come in quite a big portion but if you make it with like 5-6 people, you can split the cost. This is definitely cheaper than buying sushi from shops! You gotta try making sushi if you can!

Mango Sago Pomelo 杨枝甘露

So the Mid Autumn Festival is over and I got some pomelo left in the house so I decided to make some mango sago pomelo.  I love this dessert. Definitely a must try if you haven't.

For this dessert, you will need a blender or you need to come up with ways to blend the mango into juice.

Here's the list of ingredients (Noob cook's version)

- 400ml mango juice (Marigold PeelFresh)
 - 150ml evaporated milk
- 2 large ripe honey mangoes, cubed
- sugar syrup by mixing 2 tbsp caster sugar with just enough hot water to dissolve
- 80g sago pearls
- Pomelo (Ipoh Tambun variety), peeled and sacs separated, about 50g or more


Directions
1) Boil a pot of water to boil. Add sago and simmer for about 10 minutes. Turn off the stove, cover the pot with lid and let the sago continue to cook on its own for about 10 minutes, until all the sago turns translucent. Run the cooked sago through a fine sieve and running water to remove excess starch. Set aside. Check out this step-by-step photo tutorial for preparing sago.

2) Reserve one quarter of the cubed mangoes for garnishing (step 4). In a blender, blend the rest of the mangoes and the evaporated milk for a short while till well mixed.

3) Mix mango smoothie prepared in step 2 with mango juice. Add sugar syrup to taste. Add cooked pearl sago prepared in step 1 to the mixture. Chill in fridge.

4) To serve, portion out to individual serving bowls and garnish with pomelo sacs and cubed mangoes.



As usual I have my own freestyle version with ingredients I find my kitchen/ substitute I can't find.

- 600ml mango juice (Marigold PeelFresh)
 - 150ml evaporated milk
- 4 small mangoes, cubed
- 2 rock sugar dissolved in some water
- ~ 800g sago pearls (eye measure)
- Pomelo (random sweet and sour pomelo), peeled and sacs separated, 3/4 small bowl
I'm short of mango so I used more mango juice.

Step 1: Cook the sago.

Soak the sago in tap water for a while. Boil the water. When bubbling, then it off and pour in the sago (drained) and cover it with a lid. Stir occasionally to prevent sago from sticking to the bottom of the pot.(You can do this while cutting mangoes in step 2)

*If your sago is still white in the middle, turn on the low heat to cooked it more. Sago is done if it turns translucent.

Drained the excess water and starch.

Step 2: Cut the mango.
Basically, slice the top and bottom so you get three sections, top, seed and bottom. I tried the cheater method to cut the mango (as shown above) but it turned out pretty messy so I decided I'll just peel the skin of the mango and diced the fruit.

Step 3: Separate the mangoes. The bad looking ones go into the blender and the nice ones are used are mango bits in the dessert for texture.

Step 4: Add in the ugly mangoes, evaporated milk, dissolved rock sugar water and mango juice in the blender. Blend i

Step 5: Peel some pomelo!

Step 6: Dump everything into a bowl and chill it with a lid on in the fridge for several hours.

This is so rich and creamy. Sipping on the mango sago, munching on the pulpy pomelo and soft mango. Pretty sinful with all the sugar.

It is surprisingly as good as those I eat in the dessert shops so I guess this is really a simple dish and nothing can go wrong. Just make sure you choose the good mangoes and pomelo and you are good to go.


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Aglio Olio

Chef John's recipe on Foodwishes:

Ingredients:
1 pound dry spaghetti
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
6 cloves garlic, sliced thin
1/2 cup olive oil (note: I prefer a regular olive oil for this recipe, as opposed to a strongly flavored extra virgin olive oil)
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste 1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley
1 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese (highly recommend Parmigiano-Reggiano)
*It's not traditional, but for extra richness add 1 tablespoon of butter when you toss with the cheese.


My version. I forgot to buy Parmigiano-Reggiano and I forgot to put butter into the spaghetti.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound~ (Around half a pack of spaghetti, around 2-3 servings)
Grated Parmesan
150g~ parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper
3 cloves garlic, chopped
6-7 tablespoon of olive oil
Chicken cheese sausage (Fairprice)

The only brand of sausage selling in Fairprice that is near my house. I oven toasted these.

Instead of thinly slicing the garlic, I chopped them up.

Chopped parsley

They were quicker to brown, around 2-3 minutes on low-medium heat. I think I added two much olive oil. The dish is slightly oily. Maybe you should add only 4-5 tablespoon of olive oil.

Tip: Add in Parmesan cheese and parsley quicky and mix very well for it to fuse into the spaghetti while it is hot!

This pretty delicious but different from the best I'd tasted. I think it is the cheese being used. I shall make it next time with Parmigiano-Reggiano. This is good, frangrance of olive oil garlic and parmesan cheese. I think the step in slowly bathing the garlic in the olive oil is very important, to infuse more garlic taste into the oil.

The sausages splitted due to the heat and wrinkled when it cooled. I love it though. It has the texture of  chipolata sausages (which I like a lot!)  but it taste like cheese sausages.

Tip: Try not to add too much salt because the parmesan cheese and the cheese sausages are quite salty.


Give it a try guys!

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Japanese Carbonara

Craving for some Japanese carbonara! The first time I tried it was at my friend's birthday party. This a really addictive dish that needs to be served hot!

This is Runnyrunny999's Japanese carbonara (2 servings)

Ingredients:
150ml Heavy cream
150g grated cheese
100g bacon
2 eggs
Spaghetti
Garlic

This is my version: (3 servings)
200ml heavy cream
50g grated cheese (intuitive)
150g~ bacon
1 egg
Spaghetti
4 small cloves of garlic

Why the alternative version:
1) I was an idiot who forgot to check if I still got eggs at home. In the end, I decided to make do with the only egg left because I am too lazy to go out again.

2) I can't find heavy cream nor italian parsley in Fairprice so I had to head to cold storage to look for them. Thanks to the awesome cold storage guy who'd been a great help to locate the italian parsley.

3) I can't find heavy cream so I googled for substitutes in Cold Storage. I later found out that heavy cream is also known as whipping cream so I bought the 200ml pack. (explains why I choose to use 200ml)

4) I love bacon.

5) I follow my intuition. Whatever that feels right while I'm cooking.

Sliced Bacon and finely chopped garlic.

I used to hate garlic when I was a kid and my mum would chop them so finely that I will eat it which out noticing. One day I discovered a visible chopped garlic and made a huge fuss out of it. I don't know when but I slowly learnt to eat garlic. For all the mum out there, it takes time for your kid to learn to eat the veggies. Don't rush. Haha.

Egg, heavy cream and grated, pepper and cheese mixture.

Tip: Remember to mix them really well for a smoother texture.

Tip: Heat Olive oil up (for a while) before adding in garlic, followed by bacon. Fry till the bacon turns slightly brown. Look at the fats bubbling!

Pour in the spaghetti into the pan.

Tip: Always boil the spaghetti two minutes shorter than the required time. For example, if the pack says cook for 13minutes, cook it for 11minutes. (The pasta will still cook in the pan, so take it out earlier to not overcook the pasta)

Next, give the carbonara sauce mixture a stir before pouring it into the pan as well.

Tip: Remember not to add too much salt because the bacon and grated cheese are very salty. I didn't add any for my carbonara.

This is so heavenly! However, carbonara has always been cloying for me after 5-6 bites so having a cup of green tea is good. Very sinful treat that clots the arteries. A dish to die for! Haha. I think this is a pretty manageable dish since I'm able to make it.

Give it a try and let me know your results!


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I'll make it myself

I'm starting a section in this blog called I'll make it myself!

Things I want to cook in 2012

Carbonara
Aglio Olio
Tacos
Potato Salad
Churros
Apple pie
Mango Sago Pomelo