Japanese Curry experiment

Being bored of the food I usually eat every week - which so far hasn't been much of a variationg, I decided to experiment. Being a fan of Japanese food I googled, and found the Chicken Curry recipe on about.com quite easy and simple to make. And with my Korean (expensive) rice I bought recently it turned out really yummy. Felt proud of myself. :p Next time I think I will add more ingredients, so I guess I will do a bit more googling on it. :)

Fried Rice Experiment

Well it has been a veeeeeery long time since I've made this dish. I made it last time about 4 years ago and it not only worked out well, but it was also quite easy to make. So that makes life a lot easier for me...

Simply prepare a thin omelet, which you then cut up into small pieces or shred it, whichever you prefer. Then you heat some oil on which you lightly fry onion, then you add the chicken and fry that, add a bit of soya sauce, peas (canned), the cut up omellet and lastly cooked rice (can be left over as well) and stir it all well. Takes quite a short time to make.... and luckily it was edible. :) Oh and I do recomment a big pan or most preferably a wok. :)

Udon....

My yesterdays meal was a quick bowl of udon noodles. It has been a while since I made this, but yesterday during my shopping at Tesco's I stopped at a local asian food store and bought myself udon soup mix, abura age (fried tofu) and also I managed to find surimi in Tesco's. I already had the udon noodles. So all I did was cook the noodles for 10 minutes, then cut up the large piece of abura age, and placed it on the noodles, added surimi sticks, spring onion and then made the soup mix just by mixing the powder with the water (unfortunately my previous attempt at making dashi didn't work out well, so to keep things simple I went for the soup base mix). :) And voila..... Itadakimasu!

Pasta Again.... Fettucini

Yes, pasta again ..... why? It's the easiest thing to make. This is just a simplified version of the original fettucini that I usually make, since I didn't have many ingredients.

Simply chop an onion into small cubes or rings.... whichever you prefer. Heat a bit of olive oil on a pan, add the the onion, then after a while zucchini, chopped up in either circles or semicircles - once again whichever you prefer, after about 5-10 minutes add some stock, let it cook for a while and finally canned tomatoes. Then to add the finall taste add garlic, basil (fresh is the best), pepper. For those who aren't vegeterian you might add bacon or something similar, which can add taste. Best if left overnight, to let the taste settle. :)

Pasta and Zucchini

Well this was one of my meals during the week. Pasta is really simple to prepare and can be made quite tasty without any hard work. This basically was just zucchini fried on a bit of olive oil with garlic. Add a bit of sundried tomato pesto (and you can add in a bit of chilli as well to spice it up). I also added basil and pepper and mixed it all together with the pasta, as of course mixed in cheese. Hard italian cheese gave it a really nice taste.

Sushi

Well my todays lunch that took me longer to prepare than I expected it to do so. Usually I tend to prepare everything much faster, but considering the fact that I don't have a rice cooker, the rice was a bit more complicated to make and got a bit burnt on the bottom of the pot. But anyway first time I used proper rice vinegar and it worked out well. I still have some left for my tomorrow's bento box. ^^

Couscous salad

Well my first true post..... and my first food I have cooked at uni properly that wasn't an entirely quick solution - couscous salad.... really easy to make. One of the good things about it is that you can combine almost anything with it to create a salad to your taste. Todays choice for me was tomato, red paprika, iceberg salad, cucumber, a bit of garlic flavoured olive oil, basil and combined some pesto with the couscous. Also a good option is to add sundried tomatoes - unfortunately I didn't have any at hand at that time. ... :)

Food dilemas

Hi Everyone,
well it is the first time I have ever set up a blog and it took me a very long time to decide whether I should do so. A number of things have been an inspiration for me.
Firstly probably Obachan's blog, which often left me dreaming of food and secondly the fact that I am at university away from home, not only means that I am here to study, but also learn how to 'survive', and yes, one of the dilemas that some university students, who hardly ever or never cooked at home must face - what to eat? what to cook?
So I just thought I will set up this blog of my kitchen experiments, successes and disasters (which I do hope won't be that many).
So I hope you do enjoy.
Cheers
Makoto