Archive for January, 2008

Food Photography

January 31, 2008 at 8:27 pm · Filed under Craft & Art

“Still Life with….” is a great food photography blog of L. I found it very inspiring, especially if you are particularly interested in shooting food. There are numerous tips on how to take a good food photo, from camera gears, lighting, styling, tuning to showing…. Almost every article is worth a good read. Also you can find many professional food photographers’ websites and art works listed in this blog’s side bar. Some of them are just too good to be ignored.

To be honest, I have never ever had an expectation beyond my current gears and skills towards my food photos. However, lately I did realised that I actually became a bit fussy about my photographic work of food. I felt that I am such in the need to learn more to make my food looking 100 times appealing:-)

Do you see a bit trace of improvement from the very
recent photos that I took after reading Lara’s Blog?

Inspired by Lara Ferroni and other photographers’ great works, I tried to shoot some ordinary ingredients that I found in my kitchen with a total brand new mind. It was like having a third opening eye to look at the world. Down to the details, I feel everything is so different.

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Pickled Chilis and Ginger Chicken Stirfry

January 29, 2008 at 8:11 pm · Filed under Food & Cusine

Sorry for talking about food again. I have to do this as after my husband having made the compliment on this dish, I almost lost my mind and started to believe that I am a good cook :-)

Fotunately I still keep a certain level of self-awareness knowing that all the good flavour coming from this dish has nothing to do with my cooking skill. It’s all about a bottle of water where boring ingredients turn to amazingly tasted pickled veggie, with all the glory that should be given to our great Sichuan styled crusine. Me, is only a kitchen hand who chopped the things up, mixed things together in a wok and took the dinner plate onto our table, but nothing else :-)

I was so surprised to see my husband ignored the chicken pieces but kept picking pickled ginger and chilies out of the dish and eating them. He seemed more interested in those and enjoying little torment of hot ginger and chili working on his tongue and making it numb. Ehhhhh…… How could he bear that? I guess in this world, there are just too many things that I would never understand in my life.

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Korean BBQ and Summer Curtain

January 28, 2008 at 6:14 pm · Filed under Home Sweet Home

We were invited to a friend’s place for a Korean styled BBQ. Our friend bought a new set of cooking gadgets which particularly serves for this sort of eating occasion. The whole night we’ve been eating meat, from beef tongue, big slices of beef, to pork with several layers of fat and lean meat and very thin slices of beef cut in Japanese way. I felt that my pants getting tighter and tighter around the waist. Then it was followed by a big water melon as refreshment.

Guys had been drinking all night and finally consumed 3 litres of Japanese wine, some sort of Sake. By the time they finished all the alcohol that they can find in the friend’s place, I noticed that they actually started talking really funny.

Well, all in a sudden, I felt that all my driving practise and the obtainment of my driver’s license was for this occasion. I drove my husband home at about midnight. I could only drive the road from my memory as I can hardly recognise the roads during the night time. I had to turn on the high beam most of time and slow down to about 75kph on a 100kph road. Lucky that I turned the car at the right intersection, otherwise Gods know where we would have ended up. Well, I don’t think this is funny at the end of the day, although BBQ was nice and catching up with friends was great.

It’s been another hot week since the heat we had during the New Year time. We had moved ourselves to downstairs as according to our experience, the temperature down there is at least 5 degrees lower than upstairs. I had my little compensation on the next day as Spotlights has one day sale. I picked a pair of shimmery light green curtain for our downstair’s window. Both my husband and I was happy with them.

At least I got made up:-)

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Pork Skin Jelly

January 28, 2008 at 6:01 pm · Filed under Food & Cusine

With the instruction given by my Mom over the phone and email (now she’s very Internet switched-on mom :-) , I managed to make some Pork Skin Jelly (Rou Pi Dong) for the first time. When I poured the liquid soup into the container after two hours simmering, I was not sure if I can make it this time. The soup looked not thick enough, but when I tried with my fingers, it felt quite sticky.

3 hours later, when I checked the soup in the refrigerator, I was surprised to see it’s all set, firm and beautiful, with pretty white spots scattering in semi-transparent light brown background. Oh my God, I can’t believe that I made it! From now on, I will utilize all the pork skin that each time I buy with roast pork in Aldi and there will be always yummy pork skin jelly available at my home.

Actually I can’t believe why I didn’t try this idea earlier. It’s surprisingly simple to make. The hardest part is to chop the skin to pieces that are as small as possible. I chopped them to about 1 cm squares, but I still feel they are too big. Right amount of water and simmering time are also important. It’s better to simmer the soup as long as possible, say more than 2 hours. Here is the recipe:

1-2 big pieces of pork skin, clean thoroughly and chop to small pieces
Shallots, ginger and star anise
Salt, chicken powder, pinch of sugar
Soy sauce (optional) if you like brown coloured jelly

Put chopped pork skin, shallots, ginger, star anises into cold water, sit on high heat till the water is boiling. Remove the white bubbles from the surface of boiling water, then simmer the soup for another two hours or until the soup gets sticky or thick. Add a bit dark soy sauce to add the jelly soup a brown colour or if you’d like to have the jelly white, simply skip the soy sauce. Add salt, sugar and chicken powder to give the soup to the flavour you like.Simmer for another 20 minutes.Take the spices out of soup, only leaving pork skin and water inside the pot. Pour the soup into a container with a lid. Cool down then put into refrigerator for at least 3 hours.

The soup will form firm jelly after refrigerating. Cut the big block jelly into desired shape or size, serve with vinigar and several drops of sesame oil, sprinkle corriander leaves, crushed garlic on the top.

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Australia Day 2008

January 26, 2008 at 10:26 pm · Filed under Out & About

If it wasn’t my colleagues reminded me that this is my first Australia Day as an Australian Citizen, I wouldn’t have felt any difference about it between this year and the previous years. Well, I guess that they were more excited than I was :-) I was given some Aussie tatts and a golden cloth head band with green “Aussie” in the middle. I love the tatts. We got them on the arm. I have a blue flag with white starts, while my husband had “Go Aussie”, which perfectly fit in this evening’s dragon boating show that he’s going to attend.

So we got up to his club at about 4pm, then he disappeared till about 7:30pm. I have no idea where their boats had gone, what they had done, and to whom they presented their performance. I just strolled along the lake with my next door neighbour, from the Japanese Garden, through the bush, then got back to the Lotus Bay. We were astonished by the view of all the beautiful boats in the lake, annoyed by numerous flies around us and amused by seeing paddlers’ looks on the boat when we were waving to them.

After about 2 hours’ walking, we were tired, lost and feeling a bit of sick of the waiting. We picked a bench chair facing right to the bridge that’s supposed to be the firework spot for tonight, started to have our dinner. I made some chapati rolls filled with Chinese Style stuffing. It was a bit odd, but for two persons who have been wandering without a purpose for such a long time, the food was always a good compensation.

My husband finally came back with other 3 boats. I saw him and other people hitting their paddles crazily into the water like a herd of animals. I couldn’t imagine how they could be still so full of energy after beating the boring water for 2 hours. I wondered if he was starving like me and my neighbour. The only thing I wanted to do is to grab him out of water and sit & eat with us. We were so bored.

I didn’t find all the waiting such a worth until the night finally fell. The lake looked so beautiful and calm. You will never see many brilliant modern noen lights in Canberra, but with few sparkling carefully selected coloured lights, the tranquility you can feel from this city seemed even more precious.

The opposite side of tranquility? Would be the firework.Of course it’s stunning.

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I am so spoiled

January 24, 2008 at 11:04 pm · Filed under Craft & Art

Since the yarn that my Mom sent to me had arrived, I’ve been struggling with my obsessions of knitting them quickly. I really want to catch the last beacon of the heat before the summer completely comes to its end. However, the summer yarn that I am currently working on is too thin to be done fast. I have to use 3.75mm needles at the most to make sure the knitted garment doesn’t look too loose. So here I am….working like an old and slow snail, with a speed of averagely 16 rows per day:-)

I already have some ideas about what I’m going to knit for each sort of yarn, except pink mohair and grey cotton. Particualarly for Mohair, it could be very tricky as once you’ve done your knitting with Mohair, there is no way back. Mohair is not the type of yarn that you can undo as the fibre would get very messy. I didn’t see many good Mohair design so far, so I will leave it to the last.

But I am pretty sure about this cabled pullover, from Tahki Stacy Charles. I just love the yoke design and the gradually increasing cables. Couldn’t wait to make it, although the project actually has only been put in the third or fouth place in my waiting list.

A waiting list? I must be kidding….I felt that I am so spoiled. Did I mention that I am going to undo a cardigan that I had 3 quarters finished just a week ago? Now I have too many choices.

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