Instant food

Tonight's dinner was a complete case of cooking-improv, which is what I do most often at home, when I'm hungry for real food, but tdidn't plan to cook so there's not much ready to cook in the fridge (seeing as how my mother is the Queen of Fridge Minimalists). In the past, I've made such self-explanatory dishes as Onion-Cheese Spaghetti (one colour, weird-sounding, but surprisingly ok-tasting), Potato Spinach 'Omelette', Random Vegetable and Tuna-Mayo Omelette "Crepe" and so on. The food was always made from whatever I could scavenge from the fridge, and while no one is likely to ask me for any recipes, they were tasty (to me) miracles. However, tonight's dinner was pretty unbelieveable, even by my super-improv standards.

Behold: Mushroom-and Cheese Soup Pasta, with Garlic Croutons!

yes, instant Campbell's soup powder (Mushroom and Cheese), a slice of processed cheese, water, and Carrefour brand Croutons, with $2 Daiso special pasta (special in because it's about half the length of usual pasta, making it small-pot-friendly).

I'd planned to make mushroom pasta with real mushrooms, sliced and sauteéd with butter, tossed with pasta and a some of the cooking water, but I had sadly kept my mushrooms too long and they were all wet and sticky. Not a good sign.
So, I made pasta with powdered soup.
Surprisingly, it was actually pretty good.

I "parboiled" the pasta for awhile, about 2 minutes, since the package says it takes 4 mins to cook, then drained away the water until there was about 4 cm or so of water covering the pasta. Then, I added the soup powder, and stirred in one individual sized package of butter (probably unneccesary, but I was afraid the sauce'd taste too much like soup), one slice of cheese, and stirred some more. Cooking the 'sauce' with the pasta this way made the sauce 'seep' into the pasta, flavouring it with a nice, mushroom-soup-y taste.

The finished product looked kinda boring, which is why I added the croutons. This is the only thing I wouldn't do the next time, as it made the sauce waaay too salty. I forgot to factor in the fact that the sauce was really a super-concentrated soup, which was nice in terms of texture, but rather salty. So, whilst the croutons added a nice crunch to the whole dish, they made it way too salty.

Nonetheless, I am quite proud of tonight's dinner, and I forsee many such "pasta nights". It's quite a quick way to make dinner; the longest period of waiting was for the water to boil. The sauce could have used a good dose of rough-ground black pepper to add another taste dimension, but overall, no complaints. And, I made this with absolutely no condiments: no salt, no pepper, nothing but indiviually packaged fridge-staples like butter and cheese, and powdered soup. Is it kind of sick that I'm really proud of that?

Came across a few panna cotta recipes this weekend, and whilst my favourite kind of panna cotta is the plain vanilla with a thin layer of rich dark chocolate cream on the top, i was looking through the kitchen cupboards when i saw some Japanese tea cups that my mother never uses, and i suddenly thought that i matcha panna cotta would be lovely. kind of like matcha ice cream, creamy and rich, but not frozen.

maybe next weekend—it's a long one coming up. :)

Cravings

Am currently experiencing terrible food cravings. severe and terrible.

1) Japanese food!!!! this is all the fault of that Lonely Planet Japan book. all that talk about tofu, abura-age, miso paste, green tea and all that. oh god. i want to get my hands (and mouth) on some:
a) Sashimi from that Japanese restaurant at Chijmes—seriously the best sashimi I've ever eaten, ever. especially the swordfish. oh. my. god. firm, chewy/bouncy, juicy and creamy, and oh so fresh. mmm. the green tea here tastes excellent—the sort that has roasted rice mixed into it to give it an earthy, roasty fragrance. mmmm.
b) yakitori from Shin Kushiya at VivoCity. They serve a type of yakitori that is not dipped in the sauce when they grill it. Instead, it's seasoned with salt, so that the outsides are dry and crispy, and the insides are just bursting with juice. They also grill their skewers with real charcoal (and apparently a special sort of charcoal too, for prolonged high temp), so there is a very nice hot-coal sort of fragrance to the skewers.
c) the scallops with miso paste from Megumi at Siglap. the best baked scallops ever. really. it's lightyears better than the whole cheese sauce baked shellfish. the miso paste is salty, creamy, a litte sweet, and has this fantastic flavour that is totally out-of-this-world good. ohh boy.
d) reverse California Maki roll from that Japanese restaurant at Paragon—i just can't remember the name. this is a really really good maki roll, rolled with the rice outside instead of inside and then rolled in crushed salted seaweed and toasted white and black sesame seeds. then topped with those little orange egg roes. totally divine. the sushi chef here is very skilled, because the sushi is well rolled and doesn't fall apart, and the rice is deliciously flavoured with that vinegary taste: just right, not actually sour, but fragrant. the green tea here is also good.

2) Breakfast food!!!
a) the pancakes from New York New York: need i say more?
b) sticky cinnamon buns—chewy, sweetandsalty, cinnammony goodness. mmm.
c) scrambled eggs—the kind i make: creamy, cheesy, with lots of 'juice' because of extra milk and butter. also heart-attack inducing.
d) grilled tomatoes. the ones in my pesto pasta at the Wine Garage were fantastic. halved cherry tomatoes griled til soft inside so that they just burst into a flood of warm tomatoe-y goodness in your mouth. mmm-good.
e) chocolate chip cookies. this i am totally going to bake this weekend.

3) Cremé bruleé: for some reason i am totally craving this, completely out of the blue.

okay, i think i'd better stop here before i drive myself insane.