Roasted Cauliflower with Balsamic vinegar

So I had been going through a craving recently for cauliflower. I made it over the summer while I was back at my parents' home in Canada, but fresh cauliflower is ridiculously expensive in Ireland! Thankfully the Lidl (grocery shop) near my house was having a sale on cauliflower and I could feed my craving!

Ingredients

• 1 head of cauliflower
• Olive oil
• Balsamic vinegar
• Garlic salt
• Paprika
• Salt for seasoning

Method

1. Cut the head of cauliflower into small florets and toss into a mixing bowl.
2. Drizzle in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Usually for 1 head I'll use about 3 Tbsp. of olive oil and 2 or 3 Tbsp of balsamic vinegar. 
3. Use as much garlic salt as you like! I'm a little heavy handed on the garlic :) And in addition to that you can add about 2 tsp of salt to give it a little more flavour.
4. If you want you can use a little paprika, occasionally I'll use a bit of crushed chilli to give it a little kick. Mix everything and then toss onto a baking tray.
5. Roast at 200ºC (~400F) for about 20 mins until just browning.

(Pictures will follow. Sadly I ate all my cauliflower)

Cantonese Yee Fu style Noodles

The first 17 years of my life I spent in Malaysia. I was born and raised there and my taste palate will always be Malaysian even though since then I have moved countries a few times. When I was younger I used to visit this restaurant in one of the oldest shopping malls in the area (It has since been demolished and built into apartment blocks). I spent so many wonderful hours in that mall and as a kid I fondly called it the Blue Mall. There was also a secondhand bookstore there that I'm quite sure my parents regretted ever introducing me to! I never left with anything less than RM100 of books. Sci-fi, adventure, young adult you name it and I devoured it. But I digress.

There was this fantastic restaurant there and I absolutely LOVED the Yee-fu noodles. It was crispy and soupy with just the right level of saltiness that I loved. So much so, my aunt who is amazing at cooking managed to reproduce the recipe! 

The last time I had this was some 6-7 years ago, but after a long day I just needed some of it. So here you go!

Cantonese style Yee-Fu noodles

Ingredients

• 2 packets instant egg noodles (alternatively, use the instant noodle packs or soba noodles)
• 4 cups hot water
• oil for deep frying (Note, you will not get the crunchiness unless you fry the noodles)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3/4 cup shredded meat/chicken (I use ground beef or pork), if you want you can also throw in a few fishballs or seafood if you like as well
• 2 dried mushrooms, pre-softened and thinly sliced (If you're using the dried black mushrooms, soften them by soaking in boiling water for a few minutes, or my favourite was straw mushrooms)
• 1 cup snow peas, (I used mangetout/snap peas because I like the taste better)
• 1 small carrot, sliced thinly
• Baby corn (optional, the kind you use in stir frys)
• salt to taste
• Group A
• 1 cup hot water
• 1 sachet chicken flavour (If you use instant noodle packs, just use the seasoning packets from them)
• dash of pepper (white works the best I find, but if you only have black that's grand too)
• 2tsp cornflour mixed with 1 Tbsp water
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Method

1. Cook the noodles in plain boiling water. Add 1 sachet chicken flavour and stor to dissolve. Once the noodles begin to separate, drain them and set aside.
2. Heat oil in a pan until nice and hot and then fry the noodles. You may need to do this is a few batches depending on how large your saucepan is and how much oil you're willing to use each time. Fry the noodles until crisp and just turning brown. Be careful not to burn them! Remove and drain on a paper towel.
3. From the oil, remove all except 1/4 cup of oil and brown the meat and garlic. Add mushrooms and stir fry for a couple minutes. Stir in the rest of the vegetables and cook until tender, add a dash of salt. Spoon the meat and vegetables over the noodles.
4. Pout ingredients A into a separate pan and bring to boil. Reduce the heat and thicken with cornflour mixture. Gradually stir in the egg mixture and cook until the egg sets, continue stirring or the egg will all clump together, you want nice strings of egg through the soup. Pour the sauce over the noodles and eat immediately.

Or if you're a student like me and want to eat it another day, just keep the soup separate and heat the noodle/meat mixture and the soup up separately and combine when you do want to eat. 

Who am I?

Well, let's see...

I'm a Canadian student who's studying medicine in Ireland. I came over via the Atlantic Bridge Program and am in the Graduate Entry Medicine program at the Royal College Of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).

Now that the boring stuff's over, I'll admit I have a slight addiction to cooking and experimenting with recipes. I'm originally from Malaysia and lived there for 17 years so it's really not unusual for me to come up with fusion recipes since that's most of the food from that area of the world.

Most of the time my recipes are lazy, and quick. Cause let's face it, once you come home after a 8 hour day of classes and tutorials where it takes 30-45 mins travel in each direction, the last thing I want to do is whip up some fancy French dish that I can't pronounce. 

Apple Curry (without a pot)

I'll admit it straight up, this is not my recipe. It's from Simply Recipes and is a recipe for Green Apple Curry. But it's one of my favourites and I couldn't resist sharing it! I've made a few small modifications since I like my curries a little more spicy than the original :)

It's a really easy recipe that I can throw together on the weekend and then freeze it into meal sized portions. On top of that it's dairy free and vegetarian and you totally don't feel like you're eating something healthy at ALL! Excellent student food material!

On top of everything, when my super kitchen friendly flatmate moved out all the cooking paraphernalia went with her, so there went the nice large curry pot I used to borrow for these such occasions! What could I do??? Well, what ay student does when they're in a dilemma, call mom! So my mom was treated to a 8am Viber call in Canada where I was asking her how to substitute a pot. Lo and behold, a RICE COOKER!

Curry in a rice cooker!

Yes that is a picture of my wonderful lunch and dinner being made in a rice cooker! And it worked! Hey, if you can bake a cake in a rice cooker, curry should be fair game too! All you need to do is make sure the switch stays on 'COOK' and not just 'WARM'.

Ingredients

- 3 Tbsp. vegetable oil

- 4 large garlic cloves, smashed with the flat of your knife and roughly chopped

- 1/4 cup / 1 medium sized yellow onion

- 4 Tbsp. yellow curry powder (Or 1 Tbsp red curry powder)

- 2 Tbsp. water

- 1 tsp. butter

- 4 Granny Smith apples (cored, roughly chopped with the skin on)

- 1 tsp. Kosher salt

- 1 1/2 cups water

- 1 Tbsp. brown sugar

Method (this works for a por or a rice cooker)

1. Heat oil and sautee the garlic. Once browned, discard the garlic. 

2. Add the onions and cook until translucent. Meanwhile in a separate bowl mix the curry powder and 2 Tbsp. water to make a paste.

3. Once the onions are cooked, stir in the curry paste. Let bubble for about a minute before adding the butter.

4. Add the apples and salt and just enough water to cover the apples from the 1.5 cups water. Add the brown sugar.

5. Bring to a boil and then simmer uncovered for 30 mins. For a rice cooker, keep the setting on COOK until it starts to boil then change it to WARM to allow it to simmer. Don't cover it. I covered it and ended up overcooking my apples :(

6. If the mixture gets too thick, add more water. Enjoy eating with rice or bread :)

Mystery pasta

So, I really have too much of an addiction to cooking. I spend more money on food ingredients than I do on hospital clothes (which if you're a young professional, you know isn't easy to save on that).

Anyway, just had a long day of classes and tutorials and was in my carpool on the way home and started craving this pasta dish I usually make when I'm super lazy but need a little flavour. I adapted it from the Lemon Butter Baked Shrimp by LittleBitOfEverything.

My Mystery Refrigerator Pasta

Ta da! Probably looks more all over the place here, but let's look at the mystery ingredients that made the cut.

Ingredients

- spaghetti (I just made a ring with my fingers about 3cm in diameter and made enough for lunch the day after)

- 1 lamb chop (I really like lamb) 

- 3in of chorizo

- 2 pods garlic

- 2 Tbsp olive oil

- 1 lemon

- dried/fresh parsley

- dried rosemary (for seasoning)

Optional: 1 egg

Method

1. First boil the spaghetti in a pot of water until al dente, I usually add a pinch of salt to the boiling water. If you overcook it you've failed one of the crucial lessons of life: Never overcook spaghetti.

2. I get the lamb chops frozen from Aldi and they're usually €3 for a bag of 6, so not bad for an occasional flavour. Defrosted them first before slicing it up and then with a little olive oil fried it in the pan with some salt, pepper and rosemary. I LOVE rosemary.

3. Once the lamb is cooked but not browned yet, i had chopped the chorizo into chunks that I just tossed in to get that warmed up a little before removing all the meat from the pan.

4. Fry the garlic in the 2Tbsp of olive oil and once it's aromatic toss the cooked spaghetti in. Stir to coat the pasta with the oil and garlic. (Medium low temperature)

5. Squeeze the juice of 1 lemon (or 2 depending on how lemony you like it, or how dry it is) onto the pasta and toss some more. 

Optional step: I cracked an egg into the pan at this point and fried it with the pasta. 

6. Add salt and pepper to taste, and toss some parsley in to make it look fancy and like you're succeeding in life. (I had no parsley so I used dried basil)

7. Toss the meat back into the pan and toss some more. I ended up tossing some leftover roast chicken I made the day before in as well to finish it and make more fridge space.

Enjoy while watching an episode of Big Bang Theory. I made enough for dinner and lunch the next day with what seems like an endless parade of classes. 

NB: I would usually make the shrimp I previously mentioned and then just toss that with pasta, but I felt like switching it up this time and I still got the lemon garlic flavour I was craving. Plus, the shop with the good shrimp was closed once I got back from class.