Home Baking

I pondered upon the concept of home baking as I strolled through a Tesco Extra. There were aisles and aisles of baked goods ranging from humble ginger breads, apple crumbles, and sticky toffee puddings, to lavish chocolate eclaires, profiteroles, and citrus tarts. Upon these superordinate categories of tarts and fruit breads, you have the basic level of muffins and scones, and then the subordinate levels of fruit scones and chocolate chip scones, and each of these then has their own numerous subtypes. Choices are overwhelming. Take a plain sultana scone. One can decide to get it in the Cake and Baked Goods aisle, packaged and mass produced by different companies, ranging from Tesco Value to Tesco Finest and the common big brands. One can go to the Bakery aisle and find fresher scones made recently with simple clear pastic packaging only with the name of the item and the date of production shown. Or put in a bit more effort and go to the frozen aisles where they're jumbled up in a bag, ready to be popped in the oven. With a little more work, there is the Cake Mixes aisle with the boxed mix -- add an egg and some butter and cream, stir and bake. You could even get fresher mixes in the refrigerator aisles. If the choice is a plain sultana scone with cream and jam to accompany an Earl Gray at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, there is a pool of choices before deciding how and what to acquire.

Simple Breakfast Polenta

My mother has a bowl of plain cornmeal porridge for breakfast with half a cup of ground white sesame  seeds for breakfast everyday.  No sugar, no salt, no seasoning.  It's how my mom likes it, health food to the max, eating merely for the nutrition. She was always very much a health freak.  I had a very healthy childhood -- no junk food in the house, desserts once in a blue moon, and fried foods didn't exist.   Don't worry, I was a healthy and happy child.  Anyway, back to my mother.   At one point, I think it was when she hit midlife crisis, her diet basically started consisting of only porridge, steamed vegetables and  fruits.  Oh and the essential sweet that must accompany her cappuccino every afternoon at 3 o'clock. 

While I very much value the need for having a healthy diet, I'm not quite at that point yet.  Maybe these are baby steps following my mother's path, because here I'm already eating polenta porridge for breakfast.  But I like to flavor it with nuts and apples and spices and sugar.  Look how pretty.  Isn't it nice to wake up to a colorful breakfast? 

Ballotine of Chicken with Onions & Raisins, Root Veg Puree

I have this friend that's an amazing cook.  If anybody's got a talent for cooking, it's him.  Last time at a dinner party he made ballotine of  chicken with nuts and honey, accompanied by fresh fruits, a blue cheese sauce, and roasted root veg.  So this is an amateur attempt of that.

It was fun/such a pain stuffing the chicken.  It's basically like rolling a maki.  The key is just to roll it as tightly as possible,  and making sure that the chicken breast is intact.  When you flatten it sometimes it can..fall apart, and you don't want that.  Anything stuffed is impressive. Stuffed vegetables, stuffed roasts, stuffed chicken breasts -- never fail to impress at dinner parties.

Cold Sesame Noodles (凉拌麻酱面)

It's warm and it's sunny -- oh so incredibly sunny. It's the start of my favorite couple of months in Britain.  It honestly doesn't take much to make me happy, good weather, good food, good company -- It may be that bad time of the month for me, I may have an Economics essay I need to stress about, I may have to catch up on some readings for Psychology, and by some I mean about 200 pages. But it's okay, it's 18 degrees, it's not windy, the sunshine is blinding, and I'm on holiday. 
You can imagine why I love picnics so much.  I love being outdoors and I love good food. So here's something different for your picnic basket -- ditch your finger sandwiches and cous cous salads, try some cold sesame noodles!

Savory Bread Pudding

There's always that sense of excitement, anticipation and stress when I have people try my food for the first time.  First impressions matter so much, especially when it's about a particular..skill.  I remember the first time I cooked for my friends in university, I served them raw chicken with orange juice.  Yes, my cooking skills have improved since then.  Although I'm still not very comfortable with meat. I'm getting better with chicken though.  Living on a student budget means I get my source of protein mainly from eggs, milk and chicken.