Cooking

I've been so obsessed with cooking the last couple of weeks.

I'm pretty good at stir frying bok choy, with just (pork oil), oyster sauce and sesame oil. Bcm is still a wip. Nowadays I make easy meals that can last around 3 days in the fridge.

1. Japchae, a Korean dish. Never knew what japchae is until I came here. A introduced me, and Fen and I love how it tastes!

Pick any 4 of your favourite dishes to mix with the noodles.

These noodles are so chewy despite their dull gray unappetising appearance!

Add desired amount to pot of boiling water and cook for 6-7minutes.

In a bowl, pour some light soy sauce and sesame oil.

Strain cooked noodles.

Add to bowl of sauce. Before mixing.

After mixing.

Add in your 4 dishes. Before mixing.

After mixing! Eat it!

2. Chicken soup with kway tiao. Has to be my proudest achievement yet. I make good soup. YAAAS.

3. Baked rice. Similar to fried rice, you use whatever leftover dishes to mix with rice and bam, dinner.

Used basmati rice, cooked smoked salmon, spinach, mozzarella.

4. Shakshuka, a Middle-Eastern dish. Fairly easy to make. Havent quite perfected the taste, need to try again.

Capsicum, onions, lotsa tomatoes, feta cheese, eggs.

5. Hotdogs and sandwiches. LOL. Mostly for Fen to bring to work. He likes it =)

I didnt add every single photos of the foods or cooking process, only the japchae was more intensive. Lemme know if you would want the whole process or recipe, I'd be happy to share if you'd like to read!
But really, what isnt googleable these days. You can easily search them recipes and make a fusion out of them to suit your taste =)

Feline blood donation

Bit on my fork. Hard. 

Now I have an achy shaky tooth. Zzz. Lesson learnt, eat slowly, chew carefully. No wrong taking your time to focus on your meal. No wrong.

Pitch donated blood for the very first time. I am so darn proud of her. She's forever my champion. Probably done lots of things a cat wouldnt do. Taking a plane, selflessly saving other furries' lives, living a very very loved life.

I am conflicted if I want her to donate again. Many reasons for that.

• My furry is away from me, for 8 hrs. Could have been just 6, but she had her munch before I sent her in. Still. Too long. Hahaa attachment issues. You would know if you've gone round a guilt trip sending her on a flight that she wouldnt see you for at least 10 days.
• The hospital asks you to sign a disclaimer form every damn time you selflessly send in your donor baby. And I quote, "I hereby release and hold harmless the hospital from losses of any kind...". Essentially telling me that if anything happens to Pitch, not their problem. Err... Like, wouldnt you do everything in your power to save her? Wouldnt you absorb all costs to keep her healthy? You want her blood to save someone else, so.. cant you keep her safe and well too? It's not a life exchange, right? I'm well aware the clauses companies use to keep themselves indemnified, and emotional attachments cannot be in them. But I dont quite think there is a level ground here. O wait, you know what's the benefit the donor gets? A free bag of dry kibbles. I raise my eyebrow.
• I asked the vet what (health) benefits does a cat get for donating blood. She actually got me wrong, she thought I was asking what's in it for me to send my cat for blood donation, and went on to say I get a free bag of cat food. Pfft. Anyway, if you are a human blood donor, you might know that if we donate blood, our bodies get like blood regeneration which is like good for us. Like new clean blood, yea. So I wanna know if that's the same for furries. This vet, she was honest, brutally honest, not that I'm complaining. She said no known health benefits to the donor cat, and if anything, it could lower their blood pressure and lead to life danger. To level the blood pressure during blood donation, the donor cat is on IV to pump in fluids that she is losing. Ooooookay, not quite a plus to be a donor cat. AT ALL.
• My furry gets clipped. I DISLIKE/LOATHE/HATE/ABHOR/DETEST my furries getting clipped. It's a peeve, I believe. Everyday I look at Ginger and his badly shaven body, and I feel so sorry and sad for him. Thank god it's not winter. Cats' fur grow at snail speed, it takes 9 months to fully grow out!!!
  Granted, I was told Pitch would be clipped if she is a donor cat. I was also told the area clipped will be a small little 5cm x 5cm on her neck, and her front leg for catheter to pump in fluids. Well, I can tolerate this peeve; it's saving another furry's life. I'm bigger than that. So I'm cool.
  When I collected Pitch 8hrs later, I saw that they had clipped a really large area on the other side of her neck (she already has a patch from her 1st donor checkup that is slowly growing some fur), her front leg, AND her hind leg. THE HOSPITAL CANNOT COUNT. O MY GAWD.
• Pitch was very restless when we collected her. She was a little groggy, uptight, wouldnt sleep with us, very needy, kept real close to me wherever I went. She only relaxed and got some shuteye 10hrs after we collected her.
• Pitch, like Ginger, yanked her catheter out during her stay at the hospital, resulting in a red bruise on her front leg. Now she's just licking at it non-stop. She looks like she had a fur-cut that went wrong. 

Patchy Pitch

Would love to hear your thoughts. If you were me, would you let Pitch go for another donation? Fen responded a resounding yes. Ugh.

Fried pork lard

This is a distasteful entry. One that will push me back miles from my aspiring vegetarianism goals.

Fen and I were at A&S' for dinner last night. The menu was bak chor mee ("bcm"). No one was craving for the dish, it was just dinner.

Since we are new settlers, naturally we would compare the taste of A's bcm with what we're familiar back in SG. Fen and I thought "something" was missing. We couldnt figure out, and I just casually mentioned pork lard. Because all hawker stalls pride themselves with this little evil blob.

S got excited because he is a lard lover. He decided then that must be the missing ingredient. I then recounted childhood memories of how I saw Granny prepare fried pork lard once. Of coz, back then I didnt know what she was cooking, except that cubes of white solids turning brown and produced oil. Granny was so happy making it, excited and all. She loves pork lard, she loves cholesterol in general.

Since I was deemed the most free among us, with no job and idling at home, it became a challenge for me to attempt making fried pork lard to make bcm 2.0. Armed with fuzzy Granny memories, and 5 websites sharing fried pork lard recipes, I mustered the courage to drive out to the Asian supermarket, and shamelessly buy pork fat. With my research that indicated the output is far lesser than input, I decided to buy 1kg of pork fat. They came in slabs.

This is a third of what I bought.. For comparison, that's a 16cm chef knife.

The dicing part was hard work. Really laborious, partly because I had a blunt IKEA knife. Bah. WMF on its way in the shipment! Also because the slab was so slimy and oily! Argh.

1kg of diced pork fat. Pink marshmallows? =/

By this time I was quite grossed out with the smell. House smells like Tasman. By the way, I can no longer walk into Tasman, the butchery aura of despair and death has presented a no entry sign to me.

I was also having sore wrist from the slaying. It was a mountainous 1kg pile of 1-2cm diced fats. Took about 40minutes for a novice.

Time to juice the lard. And so began my steps that followed the websites' instructions.. Until I found the lies hidden in the recipes not discussed.

Dunk them in a deep pot

On medium heat. But the pot is sitting on the biggest burner of my cooktop. 

For the record, I did add pink salt. Like... half a tablespoon? More realistically, 6 twists of the salt grinder.

So I know how it should look like when fully done, hawker centers have taught me well (visually).

In just a few minutes..

It could be a bit amusing to watch something so dry turn into a pool of liquid. Mesmerising, if I may.

Wait, what's with the foam?

Turned the fire down to its lowest. Maybe foam will go away.

Shit. What is this. I so did not put soap detergent. Where r my cute little fatty cubes?

Fishing ensued.

 

O there you are. You sneaky little oink.

The foam was not going away and I cant see the cooking process. Perhaps my fire was too big, perhaps my pot was not right.

I decided to switch off the heat and fish out all them cubes. And then think about what to do next.

This is not right. Still got juice in them.

I took out a saucepan, and went for smaller batches.

Them cubes are not escaping my eyes this time!

More manageable this round. Less foaming, more even coating. And I figured each cube needs to touch pan, like, for more direct heat and searing. If you know what I mean.

Looking more right.

Even after this first batch was done, I still picked out the ones that still had juice in them. Not all cubes are evenly juiced. Hahaha, QC -_-

See the difference?

Also, notice from above pic how colourless the pork oil is? It's not yellow. My research found the pictures of oil all pretty yellow. I suspect overheated oil. I disapprove.

Moving on to second batch.. By this time, I realised this fried pork lard is not easy to make! For a novice, at least. For a first timer, a person who doesnt work in hawker. For a no-lard lover. For a perfectionist. You get the point.

So much work.. My back was aching and my legs were tired from standing. Cooking doesnt come with chairs.

1kg slabs of pork fat, a mountainous plate of pork fat cubes, juiced and contained, all in this same plate. It shrank, but still that's a lot of fried pork lard!

END PRODUCT

Let's not forget the juice. The pork oil I mean. Remember I said it's colourless? It also has a very low melting point. Like coconut oil. Also, both oils are saturated fats, creamier. And where I'm at, it's steadily 16℃ this week. So the pork oil solidified in just under 2 hours, to this smooth moisturiser.

1kg slabs of pork fat produces 1litre of pork oil. Interesting. Face moisturiser, anyone?

I did let A&S sample the fried lard. Apparently, it should be crispier. So, I should have let it cook longer. When I tasted it, it burst oil in my mouth on biting, which I thought was the right doneness. But I'm no lard eater, so it was hard to assess on my judgement. Basically, it's disgusting to me. I'm trying to like it, but no.

I'm however, gonna try using the oil. But Fen and I dont stir fry often. We use toasters and ovens and eat raw. I'm guessing everything would eventually go to A&S =/

I'm prolly never making fried pork lard again. It was a humbling experience, fun while it lasted (for 2hrs).