cooking @ home

We had a heavy breakfast today. I mean a really heavy one. We had duck rice and noodles, not to meantion that plate of meat was loaded with sliced braised duck meat, duck liver and eggs. On top of that we also had a plate of Fried Carrot Cake ala Bukit Timah Style. We were damn full after the breakfast that my darling J decide not to have lunch afterwards....



Anyway we inititally wanted to go to the Food Fair/Exhibition at Expo but considering the amount of food we had, we decided to give it a miss. Instead, we head on down to West Mall to "see-see-look-look". After a while, we decided to adjourned to IMM where we will get some ingredients back home to cook.

Theme for the Sunday dinner was red meat. J basically gone bonkers knowing that i have, yet again, ruined her diet plans. Anyway, we've got 300gm miniced pork, 3 slices of pork chops, a tin of pineapples in syrup, a box of pre-cut fruits, bread crumps, cheese....

I decide to try my luck at remaking the chops at Cartel. After cleaning up the meat, i pat them dry with paper towels before i slightly seasoned them with salt and pepper. While those chops R&R in the fridge, i cut up the pineapple rings and put them in the blender. The idea is to create a pineapple sauce. Turns out pretty okie i would say, jus that the pineapple sauce ( inheritent from the canned pineapple ) was a bit too sour than usual. I guess it sort of gave the sauce that extra punch of tanginess.

With the pan hot with some oil, i seared each sides of the chops at high heat for about a minute or so. After which i flipped them over and let them cook for another 5 minutes. Checking periodically to ensire the chops were browned evenly on both side. on the plate, J had me to pour some of the pineapple sauce on it. The chops was den served on a plate with freshly made pineapple sauce base, with fries to go.

J on the other hand decide to try her luck at making Japanese corochan-style burger-patties. The twist to her creation was the piece of hidden cheese in between the meat.

First she marinated the meat ( all 300gms of it ) with 1 teaspoon of sugar, some pepper to taste, 4 cloves of chopped garlic, 2 tablespoon of oyster sauce and a dash of brandy. After mixing them well, the mixture was invited to the fridge to sit for a while to let the marinate work it's way into the meat.

After about 30 minutes, we retrieve the mixture from the fridge. J had another interesting idea; she wanted to made rectangluar meat patties. The concept was to place a slice of cheese into the meat patties and ensure that the cheese is well covered within the patties. Roll them into shape like this...


Dipped the patties into a bowl of beatedn up eggs and coat them with the bread crumbs. After the oil is hot enough, we deep fried these patties til golden brown ( i sucks at deep frying stuff so i kinda of fried them til brown instead of golden brown.. will do better next time round )

These patties were served with toasted baguette, mayonnaise and tomatoes. Personally, i think J did a much better job than i had. I didn't do the pork chop justice. But the patties that J did was juicy and tasty. The outside crust, thou a bit brown, was crunchy but the inside was filled with surprises. Basically the meat juices were flowing out with each single bite. And the chesse jus ozzoes out of it. How we ate it was cut a small slice of baguette, spread some mayo on top, put a slice of tomato and top it of with a small portion of the patty. It's really very good. 4.5 out of 5 stars!


J never failed to amaze me each and everyday. And cooking up a mean burger patty was blasting my imagination out of proportions. Dear if you'er reading this, drop the diet idea yeah. ;)