cooking frenzy has DESCENDED

ok so what have i been doing over the last few days? I HAVE BEEN COOKING! so so much it is astonishing. and tiring, might i add... am wondering if i am cut out for the domestic life...

friday's project was cookies... followed the same recipe as the on i used in first term but i realised that i havent been using the right measurements! horror of horrors... i used one cup as 250ml but apparently for cooking it is supposed to be 240ml! so rectified that and the cookies turned out significantly nicer. flour must definitely be sieved and a tip is to buy a bar of chocolate and chop it up rather than use pre-made chips. this time i had josh to help me chop them chips up and will to sieve the flour (he was really bored from studying) and i added chopped hazelnuts for the extra kick. made the cookies slightly bigger that the bite-sized ones i used to do and they turned out chewier too! sorry i dont have pictured because i totally forgot to take pictures of my food until saturday.

saturday was lor mai kai (glutinous rice with savoury meats) which took me like 5 hours from start to finish. that was because everything has to soak in the marinades/sauces for at least an hour (as well as i ran out of chicken so after washing the rice and pouring the sauces to flavour it and setting aside to soak i went to TESCO to buy chicken... THEN i had to come home and debone the chicken and marinade... get the picture?). the first few either turned out a bit bland (the rice) or too soggy because the recipe that i got off the internet wasnt fantastic (like they say 'add some water before steaming' but how much is 'some'?) but after modification it turned out good. though i dont think i will make lor mai kai for some time...

saturday night was devoted to the preparation of a very late dinner (for paul and josh who had been studying finance the whole day at my place - paul had finished his exams but he was tutoring josh) and mei cai kou rou (fatty pork with preserved salted vegetables) for sunday lunch. it was rather simple and tasted nice even though this time i didnt use pork belly but pieces of pork with little fats and a bit of bone, and the mei cai wasnt the exact type we get at home in the dish. got some man tou (steamed plain buns) from birmingham the last time so it was pretty authentic.

today i made a vietnamese lunch of beef pho (rice noodles) in soup and soft rolls (sort of like vietnamese popiah but the skin is made from rice flour). pretty simple preparation because there wasnt much cooking involved as a lot of it was fresh vegetables and herbs. basically i cooked the soup and cooked the noodles separately, put the thin slices of beef in for a few mins in the soup before serving and ladled the soup and beef on. add the basil, mint, coriander, chilli and beansprouts to your liking. the soft rolls were really simple too. just moisten the skins, cook the dong fen (mung bean vermicelli) in hot water and season with soy sauce. layer on a lettuce leaf, some noodles, shrimp, beansprouts, mint, coriander, basil, cucumber and carrot strips and wrap.

will post pictures up soon, at the moment i cant use Hello! on campus. some firewall thing that i seem to have.

i'll be off to dublin with my brother tomorrow for 3 days. will be back after that to resume cooking!