Make some cookies; you'll feel better

Actually, I’m fine. Still some last-minute Christmas crap you have to deal with and it doesn’t matter if you’ve planned and organised everything down to the last detail.

And I had to go to the city to pick something up on the hottest - a balmy 33 degrees - day of the year. Aren’t we lucky?? Didn't break into a sweat walking up and down Queen Street, probably the most chilled, unhectic city street in the world. Yes- haters can have New York or Paris or Rome and I hope you fucking get mugged.

Ruth is arriving tonight so in addition to our favourite store-bought sticky-date pudding, I thought why not fill the house with the smell of freshly-baked chocolate-chip cookies?

Didn’t add nuts or dried fruit this time, and it turned out to be your classic, chewy, burnt buttery version. And I used milk chocolate which I’ve honestly always favoured over dark chocolate which also amped up the sweetness factor.

Took all of 30 minutes for 20, 60 gram cookies (thanks to having a mixer which has seriously made the work flow easier and faster).

Ingredients:
210 g butter browned
200g dark brown sugar
100g white sugar
2 eggs
Vanilla
330g all purpose flour
3.4 tspoon baking powder and baking soda
300g chocolate your choice

Method:
- Make brown butter and let cool
- Once cool, mix with sugars and whisk. Add eggs and vanilla
- Add your sifted dry ingredients
- Add chocolate
- Bake in batches for about 12 minutes

Air-fryer 'lechon' works

I didn’t have time to marinate the pork belly a bit longer and frozen lemon-grass is a hit and miss. I don’t think the one I got from the Asian store had any flavour at all.

But the pork was flavourful - it could’ve been steamed a bit longer - and 95% of the skin became crackling which is good enough.

The pork was about a kilo and if it was any bigger, it wouldn’t have fit in the air-fryer.

Got the recipe here:

What I ate this week

We joke that the reason why this generation is fucked up is because of chicken nuggets. The conspiracy theory is that the chicken where nuggets come from are so full of hormones and other secret drugs that it’s to blame for young people’s anxiety, depression, eczema etc. It has to be right?? And not really because their grand-parents (yup, look past us GenXers!) fucked up the world as we know it today!

I only bought a bag of Tegel nuggets because it was half-price, I was needing some protein pick-me-up and it cooks in all of 10 minutes in the air-fryer.

Too much of a good thing
I put my Wonky Box subscription on hold because it wasn’t long before I was drowning in a glut of vegetables. Thanks to TikTok, I saw a good way of preparing cauliflower. By boiling it first, you cut down the cooking process when you either roast or grill it. But don’t overcook it and make sure that it’s absolutely dry when you take the next step. I literally drowned it in olive oil and melted butter before putting it in the oven. Serve it like I do with my special sauce (mayo, mustard and hot sauce) and bagel seasoning.

Didn’t realise how simple it is to make fudge. I love fudge; I don’t have a sweet tooth but when I do crave for something sweet, I go for a packet of fudge because it’s like the supernova of sweet things - all that sugary sweetness concentrated in a bar no bigger than your thumb. This is peanut-butter fudge, recipe from the NY Times.

We’re Christmas-cake connoisseurs.
This year, we ordered a total of four kilos of the stuff from our favourite supplier. Every now and then, Berta supplies us with exotics; last year, it was Jamaican black-cake, and this year, a more traditional one albeit boozed up with 75 year old bourbon whisky.

Sunday baking

I had about $6 worth of carrots and apples that are about to go off so I decided to put them into a cake that costs five times as much - so much for trying to be frugal 😂.

I had to Google carrot and apple cake and this one seemed promising; however I couldn’t find the specific Whittaker’s flavour in the recipe so I got what was available at the dairy which was a Fijian Ginger and Kerikeri Mandarin dark chocolate bar.

Baking notes:
By the 50th minute, the top was dark and a skewer inserted into the middle came out clean, but when I was trying to cut the cake across so I could put some frosting in between, the middle was very soft. Either my oven was too hot and the cake needed more time, or I should’ve waited until it was completely cool and firmed up.

With only a cup and a half of sugar in it, it wasn’t too sweet, but I feel that it needed a bit more sweetness.

Tuesday

I had a consult today with my GP.

The horror stories you normally hear about the health-care system in New Zealand isn’t about insurance (the NZ government pays for health-care services) or lawsuits, but about a lack of doctors and long waiting lists. So you try (and pray) your damn hardest not to get sick, and that if you did, knock on wood that it’s just the common cold.

I went for a different matter - I’m fine by the way - and I was surprised that there was an immediate opening. My current doctor is old, like senior citizen old, just like my previous GP who I think, got sick on the job and was now probably and definitely retired (I hope) and enjoying sunny Brighton (in England) where he’s originally from. But old doctors are the best. They have a relaxed and cheerful demeanour even when they’re desperately trying to find you a good systolic reading using a manual blood pressure monitor.

Jaqueline - my current GP - is a tall and statuesque lady who occasionally lapses into citing current studies that she’s read about, or diagramming on paper, the relationship between enzymes and bodily organs. She also patiently listens to my attempt at self-diagnoses and neither contradicts nor reproaches me (I wasn’t wrong anyway, just saying).

She saw me at 9:50 when our appointment was at 9:30 and we wrapped up at 10:45, but I didn’t complain; the whole session was worth the $50 it cost (in New Zealand, this is relatively very high).

For dinner, I thought, why not a salad? And no - it had nothing to do with my doctor’s appointment - I was still having flashbacks of that salad I had at Brewd Hawt, and the realisation that we have been doing our dressings wrong.

I didn't have iceberg lettuce - and it’s really the ideal type of lettuce for this - but use whatever you have because the point is, you need to eat those goddamned salad leaves before they go off. I had curly lettuce which I washed, dried and roughly chopped up. For the dressing, it was mayo, hot sauce, mustard and miso with some EVOO.

Drizzled that over the lettuce, did a generous sprinkling of that bagel seasoning and just because I was feeling extra, grated some parmigiana reggiano on top. YUM.

PS: my cholesterol levels were amazing the doctor said and the figure did make me gasp (a 2.2). To think that for the last 6 months, I’ve been eating butter as if it were cheese. See? There are some small miracles there…

I ate

So we took a break from eating modestly. I don’t think one can call it a diet, when you’ve been doing it for years. No breakfast except about four espressos, an office cookie at morning tea, a light lunch if I was working out later in the day, and for dinner, a protein shake after that aforementioned work-out.

But there’s a ton of work lately, so we thought, why not? Live a little and eat a little bit more than usual.

  1. Thursday’s chicken tenders from Charcoalchicken which is just 10 minutes away at our local Woolworth’s. Generously sized and cooked in fresh oil, it’s perfect with their perfectly made Kabas rice.

  2. Friday’s Mochi. Just starting to discover how versatile glutinous rice flour is and the possibilities are endless. But did a repeat of Hawaiian Butter Mochi because it’s the easiest one to do.

  3. Saturday’s chicken at Brew’d Hawt. Auckland is in the golden-era of chicken; there are chicken places everywhere you look. But it’s a small market, and sadly, when saturation sets in and everyone is like, ‘fuck this, I’ll just go back to KFC’, where will your chicken-joint end up? Which is a shame, because every single chicken-place we’ve been to is good. Ironically, the star dish isn’t always the chicken (which in spite of its batter or glaze or whatever, somehow needs a tad more seasoning) and at Brew’d Hawt, the iceberg-lettuce wedges and the fried pickles were stellar.

  4. Sunday’s Katsubi. You pick from three sizes- and I always pick Large which means salad/rice and three meat options- and they try to cram all these into a paper bowl. You also pick your sauce (I always go for Garlic Aioli and Miso Sesame). It looks intimidatingly huge when you dump everything into a plate at home for easier eating, but since opting out of having rice and just the vegetables, you don’t feel as full. Perfect as a pre-workout food.

Yes, sometimes I eat bread

I have to admit that I had my ‘gluten intolerant’ moment. With bread/wheat as the culprit, I imagined that I was bloated and crampy. We have to blame social media for that hysteria which thankfully, got clarified by the experts but not before spawning a whole new restaurant menu sub-set that never fails to make you roll your eyes.

And now I’m back to my processed-food moment so bread rarely ever makes it to our pantry.

But facetiousness aside, I’ve never been a big bread-eater anyway. I don’t know if it’s changed but growing up in the Philippines, the quality of the bread wasn’t as good (and so were the cakes), and if it was there, I ate some but I wouldn’t even give it a second thought if it disappeared from the face of the earth.

I could count with the fingers of both my hands, the number of dishes where bread was necessary: 1) beef stew (which was one of our dad’s signature dishes); 2) pansit sotanghon (you made a pansit sandwich and used the thinnest, softest white bread); 3) spaghetti (before garlic bread became commercially available, we made our own slathered with Star margarine and dosed up with Italian seasoning); 4) Christmas ham (with cold slices of salty Majestic ham, mayo and tomatoes).

I had my usual grocery delivery yesterday and sourdough was on sale so I thought, why not?

The slices are too big for a conventional toaster so toasting is done on a pan with olive oil and butter. Two fried eggs, one sliced tomato and a whole lot of seasoning and breakfast is done (coz I need the energy).

Chicken Karaage

Before there was Korean fried chicken, there was Japanese chicken karaage.

There are times when I just get sick and tired of KFC (Korean Fried Chicken) and its million and one variants, and all I crave really, is the simple taste of chicken and that hint of ginger and soy.

No cheese, butter laced gochujang, bbq sauce (the worst) or ranch. And no bones!

I’ve had so many versions over the years and I’m glad that Eric Kim of NYTimes Cooking has laid to rest that question of ‘what is the definitive recipe for chicken karate?’ (watch his video). The answer being, is that there isn’t one.

There was a time when I literally had something deep-fried every week, mostly on weekends, but I’ve been pacing that now but when I do, it’s karaage.

My recipe is almost identical to Eric’s but with one difference- I use an equal part of tapioca starch in my batter with regular flour. You could do the starch exclusively, but flour mixed in gives it a crunch that’s firm, but not too crunchy which is my preference.

Ingredients:
1pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 2-inch pieces
1(2-inch) piece ginger, peeled and finely grated (2 teaspoons)
2tablespoons soy sauce
2tablespoons sake
½teaspoon granulated sugar
½teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1large egg
1/2 cup tapioca starch mixed with 1/2 cup regular flour.
About 1 quart canola or vegetable oil, for frying

Step 1
To a medium bowl, add the chicken, ginger, soy sauce, sake, sugar and salt. Toss to combine. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour.

Step 2
Place a wire rack over a large, paper towel-lined sheet pan. Crack the egg into a small bowl and whisk. To a large bowl, add the starches. One by one, dip the chicken into the egg, then into the batter mixture until evenly coated. Set the coated chicken pieces on the left side of the wire rack.

Step 3
To a medium saucepan, add enough oil to fill a third of the way up. Heat the oil over medium-high to 320 degrees. Turn your hood vent on, if you’ve got one, and open a nearby window, if possible. Working in batches, fry the chicken until crunchy and light brown, adjusting the heat so the oil temperature stays between 300 and 320 degrees, 4 to 6 minutes per batch. Using tongs or a slotted spoon, transfer the fried chicken to the right side of the wire rack, away from the portion that was exposed to the raw chicken, to rest slightly.

Step 4
Serve with the optional (but very delicious) lemon wedges and mayonnaise dusted with togarashi.

Friday's Mac and 'Cheese'

The sixth consecutive food post that made me think, since eating seems to be the only thing of significance I do in my life, I might as well do a food blog. Our kitchen isn’t the best though- for shooting cooking videos that is, so I need to be creative with my shots.

I’ve been mulling whether to buy this clever camera stand as well as a whole slew of stuff from this site which means that at the end of it all, I’d probably be fat and poor.

Anyhow, another week done and we’re already hurtling towards the holidays which is funny, because in mid-August I started getting a lot of pumpkin-pie, pumpkin-anything stuff on my social feeds. I also got an email from Nespresso hawking their limited-edition pumpkin-spice cake pods.

It’s a shame the Z station near our office burned down; Z Energy Cafes sell the BEST PUMPKIN SPICE LATTES in the country. It was so good, that I had one every other day last year for the duration that it was available.

I have a can of Libby’s Pumpkin Puree that an American (obviously) friend gave me- might do that pumpkin flan I’ve been wanting to do.

I was all set to have Spam and eggs for dinner when I spotted three large capsicums in my fridge that I had meant to make into a sauce; one was already on its way out but the other two (large) ones were still okay. So I popped them into the oven to grill. Peeled and de-seeded, you saute them in olive oil and butter with a couple of cloves of garlic. And the magic ingredient that makes them taste as if you’ve put dollops of cream and cheese? A chicken flavour cube.

It’s then pureed and mixed in with the macaroni. Since I didn’t have cheese which usually makes the topping along with bread crumbs and butter, I had to use this salad topper mix that had moorish yeast flakes, toasted seeds and crispy onions.

I very briefly put the mac under the grill just enough to heat the topping- it didn’t have cheese anyway so there was nothing there to melt- because I actually like my pasta runny.

Boun appetito!

Cookie Wednesday

I could be wrong, but I’ve never made cookies before. Full disclosure- not too fond of them. I’d eat them for sure if they were offered, but I don’t go crazy for them. We have a steady, free supply of cookies and biscuits at work and I do have one or two every day (!) but it hasn’t become a habit. Given the choice between a packet of choc-chip cookies or a deli pork-belly roast, I would always pick the latter.

Fact: I love a rum-raisin cookie though and on the rare times I get a Subway sandwich, I always get one if it is available.

But I decided to make this cookie because I saw it on Instagram- the current source of culinary inspiration- and the guy just did it well, plus, it was salted caramel, with emphasis on salt (using Maldon sea salt) which is my go-to flavour for sweet stuff.

Alas, I neither had the time to make the caramel (didn’t feel like watching a pot of simmering sugar) nor had Maldon sea salt. Tried to use Himalayan, but it’s not really fine and flaky as Maldon.

But I was committed and in lieu of caramel, I bought a packet of cranberries. The recipe is as follows if you want to make the caramel:

Ingredients:
200g granulated sugar
a pinch of Maldon Sea Salt Flakes
Cookies
210g unsalted butter, cubed
200g dark brown sugar
100g granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
330g all-purpose flour
¾ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp baking soda
1 tsp Maldon Sea Salt Flakes
300g dark chocolate, chopped
Maldon Sea Salt Flakes for finishing

Method
1. To make the caramel, add the granulated sugar to a small saucepan. Over a medium heat, melt the sugar until you reach a golden amber colour, swirl the pot to mix the caramel
2. Season the caramel with a pinch of Maldon Sea Salt Flakes, then pour it onto a heat proof surface covered in greaseproof paper and set aside to harden
3. Add the cold butter, with a pinch of salt to a saucepan and melt. Once the butter has melted, continue to cook until it starts to develop a darker colour and smells almost nutty. Then, pour the butter into the bowl of a stand mixer and let it cool for 15-20 minutes
4. While the hot butter is cooling, get all your dry ingredients ready in a separate bowl, chop your chocolate into large chunks, and smash the caramel into small coin size pieces
5. Once your butter has cooled slightly, add both the sugars to it. Mix using the paddle attachment. Once the sugar has dissolved into the butter, add the eggs one at a time and beat until the eggs have emulsified
6. Add your dry ingredients to this in 2 or 3 batches, at this point you’re trying to bring the batter together - you don’t want to overwork it
7. Add the chopped chocolate and caramel and mix for another 2-3 minutes
8. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and give it a light spray with cooking oil. Roll the cookie dough into balls and place them on the tray evenly spaced apart. Pat them down so they form a slight disc shape, then finish them with some Maldon Sea Salt Flakes
9. Bake the cookies at 180°C for 10-12 minutes. Take them out of the oven while they’re still a little bit soft.

It’s funny when you get recipes that call for eye-balling the amount of dough or using an ice-cream scooper where there’s really no guarantee of scooping consistent quantities. Use a digital scale- I have one which I got as a Christmas gift- and you’ll always get your quantities and sizes correctly. Turns out, the weight dictates the eventual size.

And don’t believe what you see on social-media; 9 times out of ten, the quantities they prescribe don’t match what you just watched. In the video, the guy made FOUR cookies.

I weighed the entire thing before portioning them out and the grand total was 1239 grams. I ended up making six 100 gram cookies; four 46 gram ones; three 80 gram ones and three 75 gram ones (these are not exact weights- some of the cookies were a couple of grams smaller).

As expected, they were delicious especially when they were still warm. But also so rich that I couldn’t finish even half a (large) 100 gram cookie. Since everyone in the house is dieting, will be bringing them to work instead.

The reliables

Sometimes, I just want to be done with it, preparing a meal, but it doesn’t mean I have to make a goddamned sandwich.

And so you pull out the familiar recipes and end up being surprised how for such simple things, there is so much satisfaction and flavour for so little effort.

Arroz Caldo
I like it thick which means a rice-cooker cupful (doesn’t seem like a regular cup) of rice to about four cups of water; this is about two generous servings. I don’t season it as much because I like to do the seasoning afterwards with lemon juice and patis. A dollop of garlic chili-oil gets it ready for eating.

Sinigang na baboy
I would prefer to use pork-ribs, but a $35 baby rack which we currently have in the freezer may be too rich. So I would divide a 1kg pork belly for this- the other half to be made into binagoongan- and simmer it in a sinigang mix (I like the Gabi variant). For the greens, it’s a mixture of swamp spinach and water-cress.

Binagoongan
It’s simply letting the pork-belly pieces cook in water until the liquid evaporates and it begins to render and fry in its own fat. A whole clove of diced garlic goes into this, and then the fish-paste. It’s not the best bagoong-alamang from Pangasinan, but it would do. I would do a fried rice with the leftover bits and pieces in the pan.

Smashed burgers two ways

I’ve been trying to eat a bit more red meat; you know, for the testosterone, B vitamins, zinc and iron. Since I really can’t do Wagyu beef all the time, I get really good Wagyu mince on some days.

But my cooking repertoire is quite restricted because I really don’t want to do the usual minced beef suspects like beef and pasta (not fond of pasta), or meatballs (I prefer pork or lamb for this) or maybe a shepherd’s pie.

So it’s mashed burgers which is how I do my burgers all the time these days. We got the brioche buns from Costco, not the best I must admit but in Auckland it’s crazy that there’s only one brand that sells brioche at the supermarkets and I haven’t seen any lately (people eating a lot of brioche buns in this economy?).

I didn’t have lettuce, so for crunch, I did cornichons for one burger, and kimchi for the other.

But I could only manage to finish one burger (the kimchi one).

Sunday's ribs

I love pork ribs BUT I HATE THE SAUCE.

I think there was a cannibalism scene in some dystopian movie or show where human ribs were covered in that ubiquitous brown glop that made me think- not because it was disgusting- how unnecessary it is flavour-wise. Of course the cannibals had to cover the ribs with sauce because if they didn’t, the flavour of the meat would be a giveaway.

But there’s nothing like the unadulterated taste of fresh pork. When I get the chance to eat lechon, I pick the belly meat for sure, but there’s the ribs and the spine, the meat and fat salted just right with that hint of lemongrass and garlic. And when I got out a rack of St. Louis Pork Ribs from the freezer I sure as hell, wasn’t going to smother out the flavour with sauce.

The rack was just seasoned with salt and pepper and marinated in lemon juice and crushed garlic.

The Station Buffet

From Wikipedia
The station handled freight and passenger traffic from when it opened in 1872 until closing in the late 20th century, and from 1880 was the site of an interchange between passenger rail and trams until the 1930s. The station building remains and is currently tenanted by a restaurant. There have been proposals for the reinstatement of commuter rail services on the Main North Line that would involve the use of Papanui but thus far, none has been approved.

And this restaurant, a Korean BBQ Buffet is called The Station in Papanui, Christchurch.

And it isn’t fancy by any means. There’s a table when you come in where you sit if you do not want the buffet, and in the buffet area, there are tables with the requisite single burner portable butane stove on top. The station structure is wood and while there are overhead heating lamps, it can still be quite cold- until you start cooking and eating.

I must say I love buffets. As someone who eats basically only one meal a day, indulging yourself in unlimited food is VERY satisfying. And the price- who says no to $39pp? If you’ve been to Korean buffets, you’d be familiar with the requisite sides: kimchi, pickled cucumber, and candied sweet potatoes. But because this is New Zealand, there are also chicken nuggets, hot chips and fried-chicken nibbles. Some people I know find table-top cooking a chore, but if you can keep yourself from eating a lot of the prepared sides, waiting til your meats are cooked allows your stomach to take in more just to get your money’s worth.