My Culinary Crusade

I've been hearing the adage "People who love to eat also love to cook" since I was a young child, but the idea of eating has always thrilled me more than cooking. I will not be taking the blame for that as I have very good cooks in my family. 

I learnt how to make lemonade when I was six, a normal vegetable salad with lemon and salt when I was ten and tea and coffee followed at age eleven. Around the time I was twelve, I became a little more adventurous and learnt how to make an omelet, scrambled eggs if I couldn't roll the omelet properly and mildly fried eggs. As you can tell, I had a good start but I've always been a little lazy so I didn't explore further for a couple of years after that until very recently, as I'm home and I've got nothing better to do. 

Welcome to my food journal :) 

Albeit a little long, if not for the words, you should go ahead for the food pictures!

I normally use a different app to do my collages,

but that app crashed so here is an IG version :/

Coffee

The first dish I remember making by myself during quarantine was unsurprisingly, Dalgona Coffee. My critical review of it would be a 4/10. I did not like it at all. People were mesmerized by the creamy texture and the exquisitely wonderful scent of coffee wafting everywhere but it was too bitter for me, and required too much effort to whip the coffee and the sugar. The yield of my effort put in? Not really worth it. In fact, it was so terrible I did not attempt it again.

However, I decided to use the technique, to make some good old fashioned cold coffee, which was neither too strong nor too sweet. Simple and satisfying to sip on a warm evening while watching the sun set. My rating for this was a full 9/10.

Cold coffee by the sunset.

Milkshake

Whipping up cold coffee would inevitably be followed by an attempt to make a milkshake for my younger sibling, who would finish his cold coffee and proceed to ask for a sip from my glass because it was creamy, frothy and slightly sugary. I didn't really do what a conventional milkshake requires, because I realized he does not need the sugar high, so I proceeded to make a very tame milkshake by adding handmade whipped cream (another task that's excellent for an upper arm workout), some milk, a little bit of Bournvita with a light sprinkling of instant coffee to my blender and voila! It seemed to have served my purpose because the milk moustache was licked clean in less than a minute.

For my whipped cream, I took some cream, sugar or honey and a few drops of vanilla essence and used my whisk until soft peaks were formed. It's so good, you would be tempted to have it as it is.

A small glass of happiness.

Vegetable Stir Fry

My mother makes an excellent dish with all of the vegetables that I would normally hesitate to eat by frying them lightly with a special sauce, which I absolutely love. I asked her how she prepared it, and then after listening carefully, I started preparing to make my very first vegetable stir fry. A good tip I learnt during this is that cut your vegetables into big pieces, and not as small as you would for a dish like mixed noodles. Try not to use a lot of oil to fry and don't cook on a high flame if you don't want to burn your vegetables. If you use carrots, it's always a good idea to toss them in a little early on, right after your onions and garlic because they take some time to become soft. Before using broccoli, put the pieces into boiling water for a minute or so to ensure it doesn't smell funky and does not become too soft when you throw it into the pan. I'm not disclosing the sauce, but it had soy sauce as the base with a slight lemony twist to it. Cook for a while, and once you think it's done, sprinkle some salt and pepper according to taste and you're good to go! It's a very colourful dish and really light but delicious!

I used onions, red and yellow peppers, 

broccoli, mushrooms, chillies and garlic!

Creamy Vegetable Soup

I had two medium cans of cream at home, which is why I initially started using cream in the cold coffee and milkshake, but it was getting boring (and I didn't feel too good about myself for consuming it with quite a substantial amount of sugar). So, I decided to try out something new that was never done in our house before and after Googling various recipes involving cream, I gave up because the list was too long and I was always missing an ingredient or two. Taking matters into my own hands, I decided to improvise.I chopped up vegetables in a similar fashion to the stir fry, but I increased the quantity of garlic slightly and did not use chillies and peppers. I tossed my mildly fried vegetables into the boiling water where I dipped my broccoli and mushroom pieces before use, as it smelled nice and after stirring for a while, I whipped some cream (without any sugar) and gradually poured it into my bubbling mixture. Bringing the "soup" to a boil on a medium flame, I adjusted the salt and added some pepper to enhance the flavor and took it off the stove. Garnishing with a few coriander leaves, this is how the final result looked.

A creamy and aromatic delight!

Mushrooms smell great when cooked properly.

Brownie Cake

I'm not calling it a brownie cake because it's a fancy dish, but due to the fact that since I didn't have a rectangular baking tray, I used the normal circular one I use for cakes and didn't cut the brownie into rectangular pieces because I'm lazy. The key difference between brownies and cakes is that brownies don't use milk and baking powder, and you have to try to not overfold your mixture of eggs, cocoa powder, flour, vanilla essence, sugar and butter so as to maintain the distinct brownie texture. Relatively easier to make compared to a cake, it took me around an hour to finish and since somebody took out a sizeable chunk from my round brownie for a 'taste test' I decided to cut it a little differently while handing out little taste samples before I served the final product. I'm not allowed to eat ice cream directly since it's not good for my throat, so I used cold, molten ice cream and a few pieces of chocolate to cover the uneven top surface of my brownie cake.

She may not be the prettiest, but you should not

judge her because from the inside, she was delectable!

Moist Chocolate Cake

I practiced for quite some time in advance to be able to prepare a cake for my brother's birthday since he would be celebrating it without his friends this year, and in my list of practice cakes, there were 2 mug cakes and I think around 3 small cakes, with a very special vanilla cake that was so good and so soft, that the warm and flavourful cake vanished in less than ten minutes! I couldn't even get a picture :(

Moving on, for this moist chocolate cake, I had to make sure that I didn't opt for a very complicated recipe and I found one on YouTube which was exactly the thing I needed. Mixing together flour, eggs, sugar, baking powder, cocoa powder and some freshly prepared buttermilk (milk with lemon juice squeezed in, for at least thirty minutes), the recipe suggested to mix a bit of coffee in warm water and add it to the cake batter. Once the cake turned out according to my expectations, I began preparing the icing by mixing together some cream, cocoa powder, corn flour, regular flour, sugar and milk, brought to a slow boil until the mixture thickened. After cooling both the components, I was very conflicted about how I could decorate the cake without any proper icing tools. Improvising, I coated the cake generously with the chocolate cream I prepared, and taking a fork, I swirled it around the edges and top layer, giving it small upturned swirls to make the cake look pretty! Here it is, in it's full glory.

I added two candles, some old plant cut outs,

a bedazzled tortoise and some pom poms to decorate the mat!

Not sure why there are 2 pencils though.

Chicken and Vegetable Salad

This is the last item I'm going to be talking about, because I made it today! The best thing about this is the fact that I did not need any recipe for this, I just went into the kitchen and knew what I wanted to make. I took out some chicken, thawed the pieces and boiled them in a pressure cooker for around 3 whistles, and before that, I chopped a small onion, two chillies, some peppers and broccoli, along with a generous number of garlic cloves. I used only butter to mildly fry my vegetables and shredded chicken, and I used salt and pepper for seasoning. Unfortunately, the chillies and pepper together made the mixture quite spicy, so I added some cream because this time, I have a large carton of cream which I need to use up. I kept cooking on a medium flame until the broccoli became a little soft and that was it! Easy to make, easier to eat!

I wish I had some oregano to sprinkle on this.

I could keep blabbering, but I'd like to wrap up by saying that not a lot of things in life can even compare to the satisfaction of cooking for yourself and enjoying your meal! That's all for an entry in my food journal :D