Cooking Spree

I hardly ever cook and if I do, it's usually instant stuff since my brother and I are simple people who derive more pleasure in savouring desserts. However, for some reason, I have been cooking most of the week. It started of with a sudden desire to make ice cream which sprung from out of the blue. I've never made ice cream before and I don't even have a maker. I thought I'd make Green Tea ice cream since my sister in law loves green tea and thought if someone ate the ice cream, it'd be worth making. The green tea bags weren't very strong and the preliminary round of my ice cream freezing tasted like frozen egg cream. Working with what was around, I then melted a block of dark chocolate to it and added loads of honey to it and refroze it. When it was about set, I crushed up some honey roasted macadamia and almonds along with some raisins to the ice cream and it turned out surprisinly beautiful, like some gourmet ice cream.

The next day, I made an all time fettucine carbonara and to everyone's delight, despite a large quantity, the pasta was al dente and the bacon crispy, giving my egg cream sauce plenty of flavour. To complete things, I took the effort to add spring onions. I was touched when Jolene took seconds. It is after all, a cream based pasta. Given that I've still got cream left from the ice cream and pasta, I thought I'd finish it up with some bread and butter pudding. This didn't turn out as good as I would like but Jolene had seconds too. The butterscotch sauce I made to accompany it was lovely though. I know, it should've been vanilla custard or ice cream.

Following that, it's back to my Asian roots. I made Hainan chicken rice. It's amazing how good things taste when you use fresh complete ingredients. This was my second time making it and the last was years ago but this time I thought I'd give making the soy sauce accompaniment a go too. Although a tad salty, but still probably very flavorful as we drowned our rice and chicken in it.

Tonight, inspired by one of the best salmon I had at a English bar on my way to Sydney, I decided to re-create something similar.

Perfectly grilled salmon on a bed of mash, soft roasted vegetable topped with fried sweet potato chips, garnished with parsley

My perfectly baked then fried trout (pink in the middle) on a bed of butter-herbed mash (not as smooth and creamy) over asparagus spears along with well roasted desirees

My brekky: Butter sauteed spinach with scrambles and soy & linseed toast with a side of chilli chicken and English Hot Chocolate
- was told to add protein and cut down sugar and fats in my diet. I will try