Practical - Dinner

Its Monday oops! Tuesday now and woke up to another misty strong wind cold morning. Went to work feeling tired and by the time I got back to my room to change for my practical class, my mood changes from groggy to wow! happy..... I can cook again.

This time round, we are featuring our own menu from our R&D.

Will blog about what the other guys are cooking. For me, this was my menu

Mikado Salad - Avocado, Fresh Button Mushroom, Tomato, Frissee with Peanut Dressing

Aquacotta - A Tuscany Soup

Moroccan Fish with Chermoula

Capiratoda - Mexican Bread Pudding


Mikado Salad - I sort of copied this menu item from the menu when I used to work in Regent KL back in 90-92. The salad was amazing and the dressing was good too. Unfortunately, i dont have the recipe for the dressing.

More bad news.....they got me 2 unripe avocado. Gave the avocado to my other classmate, so she can make her avocado soup. They didnt even get the fresh button mushroom for me. So, apa lagi, change ingredient to canned button mushroom, yucky as a salad ingredient.


This is what I came out with












Remember the "Peanut Dressing" that I had for lunch ? No ? click here to jog ur memory a little...chuckle. I managed to coax my chef for his recipe and it goes like this

Peanut Dressing












20 ml Lemon Juice
20 ml Red Pepper
10 gm Parsley
40 gm Peanut Butter
20 gm Sugar
7 gm Garlic
5 gm Salt
100 ml Oil ( use less as the peanut butter is oily enough )

Presentation wise, ok only . Gave myself 5/10.






















For the soup, somehow I managed to do it but omit the parmesan as I do believe the taster - students from the college would not appreciate the soup.

Aquacotta - Literary meaning "Cook Water" in Italian.

Simple enough to cook. Slice onion, cube tomatoes, chopped celery. Sauteed the onion till transluscent but not brown. Dump in water ( i used vegetable stock ) and bring to a boil. Lower heat, add in tomato and celery and simmer for 15 minutes or till tomato incorporated into the water. Season. Poach an egg - egg white firm, yellow runny and place them into a plate. Dish the soup unto the plate. Topped with a toasted bread and served with a generous portion of grated parmesan . Oh! I forgotten, u will also need few leaves of basil. I have never cook this before and do not know what to expect.










Dont you think it can do with a little more green colour.



From Malaysia - the peanut dressing, to Italian for the soup and now, across the Eurafrican Sea to Morocco for my main course. Fresh Seabass or what the Australian called Barramundi or what we Malaysian and our brethen called siakap also known as Sea Perch to others in the world. Still this fish is more commonly known as Barramundi ( to me its 3 kg and above ) and sea bass (if below 3 kg ).

Fillet it straight out from the fresh fish and i got scale all over my hand and some on my face. Yuck! Not for those who are ...................you know what i mean. Lolz


Uses the Moroccan marinade called Chermoula to marinate and kept some for sauce. Skim the extra oil off if you plan to use for sauce.










Marinating











Final Presentation - 5 /10 again. Diu! Shouldnt have use the lollorossa as it sort of hide the colour of this dish. $&#^@%


For the finale dessert, I found Capiratoda in the website but i dont remember where. Cleared IE history liao, so, copied the recipe for all of you lar.

This is sort of the Mexican version of bread pudding.

According to Jane Milton the dessert was originally created to use up leftovers before the Lenten fast.

I N G R E D I E N T S

1 small loaf crusty bread, a few days old
1/2 - 1/3 cup butter, softened (plus some for greasing the pan)
scant 1 cup brown sugar (or piloncillo, (crushed) i used gula melaka
1 stick canela (cinnamon)
1 2/3 cup water
3 tablespoons dry sherry
3/4 cup sliced almonds (plus a bit more for garnish)
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup grated Monterey Jack or mild Cheddar cheeselight
cream for serving

I N S T R U C T I O N S

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit or 160 degrees Celcius. For conversion refer to here

Slice the bread about 1/2" thick. Lightly butter the bread on both sides and fry a few pieces at a time in a warmed pan as you would French Toast, browning each slice on both sides. Set the cooked slices aside.

Place the sugar or piloncillo, canela and water in a saucepan. Heat gently stirring constantly until the sugar is dissolved. Bring the mixture to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes without stirring. Remove the canela stick and stir in the sherry.

Grease an 8" square baking dish with butter. Layer the bread, almonds, raisins and cheese in the dish, pour on the syrup letting it soak into the bread. Bake the pudding for about 30 minutes until golden brown.

Remove the dish from the oven, let stand at least 5 minutes, cut into squares. Serve the pudding cold with cream pour on top and garnished with more sliced almonds.

I did mine in a terrine mould as it was only for 4 pax. Cut into triangle and since i hated cream, decided to cook up some vanilla sauce instead and using red dye for colouring. Damn conservative !

Here's how it looks like ! No almond as i did not reading the instruction and used up all the almonds.











Ugly , Huh ?



Cheers !