A life worth remembering

An extraordinarily courageous young woman, held on her belief until the last.

Rest in peace, Doctor Maria Santos Gorrostieta. 

The world will be better because of you.

I make - tuna chilli pasta

A very gentle introduction of canned fish into pasta. Lovely.

Tuna chilli pasta (adapted from Foodwishes)

- one jar of tuna packed in oil
- 4 strips of anchovies
- 1/4 tsp dried oregano
- 4 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1/4 tsp dried chilli flakes
- 2 cups of Marcella Hazan's tomato butter sauce (absolutely wonderful, my favorite pasta sauce and I always have some in the fridge. You can use instead store-bought pasta sauce, canned tomato soup or just canned tomatoes)
- pasta of your preference (I prefer egg pasta, tagliatelle or Taglioni/Taglierini), cooked and drained
- freshly grated parmesan
- salt and pepper to taste

Pour the tuna oil into a frying pan. Heat gently along with anchovies, garlic, oregano and chilli flakes. When anchovies are almost dissolved in the pan, tip in the tuna chunks. Do not stir too much. You want tuna to remain in chunks.

Pour in tomato sauce. Simmer the tuna mixture for 10 minutes under moderate heat. Season with salt and pepper. Mix in the cooked pasta. Gently toss to mix thoroughly. Cook the pasta in the sauce for 2 minutes. Scatter parmesan on top. Turn the heat off and put the lid on for a minute or two.

Serve with blanched vegetables.

I make - Beef tagliata and Hasselback potatoes

Wow, I did not expect this. A meal with such joy to eat. Perhaps because it's the cold weather outside contrasting the warmth inside. Maybe it's the ease of preparation, the sensory therapy by working with the ingredients, or just because I was cooking on my favorite cooking day of a week. I am not sure but the result is mind blowing. Simplicity and fresh ingredients are just hard to beat.

Beef tagliata with Hasselback potatoes

The method is mostly what Nigella Lawson demonstrated in her recent cookery program, Nigellissima. The accompanying Hasselback potatoes are from here.

For beef tagliata:

- 1 sirloin steak
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4-1/2 tsp red wine vinegar
- sprinkle of dried chilli flakes
- 1/4 tsp dried thyme
- sea salt to taste
- 100g of rocket (or mixed leaf salad)
- cherry tomatoes, halved
- Parmasen shaves

In a dinner plate or a shallow container, mix together olive oil, vinegar, chilli flakes, thyme and salt. This is the mixture which you will need to rest in the grilled steak.

Preheat a griddle pan to very hot. Sear the unseasoned steak at all sides, about 20 seconds per side. Keep flipping the steak so that you get nice color outside but tender inside. I like my steak rare to medium rare. So I grill my steak no more than 90 seconds in total. If you prefer steak more cooked, feel free to leave it longer.

Remove the steak from the pan and rest in the olive oil marinade. After one minute on one side, flip over to marinade the other side. If you have a lid with slits, you could use it to cover steak to keep it warm. I find a microwave plate cover very handy for this task. Otherwise, a large piece of crinkled tin foil could do the job.

Remove the rested steak from the marinade to a slicing board. Arrange cherry tomato halves in the marinade (time for them to get happy). Thinly slice the steak with a knife angled in. In a big bowl, toss cherry tomatoes, marinade along with rocket leaves together and plate out in a nice dinnerware. Stew the steak slices around the salad. Scatter parmasen shaves on top.

Hasselback potatoes

- 4 medium size potatoes, well scrubbed
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 tbsp of melted butter
- dried thyme
- salt and pepper to taste
- grated parmasen cheese

Slice each potato from top to bottom but not through. You want to create a fan look. Arrange all potatoes in a microwavable plate. Cover with a lid which allows steam coming through. Microwave at high for 5 minutes. Turn each potato over. Microwave for another five minutes.

At this stage, you can leave the dish as it is and move on to something else. When dinner is about to serve, mix the melted butter, minced garlic and thyme together and brush it all over potatoes. Try to get some butter into the potato cuts. Season with salt and pepper. Microwave the whole dish for another 7 minutes.

Remove the dish from the microwave and scatter the parmasen on top. Bake the potatoes in the oven at 200C for 20 minutes.

Trust me, any potato lover will adore you for this.

Dîner chez moi - 17-23 November

After being looked after for several months, it's time to cook more routinely again. Hence the return of weekly menu.

Saturday - Beef tagliata with roasted potatoes

Sunday - Courgette quiche

Monday - Indian spiced salmon with steamed rice

Tuesday - Garlic prawns, tagliatelle in tomato butter sauce

Wednesday - Win-win combo: Tonkastu with champ (If you are an Asian who understands English, you may realize why this is a win-win combination)*

Thursday - Courgette quiche

Friday - wild card

*Just like champ is sometimes short for "champion", katsu happens to mean "win" in Japanese as well. That's my win-win combo. :-)

Cassandre's minute pie crust

Who would have thought that one day I would be shown how to make pie crust by a 16 year-old girl? Cassandre, my adorable and talented niece, knows that I like cooking and offered to show me her Pâte Minute one day. How could I resist? I immediately said YES!

She demonstrated first with a portion of dough and I followed immediately with another. In a warm and sunny afternoon with azure sky, we created two pie crusts, shaken and laid out, amid a French-English intertwined conversation, smiles and flour puffing up at all directions, and all these girly giggles we couldn't help ourselves. And we ate them all as Tarte à la tomate that evening. What a wonderful way to finish a lovely day.

Merci mille fois, Cassandre.

Cassandre's minute pie crust

- 250 g all-purpose flour
- 1 pinch of salt
- 100 mL vegetable oil (or melted butter or a mixture of both)
- 100 mL warm water

Find a round sealable container. You need a container of depth (a taller one is better than a shallow one) because the dough needs to be shaken up and down to form. If you only have a shallow round one, I guess you could shake horizontally. :-)

Put all ingredients in a container. Lid on. Hold the lid along with the container tightly and shake until a dough is form. If the dough seems a bit dry, add a teaspoon of water each time to help it come together.

As soon as the dough is formed, tip it out onto a pie dish. Use your fingers and side of your palm to pat the dough out to cover completely the pie dish. Use as desired.

This recipe is sufficient to cover a 25-cm round pie dish with a 4-cm depth. This is how it looks like after blind baking for 20 minutes.