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.

Hang on, Malala

I have been engrossed by the news of Malala since it first came out. Malala Yousafzai, a young girl from northern Pakistan, started to write about her daily life for BBC at a tender age of 9 and later became a fearless campaigner for girls' education. She was shot in the head by Talibans on 9th of October this year for her continuing support and voicing for the right to education.

She's now made her way to UK to receive specialists' care. I am so pleased and proud that Britain offers the help to treat her instantly when the news came out. The overwhelming international responses and helps offered to her just make me admire her even more. A 14-year old girl! Her courage and bravery just pale my life into insignificance.

I want to hug you, Malala, when you come out of the hospital well and fine and walk out with your head held up high. That's the best finger you could show to Talibans.

Best wishes and find you later all smiling in the newspaper.

A relief

Over the past few months, I have been living in cancer scare. Yes, that C word.

It was mentioned to me during a routine examination. "This does not look right", she said. "I will put you on an urgent list so that you can be assessed by a specialist asap". Just like that, one day I went to my GP for a regular test and came back with a disturbing news. I went through all the expected emotions and actions, disbelief, blaming myself for so careless with my health (signs were spotted 6 years ago), googling for symptoms, solutions and prognosis (yes I know it's not right but needed to divert my mind somewhere else), trying to make myself think positively (didn't work) and yet with realistic expectations, and waiting anxiously for the appointment with a specialist clinic. I contemplated on possible outcomes, ranging from bad to worse, until the day in specialist clinic with an outpatient surgery. After that, I could only wait patiently, for the biopsy results to come back.

Today, a letter came from the hospital. I am given a clean bill of health. We embraced each other happily and tightly while reading the letter together. After a short moment of silence, we both blurted out: "what a relief".

A relief indeed and I chided myself again for ignoring my body's signals for so long. I want to promise myself to be more diligent with my own health issues. I pride myself to be proactive on several fronts but health so far is not one of them. This is silly. Without a good foundation (i.e. health), all my future prospects are like built on loose sand. If this is not a wake-up call, then I don't want to know a potentially even bigger one.

Yes, my friend, if you read this, heed your body's needs and complaints, no matter how insignificant they may be. Let medical professionals do their jobs properly instead of you doing theirs.

I wish you good health to live a fulfilling life.

First of October

Holy Macaroni, in three more months I have to say goodbye to 2012.

Autumn and winter have been my favorite time of a year. Yes, I like that mother nature changes to a warmer color tone, and I get to be wrapped up in my cashmere and enjoy hearty food needing no excuses. Above all, I am most productive at my work around this time.

We've planned a nice little holiday just before Christmas. Let me keep a secret on the location until then because I want to work extra hard to get the paper out of the way. I would feel terrible during the trip if I couldn't finish what I promise myself.

Where did the time go?

Apprentice bread baker's experiments

I have been learning and practising about bread baking the whole September. Dough handling is such a stress releaser, I tell you. I hope to update you with more details about what I learn, but before then, please enjoy some of my photo diary of learning to bake bread.