New Resolutions

Meet Eustace, born the 1st of Jan 2010. Named after one of Bertie Wooster's mischievous twin cousins Claude and Eustace. Would really like to make friends with Bob and Philémon. (Nino II had been sent to retirement home, aka the rubbish bin, before I went on holidays.)

To keep him alive is amongst my new year's resolutions for 2010.
The rest includes:

1. To make my bed every day (if time permits)
2. To reduce sugar intake in general and not to eat sugary things every Wednesday
3. To keep track of my spending
4. To tidy up one corner of the flat every day
5. To spend less time on the internet
6. To re-pot and fertilise the 2 orchid plants at home and make them flourish or at least alive
7. To try out new recipes, same target, i.e. 50. In January I tried a new cheese loaf recipe, and a Jamie Oliver salmon and potato bake that perhaps will feature next time.
8. etc etc (I have so many)

I had no time

Hello to you if you happen to read this, Happy New Year and best wishes!
I had been lured by tumblr in December and completely neglected this blog.

Dear Mr internet inventor, you're a genius, thank you very much for providing me with so much fun and useless knowledge and life without internet would be a torture (for me anyway). But internet has been ruining my sleeping schedule, made me neglect my household chores, and my other projects... and so... for I am all for self-improvement and all that! amongst all my 2010 resolutions, there lurks one consistent message. LESS INTERNET IN 2010. 1-1.5 hours max everday. I don't know how long I'd last... mind you *gulp* I've broken that resolution already, I think, every single day and it's only been a week. So! Starting tomorrow! NO actually, starting next Monday!

1. Less internet, read more
2. Less internet, bake more
3. Less internet, cook more
4. Less internet, clean more
5. Less internet, blog more

...umm I'd need internet to blog though. Such irony.

Anyway... I kind of regret not having posted anything in December... so here are some photos of things I made.


Made the brioche and the ice cream just recently. I attempted to make brioche maybe about three times... the results had been poor. This time I tried a recipe from the Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. At first I was quite intimidated by the length of the recipe but actually it is very descriptive and gives you expectation of how the dough will turn out so that you won't panic and start adding flour when the dough sticks to your hand like there's no tomorrow. HA! Now I sort of know how to handle the dough I'll re-attempt the recipe in my book by Michel Roux or Hermé. The recipe I used for the vanilla ice-cream this time is by Pierre Hermé, lovely and rich.



These are fail pains aux chocolats.



One from another fail batch *sigh* I'm taking a break from pâte à croissant :(


One word : Delicioso. I loved it! Recipe from Le Grand Livre Marabout de la cuisine facile : 900 recettes.



Made the paste from scratch. It was less yummy than one from Malay Chinese on Hunter street but I'm rather proud of it. Next time I will up the paste! Recipe from the Noodle book by Terry Durrack.


Somethings I made for Christmas dinner with E, as she is a girl who's into low fat things and has aversion towards butter. Crisp skin salmon with snow peas and coriander with thai style dressing, recipe by Bill Granger taken from a Delicious magazine, can't remember which edition.



I like this photo of prawns and cactus.



Some noodle salad, again from Delicious magazine this time by Jill Dupleix. Some tofu and greens for the sides, with nuoc cham.



It looks alright in this photo though honestly this wasn't great. The pavlova went soggy because I assembled it too early.

Otherwise, I roasted a couple of chickens... which turned out quite nice, next time I'll take a photo. I made some passionfruit tartelettes, a pot of asparagus soup, some vegetarian saffron risotto, some peas and zucchini risotto, some pasta salad, some friands, etc. Some fun project I did for 2 weeks was the monday-friday baking frenzy in order to cut down on internet browsing. It was great... I felt so productive! This monday-friday bake will definitely feature in my baking resolution this year. I haven't yet set my baking resolutions but I have some great ideas, so exciting! Best wishes again for you from me and Figo. xx

Note :
1. Sadly I am resigning from the daring kitchen (I've taken off the logo). My heart is just isn't in it anymore... Best wishes Daring Bakers!