Foodie Fridays: Keeping to the 3/7 resolution

Ah, so last week I skipped the usual Foodie Fridays post since it was Good Friday, plus it was a week that I didn't manage to hit the 3 meal quota.  My mum was sick and I spent most of the time taking care of Junior J while trying to cram in studying here and there, so home-cooked meals was pretty low down on my list.  That week, I only managed to cook on Monday, and that turned out to be a minor disaster.  Firstly, I'd planned to clear some minced beef and make hamburger patties, but forgot I had run out of onions.  So the hubby very nicely went over to my mum's place to get some.  Then I wanted to bake some potatoes, and the hubby suggested I try making rosti, so I did.  Rosti, it turned out, is extremely labour-intensive to make from scratch, since the recipe calls for grating of numerous potatoes after boiling them.  I didn't have a decent grater so I ended up chopping the (rather hot) potatoes into tiny slices, and that took a pretty long time.  Plus, the hamburger recipe called for 30 minutes of chilling the patties to let them set... so by the time everything was prepared for cooking, it was really getting late, and I only managed to chill them for a fraction of the recommended time.  The hubby helped to fry the hamburgers (which turned out yummy, you can get the recipe here, but I only made the patties!), and the rosti (recipe here, but don't try it unless you have time and a decent grater, or a pair of willing hands, or an apprentice chef attached to you!), and we ate that with salad (baby spinach drenched with balsamic vinegar and olive oil).  I was so tired at the end of the whole process that I didn't even have the heart to take a photo of the food!

This week has been better, and I've hit the 4/7 mark instead (however, one meal remains to be cooked for tonight's dinner!).  You've probably read about part of the menu in my previous weekend post, but this is what we've been cooking and eating:

:: Chilled carrot soup, along with homemade wholemeal bread and Ramly burgers: I grabbed the recipe off a Martha Stewart magazine, and you can find the recipe here.  Its pretty simple to make and the fact that its chilled and mildly sweet is rather refreshing, but the hubby didn't really like it.  I think we are probably hot soup people.

:: Pork ribs and lotus root soup, served with rice and stir-fried kailan: This was something my MIL taught me, and you can get a similar recipe here.  However, I made a few modifications from the version I was taught, by adding honey dates (as recommended by the online recipe) as well as lotus seeds.  The honey dates lend a sweetness to the soup, and we slurped up a huge bowl of it.  The hubby said it was the best lotus root soup he has eaten, so I'm filing this away for keeping.

:: Beef stew: We had some Japanese stew sauce left and wanted to clear it, so we bought beef cubes the other day to make stew.  However, upon reading the ingredient list, I realised that I couldn't use the cubes since it had milk in it, so in desperation, I rummaged among our can goods and found somethings else I could use: Peeled tomatoes.  (My mum loves to use Oxo cubes, and is rather aghast at my insistence of trying to cook stew from scratch.)

There are numerous recipes online for a decent beef stew, but all I did was fry garlic (4 cloves, minced) followed by onion (2 red onions, sliced into thin rings) in olive oil (2 tablespoons).  Then I just added the beef cubes (I think it was about 300 g), and added tomatoes (2, cut into chunks) about 10 minutes later.  The potatoes (3, peeled and cubed) and  carrots (1 large one, sliced) were then added about 10 minutes after, along with the whole can of peeled tomatoes, as well as liberal sprinklings of ground thyme and marjoram, 2 bay leaves, and a little bit of salt and pepper (since I was giving some to Junior J).  Then the whole pot was left to stew (that's the point right?) for 3 hours while I hung out with the little boy.

The verdict from the hubby?  Yummy it was!  So I'm glad.  2 hits out of three is pretty good for a newbie cook like me!  Tonight its going to be ratatouille, but I'm waiting for the good man to buy eggplant after work, since our market here doesn't stock it...

Have a great weekend!

UPDATE: The hubby came back with the necessary eggplant, so we had ratatouille for dinner (recipe here, but adapted since I only added 2 green peppers).  We are rather carnivorous in nature, so this dish didn't really sit well on its own.  Thankfully, we had some beef stew left from yesterday night as well, but overall the dinner was a little too tomato-y for us!