Cooking and shopping therapy

Recently, I have been interested in using the stove instead of the oven.

I cooked this bowl of instant noodles with lots of veggies and mushrooms, using the satchet of Japanese fish stock my friend gave me. I don't think it's super yummy but I felt comforted to eat something I cooked myself.

After eating at this E-Sarn Thai Restaurant at Sixth Avenue a few times, I keep thinking of their warm lemongrass drink. The other day, I accompanied Mom to the veggie stall and also got some lemongrass stalks and pandang leaves.

I have managed to brew 2 pots of lemongrass pandang drink added with a little ground ginger (I think fresh ginger slice will be better) and rock sugar.

It's refreshing but I lack some secret ingredient, sp it doesn't taste as great as E-Sarn's one.

I like Japanese food and recently have been checking out the Japanese section for their sauces and stuff. Mom and I enjoy reading Urban's supplement to see what Jap food this writer will recommend. The other day, she featured this sesame nutty salad cream and I managed to find one without the nuts at Cold Storage Great World.
I tried it thinly spread on a slice of bread. It's really salty as it has salted egg york and tastes like Bromil/Mamite. Mom has used it on some apple chunks and veggies to make her version of Rojak.

I also bought some Japanese nuts (cheesy ones, sesame and brown sugar walnuts) a few weeks ago from Isetan Scotts supermarket and ate them with blueberries as a snack on Fri afternoon.

Yesterday, after our Japanese class, Flying Raisin and I headed for the Isetan Scotts supermarket to browse. I bought the cream sauce that FR has tried on her soba. The Urban writer has also recommended this miso paste with green chilli but it was sold out at the supermarket, so I bought the sesame miso paste that sounds good. There was also a demo/sampling counter of some Japanese soba but I was more interested in checking out some fish stock satchets stacked at the racks there. I got a small pack of 6 satchets (the less salty version) when I saw that the satchets looked like the ones my friend gave me.


Today, I used the fish stock to cook my udon soup with mushrooms, coriander, spring onions and pumpkin (that Mom steamed earlier and was quite soft).
The nice aroma of the fish stock (really not overly salty) and the veggies and the sweetness of the pumpkin made me drink up all the soup.

Sis also tried the sesame miso paste for her dry instant noodle and fried egg - she finds the taste on the sweet side but still nice.

I still miss baking but I find that it takes a long time in times of preparation and baking and the past few times, the stuff I baked just don't turn out right. I hope to find time again to bake cookies and cakes. I have some recipe that involves ground ginger and I still have chocolates waiting for me to use them for my baking :)