The Perfect Scotch Egg.

Scotch egg is a dish made from an egg that are covered with sausages meat and then breaded and deep fried. Scotch egg was originated from England in 1738 in the London department store called Fortnum & Manson. Scotch egg is usually eaten when British people go for a picnic, because it is very convenient.  Although it looks like a simple dish, but it needs a technique to make the sausages meat fully cooked but the yellow of the egg still runny. In this recipe, I will tell you how to make the perfect Scotch egg.

INGREDIENTS

• ·         10 medium chicken eggs
• ·         450g good-quality sausages, skins removed
• ·         ½ tea spoon smoked paprika
• ·         2 tea spoon corn flour
• ·         45g French’s mustard
• ·         Salt and black pepper
• ·         Plain flour
• ·         50g whole milk
• ·   125g breadcrumbs (If you use coarse breadcrumbs, blitz them in a food processor for approximately 5 seconds to create a coarse powder so the crumbs don’t absorb too much fat during frying.)
• ·         Groundnut oil, for deep-frying

METHOD

1.    Preheat the oven to 190ºC/gas mark 5. Put 8 of the eggs into a pan in which they fit in a single layer. Add enough cold water to cover the eggs by 3cm and cover with a lid then place the pan over a high heat.

2.    Once the water comes to a boil, remove the pan from the heat and allow it to stand for 3 minutes. In the meantime, fill a bowl with ice and cold water and after the 3 minutes, transfer the eggs to the iced water. Leave to cool for 10–15 minutes.

3.    Place the sausage meat in a food processor with the smoked paprika, corn flour, mustard, and a splash of cold water. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and blitz together. Divide into eight balls, approximately 55g per portion.

4.    Once the eggs are cool enough to handle, carefully peel off the shells using a teaspoon.

5.    Flatten each portion of sausage meat between two sheets of cling film into a circle, and then remove the top layer of Clingfilm. Place an egg in the center of each sausage meat circle. Wrap the sausage meat around the egg, by bringing all of the edges together and twist the top of the Clingfilm. Press the edges to seal but don’t press too hard. Place in the fridge for 20 minutes.

6.    In the meantime, put some plain flour into a small bowl and season it with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Beat the remaining eggs in a second small bowl and stir in the milk. Put the breadcrumbs into a third bowl. Roll each coated egg in the flour, gently tapping off any excess, and then dip it in the beaten egg. Finally, roll it in the breadcrumbs, making sure that all sides are coated. Place the eggs in the fridge for 15 minutes.

7.    Heat a deep fat fryer to 190ºC or place a deep saucepan of oil over a high heat until it reaches this temperature.

8.    Fry the Scotch eggs two at a time for 2 minutes until golden brown. Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and place on a cooling rack over a baking tray. When all the eggs have been fried, place the tray in the oven for an additional 10 minutes. Serve immediately while the yolks are still runny.

A taste in Paris

As I go to Bistrot Victoires, I found the menus that catch my eye immediately. In this very restaurant I ordered a three al a carte menu which is salade océane, entrecôte grille au thym brule de la garrigue frites ou couteau, and for dessert I took profiterole glace nougat sauce chocolat amandes grilles.

Salade Océane

                A direct translation of salade océane is ocean salad or salad of the ocean. Just like a normal salad, this salad has a base of vegetable, seafood condiments with a dressing. The way they plate is very natural they just stack all of the item. The vegetables that they used are julienne of carrots, chiffonnade of cabbage and shredded of crisp lettuce. For the seafood they use a 250 gram of steamed salmon and a mix of squids, mussels, and scallops braised in white wine. And to combine all of the item and bring out the taste, they use a emulsion of horseradish dressing. Compare to the portion they served, 8.50€ is a very low price.

Entrecôte Grille au Thym Brule de la Garrigue Frites ou Couteau

                Basically, this 11€ dish served an around 300gram of beef steak with frites. For this dish, I ordered a medium rare beef steak, and they served it perfectly. The steak was very tender with a thin crisp outer layer, and with a thym Brule or burned thyme, the aroma brings up the taste of the beef. Not only the beef that was lovely, when I try the frites, it was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside with a pinch of salt, even the frites was lovely. For me the score for this dish is definitely above 8/10.

Profiterole Glace Nougat, Sauce Chocolat Amandes Grilles

                For the dessert with only 5€, you can get this dish which are a choux pastry filled with nougat ice cream with chocolate sauce and roasted almond. It’s very hard to describe how good this dessert is. First, the choux pastry was still soft and chewy even though it has already been filled with ice cream and put in the freezer; second, the ice cream that they made was undoubtedly beautiful it was very soft and smooth with a just nice sugar level and chewable nougat inside. Third, the sauce is very rich and they didn’t stingy to give it, they just pour the rich sauce over the profiterole, and to topped it, roasted sliced almond give a nice crunchy taste to it. It was a beautiful ending.

Bistrot Victories

It was like a week ago when I was in a restaurant in Paris, France.  The nicest bistro restaurant hat I have ever been in to, with the perfect atmosphere and ambiance. And that restaurant is Bistrot Victories. When you first come to the restaurant before you were seated, I can assure you, you can already smell the Baggett fresh from the oven. with a friendly waiters and bartender, you will love to go here.

The restaurant is at 6 rue de la Vrilliere,  75001 Paris, France (Louvre / Place Vendôme. It is open everyday for lunch service at 12.00 PM to 04.00 PM and dinner service from 07.00PM to 11.00PM. This restaurant is very famous for both the French people and the tourist from other country. With a full occupancy in every service, if you do not want to wait to be seated, you have to go to this restaurant at 12.00 PM for lunch or 07.00 PM for dinner if not, I can assure you it will be fully packed with people and you have to wait to be seated, or you can just call the restaurant for reservation at (+04) 1 42 61 43 78.

            In this restaurant, I didn’t see any set menu, all they served was al a carte menu with a reasonable pricing compare to the bistro or café around Paris because of the big portion that they served. Their price range for every dish they served is around 15 to 20 euro. In this restaurant I have an ocenia salad, a seafood salad, grilled beef steak with frites, and profiteroles. For me, all the food that I taste in this restaurant is fabulous, the taste, the texture, all of it. Not only the food, are the wines that they served also very nice, with a price range of 17 euro only compared to other bistro or café that usually sell it for 21 euro.

Pasta, Pasta, and Pasta

                Pasta is the most known food or dishes in the world that represent Italian food, but, everyone only knows a little bit about pasta. Most of people worldwide only knew spaghetti, fettuccini, lasagna, macaroni, penne, or fusilli. The first reference of pasta dishes was found in Sicily, 1154, although truthfully pasta was already eaten by man in 1^st BC and it was called lagana. Lagana was a bit different compare to pasta, lagana was a fine sheet of dough that was deep fried not boil, and pasta was cooked by boiling it. Pasta was made from unleavened dough of wheat flour that was mix with water and oil. When making fresh egg pasta, use soft flour or all-purpose flour, rather than semolina flour that were used in factory-made pasta, to make it more tender pasta. Some pasta are better with thick sauce and some pasta are better if eaten as a soup, there are many different type of pasta that many people did not know about

1. Long Pasta

                Long pasta was usually made extrusion, which is the dough was pushed in to holes; long pasta can also be made by rolling and cutting. The dough for long pasta made from semolina flour not soft flour, combine with water and oil. In this category of pasta, there is spaghetti, long thin cylindrical pasta; spaghettoni, extra long and thick spaghetti; pelizzoni, thick spaghetti; spaghettini, thin spaghetti; fadelini, a very thin spaghetti; capelini, thinnest type of long pasta; bucatini, a thick spaghetti like pasta with hole running through the center; fusilli bucati, long coiled tubes that are hollow, and many more of pasta. Long pastas are best eaten with sauce or gravy, line, meat sauce, tomato sauce, clam sauce, and the other thick sauce.

2. Ribbon-cut Pasta

                Ribbon cut pasta can be made by hand or mechanically. Ribbon cut pasta was rolled and then cut, different from long pasta, ribbon cut pasta was usually flat shape and not round. Same with long pasta, ribbon cut pasta made from semolina flour, water, and oil, but some of the ribbon cut pasta was made from egg pasta dough.  In ribbon cut pasta category, there are fettuccine, flat long pasta with 6.5 millimeters wide; fettuce, wider version of fettuccine; tagliatelle, narrower than fettuccine; spaghetti alla chitarra, similar to spaghetti but, rather than round, the spaghetti was flatten; lasagna, very wide pasta that are often have fluted edges; lasagnette, narrower version of lasagna; lasagnotte, wider version of lasagna; linguine, flattened spaghetti; and many more. Similar to long pasta, ribbon cut pasta was usually eaten with very rich meat sauce or cream sauce.

3. Short-cut Pasta

                Short-cut pasta have many different shapes, some of the short-cut pasta are short round shapes with holes through in the middle like, macaroni, cannelloni, cavatappi, cellentani, ditalini, fideua, gomti, and many more, and some of short-cut pasta are corkscrew shapes like, fusilli, rotini, gemeli,marziani, and so on. For short cut pasta, they are usually made by extrusion and machine. The best dishes that use short-cut pasta usually are soup based dishes.

There are many different shapes of pasta that haven’t been talked here like minuet pasta or stuff pasta. When choosing pasta, we need pasta that are not smooth but have a rough surface. Also, when choosing pasta, not always the fresh one is the good one, we can also have the better one from the factory made, we just need to know the qualification like the surface of the pasta and the texture of the pasta. But what we want to talked here is how to have the best dishes with the right pasta to eat with like what pasta to eat with meat sauce or what pasta to eat with soup.

Left Over Food

Why everyone love chicken nugget? What is in chicken nugget that people love so much? Is it because of the taste and texture? I am the person who also loves to eat chicken nugget, and like anybody else, I love to eat chicken nugget because it is deep fried food. Who doesn’t like deep fried food? The crunchiness of the deep fried outer layer, the soft and chewiness on the inside, and topped with ketchup, chili sauce and mayonnaise in your mouth. Who can resist food like that?

But, I have seen how they made chicken nugget. Although it doesn’t practice in all industry, but some of them still do this kind of practices. In the industry, if they have a chicken, the edible parts that they can use are the chicken legs, and the chicken breast. So, where are the rest go? Will it be thrown away? The answer is no. if it is only one or two chicken then that is fine to throw away, but, in the big industry, they didn’t only use one or two chicken, they might use one thousand or ten thousand or even more. If they throw away the remaining part of the chicken it will be a big cost for them. So, they do brain storming on how to sell this remaining part of the chicken to the customers. Then, they come up with a brilliant idea to combine all of the remaining parts, like the bone, head, feet, connective tissue and skin, and blend them together finely. And now, they have a chicken paste, but because there still have some bone parts, connective tissue, they have to put it in the strainer to have the clean part of the chicken paste. Then, to make it taste nice and smells nice, they put in stabilizer to stabilize, flavoring, and mix it all up, and lastly they put bread crumb for the covering and deep fried it. And surprisingly, people from all over the world love it so much.

With ingredients like that, it is not surprising that if you eat a lot of chicken nugget you can get sick. Well, in short term you will feel not energetic, or even anemia. It is cause because, there is no important nutrition such as calcium, fiber, vitamins, antioxidants, and healthy fats in chicken nugget, and it is high in calorie. And the worst thing that can happen is it can increase someone blood pressure and cause heart attack.

Some of us didn’t know this truth about chicken nugget, and some of us did. Which bring me to my first question, why everyone love chicken nugget? Now, If you already know this facts, will you still eat chicken nugget?

Grany's Nasi Uduk

One of the best foods from Indonesia is Nasi Uduk. Nasi uduk is a food made from rice that is prepared similar like nasi lemak. It is cooked by heating coconut milk in a pan with lemon grass, pandan leaf, and bay leaf then, we use the mixture to cook the rice. Nasi uduk is usually eaten with spices fried chicken, omelet egg, caramelized tempe and chips, and last but not least the nasi uduk’s sambal.

For me, the best nasi uduk that I have ever eaten in my life is my grandmother’s nasi uduk. Once in every two weeks on the Friday, my grandmother always cooks nasi uduk for lunch. It was in my fourth grade when I was starting to help my grandmother. First thing in the morning, we will go to a market located near my house. In the market, we will buy chicken, coconut, peanuts, and some herbs and spices. Then we will go home to do the cooking. As a child, I cannot cook anything; I cannot touch the tools because it was hot, so when my grandmother cooks the nasi uduk and spices fried chicken, I will be in charge of making the sambal. The sambal for nasi uduk is a little different from the normal fried chicken sambal, because, it uses crushed peanuts to give the texture. The best part of making the sambal is when my grandmother is done frying the peanuts and I started to crush it. The peanuts were crushed by a peanuts grinder. For me as a child, it was the happiest things to do. It was like playing a game for me. Everyday I always wait for the next friday that my grandmother will cook nasi uduk again.

And that is the first time I tried to make some food, although it was just a sambal. But, I still can remembered how happy I was when I to go to market, looking at raw ingredients there, and the filling when I grinded the peanuts

Hi.... this is my new blog.. i will be posting my experience in the restaurant, the food that i ate, and the food that i personally make.