Hungry Reflection

I was all alone today at home and very much hungry, and as it usually is when I’m all by my lonesome, I also found myself on a pensieve mood. 

Hunger and reflection, quite an odd combination coming from opposite sides of man’s spectrum,  id est instinctive, which is a baser  function  and intellective, which is our highest faculty.  These made me realize some things about myself,  specifically regarding my aesthetics lately.

As of the late, I keep on finding myself being drawn to simple subjects that have something quirky about them.  Seemingly uncomplicated things that have an underlying oddity that only a somewhat “weirdo” (loosely used)  like me would see.  It’s like looking at the ordinary with extraordinary eyes.

 With this playing in my mind while raiding our ref, I decided to make myself something simple to eat, no fuss,  nothing too complicated, but something that  has an image of being special. 


A few slices here, a little searing there, some simple but nice plating,  and this is what I made:

Seared Tuna Sashimi with Wasabi and Soysauce, from leftover fresh frozen tuna last sunday

Grilled Unagi, from a long forgotten pack of frozen unagi at the back of our freezer from who knows when

And of course, a small bowl of rice, the stickier the better

In an ideal world, I would eat these everyday, well the unagi and the rice maybe but the tuna, I think alternating it with salmon would be much better.  :)

Oooh and I forgot....Uuni, add some uuni to the equation and that's heaven!

Apple Pistachio Buttercream Cupcake

I oftentimes get insipiration to cook or bake with ingredients I find just lying around our kitchen.  It's usually just a spur of the moment thing, no plans, no recipe, just experimenting with whatever ingredient there is on hand and whatever cooking technique I have retained in my head from my experiences.

What inspired me today was some granny smiths and some pistachios.  Since I have been on a baking spree the past few weeks, I decided to make some cupcakes.

I find it cute that my paring knife is color coordinated with the apples as well as the pistachios.


and the color of the day is apple green, literally



Pistachios roughly chopped

This is the jist of what I did:

I cooked the apples in unsalted butter, pureed the mixture in the food processor and let it cool down a few minutes.  I then creamed the sugar with the eggs and the vanilla extract, adding the apple mixture while mixing continuously then I added some cream and mixed some more.  I sifted some flour and some baking soda and slowly incorpated this dry mixture into the wet mixture until there were no more lumps.  I transfered the batter into cupcake pans and baked them in the oven at 350'F.  As for the baking time, I wasn't sure at first since this is an experiment, so what I did was checked it after 10 minutes and when I saw that only a small portion of the cupcakes' middle part was still wet, I turned the oven off and let it set in the oven 5 minutes more.  While waiting for the cupcakes to cool down, I made some simple vanilla butter cream and roughly chopped some pistachio nuts.  I then frosted the cooled down cupakes with the buttercream and sprinkled with the pistachio nuts on top.

And the finished product:

cute cuts

Mom and Dad got these from S&R today.  

One word:  Cute (it's funny using the word cute to describe sharp knives)

There's nothing like cutting a bloody piece of meat with a pink knife, and removing the guts of a fish using an apple green paring knife.   :)

Teehee!

mix and match

We had an interestingly weird dinner combination today.

I made some tuna sashimi, being still giddy from the cute set of knives bought by mom and dad from S&R earlier. 

dipped in some soysauce and wasabi

some take-out calzone from S&R

and finally, some kamto (beef ribs in a clear broth with raddish, onion and cilantro) left over from lunch

Japanese, Italian and Pinoy in one sitting.

Pretty odd combination but it worked for me.

I think I need to unbotton my pants now....burp....excuse me  :)