Dinners at home
15/01/2008. Panfried pork chops with Lee Kum Kee oriental sauce for pork chop, served with green beans stir fried with oyster sauce, onions and garlic. The pork chops were lean but juicy and cooked by Jac to tender perfection. The oriental sauce was great – sweet and syrupy and finger-sucking good, it would’ve been fantastic on pork ribs.
16/01/2008. Jac rubbed chicken thighs with barbecue spice, then grilled them. She served the chicken with fresh salad. The barbecue spice gave the chicken a delicious charry flavour, without the need for a chargrill or barbecue.
17/01/2008. Jac grabbed us some takeaway sushi from the Japanese stall at the International Eating House food hall in East Victoria Park. Top row: raw salmon, grilled eel. Bottom row: vegetarian (carrot, avocado, cucumber), cooked tuna, fish roe, omelette, prawn.
I think Jac wanted to make sure we had enough to eat, and she also got a pack with California roll, vegetarian and cooked tuna sushi (more Japanese cooked tuna for me! I was in heaven!)
And I think, mainly for me, she also got us a pack of teriyaki chicken sushi. She knows so well my great capacity and appetite for chicken!
These fish-shaped soy sauce bottles are much more convenient than the usual tear-open green and silver foil sachets of soy sauce you get with takeaway sushi. I love how you can drip just a little soy sauce over your sushi, or squeeze and let the sauce flow freely. And it’s great to be able to screw the lid shut and save any leftover soy sauce for later without fear of spillage.
Jac also got us a garden salad from the same place. This salad wasn’t as takeaway-friendly as the sushi. The dressing leaked in transit, and the lettuce at the bottom which had been sitting in the pool of dressing had become waterlogged and mushy. Not the salad’s fault – it would’ve been fine if we’d dined at the food hall.
18/01/2008. Jac made a tomato sauce-based chicken casserole with onions, peas and carrots. She served it with mashed potato, which was just perfect for soaking up the rich tomato gravy. Notice though, how she served the casserole next to the mash – she knows that I like to control my gravy distribution mouthful by mouthful. Yes, this desire to control distribution is related to my preference for the fish-shaped bottle over the sachet for facilitating control over my soy sauce distribution, as described above. :)
19/01/2008. The next evening, I ate leftovers – more chicken casserole and mashed potato – with coleslaw, which Jac made, since we happened to have half a cabbage and some carrots in the vegetable compartment of our fridge which needed to be used up. Jac however, decided to grill the ham steaks we had sitting in the freezer for her dinner. She served them on garlic toast (she made me slice of garlic toast too!), with coleslaw, fresh lettuce and tomato. I thought her dinner looked pretty tasty!
20/01/2008. Jac rubbed snapper fillets with lemon pepper and cooked them under the grill. To go with the fish, she made three vegetable side dishes: (1) orange mash – boiled sweet potatoes and carrots, seasoned and mashed together with a little butter, (2) steamed cabbage with snowpeas and sliced fresh mushrooms, and (3) butter corn – we ate this at a Japanese restaurant once, I fell hopelessly in love with it and Jac’s been making it for me ever since. Corn kernels (canned is fine) are drained and zapped in the microwave with a little butter, then tossed with a little soy sauce to taste (not so much soy that the corn turns brown). If you love corn, you should give butter corn a go – it’s so easy and so tasty!
22/01/2008. Jac cooked up a pot of bolognese sauce. She made it just how I used to when I lived on my own – I’ve told her about my very simple version of bolognese – with beef mince, onions, garlic and champignons and only a touch of dried oregano. To season the mince I like to use black pepper and soy sauce. My mum does the same, I think! My favourite stringy pasta is linguini, and that’s what Jac served the bolognese with. It was great!
She also assembled a salad to make sure I did eat some vegetables. We shared the salad between us. It went very well with the rich bolognese sauce.
