Polento Wheat Cookie recipe

Another first time to wrap the end of the year. Baking cookies, never done it myself before. ChatGPT baking, here goes. For the sake of clearing up what ingredients i have on hand.  Going with no baking soda type recipe.

Ingredients dry mix:

- 1 cup polenta, add generous amount of sesame seeds

- 1 cup wheat flour , add mixed mueslie wheat and dried raisins 

                                         

Ingredients wet:

- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened in microwave oven

- 1/2 cup granulated sugar

- 1 large egg

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract replaced with cocoa + Jacob coffee mix 

- Pinch of salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. use ikea ceramic plate for placing mixed dough .

2. In a bowl, cream together the softened butter and sugar until smooth.

3. Add the egg and vanilla extract, mixing well.

4. In a separate bowl, combine the polenta, wheat flour, and a pinch of salt.

5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing until a dough forms.

6. Gently fold in the soda water until well combined.

7. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto the prepared baking plate sheet, spacing them apart.

8. Flatten each cookie slightly with the back of a spoon or your fingers. Yes finger pressed cookies, uneven shaped original.

9. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. 18 min works great. First prototype batch too thick cookie, its better to have flatter dough to get crispy cookies.

10. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Mixed Chilli Oil - my recipe

Due to the problems at work, i need to start clearing my stocks and ingredients. Suddenly saw my bag of dried mala chilli. Here goes, chilli oil experiement or what i called now the chatGPT/Internet/IG cooking.

                            

Remove the top of chilli , remove seeds. Crush the chilli to finer pieces (no processor or blender) so its all hand work. Heat an almost one small bottle of oil (target storage). Fry the chilli on low heat.

Chop and mince up some garlic 4-5 cloves, only had  yellow onion , so 1 slice and diced it goes. In it goes.

Had some cumin leftover, in it goes. 

Add some paprika powder, add some sugar and salt.

Toss in generous amount of sesame seed. I got half a bag from prometer just not long ago =.=

Turn to high heat, fry till brown and fragnant. 

Turn low or off the heat. Add some soy sauce to the mix.

Let cool. There the chilli oil ,which turns out pretty good. Will try this out with peanut butter for the noodle flavor bomb recipe.

Braised pork belly

This is part 2 of my remaining half of pork belly. It goes to the original braised pork belly or black soy pork (oh tau yew bak) plan. My intention is to make it really soft by braising , trying to achieve the taiwanese ru rou style aka melt in mouth.

INGREDIENTS  

For the saute on pan cooking part:

1 slab pork belly About 2 pounds -  using what's left from roasting

2 tablespoons soy sauce  - reuse the soy liquid from mayak egg marinate lots of them to create liquid

5 slices fresh ginger powder , dash of it about 1.5 tablesppon

3 stalks green onion Cut into 1 inch pieces replace with diced white onion, red onion, garlic, half tomato i got lying around and mixed meat powder

4 tablespoons chinese cooking wine You can use your favourite white wine instead - swapped to my cheap 2L Belo Vino 

2 pieces star anise Broken up - skip since i dont have

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon Optional -add a dash of it

For the dark soy sauce part, heat separately in pot.

2 tablespoons dark soy sauce

2 tablespoons brown sugar - used sugar

INSTRUCTIONS

 

Cut the pork belly up into 2 centimetre thick chunks.  This is the traditional Chinese way of serving it.  Place meat directly on pan to fry no need oil lots of it will be extracted from the meat. After browning the meat in a separate pan saute the onion, fragrances along with the other seasoning ingredients and  the soy sauce mix cook for 15 minutes.

Add the browned meats, to saute pan and finally transfer to the pot with dark soy sauce and the brown sugar. Bring to a boil and then turn it down to a slow simmer. Cook until the liquid condenses into a thick gravy i just leave it up to 2 hours. It turned out similar like those ru rou pot broken down meat.

That's it, ready to serve! Result is pretty satisfying even though lacking the rare 5 spice powder in burek/balkan land.

Roast Pork Belly Recipe

There is first for many in cooking aspect this year. Pork belly sells on cheap today about 5xx dinar (RM25) for 1kg. First thought was going for braised pork , then i saw it had the bony parts as well. So here goes partial of the purchase to roasting pioneering trip -- in the oven it goes. 

As usual google around and quick search in IG for reference.

INGREDIENTS

Little bit drop oil - rub on skin side

Sprinkle generous amount salt on skin

Marinate mix for meat - missing many items like 5 spice powder, star anise for more traditional chinese style , so jebiga screw it just go basic.

Pork belly 0.5kg i think

Some recipe calls for blanching the pork first. I skipped it, just go straight patting the pork dry with paper towels. Slicing the skin provide more area to crunch the skin i think, didn't do it though since my meat is already cut up already.

Place it on the wire rack. Rub the meat spice mixture on bottom side. Just few drop oil rub on skin, then spinkle generous amuont of salt on skin. Had to tie up the meat slabs since its already sliced thin when bought.

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C. First go for about 30 minutes. Lots of oil/lard dripping for pork belly. Next roast at 15 minutes interval, keep watching the skin. 2 rounds and its ready, total of 1 hours roasting at 200C.

Remove the roast from the oven. Chop up and serve with whatever you like this crunchy goodness.

Homemade flat bread recipe

 Flat bread recipe is simple ; only few 3-4 ingredients.

wheat flour  - got 1 pack 1kg for less than 60 rsd. (RM2+). use 1 cup to get 4 balls.

water - add little by little to get the right consistency

salt-  just a little pinch

oil  - few drop after kneading few minutes

add some sesame oil - press it into the dough right before going into pan.

Shape into golf ball shape. don't have a rolling pin , so this becomes like a palm and press flat bread. Oil pan, heat up a bit first then sort of cook in little oil & heat it into flat bread. In the pan i drizzle some sugar well, i suppose to give it a little sugary glaze on surface. 

Looks a little pita-ish and can leave it on pan to brown abit. Probably can use as wrap, taste wise its a bit harder like wrap than the looks of roti canai.

DIY Goulash vegetarian

 Bought a goulash mix , its a powder packet. Custom adjust it since i don't cook beef, i turn it vegetarian.

Goulash Ingredients:

Yellow Onion – used both yellow and red

Green Bell Pepper – you can use other colors of peppers if desired (used frozen mixed)

Ground Beef (omitted) , i fried minced pork mixed separately to eat together.

Garlic - minced garlic

Tomato Sauce - replaced with a dash of ketchuo

Diced Tomatoes – 

Beef Broth - replaced with chicken stock

Worcestershire Sauce - dont have, changed to vegetarian stock mix

Seasoned Salt  - used normal salt

Italian Seasoning - omitted

Bay Leaves

Dry Macaroni Noodles – used chinese ramen noodle

Cheddar Cheese - omitted. ate with cheese bread stick, super nice combo with cheese.

Paprika powder-  2 tablesopon ,season with salt and sugar.

Red and yellow chilli 3/4 each.

Root vege - carrot, potatoes

Start by  browning protein (i fry it separetly) , brown the onion and bell pepper, toss in garlic until fragrant.

Pour in tomato sauce and diced tomatoes along with mix, broth and Worcestershire stock/paprika for some added depth of flavor. add some bay leaves. remove leaves after cooking

Add in the seasonings , blanch noodles separately and serve with sauce..

Anime DEC-JAN

The legendary hero is dead! Total ep12. Something abit different, comedic in a nice way. Legendary hero dies on episode one, and what continues on with protagonist filling up the heroes' role. .

Hell's paradise 13 ep - story of an assasin that received a mission to find the Elixir of Life. It's pretty interesting and decent art, expect S2 to come since the last episode ends with the shogunate sending more reinforcement to Paradise.

Dungeon of black company ep 12 - comedy type and sort of different genre of current trends. NEET protagonist got transported into a fantasy world and struggled being Corporate Grunt. It is light and funny storyline till the end. Sort of nice from the current isekai trends. 

Dead Mount Death Play ep13 - this is probably season one about Corpse God that got reincarnated as Polka as he got assasinated. The art, story and how the anime are potrayed together are pretty and nice. Kept things interesting throughout the whole series. This is pretty rare, tbh most anime have some moments where story spent so long for developing some storyline/character and drags on abit about it. 

Ya Boy Kong Ming ep13 - is a pretty solid and good anime about a songtress trying to make it big. The story line, vibe and art all have style and depth. Didn't know anime about song will have decent story and also song. Probably will save the OSTs for in personal librbary for listening. It's interesting that recent anime all revolves around travel forward or back in time. 

Immoral guild ep12 - this is definitely an ecchi anime NSFW despite it being a Square Enix production which got me started. Aside from softcore ecchi scenes and if the classic hentai tentacle shit don't disgust you, the series are pretty comedic and not boring. But all the scenes lead to ecchiness and lewd side ,so this really depends on what is your tolerance level to go on till the end, again its a quite decent less serious storylining aside of nonsense scenes that always leads to its original intended ecchiness direction but at alot of times strangely humorous. 

Mashle: Magic and Muscles ep 12 - the other popular genre at the moment. Overly powered MC with unique quirks you can say. It's interesting, funny and S2 is coming soon in 2024 Jan. Pretty worth watching since its don't have much cringe scenes and probably you can't stop from episode one till the end.

These marathon episodes probably will end for current journey. Had problem with work visa that HR and everyone ignored months ago and now it finally surfaced. Created sort of a situation of being deported by mid Jan. Not unexpected but came earlier than what i hoped for, well it is what it is.

Drama DEC-JAN

 Bloodhound - netflix series 8 ep. Pretty good story , lots of voilence and fighting so it depends on your preference liking, full of actions. Just a little strange certain parts of steory dont really connect well , for example the side female character just go missing after being in the centerlight for half the series or more. Still pretty good series about modern day loan shark and underworld at modern Korean setting.

Sweet home S2 released in Dec 23, total 8 ep. The story deviates from manga now if im not mistaken. At one point of S1 it starts deviating when outsiders truck invaded the camp. The story is different now. But S2 is like story of camp #2.. S3 maybe story of MH-1 or camp #1  ? haha.

Yuu yuu Hakusho  - releasing in mid Dec. One of my childhood favourite, not sure how good adaptation they will do. Read that it will cover 2 arc up to dark tournament which is alot to cover in just few netflix episodes. We'll see how well it goes. Update: not a bad adaptation albeit a little too short, been 15 years + since i read/watched the mange or anime. It's basically snapshots of some scenes along the long arcs till Dark tournament arc to piece them up for the story to make sense and changing parts here and there to make it shorter and compressed into 5x 45-50min espisodes. To be frank Kurama and Hiei looks hideous compared to original art, Kuwabara got the character right but probably hard to find a fit for kuwabara/sakuragi style character in real life and probably a challenge i suppose to get Hiei right. Karasu surprisingly hits the spot.   

Lost you Forever 2023  - total 39 ep. It spends almost first 1-10 ep talking about how it started and how lead actress is living. in Middle she starts meeting the main players of the drama. Not boring,but feels like the drama is abit dragged . The last 2-3 episodes seems like its wrapped up abruptly , feel like a very jerky ending. But the subtitle says S1, so probably there is S2 in plan already from beginning.

You raise me up 2021 - total 8 ep. K drama about a strange theme erectile dysfunction. Have to say the plot and production is decent, while its good keep it short and sweet. It focuses alot on romance , and spent most of time developing character which is less seen as most of time k drama tend to over exaggerate or dramatize, it still a romance themed drama though and what seems like it will be very comedic and ecchi didnt happen. Still for some parts such as first 5-10 min of ep 1. Its really strange that main male lead spends 95% of the time doing part and worrying about other shits , spending parent's money to rent an apartment in Seoul. Still it had some touch of realistic feel as long as you dont get too serious about where the plot heads to most of time. One of those good guy finish last romance kdrama.

Hellbound 2021 - total 6 ep. Story about divine or hell retribution in Korean setting, featuring mainly 3 gorilla/apeman avatar and a head apparition thats like Power Ranger Zordon's long lost brother who looks cooler than him , thats all about it. To be honest its a big waste of time, probably can put this production crammed up all into one movie instead. Halfway in, but still couldn't really put my fingers on what's really the main plot is about yet. There is alot to gripe about the series. At last episode now and everythings still feels like its going downhill from 1st 10 min of episode one. Sadly this one is not deserving of a Netflix production with such poor beat around the bush and story puzzle pieces that dont really piece together the story line puzzle and sort of like piece of gibberish here and there that don't connect and relate much to each other. The mystery is not well explained or revealed instead focuing on human capitalizing on the strange event happening. Deacon Yuji build up a good bad guy vibe only to be taken away by police for battery assault, what the heck at least give him an immdediate decree as retribution man. Whatever happened to the detective that they sort of focused on earlier. And worst of all is the ending, sort of like The Mummy returns that left viewer puzzled on top of the already 5 + episodes of puzzlements and so many strings left loose like the Chairman guy's ending, what happens later to the miracle baby, what happen to New Truth, the public's reaction etc..  No wonder i was snoozing off at episode 2, which doesn't happen so far on any binge i have recently.

Weak Hero - total 8 ep. Is based on Korean webtoon, revolving about 3 friends in school and with setting of high school bullies as the main storyline. Expect some violence , not that gory but some tense scenes where you will think what will happen to this or that guy in the pinch. Other than that would rate this about so-so , not dull but not very exciting story. The lack of emotion of lead male most of time, i'm not sure is it intentional or according to the webtoon character. The first bad guy was okay building quite good, but later on most of them are pretty much meh.

Strong girl Nam Soon - total 16 ep. K-drama about a family with hereditary superwoman power. Aside from this, the story is pretty decent and something that is out of K-drama stereotypical drama. The appeal point of this is it involves some romance and straight up drama about the drug trafficking and mafia storyline. Pretty recommended for watch. Lead actress is your typical korean lady beauty and the excellent protrayal of her mother adds up to the appeal of the series.