Experimental cooking

I don't usually cook as I live with my in-laws and most of the time my mum-in-law will be the one getting busy in the kitchen. I'm very particular when I cook and I don't like to share the kitchen (haha this is one area I'm very selfish in!) so I always regard myself as a pathetic woman with no kitchen because I don't want to "stick one leg" into my mum-in-law's kitchen. However, I still wish to cook sometimes and occasionally when my in-laws are not in, I may cook. This is also the reason why, although I would love to try to make bentos, I haven't been making much.

I was surfing around on bento ideas and saw this blog on 30 blogs with bento box lunch ideas, so just to share! :D And do you know of the obento app? It's a very cute app! Although it does nothing besides showing cute illustrations of bento boxes, it still fascinates me lots!

In my previous bento entry, the egg was too small for the heart-shaped egg mold. Ming, author of bentomonsters, suggested checking the blog bentowithlove for tutorials on making bread balls with the mold, and so I did and I tried =)

I've always been wanting to make tamagoyaki on my own, so I checked out various recipes online and also viewed videos on Youtube too. Here is one video on making tamagoyaki for bento box. The three girls in this video are really cute!

And yes, I attempted to make tamagoyaki on my own. This was my first attempt with two eggs.

I tried to make this in the afternoon when baby was asleep and I could spare some time. I wasn't hungry so I left the tamagoyaki for later. The egg was not fully cooked and it's a bit runny inside, so I cooked them a bit more when I was hungry and served the hot cooked egg (no longer tamagoyaki XD) on toasted bread with cheese, cucumber and cherry tomatoes. =)

And this was my second attempt. I used one egg here.

This time round, I tried to make the layers thinner by cooking a bit at a time, but I guess the pan was too hot and the thin layer of egg get cooked very easily, so it was rather dry. Oh, I didn't use oil at all for both instances.

Earlier today, I made dinner for myself. If you've been following my previous entries, you'd realized that I've used beancurd, mushrooms, lettuce, cucumber, eggs and cherry tomatoes as these were the ingredients that I've bought last week when my in-laws were not home for a few days. I've finished the slices of cucumber and today I thought maybe I should use up the beancurd too. I was thinking to make beancurd steak for dinner and googled "tofu steak recipe".

Found these two interesting food and recipe blogs, which I promptly added to my blogroll. =)

Baked tofu steak recipe on veggie belly | tofu steak recipe on la fuji mama

I used the idea of mushroom gravy in veggie belly's recipe, and fry my beancurd in sesame oil until golden brown like la fuji mama's recipe. But I did not fry with flour as I don't know where mum-in-law keeps her flour, or whether there's any flour at all.

And turn over the other side...

Nicely done! Yum yum~

While doing the mushroom gravy, baby woke up and started crying, so I had to stop and pacify baby. In the end I changed baby's nappy, carried baby around the house, latched her and then she went to rest again. And I went back to cooking my scrambled egg.

Yes, I made use of whatever ingredients I have. The sliced mushrooms were sautéed in mushroom concentrate, ginger wine (gift from my sis-in-law when I delivered baby) and added some water with cornstarch to make the simple gravy. Then an egg scrambled with 3 cherry tomatoes, sliced. And of course lots of fresh lettuce to balance the protein.

And this was my dinner ^^

I sprinkled some chilli flakes on the beancurd steaks, and italian herbs mix on the scrambled egg. Here's a close up view of the tomato scrambled egg.

It was surprisingly a very good dinner for me. *satisfied*