Exotic Indian-spice Macaroons with Salty Fillings

My another to-die-for signature dish!
My intention was to make macaroons in salty flavor instead of sweet, and to use brightly yellowish turmeric as natural coloring at the same time matching the taste of the filling.
And this failing batch of macaroons turn out to be very crunchy (in a high-class manner!) instead of airy like traditional. The turmeric gives such exotic sense of Indian-spice feeling to these crunchily sweet almond biscuits, and the whole thing is such a perfect companion with the tenderly salty salmon pâté!
A bite to heaven, exotically, sweetly salty, I feel like a royal. With the F. Mariage tea I now know the trick to bring out its special qualities, I'm eating better than Q. Elizabeth in the palace. Envy me.

Panna Cotta

Last time when I made portuguese egg tart, I have a leftover box of cream in fridge. So with vanilla seeds straight from vanilla pod, some milk, sugar and gelatin sheets, I have made these Panna Cotta as the dessert on a Sunday night!

椒鹽蝦碌

Can't help but sharing the pics if my homemade prawn dish last night! So crunchy and delicious! Even the shells can be eaten, good source of calcium, too!

Only made with the Vietnam frozen tiger prawns from supermarket! Try!

魚到爆！魚頭豆腐湯及煎封魚腩

It's how the story started. I have a left over piece of tofu and thinking what to do with it while wandering in the city. I ran into a traditional market as I decided to buy big fish head for this milky color fish head tofu soup! I bought some fish belly for frying in the same stall, too. Why not? I'm getting myself a nutritious fish lunch for today.

The challenge is not the cooking, but buying bloody fresh fish in the wet market. The plastic bags are still stained with blood no matter how may bags the stall owner tries to give you. And the change he handed to you is with a big fish scale on it, and its soaky wet with the fish blood and sea water... I spend the soaky money immediately for the mushrooms and green onions... And it's also about washing and cutting the slippery fish up. It's not that enjoyable so I'm gonna cut it short.

The dish comes up great and that's every housewife survived the market scene I suppose! And I definitely treated the fish soup like a hotpot that I add in mushrooms, three kinds of fishballs (white fishball, fresh fishball, and deep fried fresh fishball), and even sesame sweet dumplings (芝麻湯丸)! The flavor is so intense, color is so beautiful, and the savory sweet sesame dumpling is the highlight to my fish soup and fish meal as a whole today!

You know, whatever works!

綠咖哩馬介休電話線意粉

The word "fusion" doesn't get to my head, but I'd like to say it's Portuguese macalhau crossover Thai curry crossover Italian telephone line spaghetti!

It's just a harmonious threesome who marry each other! XD

Spaghetti goes well with any Thai curry, like tong yum gong, and I find my kitchen a funnier place when i grapped some spaghetti of interesting shapes to be live in my cupboard! These telephone lines from old fashioned LAN line phones really made me laugh! And I love it!

Come on, whatever works!

葡撻

Since last time making milk tarts, I find myself quite enjoy rolling and pressing the soft dough filled with scattered butter! So this week I take out the thick book of Julia Child - Mastering The Art of French Cooking, to challenge myself making puff pastry!

I was thinking to bake egg tarts Hong Kong style or Portuguese tarts, but my friends insisted on the later, so u can see the pics.

It is not the egg filling that's tricky, but always the pastry! People who don't stay in kitchen for long won't understand the effort behind the small tart that they just bite and swallow. It took me 4 hours to make the puff pastry so that it has many many layers, crispy and tastes so buttery. So don't complain on my time management please.

Packed the pretty tarts in individual bags and I learned that not only all friends preferred portuguese egg tarts than Hong Kong style, they also find tarts with more burn marks on the egg filling are more drooling!

沙嗲雞串

Getting bored of cooking ordinary stuff last week, until I find this convenient pack product from Thailand to erase my dullness!

Then, I started to get new ideas in my head and find challenging myself in the kitchen so enjoyable!

More homemade food coming up!

馬介休球

This is the snack I made for myself while my puff pastry just rolled out now in the fridge for rest! The portuguese macalhau potato cake is well-loved by everybody so pricing a fortune when u order in restaurants and getting 5 or 6 of them only.

For tonight, I think I can have 30 or 40 of them with the cost of one order.

羊捲肉

這隻牌子的羊肉很具肉味同時帶著羊肉的可口羶味，連我也可以接受。它將長肉捲成圓形成扒狀，只灑鹽及香草煎香便成，美味又容易！亦可加牛油及芥辣，香氣一流！

冬菇雞有味飯 / 薑汁炒豆苗

近來很愛以電飯煲煮有味飯這玩意，最愛它省時省力又香噴噴，飯煮熟後最後翻動使每粒飯都沾上肉汁最使我興奮！

除了雞飯，還可以做菜飯及田雞飯！

士多啤梨骨 / 白烚椰菜紅蘿蔔

士多啤梨骨我用了新鮮士多啤梨、新鮮士多啤梨醬及士多啤梨酵素去做，整碟餸都彌漫著清新的士多啤梨香！

Tarts!

中式魚皮角配日式麵豉湯

紅酒煏牛尾

不要正宗 (意大利黃椒煮雞翼)

I could understand that some people worship cuisine authenticity, but when a dish being authentic means the recipe remains in its certain age of time without any attempt to let improvements available to take place, I doubt the value of the glorious term "authentic".

As cooking makes us human, the extended meaning is more than letting the meat meets fire to kill germs to benefit our survival. It means we take steps forward in arranging ingredients and designing cooking methods as science provides us with nutrition knowledge day by day, so that we human beings are stronger among spices. We are healthier, we live longer, we are more intelligent.

That's why I'm thinking we should reconsider the value of cuisine authenticity. It should go beyond the pleasure of our taste buds, but to go on a higher level in making us feel well, more energetic, and improve our body in the long run. If our food is to sacracfice us, deteriorate our life, mind and will, our wisdom as human being is just non-sense.

So we should unchain ourselves from going absolutely authentic in gourmet we eat and cook, and on the other hand allowing creativity in recipes however make sense!

Like I always bear in mind, cooking has no rigid rules, and we can always use one film title of Woody Allen in the kitchen - "Whatever Works."