Friday 28 August 2015

cafe food at home

I am guilty again for the long absence. I have no new posts as I have not been baking that often. Instead of baking, I find myself getting more interested in cooking.


Unlike baking, I do not always follow recipes to the t when it comes to day-to-day cooking. I tend to replace or substitute ingredients freely and I could get away with eyeballing the amount of ingredients or seasonings I put in the dish. As such, I find it difficult to share cooking recipes especially when I am not a good cook to begin with.





While I may not be able to spell out the cooking instructions, I thought why not share some of the photos of the dishes I prepared. The quality of the images are not great since they are taken with my mobile phone under very poor lighting condition.



I used a free mobile app to jazz up the pictures and they don't look that bad, at least I am not shy to post them ;)



This is an easy meal I prepared for my husband when he was home for lunch...poached egg and mushrooms served on store bought focaccia. I learned this from a cooking show on tv. For the toppings, I stir fried some button mushrooms, oyster mushrooms and bunashimeji with some onions, garlics and seasoned it with salt and pepper. The salad dressing is a simple combo of 3 parts olive oil to 1 part lemon juice, nothing fancy.

The most tricky part of this meal is cooking the poached eggs. This is the first time I have ever poached an egg. The eggs were cooked using a straight forward method...just bring a saucepan of water to a simmer, then create a 'tornado' with a spoon in the water and put in the cracked egg. No salt or vinegar is needed. Although the eggs turned out looking quite ok, at least for a first timer, the water temperature was a bit too high, the water became so cloudy with egg whites floating all over, what a waste!



This is a visually appealing and delicious meal with a good mix of protein, fiber and carbs. Even though it is something so simple, I can't help but to feel proud of myself to be able to put together a cafe style meal like this at home. All I needed was a nice cup of coffee to end the meal.








6 comments:

Kimmy said...

Hi HHB, not to worry, your photos look good. Cooking is very versatile. You can mix and match ingredients and seasoning according to your own preference. It never goes wrong so long as you know what kind of food you want. Happy Cooking.

PH said...

I'll have to say that what you have prepared can rival any cafe food! Your plating is simple and yet so captivating. Yummy!

Happy Homebaker said...

Hi Kimmy, thanks so much for your kind and encouraging words :)

Happy Homebaker said...

Hi Phong Hong, you are very kind :) I am no good at food presentation, still trying to learn and improve ;)

MH said...

Wow! Very nice presentation! May I order one set from you? :)

Happy Homebaker said...

Hi MH, sure, you can have more than 1 set ;)