Cooking Successes and a Failure

After a fairly unsuccessful morning of study, I decided I might as well start working in the kitchen. Although it was a lot of work and quite tiring, I think that most of my attempts were successful.

For dinner tonight, I prepared chicken kebabs marinated with paprika and garlic, mushroom soup, cous cous, potato salad and my sister made a Greek salad too. We had the soup with really nice bread too. I love bread with fragrant sesame seeds. Seedy bread is the best.

I did the chicken kebabs with meat off drumsticks, which I like better than dry and roughly textured breast meat. Thigh is pretty good too; the grain is smoother and more tender. The mushroom soup was mostly using raw ingredients except the stock which was from cubes - I could have used proper chicken stock, but I decided to go with instant vegetable instead. I was making it from a recipe I found, which I ended up changing a bit to suit the ingredients I had. This is something I commonly do without too much catastrophe. The only times when ingredients' measurements are really important are in baking, I've found.

The potato salad I made myself - one of the first things I learnt to make and is pretty easy. The cous cous was instant, but it was really nicely flavoured and went well with the kebabs and Greek salad. My mum loves raw salads and Greek is my sister's favourite. We tried a sheep's milk fetta which was quite strong but pretty good.

I would have liked to have made more things from raw ingredients but it's pretty hard to cook lots of things, time the cooking times properly and prepare the right amounts. Today I managed to get everything on the table at once and at a particular time too, as my parents had to go out by a certain time in the evening for an event. But I think I may have overdone it, cos there was lots leftover - although there are seven of us at the moment, we don't eat that much - but not many kebabs left. Two kilos is about right for 7-8 people, I've found in the past, if they are of moderate appetites.

After dinner, I worked on a a couple of custard tarts and cream puffs. The tarts are still baking.

The cream puffs looked promising, but only one turned out as they should have. Sigh. I think it wasn't quite hot enough in the middle of the baking tray, and I possibly made them too large, which accounts for their not baking properly, but I'm quite disappointed. For a first attempt, it's probably not too bad, but I will try again some time and hopefully they'll turn out better then. This batch is edible, but more like cream flats >.< or cream caps (like mushroom caps).

All in all, an enjoyable day for me. My parents got me a cake (tiramisu) and a box of really nice chocolates from the local handmade chocolate store, which is quite famous in Sydney, Nina's. Mmm.

Here's some pictures of the really nice chocs and one of my custard tart. Didn't manage to snap any of the other things I made today.


What with cake, my desserts and chocolates, I could begin to get a bit tubby...if I was in the habit of eating lots of sweets, which thankfully I'm not. I don't even like sweet things that much, which makes me wonder why I like making desserts so much. Making food is just fun. Watching people enjoy eating them is even better. ^_^"