spinach and bacon salad

this was the first salad I'd ever made in my life and I liked it a lot. spinach is my favourite leaf vegetable and of course anything with bacon in it can't be bad! served up with a piece of toasted turkish bread, it was quite filling.

Spinach and bacon dinner salad (adapted from martha stewart's recipe]
(some quantities are not stated because it's all up to your own common sense) hehe..

washed baby spinach leaves
1/2 sliced red onion
2 hard boiled eggs, sliced into wedges
4 rashers bacon, cooked and shredded
a bit of fetta cheese, cubed
balsamic vinaigrette (2 tbsp olive oil + 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar +salt/pepper shook up in a jar till it emulsifies)

mix everything up and serve with toasted crusty bread

pandan chiffon cake

tonight we used the turbo broiler to make this pandan chiffon cake using a recipe i got on the internet. it turned out better than i expected, though I thought it wasn't sweet enough. Gav liked it this way, his sweetness tolerance is quite low. I didn't butter the sides of the pan enough so the edges stuck.
this is a rather simplified westernized recipe in that it doesn't call for coconut milk or fresh pandan leaves so I reckon it isnt the best recipe around but for someone who's stuck in Australia with no easy access to asian ingredients, it works well enough. it turned out nice and soft but flavour wise ... not so good. the next time I use this recipe I'd up the sugar and pandan paste. Or better still use fresh pandan leaves and grind it up into a paste like Poh did on masterchef...

bakuteh

for some reason i've managed to avoid cooking at all this whole week, letting gavin do it instead! here he is with a fellow male chef doing the prep work for our bakuteh [bottom- a herbal pork bone soup] while i lazed around and made comments .the cut chillis in soy sauce and chopped garlic in soy sauce are essential. the garlic bread... wasn't really part of the meal but leftover from lunch.