Nunu's Kitchen - Lemon Garlic Calamari pasta.

Food I make!


Blah, blah, blah. We had a bag of frozen calamari tubes in the fridge. Blah.

Lemon Garlic Calamari pasta.


You will need:

• Fresh or frozen calamari tubes - cut into 1cm thick rings
• 1 finger sized stick of butter - melted
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 1/2 tbsp minced garlic
• Dash of white wine
• 1 tbsp dry mixed Italian herbs
• salt
• pepper
• 6-7 smallish Crimini mushrooms - sliced
• 2 - 3 tbsp all purpose flour
• Approx 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• Pasta of your choice - cooked and drained. I used brie and prosciutto ravioli, and it was a tad too much for a cream style sauce. Linguini or Angel hair would work well!

La Methode:

• Mix together the melted butter, garlic, herbs and salt and pepper to taste. Use less salt because the calamari is naturally salty.

• Wash the calamari rings and drain well.
• Allow the calamari rings to marinate in the butter mix for 20-30 minutes.

• Heat up a grill pan, and grill the calamari rings until they're cooked, have light grill marks but still tender.

• Remove cooked calamari to separate bowl and give them a good squeeze of lemon juice.
• Deglaze the pan used to grill the calamari with the white wine, and reserve these juices for making the sauce later.
• Saute the mushrooms in some butter, reserve the cooking juices.

• Make a roux sauce (explained here ) using the flour, the Parmesan and the juices leftover from cooking the calamari and the mushrooms, as well as any leftover butter marinade.

• Add the calamari and mushrooms to the roux sauce. If needed add salt and pepper to taste.
• Mix the drained pasta to the roux sauce. 

• Eat.

Nunu's Kitchen - Pho tai

Food I make


If you follow me on Twitter, you'll see that I'm quite a big fan of Pho, or Vietnamese beef noodle soup. There's just something about the bowl of MSG laden soup, the thin rare sliced beef, the chewy rice noodles, and all those extra garnishes that makes Pho the perfect cold weather meal.
I made this against the Pooker's wishes, he said it was way too much trouble for something that can be bought anywhere for $7 a bowl. I like a challenge so I tapped into my Vietnamese side. By the way, make this only if you have an entire day to spare. Pho broth needs at least 3 hours to simmer.

Phở tái

You will need:

• Vietnamese rice noodles a.k.a. bánh phở
• 1 large yellow onion - halved
• Ginger - an approx 3" by 2" piece - halved
• 2lbs beef knuckle bone with marrow - you might need to ask your butcher for this as it's not the normal fare.
• 2lbs beef chuck bone in - cubed
• 5 whole cloves - lightly toasted in a dry pan
• 5 star anise - lightly toasted in a dry pan
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp salt
• 1/2lb sirloin steak - ask your butcher to use the slicer on number 10, you'll get approx 2-3mm thick slices.
• Garnishes - Thai basil, chopped green onion, chopped coriander, bean spouts, chopped green chillies, and lime wedges.

La Methode:

• Turn oven on to 450 degrees.
• Place the beef bone and chuck into a pot with enough water to cover, bring to a boil, and let boil for approx 5 minutes. Throw out this parboil water. Rinse the bone and meat under running water if needed, you want to remove any impurities which might cloud the broth.

• Fill a large stock pot with 3.5l water, and bring to a boil. Once it boils, place the beef bone and chuck inside, once this returns to a boil, turn down the heat to a simmer.
• Put the ginger and onion onto a baking tray and char them in the oven until skin blackens slightly.
• Remove the ginger and onion, rub away the blackened skin, slightly bruise the ginger with the back of a knife and drop them into the broth.
• Add fish sauce, salt, and sugar.
• When the broth has simmered for approx 1 1/2hrs, add the star anise and cloves.
• Simmer for a total of 3 hours, if possible, leave to sit over night. It should look like this:

• To serve, soak the noodles in cold water for approx 10 mins, bring a pot of water to high boil, switch off the heat and drop in the pre-soaked noodles, cover pot with lid.
• Test the noodles after approx 3-4 mins, they should still be slightly chewy, drain noodles and distribute them into warm bowls, layer rare sliced beef on top of noodles, sprinkle with chopped green onion and coriander.
• Ladle enough beef broth into the bowls to cover the noodles, add a few pieces of the beef chuck, they'll be really tender and tasty.
• Serve with Thai basil, bean sprouts, lime wedges and green chillies.

This recipe makes enough broth for approx 6-8 servings, if you don't need this much broth, you can always freeze it and reheat when needed. 

My good friend Dao, knowledgeable in all things Vietnamese and chemical related, has recommended that I add daikon to the beef broth, she said this would add sweetness to the broth and that it has natural MSG xD.

The one with the Missha M BB Cream review

I wanted to be cool like all the other Asian blogger girls out there so I jumped onto the whole BB Cream thing.
For some UNKNOWN reason, despite it being the "Hong Kong across the Pacific", I wasn't able to locate BB Cream anywhere in Vancouver. Ok, it might exist somewhere in an obscure shop in Richmond, but I avoid Richmond like the plague unless I'm on the hunt for food, and I have this abhorrence of Evil Bay T.T
Aaaanyways, I managed to snag myself a tube of the Missha M B.B. Cream from Daituf's bwogsale a while back and I'm ready to give my thoughts.

BB Cream 101:

What is a BB Cream? BB stands for "Blemish Balm", and its main point of differentiation from mainstream foundation is that it contains ingredients which supposedly treats your skin in addition to its usual foundation duties.

What it says:

"MISSHA M BB Cream contains natural ingredients that do not damage or irritate the skin. With continuous use, your sensitive skin will be calm, protected from redness and keep its health."

What I say:

Do they breed them differently in Korea? The colour that I got can only possibly be matched by a human alien hybrid. Seriously! it's the oddest shade of pink-grey! and it's the only colour that it comes it! According to the ever knowledgeable Alienman, they like their women really pale in Korea, like this ideally:

Swatches:

It has a thicker, almost cream like texture compared to my trusty Studio Fix fluid. Coverage is medium and buildable, however, I find that the thicker you apply it, the more it settles into fine lines. It also tends to set REALLY fast, and once it's set it won't budge so I'll recommend applying it immediately after moisturiser when your face is little damp.
Finish is matte once set, however I did find that my face got oiler a lot faster than usual.
I'm currently a NC15-20, and this BB cream was definitely NOT a colour match for me, it washes me out and leaves me an odd shade of whitish pink T.T. Although it doesn't really show up on camera, I could see an obvious line of colour difference between my face and my neck.
So what's a girl to do? I hate waste but mask face is so last season, so I set out looking for new ways to use it.
Now would be a good time to tell you guys all about how pigmentation has been leeching out of my skin lately, my face has whitened so much as a result of all the face masks that I've been using, that foundation I bought a month ago has become too dark for me. Being typically me, I thought about how soon Spring and Summer would be arriving, how I'll get all tanned and then the lighter foundation wouldn't match...so I've been too cheap to buy new foundation to match xD
Meaning I now had a too light BB Cream and a too dark foundation...hmmm...what to do...
Why mix them of course xD

Left: MAC Studio Fix Fluid in NC20, Middle: Missha M BB Cream, Right: Mixture

Blended

See how the NC20 is slightly too dark for me? See how grey the BB Cream is? See how perfectly the mixture matches? xD

I just use a half to half ratio and the colour match is pretty much perfect for me. The coverage is good, the pink actually neutralises my yellow undertones and it feels much lighter than wearing the BB Cream alone. The addition of the Studio Fix makes the mixture much more spreadable, and I've found that it's best to spread it using my fingers and then have a quick once over with a stippling brush.
I feel clever now.
Hee!