The Food Blog Dilemma with Green Tea Azuki Scones

I love cooking, and that's why you, who are reading this, is doing so right here. I like to put ingredients together, take pretty photographs of them and share, both in terms of feeding my friends/family and my self-proclaimed "recipes". But having a food blog poses a problem.

When a kitchen escapade produces somewhat good results, I inevitably want to revisit the recipe again, like going to a good restaurant again and again. But then, what do I post? Obviously it doesn't make sense posting a recipe twice and considering the fact that I grace my blog that few times a year, the two posts will definitely be back to back. I've made roasted vegetables at least 5 times and varied takikomi-gohan so many times for almost every lunchbox I made.

On the other hand, having a food blog and does push me to try new things and be adventurous in the kitchen. Reading the various food blogs out there also helps inspire me and give me new ideas.

So, where exactly is this going? Well, actually, what I'm really trying to say is, forgive me when I space my posts sparsely, when I leave out recipes or even when I post only photographs and a bare description. Just like this one.

Basically, it is the same recipe as this, substituting strawberries for 2 tablespoons of powdered green tea and some sweet azuki that comes in a can all the way from Japan. Brilliant with some cold milk. I've also used the same recipe for a blueberry version. Perfect for lazy afternoons.
An update from the previous time I posted this recipe, as the dough is quite soft and tend to spread and lose their shape when on a baking sheet, I found that the scones bake up much prettier if I put them in moulds, fluted no less!

土曜日弁当

土曜日弁当, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

この間のお弁当

soba salad with sesame dressing

curry baked rice with mushrooms and tomato

sweet potato and mushroom takikomi gohan with curry and bamboo shoots

I think it'll be the end of my bento series for now since I've recently switched a job and won't be cooking much, especially for lunch.

Hot Pot... Not

I found myself wanting very much to eat nabe, Japanese for hot pot, after reading chika-san's post on the Japanese winter quintessential. So we don't have winter here in Singapore, but the recent monsoon has made it somehow conducive for some hot pot action.

You would have realised that the photo doesn't show a pot. Of course, it would have been an actual hot pot if I did have a proper pot. But I didn't. Or rather, I didn't have one for a single portion. So I cooked everything in a normal over-the-stove pot and served it in a bowl. So, perhaps you would prefer to call it udon with soup.

I'm not posting the method (yet again), only because it just involves heating up some ingredients and water in a pot. I used ingredients that I had in my fridge; Napa cabbage, eryngii and buna-shimeiji mushrooms, tofu and cheated with frozen store-bought meatballs. Instead of cooking everything at the same time as per a usual nabe, I opted to cook the stalks from the cabbage first. Since I wasn't really going to eat it hot-pot style, I wanted to have the stalks soften before adding the rest of the ingredients that didn't require long cooking times. The cabbage also helped sweeten the soup which I seasoned with some light soy sauce and a little sugar and guess what, the individual scallop snacks (again). My sister, who cannot stand mushrooms, said they gave the soup "undertones" which I was more than happy to have.

I had my "nabe" with udon, sprinkled with negi (spring onions) and lots of chilli powder. I think rice would also make a nice carbohydrate, almost like a "porridge". But well, I'm more a noodle person but that's just me.

I wasn't a very much of a soup person until I my Japan trip, just like how I began going back to rice. I liked, and still do, prefer stronger flavours, favouring fried noodles or dry versions with lots of sauce over soup versions. But I've since become more receptive of soup if it was well-flavoured. When I was busy trying to squeeze the food in an aesthetically-pleasing manner into my really small bowl, my sister actually noted that it looked too "bland" for my taste, besides the fact that the bowl was too small. Well, it's nice to have a change sometimes, right?

今日の弁当

今日の弁当, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.