Video

Chicken kale quinoa rice

Posted 2015-10-14 by Gary

I don’t feel that well today. I woke up without enough sleep. I knew I had chicken in the refrigerator and there was kale quinoa rice too. It was a simple decision without any need for thought for the rest of the day. I could attend meetings and work without thinking about meal preparation.

I also wrote today a short post remembering the Bali bombings in 2002 and three of my closest friends who are all connected with the event. This is a time of year when I ponder the meaning of life. I hope for peace knowing the reality is so fragile.

Chicken kale quinoa rice

Recipe Type: Dinner

Cuisine: Australian

Author: [url href=”http://about.me/garydlum” target=”_blank”]Gary Lum[/url]

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 1 hour

Total time: 1 hour 5 mins

Serves: 1

Ingredients

Skinless chicken thigh pieces (2)
Lemon zest from 1 lemon
Kale (3 stems)
Quinoa rice (1 packet from Coles)
Fried onions (100 grams)
Coconut milk (low fat, 2 tablespoons)
Spring onions (1 tablespoon)
Basil (shredded, 1 tablespoon)

Instructions

Cooked the chicken in foil with lemon zest for 45 minutes at 150 °C
Wilt the kale in a frying pan with some oil
Cook the quinoa rice in the microwave as per instructions
Add the rice to the kale
Add the coconut milk
Add the fried shallots
Cut the cooked chicken into strips
Add the chicken to the kale quinoa rice
Mix everything together and plate up
Garnish with basil and spring onion
Shoot a photograph
Prepare a timelapse video while eating
Wash the dishes
Write the recipe
Blog (verb)

Humpday dinner. Chicken with kale quinoa rice.

I forgot to add that I used the last of the pickled onions that I made on Sunday.

I’m really impressed with the ability of YouTube to enhance iPhone timelapse videos. I accidentally shot this video in portrait mode rather than landscape. It looked stupid. With the magic of YouTube it was rotated into landscape mode and looks reasonable. I received a nice comment from an Australian blogging legend, viz., Lorraine Elliott from Not Quite Nigella. She mentioned her husband also likes to capture videos of himself eating. I’m in good company

What did you eat today?

How to cook a steak like Heston Blumenthal

Posted 2015-06-04 by Gary

Regular readers know I like steak and some of you know that I’ve cooked steak like Heston before. Now that I’m back on a low carb kick I’ve been dreaming of a nice steak dinner since picking up a piece of ribeye from Coles on the weekend.

I began preparing the steak this morning as I was making breakfast. I unwrapped the meat and laid it on a rack and then on a plate and put it back in the refrigerator to dry out a little.

This is Heston explaining his steak cooking method

When I arrived home after work I pulled the steak out and placed it on the kitchen bench to let it get to room temperature (which in Canberra today wasn’t much different to the temperature inside my refrigerator).

This is my steak after it had been drying in the refrigerator

Ribeye steak out of the refrigerator waiting to be cooked and eaten.

How to cook a steak like Heston Blumenthal

Recipe Type: Dinner

Cuisine: Australian

Author: Gary Lum

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 13 mins

Total time: 18 mins

Serves: 1

Ingredients

Ribeye fillet steak
Fennel
Parsley
Bok choi stalk
Red onion
Lime juice
Mayonnaise

Instructions

In the morning before leaving for work unwrap the steak and put it on a rack on a plate and put it back in the refrigerator
When you get home after work pull the steak out and put it on the kitchen bench to equilibrate to room temperature
Cut the fennel, parsley and red onion into thin slices and squeeze the juice from half a lime
Put the salad together
Slice the stalk of some bok choi and set aside
Get a frypan really hot and add some grape seed oil plus a bit of butter
When the pan is smoking hot put the steak in the frypan
Count slowly to fifteen and turn
Repeat this for a total of 3 minutes
When the steak is cooked put it aside in a warm place and let it rest for 10 full minutes
While the frypan is still hot add the bok choi stalk slices and fry off
After 10 minutes resting plate it all up
Shoot a photograph
Eat the meal
Wash the dishes
Write the recipe
Blog (verb)

This is the steak and fennel salad plated up

Steak and fennel salad after the meat has been rested for 10 minutes.

Here is my breakfast this morning. Streaky bacon cooked in a benchtop oven and served with a fried egg.

So how do you like to cook steak?

SUP Hawaii

Posted 2015-04-22 by Gary

SUP Hawaii! Today we went stand up paddle boarding except I have a vestibular defect so I did sit down paddle boarding. Back in 2000 I had a left inner ear infection and now have permanent high frequency deafness, tinnitus and poor balance.

First things first though. For breakfast Bron made poached eggs.

After breakfast we headed to Surf N Sea at 62–595 Kamehameha Hwy, Haleiwa, HI 96712 to hire paddle boards and a kayak.

I spent some time in a kayak and some sitting on a paddle board shooting photographs of what was around me.

I shot a few randoms out on the water on stand up paddle boards.

After the paddle boarding we went to Kaiaka Bay Beach Park for a picnic lunch. I had a jalapeño spam, jam, avocado, cheese sandwich. It was delicious. I love these sort of sandwiches that you made on site at a picnic after a lot of physical exertion. They always taste good. This was my first experience of jalapeño spam and it was tremendous.

After lunch we went for a walk along the beach and saw turtles.

After the joy of seeing some turtles we headed into the local town of Haleiwa and to the famous Matsumoto’s shave ice. Why is it shave ice and not shaved ice? This place is famous for the texture and flavours. I choose a Matsumoto combination of lemon, coconut and pineapple plus condensed milk. It is spectacularly good.

This was amazing. The flavours so awesome. The condensed milk added a new dimension to shaved ice. I love it.

At the shops there is also a spam stand. I bought a T-shirt. I’ll post a photograph in the next couple of days.

On the way back to the condominium we stop for supplies and I find some teriyaki spam musabi. My blogging friend Spencer Lum has told me this is a must try.

After the musabi we do a little more snorkeling and then it is time for dinner. Bron cooked pork chops Hawaiian style with pineapple and ham and cheese. We then had Ted’s bakery chocolate custard pie and pineapple Queensland nut pie with a doughnut and haupia pudding.

SUP Hawaii! Have you tried it?

Polynesian Cultural Center Oahu Hawaii All you can eat!

Posted 2015-04-22 by Gary

So it’s Monday and we have tickets to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie on the North Shore of Oahu. Our tickets include the Island buffet plus the show known as Hã Breath of life.

But first things first. Bron offered to make pancakes for breakfast.

We then go for a snorkel at Kuilima Cove

After the snorkelling we got ready for the Polynesian Cultural Center by stopping at Tita’s Grill on 56–485 Kamehameha Highway, Hauula, HI 96717.

I went with the garlic prawns and garlic chips. The prawns come with rice and macaroni cheese. The chips are covered in crushed garlic. I felt like a clove of garlic all afternoon and evening.

The prawns were really good and as is my want to avoid mess and give me a calcium boost I just pop an entire prawn in my mouth and chew the whole thing down. The chips came with a dipping sauce which I think was a mayonnaise. I’d happily recommend Tita’s Grill’s garlic prawns to anyone. You may want to go for the combo which I think has its own small serve of chips rather than the standard serve of chips that I had in addition.

When we got to the PCC we watched the canal presentation with the various Polynesian islands represented. We also watched presentations on Samoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Tonga.

The Samoan presentation was all about the coconut and its many uses. I learnt so much about the coconut tree and how it can be used.

The Aotearoa presentation was interesting. It was nicely ended by a tribute of respect to all warfighters. Veterans in the audience were asked to stand and be acknowledged. I hope this Saturday on ANZAC day they do something special given it’s the centenary of ANZAC.

The Tongans were all about drumming and making the audience laugh. I haven’t laughed like that in years.

Before the show we ate in the Island buffet. There are three dining selections depending on how much the tickets cost. I went with the cheapest option so we ate at the Island buffet. It was an all you can eat affair featuring pulled pork, fried chicken, poached fish, rice, mashed potatoes and gravy plus desserts consisting of jelly, mochi, haupia pudding, pineapple slice, cakes and bread pudding.

The show at the end was really good and almost like a Disney production in terms of quality. It was the life story of Mana and Lani and worked through the various Polynesian peoples. I was particularly taken by the Fijian effort given my father was born in Fiji.

All in all the PCC was really very interesting. The price of tickets is quite steep but the owners claim it’s a not for profit affair.

I highly recommend the Polynesian Cultural Center

Snorkeling in Hawaii

Posted 2015-04-20 by Gary

Today we had a fantastic day. We went snorkeling twice, ate pie at Ted’s bakery and I enjoyed my first dole whip at Dole plantation.

After one of my first Hawaiian holiday posts my good blogging friend Barbara suggested I try a dole whip. I made a bit of a joke on Swarm that I was waiting in a dole queue waiting for my dole whip.

I’ll get to the dole whip soon. I started the day with a repeat of yesterday’s breakfast, chorizo spam with fried eggs and cheese.

After breakfast we went for our first snorkel of the day. We walked to Kuilima Cove and jumped right in. The water was a perfect temperature albeit a little murky. The tide was out so it was fairly shallow. We could easily sea brightly coloured coral, lots of fish and other sea life like sea cucumbers. I shot these images with a Nikon All Weather camera. I couldn’t see the LCD screen while I was underwater. The sun glare was significant and after I downloaded the images I discovered many of them were unusable because I hadn’t of all things aimed the camera very well. I need to point it deeper. Some of the video was hilarious (not) because I ended up with heads of fish swimming away rather than the whole fish because I wasn’t pointing deeply enough. I tried to shoot a few sea cucumbers with their castings but none of the images were very good.

For lunch we went to Ted’s Bakery again like we did yesterday only this time we had sandwiches 🙂

I went for a crab and bacon sandwich followed by a pumpkin haupia cream pie. Again I stuck my label to the umbrella pole. I love pumpkin pie. I wish had it more in Australia.

After lunch we went to the Dole Plantation to do the maze and eat a dole whip 😀

The maze is amazing (see what I did there?) I reckon the walls should have been made with maize too 😀

We took about an hour to complete it.

The dole whip is truly a heavenly treat, I really liked my dole whip in a cup with extra pineapple.

After Dole plantation we went snorkeling again and saw more fish. The water was a little murkier but it was deeper with a higher tide.

For dinner this evening I cooked Hawaiian curry salmon with some chorizo spam and then had a Ted’s Bakery Queensland nut pie with Haupia pudding for dessert.

Do you like snorkeling? I love it.

Video

Chicken kale quinoa rice

What did you eat today?

Like this:

How to cook a steak like Heston Blumenthal

This is Heston explaining his steak cooking method

This is my steak after it had been drying in the refrigerator

This is the steak and fennel salad plated up

Here is my breakfast this morning. Streaky bacon cooked in a benchtop oven and served with a fried egg.

So how do you like to cook steak?

Like this:

SUP Hawaii

SUP Hawaii! Have you tried it?

Like this:

Polynesian Cultural Center Oahu Hawaii All you can eat!

I highly recommend the Polynesian Cultural Center

Like this:

Snorkeling in Hawaii

Do you like snorkeling? I love it.

Like this:

Recent posts

Post archive

What did you eat today?

I'd love it if you shared

Like this:

This is Heston explaining his steak cooking method

This is my steak after it had been drying in the refrigerator

This is the steak and fennel salad plated up

Here is my breakfast this morning. Streaky bacon cooked in a benchtop oven and served with a fried egg.

So how do you like to cook steak?

I'd love it if you shared

Like this:

SUP Hawaii! Have you tried it?

I'd love it if you shared

Like this:

I highly recommend the Polynesian Cultural Center

I'd love it if you shared

Like this:

Do you like snorkeling? I love it.

I'd love it if you shared

Like this:

Recent posts

Post archive