Sunday, March 21, 2010

Sotsuen Shiki - Upacara Kelulusan

19 maret 2010, jumat

Hari ini sotsuen shiki buat mei. Mei uda lulus kindergarden, 3 tahun belajar di tk, perkembangannya sangat besar banget, mulai dari 3 tahun masih takut2 buat ke sekolah, mpe terbiasa bangun pagi sekolah, main main, malah kadang dia minta jam lebih di skolahnya alias nitipin dia mpe sore, baru jemput. Padahal sekolahnya tuh uda full time banget menurut gw, dari jam 7.30 uda dijemput bis sekolah mpe jam 14.30, dianterin pulang mpe pemberhentian trakhir, deket rumah. Seneng sekaligus sedih pas upacara ini.

Pagi pagi dia udah sibuk berberes, makan, pake baju sekolah, jam 8an dianter laki gw. Gw di rumah ma Xiang beres2 juga, coz jam 8.50 mesti uda kumpul di hall sekolahnya. Laki gw telp, bilang smua pake baju jas hitem, padahal gw niat pake baju jas pink, haha, untung ga jadi..kalo ga mokal dah, sendiri pake baju berwarna, sementara yang lain pake baju jas hitam ato kimono..hahhaha...norak dah.

Acara mulai dari smua anak yang lulus masuk ke hall, trus bawa lilin buat dinyalain masing2 guru kelas, trus pidato dari kepala sekolah, trus nyanyi lagu kindergarden. Upacaranya si membosankan..hahah, tapi abis acara itu, kita emak2 ada acara minum teh bersama anak. So, Xiang dibawa pulang ma laki gw..tinggal gw n Mei aja yang ikutan acara minum tehnya. Acaranya dimeriahkan masing2 kelas bikin acara sendiri, maju ke panggungnya. Rata2 kelasnya pada nyanyi, cuman kelas nya Mei aja yang dance. Bayangkan bareng2 anak kita emak2 pada danceeeee????? huaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....mpe dapet sambutan meriah bangettt dah..guru2 n ank2 juga pada ikutan dance, coz dancenya n lagunya sama kayak waktu undokai tahun lalu, pesta olah raga tahun lalu..jadi yah semua ank tau jogetnya gimana...hahha..lucu n seru juga...untung ga usah disuruh ulang dance..hahhaha...
Abis acara udah jam 12an, gw telp minta dijemput..daripada harus jalan kaki dengan pake jas hitam n sepatu tinggi..capeee bok..hahha emang males jalan...bisa lecet nih kaki ga biasa pake sepatu tinggi..hohoho.
Foto lain liat disini

Planning the Menu for a Dinner Party

For the family, I usually cook two dishes for dinner: the main dish and a vegetable or salad. For a dinner party, I might add a first course and most likely dessert. How much and what you cook depends a lot on your guests. If they are dainty eaters, less is preferable. If they are teenage boys, quantity counts. So how do I go about creating a menu that is fun, beautiful, tasty, and doable?





Gathering information
First of all I ask the dinner guests about any dietary restrictions. Is anyone a vegetarian, a vegan, or gluten intolerant? And I think about what kind of food would appeal to them and to me. Next I look to see what is hiding out in the fridge that needs to be used. Finally I think about what is in season. Oranges, lemons, and sorrel are growing in my backyard. New crops keep showing up at the Farmers Market.

With this information in mind, I have two options:
1. I can consult a cookbook for menu suggestions, look at the Winter or Spring section of a cookbook organized that way, or cook a dinner I’ve cooked before and love.
OR
2. I can plan the new menu using my own imagination and tastes. When I choose this method, I use a few guidelines to help me out. I love the imagining part—seeing the plate, tasting the flavors in my mind, envisioning the work flow.
I usually start by choosing the main dish. As I add one dish after another, I ask myself some questions:

Color Will the plate of food be pretty and colorful? I love color. If I’m fixing a pasta with a cream sauce, for example, I might want a fresh green veggie on the side. Cauliflower wouldn’t work. Tomatoes, red peppers and carrots are great favorites of mine for adding color.




Taste/flavor How will the flavors work together? Most of us wouldn’t want to eat a meal where every dish contained cayenne. Our mouths would cry out for the soothing comfort of sour cream, avocado, cold beer. So I watch for balance in the hot flavors with the soothing ones. The same principle applies with sweet, sour, bitter, salty. Balance and contrast rule.


Migration Will the juices on the plate be compatible? A stew with a nice gravy works wonderfully with mashed potatoes. Most of the time a salad needs to be on a separate plate because the vinaigrette merging with the rest of the food would make it all taste like salad.




Texture How will the textures of the food work together? A silky-textured dessert is nice after a crisp salad. Polenta has a nice mouth feel with braised lamb shanks. Full-flavored dips are great with fresh crusty bread or crackers. You get the idea.




Timing Can I fix the meal without driving myself crazy? What can I fix ahead? I try to avoid dinners where too much has to be done at the last moment. I try to imagine the process of cooking the meal so that I can stay calm and collected. Sometimes that means waiting to have a glass of wine until dinner is on the table, as hard as that is. I know I need a clear head.

I love creating menus. But if this process seems too complicated, choose one thing, like Color, and put the rest aside. Keep it easy. Remember that you can BUY some or most of the add-ons so you can focus on the main dish. Most of all, cook with pleasure and have fun with your guests.

Menu 14: A Dinner Party

So here’s the process I use to create a menu. As I said above, you get to choose whatever you think you and your guests would enjoy eating. These guidelines might give you some help in putting it all together.

Catfish with Cherry Tomatoes and Lemon Sauce
I’m going to fix Catfish with Cherry Tomatoes and Lemon Sauce for the main dish. The dish can be put together ahead, refrigerated and baked right before serving. The sauce can be made ahead. I imagine what it will look like with the breading and the cherry tomatoes. (Cookbook photos are so helpful.) I imagine tasting the lemon sauce and the capers in the breadcrumbs.

















Breadcrumb Caper topping:
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
¼ cup capers, drained
1½ cups fresh bread crumbs
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lemon
½ teaspoon salt or to taste
¼ teaspoon pepper

1½ pounds catfish fillets of similar thickness or other white fish fillets
2 tablespoons olive oil
Basket of cherry tomatoes
Lemon Sauce (see recipe below)
Parsley for garnish, optional

1. If you need to grate the cheese and make the breadcrumbs, you can do both in a food processor. Grate the cheese with the grater insert, remove the cheese, and then make the breadcrumbs with the regular blade.
2. To make the topping, combine the cheese, garlic, capers, breadcrumbs, lemon zest and juice, salt and pepper and mix well.
3. Preheat oven to 450°F. Place the olive oil in a baking dish. Turn the fillets in the oil to coat both sides and lay side by side in the dish in a single layer.
4. Sprinkle with the topping and the cherry tomatoes. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Test for doneness. When the fish flakes easily, it’s done.
5. While the fish is baking, make the lemon sauce. When the fish is done, sprinkle with parsley if desired and serve with the Lemon Sauce.

Lemon Sauce

1 garlic clove, minced or pressed
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup olive oil
¼ teaspoon salt or to taste
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Serve at room temperature.

4-5 servings
Adapted from the Junior League of Jackson, Mississippi’s Come On In

Stir-Fried Sugar Snap or Snow Peas
I know that the texture of the fish is nice and soft. The peas would be good because of the color and the crunch. The peas can be de-strung ahead. They need to be fried at the last moment.

















1 pound fresh sugar snap or snow peas
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

1. Pull the strings, if any, from the peas, snapping off the top stems and bottom flags if necessary.
2. Heat a frying pan or wok. Add the oil and the salt.
3. Toss in the peas and stir fry until the peas are tender, but still bring green and a little crunchy. You might add a tablespoon or two of water to speed along the cooking. Stir until the water disappears.

4 servings
My own devising

The breadcrumbs on the fish take care of starch. No rice or bread or potatoes are necessary unless one of your guests would feel neglected without it.

If I wanted a salad to serve with the fish and sugar snap peas, I might choose a slaw, such as Jicama Slaw (June 21, 2009 blog) or Erasto’s Slaw (May 23, 2009 blog). Either can be put together ahead of time and stored in the fridge. Stir again just before serving. It might be best to serve in small side bowls.




For dessert, I probably wouldn’t want a big lemon hit because of the fish’s Lemon Sauce. Tiny Chocolate Pots (December 8, 2009 blog) might be just right. They can be made ahead and are ready whenever you are, unless you want to add some whipped cream.





If you want to have something to eat standing around the kitchen, what about a Green Olive Tapenade (August 10, 2009 blog) with crispy crackers or cucumbers? Nice color, can be made ahead, and has a strong distinctive flavor.

Thai-Style Steak Dinner Salad

This is a wonderful dinner salad, perfect when you have some leftover cooked steak. Add some crusty bread and you have a great dinner. It would also work with leftover roasted chicken.

















Leftovers from whatever cooked steak you have on hand, sliced in ½-inch strips
Greens (a large handful or two for each person eating): romaine, red leaf or whatever mix of greens you have on hand
½ cup fresh mint, sliced
2 green onions, sliced on the diagonal
½ cup toasted salted peanuts, chopped coarsely, optional

Thai vinaigrette:
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/8 teaspoon Aleppo pepper or hot pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Mix together all the ingredients in the vinaigrette. Taste for seasoning and adjust as you desire.
2. Mix enough of the vinaigrette with the cooked steak to moisten it nicely.
3. Combine the greens, fresh mint, and green onions in a salad bowl.
4. Add the remaining vinaigrette to the greens. Toss well.
5. Pile the greens on dinner plates. Top the salads with the steak, pouring the vinaigrette from the steak bowl over all.
6. If you wish, sprinkle the toasted peanuts over the salads.

The number of servings depends on the amount of cooked steak you have. If you have a lot, you may need to increase the amount of the vinaigrette. The amount given would serve 4 for dinner with some crusty bread.
Adapted from Martha Stewart Living’s Great Food Fast

Homemade Beefburger on Mashed Potato Pate Bun

Hundred Percent Beefburger on Potato Pate Bun

Burgers can on occasion - especially when they are of the fast food variety - be an extremely unhealthy food option. I have for a long time been on the look-out for ways on which to improve upon this factor and make the much-loved burger a healthier meal consideration. It was the sheer coincidence of having some leftover mashed potato to use up that gave me this idea yesterday and I have to say that I was delighted by the way in which it turned out.

This was also an experiment in that when I make burgers, I usually add something to the meat and very much use different types of meat. It may be egg, breadcrumbs, fresh herbs, onion, or a mixture of two of these ingredients or more. On this occasion, however, I decided to make the burger purely from beef, other than of course some seasoning in the form of salt and freshly ground black pepper.

This recipe is in the quantites required for one serving.

Ingredients

1/4lb minced/ground beef
2 tbsp cold mashed potato (incorporating salt and butter)
2 tsp plain (all-purpose) flour
4 lettuce leaves
1 tomato
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Sunflower oil for frying

Method

The mashed potato can of course be of the leftover variety or it can be prepared specifically for the purpose of making this meal. If it is to be made specifically, it should be seasoned with salt and mashed with a little butter, before being covered and left to cool. At that point, the flour should be mixed through it.

The burger pate should be prepared simply by seasoning the beef with salt and pepper and rolling it in to a round ball with lightly floured hands. It can then be flattened in to a burger shape between the palms and fried over a medium heat in a non-stick frying pan with a little sunflower oil in it for around ten minutes each side.

When the burger is cooked, it should be transferred to a hot plate and covered with foil to rest and keep warm. The heat in the pan should then be turned up to high.

The floured potatoes should be rolled in to two balls, slightly bigger than golf balls, again with floured hands. They should then carefully be flattened to circles about three to four inches in diameter and added to the hot pan. I fried them for three minutes on one side and two on the other. This had the effect of making one side golden and the other only slightly coloured, just as the two sides of a conventional burger bun would be.

One half of the burger, "Bun" should then be put on to the plate, coloured side down and the burger sat on top. The second half of the, "Bun," should then be added, coloured side uppermost. I was amused to find at this point that gravity caused the edges of the top potato pate to curl over and even better create the image of a burger in a traditional bun.

The lettuce leaves should be shredded, the tomato quartered and the salad arranged around the burger, prior to serving, as shown above.

NB I would recommend that you eat this burger with a knife and fork - attempting to pick it up in your hands may prove rather messy!

Do you want Further Help in Making Fast Food Healthy?



Whenever we contemplate healthier eating, very often we will recognise what we believe to be the inevitability of giving up fast food. The good news is that this is absolutely not the case. What have to do - as in the recipe above - is come up with new and innovative ways of preparing the traditional fast foods at home, in a healthier fashion.

In this fabulous book, Devin Alexander looks at more than seventy-five fast food recipes which can be prepared in a far healthier fashion than they would be served in a fast food restaurant and shows you how to prepare them at home. The book is even discounted at the moment - but then again, what price your family's health?