Medley of Madness

I was quite prolific in the kitchen today! Let me count the delicious and not so delicious ways...

First off, I'd made yogurt in a little machine gifted to me previously. This was my second time around using a different brand of yogurt (for the starter microbes) as well as the amount of time it incubates. With this batch, I upped the time to a whopping 16 hours using Brown Cow's whole milk yogurt. Last time, I'd used Stonyfield's skim milk yogurt. My theory was that the microbes in the whole milk yogurt would be more accustomed to processing whole milk. Well, whether it was the longer incubation time of the starter culture I used, or a combination of both, I got great results. The yogurt wasn't runny at all like last time, though the previous batch was less tart and quite creamy.

Now that's pretty firm, eh? =D So what else was brewing in the kitchen? Well, yet another item that took quite a few hours. Overnight to be exact.

I took a stab at making Ken Hom's Hoisin Marinated Spare Ribs which had to be marinated overnight and then baked on low heat for a lovely 2 hours to produce wonderfully tender and juicy ribs yet with a nice browned outside (from last minute high temps). Overall, it received good reviews from the diners, though it seemed that almost everyone preferred my mom's ribs (including my friends) as it was missing the charred bits to crunch on. The consensus was that they're just completely different ribs as these were very flavorful while my mom's ribs are simply delicious. Regardless, it was an enjoyable way to consume spare ribs which otherwise aren't a favorite in my household. We much prefer baby back ribs. =9~

As I did not indulge in the ribs, I concentrated on the last dish of the line-up: Sake no Saikyo Misozuke which is some salmon marinated with a sweet white miso paste mixture. I was very excited at trying my hand at this as I'd had very delicious versions in a Japanese restaurant. Well, I must be missing out on either technique or the marinade part because the fish turned out quite dry and too salty. To torture myself further, the dish required quite a bit of work in order to create the marinade. I was utterly disappointed. Clearly something went wrong but I'm not going to revisit this for a while. I need to recover and then be reinspired. I should go visit that Japanese restaurant...;D

Behold the foul fish beast I created:

As a side note (too lazy for a better write-up), I made Nigella Lawson's Old Fashion Chocolate Cake about two days ago. Alas, I failed to photograph the resulting cake. Not being a frosting person, I can't comment on how delicious or disgusting it is, but I certainly enjoyed the cake. Though a bit on the dry side for my taste, I found the cake has a nice chocolately flavor that wasn't too sweet (maybe that's where the frosting comes in) which was fine for me. An extra positive is that it's quite easy to make using the food processor. Unfortunately for me, I made a bit of a mess as my food processor didn't quite have the cup capacity to take this puppy on. It overflowed a bit. =( I love our old food processor which was much larger. Let me reminisce for a moment...Sigh....=P