Saturday, December 8, 2012

Cooking Diary 1 - supposed-to-be Chicken & Lemon Risotto

disclaimer: I'm in the stage of observing someone's cooking, so it doesn't mean that I can cook this dish already.

Today's recipe was supposed to be Stir-fried baby french bean with minced chicken AND Chicken & Lemon Risotto. In this post I'd like to share about my silly mistakes.
First of all, I've put the chicken breast and minced chicken in the freezer for 3 days and I didn't put them in the bottom fridge last night. Sooo... 50 minutes passed by and they're still freezing! Please don't try this at home.

Secondly, please read your recipe carefully. I bought 500ml chicken stock instead of 900ml chicken stock, 1 chicken breast instead of 2. Thankfully there was a shop near my house where we could buy another chicken stock and luckily I bought minced chicken (that's why at the end, no stir-fried baby french bean with chicken)

Apparently, grating lemon rind is DIFFICULT! (well, I didn't do it, Paul did it and it's difficult). According to Joanne, my housemate, perhaps whether the lemon is ripe, or almost ripe, or not yet ripe will make a difference. We didn't google about it.

Instead of using risotto rice, we used Japanese rice. We put so much rice!!! (I think it can serve 5 people. I'm eating 1 portion now, and this afternoon 3 of us ate BIG portion, and there was still risotto left!!).

Parmesan is expensive! Next time, please check out the price of the ingredients before choosing the recipe.

Anyway, today's cooking lessons:
1. cut vegetable before cutting or chopping the meat. Make sure you scrub the chopping board carefully after you use it for meat because if you use it for veggie afterwards and it's not clean, you can get food poisoned. (I don't understand why... :( )

2. I must 'feel the knife'. Today I tried to cut onion nicely and feel in which part of the knife I should put my strength

3. Hold your sponge at the upper part of the blade avoid accidental-cut

(why does it sound like washing lesson?)

4. Today I learned the meaning of the term "simmer", when you keep the flame minimal while you're still cooking the stuff.

5. Be prepared for plan B. (We boiled the french bean and put the french bean and minced chicken into the risotto.)

6. Move your meat from the freezer to the normal fridge one night before!!!!!

Okay that's all for today!! :D
btw, our risotto didn't look as nice as the picture on the website, but it tastes nice!! I think I'm going to have second serving now. still hungry. Hahaha

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