Homemade guacamole

In the past few years, I've slowly discovered a great liking for cilantro. I guess tastebuds do change as you grow, because I don't remember liking this as a child. I know a few of you (maybe even a majority!) are shuddering in disgust as you read this. Some people can't stand the herbal grassy taste. I've read that some people even liken its taste to soap. But my tastebuds have always been a little quirky, and I now like to add a generous amount of cilantro to my food (when we have cilantro around, that is). Halfway through my stay in Sydney, I started craving common everyday Asian ingredients like garlic and ginger and chilli and fermented prawn paste (belachan). These are the building blocks of Asian cooking, but not used much in Aussie food. There were times I would lie awake thinking of Asian food. The cravings got so bad once, I even made Hainanese chicken rice, and from scratch. This period of deprivation has prolly affected my brain and appetite in some weird way because I've been back home in Kuching for almost two years now, but I still crave major doses of these ingredients from time to time. And I've got a newfound respect and appreciation for these oft taken-for-granted items.

This morning I woke up to find a whole batch of avocados in the kitchen. Which caught me off-guard, because they'd been sitting there for some time but I'd mistaken them for mangoes. I'm not sure which variety of avocados these were, but they didn't look like the avocados I thought I knew: pear-shaped, green bumpy skin. The ones in my kitchen were rounder and smooth-skinned and speckled with brownish-black spots. A localized breed, perhaps? I was thrilled. Instantly, I thought of guacamole. It sounds really fancy, but it's a great-tasting dish that's made from very basic ingredients. What makes guacamole really good, though, is cilantro, the more the merrier. Thing is, I didn't know if we had this lying around the house. I worried about the fate of these avocados: one was rather squishy and on the verge of over-ripeness. I would have to eat it soon, but I didn't fancy having it with honey today. Imagine my joy then, when I entered the wet kitchen and found a whole bunch of cilantro, all chopped up and ready to be used in some other dish. I grabbed a handful, and gathered my other ingredients.

Scooped the gooey greenish yellow flesh out of their husks, diced half a tomato, some garlic, red onion, chilli, a squeeze of lime here and there, mash mash mash, season to taste. Amazingly easy. So little effort for such a great-tasting dish.

I toasted some buns and ate my guacamole with great relish. The cilantro definitely makes this dish. The chilli adds a kick of heat and spice too, and I oomphed the guacamole up even more with some Thai chilli powder. Brewed some tea and added some lime to that. Breakfast time.

Tangy. Rich. Zesty. Exotic. Sweet sour salty spicy. Ka-pow! What a little feast.

We've still got quite a few avocados waiting to ripen up, and I'm looking forward to more guacamole! This would be good as a filling for tacos, a dip for nachos or normal potato/corn chips, or if you like what you see in these pictures, as a breakfast spread on toast. The garlic-onion-chilli-lime blend reminds me of some Asian-style pickled condiment, so if you want to localize this, you could even try this as a side dish with rice. Not the way I like my guacamole though. *runs away*

Pet Potato: Day 12

Pet Potato's doing fine. The sprouts on Pet Potato's 'head' were really small a few days ago but are now taller and bigger, and more tiny buds seem to be emerging from Pet Potato's 'love handles'. And yesterday, I was very excited to see what appears to be little purple flower buds at the tip of the oldest of Pet Potato's sprouts!

 

I've been rather worried these few days because Pet Potato doesn't seem to be rooting though. So I did a little poking and peeking around the 'Net and realized my mistake: in all the excitement of having a new pet, I'd forgotten to submerge Pet Potato's 'legs' into the water. All I'd done was balance Pet Potato on the rim of my water-filled pasta jar, but this achieved no purpose as Pet Potato wasn't even touching the surface of the water. *facepalm*

 

It took about 20 minutes to figure out how to get Pet Potato's 'feet' dangling in the water without drowning it. Solution: bright yellow raffia string. Ugly, but effective. A lot of winding, knotting, and cross-knotting, but we did it.

 

 And now all we have to do is wait for Pet Potato to put down its roots. Pun intended.

Pet Potato: Day 6

Pet Potato is growing!

Can you see the tiny yellow buds? Soon he'll be taking his first tiny steps into the great big world!

Pet Potato, I'm so proud of you! 캬아~!!!!

Pet Potato: Day 1

I have a new pet.

I am aware that, to sane and intelligent people like you and me, it looks just like a very ordinary, rather dull-looking potato. Biologically speaking, it is just your everyday run-of-the-mill potato, species: Solanum tuberosum.

This lump of carbohydrate does not know that. Fortunately (or rather unfortunately, depending on how you look at things) this tubby tuber thinks it is a pet. My pet, to be exact. It has big dreams, this little brown potato.

Welcome to my room, Pet Potato!

Photowalk: Kuching Waterfront 2

Went on another photowalk along Kuching Waterfront last Friday, this time with Planky and her brother and her brother's friend. It's funny, you would think that living in an exotic tropical place like Kuching, that you'd have a lot more interesting places to shoot. Nope. That's the thing with living in one place for such a long time; after a while, everything seems dull and familiar.

But anyway, back to the photowalk. It was an impromptu thing, but it ended up being a really good day! Planky and I went on our own photo trail (the boys apparently ended up in the nearby shopping complexes, and people claim that girls are the fragile shopaholics?), and ended up with quite a tan by the end of the day. The areas we managed to cover were Main Bazaar and the whole strectch of the waterfront, and here are my best shots from that:

We had dinner at the Kuching Food Fest. I get really excited each year when July/August comes rolling around because of this annual event; it's basically this pretty massive area in town where they set up food stalls of all kinds, and they've got a garden show as well, and some events thrown in for variety. I didn't manage to take many good shots though, there were so many people shoving and pushing in the crowd, and you've got to factor in the oil and steam from the food as well. This shot below was taken at the chee cheong fun stall, where they make this flat steamed rice noodles (they look less like noodles and more like very thin sheets of steamed rice cake), which they fill with ingredients like shrimp or veg or meat (I think), roll up, and slice. Usually served with a thin dark gravy over the top of the dish.

This one below is a shot of the lady at the cha kuih stall. Rice cakes (some mix theirs with carrots or turnips I think), cubed and fried with egg, soy sauce and... argh, I can't remember the name of that preserved veg thingy! Is it called chai poh or something like that?

Here's a shot of my takoyaki in the making. The chee cheong fun and cha kuih were Planky's dinner. I'd previously tried the takoyaki from the Japan Boat stall, and didn't quite like it there (have they deteriorated? I didn't get much octopus, and they seemed to cook drown it in oil which was quite frigtening). This time my takoyaki came from the stall near the entrance to the garden show, and it was an improvement: the insides were still creamy and gooey, and they were pretty generous with the octopus. Less oil too, which is always healthy, or so I've been told.

And that's it. Overall a very enjoyable day out, although my tan gave me quite a bit of grief for a few days.

P.S. Is anyone else following the Olympics? I've been watching the artistic gymnastics and equestrian competitions, looking forward to the synchronised swimming and rhythmic gymnastics! End of P.S.

Photowalk: Kuching Waterfront

Went on another photowalk last Saturday, this time along the Kuching Waterfront. It was pretty late in the evening by the time we started taking pictures, and it was cloudy too, so the light didn't make for very good shots. But still, the occasional upload-worthy one pops up. Here's the best of the day:

We headed to Sanga, a Japanese diner that's within walking distance of the waterfront, for a good dinner. Sushi is always good dinner grub, but it was the bento sets that are really good here. I went for the usual, the torikatsu bento set with cheese. Deep fried chicken cutlets on a bed of caramelized onions, topped with egg (I think!), chives (or maybe those were leeks?), and cheese! This set came with chawan mushi (steamed egg), edamame (green soybeans), miso soup, some kind of fish in a dark sauce, rice, and some fruit and veg. Dinner shots:

Looking forward to my next photowalk! The food fest is coming up, and I'm hoping to take plenty of good food shots (shots of good food, or good shots of food, read it as you want it, haha!). That's less than 2 weeks away!

Cheers, people!