Just another quick picture post on some scrambled eggs I made while I was in London. Found some black truffle at Borough Market, so I shaved some over the eggs. I still think nothing beats the aroma of Alba winter white truffles!
A minute twist to ordinary scrambled eggs… add some truffle oil and mild cheddar cheese shavings to give boring ol scrambled eggs a little kick! Top with chopped chives and serve over slices of sourdough bread, pan toasted in butter. Recipe for the basic scrambled eggs here.
The above picture is from my 2nd attempt at making tamagoyaki. Its a pretty common food in Japanese and Korean cuisine. Perhaps the only difference is that the Koreans don’t make it with sugar, dashi or sake. Of course, the Japanese tamagoyaki has both sweet and savory versions but I prefer the sweet version. While it is helpful to have a rectangular pan for this recipe, it is not necessary. You can make tamagoyaki using a normal frying pan.
For my first attempt, I made tamagoyaki using only 3 eggs and using a low fire. Not only did I have to wait a longer time for the egg to cook, but the egg roll came out kinda small, flat and not as fluffy. It was worse when it got cold and shrank further in size T___T. I poured in only enough egg to cover the surface for the first round but this was a mistake in my opinion.
In my 2nd attempt, I used 5 eggs on medium-high heat in a smaller and deeper frying pan. I poured in half the eggs for the first round of cooking and that made the egg roll fluffier. The end result? Thick egg rolls!!! ❤
Other than that generally the cooking methodology is still similar, which is why I’m including my first attempt here as well.
Ingredients
5 eggs
1-1.5 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp water or dashi
1 tsp salt (more or less depending on how salty the dashi is)
1 tsp mirin
1 tsp sake
You will need some kitchen paper for oiling the pan after each round of frying as well.
Instructions
Combine the dashi/water, sugar, mirin, salt and sake into a bowl. Mix thoroughly.
Break the eggs into the bowl with the dashi mixture and beat to just combine but do not overly beat it as we want some egg white bits in the tamagoyaki. Run a chopstick a few times through the mixture to ensure that the eggs are broken up and can be poured easily.
Keep a bowl of oil with kitchen towel next to the pan. You will use this to continuously oil the pan after each round of cooking.
Oil the pan and heat it up on medium-high flame.
Pour in half the eggs.
Scramble it a little. Fold over when the bottom is set enough to flip it over. Oil the exposed side of the pan, and then gently push the “omelette” to the side of the pan. Oil the rest of the pan before adding more egg. This time add just enough egg to cover the pan.
Above, I’ve already pushed the first layer of egg to the side and added the 2nd thinner layer. Lift the first “Omelette” so that the second layer of egg goes underneath to coat the entire pan. See those bubbles forming? Pop them!
Hehehe! Once this layer is more or less set, flip the thicker part onto the thin layer. This would create the “roll” layer. Again, oil the exposed part of the pan, push the egg to that side and oil the rest of the pan. Then add another layer of egg. Continue the process until all the egg is used up.
The last bit of egg… and you’re done! Brown the outsides if you like but don’t overdo it. If you want to shape the tamagoyaki into something more rectangular/oval you can make use of a sushi mat, but you have to shape it when it’s still hot.
Lastly, slice the tamagoyaki and serve 😉
I did not shape the tamagoyaki so the shape of it has a mind of its own T___T
I’m also going to add pictures from my first attempt. You can see that the heat is lower and the pan is bigger. So I “rolled” the egg several times and pushed the egg to the middle instead of the very end.
Waiting for the egg to cook before flipping the roll towards the left.
Above, after pushing the roll to the middle, I added another layer of egg.
Continue the process…
Finally done.
Now to cut it!
As you can see, the roll isn’t very thick. Also, it shrank after it cooled and wasn’t as fluffy. Which is why I prefer the first method of cooking on medium high heat and in a smaller pan. Cooking half the eggs and scrambling them in the first round saves time and also makes the eggs fluffy. So try it yourself and see which way works well for you.
I’ll leave you with some youtube links on making tamagoyaki :-
Yes I know the picture above makes this post seem like it is about pot stickers instead of eggplant. I’m saving that post for another day. Today it is just the eggplant.
Ingredients
1 fat eggplant, sliced into equal thickness (around 0.5 – 0.7 cm would be good)
1 egg, beaten and seasoned with a pinch of salt and white pepper. If you like you can also drop a couple of drops of truffle oil into the egg mixture
2 tbsps Olive oil for frying
Instructions
1) Heat up the oil in a frying pan on medium high heat
2) Coat each side of the eggplant slices with egg before placing them in the pan.
3) Fry until the bottom down side of the eggplant slices turn golden brown, before flipping it to fry the other side
4) Pat off the excess oil or place the fried eggplant onto some paper towels.
This is one of those quick fixes that can be done with just cooked rice and an egg. The other ingredients are cupboard ingredients (those that can be stored for a really long time), which is the beauty of this dish really.
If you’ve heard of the nabe (hot pots) that Japanese really love, you’d have also heard of them adding rice into the leftover stock once they’re done cooking the rest of the food. They then turn the rice into porridge, and thus, nothing is wasted.
And it is really delicious! I tried this “zosui” (the Japanese refer to thick rice porridge as zosui/okayu) in Hokkaido after a delicious kani-nabe ( I did NOT just swear at you lol!). Kani means crab, so what we had after the crab hotpot was some delicious stock. The waitress added more stock to it and then added precooked rice and let it simmer for a while before adding egg. It was the best porridge I’ve had!
I try to replicate it here the best I can without such expensive ingredients, crabs don’t come cheap in Singapore. I’ve come pretty close to it I think.
Ingredients (For 2 pax, or 1 hungry person)
1 cup cooked rice
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup dashi (this is the second bottle from the left) – you can make it yourself, using konbu, anchovies and soy sauce but I found this more convenient
1 cup water
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp sake/cooking wine
Handful of chopped spring onions for topping
Handful of seaweed (nori) strips for topping
Cooking Instructions
Pour the dashi, water, mirin and wine into a pot and bring to a simmer.
Add the rice and cover the pot with a lid. Simmer on medium high heat until the rice softens. If you prefer really soft rice in the porridge, you could simmer it a little longer, just add some water so it doesnt dry up and stick to the bottom of the pot.
Once you’ve reached your desired consistency, turn off the heat and pour the egg into the centre of the porridge.
Work quickly and use the bottom of a ladle to stir the egg round and round until the egg is completely incorporated into the porridge.
You want the end result to look creamy. This is the end result of stirring the egg well. If you let the egg cook before you stir it in, it is going to look like an egg drop soup. Not like it tastes bad either, it just will not be as creamy as the picture below.
So the egg has to be quickly stirred in, in circles starting from the centre of the pot. If you were to stir it any way you wanted, the egg may end up streaky -___-
Then ladle it into a bowl and top with spring onions and seaweed.
So there it is, creamy Japanese porridge (obviously with zero dairy in it).
I love spring onions so I went overboard with it ;p
Almost finished with the truffle series! Here I made two simple dishes with the truffles, a puff pastry and a salad. Really easy and yummy stuff.
Puff Pastry Ingredients (for 1 pax)
A quarter of ready made puff pastry (I used Jus-rol, the 500g packet)
Grate a good handful of your favourite cheese (I used cheddar)
Sliced mushrooms (about 3 fresh swiss brown mushrooms)
1 teaspoon of truffle oil
1 egg
1 egg white to glaze
Black pepper and salt
Salad Ingredients (for 1-2 pax depending on how greedy)
7-8 almonds sliced (If you can buy them pre sliced, that’s even better
Handful of cranberries
Juice and rind from half a yellow lemon (omit the rind if you don’t like it)
3 tbsp mayo
1-2 tbsp honey
Enough salad leaves for 1-2 pax
Instructions
Roll out the ready made pastry into a square and trim off the sides so that it’s nice and neat.
Preheat the oven to 220°C (200°C for fan assisted ovens). You should follow the instructions printed on the wrapping, oven temperatures and timings may differ.
Cut a little more of the ready made pastry and roll it out to make 4 strips, you will need to place each strip at the edge of the pastry square so it holds the ingredients (and egg) in.
Arrange the cheese and mushrooms in the pastry, leaving space in the middle. The egg will be added here later on. In the meantime, brush the pastry with the egg white for that golden brown colour
Bake the pastry for about 12 minutes (this would depend on the total time you need to bake the pastry. If you need to bake it for 20 minutes, add the egg 3-4 minutes before completion). If I remember correctly I baked it for 15 minutes, so I slid the egg into the middle after 12 minutes. You can add more cheese around the egg after that if you wish. Then drizzle the truffle oil over the pastry.
Once the pastry is golden brown and the egg is cooked, remove from oven.
While the pastry is cooking, wash and drain the salad leaves, slice the almonds and fry them til golden in color. Pat the excess oil off almonds with a kitchen towel and set aside.
Mix the lemon juice and rind, mayo and honey together in a separate bowl.
Place salad leaves in a salad bowl and toss with the honey lemon and mayo mixture. Add cranberries, sliced almonds and shave some of that black truffle on top. Serve.
Season pastry with black pepper (and, if you chose a mild, not-so-salty cheese, some salt) and add some truffle shavings. Eat!
You can add other things to your salad, I added cherry tomatoes to mine.
If you like your egg less cooked then just cook it for 1.5-2 minutes before removing from the oven. For me, as long as the whites are cooked I’m all good.
