The Food Pornographer

Jac had bought a big bag of frozen prawns so she could make garlic prawns for us all. She simply cooked them in the wok with loads of garlic and olive oil. The smell was amazing as they cooked, and even more amazing when she presented us with this bowl piled high with juicy prawns.

They were so plump and juicy and perfectly bursty.

S and D love garlic as much as we do, and we were all eagerly piling chunks of garlic on top of our prawns before eating. Even the kids, aged 5 and 2, enjoyed the prawns. We started out with toothpicks but soon switched to using fingers – much quicker, more efficient and infinitely more suckable!

The garlickyness reminded me of the Witches Cauldron’s garlic prawns, though theirs have a hint of chilli in the oil. S and I thought the prawns tasted buttery but Jac said she didn’t use any butter – just good old Home Brand extra virgin olive oil!

Dinner featuring peri peri prawns
S, D and kids left, and another guest, our friend M, came over for dinner. Jac had kept some prawns aside for dinner – she did ask if I’d mind prawns for afternoon snacks and for dinner, and I was “Are you kidding?! I’d have eaten prawns for breakfast too!” :D I would’ve been happy to eat garlic prawns again, but Jac made peri peri prawns instead, using the jar of Nando’s peri peri seasoning we bought ages ago. Once again she cooked the prawns to perfect burstiness. It’s really difficult not to be grabby when presented with something like this! :D

She also made a garden salad, and oven-roasted cubes of sweet potatoes to go in it.

Besides the sweet potatoes, I loved the asparagus. Such a treat to have fresh blanched asparagus in a salad at home.

Jac had envisaged a “surf and surf” – fish and prawns. She panfried John dory filets that she’d rubbed in seasoned flour.

Jac also oven baked some seasoned potato slices.

Jac bought a tub of antipasto mix from the supermarket deli to take along to her last hockey match – her team mates planned to have drinks and nibblies afterwards – but in the end she wasn’t well and didn’t go, and so we decided to just throw this in for dinner.

I deliberately avoided the olives in the antipasto mix, of course. But the sundried tomatoes and chargrilled eggplant were fantastic. I was very greedy with that eggplant. You may have noticed my fish is sitting in a sauce on the plate – it’s a cream and sage sauce Jac whipped up.

I met up with my friend Chad for breakfast last month at Bar One, in the QV1 complex in the city. Please excuse the quality of the photos – it was very dark in there (besides steam from hot food, TFP’s other photography enemy is darkness!). Chad ordered poached eggs with toast. Once again, I looked at the poached eggs and was instantly reminded of a certain part of male anatomy. This has happened before when I’ve looked at poached eggs. O_O*

I ordered the pancakes with vanilla, cream and maple syrup with caramelised banana. Rather than “pancakes”, I received one large fluffy pancake, sliced in two. The other half is obscured in the photo, but I assure you, I did have a whole pancake on the plate.

Whenever I order pancakes, I like to order a side of bacon to make my favourite breakfast meal – pancakes with maple syrup and bacon. It’s even better if there’s caramelised banana, which I love, and cream, which I also love.

Here’s my plate with the bacon – now THAT looked much better! I was overjoyed (and immediately guilt-ridden, as I knew I would eat it all) to discover that the cream dolloped on top was thick, luscious double cream. Most of the time when I’m given cream with pancakes, it’s simply whipped single cream, not the thick, indulgent stuff. It was soooo good. And what I love about double cream is it doesn’t melt as quickly as single cream. So I was able to take photos to my heart’s content without the blob of cream losing its shape and liquidising before my very eyes. This was so good.

A few weeks ago, we had my friend Chad and her boyfriend J over for a Sunday roast lunch. Jac loves cooking for guests, and she cooked up a feast featuring two roasts and lots of vegetables. This was the roast leg of pork, complete with salty, crunchy crackling.

Jac peeled the crackling off the meat before handing me a knife so I could chop it into smaller pieces. They don’t call it “crackling” for nothing!

A beautiful sight – a dish of crunchy fresh bite-sized pieces of pork crackling. Does pork crackling call your name too? :)

Jac also cooked an Inghams turkey thigh roast, the same sort we’ve had before at Christmas (see turkey thigh roast from Christmas 2008). This is one of my favourite roast meats – EVER. The meat is deliciously seasoned, succulent and juicy. It’s got a little fat through it, as well as the skin all around it – it tastes fantastic.

I couldn’t wait to try the roast pork either. It smelled unbelievably good.

Jac arranged the carved roast pork and turkey on a platter, garnished with roasted chilli peppers.

Jac had roasted lots of vegetables too, which she tossed in the pork drippings so they’d be extra delicious – potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, carrots and whole onions.

She also steamed green beans and broccoli.

To go with the pork, Jac made some apple sauce.

She also made gravy using some of the roast meat juices with a little help from Gravox gravy powder. I have since decided I have to stay away from instant gravies – I always end up with an insatiable thirst that lasts for days afterwards.

Jac bought some bake-at-home white bread rolls too. They were lovely, freshly ovenbaked, crusty on the outside and warm, soft and fluffy on the inside with a little butter.

So here’s my plate, round one. I’m not usually a fan of fruit sauces with roast meats, but for the sake of the photo I decided to have a little of Jac’s homemade apple sauce with the roast pork. You know what? It was delicious! I think I’ll be more willing to have roast pork with apple sauce from now on. Everything tasted as good – no, even better than it looked. I’m so lucky Jac is such an amazing cook. And the great thing is, she really enjoys cooking – so it’s a win-win for her as well as me (the cook, as well as the glutton)!

I’d volunteered to make dessert, and I made tiramisu. Just before serving, I grated dark chocolate over the top.

I was a little over-enthusiastic with the coffee + marsala on the sponge fingers – they were soggier than they should’ve been, but the coffee flavour was really good, with not too much taste of booze. I was pleased with how creamy, smooth and light the marscapone / custardy layers turned out.

I arrived first, and helped D bring the afternoon tea things out to the wooden table on the patio.

We had iced cookies and a very walnutty loaf. There was lovely soft butter to spread on the loaf.

D also put together a cheese, nuts and fruit platter, with seedless grapes, rockmelon, apricots and kiwifruit.

We ate the cheese with cracked black pepper crackers (I also ate buttered crackers – yum). I’m not sure what the orange cheese was called, but I ate quite a bit of it – it was rather tasty!

I love grilled or barbecued haloumi cheese, so I was chuffed to see our starter dish cooking on the barbie.

Soon, we could hear the sizzle of haloumi turning golden-brown on the hotplate. It smelled great!

I ate the last piece of prosciutto-wrapped haloumi – lucky me! :)

To go with our barbecue meats, S made a couple of salads. First, this beetroot salad. Regular TFP readers will know I don’t like beetroot, so not surprisingly, I didn’t touch this salad. But Jac loves beetroot, ate loads of this salad, and loved it. From memory, I believe there was beetroot, carrot, and apple among other things in there.

S also made a spinach, pear, walnut and shaved parmesan salad.

I did my usual thing of hanging around the barbecue / cook, so I could get some shots of the food cooking on the barbie. Here are the chicken thighs and hamburger patties.

The last of the meats to go on the barbie were the marinated lamb chops. I didn’t just stand there snapping pictures and getting in our barbecue cook D’s way! We talked about my new job and mobile phones – he showed me his new Blackberry Bold. I’d been thinking about mobile phones ever since having a play with C’s new Nokia E71 at breakfast – and C, it was after playing with the Blackberry Bold that I made my decision to buy the Nokia (bought it the very next day!). Not that there was anything really wrong with the Blackberry Bold – it’s just that the E71 felt better in my hand in terms of size, and what can I say? I’m a true blue Nokia girl.

By the time we sat down to eat, the light was fading fast. I grabbed myself a chicken thigh, a lamb chop and some spinach salad, squirted myself a blob of tomato sauce for dipping, and tucked in.

Chad ordered the eggs benedict, with the hollandaise sauce on the side. She enjoyed the dish, but I think two toasted English muffins were a bit too much.

I ordered the french toast, which is served with maple syrup. So why am I showing you this plate of bacon? Haha, those of you who know the eating habits of TFP will know how much I love bacon with maple syrup. This was my side order of bacon to go with my french toast and maple syrup. :-D

I made some room on the plate and piled the bacon on, so I could enjoy my feast all on the same plate. Before digging in, I poured the maple syrup all over the bread and the bacon.

The french toast was lovely. Lightly dusted in cinnamon and caramelised to golden-brown perfection, the bread itself was soft and eggy without being too soggy.

My favourite way to eat bacon is probably with maple syrup. Add sweet eggy French toast, and it’s just heaven. Why can’t bacon and maple syrup be ‘every day’ foods? Or even ‘every week’ foods? I didn’t lick the plate, but used the French toast tto mop up all the dregs of syrup. And I may have also wiped the plate ‘clean’ with a finger or two. Finger-sucking good.