salad with passion fruit dressing

this was ad hoc. i couldn't put the leaves back in the fridge, err.. actually i didn't want to coz i didn't have dinner. so i had baby spinach and Red Coral lettuce. i had 3 passion fruit at hand, but i needed protein somehow. Well, i have ham? Hmm, but i didn't want repeats since it's going to be for tomorrow's menu. Checked the fridge and i found my bag of bonito flakes and some leftover walnuts!


so my ad hoc salad consist of these:

1) walnuts
2) red coral lettuce
3) baby spinach
4) bonito flakes


the dressing is made of these:

1) passion fruit
2) 1 teaspoon of honey
3) QP Chuka dressing which consists of sesame seed oil, vinegar and some other stuff and something spicy


incidentally, though i like passion fruit quite a bit, i have never exactly eat it from the actual fruit itself. so this was the first time. Guess what? i had problem cutting it open. Apparently, though the outer layer of skin is quite tough, the inner layer is a bed of cushion for the flesh and seeds! so interesting! i have seen how the innards look like, but today is the first time i see the whole fruit in its entirety! so cool!

this is how a passion fruit looks like.. before it's being cut

after it's being cut

after it's being emptied

i tasted the juice which dripped, it's pretty sour so i knew i needed some sweetness to it if i am going to make it into a sauce. i had honey, one teaspoon is really sufficient (well, for me at least coz my level of sourish tolerance is quite high). thereafter, i added the Japanese salad dressing to give it more oomph. mix them nicely together and then drizzled on top of the salad. i gave the leaves and walnuts with the dressing a toss and finally added the bonito flakes.

the salad leaves

prepping the dressing

close to completion

here's the bonito salad with passion fruit dressing!

my conclusion? Surprisingly, the whole salad is very refreshing and quite yummy. The savoury bonito flakes with its little bit of burnt smell, mixed together with the crunchy red coral leaves and the more intense taste of the baby spinach gave the whole salad a lot of texture. with that little bit of sourish and slightly wettish dressing gives the salad quite a punch. best of all, the seeds of the passion fruit gives that crispy bite in every mouthful.


hmm.. one thing though, it feels like i am eating yummy paper.. err you know what i mean right?? Bonito flakes have that papery feel to it! hee hee.

Sandwich breakie to beat the Monday Blues

due to yesterday's overwhelming heatwave which hit my head badly, i forgot to get a couple of ingredients from Jasons. After having kopi with LC and rojak sesh at OAR she tompang me to Parkway Cold Storage. Price difference between Jasons and CS is about 30 cents. I bought the following in the supermart.


1) Philly Smoked Salmon cheese spread (which i totally heart for the longest time)
2) Honey Baked Ham
3) Royal White Bread by Gardenia
4) Passion fruit


I bought all my salad leaves yesterday. Romania, baby spinach and Red Coral lettuce.


my plan for Monday was to make sandwiches and a side salad to accompany it. i found out later, i was too ambitious, i've plucked too many romania lettuce leaves and the whole sandwich got more leaves than ham even though i've already put in two slices. Actually, the 'butcher' at Cold Storage gave me the different one which i wanted. they apparently had two types of honey baked ham, i guess the ones i wanted was the shaved ones. Reason for choosing the shaved ones is coz they are lighter? can anyhow arrange? and gives you different amount of ham in a mouthful. i dunno why i so polite, i actually ok-ed that he gave me the nicely sliced ones.. arghh... i feel so like a 'carrot' again.. tmd!


the photos documents the whole process. not easy to take pics and make the sandwich within a short span of time to ensure the freshness of the ham. Somehow, i managed. Off to the pictorials.

Romania lettuce, mini plum tomatoes, Philly smoked salmon cheese spread and honey baked ham

Gardenia's take on thick Japanese bread?

spreaded just enough cheese to cover the entire two thick slices of bread

stacking 'em up!

err, see what i mean that lettuce more than ham? i omitted the salad and made it into dinner

i think i don't have to eat lunch tomorrow. oh another reason why i wanted to make the sandwich? So that i don't become 'carrot' again and get 'chopped' by Simply Sandwich coz something like that may have cost erm $7??.. :p

obsessed with DIY salad

okay, i have been making salad for breakie for the last couple of mornings. hmm.. is it an obsession or is it just plain therapeutic? i don't know.. i just know that the trips to the supermarket has resulted in a variety fruits, vege and meat being bought.


today i saw cheap blueberries (pity they were sour though), fresh looking wild rocket in that you don't see any rotten bits here and there, and i bought oak leaves lettuce too! I kinda mistaken them for buttercup lettuce initially. Cold Storage also had smoked virgina ham on sale! so i just had to buy the stuff and bring 'em home to fully utilize my remaining coral lettuce, pessimons and tomatoes. didn't add pomegranate this time as blueberry itself has anti-oxidant too. i will the pomegranate for another time. all these grocery shopping due to picking up a pair of altered pants from Isetan Mango. Fortunately, i didn't succumbed to temptation and went for laksa instead from my fave stall. i decided no way i am going to do that coz i just finished hip hop class earlier..


so any with cheap and good ingredients, i made my breakie for tomorrow. i am torn between using the onion dressing or the kurozu dressing.. hmm.. i will prolly use the latter and then also add Parmesan cheese!

i like the appetizing colours. and i had to take this shot coz of the design of the plastic bowl!!

hee can't wait for the salad tomorrow!! :D

here's my Thursday breakie upclose! TGIT!!

salad for breakie

decided to prep some salad for tomorrow's breakie and to de-stress a bit. still feeling the woes of the week that passed and the horrid weather sure aint making things any better. i feel close to giving up. unfortunately, i can't. sad and harsh reality of life. sighz, i still feel depress. wonder how soon i can rid or move myself off this phase which seldom make its appearance these days.


no wonder i have problems getting rid of it..


anyway, off to salad. i discovered coral lettuce recently. i much prefer the purplish ones as they have more punch, flavour and are slightly savoury with a tad of bitterness when it touches the ends of your tongue before you swallow. i made a smaller version yesterday sans the pear. and because the season of korean strawberries is over (don't bother with the aussie or the amercian ones coz they are never as sweet) i thought my anti oxdiant supplies were gone too. Fortunately, the appearance of pomegranates saved my day!

Coral lettuce in vibrant green and brownish purple?

i have a love hate relationship with pomegranates. love it coz the ruby reds of smallish seeds are packed with loads of juice when i crunch them with my molars. reward comes in the form of sweet juice and it's always refreshing with it's slight acidic taste.

the entire ingredients

hate it coz to get the seeds out are not entirely the easiest thing to do. i am a perfectionist when it comes to getting the seeds off their soft bed of cushion. i hate it when the seeds bursts and the juice pops out when not inside my mouth. so i am always careful and make sure they are perfect. as such, it takes a lot of time to completely get all the seeds out. thereafter, yellowish residue will stain my fingers and will take ages to get rid. but well, it's all worth it for the yummy bursts of natural sweetness.

the final product

am contemplating if i should add cheese. i most definitely will if i have time in the morning tomorrow which i highly doubt i'd have any. dressing which goes best with this is the japanese onion dressing. it highly compliments the coral lettuce. great to start the day with yummy breakie and healthy too!

strawberries & cabbage salad

hmm.. had the same thing today, had my DSLR ready, so i decided to take some pics.

cut strawberries on top of a bed of cabbage

the uber tasty kurozu dressing!

After adding the dressing.. yum yum

after tossing the salad.. now it's ready to be eaten! :D

beans

hmmm.. contemplating if i should announce this..


i am officially... a fan of natto (japanese fermented beans)!! okie, to some people it's some kind of acquired taste to be able to appreciate it. the first time i tried it, i didn't like the taste nor smell. it was only due to my recent visit to Shinryoku that i fell in love with it.


i like it better than the chinese fermented beans (which people stirfry with minced meat and use it for other stuff) coz it's less salty, less likely to disintegrate easily when you bite it, it has this sticky texture which i like and most of all, it is one thing which makes me think of wanting to eat one bowl of sticky japanese rice with. these days, rice isn't exactly a staple for me.


i ate it with salmon again, but this time better salmon. i must also say that i added a new type of sauce into the mixture and everything went really well together. the natto is not so stinko (though to me, it smell all right) and makes it really sticky. yum yum, fun fun! haha


which brings me to the next thing that i wanna talk about. on Sat, i bought this Japanese salad dressing from Cold Storage. It's called 'Kurozu Dressing Onion'. At first, i didnt wanna get it coz i'm not exactly a fan of onion. however, after testing it on my simple salad, it's damn shiok and brings out the taste of the simple salad!! how simple is the salad? well, you only need 3 things.


Korean strawberries (sliced)
Cabbage (thinly cut/chopped/sliced)
Kurozu Dressing Onion (add according to your own preference)


I used Korean strawberries because they are sweeter and it adds a natural sweetness to the salad. The cabbage used was any cabbage you can find in markets. After chopping the cabbage into thin strips, you'd have a bowl full of cabbage and then put the sliced strawberries on top of the bed. drizzle the dressing on the cabbage and strawberries.


the dressing is slightly oily, sour, flavorful and brings out the sweetness from the strawberries even more. i guess it must be due to the onion in the sauce as well. i was surprised that the simple salad tasted awfully good!! Love it entirely and i will continue to buy this brand of dressing. it is very promising :D i can imagine using this sauce for so many other stuff!! For a price of $8.50 i think it's pretty worth it!


no wonder that bottle which i got was the last one.. hmm.. cool! Pictures next time i guess.. i didnt think of taking a pic of the dishes today. too tired and lazy!! haha, it's a work day after all!!

more things japanese

so i went grocery shopping earlier on. no plans as to exactly what i wanted to get, but i knew i wanted to get greens and lady's fingers were on top of my mind. so i ended up getting a couple of greens, canned tomatoes from HUNT's and i also got salmon sashimi as well as natto.


the taste of the maguro natto lingered so much in my mind that i so wanted to try more of it. i was just worried the kind of natto i was buying, didn't know if they tasted the same or are there any different. so i went to Cold Storage to check it out and realised that there were only two brands. one with the funny japanese doll face and another one nicely packed into 3 cups, organic and i dunno if it's because it's pretty green packaging attracted me to buy more than anything else, in the end i just got it. hoping it would taste exactly like the one i tasted the other day.


it's simple enough to make. coz everything was already prepped, you just need to mix everything together.

the green cup, came in a set of 3

the sticky natto!! see those silky strands!?

the super yummy soy sauce. so flavourful and not overly salty

the mediocre salmon sashimi.. haha..

i didnt take a pic of the final product in view of the fact that it is not very pleasant to look at. but it tastes delish enough and pretty yummy. i added a dash of lemon juice coz the salmon came with a slice of lemon and added the soy sauce in the sashimi set, with some wasabi as well.


ultimately, i think natto tasted better with maguro than salmon. but i am surprised that the natto itself is pretty good. hmm.. a good addiction for the new year i gather?? Haha..