Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Happy Anniversary!!!


My hubby & I celebrated our 8 year anniversary on the 28th. We decided to just stay home and cook dinner ourselves. For brunch my husband wanted spam fried rice. **Don't knock it if you haven't tried it alright?** Like my profile says, i'm an island girl and proud of it=)
I thought we had a can in the cupboard but we didn't, so he didn't mind me making it with Chinese Sausage, since he loves that stuff and we had it already in the fridge. I made the fried rice the exact same way I would with the spam.
Ingredients for fried rice
My ingredients:
3 cups cooked cold white rice (I like to use jasmine rice).
1/2 medium onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic
2 carrots, diced tiny
1 cup peas
6 Chinese Sausage, diced
sliced green onions for finishing
3 eggs
salt
pepper
soysauce

*its really up to you how much eggs, sausage, carrots, or peas you want. Taste as you go along cooking. You will find what tastes right for you. I couldn't tell you how much soysauce I put, I just had to taste the rice. In the photo, I had only cut up 4 sausages, I ended up cutting 2 more and adding it to the rice because it didn't taste like there was enough. 
Instructions:
  • Turn on stove to high heat. Add a tablespoon of oil in a large frying pan or wok. 
  • When hot, add the diced sausage and cook for about 1-2 minutes, stirring often. Some fat will be rendered from it. 
  • Add the onions and garlic. Cook for another 1-2 minutes, until the onions are almost transparent. 
  • Add the carrots and peas. Cook and stir for about 1 minute. Add salt and pepper. 
mixing it together
  • Add the cold rice, breaking it up in the pan and stirring. Do this for about 2-3 minutes until you've taken all the clumps out and the rice has been thoroughly mixed in the pan. 

Eggs
  • Make a well in the middle of the pan and add your eggs. Add salt and pepper.Mix the eggs first with your spatula and work your way outside to the rice. Turn the heat down to medium. Keep mixing for about 2 minutes until the eggs cook into the rice.
  •  Add your soysauce. I would add 1 tablespoon of soy first, mix then taste and see if you need some more. Turn the heat off when your satisfied with the flavor. Add your green onions and mix and your done! 
Chinese sausage fried rice
I plated the rice in a heart shape. Yeah, i'm crazy like that...hehehe. It was our anniversary.

Now for Dinner~


Anniversary dinner
One inch thick filet mignon and roasted corn. There was supposed to be roasted zucchini too but it was one of those big zucchini's that got too big that it started having that fibrous stuff and it didn't taste right. Make sure you get the small zucchini if your going to grill it. I tossed it before we took the picture. Were still not experts in grilling. Our filets were still rare after being on the grill for 8 minutes on each side. We put it back on the grill for maybe another 8 minutes and mine came out medium well. My hubby's came out medium. It still tasted pretty good since its an expensive cut of meat. I usually like my meat cooked medium. At least dessert turned out FABULOUS! Creme Brulee!
Yummy!
Look at that candy crust and creamy custard!!! Seriously yummy! 
After trolling around the net for a good recipe, I found it on FoodNetwork. I searched and got this 5 star recipe from Tyler Florence. This recipe is really a heart attack on a ramekin. Full fat, everything, it is sinfully good. Don't tell your doctor. Or mine for that matter. 

Ingredients for creme brulee
Here are the ingredients. Not many, but all baaaaad for your body. But I promise you, the finished product will make your palate sing. Oh, by the way...before you make this, you should look up recipes that require egg whites because you don't use any of it in this recipe.
Putting it all together.
Thats 9 egg yolks, superfine sugar, and vanilla beans..all ready to get mixed up.

mixing in the milk.
Tempering the eggs with the hot milk (heavy whipping cream). Just like with the custard pie, add it slowly and keep stirring so the eggs don't cook! Very, very, very important!

Ready for the oven.
Ready for the oven. Hot water already added, make sure the water is about 1/2 the height of the ramekin.
Out of the oven.
Out of the oven to cool completely.

Making the candy crust.
You can't really see it, but i'm burning the sugar. The flame is on the top right of this photo. If anyone has any tips on how to torch the tops without burning the sugar or leaving sugar crystals please let me know. I think I only did 2 perfectly, but we ate them all anyway...Not in one night (although i'm sure we could have if we didn't feel so guilty about how bad it was for us) make sure you refrigerate it first before eating.....and, we finished with this:
Apple Ice Wine
We got it at the Duty Free on the US/Canadian border. It came in a nice wooden box, so we bought it, thinking it looked nice, it must taste nice too. We should've known that it wasn't a winner since it was on SALE. Oh well, we will just have to stick to Covey Run's Semillon Ice Wine...whenever we can find it. I think we had a good 8 year anniversary=) Our tummy's were really happy. 
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