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What I ate

    what i ate

    Test Kitchen: Shaved Brussels Sprouts With Walnuts, Lemon and Parmesan

    Y’all know that I absolutely LOVE testing and posting up recipes on the blog, but I’m sure it’s not as obvious that each recipe that I put up goes through hours of research, testing, a myriad of different versions, and agonising decisions regarding how it should look.

    I usually start with either a craving or ingredients that I have in my kitchen, and then do tons of research to try and find interesting things to create with it. Sometimes I try out a pre-written recipe to start off with, or sometimes I start throwing things together and go from there.

    Well, once in a while, a recipe just doesn’t go quite right, or just plum doesn’t work out the way you want it to!

    Recently, I had bought a whole bunch of brussels sprouts on special at the green grocers, but had some left over after using them as part of a roast. So what now?

    I found this nice looking idea on Gourmet Traveller – a simple salad of shaved brussels sprouts, with toasted walnuts to add depth, parmesan to add flavour, and just lemon juice to dress it. Some versions of this recipe online also had olive oil to add moisture.

    So of I went, to shred those tiny cabbage-looking sprouts. I do love a good slaw, in many variations, so I was similarly excited about this particular salad. After all, in my research, there were many who described it as a more delicate cabbage-y flavour.

    Well, no matter what I did, this salad was dry, and had a somewhat astringent after-quality to it. Even adding olive oil didn’t do much in terms of lubrication. The brussels sprouts themselves had a light, peppery quality to it, similar to rocket, and that went quite well with the toasted walnuts and parmesan. But I couldn’t quite get around the texture issue. Adding more lemon juice made it super sour and seemed to accentuate the dry texture, and adding more parmesan just made it worse.

    In all, it was a promising recipe, but didn’t quite work out.

    How about you? Have you had any disappointing recipes that you couldn’t quite figure out?

  • what i ate

    What I ate: Crab Salad Roll

    You know that time of the week where you have spare cooked crab meat in your fridge? No? You don’t? You ate it all? Well I usually do too, but I was convinced for…

  • A cheat's way to enjoy Singapore Chilli Crab without all of the work!
    what i ate

    What I ate: Cheat’s Chilli Crab Pasta

    Whenever I mention that I’m from Singapore, the first thing I get asked is, “Do you make Singapore Chilli Crab?” Well, the answer is that I don’t yet, but in the meantime, I totally…

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    What I ate: Fish en papillote

    I’ve been interning at some food jobs lately – chase that dream! – and I’ve been taking home HEAPS of leftovers. Some of these leftovers are in the form of raw ingredients, and you…

  • what i ate

    What I ate: Berry and yoghurt parfait

    The lazy, rainy weekend is over, and Monday morning rolls around. I begrudgingly get out of bed and make all the appropriate noises and mumbles about wanting to get back in. Then my tummy…

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    What I ate: Shredded lamb pasta

    So I had a satisfying roasted lamb over the weekend, but seeing as how I roasted a whole 2+kg lamb shoulder, I was bound to have leftovers. Well, waste not want not, and I…