Monday, November 14, 2011

Daring Cook's October Challenge - Cooking with Tea


dinner! with pan fried shiitake mushroom crusted salmon


Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.

Oh man. This was such a good challenge. I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't give it a proper attempt. It was such a busy month with so many tests that was just swirling by every 2 days. On a brighter note, I PASSED MY OPERATIVE EXAMS! *throws confetti into the air* Operative is about the handiwork component of Dentistry, where we drill cavities and then fill them up with restorative material like tooth colored composite or amalgam fillings. It's my greatest fear for this year and I am glad that I've managed to overcome this portion of my undergraduate studies.

Nonetheless, that's not much excuse for not cooking with tea since I've got to eat and I've been stir frying lotsa other stuff instead. I've initially wanted to go for Cha Soba, making Japanese buckwheat noodles with the addition of matcha (green tea) but there just wasn't enough time to sit down and knead some noodles. One thing led to another and well, its the reveal date and I've yet to cook any tea related food. So I've decided to wing it and cook plain Soba noodles and tea dipping sauce.


soba with black tea and ginger dipping sauce

Not as good as it sounds. This is one of those things that looked better than it tasted. And it doesn't even look good either. Not much of a lighting I've got here at night. =(

The taste was, well... erm... weird. I used some Lipton black tea with a ginger slice. I added some soy sauce and mirin into the concoction and was hoping that it'll taste umami-ish but the mirin was just...... BLEGH. I should have added in some sugar in hindsight, as that would have balanced out the vinegar taste of mirin much more. Sigh!

The accompaniment fared much better though. It was a pan fried shiitake mushroom crusted salmon with teriyaki sauce. YUM! Double YUM! The shiitake was subtle but absolutely yummy and the teriyaki sauce went really well with it! =D Pity it wasn't really well cooked though URGH first time pan frying a salmon. Will do better next time!


not that well cooked. =(

No recipe though, since it was a tea challenge and I've failed in that aspect. Gah! On another note, new plates! =D

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