Tomato Sauce

Food with tomato sauce was not my top choices when eating at restaurants. Because the flavor of tomato are too much too be real tomato flavor. After cooking Bolognese Lasagna, I found out… YES… The really tomato sauce should be like this, a mild tomato flavor with light tomato color. And  it is very scrumptious. Everyone cooks it in different ways. Here is one of my ways to cook it.

 

Recipe: Serve 5~6 people

 

Steps

(1) Heat up the vegetable oil in a big saucepan. Then, put some chili pepper in. Stir around 1 minute.

(2) Then, add chopped garlic cloves into the pan. Cook around 3 minutes to let the oil full of garlic flavor.
(3) Add the quartered tomatoes into the pan. Stir a little bit to let the oil cover the tomatoes. Cover the lid and cook around 10 minutes until it starts to become very soft.

(4) Add the chopped onion and carrots into the pan. Stir it with tomato. Boil it until tomato start to juice.

(5) Pick chili peppers out. Use a kitchen blender to blend all ingredients. Then, put chili pepper back.
(Selena’s Kitchen Talk: If you love spicy food, it is definitely okay to blend chili pepper with other ingredients.)

(6) Add 2 table spoons of tomato puree and 1 table spoon of soy sauce into the pan.

(7) Simmer it around 60~90 minutes until it turns thick.

(8) Add some sea salt and black pepper to taste

 
I have discussion with my friends that homemade sauces won’t have a very strong color like sold at jar. But, the taste is much better than those. Then, why would we like to buy them? Because of beautiful color? Or, very convenient? I am not sure if I could cook or bake every day after going back to work. But, I would like to try.

It is a very yum tomato sauce that I use this sauce to cook pasta, risotto, roast meal or anything you want. Enjoy it.

Lemon Curd

I never know what Lemon Curd is until I am here, in the UK. Though Lemon Curd may be not so popular like other jams in the world, it is a very useful sauce for lots of desserts. For example, like lemon tart, Lemon-meringue pie. Or, some people just spread lemon curd over bread, scones, waffles. Unlike custard, cooking lemon curd does not use milk so that the taste is smoother. Some people use lemon curd as an alternative to jam at afternoon tea because of it fresh and light. So, try it, if you didn’t have this before.

Recipe: Around 200 ml

 

 

Steps of Lemon Curd

(1) Slice butter into the cubes. Place it in a big bowl. Put the bowl on the top of the boiling water. Please don’t let the bottom of the bowl touching the boiling water.
(2) Add sugar in. Stir butter and sugar until they are melted.
(3) Add lemon juice and zest into.

(4) Add eggs the bowl. Keep stirring it around 10~15 minutes until it turns thicken.

(Selena’s Kitchen Talk: If you think it is hot in the bowl now, please don’t put egg in. Leave the bowl out from the boiling water for a while. We don’t want to boil egg.)
(5) Then, leave at room temperature to cool down. Stir occasionally when cooling down.

Salted Caramel Custard

 

Custard sauce is a very useful sauce for dessert. For some cakes, like crumble cake, you can eat with it. For some desserts, like swiss roll, you can wrap custard sauce in. For some desserts, like magic cake, you make custard as part of cake. I think the reason we like custard is because we love the silky and creamy flavor in our mouth.

I did salted caramel custard for my swiss roll. Though I don’t mind the double cream, too much cream will be too over for me. Then, I think, why not wrap custard sauce in?

Recipe: Around 300 ml

                                
 Salted Caramel Sauce Link

 

Step

(1) Prepare a saucepan. Heat up milk by small heat

(2) Add egg yolks into the milk. Whisk the yolks into the milk
(3) Add sugar, flour and corn starch into milk mixture gradually. Mix everything well before adding more.

(4) Add salted caramel sauce into the pan. Mix it. Keep whisking it when simmering it. Cook it until it turns thick. Then, switch off the heat.

(Selena’s Kitchen Talk: When it starts to turn thick, I’ll switch off the heat. I’ll use the heat left in the pan to cook it. If we switch off the heat too late, it might overcook.)