Good eat!

I am amazed by the amount of food that I go through every week, and the amount spent on meat and greens. Oh yeah, I make sure I look after myself real well - by eating well. Well with fruits and vegs, I go for bargain, not cheap one but specials price with reasonably acceptable quality. As for my meat, I go for decent quality, now price here isn't really the concern. The bulk buy of scotch fillets and porterhouse from Coles are just horrific! Tough as rubber, most of important of all the label doesn't tell you what grade they are. I opt to shop my meat with stand alone butcher stall, well at least I know what I am getting. My view is, with meat, I get what I pay for, especially with seafood.

I filled up my orange trolley fairly quickly and I only met half the requirement of my shopping list. Had to use one of this green bag for rather fragile stuff like breads, tofu etc, and that, was filled up pretty quickly too. Bloody bus journey is a pain especially when it's peak hours. Me and my plumped trolley, a full green bag, and a school bagpack. I must have carried like 15 kgs stuff from Central Market to home. Sure, I miss the convenience of driving a car. But I feel like I am living the way I am supposed to live, as a student, or even as a person. What are we without a personal car today? Probably an easily irritated person, perhaps we would whine like we sing. Yeah well, if we all just endure the inconvenience (which is a managable one), we be fine. The key word here is to endure. I am challenging myself to see how far I can be pushed, my aim is to increase my threshold for irritants (both things and people), something that once I lacked of, which almost ruined me.

Home. Unpacked. Organized.

Happy pan on the stove, splash of olive oil, while the pan's heating, button mushrooms were cleaned and quatered. Garlics, plenty of garlics sliced. Smoky pan, time to lay down the yearling (cattle that's just 1 year old) porterhouse, in it went, sizzled, good grind of sea salt and black pepper, let the meat seared, untouched. Another pan on the stove, went the sliced garlic, good splashed of olive oil, in the mushrooms and sauteed away. Quick check on my porterhouse, nicely colored, beauty, turned so the other side get seared too, right on with another good grind of S&P. Eye sight left the steak, onto the mushrooms, a quick toss, movement nice and smooth, popped the cap of Shaoxing wine, a generous splash into the mushrooms, let deglazed, beautiful beautiful aroma from this humble yellow rice wine, added couple of tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, seanoned well. Steak was taken off the stove and let rested while mushrooms' been transfered into a small pot to be slowly braised. Left them alone while I put on another pan for a side spinach. Turned around to clean and wash my chinese spinach, snapped off the end bits, a quick wash under the tap, the pan heated up in matter of seconds, in the sliced garlic and O.O, broke the bunch of spinach in half with hands, right into the hot wok, sizzled, the residual water on the spinach created steam that helped cooking it. Done! spinach was cooked in the matter of 5 seconds. By now, steak is well rested, mushrooms was softened, sauced nicely reduced.
Everything went on simultaneously, the entire cooking process just took me 15 minutes.

Nothing can beat a dinner like this..no muck around, just the fresh ingredients cooked simple way. I Mmmmm-ed all the way through my meal, absolutely divined! Washed everything down with a nice cold bottle of beer. Ah... all those troubles in the markets.. worth it now.

Good food, really is, the best medicine.