Stuffed Cabbage

I am honestly never a big fan of cabbage. White cabbage, red cabbage, whatever cabbage, it's simply not my favourite veggie. My mother used to tell me that cabbage gives nothing but water (not sure what's the truth in that) but my disliking cabbage comes from its bland taste. Unlike carrots that have sweetness or tomatoes that are rather sour, cabbage just felt so... not special for me.

Until I watched French Food at Home by Laura Calder the other week. I was about half time late when I saw Laura making this Stuffed Cabbage. So the recipe I am sharing below won't be by-the-book one. It might be absolutely different in taste with the real Stuffed Cabbage since I substituted the pork mince with the beef mince. But according to the French guy in the family, the dish was an absolute delish! How is that coming from a guy who doesn't like veggies?

Anyhoo, he was right. It was super tasty - and I am not being biased because it was my cooking. Remember that I was supposed to dislike cabbage. But it did indeed blow away my mind.

I also fell in love with the layers of cabbage and beef, not sure if you can see it in the pictures. If only I used the red cabbage as it actually should be, then maybe it'd look much more beautiful in presentation. But I'm telling you, this is already amazing!

You need to serve it on a plate with its delicious broth. Scatter it with fresh chopped scallions. Yumm...

Oh, and did you notice that I put some text on the pictures? It's because my annoying, but kind-hearted friend, Pyorr, said that I should protect my photos in any way possible. I actually used to do that a lot long time ago. But really, if people want to steal photos, they'll steal them. A mere text is so easy to erase with only stamp tool from Adobe Photoshop. But anyway, I think she had a point. If your house is in a thief-prone area, you'll put double locks, hire private security guards and put security cameras all around, right? There is still a chance that your house is going to get robbed, but at least you have put that much effort in protecting it. So, I'm watermarking my pictures from now on, though I still think it makes them uglier. :P

Enough babbling! Here goes the recipe.

Pork and Vegetable Stir Fry

I have been busy with so many different things lately that I couldn't be as systematic and organized as before. Not that I am THAT systematic or organized. But I could do better. The reason is because I've been diversifying my works to keep me away from being bored of doing the same routine. However, they have all been coming to me altogether lately that my days were close to crazy. I did try to be organized with the works, though, by making a list of which is important, which is due sooner and which I can postpone. It seemed to work though I still couldn't manage to write long for the blogs.

However, I feel the need to update this food blog. It's been a while.

The good thing is although I've been busy with things, I still found time to cook. I view cooking as a relaxing as well as productive activity. I feel relaxed when I cook, as opposed to my mom who is always frantic in the kitchen. I wouldn't really blame her. She always puts too much pressure on herself than she should. She cooks literally everyday and there is no exception not to. Even when she took a vacation in Bali and stayed at my house, she was never far from the kitchen.

Anyway, during the time when I'm busy, I need to come up with something quick to cook. Like this Pork and Vegetable Stir Fry. It only takes minutes to cook and some more to do the prep. Anybody can do it.

Sweet Corn Salad with Cherry Tomatoes and Feta Cheese

I kind of like salad. As a matter of fact, I can really like salad. It's just when I have to order it in a restaurant, I'm often pretty fussy about it. Making it myself, however, is a completely different story. I can put whatever ingredients I like in there and how much sourness, freshness, sweetness or saltiness that I want.

Personally I like my salad somewhat salty with a bit of freshness and sourness. I love Italian mixed green salad, mostly organic because that's just where you can get the crunchiest loveliest greens. Some additional toasted nuts will be great to add some flavour and cheese is definitely a must. I prefer feta cheese to put in my salad, but shredded cheddar cheese will work as well. As we are now talking about cheese, I find it rather weird that the only place where I want some goat cheese is in a salad. Other than that, I pretty much hate goat cheese. I dislike its strong, strong smell and how it stays inhabiting my fridge for a while if the it's not finished quickly enough. Vincent likes goat cheese so much! He could eat it just like that with some toasted French bread. In the early months when he just moved here, he bought goat cheese almost every time we went out shopping for groceries. I remember how I was rather upset about it because this is one of the most expensive cheese in Bali and yet I couldn't enjoy it as he would! Anyway, put some goat cheese in your vegetable salad or sprinkle it on a tomato together with olive oil, salt and pepper and put it in the oven for a few minutes, it will transform the low profile salad into a posh, most delicious salad ever!

The reason why I am talking about salad is because I just ate one for lunch. A very nice one, if I may add. I originally wanted to make dadar jagung - Indonesian mashed corn cake, but I found out that I ran out of eggs. It had been raining the whole day today so I couldn't go out and buy some eggs either. My stomach was growling angrily and I had to think fast what to do with my sweet corns I just bought a few days ago.

So I came up with this Sweet Corn Salad with Cherry Tomatoes and Feta Cheese. I could have made my normal, full-of-nutrition lunch dish I usually had, but Vincent and I just bought a bathroom scale yesterday so that we could watch our weight and be alarmed if it got too much. He needs to lose weight in a month due to his gastritis condition and I just want my once J-Lo's body back. Okay, I am not that ambitious. Kate Winslet's body is alright too for me.

I did think that I lost some weight when Vincent was in Vietnam. But now that he's back, I eat normally again (when I was alone, I could eat whenever I wanted and there were only a few times that I actually felt hungry). I suppose that's what causes my 60.4 kg weight as proven down here, despite my diligence in having Wii fitness and yoga training!

I swear last night it was only 59 kgs!

I'm actually not overweight with my 157 cms height. But I'm in the borderline between slim and fat with more tendency to fat. And to compare this 60.4 kgs with my once-steady-highschool-and-college weight of 45 kgs, this is a sad fact! So, I've made up my mind to at least lose 5 kgs in the next month. I'll do the Wii exercise everyday and eat more healthy foods. If Vincent protests because I am serving grass on his plate - his reference to green salad - he can be disappointed as he wants. :P

Anyway, enough rambling. Here is my lovely sweet corn salad with cherry tomatoes and feta cheese recipe. It's great to eat with crunchy garlic bread and fruit juice for lunch. This makes one portion.

Lazy Sunday Lunch

This is my not-quite new invention in preparing easy lunch that features a fusion between Indonesian and Western food. A perkedel sosis (fried mashed potato with sausage) and buttered peas and bacon.