Bacon Cheeseburger

For my friends over at their respective countries, i have experimented some recipes that have worked and hence i think it'd be pretty safe for you guys to try and make them, last saturday i was grocery shopping and so happened to chance upon some fresh ground beef, it struck me to make my own burgers, and so i did. Boy was it good, i marinated the beef with some wocestershire sauce, salt, pepper, a lil onions and garlic and onion powder, you could be more adventurous and use stuff like blue cheese in your beef, or maybe something like breadcrumbs, remember to use some oil or butter to bind the beef, you don't want your patties to crumble apart while eating!

Bacon Cheeseburger

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef (75 pct lean for full flavour)
1 tsp worcestershire sauce
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup onions, depending on your taste
Salt and pepper to taste
4 Slices of Cheese
1 Whole onion, sliced
2 Tbsp BBQ sauce
2 Tbsp Soy sauce
4 Tbsp Real Mayonnaise
1 Package maple smoked bacon (any bacon would do fine)

1. Mix the ground beef, worcestershire, onion and garlic powder and chopped onions, form into patties

2.Preheat the oven to 450F

3.Now using the bacon, 'wrap' the beef patty and then place in the oven, this is to allow the bacon fat to seep into the meat, a technique known as basking which gives the beef more flavour

4.Next, heat a pan till very hot, place the bacon slices and cook. Do not add oil for the bacon grease will 'leak'

5. Use the bacon grease to stir fry the sliced whole onion, add the BBQ sauce and soy sauce, add more if still not flavourful

6. Now, butter your burger buns, place the mayonnaise, layer with cheese and bacon, place the patty over, layer with the sauteed onions and finally top it off with another slice of cheese

7.ENJOY!!

Ruby Tuesday

Damn how i hate myself, the thing about me that most people may realise is my health concious side, looking through nutritional information of the various foods in restaurants, making the correct and 'wise' dining choice while eating out and eventually, regret for not trying the house specialty. Screw it i did it again, this time it was at Ruby Tuesday, a chain restaurant serving classic American food such as steak and baby back ribs. My initial purpose was to try their house specialty, the colossal burger. This beast is double stacker burger with 1/2 pound of fresh USDA ground beef loaded with american and montery jack cheeses on 3 thick slices of buttered buns. Its stats: 1992 calories with almost 125g of fat, 85g the unhealthy saturated kinds, talk about a heart attack on a plate, here's a peek of how it looks like on picture..

Aint it a beauty, but the ridiculously retarded me went for the creole catch, which was a grilled tilapia served with seasonal vegetables(buttered) and mexican rice topped with cheddar cheese, though my meal was really good, my heart just didn't feel right, i felt that i had cheated myself of an experience, damn this was supposed to be a culinary adventure! Screw the fat man i can work it off when i return home, i will return to Ruby tuesday, and i swear that the Colossal burger will be CONQUERED!!!!! Happy times :)

Olive garden!!!

haha now time for new food review, ok although this isn't really appropriate for ppl living in singapore, i guess i'll still review this restaurant. Yesterday as part of the culinary expedition of america kelvin and i went to restaurante italiano Olive Garden, yeap, olive garden, most probably u guys wouldn't have heard of it b4 its coz its not even in Singapore, guess they only have it in the states. Anyway here family style restaurants are present in the thousands, so there's no fear of not being able to find food :)

Ok first up, appearance wise this place looks real decent, i mean look at this, its just a normal, affordable italian restaurant, compared to those fine dining italian restaurants in Singapore the designs are like 10times much better, just see it for yourself..



Next comes the food, for starters i had minestrone, a classic italian hearty broth infused with a medly of herbs and spices, in it were generous portions of both white and red kidney beans, pasta, tomatoes and other greens. It was delish, i mean every sip of this soup brings you to some happy playground, it didn't need any extra seasoning and had the right balance of most of the things you would expect in a nice hearty soup. Accompanying it came freshly baked garlic 'salted' bread, boy was it good, the crusty loaf would just crumble in your mouth, and the garlic salt didn't really spoil the bread, in fact it gave it a different dimension, just that oomph to enhance its characteristics..





















After that came the appetisers, had this special olive sampler platter, where one gets to choose and create their own appetiser platter, it was a unanimous decision: Stuffed mushrooms, toasted ravioli filled with beef and fried calamari. MAN WAS IT AWESOME, the mushrooms were stuffed generously with breadcrumbs and mozzarella, the ravioli was crisp and flavourful. My only concern was the fried calamari, given its reputation i was expecting something a little more spectacular, after all the chefs from olive garden are claimed to have graduated from the culinary institute of Tuscany.

Halfway through our appetisers came the main course, Kelvin had a seafood portofino, which was linguine in a lemon butter sauce tossed with mussels and shrimp, while i had Chicken Giardarno, which was grilled chicken tossed in a lemon herb cream sauce together with farfel pasta. Both pastas were cooked to al dente perfection, the chicken was moist, juicy and tender and the portions were generous, all elements of a good meal. Overall the experience here at Olive garden was good, though i'd better times in other restaurants, this would be considered as one of the better ones, and people thought that america was just about burgers.. Ciao!!

the end of days..

On the 14th april, which is last saturday, dear friend kelvin and i were walking along rhode island ave to work to retrieve our cultures when suddenly, we met two friendly people, a nice young lady and a nice young man. They addressed themselves as i dunno what, but clearly they had this nice holy aura floating around them. They explained to us about the world nowadays, and ppl succumbing to evil, and about the devil possessing people to do stupid things, how cute. Oh did i mention that they gave us brochures too? haha about how the devil started to manipulate mankind since the beginning of adam and eve's sad saga. Come to think of it, with so many things happening now, this may be true, and if it were, it means our time has come, the devils time has come.. HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHA \m/

gonna die..

man what a week it has been so far, my project is like somewhere, laying within a misty fog, not knowin whats coming up next nor how long it will take to complete it. Science is really a mystery, we spend so much time finding out the question to an answer, only to realise that there are more questions to be answered along the way, but as much as u would love to find out why stuff like these are happening, the focus is still on our main question, haha i guess you ppl wouldnt understand a single thing that i was saying, but like arvind says.. 'its ok, things happen..'

gonna spend the rest of my day outside grocery shopping today, havent had enuf time to blog about my culinary adventures, damn i wanna go eat something huge and cool so that i can post up here, anyway read up on my friend's blogs in aussieland and india, damn are those ppl seem like having a good time.. yea though i did go to places that i nv thought i would visit, such as the white house, but cmon man, CONCERTS!!! ABSINTHE!!! oh and we dont celebrate good friday here, what the hell's with this crazy country..

Hmmmm...

ok so now here's da recipes of some of the stuff here that im preparing for dinner everyday, might not look appetizing on the photos, but they do taste good in my opinion, so if ur game for it, have the extra time to spare, why not try getting some groceries from ur nearby NTUC or cold storage, if you can't find some of the listed ingredients on my recipes, try looking for them at the higher end supermarkets (i.e marketplace) and if you still cant find them, then tell me and i'll tell you the appropriate substitutes. ciao

ANGUS ANGUS ANGUS

ok for you fast food junkies out there in singapore, trust me, u havent seen nuthin yet in america. In a land where obesity conquers it is not surprising to see gargantuan portions of food served here, taste is kinda ok though( even though they keep specifying USDA approved beef), prolly slightly better than the ones served in singapore. Variety wise, woah USA kicks ass man, their whole macdonalds breakfast menu has more varieties than the burgers of KFC, macs, BK, carls Jr in Singapore combined, yeah now u get the picture, the BIG picture.. Literally..

ok my first review would be on the Angus Steak Burger, a burger u wont find in Singapore, now this bad boy weighs in at about 660 calories(yea, just the burger:D), thats bout 110 calories more than the big mac, yet much less filling than that. Anyway since im here at the states, might as well just apply the 'u have only one life, live it' philosophy that my sister oftens preach to me.
ok apart from the larger corn dusted bun that separates this fella from the other burgers which uses a sesame seed bun, it has a huge angus steak patty sandwiched in between layers of lettuce, tomatoes, angus steak sauce and mayonnaise. now this angus steak patty, boy is it juicy, every bite sends u straight to a field with free roaming cows, no kidding dude.. apart from being more flavourful and delish than the standard beef patty, it looks kinda oso more wrong than the original patty. Picture an 'uneven' looking piece/hunk/chunk/heap of manure, yeap i shall speak no further.. but in the end, its still the flavour, i'd give it 8 out of 10, yea nothing still beats the mushroom swiss in our country, would give a 9 if they had a slice of melted swiss cheese though.. cheers

against my principles

ok fine, i did say alot of bad things about bloggers and about blogging, i noe i condemned and cursed and sweared about these stupid bloggers, apparently i've fallen to the dark side, but fear not im not going to be like those crazy ass ppl dat post stupid things on their blog, this blog is mostly gonna be a food blog and at the same time a journal for the stuff that is currently happening during my 4 month attachment here in the US and A.. So yeah enjoy the rants, and of course the recipes and culinary adventures of my stay here haha.. Cheers..

P.S--> This blog is definitely not for one who hates food, hates health and of course for those who love religion, of course if u want to u can always read bout the stuff i type, just dont take it to offence, even if u do, i dont give a damn :)