So last night I started preparing my bolognese sauce for lasagne. This and the potstickers were two things I wanted to make this week.

I have made bolognese sauce a few times before, but this is the first time I feel that I’m quite happy with it. The recipe is adapted from Adrian Richardson’s Meat recipe book.

I cut some onions, carrots, celery and garlic. Fried those in a pan with some butter to get the fragrance out. Browned some beef and pork mince together. Added some tomato paste, a large can of tomatoes. Seasoned with basil and paprika, with pepper, salt and sugar to taste.

You cook that stuff on moderate heat for about half an hour to reduce the liquid a bit. Left the sauce overnight so that the flavours all get absorbed into the meat, and the liquid in the pan gets reduced even more.

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The next morning, prepped some bechamel sauce (dug a recipe out from the web). Heh, it took three attempts between me and Vyanne but we managed it. Melted some butter in a pot, added flour, stirred it into a roux, and slowly added milk to it, all the while stirring it until it thickened up.

Greased a large, rectangular dish and started layering the lasagna onto it. The sheets of lasagna skin I got fitted almost perfectly against the dish I had in the kitchen. After the pasta, added the meat sauce, then a layer of bechamel sauce, and the process continued with another sheet of pasta.

The top most layer was covered with parmesan cheese. Chucked it into the oven at 200 degrees C and cooked for nearly half an hour.

Came out piping hot and it was left to cool on the dining table.

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And here we have the final dish!

I’ve been semi inspired of late. Probably from watching Masterchef Australia, and just wanting to try something new.

Saw this blog post about potstickers through another food blog and was itching to make it since. Decided to go ahead with making them on Thursday evening. Popped by the Asian grocery store on the way home and bought a pack of gyoza skins, mince pork, shitake mushrooms, spring onions and a chinese cabbage. Followed the recipe as per the blog except I didn’t put in the bamboo shoots.

Chopping and mixing the ingredients was easy enough. Sat myself on the living room sofa and started making the dumplings one by one.

After about 40 or so minutes, had probably made enough dumplings so I heated up the pan with a little bit of oil. Stuck the potstickers to the pan one by one while I boiled some water on the side. Lifted them up occasionally to see if they were browned enough. Just wanted to get the nice caramelised bottom you see in restaurants when you order these.

After five or so minutes, I poured water into the pan and you could see the water boil away quickly. Put the lid on and let the dumplings steam for about 8 to 10 minutes and there you have it, potstickers!

Made a dipping sauce of soy sauce and vinegar with a little sesame oil. Chopped some garlic into it. As usual, too hungry to take proper pictures so whatever I fried Vyanne and I had wolfed down.

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I’m quite happy that I managed to pull this off, from start to finish. Heh, usually need Vyanne’s help to supervise or just take over. I’ve been observing how food is prepared over the last few months and it gets you thinking on the various characteristics of meat and vegetables, the various cooking methods and how it affects the taste of it.

Cooking something else in the kitchen now. If it turns out there will be another post on it. Heh.