Salting Chicken Eggs with Brine solution

Having tried different methods, I find soaking the eggs in wet brine solution is by far the best and most sucessful. It is really easy as there is no cooking skill involved. All that is required is dissolve some salt in water and one month later.....viola salted eggs. Cost wise it is cheap....price of ordinary eggs and some salt.

As we don't eat a lot of salted eggs, I salt about 5 at a time in a small plastic container.To salt the eggs, use whatever available sized container you have as long as the eggs stay submerged by the brine.

This lot was actually salted for mooncakes but I haven't got around to making the mooncake yet (too busy playing armchair golf !). Thank goodness I don't adhere to a strict festive calender ! Hard boiled salted eggs goes well with rice porridge.



Ingredients
1 cup water to ¼ cup salt (ratio)
large chicken or duck eggs

plastic or glass container

½ tsp szechuan peppercorn per 1 cup water (optional)

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Beef Wellington

We have always been fascinated when the contestants in Hell's Kitchen stuff up Gordon Ramsay's beef wellington. Of course we were intrigued as to how they could mess up something as simple as cooking a piece of meat wrapped up in pastry.

It is actually not hard to make but the trick is to cook the meat just right. In fact we love it so much that I am always on the lookout for mushrooms on special. I prefer to make our own flaky pastry as it is far less fattening than puff pastry.

A 5-star restaurant meal for a fraction of the cost.

Ingredients
400g mushroom
¼ onion

350g beef sirloin or scotch (or any tender cut)
2 slices bacon or parma ham
300g homemade flaky pastry or puff pastry

salt and pepper
mustard
egg yolk or beaten egg

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Curried Roasted Pumpkin Soup

Mr Redneck is quite fussy when it comes to pumpkin soup. We have tried various recipes and combinations but this is the one that have passed the test.

I was lucky that the garden managed to produce a few pumpkins last season and it stored well over the winter months. However one or two turned out to be the watery type which is good enough for soup. I usually make a whole pot to freeze for future lunches.

Nothing like a hot soup to warm up the body in the cold winter. Pumpkins are very healthy and is in the superfood category. If you don't add cream to this soup, this will turn out to be a non fattening yet delicious meal with very few calories.



Ingredients
1.5-1.8kg whole pumpkin

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp Baba curry powder
2 Tbsp tomato paste
4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
¼ tsp salt

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