would have bring home the banana pie

today's dinner was for my father's birthday. all nigella recipes, all done by myself. singlehandedly. i should have been quite proud of it, but everything was just not good enough.

the slow-roasted garlic and lemon chicken was easy enough to make.
you just have to mix everything together in the roasting pan and slowly cook it in the oven. sure enough, the smells that come out were very nice. very lemony, very citrusy, very refreshing. but the weird thing was there was so much liquid in the end, which i think was all the lemon juice that came out. the result was some dry chicken and bitter-sour tasting juices in the pan.

on a side note, i made a big discovery that one clove of garlic is actually the small segment of the entire lump. and i kept using the entire lump in making pasta sauces (and on the way die trying to peel and chop the garlic) when the recipe called for one clove.

anyway, for the 'veggies', i cooked the mushroom stroganoff from feast.
lots of mushrooms, lots of chopping. but they cook down so much that they barely fill a plate. this was the only passable item that i made today.

dessert was another bread pudding, because there was leftover wholemeal bread. i used the same recipe as the previous one, but changed to all-milk, so the pudding didn't set up as well.
it was also very bland, because i didn't use enough jam i think.

i feel a bit tired, a bit off-form.

oh, and the pineapple tarts i made with weijie last sunday. i'm afraid the ones i brought home have already been eaten, even though it's not even new year yet.
wrapping the pineapple balls in the pastry. the pastry leaked a lot of oil as the balls sat on the waiting baking sheet. i think it's the margarine.
there was no pastry brush, so the egg wash was manually put on, and i overdid for one tray; the egg wash flowed and collected at the bases of the balls, and they all had a fried egg crust at the bottom. but i did it so that the tops would have a nicer golden colour!
the pastry skin cracked as the tarts baked, but they were still sturdy enough to hold themselves together. when pulled apart, you can see the filling is still moist (and it was nice, because it was cooked by mummy). we decided to call them '破天黄' because they were cracked and they were yellow. anyway, they also look like 旺旺小馒头.
and move one stick to form a square.