Small Talk

The Year of the Dragon

2012-01-23T00:16:00.002+08:00

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

It's the year of the "water dragon" for 2012 and let's hope the rain brings with it showers of blessings. I don't think I've ever remembered a Chinese New Year that rained though. Here's some mandarin oranges (albeit teeny weeny ones) for luck, leeks to bring in lots of money for you to count and a pink ang-bao for good wishes and blessings.

Happy Holidays!

25!

2012-01-11T00:00:00.000+08:00

It's my birthday today and I've baked myself a birthday cake! Lemon cake layers sandwiched with lemon curd cream, slathered with fresh whipped cream all over and topped with baked meringues. Totally not the perfect cake but it still makes me happy! Took me twice to get the cake done, because I ruined the first. It's a long story but that shall come later.

In in meantime, happy birthday to me!

2011

2011-12-31T21:27:00.000+08:00

2011 has passed in the blink of an eye and 2012 is nearing upon us! Have you made your New Year resolutions yet? Hope you had an awesome 2011 and here's to an even greater 2012!

Happy New Year 2012!

T'is the Season to be Jolly

2011-12-24T23:03:00.000+08:00

They say Christmas is the season of giving though it's probably more true that it's also the season of buying (I've done so much shopping!). This year, I made my gifts instead of buying them for my colleagues in the office. Of course that involves a lot of kitchen action but it couldn't be merrier.

I made hot chocolate sticks (dark chocolate with orange and caramelised white chocolate with orange and sea salt), had them individually wrapped and popped them into brown paper bags decorated with a pompom.

A handwritten tag and instructions for using the hot chocolate completes the set! Although it isn't winter here, but the perpetual rain has made a hot chocolate seem appropriate, especially in the igloo of my office.

I have the mind to bake Christmas cookies and try more flavours for the hot chocolate for another party I have coming up on the 30th. Sugar cookies with hot chocolate, perfect for a relaxing Christmas week, don't you think? Maybe you should make your gifts next year, too!

Here's wishing you a joyous festive season filled with love.
Enjoy the partying and have a very merry Christmas!

Pumpkin Marble Bread

2011-12-17T20:58:00.000+08:00

Like a steam engine that has built up enough energy to charge, I was so excited with my new found interest that I looked up books that were reccomended for bread-making beginners like me. I almost bought a book but decided against it because while spending about 1 hour browsing through 3 or 4 Japanese bread books at Kinokuniya, I realised the techniques and recipes were quite similar from what I could find on the web.

Well, instead of adding yet again to my ever expanding library of magazines and recipe books, I decided to save the money and spend it on ingredients for more experimentation! But of course the long browsing time wasn't in vain either. I finally realised what it meant to "throw the dough against the table". Incidentally, this video (via comme un lait fraises) that I chanced upon also helped in my understanding of the "kneading" technique.I also saw a marble bread recipe that made me want to immediately go home and try it out. The recipe in the book was for a loaf bread, but I knew it was the same as the wassant that Provence is very popular for.

Because the book was published by a baking supplies shop in Japan, Cuoca, the marble bread actually called for a house-brand product, a 折込みシート (orikomi-sheet), which is a chocolate sheet for making marble bread. Another quick search in Cookpad yielded many many recipes for making the sheet itself and making marble bread and it made me secretly happy (okay, maybe not secretly) that I didn't buy the book. I was especially attracted to a pumpkin sheet recipe and made it the very next day to freeze, in preparation for my very first marble bread.

I used the recipe for the yu-tane bread I made previously as the base recipe, omitting the cranberries and black sesame paste. I tried the new technique of "throwing the dough" instead of kneading, adding as little flour as possible when working dough, and just repeated the "throwing" till the dough was not sticky.

Achieving the marble effect was easier than I thought. It's the same way as you would incorporate butter into croissants, just that you work with a flavoured sheet instead of butter. The dough is then braided and left to rise for the second time before baking. Of course, wanting to recreate the Provence wassants at home, I tried shaping them into petite croissants with half of the dough. Unfortunately, the dough was a little too wet for me to handle, because of the pumpkin sheet and I ended up baking the wassants in cupcake cups. They were just too ugly to go bare. A little piped cream cheese frosting and sprinkling of chopped pecans and nutmeg made it look almost perfect.

Anyhow, it was time for the taste test! The individual buns were a little dry, probably because I over baked them a little, but I think hit jackpot with the loaf. Okay, maybe I missed a tiny little bit because the center was a little undercooked, but the rest of the loaf was so soft and fluffy! All the effort I put into making my own orikomi-sheet from scratch and throwing the dough about was all worth it! The taste of pumpkin wasn't very pronounced, but it was good nonetheless. I don't know if using canned pumpkin puree would up the pumpkin flavour, but I think a can would be too much puree for me to use up.

I won't be writing the recipe for the base dough in this post, but you can check it out here. Just leave out the sesame to get a plain dough. I used 3/4 of the bread recipe for 1 portion of the orikomi-sheet. Below is the recipe I translated (as closely as I can) for the orikomi-sheet but you can also check out the Japanese version here, complete with pictures. I've also included the method for incorporating the sheet into the base dough, which I mainly referenced from here (in Japanese with pictures).

Pumpkin Orikomi-Sheet
(Makes about 200g)

150g pumpkin, seeds removed and sliced
Some vegetable oil
30g sugar
1Tbsp milk
10g potato starch
10g butter or vegetable oil

- Preheat oven to 200degC.
- Lightly oil a baking sheet with vegetable oil and arrange pumpkin slices on top.
- Roast for 20-30mins or until fork tender. Let cool.
- Mash the pumpkin in a microwavable bowl, keeping only the flesh and discarding the skins for a nicer colour.
- Using the microwave, heat the mashed pumpkin flesh until steaming and relatively hot. I like to use short time settings of about 30-40secs each when heating up the pumpkin, checking in between to see if it's ready, adding 10-20secs each time after that. Eg. 40sec-30sec-10sec-10sec.
- When the pumpkin is hot, add the sugar, milk and potato starch and mix well.
- Heat the pumpkin mixture in the microwave for about 10-20secs each time, stirring and mixing well in between each round. The mixture is ready when it has become sticky and mochi-like.
- Stir in the butter or vegetable oil until well incorporated.
- Roll out the mixture between cling wrap or a ziplock bag until it is about a 15x15cm square. Let cool or freeze until ready to use. If freezing, thaw at room temperature for about 30mins before using.

To make a marble bread loaf

- Prepare the bread dough as per recipe instructions up until after the first rising and punching down of the dough. Let the dough rest for 15-20mins before proceeding to incorporate the orikomi-sheet.
- Roll out the bread dough, to about the size of a 20x20cm square.
- Wrap the orikomi-sheet with the bread dough, making sure it is not exposed.
- Roll the dough out again and do a letter fold, or the Japanese calls it mitsu-ori.
- Repeat the rolling and letter fold 3 to 4 times, letting the dough rest in the fridge for about 20 minutes between each repeat. For each rolling out and folding, turn the dough 90deg clockwise so that you roll and fold it in a different direction each time. Let the dough rest in the fridge for 30mins after the last letter fold.
- Lastly, cut the dough in 2, leaving it attached 1cm at the top. Twist the 2 parts of dough to create a braid and let rise for the second time in a lightly buttered loaf pan.
- Bake as per instructions for your bread recipe.

Bread Making

2011-12-04T00:08:00.000+08:00

Right after the failure of my first collaborative kitchen project with Mr. Instant Yeast, I decided to give my first time partner and myself a second chance. I mean, I wasn't expecting a super wonderful pizza crust, but I didn't expect it to be that bad. I think if I tried to bite anymore of the brick hard pizza crust, my teeth would start chipping. So, picking myself up, I rolled up my sleeves and made myself some dough to knead.

Now, I always thought making bread was best left to the experts and it was truly a little daunting for this amateur baker. There were those stories I read about failed attempts at making bread and how tricky it was to work with yeast. But I didn't want to just surrender at my first try! And I'm very glad I didn't! Because I'm just so addicted to making my own bread right now (read: many many more bread related posts coming up!).

The first bread recipe (not pictured) I tried was a very simple and basic one that I googled. No butter, no milk, no eggs. It even uses only all-purpose flour instead of bread flour. It was just yeast, flour, sugar and water. Honestly, I don't remember the recipe at all, nor do I actually remember how the bread tasted. But I remember it being a more angmoh bread: quite dense and compact, something close to what Carrefour calls "rustic loaf".

I don't think Mr. Instant Yeast fully exhibited his capabilities in this second collaborative effort, but at least it was quite successful in comparison to my poor pizzas. I vaguely recall slathering homemade lemon curd on some toasty slices of soft white bread. This could really work out! So I set out on making bread every week, trying different recipes and from various sources, just to find the perfect go-to recipe and to get the hang of making bread.

I did lots of reading on bread making, looking at recipes and tips and tricks of making bread by hand. Probably the most I've studied in quite some time. Since I frequent the Japanese bakery, Provence quite often and cannot get enough of their pillowy soft buns and breads, I decided to turn to Japanese sources for guidance. A quick search on Cookpad (in Japanese) yielded numerous recipes that promised fluffy, soft white bread and I also chanced upon a site that provided detailed step-by-step instructions to making all sorts of bread by hand, accompanied by pictures no less.

The first Japanese recipe I turned to was from Cookpad, though I actually used the step-by-step instructions here to create a 山形 (yama-gata) or mountain-shape loaf. It is so named because the dough is divided into (most commonly, but not limiting to) 3 portions while shaping and then put side by side to let rise in a loaf pan. The resulting 3 mounds are thus thought to resemble mountain ranges and more specifically (I think) the Chinese character or kanji, 山 (yama).

The loaf in the picture is only two-thirds of the "mountain" as one part of it has been pinched by my uncle before I took the picture. It was better than my very very first loaf of bread, but well, still not enough.

Then, I chanced upon the 湯種 (yu-tane) or tangzhong or water roux method. This particular yu-tane recipe involves cooking some flour with water into a roux and adding it into the dough. Weirdly enough, although the link mentions the method to be "Japanese", most Japanese yu-tane bread recipes I found simply add hot water to flour at a much higher flour to water ratio to make a "cooked dough" (like this one) instead of cooking a roux. In the spirit of experimentation, I tried both types of yu-tane methods, just to make a comparison.

I tried this recipe first and literally "spiced" things up a bit by using half the dough to make cinnamon pull-apart buns. Although texture wise, it was better than the yama-gata loaf bread, it could still be a bit fluffier, methinks. The cinnamon buns were great when warmed and toasty as that's when the bread is the softest. Otherwise, the "crust" was a little more chewy and slightly hard, a little like a soft pretzel.

The other yu-tane method however, was quite brilliant. Of all the recipes I've tried (which is only about 5), it yielded the softest and fluffiest result. The bread also stayed soft for the longest period of time (also because there was more bread to begin with).

The recipe is for a cranberry, black sesame bread, which I think is a really nice combination. I especially love the fragrance of the black sesame when the loaf was baking. I had my bread with a slathering of cream cheese and a drizzle of honey but the bread is good on its own or just with some butter.

Of course I couldn't resist mixing things up a bit by using a portion of the dough to make a black sesame swirl bread. All I did was to roll out the dough and spread on some black sesame paste and then rolling it and putting it in the loaf pan to let rise the second time.

It's been 2 months since my first "successful" attempt at baking bread, I've come to realise making bread is not the hardest thing in the world to do, so if I could do it, you should be able to too.

I (seem to) have gotten the hang of working with Mr. Instant Yeast, knowing his working temperaments and his working temperatures little by little. Now I just have to work on my consistency and our chemistry. More baking to go!

My Acquaintance with Figs

2011-11-17T22:52:00.001+08:00

Figs! Such an elusive fruit in Singapore! I've always seen them in food magazines, on food blogs and in restaurant menus, but seldom in supermarkets. Maybe except the really up-market ones. So imagine my surprise when I saw them in the small and sometimes badly stocked, 24-hour NTUC branch in my neighbourhood! There they were, sitting in the corner of the fruit chiller waiting to be picked up by someone who knew what they exactly were (the aunties and ah-mas around the neighbourhood probably thought they were kindaweird). I was mumbling to myself in excitement while choosing carefully which box of 4 figs I should get and resisted the urge to put 2 boxesinto my shopping basket. Although I'm a self-proclaimed bargain hunter and auntie when buying groceries, the figs unfortunately came with a rather hefty tag of $4.95 for 4. Well, if this auntie could only be a spendthrift just once, it would be a box of 4 figs.

I've never known figs to be a summer fruit. Maybe it was its more common rich, dark purple colour that reminded me of fall rather than summer, but I've never seen fresh figs for myself while growing up. In childhood, figs came in the form of preserved little brownish strips in vinyl bags. When I got a little older, I was eating dried baby figs as a snack during one of my many diet days. Fresh figs only came under my radar when I started getting interested in food blogging. I remember seeing them only this once in Carrefour years ago, where you could pick and choose, but walked away thinking they were too expensive. Then earlier this year, I tasted my first fresh fig at House, Barracks Cafe in the form of a pizza. So what was I going to do with this precious box of figs, I thought. While I pondered on my options, the figs waited patiently in the fridge.

There was this post on Chika's blog that left me with so much inspiration. In the midst of my ice cream-making craze, I had very much wanted to try Chika's rendition of this recipe, but decided against it since I wanted to milk the most out of the 4 little figs and it called for, erm, much more than what I had.

Since it was the first time I was cooking with figs, I decided to go with something simple so that I could familiarise myself with and appreciate how figs tasted without too much fuss. I also wanted to try figs in both sweet and savoury recipes, just to see how it paired with other ingredients. I also just realised that the 2 ways I used my figs both used balsamic vinegar which was newly acquired (a little before the figs) and one of my (many) new obsessions.

The first thing I made was a simple fig tart. 1 fig tart and 1 fig and plum tart to be exact. Using one portion of the leftover pastry from this recipe, I simply filled the tarts with sliced figs and plums and brushed the fruit with a syrup of balsamic vinegar and sugar. Pop them into the oven at 180 degC and they're done within 20 minutes. How wrong can you go with that? Although the figs tasted mellow and mildly sweet when raw, their flavour concentrated with baking and with the addition of balsamic. Baking with the figs also released their brilliant, intoxicating perfume that I can't quite find any other word to describe except "musky" (in perfume terms I think it's like a base note component). The tarts were great warm, and of course I had to have them with my homemade chocolate sorbet (recipe on its way, I swear). I think a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream should also do the trick.

I also remembered there was a feature on figs in issue #43 of Donna Hay magazine and everything looked so good! Especially a fig and goat cheese tart and creamy fig and chilli pappardelle. I went with a pizza recipe in the same feature, just because I wanted to try making pizza and my mother had very weirdly bought some yeast a while ago even though I've never baked bread. I only followed the recipe for the dough and just used whatever I had in the fridge for toppings.

My first time working with yeast was a big flop: the dough refused to rise (it wasn't warm enough) and the pizza was brick hard. The edges were almost inedible but at least the center was less dry with the moisture from the toppings. Oh wells, back to the figs. Basically, I worked the pizza toppings around the basis of balsamic caramelised onions paired with figs, which was what was in DHM. I varied the toppings slightly for each of the two "no-rise" pizzas I made; the "autumn" style one with blue cheese and deeper flavours, and the other one with orange and parmesan crisps which is supposedly more "summery" and inspired from the skinny pizza I had at House, Barracks Cafe. No rocket leaves, so I tore up some spinach leaves I had left, and used sausages instead of proscuitto. I love how the flavour of the figs develop and deepen upon baking and the sweetness went well with the salt in the sausages. I liked the blue cheese one but the oranges in the other one brightened up the palette and was good too.

Anyhow, I had fun experimenting with the figs and was quite glad the results turned out relatively good tasting, except the pizza dough. Let's hope the next time fresh figs come on the shelf in supermarkets their prices would be a little less ridiculous and this bargain hunter can happily tote more home.

Plum Galette

2011-11-02T22:59:00.000+08:00

I don't think I've ever been a huge fan of plums. It wasn't that I hated them, I just didn't LOVE them. Maybe it was the fact that they were quite easily available since I was a kid and it didn't seem exotic enough. Now that the markets here have begun to stock seasonal produce, I've learnt to appreciate all the seasonal fruits more and of course plums were one of them.

So, as you know, I've been heading straight for anything (almost anything) on sale on the aisle of the supermarkets recently, and these plums were no exception. I bought 10 plums for less than 2 dollars and I don't think I've ever gotten such a steal. They were sweet and ripe, a little tangy around the skin and still retained a slight crunch. I can't stand mushy and over-ripened plums, or persimmons, or anything else in fact. It was such a good deal that my mother bought another 10 the very next day.

Though we enjoyed them just as they were, I wanted to try cooking with plums. Most of the recipes I recall that involved plums were dessert recipes, with an occasional salad thrown into the mix. So well, I haven't made a dessert tart for quite some time and decided on a galette, or more free form and rustic looking tart. Galettes (I think it's crostata in Italian) seem to be surfacing on food blogs often, especially during the summer. Plums are merely tossed in a little sugar and flour, and spices if you like, pastry dough can be done fairly easily and there's no need to wash any tart moulds afterwards! I love an easy dessert.

I kept the amount of sugar I used to a minimum, since I wanted to keep as much of the natural flavour of the plums as possible. The tarts were good warm from the oven, and even better with an indulgent scoop of rich dark chocolate sorbet, which I promise to blog about soon. For now, let's focus on the galette.

Plum Galette
(Makes 1 6-inch tart)

Pastry
250g flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
Zest of 1 lemon
125g cold butter, cubed
1 egg yolk
40ml ice cold water

2 plums
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbps lemon juice
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 Tbsp flour
Milk, for brushing
Sugar, to sprinkle

- In a large mixing bowl, put in the flour, sugar, salt and lemon zest and stir to combine.
- Rub the cold butter into the flour mixture with finger tips, pinching the mixture and letting the flour fall back into the bowl, until the mixture resembles coarse oatmeal.
- Add the egg yolk and mix briefly.
- Add the ice cold water, a tablespoon at a time and incorporating the dry bits of the dough as you go. As soon as the dough is able to come together into a ball, stop adding the water. The dough might still seem crumbly but it's fine.
- Divide the dough into 3 parts, roll each piece of dough into a ball and flatten slightly.Wrap each piece of tart dough in cling wrap or plastic and let rest in the refrigerator for at least 30mins. For a 6-inch galette, you will only need one part of the dough. You can also increase the ingredients for the filling accordingly and make one large galette or 3 small ones. If not using the rest of the dough, you can freeze the rest of the dough and save for other kitchen experiments!
- Preheat oven to 180 degC.
- For the filling, halve the plums and remove the pits. Slice each halve into 1/4-inch slices.
- Place plums in a bowl and toss with sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and flour. Toss to coat well.
- Roll out one part of the chilled tart dough into an 8-inch circle, about 1/4-inch thick.
- Arrange the plum slices over the dough, leaving about 1 1/2-inch around the edge.
- Fold the edge over to encase the plum filling. Brush the edge with milk and sprinkle with sugar.
- Bake the tart in preheated oven for 20 - 25mins or until the tart crust is golden and the plums start to turn soft. Serve warm as it is or with a scoop of ice cream!

The Relish Burger

2011-10-26T12:46:00.000+08:00

Am I getting repetitive? It was burgers, then ice cream and all the frozen yogurts and now I'm back to burgers again. But you know, I have this tendency to go through phases, don't you too? I'll be all mad about a certain food/ingredient and go crazy over it, and a while ago, it was burgers.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, this burger is the "something" that I tried replicating in my home kitchen from memory and isn't an original that I came up with. I actually first had this burger at Relish over last year's Christmas dinner with my colleagues. Although my colleagues felt their orders were just okay, I totally loved my "Blue Cheese Beef Burger with Rucola, Poached Pear & Walnut Butter". The only thing I would change was to have my patty done medium instead of medium well since it was a little on the dry side. I actually couldn't stop thinking about it for months on end and have just ended up calling it "The Relish Burger" to simplify things. I've been wanting to go back since, but kind of gave up since it was totally out of the way at Cluny Court (but not anymore with the fully operational Circle Line!). Then, I was surfing the food blogosphere when I saw that someone had tried replicating this particular burger at home! Now, of course I had to try it for myself!

Basically, the name of the burger (not the one I gave it) speaks for itself: blue cheese, beef patty, rucola (also rocket or arugula), poached pear and walnut butter. Not the most creative but definitely informative! Although there are many different components, they all work really well together, especially the classic grouping of pear, blue cheese and walnut. For my burger at home, I wanted to be real particular and went through the process of making my own poached pears and walnut butter. You can also use canned pears (or just ripe pear slices, me thinks) which saves you the trouble and maybe skip the walnut butter or if you can find it, use store-bought. So, unless you want to bake your own burger buns (or your own blue cheese or plant your own rocket leaves), you really only have to make the beef patty! Which is actually what the recipe that follows is about. For my patties, I added potato starch as a binding agent since I didn't use any bread crumbs or egg.

All in all, I think my burgers turned out quite well! The only thing was the poached pear was a little too sweet (it was a dessert recipe anyway) and that the walnut butter didn't really shine through. So maybe it wasn't that worth the trouble making walnut butter anyway. I know blue cheese is really a love it or hate it thing, but I think the blue cheese-poached pear pairing really makes all the difference, to me at least. My parents had their burgers without blue cheese so I added some mayonnaise and the pears missed the salt the blue cheese had to offer, since the pears were already a little on the sweeter side to begin with. I also served my burgers with potato wedges, baked to a crisp, though you could also have them with fries or salad, which is the choice you get to have at Relish itself.

Although I'd probably declare my home kitchen experiment relatively successful and the flavour grouping a definite keeper, I don't think I will make this as often as my rustic salmon burgers. The leftover poached pear and rocket leaves have me wondering what I should do with them, and in that frame of time, they sort of die in my fridge, the rocket leaves at least. If I ever wanted a quick fix, once in a while, I think I should be better off hopping onto a Circle Line train and head to the Cluny Court branch (there's another at Serangoon Gardens) of Relish, with some good company no less. I've been wanting to try their black sesame dessert anyway.

The Relish Burger (also Blue Cheese and Poached Pear Burgers)
(Makes 6 burgers)

Beef Burger Patties
600g minced beef
2 small onions, finely minced
3 Tbsp barbeque sauce
Salt and Black Pepper
2 - 3 Tbsp potato starch

To Assemble
6 burger bunsRocket (arugula) leaves
1 poached pear, thinly sliced
Walnut butter, if using
Blue cheese

- Put all the ingredients for the beef patties in a large bowl and mix well. If the beef mixture seems to be dry and falling apart, add a bit more potato starch. You can also add a beaten egg to help with the binding.
- Divide the beef into 6 and shape into patties.
- Heat some oil in a frying pan and fry the patties till desired doneness. (I had mine well done since my family likes it that way and the beef I used was frozen beef, I'm thinking about 5 - 7mins on each side.)
- To assemble the burgers, toast the burger buns slightly, spread some walnut butter on each half and pile on the rocket leaves, poached pear slices, beef patty and blue cheese. Enjoy with your side dishes of choice!

Supporting Actors

2011-10-15T20:11:00.000+08:00

Poached pears and walnut butter. I don't think I would really really really think of making them if for eating just as they are. But it's another story when I have an ulterior motive. There was this one dish that I really wanted to try replicating the taste at home and wanted to get as close to the original as possible. So, they're really things I made in order to make something else. For the pears, I poached Forelle pears with lemon rind, cinnamon, nutmeg and crushed black peppercorns based loosely on this method while a Google search led me to this recipe for walnut butter. I imagine the walnut butter would be nice on some toast (though I haven't tried it myself and I really should), while the poached pears are good as they are or with cereal and milk or yogurt. So while you wait for the REAL post in which I used the poached pears and walnut butter, maybe you could try making some yourself.

Berry-Good Fro-yo

2011-10-08T21:22:00.000+08:00

I guess I really could have combined this post with the previous one, but I'm really trying to erm, stretch my "dollar" here. I realise I haven't posted anything about blueberries here before even though I've been buying loads when they go on sale (I'm becoming such a sucker for sales!) and freezing them for the "rainy days". Berries can be so overpriced in Singapore (like raspberries!) so the squirrel in me has me hoarding them when they become really cheap; also stretching my dollar.

Blueberries are amongst the most affordable berries in Singapore, together with strawberries and have become really quite easy to find in supermarkets during the summer months (not Singapore's), and that makes me happy. I thought it time to use up some of my frozen blueberry stash (to make way for new ones) so I decided upon making blueberry frozen yogurt. I also had a tub of plain yogurt on hand which I bought, you guessed it, on sale! So, armed with all the sale goods, I set out to strain, blend, freeze and blend my way to blueberry frozen yogurt heaven.

In retrospect, I think I should have tried the other recipe that I found for frozen yogurt in my ice cream book so that I could make a comparison on the 2 different recipes. But I was lazy, what's new? Anyhow, the recipe did yield a berry-good frozen yogurt of a deep, luscious purple. This time round, I filled the frozen yogurt into glass yogurt bottles (flown all the way back from Paris!) which makes more easier serving. Just take out one bottle when you feel like it. No more scooping. I've also recently found out that frozen yogurt has been very much simplified to fro-yo nowadays, although I still very much prefer to say frozen yogurt. More sophisticated don't you think?

Blueberry Frozen Yogurt
(Makes about 800ml)

500g plain yogurt
2 1/4cup blueberries (frozen or fresh is fine)
5 tbsp honey

- Strain plain yogurt in a sieve lined with double layers of kitchen paper or muslin. Set the strainer over a bowl and leave in the refrigerator overnight to get 2 cups of Greek-style yogurt.
- Process the Greek-style yogurt, blueberries and honey in a blender until smooth and well mixed. If using frozen blueberries, let thaw slightly before blending.
- Pour into a freezer-safe container and freeze until almost firm, about 4 hours. Process again until smooth and freeze again before serving. At this point, if you like, you can fill little cups or yogurt bottles with the frozen yogurt mixture for an easy serving option. You might have to repeat the freezing and blending process a couple more times if the ice crystals are still too large after the second round of processing.

Peaches I Had This Year

2011-10-01T11:13:00.000+08:00

When June came, I was already starting to dream about the seasonal produce summer would bring. All the lovely berries and stone fruits especially: strawberries, blueberries, apricots, nectarines... and peaches. After I started making my first homemade ice cream, I was hooked. Not so much of the eating part, but the making part. Well, ok, of course I enjoyed eating the ice cream too.

So I was getting ready for my repertoire of ice creams, bookmarking recipes from books, magazines and other food blogs, and I found myself returning to this post by Chika, a lot. Looking at the beautiful photographs and thinking of white peaches that the Japanese affectionately call momo. So much so that I actually started dreaming of peaches, literally.

You can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to find white peaches on sale in July. Yes! I thought, I could finally get my hands on some white peaches, albeit from China. Nevertheless, I was happy to be able to tot the punnet back home. They didn't taste all so good though, probably the first of the peaches to be available, undersized and under-ripened. Although not quite sweet, they were quite juicy and had the light, refreshing fragrance of peaches. Since I didn't plan on eating them as they were, it was good enough for me.

Although the ice cream book I had also had a recipe for frozen yogurt, I decided to give Chika's method a try first since it used less ingredients and I thought was more straightforward. Basically, it was just yogurt and whatever you wanted to flavour it with and in this case I used peaches, honey and a peach-flavoured liquor or momo-shu that I bought some time ago and had wanted very much to try using it in a dessert.

The result: a light and refreshing frozen yogurt that actually showed the tang of the yogurt, flavour of the peaches, the floral notes of the honey with slight aftertaste of the liquor. Not bad! My mother commented that it was a little bland but considering the very not flavourful peaches I had, I was happy. I would have added more honey, but then again, the honey I had on had had quite a strong flavour and would probably have masked any of the faint peach fragrance present. I had mine with more peaches, peeled and sliced, to further assert the presence of peaches, but it was also good as it is. Now, maybe one day I will decide to burn a large hole in my pocket and fork out a premium for some momo to try this again.

White Peach Frozen Yogurt (adapted from Chika's recipe at SheWhoEats)
(Makes about 350ml)

250g plain yogurt
300-400g white peaches (about 4-5 smallish ones)
3 tbsp honey
4 tbsp peach-flavoured wine (optional)

- Line a fine meshed sieve with double layers of paper towel or muslin and set it over a bowl. Pour in the yogurt to strain and leave overnight in the refrigerator to make Greek-style yogurt. For me, 500g of plain yogurt gave me 2 cups of Greek-style yogurt, of which I used 1 cup for this recipe.*
- Peel (optional) and remove the pits of the peaches and quarter them. Puree the peaches in a blender and add the honey and wine if using. Mix well and freeze the peach puree mixture.*
- Break the frozen peach puree into small pieces and process in the blender. Add the Greek-style yogurt and process until smooth.
- Pour into a freezer-safe container (I usually use a metal loaf tin so that it freezes more quickly) and freeze until almost firm, about 4 hours. Process again until smooth and freeze once more before serving. You might have to repeat the process a couple more times if the ice crystals are still too large after processing the second time.

* The process is ideally split into at least 2 days, and the frozen yogurt should be ready to serve the earliest by the evening of Day 2. The first 2 steps should be done the night before, so that you have both puree and Greek-style yogurt the next day.

Summer

2011-09-20T23:11:00.000+08:00

Summer's about over in the Northern hemisphere and I'm just about starting to blog about my misadventures with making ice cream. But hey, over here on the equator, summer's never ever over. It's summer 365 days a year, and you think 100 days of hot, humid weather was more than enough. (Warning! This post is heavily loaded with photos under the cut!)

A couple of months back, I very luckily chanced upon fresh raspberries on sale at Carrefour and happily totted 2 punnets back home. Fresh raspberries are one of those things that I always wanted to buy but just too stingy to fork out a premium for. I ran through a list of recipes I thought I could try with them and thought an Ispahan-inspired cake would be great since my uncle had bought a basket of lychees as well. A lychee pound cake didn't turn out all that well, so that plan fell through. Then I turned to making ice cream.

Even though I bought this ice cream recipe book about 2 years (or was it 3) ago, it was the first time I looked at it seriously and tried a recipe from it. Partly because it was in Japanese and 2 years ago, my Japanese was just about kindergarten level. So this year, I finally picked up on the homemade ice cream bug (I think I go through phases of wanting to make different things), especially after looking at Chika's ice cream adventures.

Anyhow, my first attempt at making my own ice cream from scratch wasn't as successful as I had hoped for. Even up till now, I've still no idea what exactly was the problem(s) since there were many points where I sort of messed up. I don't know if it was the fact that I didn't cook/cool my custard enough, or was it the plastic container I stupidly use to freeze the ice cream, or was it the fact that my fridge was on the verge of a "meltdown". On the whole, the taste of the ice cream was quite good, though it just wouldn't freeze properly and the ice crystals were quite large. So, we'll all notice that the pictures aren't so pretty, but let's just not talk about that.

The recipe I followed was originally for a strawberry ice cream, which I simply substituted strawberries for raspberries. Because whipping cream that I got came in 200ml packages, I upped the quantities of the other ingredients so that I could use the whole pack of cream. I'd probably down the quantity of fresh raspberries a little if I ever made it again (which I doubt since raspberries cost a fortune) because raspberries have a stronger flavour than strawberries.

I don't have a recipe this time round because 1) I'm not very confident to translate detailed Japanese instructions into English, 2) I don't have an ice cream maker and the instructions for making an ice cream without it is horrendously long and 3) ok, I'll admit that I'm just lazy. I'll so much rather be eating the ice cream.

In place of the recipe, I shall leave you with some of the photos I took during my recent trip to Korea in August. These are just a tiny fraction of the collection and are all shot old-style, in film. The digital ones should, hopefully, come in a while. The coloured ones were taken with my very own Gakkenflex (which I have JUST thought I would name gakki) and the B/W ones with Popeye Camera Mint Cyan (which is actually a Vivitar Slim x Wide).

Enjoy!

Yongin Everland Theme Park

Yongpyong Dragon Valley

On the cable car to Seorak-san

Almost at the peak!

Oak and maple

Calves at Yasan Farm

Tangerine orchard

Super windy day at Seongsan Sunrise Peak in Jeju

The view from my hotel in Jeju

Yongduam Dragon Rock

Myeongdong, Seoul

Rustic Salmon Burgers

2011-09-04T20:03:00.001+08:00

Burgers get the bad rep for being junk food, no thanks to fast food chains that serve burgers by the thousands everyday. Though I'm not a serious fan of fast food chains (definitely less than 10 visits per year), I find myself drawn to burgers on restaurant menus quite often. Maybe it's the allure of the fanciful pairings and condiments of these "gourmet burgers", or maybe it's just simply because I like burgers.

With simple, fresh ingredients, burgers can actually be a tasty all-in-one meal and be healthy all at once. This recipe is actually modified, quite heavily, from one I found in issue 44 of Donna Hay magazine.

The original actually called for pickles, dill, fresh and dry breadcrumbs, etc etc, all of which I found a little too fussy since I wouldn't really be using them for anything else. I also used salmon instead of "firm white fish", since I'm not really sure which "white fish" would do the job here. The coriander, chilli and lime came in only the second time I made this recipe because I felt the burgers lacked flavour and was a little fishy the first time round. The burger buns I used are actually Pafu-Pafu (literally puff-puff) buns from Provence, which I think are made from rice flour, and are incredibly soft, with a slightly chewy crumb.

I think this post should mark a break to the coriander, garlic, lime and chilli posts for the time being in case it becomes too repetitive. Anyhow, 3 posts should make a series right?

Rustic Salmon Burgers
(Makes 4 burgers)

300g potatoes
300g salmon fillet
1 chili padi, seeds discarded and finely chopped
1 bunch coriander, chopped finely (about 1 Tbsp)
1/2 Tbsp lime juice
2 Tbsp potato starch
Salt and black pepper

Lime Mayonnaise
1 Tbsp lime juice
2 - 3 Tbsp mayonnaise
1/4 tsp chili powder
Salt and black pepper

To assemble
4 burger buns, halved and lightly toasted
1/2 Japanese cucumber, sliced
Fresh limes

- To make lime mayonnaise, combine all ingredients and mix well to combine. Set aside.
- Place washed potatoes in a saucepan of cold water and cook until fork tender. Drain and let cool before peeling and mash roughly with a fork in a large bowl.
- Skin the salmon fillet and remove any small bones. Chop the fish into medium-sized chunks.
- Add chopped fish, coriander, chilli, lime juice, potato starch and salt and pepper to the mashed potatoes and mix well.
- Heat up 1 Tbsp of oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium flame.
- Divide the mixture into 4 palm-sized patties and pan-fry them till they are golden and cooked through, about 3-4 mins each side.
- Serve the patties on burger buns with cucumber slices and top with a big dollop of lime mayonnaise and a generous squeeze of fresh lime juice.

Aglio Olio e Peperoncino..?

2011-08-09T14:52:00.003+08:00

I was watching a Japanese chef specialising in Italian cook aglio olio e peperoncino on a Japanese variety show yesterday that I realised I should do this post soon, or the fantastic four series would probably be carried forward till next year.

A quick chit-chat with your best friends Google and Wiki and you'll find that alio olio e peperoncino actually doesn't contain much else than, well, aglio (garlic), olio (oil) e peperoncini (chili peppers). And you will see that it's not really the case in my aglio olio e peperoncino. It's definitely not the authentic nor orthodox way to cook aglio olio e peperoncino, and actually, this was created from my extremely faint memory of aglio olio e peperoncino when I visited Italy some 5 years back. Maybe you could say the aglio olio e peperoncino served as the base of my "fancied-up" version. The recipe was first born out of desperation to finish a box of mixed fungi before they die out in the fridge and therefore the mushrooms. The sausages I added today are just a whim of fancy which happened to be in my freezer and add to a balanced, quick lunch. Of course, it wouldn't be a continuation of my pantry essentials series if I didn't use coriander, which is also an adaptation to my Chinese kitchen.

By the way, you have no idea how tangled my brain is from "saying" aglio olio e peperoncino so many times.

Aglio Olio e Peperoncino..?
(Serves 2)

2 portions dried spaghetti

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small chili padi, seeds discarded and finely sliced
5 - 6 cocktail sausages (you could use whatever you like), sliced into rounds
50g willow mushrooms, briefly rinsed and ends removed
1 bunch coriander, finely chopped
Pinch of salt

Grated Parmesan cheese, to serve

- Cook dried spaghetti in salted, boiling water until al dente.
- While the spaghetti is cooking, in a shallow frying pan, saute minced garlic and chili with olive oil over medium heat.
- When the garlic has turned golden brown and fragrant, add the sausages and mushrooms to pan and fry till cooked, about 3 - 4mins.
- Take about 1/2cup of the liquid from cooking the spaghetti and add to the sauteed ingredients.
- Add the chopped coriander and season with a pinch of salt.
- Drain the cooked spaghetti and add to the pasta dressing. Turn off the heat and toss to coat evenly with the dressing.
- Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese before serving.

Refurbishing

2011-07-31T09:35:00.000+08:00

Small Talk is undergoing a design revamp!
Since I'm not officially into my break yet, this might take awhile.
In the meantime, do pardon the awkwardness of the template-style designs.

UPDATE
So, this is about it for now!
Hopefully the fresher outlook will inspire me to blog more often!
(I just realised I have only 5 blog posts this year. And I think only about half is food related.)

Herb & Garlic Butter

2011-07-24T17:49:00.005+08:00

I promised a few recipes as a follow-up to my pantry's essential four and seeing that I haven't posted a recipe in ages, I thought it was time to pull something out from my back log to update this poor, neglected space! There's actually a post about lemon cake somewhere in my drafts but that shall be for another time. I was food-blog surfing when I chanced upon umami butter on Delicious:Days and remembered I had wanted to do a post on herb and garlic butter.

It all started with a barbecue last year around this time. (So you see how long I've been wanting to do this post now) Garlic bread is *almost* a must-have at our barbecues but is just too expensive to buy and tastes much better when homemade. I remembered seeing a recipe for herb butter on Simply Recipes and thought I would give it a try. As usual, I'm never one to follow recipes or really calculate the exact measurements of what I use, I just threw things I pulled out of my fridge and mixed them together. Judging from the "mmmmmm"-s I had when the garlic bread was served, I would consider my random blending a success. But it could also be the slow-roasted garlic which I promised was TONS better than normal garlic bread but nobody actually believed. I think it was both.

Wrapped in plastic and kept in the fridge, this herb butter could serve a million purposes, well, maybe at least 4: a spread on toasted bread, for baking salmon, corn-on-the-cob or baked potatoes and a spaghetti that I cooked with almost the same ingredients and more.

Herb Butter

125g butter, room temperature
1 single-clove garlic or about 5 small cloves, skins removed
1 bunch fresh coriander (cilantro)
1 chili padi (bird's eye chili), seeds removed
Juice and zest of 1 lime (you can also use half a lemon)
Pinch of salt

- Finely chop garlic, coriander and chili padi. For the coriander, I use both the leaves and the stems and should come up to about 2 tbsp. Chili padi is an extra spicy chili commonly available in Southeast Asia. You can also use normal, large-sized chili that is less spicy if you prefer.
- In a bowl, mix well the chopped herbs, lime zest and juice, butter and salt. It might take some time for the butter to come together due to the addition of lime juice.
- To store, wrap the butter in plastic wrap into the shape of a log and refrigerate.

Pantry Essentials: The Fantastic Four

2011-07-10T14:43:00.005+08:00

Although I haven't been blogging, I've been preparing lunchboxes for myself to bring to work the past few weeks as part of a diet plan that I have with a fellow colleague who's getting married. I've come to realise I almost cannot do without these fabulous herbs and spices in my cooking. Garlic is definitely a must have; love the punch a chili padi can add to anything; fresh and juicy homegrown limes are much better than the ones from the supermarket while fragrant coriander is my favourite herb to add in Asian-inspired dishes. I already have a few recipes that involve the fantastic four (maybe sometimes three) so, watch this space!

So, what's in your pantry?

Whatever You Like and a Hope for Goodness

2011-03-31T23:57:00.002+08:00

I think it's no secret that I'm a big fan of Japanese food, actually, almost everything that hails from the land of the rising sun. Most of the time, I make Japanese-inspired versions of various foods (like this, this, this and most of my bentos. So, it's natural that I have an almost constant stock of ingredients that are commonly found in Japanese food. I especially like vegetables, and more specifically root vegetables like sweet potatoes, carrots and what not. I've recently had a special affinity for 長いも　or nagaimo (also called yamaimo or huai-shan and shan-yao in Mandarin). But of course, as with my family, a single nagaimo usually lasts too long, or should I say, doesn't keep long enough. A 4-inch long piece goes a long way, since I usually cook for myself, but supermarkets usually have them coming in about 16 inches.

My family doesn't appreciate my cooking very much, so I typically cook for just myself. While I usually used nagaimo in soups, curry, takikomi-gohan and once in a stir-fry with pork and miso, I was really quite glad to find yet another way to finish up my nagaimo before it ended up in the bin. I was told by CY, friend and one of the few supporters of this blog that nagaimo was used in okonomiyaki.

Okonomiyaki, literally a fried-something of whatever you like, is a savoury pancake of cabbage, batter and other ingredients. The best thing is, okonomiyaki was something that my whole family would really eat. For now, I have only a list of ingredients and a rough method since I seldom measure anything when cooking (it's probably best that I start soon, lest all my "recipes" turn out without measurements at all). It's as easy as a piece of pan-cake so basically you mix away with whatever you like! Here's what I use for mine.

Ingredients

Shredded cabbage (not too fine, I personally like the bit of crunch of partially uncooked cabbage)
Chopped spring onions (scallions)
Plain flour
Eggs
Water
Salt and pepper to season
Nagaimo
Bacon or ham

- Mix flour, eggs and water in a large bowl to form a batter. I like to have it as a thinner batter than usual since addition of grated nagaimo would make it very thick and sticky.
- Stir in the shredded cabbage and spring onions. Season with a little salt and pepper.
- Peel the nagaimo and grate into the rest of the batter. Stir to mix well.
- In a frying pan with a little oil, ladle some batter and line pieces of bacon or ham on top of the pancake. Cover with a lid for awhile before flipping.

Okonomiyaki is usually served with a generous brushing of okonomiyaki sauce, a good squeeze of mayonnaise and sprinklings of aonori (seaweed powder) and katsuobushi (bonito flakes). Well, in my kitchen, I improvised my own "okonomiyaki sauce" from oyster sauce, ketchup and sugar and replaced aonori with erm, shredded seaweed snacks. It isn't as authentic as the real okonomiyaki, but I think it's good enough. As an alternative to my very vague explanations, you can check out the recipe here!

***

On the topic of Japan, it's been really saddening to watch the crisis unfold in Japan over the past few weeks. I've been to Japan thrice now, with the most recent just a month prior to the major earthquake that struck. It's heartbreaking therefore to witness the carnage and destruction unveil through Singapore's news and also live-streaming of Japanese news on the internet. More so, probably because of how the Japanese are coping with their utmost dignity and resilience.

Published last week on The Straits Times' supplementary magazine of Digital Life, a translated tweet from @7474529 read:

"A goth youth with white hair and body piercings walked into my store and shoved several hundred dollars (several tens of thousands of yen) into the disaster relief fund donation box. As he walked out, we heard him saying to his buddies: 'We can buy those games anytime!' ... ..."

In such a crisis, there's not a lot that we can do to help personally. But in such times, we can hope for goodness.

If you'd like to give something for the people in Japan, here are some links where you can visit to donate monetarily. You can also contact your local Red Cross for details of other ways in which you can help.

Japan Earthquake & Tsunami: 7 Simple Ways to Help
mashable.com/2011/03/13/japan-earthquake-tsunami-help-don...

【Amazon.com】
http://www.amazon.com/b/?&node=2673660011&ref_=cm_sw_r_tw_arcjept

【Google Checkout】
www.google.com/intl/en/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

【Japanese Red Cross】
www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

【American Red Cross】
american.redcross.org/site/SPageServer?s_subsrc=RCO_Donat...

【International Medical Corps】
www.internationalmedicalcorps.org/Page.aspx?pid=1970

【AmeriCares】
http://www.americares.org/whatwedo/emergency/japan/japan-earthquake-tsunami.html

【Donate with Paypal】
www.paypal-donations.com/pp-charity/web.us/campaign.jsp?c...

【causes.com】
www.causes.com/campaigns/154523

***

2011-03-15T00:47:00.003+08:00

***, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

日本、頑張れ！

＊＊＊

Links

Japan Earthquake & Tsunami: 7 Simple Ways to Help
mashable.com/2011/03/13/japan-earthquake-tsunami-help-don...

【Amazon.com】
www.amazon.com/b/?&node=2673660011&ref_=cm_sw_r_t...

【Google Checkout】
www.google.com/intl/en/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

【Japanese Red Cross】
www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

【American Red Cross】
american.redcross.org/site/SPageServer?s_subsrc=RCO_Donat...

【International Medical Corps】
www.internationalmedicalcorps.org/Page.aspx?pid=1970

【AmeriCares】
www.americares.org/newsroom/news/massive-earthquake-tsuna...

【Donate with Paypal】
www.paypal-donations.com/pp-charity/web.us/campaign.jsp?c...

【causes.com】
www.causes.com/campaigns/154523

have a lovely christmas

2010-12-25T12:24:00.002+08:00

have a lovely christmas, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

The Food Blog Dilemma with Green Tea Azuki Scones

2010-11-27T23:35:00.006+08:00

I love cooking, and that's why you, who are reading this, is doing so right here. I like to put ingredients together, take pretty photographs of them and share, both in terms of feeding my friends/family and my self-proclaimed "recipes". But having a food blog poses a problem.

When a kitchen escapade produces somewhat good results, I inevitably want to revisit the recipe again, like going to a good restaurant again and again. But then, what do I post? Obviously it doesn't make sense posting a recipe twice and considering the fact that I grace my blog that few times a year, the two posts will definitely be back to back. I've made roasted vegetables at least 5 times and varied takikomi-gohan so many times for almost every lunchbox I made.

On the other hand, having a food blog and does push me to try new things and be adventurous in the kitchen. Reading the various food blogs out there also helps inspire me and give me new ideas.

So, where exactly is this going? Well, actually, what I'm really trying to say is, forgive me when I space my posts sparsely, when I leave out recipes or even when I post only photographs and a bare description. Just like this one.

Basically, it is the same recipe as this, substituting strawberries for 2 tablespoons of powdered green tea and some sweet azuki that comes in a can all the way from Japan. Brilliant with some cold milk. I've also used the same recipe for a blueberry version. Perfect for lazy afternoons.
An update from the previous time I posted this recipe, as the dough is quite soft and tend to spread and lose their shape when on a baking sheet, I found that the scones bake up much prettier if I put them in moulds, fluted no less!

土曜日弁当

2010-11-21T20:58:00.001+08:00

土曜日弁当, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

この間のお弁当

2010-10-24T21:07:00.003+08:00

soba salad with sesame dressing

curry baked rice with mushrooms and tomato

sweet potato and mushroom takikomi gohan with curry and bamboo shoots

I think it'll be the end of my bento series for now since I've recently switched a job and won't be cooking much, especially for lunch.

Hot Pot... Not

2010-09-19T21:31:00.001+08:00

I found myself wanting very much to eat nabe, Japanese for hot pot, after reading chika-san's post on the Japanese winter quintessential. So we don't have winter here in Singapore, but the recent monsoon has made it somehow conducive for some hot pot action.

You would have realised that the photo doesn't show a pot. Of course, it would have been an actual hot pot if I did have a proper pot. But I didn't. Or rather, I didn't have one for a single portion. So I cooked everything in a normal over-the-stove pot and served it in a bowl. So, perhaps you would prefer to call it udon with soup.

I'm not posting the method (yet again), only because it just involves heating up some ingredients and water in a pot. I used ingredients that I had in my fridge; Napa cabbage, eryngii and buna-shimeiji mushrooms, tofu and cheated with frozen store-bought meatballs. Instead of cooking everything at the same time as per a usual nabe, I opted to cook the stalks from the cabbage first. Since I wasn't really going to eat it hot-pot style, I wanted to have the stalks soften before adding the rest of the ingredients that didn't require long cooking times. The cabbage also helped sweeten the soup which I seasoned with some light soy sauce and a little sugar and guess what, the individual scallop snacks (again). My sister, who cannot stand mushrooms, said they gave the soup "undertones" which I was more than happy to have.

I had my "nabe" with udon, sprinkled with negi (spring onions) and lots of chilli powder. I think rice would also make a nice carbohydrate, almost like a "porridge". But well, I'm more a noodle person but that's just me.

I wasn't a very much of a soup person until I my Japan trip, just like how I began going back to rice. I liked, and still do, prefer stronger flavours, favouring fried noodles or dry versions with lots of sauce over soup versions. But I've since become more receptive of soup if it was well-flavoured. When I was busy trying to squeeze the food in an aesthetically-pleasing manner into my really small bowl, my sister actually noted that it looked too "bland" for my taste, besides the fact that the bowl was too small. Well, it's nice to have a change sometimes, right?

今日の弁当

2010-09-01T23:33:00.002+08:00

今日の弁当, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

今日の弁当

2010-08-31T22:42:00.002+08:00

今日の弁当, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

サツマイモご飯に小豆を入れてみたかった
そして、ご飯がお粥になった　（笑）

小豆がずっと軟らかくならなかったので
しかったないね～
でも、意外に美味しかった…

今日の弁当

2010-08-26T21:17:00.002+08:00

今日の弁当, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

Roasted Vegetables

2010-08-22T11:40:00.001+08:00

I love vegetables. I find them much more convenient to cook, especially for a 1-person meal and with so many different types of flavours: sweet, sour, bitter, peppery, fresh... I guess I could probably do without meat for a day, but definitely have to have my vegetables.

I found myself craving for roasted vegetables the other day and whipped up a batch. Although very simple and quick, I really like how flavourful the vegetables become from roasting in just a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Warm, wholesome and hearty. I sometimes mix a simple dressing of red wine vinegar, wholegrain mustard and something sweet like strawberry jam, seasoned with salt and pepper to eat as a warm salad, but it's just additional and could definitely be done without.

No recipe, but hey, just drizzle cut vegetables with some olive oil and sprinkle with cracked black pepper and some sea salt. Roast in the oven at 220 degC until the vegetables are tender. I used a mixture of pumpkin, potatoes, carrots and onions cut into wedges. Sweet potatoes would be great too. I also recently discovered one of the most delicious vegetable when roasted: garlic! I never knew the humble garlic clove could develop so much sweetness and flavour with just 20 minutes in the oven. I was skeptical until I tried it for myself and it was so good! I didn't think my friends believed me either until I decided to roast whole heads of garlic over the grill for a recent barbeque to make my own garlic bread.

Rice

2010-08-07T14:47:00.004+08:00

Having been on a no-rice (maybe a little) diet since god-knows-when, I felt guilty reverting back to a sometimes-rice lifestyle. I blame it on the very long over trip to Japan I took about 2 years ago, but then I might have fallen off the wagon anyway with or without the trip. My fever for anything Japanese has since elevated, especially since my Japanese language skills have increased, and it has affected my choice of food and cooking. But that's also mainly because I've been reading Japanese food blogs.

炊き込みご飯 or takikomi-gohan, is basically rice cooked with ingredients and therefore having the rice flavoured and seasoned in the process. I much favour richer flavours and frankly, don't like white rice. Addition of seasonal ingredients (read: whatever you have and like) makes for a more exciting bowl of rice! And I like exciting.

Reading the fancy-schmanzy name might be the hardest part of cooking takikomi-gohan. Technically, you ~~dump~~ put everything into a pot and just let it cook. I have a feeling my way of seasoning the rice is a little unorthodox (I used mentsuyu, mirin and individual seasoned hotate or scallop snacks) but it's not like it bothers me.

This recipe is for a mushroom takikomi-gohan and I used a mixture of eryngii and buna-shimeji. My first attempt at takikomi-gohan with Japanese sweet potato and nagaimo have yielded equally good results. I'm waiting to get my hands on takenoko (bamboo shoots) and kuri (chestnuts) so that I can use them in my takikomi-gohan ventures.

If you haven't realised by now, my recipes tend to be really "free-form" and serves fairly little. I usually cook 1 serving if not 2 for the next day or a bento. This time round I prepared a pumpkin and sweet potato curry and yaki tamago (sweet egg omelette) with my takikomi-gohan but I imagine it just as nice with anything you would serve with normal rice.

きのこの炊き込みご飯 (Mushroom Takikomi-gohan)
2 Servings

1 medium eryngii
1/2 pack buna-shimeji
1/2 cup rice
1/2 cup water
1 Tbsp mentsuyu (or 1 Tbsp light soy sauce and 1/2 tsp sugar)
1 Tbsp mirin
4 seasoned scallop snacks (optional)

- Gently wipe mushrooms with damp paper towel or give them a very brief rinse to remove any dirt. Trim off the ends and discard.
- Break the cluster of buna-shimeji into smaller portions and cut eryngii into bite-sized pieces.
- In a heavy-bottom saucepan, wash the rice twice.
- Layer the mushrooms over the rice and add the water, mentsuyu and mirin.
- Put the individual scallops, if using, in between the mushrooms.
- Cover the pot with a lid and simmer over low heat for 30 mins or until the rice is tender. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking. You might need to add more water depending on the rice you use.
- Alternatively, you can cook everything in a rice cooker.
- Serve hot with your favourite side dishes.

On a whim

2010-04-21T21:16:00.001+08:00

illust, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

A few of my favourite things

2009-11-27T21:33:00.002+08:00

colours, balloons, umbrellas.
and a happy little song that probably doesn't make much sense.

また flumpool

2009-11-19T10:46:00.002+08:00

Potato and Pumpkin Gratin

2009-11-07T16:56:00.006+08:00

Couldn't resist making a gratin today after my mother tried making one on Tuesday morning. And I guess I couldn't let a pumpkin sit for too long without whipping up something either, especially after making pumpkin korokke, spaghetti with pumpkin cream, pumpkin mac and cheese...

I have absolutely no idea what's the "actual" way of making a gratin, not even sure if there is one. But anyhow, I liked how mine turned out, considering it was done without much thinking and using the simplest of ingredients. Ok, I consider making a bechamel simple, but it really is!

Potato and Pumpkin Gratin
Serves 2 or 3

1 waxy potato, peeled and sliced into 5mm slices
200g pumpkin, peeled, seeded and sliced into 5mm slices
Salt and pepper
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp plain flour
250ml milk
Shredded cheese (whatever kind you like)
Chopped roasted pine nuts, to serve (optional)

- Preheat oven at 180 degC.
- Arrange potato and pumpkin slices in a lightly greased shallow baking dish, alternating rows between pumpkin and potato.
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Melt butter over medium heat in a frying pan.
- When the butter has melted, add flour and stir with a whisk until smooth.
- Add milk bit by bit, and continue whisking until thickened with no lumps. Add more milk if you think it's too thick or stop if you feel the mixture is too thin.
- Turn off the heat and whisk in a handful of shredded cheese. I used a mixture of mozzarella and parmesan.
- Spoon the bechamel sauce over the potato and pumpkin and sprinkle with extra cheese.
- Bake in oven for about 30mins or until top is golden brown and potatoes are tender.
- Serve hot, topped with chopped pine nuts if desired.

秋っぽい天気

2009-11-01T12:48:00.001+08:00

秋っぽい天気, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

flumpool love

2009-10-09T21:46:00.005+08:00

flumpool - フレイム [PV]
Uploaded by _meg. -

flumpool makes me cry, but i can't stop listening to them.

Korokke Bento

2009-09-09T14:24:00.000+08:00

Bento of korokke (or croquettes if you might) and baby green salad. I think korokke will be my new favourite item for my future bento menus. So many variations that I can think of and so easy to make! I'm reminded of the marvellous piping hot korokke I had in Arashiyama last year and was trying to replicate but couldn't. Still, the results were good, though I did pan-fry my korokke instead of deep-frying. I hate dealing with all that oil. There's no recipe for now and I promise I'll come back with one. But it's going to take a while. In the meantime, Google is your best friend.

Spaghetti with Pumpkin Cream

2009-08-25T19:54:00.000+08:00

I shouldn't have been cooking today. But I did anyway. And it wasn't just lunch I made. I had the nerve to pull out potatoes and breadcrumbs to make croquettes for "future bentos", but I'll talk about that the next time. Let's hope it's not tomorrow because it'll mean I didn't do my schoolwork again.

I used a 1/4 of the kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) in this recipe but have leftovers for the cream/sauce (cream sounds better but there's no cream since I substituted it with milk). I supposed I would just add more milk to it to make a soup for tomorrow's lunch or mix it into a mac and cheese. The first time I made it, Anyhow, the recipe's very simple and really satisfying (at least to me) but do remember to eat it hot since I find that the pumpkin can be a little too cloying when cooled.

Spaghetti with Pumpkin Cream
Serves 1

1 handful frozen edamame, with pods
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/4 small kabocha, peeled, seeded and cubed
120ml milk
Water
1/2 a bouillon cube
Milk, extra
Salt and pepper

1 serving spaghetti
Grated Parmesan cheese

- Boil edamame with pods in boiling water for 3 mins. Drain, let cool and pop the beans out from the pods. Set aside
- In a small saucepan, fry chopped onions and garlic with a little oil until fragrant and onions turn translucent.
- Add cubed kabocha to the saucepan and fry for 1 - 2 mins.
- Add milk and enough water to cover the pumpkin. Stir in the bouillon cube. Alternatively, you can also use only water or only milk and season with just salt and pepper.
- Cover and simmer the pumpkin until tender. If you think there's too much liquid, let it reduce slightly over medium heat.
- Let the pumpkin cool a little before blending till smooth.
- Add milk, bit by bit, until it reaches your desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper but keep in mind that parmesan cheese will also increase the saltiness. You can also use cream if you like.
- Cook spaghetti as per packet instructions until al dente. Drain and return to the cooking pot.
- Add edamame, parmesan and pumpkin cream to spaghetti and toss well.
- Serve immediately.

Oshiruko

2009-07-30T13:28:00.000+08:00

I had the craving for oshiruko yesterday night but it was just too late to make any. So obviously I had to do it the first thing in the morning.

I used readily prepared koshi-an (sweet red bean paste) from Daiso for the soup. Besides adding too much water to the koshi-an, to neutralise the sweetness, I also added some sea salt to soup. Usually I would just make the shiratama (glutinous rice dumplings) version but I had fun trying to "grill" my mochi (glutinous rice cakes) and nearly burnt a pair of chopsticks over my stove. Oops.

Which would you choose? Shiratama or mochi?

HELLO... Hello... hello...

2009-07-29T11:52:00.000+08:00

*blows dust*

*sweeps cobwebs*

*wipes windows*

I shot my breakfast today. =)
Let's see how long I can keep this up!

Yogurt with homemade granola, homemade applesauce and Forelle pears.

From Japan to You

2009-02-02T22:47:00.007+08:00

I realised I would never really get down to blogging about my trip to Japan with the tons of homework and the fact that I hate processing photos. So here's a slideshow with my photos and it'll update itself as I upload more photos onto my Flickr site. Feel free to click on the button on the right of the thumbnail-bar to view it full screen. Enjoy!

Final

2008-12-31T23:54:00.001+08:00

It's my last post of this year!
See you all in 2009!

Adult Rating

2008-11-26T16:30:00.000+08:00

A much awaited return! At least to the few who drop by now and then. Honestly, if not for those nudges for me to start blogging again, I would have been too lazy to. Bad me. So far, I've also yet to pick up my camera and cooking utensils, but hopefully I will do so a couple of times before I set off on my holiday to Japan.

I left before truly finishing my strawberry phase so I really have just this one recipe left. As a warm up to my return to the blogosphere, it's really quite short and easy. Despite that, I do think it results in a very pretty and classy outcome, good for entertaining!

Because the whole recipe barely uses any sugar, it's quite adult and probably won't go very well with the sweet tooth. And because it's so simple, it's important to use sweet strawberries and good chocolate if you have access to them, or at least those you think are good. The tart pastry recipe yields much more than required for 2 individual tarts, but you can freeze the extra till you decide to make more tarts again.

Bitter Chocolate and Strawberry Tart
Makes 2 4" tarts

Chocolate Tart Pastry
240g flour
25g sugar
2tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
125g butter, chopped and chilled
1 egg yolk
40ml ice cold water

- Sift flour, sugar, cocoa powder and salt into a large bowl. Stir to combine.
- Using the fingertips, rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse oatmeal. While incorporating the butter, lift up your hand slightly and let the flour fall back into the bowl.
- When no big pieces of butter is left, mix the egg yolk and water in a small bowl and pour it over the flour mixture.
- Knead gently with fingertips until the dough comes together in a ball. Work lightly and as little as possible so that the pastry will be flaky when baked.
- Divide the dough into 3 portions, wrap each portion in cling wrap and chill for 30 mins or until ready to use. I like to wrap each portion into individual plastic bags and then pop all into a Ziploc bag if I'm freezing them.

- Preheat oven to 180 degC. Lightly butter and flour 2 4" tart moulds.
- Take out 1 portion (out of 3) of the chilled dough, roll out to 1/8" - 1/4" thick and fit into tart moulds.
- Trim off the excess from the edges and prick the base with a fork. Chill again for another 30 mins.
- Bake the tart pastry for 20 - 30mins until cooked through.
- Let chill before assembling the tarts.

Ganache
100g dark chocolate
80ml cream
2 tbsp milk (optional)

Topping
10 - 12 smallish strawberries

- Put the chocolate, into a large bowl. I use chocolate pallets, but if yours comes in a block, chop into smaller pieces to facilitate melting.
- In a small pot over medium heat, cook cream and milk until small bubbles form around the sides and then remove from heat.
- Add the cream to the chocolate and stir occasionally until all the chocolate has melted. Let cool before assembling the tarts.
- Divide the cooled ganache into the baked tart crusts. Let chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve before proceeding to the next step. If you cut the strawberries too early, they'll dry out when you chill the tart.
- 15mins before serving, wash and hull the strawberries. I cut the tops off so that it's easier to slice them.
- Place strawberries, cut side (top) down, and cut into thin slices.
- Finish the tart by arranging the strawberries on top in a flower-like pattern. Work from the outermost towards the center.

Lost and Found

2008-11-10T22:58:00.003+08:00

Doudou's been found! He was sent to the AVA on Tuesday and we just got him back today. His flying licence has since been suspended until further notice. Thank you all for your well wishes and help.

this goes out to all those who happen to live around the old airport road area (guillemard road, mountbatten, pine close, cassia cresent).

my pet parrot (african grey), doudou, is missing. the last we saw of him was when he flew out our bedroom window in pine close towards cassia cresent at 7pm on 10 nov (mon). he needs to be fed special bird feed twice a day by syringe. we're very worried for his safety and well-being.

if you find him, or any parrot that looks like him roaming in the area, pls contact me at melon_tea[at]hotmail[dot]com.

i'd greatly appreciate your help. thanks

Hiatus

2008-08-22T22:00:00.002+08:00

I'm taking a break from blogging and flickr-ing to concentrate on school work and sleep.
See you soon!

Strawberry Cream Scones

2008-08-09T23:45:00.001+08:00

I love scones. Don't you? But I never thought scones could taste so good! I've always been eating scones bought from bakeries like Sweet Secrets and Four Leaf because they're not expensive to get, and taste, well, really quite good. But that was all before I decided to have some scones bake in my oven. I'm not boasting about my baking or whatsoever. Most definitely not. Rather I'm just so glad I found such a good recipe!

I was searching for scone recipes online, when I saw this recipe on Lara's blog. Reading through the post, Lara had nothing but praise for the recipe (like "nearly fell on the floor after I tasted them" and "simply amazing"). Running through the ingredients list, I was a little reluctant as it asked for really quite "an epic amount of cream". But I still decided to give it a go. And I'm so glad I did! It was just as what Lara had said, very moist and light and just oh-so good. Stand aside, you dry and dense store-bought scones! Whipping the cream created such a fluffy texture for a scone that I never knew could or should be in a scone.

The only problem I had was shaping these babies. Because the dough was so wet, I kinda gave up trying to shape and cut them and just dropped tablespoons of them onto the baking sheet for fear of destroying all the effort of incorporating whipped cream for a fluffy scone. The thing is, also because they're so wet, they spread a little too much and ended up quite thin and looked more like a cookie than a scone. Still, they tasted great warm from the oven! If it ever lasts till the next day, I always like to toast them for a while to warm them up and the outsides will get a little crisp while the inside is still fluffy and moist. A very flexible recipe, I substituted blueberries that Lara used to diced strawberries and made only 1/3 of the full recipe. While these scones are great on their own, I drizzled them with melted chocolate to dress them up a little and made them all the more delicious. I finished the baking and shooting late in the afternoon and by the next day, they were gone. Even though there was only 6 scones, considering the rate food disappears from my kitchen, it really is quite an amazing feat.

Strawberry Cream Scones
(Makes 6)

1 cup strawberries, hulled and diced
140g flour
50g sugar
2/3 tbsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
200ml whipping cream

Melted chocolate (optional)

- Preheat oven to 180 degC.
- Sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Mix in the strawberries.
- Whip, with a standing mixer or a whisk, the cream until medium soft peaks form.
- Gently fold in the whipped cream into the flour and fruit mixture, taking care not squash the strawberries.
- To shape, turn the dough onto a floured working surface. With floured hands, shape the dough into 1" thick rectangle and fold it in half. If it is still too wet, dust with a little more flour and shape and fold again. Cut into triangles or squares and place on a lined baking sheet 1cm apart. This is so that they will hold their shape even if they spread.
- If like me, you're afraid of dealing with the mess and don't mind awkwardly-shaped scones, drop tablespoonfuls of the scone mixture onto a lined baking sheet.
- Bake the scones in preheated oven for 20 - 25mins or until browned on top.
- Let cool for 15 mins and drizzle with melted chocolate if desired.

Salad in a Cup

2008-07-31T17:30:00.002+08:00

Seeing that more than a few days have passed since I posted my previous recipe and my pictures for this post on Flickr, I thought I had better get on with it. You know, in case I get all lazy and decide to procrastinate (again) and end up not posting it at all. I've decided to take a little break from strawberries but I do still have some strawberry recipes scheduled to be posted but that'll come later. School's been busy, even though it's only 2nd week of the term and semester. I've been wanting to pack lunch, but almost always too tired at night to prepare for the next day or that I have too many things to bring to class and don't want to add to the "luggage". Forgive me, I do rant a lot.

Now, about the recipe! I think I have already established the fact that I'm a salad girl. And I don't have to remind you how easy it is to throw together a salad! Since starting my low-carb diet years ago, I've been actively trying to cut down on my carb intake. So rice had to go, most potatoes too. But I really love noodles. Soba, glass noodles, udon, vermicelli, ban mian, etc. So sometimes for variation, I add noodles into my salad. This salad of udon and crab was very much inspired by Pepper Lunch! Udon makes a good addition to a salad because it's just a plain noodle, hence makes a good base and mingles with flavours well. Serving the salad in a cup/glass was very much triggered by the fact that Pepper Lunch served theirs in a plastic cup. Isn't it genius?! All you have to do is put the ingredients in the cup, drizzle the dressing and then give the cup a good shake (covered of course!) and there you go! No messy tossing with forks or spoons. And it's some exercise before you meal! All good things.

Black and White Sesame Seeds

For this recipe, I used Surimi crab, which basically is imitation crab meat. But instead of the crabsticks, I used those found at the sushi counters in Cold Storage. I find (ok, think) that it tastes more like crab meat. If you're feeling luxurious and hardworking, buy crabs, cook them and remove flesh from the shells! The dressing is again, something that I just threw together with the ingredients I had on hand and feel free to adjust the proportions to your likings.

Salad of Udon and Crab
(Serves 2)

Dressing
4 tbsp soba shoyu (or Japanese soy sauce)
1 tsp sesame seeds, toasted and crushed
1 tsp chili flakes
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp sesame oil

100g fresh udon
1 egg, beaten
1 cucumber
1 medium-sized carrot
100g Surimi crab (or fresh crab meat)

- Combine all the ingredients for the dressing together in a bowl and mix well. Leave to sit while preparing the other ingredients.
- In a pot of boiling water, cook the udon for about 1 - 2mins. Drain and let cool.
- Heat 2 tsp of oil in a frying pan and fry the egg to make an omelette. Remove from frying pan and let cool before cutting into 1cm strips. I find it easier to cut the omelette into half, then roll each half to cut.
- Wash, peel (if desired) and cut off the tops and ends of the cucumber and carrot. Grate the vegetables to get thin strips. I like to use the largest grater for salads like this. Alternatively, you can julienne the vegetables with a knife. If you find the carrots too raw for your taste, you can blanch them in hot water for about 30secs.
- To assemble, layer the ingredients for the salad into 2 glasses for individual servings. First being the udon, then carrots, then cucumbers, crab meat and then the omelette. Garnish with spring onions or coriander if you wish to. Let chill for about 10mins in the refrigerator.
- When ready to eat, drizzle the dressing over the salad, cover the glass with a plate or saucer and shake! If presentation and playing with food isn't your thing, just toss everything in a bowl and enjoy, but it won't be so fun of course.

Sweetly Pink

2008-07-22T10:30:00.001+08:00

Haven't I been a good blogger these couple of weeks? Tee hee... I've got posts up within 1 week of each other for 2 weeks now! Alright, I'm starting to wonder if you guys are getting sick of strawberries. But I still have a few more posts on strawberries that I have yet to publish. I don't know, but I really think I went a little crazy for strawberries. But, I digress.

So, the Indonesian strawberries weren't very tasty. Though that is quite a sad truth about strawberries that weren't exactly cheap, I think it gave me the opportunity to try salvaging it. I had been wanting to try a recipe from Anita at Dessert First but always used the strawberries up for something else more suitable for it. So with the quite tasteless strawberries, I set on to roasting them and use as a topping to some citrus-flavoured meringues. Pairing light, crisp meringues with roasted, syrupy strawberries seemed quite genius to me. It's a very easy recipe, but I think the result looks so classy!

I wanted to make a refreshing dessert with this but encountered slight problems. Firstly, although I really love the texture of meringues (you know how the crispy outer shell breaks and dissolves away to reveal the very soft and light innards), I really find them a little too sweet. But to yield a nicely whipped and dense meringue, you'll need at about 50g of sugar per egg white (most say 60g but I've tried 40-50g with good results too). And then there was the problem of flavouring the meringues. I wanted to flavour it with citrus juice and zest to counter the sweetness but it didn't quite show through. Or perhaps I just wasn't brave enough to add enough juice to the egg white. Still, I think it's a recipe worth a try if you're aiming for something more fancy yet still easy to make.

Getting ready to make meringues

Citrus Meringues with Roasted Strawberries
(Makes 6)

3 large strawberries or 6 small ones
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp lemon and orange zest

1 large egg white
50g sugar
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp orange juice
1 tbsp lemon and orange zest

- Preheat oven to 200 degC.
- Wash and hull strawberries. If they are big, cut them in half.
- Place the strawberries on a baking sheet and sprinkle with the sugar and citrus zest. Roast in the oven for about 10 minutes or until soft and syrupy.
- Lower the oven temperature to 120 degC.
- To make meringues, beat the egg white with an electric mixer until soft peaks.
- Add sugar gradually while beating until stiff peaks form. When the egg whites are about ready, add the citrus juice and zest.
- Spoon tablespoonfuls of the meringue onto a lined baking sheet to make 6 meringues. Make a little dent in the center of each meringue to hold the strawberries.
- Bake the meringues in preheated oven for about 30mins or until crisp on the outside. Let the meringues dry in the oven for another 30mins.
- To serve, top each meringue with roasted strawberries. The meringues alone keep well in an air tight container for up to 1 week.

Comfort Food

2008-07-16T10:00:00.002+08:00

Don't you hate falling sick? I do. But I'm also glad to say that I'm not all that susceptible to colds and flu and fall sick only, thank god, a couple of times a year. But, rather unfortunately too, I fall sick during a break after a long period of stress and hard work. It's like the immune system relaxes just as I start relaxing too.

Last week, having completed my internship, I finally got a chance to wake up late on a weekday and had planned to start a cooking and baking spree and do some blogging. But I just had to come down with an infection. A gum infection. I don't know how it happened, but I woke up on Sunday and it started feeling sore. By the time I checked to see what really was the problem in the evening, there was this large ulceration at the back of my jaw and the pain had spread to my throat. For anyone who had the rather unfortunate experience of a bad wisdom-toothache, you'll know how it's like to not be able to open your mouth big enough to put food in with a spoon.

So by the time Monday came, I was yearning to cook and photograph but not really wanting to eat. Now there's this one thing that I always cook for myself when I fall sick: barley. Yup, pearl barley. I just cook some in lots of water till tender, add some sugar and have that for the whole day. It's almost like a craving for times when I'm unwell. Still, I wanted to tie it in with the strawberry phase that I'm currently in and plain cooked barley didn't seem to accommodate the red berry quite well. A little thinking and a barley and oatmeal porridge was cooking on the stove. The barley added a nice bite to the porridge which I liked (a little ironic since I was down with a gum infection) and topped with strawberries and honey, makes a wholesome breakfast for a gloomy Monday morning. Besides the chewiness of barley, I also like my oatmeal porridge, any porridge for that matter, a little thicker. A little like a pudding I think.

The strawberries I used this time were from Indonesia and I was really quite happy to find them at a Shop & Save outlet. They were really beautiful, I have to say. No bruises at all, lovely leaves and even some remaining petals on the berries! Gorgeously red and in small punnets, which I think is good if you can't finish the very perishable fruits fast enough. At S$2.95 for 1/2 a pound-punnet, it's almost the same price as the US strawberries when they're not on sale. So I put them into my shopping basket to bring home to try. They lasted long for strawberries, I bought them on Thursday night and they remained perfect for 1 whole week. However, I'm sad to report that they were really quite tasteless, if not really tart. Oh well...

Barley and Oatmeal Porridge
(Serves 2 small stomachs)

50g pearl barley
50g rolled oats
2 tbsp cereal mix (not breakfast cereal! i used this but it's optional)
300ml milk

Strawberries, hulled and quartered
Honey

- Rinse the barley and cook in a 2 cups of water for 30mins or until tender and the water is almost evaporated. If the water has evaporated before the barley is cooked, add another 1/2 - 1 cup of water.
- When the barley is tender, add in rolled oats, cereal and the milk. Stir and continue cooking until the oats are cooked through, adding more milk if desired.
- Serve warm, topped with strawberries and drizzled with honey.

Keep Jammin'

2008-07-11T10:00:00.000+08:00

No excuses this time. The latest hiatus is just due to my laziness to blog after a day's of work at my internship company. So, after a full month of non-blogging action, I'm continuing with my strawberry phase with homemade strawberry jam!

Previously, I've done a brief introduction on Korean strawberries. This time I used their American counterparts. I would have bought the Korean strawberries if they were still available when I was at Carrefour, but the US strawberries were the only ones left. As previously stated, I found the US strawberries much bigger (mostly) than the Korean ones but usually were more bruised, probably from the rough packing and travelling. They were about to die quite a horrible death on the shelves and I had quite a hard time choosing the best 2 punnets for my jam making. But it wasn't all bad since they were even cheaper than stated and I paid only S$8.90 for 2 pounds of awfully ripe strawberries. Being very ripe (you know, almost turning black), they were very very fragrant and really sweet. My family ate almost 1 pound while I hulled and cut the strawberries to make jam. In the end I only had a little over 500g of strawberries left to make jam but it was all good since I didn't have too many jam jars on hand either.

Jam making, apparently, seems to be quite a daunting task for many, but it's really quite easy! All you do is boil the cut fruit and sugar in a pot to the desired consistency and you'll have nice bottles of jam for toast every morning. The tiring part probably is to keep an eye on the jam and stir it almost constantly so that it doesn't burn. I like my jams thicker for easy spreading on toast and whatnots so I've stated a longer cooking time. Some recipes include the addition of pectin for better jelling but I didn't think it was necessary after perusing recipes that I've found online. There's also a cold saucer test that might be quite useful though I didn't rely on that. The recipe I followed mainly was Mae's recipe but hers was more syrupy and I also think the ripeness of the strawberries affect the jelling effect. So just adjust cooking time to your liking.

Strawberry Jam
(Makes 2 - 3 275ml jars)

500g strawberries
300g sugar
1 tbsp lemon zest
1 tbsp lemon juice

- Wash, hull and quarter the strawberries. You can als

o half them (for a more chunky jam like Mae's) or blitz a portion in the food processor. Set aside.
- In a heavy bottom saucepan, combine sugar, lemon juice and zest and stir over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved.
- Add the strawberries and stir gently until it comes to a boil.
- Cook, stirring constantly, for 40 - 60mins depending on the consistency you like. I cooked mine for 60mins. For a thicker jam, you can do a test with a cold saucer (popped into the freezer before you start cooking), drop a bit of jam onto the saucer and leave for a few seconds. If the jam still runs like a liquid, cook for another 10mins and test again. It's advisable to start testing at about 40mins and gradually increase the cooking time. You can also taste the jam and add more sugar if desired.

- Fill the jam into sterilised jam jars leaving about 1cm from the brim(careful it's hot!) and screw on the cap tightly. Let cool. For more presentable jam to be used as gifts, spoon off the foam on the jam before filling into the jars. I didn't bother because I thought it was quite a waste of beautiful jam.

Strawberry Story: A Prologue

2008-06-11T11:00:00.000+08:00

I had wanted to go out to get some strawberries over the weekend and do some baking and post recipes like I promised, but the dark clouds were looming and I gave up my baking plans. Because you know I won't want to take photographs when it's cloudy, which actually is part of the ultimate goal besides having something to eat. So I'm going to leave you with a very simple way to prepare strawberries and an update of my bread pudding recipe.

It's summer in the Northern hemisphere and though Singapore sits on the equator, I still get to eat according to the seasons with the foreign imports. I'm not sure if bread pudding is summer food but I think the marinated strawberries add a fruity touch to it which is just my kind of summer. The addition of lemon zest to both the custard and the strawberries also make it more refreshing besides perfuming the dessert.

The bread pudding recipe that follows serves only 1 but it's a larger (approximately 1 3/4 times... okay... 2!) serving than what I did previously in cupcake cups. As an update to the bread pudding recipe, I think I would advise to leave the bread (I used a rustic white loaf from Carrefour which was the best white bread I've had!) to soak in the custard mixture for at least 30 minutes. I find that the 10 - 15 minutes that I stated in my previous recipe didn't adequately allow the bread to absorb the custard and the bread was still slightly on the dry side. Also an additional step to coat the ramekins with some melted butter and sugar leaves a syrup at the bottom of the bowl when baked which I think The marinated strawberries were done by eye so there's no measurements. Very simple flavours but distinctively summery with the fragrance of strawberries. Of course it's so versatile you could have it with anything! I had it spooned over some yoghurt together with my passionfruit curd and I imagine it to be just as wonderful over some crepes or even ice cream! Now that's what I call summer!

Marinated Strawberries

Strawberries, hulled and diced
Sugar
Lemon juice and zest
Honey

- Throw everything into a bowl and mix briefly. Let sit for flavours to mingle or until ready to serve. You can also use only sugar or solely honey.

Bread Pudding for 1

1 tsp melted butter
1 tsp sugar
2 3/4"-thick slices of bread
200ml milk
1 egg
Zest and juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp honey
Extra melted butter (optional)

- Brush ramekins with melted butter and coat with the sugar. Skip this step if using cupcake cups.
- Cut the bread into 1" thick sticks and arrange in ramekin. Cut the bread sticks shorter if they stick out of the ramekin too much, 1/2" is okay.
- Whisk milk, egg, lemon juice and zest, sugar and honey together until the sugar has dissolved.
- Pour over the bread in the ramekin. If it looks like it's going to overflow, stop and let the bread absorb the mixture for a while before adding the rest. Let sit for 30 - 40mins. Alternatively, you can just prepare it and let it sit in the fridge, forget about it for a while and come back after you've finish the things you have on hand.
- Preheat oven to 180 degC. Dot the tops of the bread with extra melted butter if desired.
- Bake the bread pudding in preheated oven for 45mins or until the custard is set and the bread is browned.
- Cool for 5 - 10 minutes and serve slightly warm with marinated strawberries and the syrup.

Strawberry Love

2008-06-06T21:45:00.002+08:00

It's apparently strawberry season now and the punnets of these beautiful red jewels look so tempting on the shelves! These strawberries are from Korea and packed very neatly in the plastic cases so less of them were bruised, unlike the ones imported from the US. Although I'm not exceptionally crazy about strawberries, it's really hard to refrain from buying them when hoards of them are around. And it's quite fun trying to eat according to the seasons by tapping into the seasonal foods from temperate regions. I'm hoping to get more strawberries before they run out and use them in some wonderful recipes I've seen around.

Recipes to come soon!

Mini Pies = Pielets

2008-05-31T08:58:00.003+08:00

Mini tarts are called tartlets, so mini pies must be called pielets right? And passionfruit meringue pielets these shall be.

So, I promised a fancier way to serve the passionfruit curd (I know it took a little too long!) and while you actually can just have it on your toast (which is still very good, btw), I think sometimes it doesn't hurt to make a little more effort to impress people a little. By fancy, I really didn't mean difficult. Just needing a little more time.

These meringue pielets are fairly easy to put together. The tart base is very easy and quick to do, but so good! Fragrant with a nice buttery, flaky crumb, I think it will work well with many sweet tarts. I used Fanny's recipe for the tart base and followed it word for word. I didn't the need to change it. I've since used it twice and my favourite part about it, no shrinkage when baking! All-in-all, it takes about another 1 or 2 hours to assemble the pielets including the time needed to chill and the tart dough. The full recipe for tart base makes about 11 3" tartlets (weird number, I know). The following recipe makes 4 pielets so it will use 1/3 of the tart dough recipe. Or you can simply bake up all the tart bases and store in an airtight box for future use!

Passionfruit Meringue Pielets

Tart Dough
250g plain flour
25g sugar
Pinch of salt
125g butter, chilled and diced
1 egg yolk
40ml ice cold water

Filling and Meringue
4 heaping tbsp passionfruit curd (find recipe here)
1 egg white (I used the one left from making the pastry)
40g sugar

- Sift flour, sugar and salt into a large mixing bowl.
- Using only your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse oatmeal. When incorporating the butter into the flour, lift up your hand slightly and let the flour fall back into the bowl.
- Mix the egg yolk and cold water together in a small bowl and pour over the flour mixture.
- Knead gently until the dough comes together into a ball. Work the dough as little as possible so that it will remain light and flaky when baked.
- Wrap in cling wrap or a plastic bag and chill for 30mins or until ready to use. You may want to divide the dough into 3 parts before wrapping so that you can take out only what you need when baking.
- Preheat oven to 180 degC. Lightly butter and flour 4 3" tart moulds.
- Roll out 1/3 of the tart dough to about 1/8" - 1/4" thick between the clingwrap or plastic bag or on a lightly floured surface. You may find that you need a bit more tart dough depending on how thick you roll out the dough.
- Drape the tart dough over the moulds and press into the edges. I find it easier to try to fit it into the bottom first before letting the dough drape over the sides.
- Trim the excess dough from the rim and prick the base with a fork. Chill again for 20mins.
- Bake the tart bases blind for 25mins until golden brown. When baked, let cool before filling with passionfruit curd. Increase oven temperature to 200 degC.
- While the tart shells are cooling, whip the egg white until soft peaks form and slowly add in the sugar while whipping until stiff.
- Fill the cooled tart bases with 1 heaping tbsp of passionfruit curd each and top with the meringue, spreading it out to cover the passionfruit curd and piling up high in the center. Create whiplash peaks using a knife. Alternatively, you might want to pipe the meringue and making decorative swirls or using patterned nozzles.
- Bake 8-10mins or until the meringue browns slightly. You can use a blow torch too.

I know most people don't keep meringue pies, but if you happen to have leftovers, or they cool before you have a chance to eat them, pop them into the oven or toaster to warm up again before serving. I find that they taste better warm because the crust is more crisp, rather than hard.

Passion for Passionfruit Curd

2008-05-21T23:45:00.000+08:00

I first bought passionfruit curd on my Perth trip in 2005 with my art classmates without knowing what exactly it was. It just sounded... exotic. I knew what passionfruits were, how they looked like, how the plant/flowers/vine looked like. But I never got to eating real passionfruits. The only "passionfruits" I tasted before were passionfruit *flavoured* drinks and didn't know if they were anything like the real deal. So imagine my glee when I saw them fresh in the Singaporean supermarkets last year! Okay, back to passionfruit curd. I was pleasantly surprised! I thought it would be kinda jam-like, but it was smoother since it was more "liquid", more rich with the addition of eggs and butter and less cloying because it wasn't as sweet.

Ever since I found passionfruits on sale in the supermarkets, I wanted to make passionfruit curd. But you know, procrastination, school, yada yada... Many times I bought passionfruits to "make passionfruit curd when the weekend comes" but they either end up eaten as it is or worse, dying in the refrigerator (which, sadly, happens all too often with ingredients I buy). Well, it took me long enough to recreate passionfruit curd in my kitchen and I'm glad to say it's so easy I won't have to buy it again! Taste wise, the flavour of the passionfruits weren't showing through much. It might be because the passionfruits (the Indonesian/Malaysian variety, green on the outside, reminds me of Pong Pong) were a little lossy on the flavour to begin with, or the fact that the lemons I used were too fragrant. Despite that, it's still a great recipe! I love the smooth texture of the curd, the tang and fragrance of the lemon and the crunch of the passionfruit seeds. Seriously, I "wiped" the bowl in which I prepared the curd in with a slice of white bread. I wasn't about to let any bit of this yellowy goodness go to waste. I also had it with yoghurt and cake, both of which proved to be delicious. If you're in the mood for something fancier, I'll follow up within the next few days with another recipe.

Passionfruit Curd

(Makes approximately 500ml)

2 lemons
6 passionfruits
80g sugar
60g butter
2 large eggs, lightly beaten

- Zest and juice the lemons and set aside.
- Remove the pulp from the passionfruits and set aside.
- Bring a pot of water to boil. When the water is boiling, turn the heat down and let the water come to a slow simmer. Set a heatproof bowl over the pot of water, making sure the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water.
- Combine lemon zest and juice, sugar and butter in the heatproof bowl and stir occasionally until the sugar dissolves.
- When the sugar has dissolved, add in the passionfruit pulp and stir briefly. Do not overheat.
- Add in the eggs slowly through a strainer and whisk constantly. The mixture will take some time to thicken, about 10mins. When it thickens and starts to coat the whisk/spoon, remove from the heat, let cool and store in sterlised jars.

P.S. You might want to try another method which involves stirring (constantly!) all the ingredients, except the butter, in a bowl over a pot of simmering water until it thickens. When the mixture has thickened, remove from heat and whisk in the cold butter to incorporate.

I'm Back!

2008-05-11T16:40:00.001+08:00

And in one complete piece! Phew~!

Did you miss me?

After a long month of struggling with pencils, brushes, needles and sewing machines, I'm glad to report that I've fully accomplished my mission and successfully, more or less, survived my second academic year at fashion school! YAY! If you want, you can take a look at my proudest creation up to date.

Ok! So back to the edible.

I actually baked a couple of times before my hellish term started back in March but didn't get around to posting about them. I've been pestered by SK for quite some time to make bread pudding. But I've never had bread pudding before, and thought it was just simply soggy french toast. So it didn't appeal THAT much to me and I obviously procrastinated. Then it seemed to be like bread pudding season somewhere in Fall of the Northern hemisphere, when I saw this and this. But I still didn't make it.

So after a long long wait, I finally got around to making bread pudding in March. But that's partly because I had leftover cranberries and apples and oranges to use and found it exactly the ingredients of this bread pudding which I thought looked really quite good.

Not having bread pudding before, much less making it, I looked through some trusty food blogs online for recipes to reference to. And my favourite (and only) dessert cookbook. And they seemed easy enough: thickly sliced bread in a simple custard of milk (sometimes cream), eggs and sugar make up a very basic recipe which can be flavoured and tweaked with additions of other ingredients. So, to use up the leftover ingredients that I've had in my refrigerator for *ahem* months *ahem*, I infused the custard with orange zest and orange juice and topped the puddings with diced apples and cranberries. I made individual bread puddings because I brought them for a sleepover with my fellow art-sians and was quite attracted by how Bea packaged hers. I'm not sure if I over-filled my cupcake cups because they were leaking by the time they were supposed to go into the oven and I had to stack up to 4 cups for 1 pudding. So feel free to use ceramic ramekins or baking dishes if you're not going to have them lugged around like me.

Truth be told, I can't remember the exact quantities of the ingredients I used, so I'm going to leave you with some very very vague measurements here. But I promise to recreate something soon enough to post an accurate recipe that works.

Cranberry and Apple Bread Pudding

Ingredients
1 green apple (I used Granny Smith)
~200g loaf of multi-grain bread
400ml milk
2 large eggs
~80g sugar + 1 tbsp
Zest and juice of 1 orange
Handful of cranberries
Icing sugar for dusting

- Peel, core and dice the green apple. Set in a bowl and let macerate with orange juice and 1 tbsp of sugar.
- Slice bread thickly into 3/4" slices. Cut them into 1" sticks.
- Divide bread sticks evenly into 10 individual cupcake cups, lined with wax paper, or greased ramekins/baking dishes.
- In a large bowl, whisk together milk, eggs, sugar and orange zest.
- Divide the custard mixture evenly into the cups and let the bread soak up for about 10 - 15mins. Here's where you need to keep an eye on the puddings if you're using cupcake cups. If they leak, layer on the paper cups.
- Preheat oven to 180 degC.
- Top the individual puddings with macerated apples and cranberries and bake for 45mins.
- Let cool slightly before serving and dust with icing sugar if desired.

By the time we got around to eating the puddings in the midst of our movie marathon, they were already quite cold and I don't think it did them much justice. The tops were kinda dried out which I thought would be slightly crusty and crispy if it had been warm, or not been left out for that long. I think If I were to do it again, I'd probably not have my bread stick out of the cups this much, or soak them all in custard before filling them into the cups. Also, my friends thought they weren't sweet enough and I drizzled on extra syrup for them. I don't have a major sweet tooth and didn't have a problem with the sugar content. If you like your desserts really sweet, add more more more! sugar.

Arrival of Spring

2008-03-31T12:38:00.004+08:00

It's the end of March and I haven't got around to posting any of my foodie-ventures yet. I managed to squeeze time in to bake some, bread pudding, some brownies, apple tarts, but I've been too busy and lazy (though I don't know how the two can coexist).

There's obviously a lot of things that I want to do and similarly, a lot of things that I do not. But it seems I don't have a choice but to conform. Except for a couple of exceptions like skipping school (today) to finish up some work and gather myself before I start my never-ending rat race to the finish line. For this period of time, my stocked-up secret pantry comes into great use for the easy, ready-to-eat snacks of biscuits and finger food like the sesame longers (above) and when I feel extravagant, a couple of quick-fix sandwiches.

The sesame longers I bought at Daiso, the Japanese $2 lifestyle chain, and the petit croissants from Le Petit Provence at Central, the new mall at Clarke Quay. Le Petit Provence is the sister chain of the Provence at Holland Village. I would like to say more, but somehow my mind is a little jammed up at the moment. But that leaves another post to look forward to! Though that might take a little longer than expected.

Birthday Baker

2008-02-23T20:45:00.001+08:00

Oh yeah, that's me! And I'm quite happy about that.
After baking my own birthday cake, there were of course more birthday cakes to be baked throughout the year!

Here's one for MH which I baked last Saturday for her 21st birthday. Let's hope I can keep up with the important birthdays and make everyone happy!

Deja Vu

2008-02-21T22:20:00.000+08:00

I think many food bloggers have a common problem. We avoid making the same thing too often. Because if we did, we would run out of things to blog about! But we all have recipes we turn to again and again, don't we?

So I baked white chocolate and cranberry jam cakes again. But it wasn't for myself! My classmate, Daisy, placed an order for these and a dark chocolate version (dark chocolate, peanut butter filling, nutella topping) to bring back to Indonesia for her family for Chinese New Year. Now I'm really glad because she placed the same order last year. Which means they were well received by her folks the last time!

And that makes me a happy girl.

I think I did a better job this time round with the cakes because they were more fluffy and had a moister crumb than those last year. And the white chocolate ganache isn't grainy like the previous time. I just have to work on spreading the topping on the cakes because I don't seem to be able to do it without getting the crumbs all over and destroying the smooth toppings, especially with the nutella. I think it has to do with the consistency.

More practices needed!

Valentine

2008-02-14T21:18:00.001+08:00

心, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

New Year Detox

2008-02-10T02:55:00.001+08:00

First of all, let me wish you all a Happy Lunar New Year! I know I should have done that a few days ago, but hey, there's 15 days to it! (i suddenly realise how similar this is to my Christmas greeting) And of course they say it's better late than never. (Did I say this too for Christmas?) For you who doesn't know what the Lunar New Year is about, wiki is your friend!

With all the celebrations going on, all the food and booze, it's really about time we all got a detox. And what better way than salads?! You know how much I love salads. They're oh-so-easy to prepare and even more so when you buy wash-and-toss salad mixes from the supermarket. It's the first time I got the a salad veg mix from the supermarket and it's a change from the usual ice-berg lettuce that I always use for my salads (because it's like the cheapest salad veg around!). And it's so convenient.

I don't really have a recipe for this 5-minute salad but if you really want something, I could tell you how I mixed my vinaigrette. As usual, I think you should just add whatever you like to your salad. I love nuts in my salad because it adds texture and I'm not keen on eating like a cow. I added lightly salted cashews and almonds this time, because I love cashews. I also added some corn (after I took the photographs) for added sweetness.

I admit I wasn't eating healthy all the time. In fact, I've always liked salads but with mayonnaise or thousand island. And I've only started using healthier dressings like vinaigrettes recently. I think it's also because I like stronger flavours and I don't think I could ever evolved to eat salads only with olive oil.

Now, if you really need to know, I mixed some apple cider vinegar, olive oil, about half a teaspoon of honey, pepper and about 1 teaspoon of soy sauce together to get the dressing for this salad. I don't even remember the proportions. But you know, taste test!

Have I succeeded in keeping my blog alive and reminding you that it's time to stop the new year binge?

Birthday Baking - Part 2

2008-01-20T11:50:00.001+08:00

Okie! I'm back with the recipe! Did you miss me?

White Chocolate Orange Cake with Cranberry Jam

Ingredients
100g white chocolate
110g butter, softened
120g granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 heaping tbsp grated orange zest
160g all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
120ml milk

50g sliced almonds, lightly toasted
4 - 5 heaping tbsp cranberry jam, warmed
1 tbsp icing sugar
2 - 3 tsp warm water
icing sugar, to dust

- Preheat oven to 180°C.
- Melt chocolate in a double boiler or in a bowl set over a pot of simmering water, making sure that the bottom of the bowl is not touching the water.
- Beat sugar and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer until light and fluffy (~ 3mins). Meanwhile, sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and set aside.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, allowing to mix 30secs between additions.
- Add melted chocolate and orange zest. Beat for 30secs.
- Fold in 1/3 of sifted flour mixture and then 1/2 of the milk.
- Repeat until all the flour has been well incorporated. Do not over mix.
- Bake in a greased and lined 7" baking tin for 35mins or until a testing pin inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. If the cake is browning too rapidly, cover with aluminium foil.
- Turn cooked cake out to cool on a wire rack before proceeding to assemble.
- When cake is cooled, slice into 2 rounds with a large, serrated knife. I find it easier to cut by placing turning the cake and cutting slowly from the circumference to the center. If the cake has a dome, even the top by cutting the "extra cake".
- Spread cranberry jam generously over the bottom half of the cake and top with the other half of the cake.
- Mix 1 tbsp of icing sugar with the warm water, 1 tsp at a time, to get a paste. Spread this thinly over the top of the cake.
- Sprinkle sliced almonds to cover the top of the cake.
- Dust with icing sugar.

I think I did mention about messing up the cake quite a bit. In order to provide you with full information and also entertainment, here's what happened:

(In no particular order)
1. I was lazy and skipped lining the tin so the cake got a little stuck. And a part of it broke while I tried to, frantically, get it out of the pan. But I pieced it back, so you can't see it.
2. I used a mixture of white and brown sugar so the cake wasn't as white as I would like it. It's got nothing to do with taste, but if you wanted it to look better, I'd suggest using only white sugar.
3. I wanted to make a white chocolate ganache for the outside of the cake, but due to miscalculations, it just wouldn't thicken up. So I have a lot of chocolate "sauce" left.
4. My almonds were more than lightly toasted. They were quite, erm, well-browned. So I covered up with icing sugar so you wouldn't notice.
5. So in my recipe I've included an icing sugar paste to spread over the cake. It's to act as *glue* for the almonds to stay on the cake. As you guessed, I didn't think of it when I was in the middle of trying to fix the above 4 problems of my cake. And my almonds were falling all over the place when I cut the cake.
6. I think 5 glitches are enough for a poor birthday cake.

Birthday Baking

2008-01-13T21:13:00.001+08:00

Here's what I promised to be up by this week! My belated birthday cake! I kinda messed up quite a lot here and there, but that'll come later. Fortunately I was able to do emergency rescue procedures to salvage the cake and make it look presentable!

I don't have much time to post today, so I won't have a recipe yet. But let's hope it'll come soon, okie? =p

Special

2008-01-11T18:14:00.001+08:00

red riding hood in paris, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

It's a special day today!

I'm Alive!

2008-01-10T21:31:00.000+08:00

Yup! Well and kicking! I've been neglecting my blog for quite some time, although I seriously wonder if anybody besides MH realised. Saying sorry for that is so overrated, am I right? I've been cooking and baking bits here and there, fiddled with perfectly fine recipes and gotten disastrous results, etc. Thing is I really want to bake and cook more and photograph even more, but my sister's been waking up way past my "shooting studio's" premium sunlight-receiving hours. Plus it's monsoon season and I don't seem to be able to get my camera on my tripod (I must be stupid). So it gets a bit depressing to photograph when light conditions are poor.

Apple and Cranberry Cake

Okay, so excuses aside. I have a recipe to share! Bea's recipe, to be exact. Apple and cranberry cake. Really easy and quick. I'm not going to post it here because I didn't make drastic changes to it: decreasing the sugar a little and tossing in some fresh cranberries with the dried ones. And you so should visit her site if you haven't done so before! I think I might add more fresh cranberries next time or just use it solely because I like the sourish juices it lends to the whole cake. I also sprinkled some cinnamon and sugar on top before baking so it would neutralise the sour cranberries a little.

The photos below have got nothing really to do with this post, but I thought I'll just show you that I've truly been cooking and baking recently. Hehe.

Cold Cha-soba

This is my idea of comfort food! The cha-soba didn't really taste of matcha or any cha for that matter, but I love it! It's like instant noodles but much tastier! I topped off with some shredded Japanese cucumber and a simple omelette. I added chili flakes for an extra seasoning and it was really refreshing.

Orange Yoghurt Cake

A total baking disaster! I fiddled with a recipe I had from my one and only dessert recipe book and ended with a very dense cake. Like kueh. It tasted fine, just had a weird texture. Must not mess with recipes again.

I actually have something that I've planned to come up with tomorrow, but, somehow my plans were foiled. So I hope to be able to get it up by the start of next week because school starts then. Tata!

Paris!

2007-12-27T22:47:00.000+08:00

Here are some photos I promised! Wishing all a Merry Merry twelve days of Christmas! (I'm just saying it because I'm late for an actual Christmas greeting)

Touch Down!

2007-12-21T02:05:00.001+08:00

And yes I'm back! Almost 2 days ago to be exact. But well, it's the festive period and parties and gatherings are all coming up so it might be a while more till I have time to post. But I'll get some pictures of my trip up soon! I promise!

Short and Sweet

2007-12-03T23:17:00.000+08:00

And so this post shall be. Alright, maybe not so much of sweet, but short at least.

After an extra long hiatus, ugly biscuits and forgetting my blog's birthday, I'm going to leave you guys (and my blog) once again as I take a long awaited trip! So, I'll be setting off tomorrow on a tour to Europe with my family. We'll be visiting Paris, Pisa, Rome, Venice, Lucerne, Innsbruck and Brussels, to name a few. I'm excited about the weather, the shopping, the scenery, the food, the souvenirs, basically everything!

I'll be gone for 16 days so I'll be in time for Christmas. Which will kick start another busy festive period with all the present-making, baking and Christmas shopping and partying. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a post or two before the end of the year!

Till then, have a happy December!

The Forgotten and The Not...

2007-11-28T13:19:00.000+08:00

Have you ever forgotten a close friend's birthday? Or didn't even bothered remembering in the first place? How about forgetting your own birthday? Hrm...

Well, because I just realised my blog's birthday was 2 months ago. Not that I find it particularly important, but when Bea posted about her blog turning two, it dawned on me that I started my blog around this time last year. I checked and realised it was in October. And to be exact, 2 October. Okay okay, so my judgment's a bit off. But it's no big deal, there's always a next time!

So this post isn't just about forgotten birthdays and anniversaries. It's also about celebration! My abstract representation of cha-soba noodles actually brought me 3rd place for best capture in Click! And if I had wanted a belated birthday celebration for my blog, I think there's nothing better than a recognition of the photography I do for this blog.

Big thank you to Jai and Bee of Jugalbandi and the judges for this pleasant "birthday present". If you'd like to view the other winners, head over to Jugalbandi and take a look at the amazing entries!

Fireworks for the celebration!

Click!

2007-11-20T20:00:00.000+08:00

When I first heard about Click!, I was really kinda excited. And why wouldn't I? Photographing food that I make/eat makes up half of what I do to keep this blog and photo events just makes it more fun. Of course there's DMBLGiT but the more the merrier right?

Well I really really wanted to participate in the first edition but I was up to my neck in school work and didn't have time to photograph any eggs. Now that the holidays are here, and I'm free from school, I wouldn't miss this month's edition for anything.

Nudel. Noodles. 面.

Although I'm not a carbo freak, I do like eating noodles. Pasta, mung bean noodles, soba, udon... the list goes on. So the choices as to what to photograph were many. I have had my packet of cha-soba from Daiso for quite some time and haven't had the chance to cook it. And it came in handy for this month's contest.

I took a whole series of photographs of soba but wasn't very happy until the last few shots. Because the bundle of soba is just as such, it got quite boring lying them flat on the working surface, which was a stool with a cardboard on top (to enlarge working area), covered with a black fabric that I bought for my fashion design assignments. Even when I tried to arrange the soba unevenly, it just looked to me like a broom that we used in the kampung.

So I had seen Ilva photograph her squid ink pasta (for some reason, I can't seem to find that photograph!) and decided to use the way she composed her picture. So I stuck the bundle into a glass and let the bundle open up slightly and photograph from top down. And I liked it! I liked how it opens up like a flower or like fireworks, just not as colourful. I like going up really close and playing with DOF. So I ended up with quite an abstract shot, I must say. Which really worked for me. I wanted to go with something that doesn't say noodles outright. It might not work for everyone but hey, art is quite subjective isn't it?

Some details of the photograph
Camera: Nikon D100
Lens: Nikkor 70 - 180mm
Exposure: 0.02sec (1/50)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 70mm
**Handheld with natural light from window 0.5m above and behind the set up.

So what if they're ugly?

2007-11-20T09:23:00.000+08:00

I think we'd all want to think that looks don't matter, but ultimately, we all know they do. In fashion school, it's almost everything that people care about. Especially with a lecturer who can't seem to stop pointing out who's putting on weight. And when I was eating at a certain local Western food chain, I realised it just wasn't the same without a menu with pretty pictures. I need pretty pictures to tell me what to eat! But when I went to the website of that certain local Western food chain, I thought it might be for the best for the menu to not have any photographs.

So, what got me into this good looking VS bad looking talk? Well, meringues. Yeah, those that you get from baking whipped egg whites and sugar.

I had leftover egg whites from baking the lavender shortbread and decided to make some meringues out of them. I always had the impression that meringues were difficult to make so it was only then did I decide to take my first step into the realm of meringue making. And it wasn't hard. I just erm, needed to not be too hasty. I remembered seeing a recipe for meringues that Brilynn had put up and went back to look for it.

Now this is where it started going a little haywire. No, Brilynn's recipe was fine. Great actually. It was me. I swear next time I will read recipes again and again until I can memorise them before proceeding. And I swear I would never underestimate 4 egg whites. Because you see, my oven is small. Like puny, small. I never expected 4 egg whites to grow into that much meringue! And my baking sheet wouldn't fit half the piped meringues. Whipped egg whites can't sit and I was in such a haste to well, use up my egg whites that I tried speeding up the baking process by turning up the heat and forgot the last part of the recipe: leave in oven after baking for another hour. Oops.

Now after all these talk, where does the ugly part come in? Like right here. Now. So meringues obviously have to have some time in the oven at a fairly low temperature for them to bake well. And my rushing things wasn't going to give me nice meringues. The first batch browned too quickly. And didn't set. So they were kind of squishy, much less say photogenic. I had to destroy that evidence! Okay let's have the second batch then. By then I realised I wasn't going to get to use up all that meringue. To cut losses, I concentrated on that batch and did *almost* what the recipe said. But the meringues were still too brown. Amateur piping skills didn't help make my meringues any more attractive.

And guess what my sister called them. Ugly biscuits. Yeah. Thanks. And it turned out that shooting ugly biscuits made them uglier. The humidity in Singapore just wouldn't spare these poor little meringues alone. They got tacky and stuck to each other, disfiguring themselves in the process. Sigh. But! Big BUT. They were tasty. And that's what counts, right?

Because it was so long ago and I can't remember what I did to create my meringue concoction, please head down to Jumbo Empanadas and try out the meringue recipe. Even though mine didn't turn out all that great, they were slightly crisp on the outside and dissolved away in the mouth. Almost like how candy floss would. Leaving a fresh, lemony flavour lingering on the tongue. I bet yours would be better if you followed the recipe well.

Oh, and please use an electric mixer. I can't imagine you whipping the egg whites manually like my friend's boyfriend.

Portrait

2007-11-19T02:07:00.001+08:00

Portrait, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

Oopsie!

2007-11-13T23:05:00.000+08:00

It's November already! And about time I posted about my lavender shortbread! I know, I know, certain few (you know who you are) have been waiting ever since I posted the photos up on Flickr a month ago. I'm really sorry! School's been busy like hell giving me no time to eat and sleep on most days much less *think* about blogging. Now that everything is finally over and I have a long break from now up to the new year, I've got lots of time to cook, blog, photograph and most of all enjoy myself. Now that's worth celebrating!

So... back to the cookies. I've previously cooked with roses and it was delightful. I love how instead of just the sense of smell, each mouthful treats you to the lovely taste and scent of rosebuds: pleasantly sweet. So when I first saw lavender cookies, I knew, somehow, that I had to get my hands on to baking them. Lavender in cookies, isn't that just plain ingenious? I've always been intrigued by cooking with flowers and cooking with lavender isn't something that I would pass on.

The first lavender cookies I encountered were these babies from Milk and Cookies. That got me itching to get some dried lavender, but as the obvious procrastinator would, I procrastinated. Then, these came. Now I really have to go get that pack of lavender!

And I'm awfully glad I did. Refreshing and slightly tangy, these lavender shortbread cookies were a breath of fresh air. Sugar-coated buttery goodness. Mm~

To be honest, when I was preparing the cookie dough, I was a little apprehensive of the amount of lavender to put in. I can't really remember if I added 3/4 of a tablespoon or less, but I remember being extra hesitant about it. It was after all my first time adding lavender to food and although I wanted to be able to taste lavender in every mouthful of cookies, I didn't want to be overwhelmed by it all. When the cookie dough didn't smell or lavender at all, I started wondering if it was too little. But cookie dough(s) deceive! Once the cut cookies hit the oven, the beautiful scent of lavender filled the house. The aroma toned down once the cookies cooled, but one bite and there's no doubt about it. My sister took one cookie without any knowledge of what was in it and immediately said, "Tastes like lavender!" And everytime I open the cookie jar, I would be greeted by the smell of sweet sweet lavender. Each cookie is like a sprig of lavender flowers. So, what's not to love about these cookies?

Lavender Shortbread Cookies

Ingredients
80g icing sugar
3/4 - 1 tbsp dried lavender
140g unsalted butter, cubed
1 tsp lemon zest
210g plain flour
3 large egg yolks
Granulated sugar (for coating)

- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Whisk icing sugar and lavender together in a bowl.
- Add butter, lemon zest and lavender/sugar mixture to the bowl of an electric mixer and mix until smooth and light in colour.
- Add flour and mix until well combined.
- Add egg yolks and mix just until the eggs are fully incorporated and the dough comes together.
- Form a disk from the dough, wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm (about 30mins).
- Roll the dough out between 2 layers of plastic wrap to 1.5cm thickness and cut cookies out with a cookie cutter.
- Toss each cookie in a bowl of granulated sugar to coat.
- Place the sugar-coated cookies on a lined baking tray and bake till lightly golden (12 - 15mins).

P.S.: I thought the eggs I had at home were small and used 4 egg yolks instead of 3. Apparently, the were sufficiently big and I got a less crumbly texture from the cookies as the dough was moister.

P.P.S.: Handle the cookie dough as little as possible and each time after I cut enough cookies for one batch, I'll chill the remaining cookie dough again so that it's easier to work with. Also dusting the cookie cutter with flour before each cut helps to remove cookies from the cutter.

P.P.P.S: Ain't those little noodle boxes cute?! I'm working on it as a gift idea for Christmas!

Lavender

2007-10-21T12:54:00.001+08:00

Sorry for the hiatus! Will be back soon!

When Time Isn't On Your Side...

2007-09-29T20:09:00.000+08:00

You make sandwiches!

Alright, that's not exactly what you should be doing when you've got no time on your hands and lecturers are hounding you for your assignments. When that happens, you simply forgo sleep and lunch to fulfil your duties as a student. Sandwich-making should be the last thing on your mind.

BUT! If you know me enough, it just doesn't make sense to not whip up something to eat when you're at home with a refrigerator full of ingredients to use! So for the 2 days when I stayed at home, barely sleeping 3 hours a day, I ate sandwiches for lunch. Very good sandwiches.

Day1: Ham, cucumber and double cheese.

Day 2: Ham, tomato, egg and double cheese.

I don't think you would need a recipe for my sandwiches because, honestly, I didn't use one. Fact is, they don't *require* cooking, except the poached egg. But I do swear by toasting my sandwiches after assembly and before eating. One, when there's cheese, the heat would melt it and who doesn't like melted cheese?! (If you don't like melted cheese, I think there's something wrong somewhere) Two, I like my bread toasted warm and slightly crispy.

Another reason for not using a recipe is just simply because you might not like mine. I like to spread mustard and sweet chilli sauce on my bread before layering on the sandwich filling. You might not like that mustard and chilli combination. I always try to have some kind of "plant material" like tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and/or onions in my sandwich. You might not like tomatoes. Or lettuce. Or cucumbers. Or you just don't like vegetables altogether. Which makes you like my sister and previous Biology lecturer and not very healthy.

So, it makes things easy, just focus on getting the best ingredients. I'm not one for white bread. Like white, white bread. If I had any choice, I would get bread that has something, anything, that makes it not white. And I like crusty, chewy bread. My favourite bread to go to currently is the Savoury Delight Loaf from Gardenia. But, it seems like it isn't available now. Maybe because Bonjour has one that's exactly the same, just in a different shape and not as chewy. But the addition of sun-dried tomatoes and herbs makes it really good. Even if eaten on its own.

Well, maybe you should start your own sandwich-making session now. I think I might have ran out of things to say about my sandwiches.

Sneak Peek!

2007-09-26T21:40:00.000+08:00

Crumbles and Crisps

2007-09-10T12:46:00.000+08:00

Don't you love apple crumbles? Crisps, crumbles, whatever you call them. They're so easy and comforting. Somewhat like an apple pie, but not as boring.

The first time I had an apple crumble, I had it at Swensens. Probably not the best place to have my first meeting with the delightful dessert, but it was great all the same. Warm apple crumble, on a hot plate, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Ooh~ how I have sinned! But that was really long ago.

I managed to squeeze in this apple and cherry crumble before the cherry season ended, which, was also really long ago, but not quite as long as my first date with an apple crumble. I nearly wasn't going to make it until the house warming party that I went to the day before I baked served apple crumble. Now that got me started! I really do need a kick in the ass sometimes to get going. Like jogging, doing assignments, cooking, tidying up my space... well you get the idea.

Now when I said that apple crumble was really easy, I wasn't exaggerating. It really is quite a no-brainer and I don't think you could ever go wrong when making an apple crumble, or any crumble. I did come across some recipes for crumbles/crisps when food blog-surfing and picked up some tips. For the first time I made my crumble, I followed a combination of 2 recipes. For the crumble topping that is. And if it's your first time reading, yes, I do believe that you can substitute anything you want for the filling! That's how I like my recipes: flexible!

I really liked how the addition of cherries give the crumble a nice ruby red hue! Doesn't it perk your appetite, that lovely colour? I didn't have fresh shredded coconut at hand and used dessicated coconut instead. I'm not quite sure if it made a difference to the texture and flavour, but hey, I love coconut and any form is greatly welcomed! I really liked the generous amount of crumble topping in each spoonful because that's my favourite part of the crumble. Well, not surprising for one who used to eat pie crust after finishing the pie filling. But I did feel that my crumble filling was a bit on the dry side and a little too sweet for my taste. But that can easily be solved by adding more lemon juice or skipping the flour for the filling and less sugar.

Haalo recommended trying the crumble in 3 ways: hot from the oven, warm and cold, which I did! And I do have to say I much prefer it hot or warm. The cold crumble wasn't, um, crumbly anymore. It was more like, um, hard. I didn't serve it with cream like Haalo because, I don't like cream and the crumble itself was enough to spoil my diet. Hee~ But if you're a cream lover, and someone who never needs to go on a diet (blah!), go ahead and have all the cream that you want!

Apple and Cherry Crumble

Ingredients
Filling
2-3 Granny Smith apples
200g cherries, pitted and halved
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
3 tbsp soft brown sugar (I would reduce this the next time)
2 tbsp palm sugar
1/4 tsp grated cinnamon
1-2 tbsp plain flour (optional)

Topping
150g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
40g dessicated coconut
50g rolled oats
70g soft brown sugar
Zest of 1/2 a lemon
Pinch of salt
120g butter, melted

- Preheat oven to 180 deg C.
- Core and dice apples into bite-sized pieces. I suspect I cubed my apples to tiny and it didn't give the "bite" that I was looking for like in apple pies. I don't peel my apples and that didn't give my crumble any problems.
- Toss apples with all other ingredients for the filling in a large bowl and set aside in the refrigerator.
- For the topping, toss all dry ingredients in a large bowl and ensure they're evenly mixed.
- Add melted butter and incorporate into the dry ingredients with fingertips. It should turn out slightly lumpy, but not too wet. Feel free to add more flour or butter if you find that the topping is too wet or dry respectively.
- Spoon the filling into one large baking dish or individual ramekins (I used 3 small ones). Layer the topping on top of the filling. The topping layer should be quite thick. Just make more topping if you find it neccessary!
- Bake in preheated oven for 40mins if using one large ramekin or 20mins if using individual ones. The topping should be golden brown and juices bubbling underneath.
- Serve warm!

Woohoo!

2007-09-08T22:50:00.000+08:00

I can finally breathe! After 2 weeks of sleepless nights and working at wee hours of the day, I get my long deserved break. Not a total breakaway from school but at least I can relax a little.

I took the photos of these moomin biscuits quite some time ago, but have yet to have the time to post time here. I admit I was attracted by their cute appearance and packaging (Mama taught me that first impressions count), but don't you think they're cute?! I bought them at Daiso, the $2-chain. Besides being cute, they do taste good, a little like regular baby biscuits. What I really like about them is that the box contained 2 small air-tight packs of biscuits, which really solves the problem of having to find an air-tight container if I couldn't finish all the biscuits at one go. But I did also realise that they don't soften as quickly as most other biscuits when left out of their packagings.

Besides eating and photographing, I did play a little with those little moomin characters... Shh~ don't tell my mum!

Sweeten Up

2007-08-28T21:12:00.001+08:00

School work has been the top priority on my to-do list all these while, superseding sleep, lunch and sometimes dinner. So while I gear up to run this last leg before the term comes to a close, "enjoy" these lovely hard coconut candies that my uncle brought back from Hainan. I like these particularly because they're so flavourful, with a really distinctive taste of the coconut and a hint of charred sugar, a little like caramel. Besides, I'm one for all things pretty. The lovely red and white paper wrappers really stood out for me.

For all of you there who have been looking for updates, I think you've got to wait just a little longer! Real foodie posts coming up soon! Just not so soon. :p

Star

2007-08-13T22:37:00.001+08:00

, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

Back to School...

2007-08-08T21:46:00.001+08:00

And out of the kitchen. That includes the blogosphere as well. Haven't had much time to blog, let alone bake or cook something. I made this very long ago, so long ago that I can't really remember what was in it exactly. It tasted quite good though.

Inspired by this, I've been wanting to make some salsa with tropical fruit for quite some time. When I finally got around to really make it, I didn't have mangoes in my fridge. Nor did I have rock melon. But I had jackfruit. And cucumber. And my uncle had bought roast duck. Now, that doesn't sound too bad, does it?

In case you haven't realised, anything sweet, sour or spicy gets my nod. Now combine it all and you've got a winner! With me, at least. So, it's no wonder why I made my salsa the way I did. You know how sometimes you really don't have an appetite because of the heat? Refreshing and light, the salsa fits summery Singapore really well. The diced cucumber lends a nice crunch to the salsa and the jackfruit, its sweetness. As in most of the recipes I post, feel free to substitute the jackfruit or just add others in! If I ever get a chance to have jackfruit, pineapple and mangoes in my fridge together, I'll definitely put them all in.

Just in case you're wondering, there's 2 different ways in which I dressed up my salsa and the roast duck. One, I placed sliced roast duck on a bed of the salsa and another, I chopped the roast duck, mixed it as part of the salsa(which maybe should be called a salad now) and topped it off with pork floss and sesame seeds. Why? Because I was simply bored. Ha.

Tropical Salsa with Roast Duck
Ingredients
3 pieces of fresh jackfruit
1/2 a cucumber
2 tbsp plum sauce
Juice of half an orange (you could use lime or lemon)
1 tbsp palm sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
1 or 2 chili padi, chopped (I used a chili paste my father made)
2 tbsp coriander, chopped
1 tbsp mint, chopped
Roast duck
Pork floss (optional)
Sesame seeds (optional)

- Remove seeds from the jackfruit and dice the flesh. Set aside in a bowl.
- Peel cucumber if desired. (I used the local ones which had blotchy skin and I didn't like that) Cut the cucumber, lengthwise, in half and then in quarters. Remove seeds, if any, and dice. Set aside in a bowl with the jackfruit.
- Mix all other ingredients, except the roast duck, together. Taste and adjust if necessary. If you use lime or lemon juice instead of orange juice, you'll probably need more sugar. And do be cautious with the chili if you can't take spicy food! Start with half a chili padi or remove the seeds.
- Mix the dressing with diced jackfruit and cucumber and set aside in the refrigerator for about 15 - 30 mins or until chilled.
- Meanwhile, place slices of roast duck on a baking tray to reheat. After which you can decide whether to (1): chop the meat up and mix with the rest of the salsa or (2): just lay them on a bed of salsa. If proceeding with (1), top the salsa with pork floss and sesame seeds.

Serves 1

Uhh...

2007-07-24T00:06:00.000+08:00

Well, yeah. It is a salad. Yet again. But this time, I'm not quite liking it. Okie, I was inspired by this when I decided to try making what I made. I've had and made barley salads before, but in a different way and my mushrooms were begging to be used and I just thought, why not? I didn't follow the reference recipe to a T, (Okie, I confess, I didn't follow it! Except for the idea of putting mushrooms, onions and barley together.) so I'm not saying I don't like what 28 cooks has done!

Here's what I did differently:
- I didn't have balsamic vinegar and I wasn't keen on substituting apple cider vinegar or black rice vinegar for it so I used terrayaki sauce. Very different, I know! But hey, terrayaki sauce is nice! With mushrooms at least.

- I didn't only mix the cooked barley and sauteed mushrooms with the "dressing". I actually dumped the barley into the pan with the mushrooms and dressing to "fry". I thought it would taste better warm. (And it did, because it tasted quite horrible cold/at room temperature.)

I actually like all the individual ingredients that I've used, but put them all together and something just isn't right. I think it was too heavy, which probably was my fault, because I decided on terrayaki sauce instead of balsamic vinegar.

So why am I posting this? Well, because I took photos before tasting and decided it looked quite alright photographed and also because I'm running out of things to post about. Tee hee.

La Note

2007-07-20T13:28:00.000+08:00

Dear Evinrude/Melody/Whatever-you-call-yourself,

I've decided to run away. For months, you've put me away into that cold, cold closet of yours (I think you humans call it the refrigerator). Ever since that one time in February, you've decided to set me aside and not let me into your life again. I've been hoping that one day you would take me out of that icy dungeon and put me on that bain marie again. Melt me and stir me into whatever you're baking. But, everytime you ravage through the fridge, you only glanced so briefly at me. Each time, I harbour more hopes that you'll look at me for more than 3 seconds. But you've let me down again and again. So, I've now left you in search of greener pastures. Don't bother looking because I'm probably in someone else's cake now.

WhChoc

P.S.: Your testing pin didn't run away with me. He's in the box grater.

Seven

2007-07-18T21:58:00.001+08:00

Pistils, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

For the Child in Me

2007-07-15T21:34:00.000+08:00

When I posted about nostalgic foods back in this post, I forgot about something. I forgot about these small little munchies I used to have as a kid. They tasted great back then, still do now, and I also know, in my head, that it's all sugar! But that doesn't stop me from reliving my childhood.

Honestly, I got quite excited when I found out that an old provision store opposite my alma mater sold these goodies! And quite cheaply too. Now, I don't think it was the taste that got me all excited and sentimental, but the way it was presented. Fact is, it was the same as before. Those square, gold-ish metal tins with a clear plastic panel on each of the 4 sides for customers to see the goods. Stacked upon one another, the biscuit tins held memories of my childhood days when I used to go shopping with my nanny at the market. Everything about that provision store was nostalgic too. The wooden carved-out signboard, tarnished metal grilled fans, old turquoise weighing scale, small plastic bucket hung from the ceiling for keeping money and, the shop owner. Hee.

I couldn't resist the temptation to buy myself some treats home to savour. Back to the old times! Well, young times. In all the excitement, my maths slowed down. By the time it started working out fine again, I had such a big pack of chocolate-filled wafer that I was taken aback. I sort of "realised" that $2 worth of wafer priced at $5/kg meant I had bought nearly 1/2kg of it. Whoever knew $2 could buy THAT much wafer! But I wasn't going to leave with ONLY wafer! So I learnt my lesson. I used weight as a measurement instead of money. 200g of these and 100g of that.

Now, time to go home and work those jaws!

Thong Tat
Blk 18 Bedok South Rd
#01-69
Singapore(460018)

Pink

2007-07-08T22:20:00.001+08:00

Vibrancy II, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

More Sandwiches!

2007-07-06T17:32:00.001+08:00

Lunch In 4 Steps Under 10 mins

Step 1: Wash lettuce, slice cheese, fry egg, toast bread.
Step 2: Spread mustard, sweet chili sauce and mayonnaise on toasted bread.
Step 3: Layer lettuce, cheese, ham and egg on prepared bread.
Step 4: Eat!

Recreating Mushroom Swiss, Without the Patty

2007-07-05T21:27:00.000+08:00

What do you do when you run out of ideas of what to eat for lunch but desperately want to get into the kitchen to make something?

Well, I'm not sure about you, because maybe you're not the kind who suffer from kitchen-withdrawal. But I make sandwiches. Other than salads, sandwiches are the next thing that I make most often. Probably because I pack my lunch a lot. Like salads, they're really easy to make, sometimes no cooking is required, and really flexible eats. Besides the 2 slices of bread, you can put, or not, anything in between. Hell, you can even skip the slice of bread on top and make tartines or bruschetta (I don't know what's the difference between them, but I think they're just open sandwiches sort of).

There's the usual ham and cheese, tuna mayo, egg salad sandwiches. But everybody gets tired of that sooner or later. So what can you do to spice up the humble sandwich? When I saw this over at the Homesick Texan's, I just thought I had to try it somehow! Now, I'm not a very big asparagus fan, and my mushrooms were sitting sadly in the corner of the fridge. Mushroom and cheese sandwich, a la Burger King's Mushroom Swiss (I just realised Mushroom Swiss seems to be available only in Singapore), with a crispy cheese coating. Now that's something!

Nicer-Than-Mushroom-Swiss Sandwich
Ingredients
2 slices bread (I used flaxseed loaves from the supermarket)
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp garlic, chopped
4-5 baby Portabello mushrooms, sliced thickly
1/4 tsp Italian seasoning
Salt & pepper, to taste
2-inch length cucumber, thinly sliced
Mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced

Coating
1 tbsp butter, melted
2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp Italian seasoning

- In a small frying pan, stir olive oil and garlic over medium high heat till fragrant, about 30 secs.
- Add mushrooms and saute for 3 mins.
- Season with salt, pepper and Italian herb seasoning and saute till mushrooms are tender.
- Line 1 slice of bread with half of the cucumber slices and arrange mozzarella cheese on top of the cucumber.
- Pile cooked mushrooms onto the prepared slice of bread and top with the rest of the cheese and then cucumber slices. Finish off with the second slice of bread. This way, you will have mushrooms in the very center, followed by mozzarella, then cucumbers and lastly, bread.
- Brush the top of the sandwich with melted butter and sprinkle generously with half the grated parmesan cheese and some Italian herbs. Turn the sandwich over and repeat this procedure.
- Place on a baking tray and toast in a 200 deg C oven for about 10 mins on each side until the cheese is nicely browned.

Straight out of the oven, this sandwich is sinfully delicious! The crunch of the outer coating, juicy mushrooms, melted mozzarella and refreshing cucumbers. I made mine vegetarian because meat is such a chore to prepare when you want a quick bite. That said, it is no healthy meal (obviously) with that guilt-ridden cheesy coating. I also found that the cheese for the coating can make the sandwich quite salty, so don't dredge your mushrooms with too much salt when cooking!

Solitude

2007-06-29T23:38:00.001+08:00

Solitude, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

Avocado Feature!

2007-06-23T22:35:00.000+08:00

I don't know why, but before last December, I always thought avocados were bad tasting. Maybe it's the colour of the buttery flesh. Or maybe it was the fact that avocados were always on advertisements featuring facial washes. But ever since I got down to try avocados late last year, I've grown to like it. A lot. Salads, crepe rolls, guacamole... and there's milkshake and something I call a yogurt blend because I don't know what else to call it. In the recipe for the pasta salad, I used only half the avocado, and the other half of it went into this. Of course you can use a whole avocado, but when I do, I'll skip the banana, simply because it'll be a little to thick to drink. But of course you can still eat it with a spoon like this yogurt blend. With granola no less.

Avocado and Banana Milkshake

Ingredients
1/2 avocado
1 large, ripe banana
2 tbsp honey
250ml milk

- Peel and cut both the avocado and banana into smaller pieces (it's not totally necessary, but it helps my blender work less).
- Put all ingredients into a blender and whiz away!
- Serve.

Avocado Yogurt Blend

Ingredients
1 avocado
150ml yogurt (I used the peach and mango flavoured yogurt in cups)
2 tbsp honey
100ml milk

- Cut, pit and peel the avocado. Cut the flesh into smaller pieces.
- Add all ingredients into a blender and blend till smooth.
- Serve in a cup/bowl with granola.

Note: These are really rich and filling, so normally I'll just have them as breakfast, alone. For the yogurt blend, you can add less milk if you like it thicker but this works just right for me.

Show-and-Tell

2007-06-22T21:55:00.000+08:00

Harlow~

I thought I wanted to introduce, to the however many (or few) people who read my blog, my house parrot. A new family member (he's my uncle's actually, and my uncle lives with us), together with 2 cockatiels, he's quite adorable and, at times, a pain the ass (he bites me when I don't have food for him, it's a long long story). He's about 4 months old, the size of a small chicken and is trying to learn how to speak. Right now he says "harlow", an incomplete "how are you" and mimics the sound "doudou" made when car doors are opened with remote-control keys.

While trying to type this out, I was thinking how long it had been since I posted something non-food related. Apparently, since late February or early March, 99.999% of what I've been blogging about were somehow edible and occasionally, caused much distress for some of my friends (you know who you are!) who drop by. But you know, sooner or later, you get to eat something that I make. Let that be of utmost comfort whenever you feel tortured at 2am in the morning and feel hungry from visiting my humble blog.

I Heart

2007-06-21T17:17:00.000+08:00

If I give you my heart, would you promise to keep it safe?
And not eat it?

Perpetual Quest

2007-06-20T00:30:00.000+08:00

Pasta Salad with Honey-Wasabi-Mayo Dressing

A woman can never be too thin. Well, at least to herself. There's always that extra bit of flab on the arms. And the thighs. Not forgetting the tummy. So, the one battle that a woman, or girl, has to fight constantly is to keep off that extra pound or inch or dress size. (Maybe there's another one at the annual GSS.) To do so, we turn to diets (yeah, I think it's more popular than the exercise way). Atkins, low-fat, low-carb, vegetarian, soup-and-vege, 1000-calorie, two-apples-and-one-granola-bar, one-cup-of-Milo-a-day, ... the list is endless! Then there's this one thing that's almost indispensable in a diet menu: salads. (Aha! We're finally at our main topic.) So we gnaw away at leaves of Iceberg while the others enjoy their burger. It's not easy being female, okay? Except maybe when you're the much ~~hated~~ envied don't-ever-put-on-weight-whatever-you-eat kind.

That said, salads are not dreadful. I love salads! Well, this is Salady speaking. I love packing salads to school and to work. They're easy: one bowl kinda food and you can prepare them the night before and just grab the box when you're heading out. They're versatile: sick of mayo? Use a vinaigrette. Change one ingredient and you'll have a different salad. And they're health. Just remember not to drown your greens in a bottle on mayonnaise. So, given my LOVE for salads, how can I not be excited about this?

I made this pasta salad for a barbecue with my friends the other day and it was quite well received. I don't know if any of them didn't like wasabi but they seemed to like the dressing a lot. I love wasabi so I tend to add quite a lot of it whenever I have the chance because it gives an extra kick to an otherwise okay-only dressing. If you're worried about your wasabi tolerance or perhaps intolerance, add a little wasabi at a time and taste-test to your liking. The honey actually tones down the wasabi a bit and rounds up the flavour of the dressing. At most, you can skip the wasabi, but that isn't all that special already.

Pasta Salad with Honey-Wasabi-Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients
50g dried pasta (I used wholewheat fusilli in small spirals and this in large spirals)
1 egg
100g cherry tomatoes (about 8?)
1/2 avocado (I used the other 1/2 for a milkshake)

Dressing
1/2 tbsp mayonnaise
1/2 tbsp sour cream
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp wasabi (I used 1 tsp)
Salt and pepper
Mixed Italian herbs (optional)

- For the dressing, mix all the ingredients in a small bowl and let the tastes develop. Refrigerate till ready to use.
Boil a pot of water. Upon hitting boiling point, add 1 tsp of salt and pasta. Cook till al dente.
- Drain cooked pasta and toss with 1/2 tbsp olive oil and a pinch of salt and dried herbs if desired. Refrigerate.
- Cook the egg in a pot of water over medium heat. When water boils, remove from heat, cover the pot and allow to cook further for 15 mins.
- Cool the egg under running water, shell and dice. Half the tomatoes.
- Cut the avocado, remove pit, peel and dice (read how to). Do this just before serving as avocados brown if left in contact with the air for too long.
- To serve, toss pasta, vegetables and egg with dressing. Sprinkle with pine nuts if desired. I think walnuts will do too.

Enjoy~!

Purple Blood

2007-06-17T18:36:00.000+08:00

Cherry Tomatoes or How to Diet and Still Have Midnight Snacks

2007-06-15T20:30:00.000+08:00

These are probably the healthiest snacks that I'm ever gonna have. Back when I was in TJ, I used to have cherry tomatoes all the time, for break time, lunch and whatever! Especially during the times we rushed for coursework submission and studied for exams, these tomatoes were a hit among me, my teacher and a few of my friends. They kept me away from junk food and kept me at the pink of my health despite all the late nights, irregular meals and stress. I like my tomatoes slightly on the green side because I don't like mushy tomatoes. They're cheaper than most chips, full of flavour yet much healthier. All you have to do is wash them and they're ready to eat. (The supermarket should employ me as their promoter!) The tomatoes in the photos are halved because I used them in a salad (which I will post about later) and the photos of whole cherry tomatoes weren't worth uploading.

Cheerios~!

Upside Down and Right Side Up

2007-06-12T13:05:00.000+08:00

Cherry Upside-Down Cake

Ok, I know I did say that if cherry-filled desserts were to come, it meant the supermarkets were giving great discounts on cherries. But ever since I said that, the price tags of these little red fruits never did come down. I actually baked this cake last Tuesday, with the same cherries that you had seen on the previous cherry-ed post. They were sitting there in the fridge and I just didn't want them to start rotting on me, so I saved them. And put them into the cake. All good things.

I was, at first, struggling to decide what I should do with the cherries. I knew I wanted to put them in some dessert, but I just didn't know what. Flipping through my favourite dessert cookbook, I sieved my through options. Pineapple upside-down cake. Cherry pie? Nope, not enough cherries. Caramel peach (upside-down) cake. Pear upside-down cake. Cherry crumble? Still not enough cherries. Sour cherry cake? My cherries aren't sour! Bleah. Upside down cake!

I baked this in both a mini loaf pan and a mini springform tin. And they did turn out quite well, considering the fact that I kind of came up with the idea myself. Ha. I used my favourite cupcake recipe, which you can find here, from Cupcake Bakeshop. It's easy and versatile, with a nice moist crumb, somewhat like a pound cake. I decreased the amount of sugar quite drastically though, around 80g, because I found it too sweet and still did after the reduction. If I had cherries and were to make this again, I would probably use some orange or even lemon juice and zest to add another dimension to the cake. Other than that, everything was good and I especially like the colour combination.

Cherry Upside-Down Cake

Ingredients
30g butter, melted
2 heaping tbsp soft brown sugar
Cherries, pitted, enough to cover base of your pans*
100g butter, room temperature
120g sugar
2 large eggs
160g all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
120ml milk
Pinch of salt

- Lightly grease and flour the sides of 2 4-inch springform tins and preheat oven to 175 deg C.
- Divide the melted butter evenly between 2 tins and half the brown sugar into each tin.
- Arrange the cherries, stem side up, as many as possible over the sugar mixture.
- Cream butter in the bowl of an electric mixer till smooth, about 1 min.
- Add sugar and beat till pale and fluffy, about 4 mins.
- Meanwhile, sift flour, baking powder and baking soda into a separate bowl.
- Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, about 30 secs.
- Sift in 1/3 the flour mixture into the egg batter and fold in lightly.
- Add half the milk and mix lightly.
- Repeat the above 2 steps, alternating between flour and milk, ending with the flour mixture. Be sure to stir the batter as little as possible when mixing for the cake to remain light and fluffy.
- Fill the prepared cake tins with batter, about 3/4-full.
- Lightly knock the tins against the table a few times, 3 maybe 4, so that the batter will fill up the gaps between the cherries.
- Bake the cakes for 35 - 45 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
- Let cool in tin for 30 mins before turning out the cakes.

* The hardest part of baking this cake, I would say, is to pit the cherries. Ok, maybe not the most difficult task, but it was tedious. I used a paper clip, as suggested here, but was struggling at first because the paper clip was a little too soft and pliable. By the time I got the hang of it, there weren't any cherries left. Oh well. And because I didn't have that many cherries, I used whole cherries, pitted, for my circular cake and cut the rest of the cherries in half and lined them up like roof shingles (or fish scales) for the loaf cake. I don't think there was much difference but if you like more cherries with each slice of cake, use whole cherries.

I'm A Happy Girl!

2007-06-09T00:55:00.001+08:00

Why? Because my baked mushrooms have brought me a 2nd overall position in 'Does My Blog Look Good In This?' May Edition! I'm wonderfully surprised and absolutely flattered! Head on to Scott's website to take a look at all the other beautiful entries (winners or otherwise)!

Tessellations

2007-06-05T16:19:00.001+08:00

What do you think it is?

A Bowl Full of Rubies

2007-06-04T16:54:00.000+08:00

Cherries are in season! And food bloggers scattered all over the globe are tempting me with lots of mouth-watering recipes dedicated to these gorgeous ruby-red berries. But cherries aren't exactly cheap in Singapore. Let's see if the supermarkets offer up a bargain for them. You'll know if you see more cherry-filled posts (and desserts of course) here in the near future!

Random Thoughts

2007-06-03T12:30:00.000+08:00

What do you do when you're up against some fierce competition?

Do you run away, avoiding all direct competition, so that you will not feel the embarrassment of being defeated? Or, do you stay on, and with all you can and have, whip up some head butting action regardless of winning or losing?

Gyoza

2007-05-30T20:57:00.000+08:00

Gyoza with Black Rice Vinegar and Garlic-Chili Dip

I had been making gyoza all afternoon and was really happy to be able to update my missing-in-action blog with something about these babies that I made from scratch. But, the photos turned out really crappy and sucky. Bah! It's really frustrating to have taken out nice little plates and saucers, arrange and garnish the little pot-stickers (I made mine the size of a har kao) as prettily as possible, painstakingly make sure the dipping sauce wasn't all over the edges of the the saucer, take tons of photos... and realise the photos were all out of focus! Argh!

Ok, but Mama always said to learn from one's mistakes so that it wouldn't happen again. So, I sat down and analysed the situation.

I think the shutter speed was set too low. I usually used a shutter speed of 1/20 but today I set it to 1/13 (not just for the fun of it, it wasn't as bright as usual because I took my photos at 4pm today instead of the usual 9 - 11am). I'm not really sure if that little change was so absolutely significant, but well, it's good to K.I.V.. I just realised I used to use a shutter speed of 1/80 (not 1/20!). That totally explains why! For a moment there, I thought I was getting Parkinson's.
I didn't use a tripod. Oh, don't look at me that way.
I didn't check the thumbnails before proceeding on to the next photo. (But the thumbnails are so puny!)
People (read Mama) were walking in and out and giving all sorts of comments ranging from the type of garnish I should have used (I used spring onions and she said I should have used coriander) to how I should have arranged my gyoza to which pair of chopsticks was better. So I was distracted.
I was struggling between using the chopsticks with my right hand to pick up gyoza and dip it into the sauce in a aesthetically pleasing way and putting my eye at the view finder and taking the photo with my left hand with a freaking heavy digital SLR. Am I just telling you how stupid I am?

Despite all that whining, not all is lost and I still have a couple of decent looking photographs to show. And I just want to say the piece of fabric I used as a tablecloth is just too adorable to not mention.