Joyeux Noel

Hello dearies!

It's been a loooooong time, I know. Well, to cut the long story short, I got lazy. But look! It's less than a week left to the end of the year and you'll cut me some slack, right? I won't be writing lots since I'm running out of time, but here's two "recipes" for you, if you're up for some last minute Christmas baking. Here's wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Just so you know...

...that I haven't been idling around! It's been 6 months (almost 7!) since I last posted and so many things have been happening. Work has been keeping me really busy and now I'll be having to move on to look for another one... made a trip to Tokyo at the beginning of the month and had a great time... and obviously been busying myself in the kitchen too! Let's hope I get around to post about some of these things. 

Have a great week ahead!
And Happy Halloween :)

Bread Making II

Apple and mozzarella loaf

Taking advantage of my available weekends, I've been making bread every Saturday ever since I got hooked on kneading bread by hand. I've been trying my hands on different recipes to build up my experience in working with yeast and it's been somewhat of a roller coaster ride. After my sweet success at bread making baking the pumpkin marble bread, I think I got a little too proud of myself. Because right after that, my subsequent bread attempts yielded quite disappointing results.

When Life Gives You Lemons

When life gives me lemons, I think I'd prefer to make lemon cake. Well, so life didn't actually give me lemons, I got them the very un-supernatural way at the supermarket, way too many of them. I've been craving for lemon cake for the longest time, specifically the lemon cake from House @ Dempsey. I think I started missing the marvellous cake just as I was leaving the restaurant. Come to think of it, I don't exactly remember how exactly it tasted except that it was wonderfully sour and tangy. I never got around to satisfying my craving because it's just darn hard to get to House, and I wasn't sure if the more accessible Skinny Pizza outlets offered desserts (and I always neglected to investigate).

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＊＊＊, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

頑張れ日本

The Year of the Dragon

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!

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 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

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.

Pumpkin Marble Bread

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.

Bread Making

 

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.

My Acquaintance with Figs

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.

Plum Galette

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.

The Relish Burger

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.

Supporting Actors

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

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.

Peaches I Had This Year

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.

Summer

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!)

Rustic Salmon Burgers

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.

Aglio Olio e Peperoncino..?

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.