My simple meals

While I do not bake as fervently as I wish to, I have upped my cooking capacity – mainly simple meals that I can eat for dinner and bring to work the next day.

They include:

- fried vegetables with oyster sauce

- pizzas (mainly topped with potato and onion, fresh vegeables, ham and cheese)

- stir-fried chicken with baked cashew nuts

- curry chicken with diced cauliflower

- mee siam (using prima taste)

- pastas (mostly tomato-based)

My next endevours include:

- hainanese chicken rice (including chilli sauce, authentically-made with chicken oil, yum)

- lion’s head, literal translation from shi zi tou (braised lettuce with meatballs)

- roasted duck or lamb of some kind

- more variations of vegetable-based meals – I’ve been reading lots of Mark Bittman on NYT.

When I next go home (in April), I will eat

- bbq stingray with less sambal, and more of that sour, onion chilli sauce please!

- fish soup (more fish please!)

- fish head with salted bean paste sauce and pork lard (my dad’s recipe is the best)

drool…

Sites I’ve been drooling over

1. www.orangette.blogspot.com – her writing is fluid and her photographs are gorgeous

2. www.norecipes.com – i like his inspired take on cooking (after all, isn’t it what most home cooks from a previous generation did?).

3. www.cookinglight.com

I’ve been writing lots in list-form recently. Work does that to you, I think.

The Vanilla Series: Vanilla Biscuits

The next vanilla-inspired recipe in this series is the vanilla biscuit. I suspect that it belongs in the macaron/macaroon family, because it does not consist of any fat and has less flour. With a tinge of a lemony aftertaste, this biscuit is as light as air, and will literally melt in seconds in your mouth. Good for sugarless tea-dipping.

Vanilla Biscuits (adapted from the trusty Le Cordon Bleu Home Collection Series – Biscuits)

Ingredients

65g caster sugar

1 egg

1egg yolk

2 – 3 drops vanilla extract or essence (or 1 vanilla pod worth of vanilla seeds)

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon rind

65g plain flour

extra caster sugar, to dust

First, bring a half-filled saucepan of water to boil. Put the sugar, egg, egg yolk, vanilla and lemon rind in a large bowl and place over the pan of steaming water. Please make sure that the base of the bowl is just above the level of the water.

Whisk with electric beaters for 5 – 10 minutes, or until the mixture becomes thick and mousse-like and leaves a trail as it falls from the whisk. Remove the bowl from the pan and continue to whisk for 5 minutes, or until the mixture is cold. Your mixture should now be almost ivory-cream in colour and almost double in volume of what you started with.

What you start with:

What you end up with:

Sift the flour and fold into the egg mixture. Use a metal spoon and fold until just combined. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 2 cm (3/4 inch) plain nozzle and pipe rounded mounds of the mixture about 2 cm (1 inch) in diameter and spaced well apart onto the baking trays. Sprinkle with the extra caster sugar. (Forgot this step).

Leave the mixture to dry on the baking trays for 4 – 5 hours at room temperature. Preheat the oven to slow 150 degrees Celsius (300F/Gas 2).

Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown and firm to the touch. Transfer the biscuits to a wire rack to cool. Yum it down.

In other news, I’m leaving for Hong Kong soon, for a short holiday with my good friend. After that, I’m leaving for Japan to meet up with another good friend of mine who’s staying in Tokyo for one month. I’m extremely excited about both trips, so look out for some of the many many photos I’ll be taking. Wish me luck!

I need a new oven.

My Baby Belling oven and I have gone a long way. More than a decade, in fact. My dad bought it for me for my tenth birthday, after my disastrous attempt to bake a sponge cake in the microwave oven (let’s just say it wasn’t spongy). Since then, it has followed me through thick and thin. Today, it still heats up, but old age has mellowed its ability to estimate an accurate temperature. Which makes me more of feel like a prophet than a baker.

I feel that the cookies are going to be done. I have a feeling that the next minute will create a soft, fluffy chocolate cupcake. This heat should be the right one for a perfectly done roasted chicken.

In any case, a new oven would probably not be in the works anytime soon. But, I should like to plan for my own place in future, and I was inspired by an episode of Debbie Travis’ home makeover show, where she fitted a teal retro-looking stove-cum-oven for an eclectic look in the kitchen.

I did some research and found out that the oven was from Northstar.

My favourate range of colours:

Bisque

Photo from: elmirastoveworks.com

Robin’s Egg Blue

Photo from: elmirastoveworks.com

Avocado

Photo from: elmirastoveworks.com

Lovely. Of course, I won’t be getting this any time soon. But, I can dream.

I’ve been going to marthastewart.com quite often for new recipes. Her recipe instructions have a distinct Martha vibe about it. Very precise, very clear. The outcome is also usually quite perfect, but perhaps not as perfect as how Martha could have done it.  

The two recipes I have done are:

1. Healthy Oatmeal Cookie

I like that wholemeal flour is used, which ups the fibre factor. Chewy and yet crisp cookie.

2.  Frosted Chocolate-Buttermilk Cupcakes

I didn’t do the frosting, because I felt that the cupcakes were moist and sweet enough on its own. I eat it refrigerator-cold, perhaps because it brings back memories of my Sara Lee frozen chocolate pound cake days. I do believe (hope) that this recipe is a little bit less fat-laden. Oh, I also replaced the buttermilk with light sour cream, which probably altered the taste, but ultimately, it still worked well for me.

On a TOTALLY separate note, I would just like to end this post telling everyone who reads this blog to be nice to the people you love and care for. It sounds so obvious, but often, we hurt, whether knowingly or unknowingly, people who love us. Perhaps it’s because we have higher expectations of them, so we get frustrated when they don’t meet them. Perhaps it sometimes is easier to be mean because it makes us a little less vulnerable. Perhaps sometimes we are just in a bad mood. However, for all these excuses we might give, we should also realise that doing and saying things that show you love them, even things that might seem insignificant to you, is more important than just thinking it.

Pensive pensive.        

Day 30: Where I live + food I eat

The apartment I live in is all but about 400 sq ft, which honestly is pretty small. However, it’s enough for two (and not any more). I like that it’s easy to clean and that I only need to take three steps (I counted) from the television to the bed. Also, it’s extremely convenient to most of the shopping and eating places in Central, which is extremely important for a person who doesn’t not like to venture too far in the cold.

This is the living area. Beyond that is the “bedroom”, which is basically the bed. The computer and the television are my lifelines,  without either I will die. Die.

This is the typical position I take during the day (and night), in front of the television and the computer. If you notice, there are several plastic bags on the right of the television stand. I have started a good habit here – separating my rubbish into plastics and paper to recycle them – which I will continue to do so when I’m back in Singapore.

This is the modest kitchenette. As you can see, I have a pot and a ladle to cook with. I think in this photo, I was preparing chicken soup.

These are the ingredients you need. My sister has the skills to estimate and blend the necessary Chinese herbs. Sadly, I don’t. That’s why, pre-packed herbs are vital and useful. I add red dates to enhance the sweetness. As you can also see, the chicken has been skinned, which I first place in some boiling water to briefly cook them. I then start a fresh pot of water, add in all the ingredients, and let the soup simmer for 2-3 hours. Towards the end, add soy sauce to taste.

Of course when I’m lazy, I buy takeaway.

IS THE YUMMY-NESS OOZING OUT OF THIS PHOTO? I’m sorry I had to bold and capitalise that sentence, but the magic of Yung Kee goose and char siew rice is too delicious to not exclaim in such excitement. I’ve had it three times since I arrived in Hong Kong, and I still cannot get enough of it. The goose meat is succulent, the skin is almost perfectly roasted and the fat oozes into the rice. I also love the fact that there is still some charred bits on the char-siew, giving it that extra crunch in every bite.

Gosh, I’m hungry.

Yup, going to grab some lunch now.

Day 28: The highlight of my trip!

The highlight of this trip was when I had the luck to meet up with Ms Annabel Jackson. Having lived in Hong Kong for the past 19 years, she has been actively involved in the food business, be it writing cookbooks or consulting for restaurants. Amidst her extremely hectic schedule (please click on her link for more information about what she does), she took time to hear out and advise on my interest in heading into the food industry. As she spoke about her own experiences, I grew more confident about the decisions I were about to make for my career. The bonus came when she invited me down to a party she was going to have with her 20-odd students from the HKIS. They were making a cultural trip down to Vietnam, and she wanted to introduce some of the local delicacies of the country.

And of course, I happily (and greedily) agreed.

Who likes a little bit of food porn????? I DO! I DO!

Appetisers first...

Marinated beef wrapped in la lot leaf. This leaf has a peppery aftertaste, and is related to the betel leaf.

Beef skewers. Kinda like satay, I guess.

Fresh prawns rice paper rolls – YUMMY!

Green mango salad

Sliced cabbage with shredded chicken. This was supposed to be “my station” to take charge of, and it was hilarious watching the students trying to put the salad together. The assembling is actually quite a no-brainer – simply add the cabbage, chicken, mint leaves, lime juice, salt and pepper, to taste. The students, I must say, did a wonderful job, under the leadership of one boy, who oddly seemed determined to add some tomatoes, salad sauce, and cheese to turn it into a Caesar salad instead!

The mains

Clams cooked in lemongrass.

Beef curry (with coconut) – Although I don’t take beef, I tried some of the sauce with steamed rice and it was delicious (the coconut really helps to uplift the taste). It’s more of a soup I think.

In my greediness, I forgot to take a photograph of the sour fish soup we had. The fish was marinated in tamarind, the soup was perfectly sour. Writing this down now is making my mouth water.

Finally, dessert! 

Coconut creme caramel. I am especially proud of showing off this photograph because I had baked it the day before! Annabel very graciously invited me to come help her with making this dessert at her place. While the creme caramel has French origins, the Vietnamese version has been infused with coconut, a very Asian ingredient. I suggested infusing some gula melaka, a kind of raw sugar very often used in Peranakan desserts, into the caramel. More interestingly, we replaced the liquid vanilla essence with Madagascan vanilla pods. As a virgin handler of the quite pricey vanilla pod, I was embarrassingly excited to slice open, remove the beans and stir it into the custard. And upon tasting the creme caramel, I now am truly a believer of how spending a little bit more on fresh, authentic ingredients will really help to give the dessert that much more oomph.

Friends, I will be making this once I am back in Singapore. Keep my number on speed-dial. 

At the party, I met the executive chef of Chiram Strategic Restaurants Ltd, Chef Jeffrey LeBon. While we were in the living area chomping down our food, he slaved away in the small kitchen, which, to him, must have felt like cooking on board a ship cabin. He was kind enough to take me down to Shanghai Street, which is a place where both chefs and food enthusiasts meet to look through almost anything related to food and cooking.

A box full of interesting cutters – There were some shaped of Chinese characters and even poisonous animals, like scorpions (I wonder what they are used for).

I think my lucky stars must have been shining bright when I had the chance to meet Annabel. I really cannot thank her enough.

PS: I have a surprise interview coming up, which I am quite excited about. It’s on Thursday and I hope that it goes well. Again, wish me luck!

After he’s left…

Okay, after a whirlwind weekend of over-eating, meeting up with his family, buying a lovely Marni dress (which I’m going to show off later), attending a very Chinese-style wedding (which had a Chinese-style of starting at 8.45pm, after we polished off 3 plates of peanuts), it’s finally back to the reality of job-hunting and project work.

It’s not that I’m complaining though. There’s a certain excitement to finishing up school and attending the interviews. I feel busy. Which I like. I guess, the only bad thing is that I will miss him while he’s gone.

I first have to blog about my Marni dress. I fell in love with it at first sight. 

 

In fact, when there was another girl who wanted to buy this dress, I IMMEDIATELY reserved for my own. Ain’t nobody is going to take my Marni away from me. Nobody! 

I also baked double chocolate chip cookies. I’m not going to link my recipe because you can go to www.recipe.com, type in the best chocolate chip cookies, and get the recipe. I usually choose the one with the most reviews and highest ratings. I’m aint going to go against 100 opinions.

I think I used Barbara Bush’s recipe. Her recipe makes for a good batch, nice and crisp with a nice dose of cocoa.

 

Take note though, she used a lot of butter. Not really diet-friendly, but it’s still good.

On one very stress-filled day, I made brownie. This brownie, however, was special. It was almost fat-free. I used a recipe that didn’t require any added fat, from a recipe book that I bought a long while back from my primary school, an all-girls’ convent school. The recipes listed in the cookbook were all created by the alumni and their family members.

The cake is nice. But I guess being fat-less doesn’t give it enough moist-ness. Or maybe I baked it for too long. It turned out a little dry.

My suggestion is to add a little bit of moistness – butter, milk.

Rachel’s Brownie – from CHIJ St Nicholas’ Girls School Family Recipes

makes 16

Mix 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon vanilla essence, 1 cup sugar, 2/3 sifted flour and 1/3 sifted cocoa and pour it into a pan. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 25 – 30 minutes.

carrot cake, low fat

I don’t know about you, but I like to be deceived. Especially by myself. I like to think that when I eat a piece of dark chocolate that I’m helping my heart (even though the block I broke off will more likely clog up my arteries). I like to think that when I’m watching Oprah that I am becoming more enlightened about the world and its issues of how my bra is the wrong size, how my bed is not my secret sanctuary, and how I am not let in on THE SECRET and thus not transmitting positive thoughts out to live my best possible life.

 Oh, ignorance may be bliss, but it’s actually deception, deception my friends, that will get you through.

 That now brings me to the carrot cake (not the fried radish cake chai tow kueh, mind you). I like to think I’m filling up some of the daily vegetable servings I’m supposed to have. To my horror, I found that most carrot cake recipes had a more significant part to play in satisfying the daily fat and carbs servings than the fibre content. All I could think about was when I could have chosen the chocolate cake instead of the carrot cake at Cedele Depot, and it wouldn’t have mattered. It wouldn’t have mattered. It wouldn’t have mattered…

Of course, this post is not meant to end in such a sardonic manner. It’s meant to end happily in the low fat carrot cake. This recipes is from Delia Smith and is made with wholemeal self-raising flour, lesser fats and sugar. Plus, I shared the cake with good friends, so it’s even lesser fats and sugar!

 My friends whom I’m shared the fats carrot cake with. Thank you GMG! That’s what friends are for!

 

 Here is the carrot cake. It’s really quite good. I didn’t add the sugar syrup as mentioned in the recipe. Oh one thing I wouldn’t have done is add the cinnamon into the cream cheese, a bit too spicy for my liking.

On a side note, how hot are the penelope and monica cruz in the new mango campaign? I don’t particularly like mango clothes, but looking at them in the beautifully taken shots makes me want to throw out everything in my wardrobe, buy them and start wearing them to school.

 Just how much hotter can one get?