u m a m i

Sarawak White Pepper

Husband took a picture of his favourite seasoning. It is some white pepper that we took from my mother's kitchen on one of our trips to KL. White pepper from Sarawak is considered really superior in my parents' household. My mother had on a few occasions even asked the salesmen in my father's company to bring back white pepper (ground and in whole peppercorns) from Sarawak, but nowadays she buys it from the supermarket. This particular brand is called Angsa, which means Goose in Malay, there is an illustration of a goose on the label. Actually it looks more like a swan, though I am sure swans are not a common bird in Malaysia. I've not come across this brand in Singapore, come to think of it, it is not easy to find real Sarawak pepper.

Of weddings and whelks

29th April 1998 marks the date we married. 6 months later, we married again. Confused? Here's what happened. In early 1998, we decided that we would marry, but due to a Chinese superstition and circumstances at that time, we either had to marry right away or wait another three years. I was not prepared to delay marrying for 3 years, nor did I want to be rushed into a marriage, after all I need time to consult my tailor. To get around this problem, we were first married 'on paper' at the Registry of Marriages (ROM). Six hectic months of gown fittings and wedding prep later, we were married again, by Father Nicholas Chia at the Holy Cross church; btw, this is Father Chia who is now the Archbishop of the Catholic Church in Singapore. The Catholic Church does not recognise ROM marriages, so we would have been living in sin if we did not wed in church. The church ceremony is also 'registrable', which means if a couple is married by the Church the marriage is just as legally binding. Some couples also do the ROM-followed-by-fairy tale wedding-route, because they need to be registered as a couple to qualify for public housing, but this is less common nowadays as public housing is more easily available.

April seems to be a popular month to get married in.
28th April 1998: My cousin's wedding day (Coincidence but true, Happy Anniversary Cousin M!)
29th April 1998: My ROM wedding day
30th April 2004: My friend's daughter's wedding day. Yep, I am attending a wedding dinner this Friday.

We celebrated our anniversary tonight because tomorrow I have belly dancing class. Venue: current favourite Chinese restaurant Crystal Jade Golden Palace. We had live sea whelk for the first time in our lives. It was on offer for $12 per 100g, instead of the usual $18. The weight includes the shell, so our whelk costed $108. There was actually only a small smidgen of meat, arranged oh-so-artfully on the plate. We chewed really slowly, to really remember the taste and get more bite for my bucks. All the while I was thinking " I don't get it, what is so special here?".....oh well, at least now I know, and i get to keep the shell as a home decor item. The other items were much more reasonably priced, and as usual, really quite delicious.

I love this dish of live prawns cooked in a sauce of superior broth fortified with crushed dried fish (Ta Tie Yu, from Hong Kong); this dish is not stated in the menu, but the sauce is DIVINE, and live prawns is always very yummy. Is there anything better than live prawns? Yeah, maybe live lobster, hmmm, wrong continent. There was also an oyster pancake, which was too starchy for my liking, but husband seemed to enjoy eating it. And not forgetting a bowl of peppery pig stomach soup to wash it all down with.

Desserts were very refined versions of hawker favourites like tau suan (mung bean soup) and crystal dumplings.

Steak Dinner

I have been hankering for a juicy piece of steak recently, and tonight, I got my wish. Last weekend, we bought some rib eye steak from Tanglin Food Market. Not that I do all my grocery shopping there, stuff there are really expensive, but I was already at Tanglin Mall for my quilting class, so it was convenient. There were other goodies there too, like brussels sprouts. I introduced brussels sprouts to husband, and he loves it. And because husband was so in love with the Magic Chutney from last week, he also bought two huge red onions - shown here with regular onions for comparison. Those onions were expensive, two pieces cost $8, compared to $1.40 per kg for regular onions!!! But they caramelised beautifully.

Thus, for dinner tonight we had grilled rib eye steak with brussels sprouts and caramelised onions. The brussel sprouts were simply boiled in some water and then sprinkled with some fancy pancy salt (to be precise, Fleur de Sel de Camargue, $15 from Culina, cripes), which made a very zippitty bitter counterpoint to the sweet onions and meaty steak. I made some ugly but delicious gravy by deglazing the pan with onion bits with some thawed stock, then deglazing the grill pan with the liquid from the onion pan, so you can imagine how oniony and beefy the gravy was.

By the way, this is the first time I used the grill pan, another one of those Things in the Kitchen that gathers dust, this one has been around for at least 3 years.

Waffling Sunday

When I was an impressionable student in early 90s London, I knew a blond and beautiful English lady, T. I led a quiet life among my books, afterall my parents have sent me there at great expense so I studied hard to make sure I graduate. T on the other hand, led what seemed to me a terribly exciting lifestyle, well it seemed that way because she had a lovely flat, drove really fast cars and her boyfriend was not only older, he was an American.

T is also Jewish, and has a wicked sense of humour, and she seemed to know everything. She turned me on to deli foods like bagels and pickled herrings (very good) and chopped liver (not very good). Chopped liver is quite a few planets away from pate and foie gras. And another memorable thing she said included the relevation that her American boyfriend really loved it when she made him waffles and sausages.... a very American thing it seems. This food combination intrigued me, because up till then, I've only ever known waffles that are sold by A&W, and A&W waffles are accompanied by ice cream and syrup, no sausages, although A&W do sell hot dogs. So maybe there is a connection there, but I have missed it. Still, waffles and sausages, who would have thought.... OK, the Americans did, we have to stop waffling here.

Now, more than 10 years later, I still order waffles with a side of sausages if I can... because there are not many opportunities actually. For one thing, good waffles is really difficult to find in Singapore. Marche does a credible version, and their sausage selection is very good indeed, but their generic (read icky) 'maple-flavour' corn syrup lets the whole dish down. Even in US most diners would serve pancakes but hardly waffles, I ate not a single waffle in New England last autumn, though to be fair I did miss two opportunities. The first was the waffle option at breakfast one morning, which I did not take up because I thought the corned beef hash would be better, it probably was, but the waffles still looked good. The next opportunity was a waffle place called Polly's Pancake Parlour in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, we got there by the time they closed, dammit.

So guess what we bought for Christmas last year? A waffle maker, Phillips Fiesta model to be precise. Which really came in handy because now I can whip up waffles anytime I want. And as usual with Things in My Kitchen, this gadget did not get used until this morning, almost 4 months later. This is because I don't usually keep what other household may consider staples, like flour and baking powder, but there was the cake misadventure last weekend, and now we have a surfeit of flour. So husband gently reminded me about the waffles. I looked through the recipe books. Gahhh... all the recipes in Epicurious and even the Phillips handbook involved proportions like 125g butter to 250g flour, as well as that dreaded thing called Yeast. Too formidable for me......sigh....I did not give up, .....Finally, I found a recipe in one of my cookbooks "Le Cordon Bleu" Home Collection series "Breakfasts" which called for only 30g butter to 250g of flour. Less butter did not impede the taste of the waffles, these were light and crispy, and so easy to make I suspect we'll be Fiesta-ing more often in the future.

The waffles were made even more delicious with some organic maple syrup bought from Culina, pricey but good. Cumberland sausages were from Tanglin Food Market. Some honey tomatoes for Vitamin C and a cup of Earl Grey with milk for calcium. I think even the nutritionist would approve.

Recipe:
250g plain flour
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1.5 teaspoon baking powder
0.5 teaspoon salt
375 ml milk or buttermilk ( I used buttermilk, and found I needed like 430 ml for a less sticky batter)
30g unsalted butter, melted
2 eggs

1. Sift dry ingredients together
2. Mix wet ingredients
3. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until well combined. Batter is ready for cooking.

Roast Pork and Magic Chutney

I came home from belly dancing class to find a wonderful roast pork rib dinner waiting for me, complete with fresh lime juice and some chilli jam already scooped out into a pretty dish. Husband cooked the ribs in a roasting dish on the upper shelf and the roasted cauliflower with green peas on a baking sheet in the lower shelf of the oven. The pork ribs were marinated in some oyster sauce, dark soya sauce, sesame oil, pepper, mirin and whisky. He laid a bed of sliced onions in the bottom of the oiled roasting dish and placed the ribs on top. The juices from the cooking ribs dripped onto the onions. When he took out the ribs, he transferred the onions into a saucepan and cooked it down some more with a little water, and the result was what I call Magic Chutney, the perfect accompaniment to roast pork.

Road Side Stall Hot Pot Restaurant

Hot Pot, or steamboat, is a communal dish beloved of Chinese people all over the world. A pot of hot soup is placed in the middle of the table. Ingredients are dipped into the simmering soup and eaten as it is cooked. My father tells me that in the old days of China, people would eat hot pot in winter, the simmering soup full of good ingredients provided much comfort and warmth against the bitter cold. Of course nowadays we eat it anytime we like, there is no winters here.

In typical Singapore fashion, we have moved on somewhat from the simple home-style hot pot of a clear stock made from pork or chicken bones. Nowadays, the soup base comes in more exotic variations like tom yam or Chinese herbal brews. And at the Road Side Stall Hot Pot Restaurant this evening, where our group of dedicated foodies gathered for our monthly dinner, we revisited two of our most favourite versions. A fiery ma-la soup that renders lips, palate and tongue numb (ma) and hot (la) on one side of the pot, and a comforting and nourishing brew of country chicken and hua-tiao wine on the other side. Great for people who cannot make up their minds.

The mala soup came to Singapore about 6-7 years ago. Chongqing Restaurant still exists today at Tanglin Shopping Centre, and they first introduced this love-it-or-hate-it dish. It originates in China, and the main ingredient that causes the ma-la effect is the Szechuan peppercorn. Husband loves mala while I have learnt to tolerate it. It is not spicy as my tastebud's impression of spicy, still, it can be painfully hot. The numbness and pungency is another issue for me. But as they say, one man's meat .....Mala is ambrosia for others, such as my husband. And also my friend Andrew Wong, who is so passionate about this dish he opened his own hot pot restaurant. Andrew informed me that his recipe is typical of the style usually found in China, although the heat factor is lowered many notches to suit local taste buds. Mainlander Chinese prefer their soup a dark red sea of chilli oil. Still the recipe here uses more than 30 different types of spices!

The chicken in hua-tiao wine is no slouch either. This is a robust soup with clear chicken and wine flavours and is not easy to find in restaurants. Because of the vast quantities of wine and ginger, it is commonly used as a "confinement" food, i.e. food for mothers who have just delivered their babies. The Chinese believe that childbirth causes a lot of "wind" in the body which is bad, because wind can cause health problems like arthritis and rheumatism. Confinement food would contain those ingredients like wine and ginger as these are believed to help expel wind. Although none of us have given birth recently, we still enjoyed the tasty goodness of this soup.

To accompany a hot pot, the ingredients have to be as fresh and of as good quality as possible, since they are handled as little as possible (no marinading etc) and cooked briefly and simply. Here as usual, the meats, vegetables and other ingredients are impeccable. The sotong(octopus) balls and fish raviolis are the best I've tried in Singapore- and I've been around. And who knew that luncheon meat would taste soooo good with mala soup? The oily meatiness is the perfect sponge to complement the complexity of mala, and although I hardly eat luncheon meat at home, I never miss having it here.

And it does not stop here. Andrew is constantly testing and innovating, and eating here is never boring. Today we had 5 types of appetisers: Aspic luncheon meat, Pork Belly with Garlic Sauce, Chilled Beef Shin, Chicken rolled with Century Egg and Mala fried pork..... I am in love with the Pork Belly, so meltingly tender and tasty. There was also a bowl of dumplings in chilli oil to pass around, reminding me so much of those dumplings we queued up for ages to buy at Yuyuan Gardens in Shanghai.

And there was even more goodies midway through the meal. So far, I've been good, and controlling my carbo intake, only nibbling on some grains of rice. Then the servers came round bearing plates of fried man-tous (buns, like char-siew bun without char-siew) which when dipped into some condensed milk is one of the most unlikely yet marvelous foods on earth.

I have forgotten about those...... I had one piece, and thought the danger was over....but no, uh uh, not yet anyway. Andrew had come up with a new snack, a sweet nian gao (sticky rice cake) stuffed with red bean paste and dusted with sesame seeds. His version was just about perfect, with a toothsome texture and a subtly sweet paste, without that cloying fake osmanthus smell that many places use as flavourings. These little babies killed my resolution completely, and I ended up eating 4 pieces!!

And here is the picture of mala evangelist Andrew Wong. Cheers!

Road Side Stall Hot Pot Restaurant
31 Marina Park (Marina South) #01-04/02-04 Planet Marina (Car Park A)
Tel : 6220 0178

Bonus picture: What the staff had for dinner: Mala stir fried pork I think. Looks appetising even to a non-mala fan.

Pickled Mustard with Chilli

It's been so hot my appetite is fairly zapped. Not to mention husband and I made a pact not to eat any carbo after 5 pm, well unless we were having dinner with other people. So dinners have been very unexciting. Tonight it was a tuna bean salad, too boring to blog about, but, we did accompany it with a jar of AAA Pickled Mustard with Chilli. I can make my own pickles, but have been too preoccupied with other projects, and this does make a handy substitute. Mustard vegetable is usually bitter but not this, maybe because they use the tender heart bit, or maybe they processed the bitterness out of it, hope the latter is not true fingers crossed. Anyway, the resultant pickle is crunchy, sweet, salty and sour all at once. It is usually eaten with plain congee, or as a light dish for delicate appetites e.g. convalescents. The lip-puckering sourness woke up my tastebuds, and the single piece of chilli added a welcome heat. This brand is particularly tasty, and it comes from Thailand.

A Cake Walk- Is My Blog burning?

Today is the day of the Cake IMMB project.

The last time I made a cake was more than 5 years ago. It went alright, but I felt it was a lot of effort for something that the two of us would take a long time to finish eating, and since then, the baking pans and rollers were all packed away in two big cartons. For the IMMB, I thought I will make some effort, so today, between the hours of 1 pm till 5 pm, I made two types of cakes. Two types because I figured that if one failed, I would have a back up. Not the brightest idea as it turned out, because both cakes were quite dismal, despite kind and encouraging comments from husband and volunteer guinea pig "slurp".

Cake 1 is what I would call a Chestnut Orange Sandwich Cake
Cake 2 is Huat Kueh.

The first cake was meant to be a Genoese sponge (recipe from Ultimate Cakes by Barbara Maher).
Here's the recipe:
Cake:

125g unsalted butter
125 g caster sugar
4 large eggs separated
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
125 g plain flour

1. Met butter and leave to cool
2. Whisk egg yolks with sugar (less 2 tablespoon for step 3) to the ribbon stage, and whisk in lemon zest
3. Whisk egg whites into soft peaks, then sprinkle over reserve sugar and whisk until slightly stiffer peaks
4. To the egg white mixture, fold in flour. followed by the melted butter. Then fold in egg whites
5 . Pour into a prepared spingform tin and bake in oven 180 degree C for 45-50 minutes
6. When done, remove from tin, let it cool. Cut into half and sandwich it with buttercream.

We did everything right by whisking the egg yolks separately from the egg white, and folding the whisked egg whites into the batter, but we inadvertently put the cake on the top shelf!! I sensed something wrong at 15 minutes, because I could smell the cake baking, and I was thinking of opening the oven but everyone said it was not a good idea to open the oven midway during baking, so there was no going back!

After 45 minutes, we took out the very flattened and overcooked cake, and attempted to make the best of the situation by sandwiching it with some improvised chestnut paste (no buttercream at home) and camouflaged the whole thing with icing sugar and garnishings. The chestnut paste was made by mixing unsweetened chestnut paste with orange juice, Grand Marnier, and sugar syrup. Because I bought a big tin of French chestnut puree from Culina. Opened the tin to find it was not sweetened as I had thought. The hazards of not knowing how to read French!

The second cake is a traditional Chinese cupcake called Huat Kueh. A forummer posted this recipe on the Makansutra website. The recipe intrigued me because it involves Eno, a type of fruit salt for indigestion, everyone over the age of 30 will remember the TV ads (images of waterfalls to drown out inflamed digestive system) touting its benefits.

100g rice flour
50 g sugar
130g water
2g yeast
2g ENO

All ingredients except ENO is mixed together and left to stand for 3-4 hours.
Add ENO. Let stand for 5 minutes
Heat some small cups in steamer. Pour dough into the heated cups. Steam for 15-20 minutes.

I customised this recipe by adding some coffee to half the cups, resulting in coffee huat kueh. The result is like the huat kueh sold at the market, but denser, maybe I did not let the yeast mix stand long enough. The testers gamely ate half of the cakes, very sweet of them indeed, considering it was quite dense, sticky and smelled like a brewhouse.

Gandhi's

We just finished a lovely lunch ahead of the cake-making project. A few weeks ago, I wrote about eating along Race Course Road. This morning, we went to Gandhi's, which is "behind" the row of shops along Race Course Road. The place serves South Indian food, cooked in big quantities and displayed so people can pick and choose to take away or eat inside a separate air-conditioned space.

We sat down to a table set with trays of banana leaves, and the servers came round dishing out the vegetables of the day: pickle, a gourd, a leafy dish and a dhal. All so good, especially the spinach and the gourd, greedy me had three servings of these two dishes. These we ate with mutton masala, prawn masala and fish head curry. Looking around we observed that most diners (well, all except the two of us) seem to be Indians, and the all-round favourite appears to be the mutton masala. The mutton was tender and the spicing well balanced, we should just have ordered that alone, well, maybe with some of that boiled egg sambar, for next time. And to drink, the friendly server recommended tairu lassi, which is a blended yoghurt drink, sweet, tangy and really refreshing on this hot day!!

Chai Tow Kuay

What did you have for breakfast. We had Chai Tow Kuay, which is Hokkien for Radish Cake. Cakes of rice flour, chopped radish and other mystery ingredients are steamed in blocks. Then the cakes are cut up and fried with plenty of garlic, chai poh (preserved vegetables), beaten eggs and seasonings. " Black" version is coloured with a thich sweet soya sauce, while "white" version is prepared without the black sauce. I prefer the black version. Some stalls may add pieces of shrimp to the dish, but I find it redundant and the juices from the shrimp makes the dish rather "wet, not too desirable in my books.

I like those that are fried pretty dry, with plenty of wok-hei, the fragrance imparted by the hot wok; wok hei is difficult to achieve in home cooking, as the average stove just cannot get as hot. Wok hei of course is a little more complicated than just a hot wok, it requires deft handling of the wok and fire, as well as a good judgement and sense of smell. This humble dish can be found even in hotel restaurants, but the wok hei is hard to duplicate in fine restaurants, just not the same, you know.

It is best eaten on the spot, after it has cooled slightly. I zoom in on all those charred bits, while husband likes his chai tow kuay in sizeable chunks.

The ones we had this morning is one of our favourites, the lady even wears a pair of thick white gloves when frying. This stall is located at Bendemeer Food Centre, adjacent to the wet market. Dress code: T-shirt, shorts, slippers.