A Daily Obsession

Red And Her 15 Minutes Of Fame

2012-01-30T14:53:00.002+08:00

And so the best part of CNY is over as everybody goes back to their routine today. My daughter left for Shanghai this morning and my youngest left at noon for NS camp. I'm not feeling so bad, even though the vacumn is there in my heart, because Middle Child is here for another two weeks.

This CNY seemed more subdued to me than previous years, probably because of the burglaries in my neighborhood and the awful incident where a guy died while checking on the fireworks he had lit and another case where a young man crashed his car into a signpost on the road outside our taman. We just feel so bad for their families each time we hear fireworks. The fact that such commercial public-type of fireworks are so easily available despite the ban just shows how out of control everything is. I strongly feel that we should report neighbors who set off those big fireworks. It's both dangerous and annoying to the public, especially in housing areas and at wee hours.

We had our reunion dinner in a hotel for the first time and not at MIL's because we had relatives from Shanghai and MIL couldn't cope, so I didn't bother to take photos of the food. No unicorn or lion dance troupes came to the house until the 3rd day and I was so happy when they came that I let them into my garden where they rolled and pranced around like little lions. It was a big difference to previous years where I had to sometimes pretend that no one was home because too many troupes came visiting. I think that the tradition of lion and unicorn dance troupes coming to the house is dying out as it is more lucrative and less tiring to perform at special events than to go house to house. Likewise, when I was a kid, bai nien was families taking turns to visit each other, with the younger families visiting the older ones first but now bai nien means big dinners where so many people are gathered that nobody really gets to catch up with the hosts.

I must clarify that I DO love CNY music, but only the traditional ones from the 60s, not the West Malaysian ching chang chong stuff that we get now. There's nothing I love better than cranking up the radio (yes, radio) to CNY music the first thing in the morning of the first day of CNY.It's a tradition that my dad practised, and it meant that we had to be up early, dressed in new clothes to wish our parents "Gong xi fa cai" (happy properous new year) before the visitors arrive. I have always wanted my kids to wake up early on CNY, come to Hub and I as we are seated happily, and bow with clasped hands the traditional way and wish us "Gong xi fa cai" as we smilingly hand them their ang paos (lucky money). But that never happens, especially as they got older, as my kids don't come down until past 10 am despite all my hollering. Usually by the time they get to the table, I'm so busy and upset that I don't give them their lucky money until days later.

Oh, we have been getting exciting news recently. My daughter Hong Yi had posted a video of herself using a basketball to paint the basketball giant (oops) Yao Ming about 3 weeks ago and Gizmodo, a bigtime American website that features new ideas in technology and science, had posted Yi's video on its website on 25th Jan. Gizmodo, btw, had its 15 minutes (and more) of infamity in 2010 as it came into possession of the iPhone 4 prototype that was left unattended at a bar in California. The video quickly became viral, spreading to other online sites such as ABC, CBC, NBC, Hufftington Post and Yahoo! ESPN and NBA also posted the vid and the Good Morning America people wrote to her too for permission to air the vid on the show. People from as far as Sweden and Serbia wrote in to say they saw the video on their TV. The vid continued to spread to England, where my niece had the funny experience of friends showing her the vid on mobile phone and looking at her in disbelief when she said that the girl in the vid was her cousin. Yesterday, the Taiwanese newspapers picked up the news, followed by the West Malaysian Chinese papers who gave her front page coverage. Today, the Phoenix Channel in Hong Kong posted the vid and we've been told that the news have finally arrived in Shanghai too. You can go to all the links by typing "Girl painting Yao Ming with basketball" on Google.

Yi--who goes by her arty nickname Red because in China 'Hong' is red--has always loved to draw, especially cartoons, and even when she was studying architecture, her secret ambition was to work for Pixar. Now's she's happily working in the Shanghai branch of Australia's largest archi firm and she draws when she has the inspiration and time. We are proud of her but the deluge of phone interviews and attention is worrying too. That's it, I should stop the shameless pitching. Back to regular food blogging tomorrow.

The Chinese Restaurant, Hyatt Kinabalu

2012-01-26T17:46:00.000+08:00

Note: I've been MIA because of CNY (figure the acronyms out yourself--am too tired to type!). We have relatives from Shanghai, my bro and family from Singapore stayed with us about 4 days, ate endless CNY dinners and had lots of visitors/visited friends, my kids each had turns hosting parties in the house (kids do learn from their parents don't they) and I am so tired that I wish I'm alone in some remote mountain. I left my camera in a friend's house and when I get it back, I will upload some CNY photos. I hope you had a great CNY too.

A week before CNY, Julia, the Communications Manager at Hyatt Regency Kinabalu invited me and a handful of other bloggers and media people to dinner at The Chinese Restaurant in the hotel. Chef Tay of the restaurant had created a special menu of 12 auspicious dishes to celebrate the start of the Year of the Dragon. The promotion started on 16th January and will run for the duration of the CNY celebrations.

We started with lou sang/yee sang, a salad of veggies, fruits, flour crisps and raw fish. The dish is Malaysian-Singaporean and is eaten on the first day of CNY for an auspicious start (you can't write a CNY post without that word).

Salmon yee sang, RM88/USD29 (medium). The restaurant also has a choice of abalone yee sang (RM188/UDS62) and tuna yee sang (RM68/USD22). The number 8 in Cantonese sounds like 'prosper' and prices of the CNY menu are priced around that lucky number.

Diners toss the yee sang while shouting auspicious phrases, usually calling for prosperity and a healthy long life.

I've found yee sang in hotels and restaurants overly sweet. The artificially-colored flour strips give crunch and color but I much prefer home made yee sang using veggies and fruits which may not look as fine but is far more tastier.

Steamed chicken with dried oysters, RM58/USD19 (large). This looked really good doesn't it. I didn't taste any dried oyster but I though it was a good way to feature fatt choy (a rare black algae, eaten during CNY because its name sounds like "to grow rich/prosper"). Unfortunately, the chicken was rather bland. I think that this is would be a great dish for CNY reunion dinners but the chicken has to be home-reared or at last free-range.

My hub and I both enjoyed this light and tasty dish of sea asparagus and pacific clams with Thai asparagus, RM88/USD29 (medium).

I'm not particularly fond of soft-shelled crabs because they are always deep-fried and soaking in oil. This plate of soft shelled crabs however was the best I've eaten--and I had just had deep-fried soft shelled crabs two weeks before at Gaya Sports--because the batter was super light and crispy while the crabs were very tasty (I think it was chicken stock powder), and all the pieces I ate had roe in them. Superb, the best dish of the dinner. I would go back just for this but Chef Tay said that not every batch of crabs come this good. This is not on the special CNY menu and availability is dependent on the supply of crabs.

King Prawns XO Fortune sauce, RM88/USD29 (medium). The prawns were fresh and meaty, and the sauce was good if only it wasn't so salty.

Crispy fried salmon with honey sauce, RM20/USD6.60 per 100 gm. This was quite good but the sauce and deep frying overpowered the flavor of the salmon so I think it's a waste of a flavorful and expensive (at RM200/kg, 8 times higher than choice local fish) fish. I'd cook this dish with any white fish.

Fried rice with bbq chicken and chicken floss, RM48/USD16 (large). I didn't like the bbq chicken.

I liked this, steamed slices of sticky glutinous 'cake' coated with peanuts and sesame seeds, RM18/USD5.90. Hub found it too sticky but hey it is sticky cake.

Lotus paste pancake done very well, not too oily and not too sweet.

There were some hits and some misses but considering the attention to each dish compared to the mass-produced dishes at the bigger restaurants, especially the seafood restaurants, I'd say The Chinese Restaurant has some great dishes --provided you don't mind paying the higher prices and the standard hotel ++ charges. Besides the CNY a la carte menu, there are two set dinner menus priced at RM88.88 per person and RM118.88 per person (minimum 5 persons).

The Chinese Restaurant
Hyatt Regency Kinabalu
Jalan Datuk Salleh Sulong, 88991,
Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
Tel: +60 88 22 1234 Fax: +60 88 22 5972
Email: kinabalu.regency@hyatt.com

Hours:

Mondays to Fridays

Lunch: 11:30am – 2:30pm

Dinner: 6:30pm – 10:00pm

Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays

Brunch: 9:00am – 2:30pm
Dinner: 6:30pm – 10:00pm

Bijan, Kuala Lumpur

2012-01-19T11:29:00.002+08:00

Bijan is a highly awarded fine-dining restaurant in Kuala Lumpur. I've seen the name so many times but never read the reviews and I've always had the impression that it was a French restaurant. I walked into the dimly-lit Bali-style restaurant with its al fresco dining area, bamboo blinds and palm trees and expected a fancy French menu but while the prices were French enough (i.e. affordable only on special occasions), the cuisine was Malay with a hint of Indonesian. There are no fine-dining Malay restaurants in KK, a fact that I've always complained about. We don't even have a decent Malay dining restaurant to bring our visitors, other than standard hotel restaurants that have a few Malay dishes on the menu as an afterthought. I smell financial opportunities in that vacumn but I think unless we get some entreprenuer from KL, local Malay restaurant cuisine will continue to be limited to soto daging and nasi lemak.

Bijan (not the French name but sesame seeds in Malay--but of course!), I'm told, has slipped a little in its standards recently although it is still rated among the top Malay fine-dining restaurants in KL. Despite that, I loved the food at Bijan, and my top pick is Opor Rusuk, succulent and aromatic beef ribs stewed with spices and coconut milk. Another unforgettable item is Bijan's Chocolate Durian Cake, which was a slice of heaven, trite as it sounds.

Kerabu Mangga, a tangy-spicy salad of unripe mangoes that went well with the rich dishes.

Opor Rusuk, stewed beef ribs in spices, toasted coconut, gula melaka and coconut milk. So, so good--the best dish. Superbly-flavored ribs slow-cooked until it was super tender yet still stuck to the bones.

Terung Goreng Bercili, fried brinjals with a chili sauce.

Another delicious meat dish: Rusuk Panggang, bbqed beef ribs with dark soy sauce, belacan (shrimp paste) and spices.

Masak Lemak Udang Dengan Nenas, prawns and pineapple in a spicy coconut sauce. I have no recollection of this dish!

Or this chicken dish, partly because it was so dark in the restaurant (next time I come to Bijan, it'll be before sundown because I want to be able to SEE the food and place) and everything was just so yum.

Dang, I don't know this one either but like all spicy dishes, this was heaven when eaten with white rice.

Pucuk Paku Goreng Tahi Minyak--what is 'tahi minyak'?--, stir-fried wild ferns and prawns with chili and caramelized coconut. Are you drooling yet?

After all that, I thought I should skip dessert but was told that it would be a big mistake.

I took a small bite of Sharmaine's Beach Holiday Cake, a soft pandan sponge covered with buttercream, mango compote and toasted coconut. It was yum but didn't blow me off my feet.

Classic cendol, pandan-flavored mung bean strips with gula melaka (palm sugar, the best-tasting sugar in the world, I must repeat) and coconut milk. Forget about fussy multi layered Opera cake and other fancy stuff. Cendol with good coconut milk and gula melaka is simple but ohhh-sooo-goood.

Finally, the crowning glory of Bijan's dessert menu, the Chocolate Durian Cake. What can I say? This blew me off my feet.

Many thanks to the Royal Selangor folks for the superb meal which was made doubly enjoyable by their company!

Bijan Bar & Restaurant

No 3 Jalan Ceylon

50200 Kuala Lumpur

Tel + 60320313575

Fax + 60320313576

Email: admin@bijanrestaurant.com

Open Mondays to Sundays 4:30pm to 11 pm.

Old China Cafe, KL

2012-01-18T14:34:00.000+08:00

The ambience in Old China Cafe is cosy and takes you away from the bustle of the city but the place is filled with so many authenically old things that I wonder if the gramophone comes on by itself when no one is around!

Old China Cafe in Kuala Lumpur is probably frequented more by tourists than the locals but I highly recommend it for those who want a feel of the Peranakan baba-nyonyain the early 1900sand a taste of delicious Peranakan cuisine. Peranankan baba nyonya were Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore who married local Malay ladies and integrated their customs, culture and cuisine. The Peranankans had the freedom of combining non-halal (non-'kosher' food for Muslims) ingredients with the local Malay spices into exciting dishes that exude the best of both cuisines, with flavors that are more Malay and cooking style more Chinese, in my opinion. Peranakan cuisine is dying, probably because Peranakan marriages are dwindling due to the present religious ban against a non-Muslim marrying a Muslim. That makes me realize that 'multiracial' and 'interacial' are very different things. Peranakan is interacial, and in the old days interracial marriages were welcome because no politics were involved.

Royal Selangor's meals for us were centered on Malaysian cuisine and no other cuisine in Malaysia embodies the harmonious times between two of the largest races in the country than Peranakan cuisine.

For starters, we had a version of the Cantonese bao sang, a mixture of sauteed veggies wrapped in lettuce and seasoned with a delicious chili-prawn paste sauce.

Pie tees, the size of a golf ball, are yummy 'tarts' made with lots of skill and care.The shells were super crispy-crunchy and the filling just right so that each mouthful was a delight.

The duck soup with salted veg was light but not outstanding.

A yummy pork dish. Authentic Peranankan cuisine includes pork.

Chicken dish (I didn't order or take notes!)--delicious.

Another yummy chicken dish.

I appreciated with wonder the amount of work and passion that went into cooking these dishes because Peranakan food is something I never cooked or will ever cook, I think, because there are lots of spices to roast and pound, and elaborate preparation and long stewing are key steps in Peranakan cooking.

This plate of fried calamari rings must've been ordered by my son Wey. He orders fried calamari rings and pasta carbonara too, whenever those dishes are on the menu. He judges a restaurant by how good they make his favorite food. I'm not sure how he rated these calamari rings; he's away doing National Service.

I love salted krill omelette but wished this was stronger in flavor. I think that for this dish, a mixture of aged and freshly made salted krill would give both taste and texture.

A veggie dish.

Blue rice is made from the bunga telang, a flower of the pea family. The natural blue dye doesn't add flavor to the rice but makes it pretty and unusual.

The sago gula melaka was disappointing because the flavor of the coconut milk was rather bland.

I had a taste of each dessert and felt that they could've been better if the santan (coconut milk) flavor was fresher and stronger. Old China needs to pay more attention to its desserts. I think that Asian sweet soup desserts are super yummy and so totally under-rated.

Old China Cafe
No.11, Jalan Balai Polis
Tel: 603-2072 5915
Opens 11 am to 11 pm daily

Getting Ready For CNY

2012-01-17T14:09:00.002+08:00

La rou and la chang (Chinese winter sausages and bacon) being dried in the winter sun, somewhere in Guilin, China.

One week before Chinese New Year and there's so much busyness you can feel it all around. I don't even bother to go to the city because of the traffic. I hate having to queue on the road, queue at the check-out counters, queue to get out of parking lots. Another thing I absolutely hate this time of the year is the crazy, noisy CNY music. Absolutely hate it, nearly as much as I hate the wooden clucking of Dutch folk music.

I was just at Thai Seng Supermarket last week and people were buying canned food, cooking oil, Chinese winter sausages and all those CNY stuff and I was thinking "Am I the only one who hasn't started doing anything about CNY?" So I grabbed some cassava flour, some sugar, some veggies from Hong Kong (they have sweet pea sprouts for the first time, so there's no need to them get from Hong Kong) and I got home and made prawn crackers. We haven't had the sun for weeks and the last two days when I needed it, the sun came out. Somebody does like me. The prawn crackers turned out perfect, smooth, full of flavor and they puffed about four times their size. Again, I urge you to make your own prawn crackers because there's no way commercial prawn crackers are made with prawns.

Addictive home-made prawn crackers. This year, I made my prawn crackers with yellow prawns and sand prawns. The cheaper paper-skinned white prawns are all farmed. In fact, all prawns served in restaurants are farmed and the redder they are, the more likely they are to have been fed a diet that includes dye.

The fried prawn crackers expanded more than four times the original size. Specks of minced prawns are visible, unlike commercial prawn crackers which are clear and translucent before frying.

I made chi ku chips too. This year, I didn't peel the chi gu to keep the fiber and also to reduce wastage. I over-fried them but no matter, they are still delicious.

With the huge CNY meals looming ahead, I've cut back on my intake of carbs so that I won't spill out of my new dress. CNY is that time of the year when we are likely to meet friends we haven't seen since the previous CNY so there's tremendous pressure to look better or at least unaged. With all the busyness, or the busyness in being busy, I'm taking it easy and a meal can be just fried veggies with winter sausages or la rou (Chinese bacon). On our visits to China in the wintry months, la rou and la chang are always on the menu. In the villages and smaller towns, every family makes their own la rou and la chang. I am so blessed every year because my friends from China would get their moms to make extra la rou and la chang for me, and since one friend is from Sichuan and the other from Jiangxi, I get different varieties of la rou and la chang. Home-made la rou la chang are SO different, SO SO much more delicious and fresher than those in the stores.

If you are wondering what to cook during this busy period, just slice some Chinese sausages or la rou or both (I used home-made Sichuan sausages and store-bought Cantonese la rou) and toss with with a bit of veg oil in a smoking hot wok or frying pan, add parboiled veg, sprinkle some salt and rice wine over and that's a light dish that goes well with rice.

Kailan stems are all stems and no leaves, available this time of the year. Very crunchy and sweet.

And now excuse me while I run off to make pineapple tarts and almond crisps.

Biang Biang Noodles

2012-01-15T23:30:00.000+08:00

Biang biang noodles, also known as 'belt noodles' because they are as broad as belts.

What noodles I hear you say? I've never heard of biang biang noodles either. I asked two friends from China if they've heard of biang biang mian and both said they've never heard of it too.

Biang biang noodles are the specialty noodles of Shaanxi, a province in the middle of China which has Inner Mongolia as its northern neighbor. Shaanxi is one of the cradles of Chinese civilisation and Xi'an, the capital, was one of the 4 ancient capitals of China. 13 dynasties established their capital cities in Shaanxi. If that still doesn't orientate you, how about the Silk Road? Surely you've heard of the terra cotta warriors?

There are two stories to the origin of biang biang noodles, noodles that are so wide that they are also called 'belt noodles'. One is that the name came from the sound of the noodles being flapped and stretched. The other story is that the word was invented specially by an Emperor or a premier for the noodles. I certainly didn't hear a "biang biang" sound when I whacked the noodles on the counter. Since the word 'biang' doesn't exist in the Chinese language (I asked Hub and he has never seen or heard of this word) and is only used to mean the noodles, I think the second story probably holds more water. The word biang is made up of 57 strokes, the most of any Chinese character although Chinese language experts don't even accept biang as a Chinese character. If you think 57 strokes is not a big deal, try writing it. 100 times, like how your Chinese teacher used to punish you.

I made biang biang noodles 4 times this week and frankly, I'm sick of them. The first time was a big success. The family loved the noodles. Hub said it tasted of China and Ming wanted the recipe but I didn't like how the noodles had splits and frayed edges. I had used plain flour and thought that a stronger flour would improve the strength and texture. The next day, I made the dough using a 50-50 mix of plain flour and hi-protein bread flour and the noodles were hard to stretch even though I had let the dough rest for 40 minutes. Worse, the noodles were difficult to eat because they were so broad and chewy.

The third time I made the noodles, I left out the egg. I wanted to see how the texture turned out but without the egg, the dough didn't smell as good so I threw it out instead of cooking it. The fourth time, I went back to plain flour and egg but used less water. I think it was the right texture. I said I think because I've never eaten biang biang noodles before so I can't compare. If, like me, you love noodles and you aren't fixated on the same old wonton noodles or chow mian, do make biang biang noodles for a change. The noodles are slippery-smooth and unusually broad, broader than papardelle, so that eating them requires you to open your mouth very wide and chew like a caveman but the complex mix of spices (chili flakes, 5-spice powder, cumin powder, Sichuan peppercorns), herbs (coriander, garlic leeks, spring onions) and seasoning (soy sauce, peanut oil, sesame oil, black vinegar) makes the noodles totally delicious despite being a simple bowl of poor man's noodles. I can't imagine the emperor eating biang biang noodles though, not because they are humble noodles but because I can't imagine the emperor opening his mouth really wide and gobbling like the commoners.

The recipe below is adapted from a wonderful blog, beijinghaochi.com, which unfortunately is strickened with malware recently.

Biang Biang Mian

Toppings for the noodles (1 serving):
2 to 3 Taiwan bak choy, blanched briefly in boiling water
1 T thinly sliced spring onions
1 T thinly sliced garlic leeks
a few sprigs of cilantro (coriander leaves)
2 t freshly toasted dried chili flakes
1/2 t freshly toasted ground Sichuan peppercorns
1/2 t 5-spice powder
1/8 t ground cumin

The sauce (for 1 serving):
1 T light soy sauce
1 t dark soy sauce (optional; for darker color only)
3/4 to 1 T black vinegar (to taste)
1 t chicken powder

To scald the seasoning:
2 T peanut oil (smoking hot)

Making of the noodles (for 2 to 3 servings):
2 1/4 cup + 1/4 cup extra plain flour
1 egg, beaten lightly
1/2 t salt
150 ml room temp water
sesame oil to coat

1. Mix 2 1/4 cups plain flour, 1 egg, 1/2 t salt and 150 ml water into a dough and knead well until smooth. You may need to add another 1/4 cup flour as you knead to make a firm dough. Cover and let dough rest 15 minutes.

2. Cut into 6 portions and coat lightly with sesame oil. There's no need to flour the working surface if the dough is just right. This dough was my first try and I floured the working surface, just in case.

3. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a long 'tongue' of about 1 foot/25 cm.

4. Hold both ends of the 'tongue' and flip up and down, pulling and stretching your arms wider as you go. On the downstroke, slap the dough against the working surface to thin it. If you are good, you can get an evenly stretched piece of 'belt' about 1.5 "/4 cm wide. The noodles taste better thin but it's up to you.

Do not cheat early on by rolling the noodles out using a rolling pin, because you'd get noodles so broad that they look like those funny-looking bands some men have to wear on their wedding day. Cummerbunds I think they are called. To avoid making cummerbunds, you can use the rolling pin to make the noodles evenly thick after they have been stretched.

5. Assemble the toppings, sauce and seasoning.

6. Cook the noodles in a pot of boiling water for a couple of minutes and scoop out with a slotted ladle into a big bowl.

7. Quickly top the noodles with the blanched veg, the toppings, seasoning and sauce. Heat the peanut oil up.

8. Pour boiling hot peanut oil over the toppings, scalding the onions and seasoning to release the flavors. Mix and gobble up.

Onsen Tamago: Slow-cooked Eggs

2012-01-11T11:38:00.001+08:00

The Japanese knew about sous vide long before the Brits or the French and onsen tamago is one example of slow cooking food in an enclosed container. Modern chefs who are into molecular gastronomy like to think that they can apply their high school chemistry and physics, and the sous vide cooking of meat in plastic bags at very low temperatures for 2 days or more to get a tender texture and 'original' flavor is gaining popularity in restaurants although I'd stay ten miles away. I just won't touch plastic-cooked food whether or not they are guaranteed to not leak into my food. That's the reason I only have one non-stick pan.

Onsen tamago are eggs cooked in hot springs, such as those on the foothills of Mr. Fuji. Japanese restaurants serve onsen tamago too but instead of hot spring water, trays of eggs are kept for a long time in warm water. That is all I could extort from a waitress at Nishiki Restaurant, the only place in KK where onsen tamago is served. Interestingly, I've eaten Mt Fuji eggs twice, and both times they were hard, maybe because the spring waters were too hot. They weren't any more delicious than regular boiled eggs and they stank of sulphur.

If you love half-boiled eggs but the thought of eating raw yolks makes you queasy, onsen eggs are the answer to your agony. Onsen eggs are in fact half-boiled eggs in reverse, eggs with cooked yolks and runny whites. I find it rather strange and sometimes wonder if the eggs are delicious just because they are reversed. But then I take a spoonful of the egg, a bit of cold, smooth, silky white and a bit of the firm yellow and I know that it's not the novelty of the unusual egg but the damn deliciousness of it. Of course the light dashi soy sauce adds to the taste but if you've eaten a good organic half-boiled egg, imagine it twice as delicious and you'll sort of know what I mean. The reason for the reversed state of boiled onsen eggs is egg whites are made of mostly protein (albumin) and coagulate at a higher temperature than yolks. That's why when you boil an egg, the whites set before the yolk. Of course the fact that the yolk is in the center means that it doesn't get as much heat. However, when you cook (not boil, technically) an egg at a temperature to just set the yolks, you'll get a firm yolk and a runny white.

The Nishiki waitress said that the onsen eggs were cooked for 45 minutes but couldn't--wouldn't--tell me the temperature of the water so I did a bit of googling (Google is the best thing ever!) and found that the recommended temperature is about 65 to 70 C. How long the eggs are to be cooked depends on the size of the eggs. I can measure the weight of my eggs but I can't measure the temperature because I don't have an cooking thermometer. The best method would then be to cook the eggs in the oven. Oven tempratures however are not accurate, with some ovens ranging + or - 15 degrees off the set temperature. For an near-scientific onsen tamago recipe, go here. It's a very interesting article and the site is just amazing; I love it. Based on the results posted in the article, the best onsen eggs were boiled at 64.4 to 66.7 C for 75 minutes.

I know cooking onsen eggs is rocket science but since eggs are cheap, I thought I'd test a batch of 5 and adjust the time and temperature from there. Instead of 70 C, I set my oven at 85 C for 30 minutes because I have a cool oven, unfortunately. The pot felt so cool after 30 minutes so I increased the temperature to 95 C. I cracked one egg after 1 hour and got this:

It's a raw egg! I wasn't surprised because I started with room temperature water, since I don't have a cooking thermometer. I put the pot back into the oven. I have to go out for lunch now. I'll be back maybe two hours later. Will my eggs be reversed?
~~~~~~~~~~
I didn't wait two hours because tiny bubbles began to form on the sides of my pot when I checked on the eggs an hour later (delayed my lunch appointment). I had set the oven temperature at 95 C, assuming that my oven is 15 degrees lower. After an hour, the egg turned out this way:

The white is still not fully set but the yolk is quite firm and cooked. If I had checked on the eggs at 45 minutes, I probably would've got the perfect onsen egg. I'm happy though because I've wondered about reversed boiled eggs for years. I think that if I have a cooking thermometer, I can make perfect onsen eggs in 45 minutes.

Onsen Eggs
large organic free range eggs (60 to 65 gm each), room temperature
dashi granules
light soy sauce
water

1. Preheat the oven to 70 C. Great if you have a reliable cooking thermometer.
2. Fill a small heavy-based pot with a tight-fitting lid with enough water to cover the eggs and heat it up to about 65 to 70 C. Put the eggs into the pot and cover with the lid.
3. Place the covered pot into the oven, middle position, and leave in the oven for 1 hour.
4. Meantime, mix a little bit of dashi granules with hot water and stir until granules are dissolved. Add some light soy sauce and dilute the sauce with water to taste. Chill in the fridge.
5. When eggs are done, put them in cold water to cool and then crack into a bowl and ladle some sauce over.

Old Chinese Coffee Shop: Sin Seng Nam

2012-01-09T11:49:00.000+08:00

I'm going to have to speed up posting on the backlog of posts on my trip to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore last month. Gosh, was it just a month ago?

The folks at Royal Selangor did an excellent job of making sure that we enjoyed our trip. We were taken on a walking tour around KL, on a tour of RS' factory and showrooms, and meals were carefully planned at restaurants that reflect the different cultures and cuisines of Malaysia.

Restoran Sin Seng Nam is one of the remaining old Chinese (Hainanese?) coffee shops in KL. Yut Kee is the more famous old-style Chinese coffee shop in KL but it closes Mondays.

We were directed upstairs because the ground floor was full. I love old, high-ceiling restaurants such as this. There's so much character and history in every corner, tile, table, window and even the ceiling fan. Reminds me of Journal Canteen in Melbourne.

The standard brekkie in such types of restaurants consists of charcoal fire-toasted bread, sandwiched with kaya (a custard-jam made of coconut milk and eggs) and butter. Thick, strong local coffee in old mugs are another must, as are coddled eggs.

Coddled egg--not half as good as Yut Kee's.

Fried noodles may seem too heavy for breakfast, but in Malaysia, it is eaten anytime of the day.

Cheong fun is flat rice noodles with a sweet sauce but here it's topped with stuffed okra, beancurd skin and fried fishballs. A bit too much variety for me, as I prefer plain cheong fun.

Plain cheong fun--yummeh!

It was a good breakfast. I'd go to Sin Seng Nam for the rustic interior and the architecture around the area but for the food, I'd stick with Yut Kee. Maybe I'm just biased because I love the coddled eggs at Yut Kee.

Duck Noodles and A Good Cow Poo Tart

2012-01-06T14:39:00.000+08:00

One of the most famous culinary creation from Sandakan, a small town on the east of Sabah famous for its food, is the ngew si doi (cow poo heap) or ngew si tud (cow poo tart). Those names make some people uncomfortable, so euphemistically and outside of Sandakan, the tarts are known as UFOs. However, that polite and boring name belies the feisty spirit of Sandakanites (Sandakanians sound hick) who became known as people of strong principles in the 80s because they steadfastly supported the opposition party.

There aren't many places where you can get poo tarts and I used to get them from Kedai Kopi Mee Ngar in Iramanis but the last time I ate them months ago, they tasted of cheap margarine and were too sweet. Into my house yesterday walked Steph and her daughter, bearing with them two boxes of goodies from a restaurant operated by Sandakanites. One box contained rice wine-flavored chicken rolls and the other, ngew si doi.

I have the original recipe for ngew si doi from the coffee shop in Sandakan where the tarts were first made. It was given to me by a friend whose sister's maid worked in the kitchen of the coffee shop (a coffee shop here is literally that, a place where local coffee is served throughout the day, along with bread and pastries). Unfortunately, the shop guarded the recipe by keeping part of the recipe from the maids so what I've got is how to make the 'poo' (the rich yummy custard) but not the base of the tarts. I've tried many times to make the base, which has a neither soft or hard texture like madeleines, but failed to get a satisfactory clone. The 'poo' though is better than those in the shops because I don't scrimp on the ingredients. As far as I know, the ngew si doi recipe is not googleable--it just isn't available.

These ngew si tarts were better than any in KK. They weren't too sweet (in fact, they are a little too salty) and there was no strong margarine flavor either.

Rice wine-flavored chicken rolls were good but the filling was mostly onions. Also, that strong orange color is likely due to coloring, not egg yolk. Still, it was tasty and flavorful and I would drive there for this.

Kedai Kopi Sin Sin in Inanam (the new shoplots) is where you can get the tarts and rolls. I haven't been there yet but I will soon.

A friend recently directed me to Kedai Kopi Man Soon Hin (name to be confirmed) in the first row of the old shoplots just after the Inanam roundabout for bittergourd noodles. I love bittergourd (those heading to Hong Kong should try bittergourd sherbet, something I haven't eaten before but want to) and so I packed the whole family into the car one hot mid day last week.

Duck slices and rice noodles in bittergourd soup.

Look at that presentation. I mean, really, which other shop goes to that extent? I love that they cared enough to make every bowl of noodles look good. However, the soup didn't impress us.

My bowl of mixed pig offal and noodles in bittergourd soup.

Why was this soup so ducky-flavored too when there's no duck in it?

Roasted pork and rice noodles in salted veg soup.

The crispy roasted pork is the crispiest I've eaten outside of Hong Kong but somehow the taste was just so so. Hub pointed out (he's beginning to have opinions about food...!) that the thin noodles from Thailand and Malaysia are best for frying while the thicker rice noodles from China are the right kind of noodles for soup. The thin noodles just didn't taste as good in soup, especially if the soup is not tasty enough. So proud of you, Hub

Fish head rice noodles in salted veg soup.

The curry chicken was okay, not extraordinary.

The noodles were RM6 per bowl and there were more toppings than most other places. However, unless you like your soup noodles ducky-flavored, it's better to stick to duck or roasted pork rice. I assume the rice isn't duck-flavored.

The Best Panettone Ever

2012-01-03T18:22:00.000+08:00

Soft, shreddy, rich, flavorful bread speckled with vanilla seeds, plump rum-soaked raisins and brandy-soaked cranberries.

Last year, I made panettone for the first time and thought it was pretty good for a first try. Then my friend Y came with a panettone from Marks and Spencer and it tasted better than mine because the orange peel flavor was stronger. It was still incomparable to the Milanese panettone I bought in Melbourne years ago. I think if you eat something for the first time, eat the best version so that you'll forever measure your future taste of the same thing against the best.

Panettone is a sweet bread that originated from Milan, Italy and it is eaten especially during Christmas. It is a rich bread with candied peel and rum-soaked raisins and has a distinctive look: it's always taller than it is wide. That is a problem for me because I can't get panettone parchment cases here. The other problem is that panettone, like chiffon cakes, is very soft and have to be hung so that it won't sit on its own weight. I didn't know that and the panettone I made for Christmas/New Year deflated as it cooled and sank in the middle. I also didn't know that panettone cooks as it cools. I had served my panettone straight out of the oven and it was a little bit sticky. I told my guests to eat the bread dipped into the vin santo that I had carried from Rome. The bread was so soft that upon dipping in the vin santo, it just soaked all the liquor and turned soggy. Laura has just confirmed that panettone is usually eaten with (not soaked) spumante, a champagne-like Italian wine. I have another question for Laura: do you tear the panettone or cut it? We tore it like monkey bread and it was fun to eat that way.

I once made 6 sponge cakes in one afternoon when I couldn't get the texture right, and threw each failed cake to the dog which turned its head the other way every time a cake landed near him. In that spirit of not giving up, I googled for another panettone recipe two days ago because the panettone I made for Christmas/New Year didn't have the right texture and taste. I wanted a panettone that was shreddy, not crumbly in texture. The latest recipe I found, named 'The Best Panettone Ever', made the best panettone I've ever eaten, better even than the first one I ate.

Unless you love panettone (and I do), don't attempt making it. A lot of time is needed to proof the dough. The dough has to be proofed first for 12 to 15 hours (less in hot weather) and then proofed again for 3 to 5 hours. However, the proofing time is dependent on the room temperature, as I found out last night. I made the dough at 4 pm yesterday, went to a dinner party, came home at midnight and did some reading. Suddenly, just as I was getting into bed, I remembered my dough and rushed to the oven. It was a Magic Porridge Pot scene:

This was 9 hours into proofing.

The other thing about making panettone is the hanging of the cooked bread. I used skewers as per the instructions but the bread pulled through the skewers and was mutilated. If you are not fussy about authentic-looking panettone, use a tube pan. I've read somewhere that large soup cans are good too but that still doesn't solve the hanging part.

I'v made several adjustments to the recipes, not in the amount but in the steps. Lahey's famous for his no-knead bread recipe and this too is a no knead recipe but I left the dough to proof in the mixer bowl and kneaded it after the first proofing because I wanted a shreddy bread. Btw, this recipe is great because everything is mixed at the beginning--you don't have to make a starter dough.

Right after we ate lunch, we pounced on the panettone. It was SO GOOD with coffee. The rain started soon after and I thought life just can't get any better. Really. I know Christmas is over but life is great and we should celebrate each day so make panettone even if it's not Christmas!

Out of focus but I want to show how wet the dough was.

Windowpane stage is when the dough is so stretchy that it can be pulled into a thin, see-through membrane.

The dough was so wet and hard to handle that I used a heavy duty rubber spatula to scoop it and a pair of scissors to cut it.

The next day, after 8 hours of second proofing overnight in the fridge. I made twice the recipe and put one portion into a tube pan and another into a small cake tin.

Place a small spoonful of cold butter on the top before baking. The black specks are vanilla seeds.

Hanging the poor bread.

The skewers tore through the bread because I used baking paper, not panettone parchment case.

The Best Panettone Ever (Adapted from Jim Lahey's recipe, published in Gourmet, Dec 2008)

1 cup raisins
2/3 cup candied orange peel
1/2 cup dried cranberries (my addition)
2 T light rum + 2 T hot water
1 T brandy (optional)
3 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 t salt
1/2 t instant dry yeast (I used 1 t)
1/4 t grated lemon zest (I used zest from 1 large orange)
seeds from 1/2 vanilla bean (or use vanilla extract)
3 large eggs, room temp
1 T honey (I used maple syrup)
2/3 cup tepid water
10 T or about 170 gm (original recipe was 10 1/2 T) unsalted softened butter/1 T melted/1/2 T chilled

equipment: panettone cases or large parchment case to fit a 7 or 8" round pan, at least 4" tall (no need to grease) or larger tube pan (no need to grease or line)

1. Soak the raisins in the rum and hot water overnight. Soak the cranberries in brandy overnight.
2. Next day (schedule your time), mix the flour, salt, sugar, yeast, lemon or orange zest and vanilla seeds in the bowl of a stand mixer.
3. In another bowl, whisk the eggs, honey/maple syrup and the tepid water.
4. With the mixer at low speed, slowly pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture. Increase speed to medium and mix until well-combined.
5. Add the 10 spoons of softened butter, 1 T at a time, until well-incorporated between additions.
6. Mix the raisins (I didn't have to drain the raisins as instructed because the raisins soaked up all the liquid; wasteful to drain the rum off anyway), the cranberries, the candied peel and the 1 T melted butter and stir that into the dough mixture with a long wooden spoon or heavy-duty spatula until well-mixed.
7. Cover the dough in the same bowl with cling wrap (or transfer to a greased bowl) and leave in a cold oven about 6 hours (in warm weather) or longer (in cold weather; recipe said 12 to 15 hours).
8. Knead the dough in the mixer for about 10 minutes until the dough at 'window pane stage' or as per the original recipe, turn the dough out onto a floured board, pull and fold the dough from outer edges into the middle.
9. Put the dough into a 20 cm/8" tube pan or panettone parchment mould, cover with a wet towel and let it proof 3 to 5 hours until doubled and very soft and puffed. Sprinkle some water on top pf the panettone if it looks dry. About 15 minutes before panettone is to be baked, heat the oven at 180 C.
10. Snip an X on the top of the panettone with scissors (careful not to deflate the dough) and place the knob of cold butter in it. If using tubepan, place small knobs of butter around the top of the bread.
11. Bake on the bottom rack 1 1/2 hours or until a skewer comes out clean.
12. For panettone baked in tube pan, just turn over like you would a chiffon cake. For round pan, quickly pierce two long skewers parallel through the parchment paper and bread about 4-5 cm/2" from the base and hang the bread upside down in a pot to cool, about 1 hour.

Rose Water Panna Cotta With Apple Compote

2011-12-31T01:48:00.000+08:00

One more post before the end of 2011. Do you, like me, find that each year goes faster than the year before? Maybe time seems to fly the older you get because one day for an older person is one day over thousands of days compared to, say, a one-year old whose one day is one day over 365. I read that in some magazine years ago and I liked that explanation.

Panna cotta ("cooked cream") is super easy to make and super yummy too. Yes, believe it or not, there is such a dessert. Just set dairy cream with gelatine (overnight so you have plenty of time the next day) and serve it very cold with a caramel syrup and seasonal fruits. The Brits try to complicate ~~everything~~ the dessert by making a fruit compote but even so it's still much easier to make than say an apple crumble or a bread pudding.

I can't get rose water here so I used rose essence for the flavor and grenadine for the color. The rose flavor gave the dessert a subtle but wonderful flavor. I was lucky to have dried blueberries and cranberries. I didn't have dried cherries so I used fresh ones. The original recipe was from London: Authentic Recipes Celebrating The Foods Of The World but I made the panna cotta according to my long-trusted recipe. I also simplified the apple compote. That just means I made do without ingredients I don't have, such as Muscat de Beaumes de Venise, a sweet white dessert wine.

Happy New Year All!

Rose Water Panna Cotta With Apple Compote
The panna cotta:
1000 ml fresh dairy cream*
6 pieces gelatine sheets**
1 1/2 t rose essence or 2 t rose water
6 T castor sugar

* increase to about 1200 ml in cold weather or if you want a wobbly panna cotta
** from cake ingredients shops

1. Put the cream into a small pot, add the gelatine sheets which have been briefly soaked in cold water (15 sec or until just turning soft). Heat and stir the cream until the gelatine is thoroughly melted and pour into individual molds, preferably metal molds which are easier to ease out. For big parties, I make a huge mold for guests to help themselves with.

The Apple Compote
3 apples, peeled, cored and diced
3 T dried cranberries
3 T dried blueberries
2 T dried cherries
3 T lemon juice
finely grated zest from 1 large lemon
7 T caste sugar (to taste)
1 t rose water (or 1 t rose essence + 1/4 cup grenadine syrup)

2. Put the sugar, zest and 2/3 cup water into a sauce pot and cook, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is slightly syrupy. Add the remaining ingredients except for the lemon juice and let the mixture simmer for 5 to 10 minutes until the apples are tender and sauce is reduced and thickened. Add the lemon juice and remove from heat. Cool.

3. Run a blade around the sides of the panna cotta, hold a serving plate over the mould and invert. Cover the mould with a hot towel, leave for a few seconds and shake the mould to ease the panna cotta out. Spoon the compote on and around the panna cotta and chill thoroughly before serving.

Bacon Explosion

2011-12-29T01:33:00.000+08:00

This caterpillar of meat, known as Bacon Explosion or Bacon Bomb, is just pork meatloaf wrapped in bacon. Regular beef meatloaf is so tame compared to the Bacon Explosion.

I wanted to make devils on horseback for Christmas dinner but when my son Ming asked if I've heard of bacon weave before (I hadn't), I googled it and that led me to Bacon Explosion, a long roll of pork sausage meat with fried bacon bits covered with a mat of weaved bacon, bbqued until it's smokey and crisp and glazed with a sweet sauce. The original Explosion was created by the bloggers here and was said to contain at least 5000 calories. I have made a less sinful version, cutting back on the amount of bacon and fat used but still, do proceed with caution.

Because bacon is expensive here, I didn't want to use any more bacon than necessary so I didn't have crispy bacon in the meat filling. We can't get fresh sausage meat here and I had to make my own. I had a packet of chorizo sausages from Australia (thanks, Liz) that was close to the used-by date so they were chopped up, fried and mixed into the sausage meat for extra flavor.

The Bacon Explosion for Christmas dinner was so good that it went quickly, leaving me scavenging just the bacon bits and dried cranberries I had used for garnish. I intended to post the recipe after making another Explosion this weekend but after several requests for the recipe, including from W in Canada who I just spoke to this evening, I am posting the recipe today for those who want to make one for New Year's Eve dinner. I am waiting for a photo of the cut Explosion taken by a friend (I was too busy to take photos) and I'll upload it later.

If fresh pork sausage meat is available where you are, you can use that instead of making your own. You can also substitute the chorizo with bacon, pepperoni or whatever you like. In the original recipe, the Bacon Explosion is smoked-bbqued and glazed but I find it easier to cook it in the oven. I also don't like my bacon fully crisp so the oven is a better place to cook the roll. If you want a glaze, just make your own or use bottled bbq sauce mixed with some honey or maple syrup. Serve the Bacon Explosion with a crisp salad and some mash and say hello to your triple chin.

Note: I made a second BE a week later and the result wasn't as good as the first one. I've thought about it and think these are the reasons:

1. The local chorizos were not as tasty or maybe it was because I used only 2 instead of 4 chorizos. Advice: Use tasty chorizos.
2. I got the bacon from the same supermarket but noticed that the bacon was in narrower strips and tasted different. Advice: Keep to good fresh thick-cut Aussie bacon.
3. I took the short cut of having the butcher mill-grind the pork for me but the mince was too coarse. Machine-ground pork is too pasty. Chopping by hand gives a fine mince that's just nice.
4. I didn't cook the roll until the bacon was browned enough because I need the oven for baking bread. The BE should be baked until the bacon is browned and quite crispy.
5. I used Hunt's hickory bbq sauce to glaze and I think that really spoilt the taste. My advice is to skip the bbq sauce.

Weave the bacon strips on a piece of firm plastic. You can sprinkle some bbq seasoning or dry rub on the bacon mat if like. I didn't.

It is easier to pat the sausage meat into a long log on a prepared tray and then slap the bacon mat on top than put the sausage meat on top of the bacon mat and roll.

Weave the bacon mat on a piece of plastic for easier lifting of the mat and slap the mat on the sausage roll. Tuck the ends under the roll.

Make sure the weaving is tidy and snug.

My Bacon Explosion
The sausage meat:
1.5 kg pork shoulder, with at least 20% fat
4 chorizo sausages (about 400 gm)
3/4 t salt (or reduce slightly)
3/4 T ground sage
3/4 t thyme
1/4 t ground ginger
1/2 t nutmeg
1/4 t white pepper
1/8 ts cayenne pepper
1/4 cup water or 1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 slices of day-old bread, cut into 1/2 cm cubes

For the bacon weave:
About 800 gm to 1 kg of thick-cut streaky bacon (do not use the thin-cut Danish bacon)

Optional: bbq seasoning/dry rub

1. Chop or coarse-grind the pork. Cut the chorizo into small pea-sized cubes and fry them in a frying pan without oil. Remove when the chorizo are golden brown. Cool.

2. Mix the fried chorizo and all the other sausage meat ingredients until well-blended, cover and leave in the fridge for at least half an hour to firm up.

3. Meanwhile, weave the bacon criss-cross into a mat. You'll need two or three large bacon mats. Arrange the bacon 'mats' on a baking tray lined with aluminium foil. You can sprinkle the bacon with your favorite bbq seasoning/dry rub for extra flavor.

4. Pat the sausage meat into a long roll on the weaved bacon. Roll the sausage with the weaved bacon mats firmly and snugly. Or, the easier way is to weave the bacon on a piece of plastic for support, lift the plastic up with the bacon mat and drape over the sausage roll. Re-arrange and tidy up the weave, making sure the bacon strips are woven closely. Tuck the edges under. Make sure the ends of the roll are covered and the seams of the mats are at the bottom on the tray. You can spread some bbq seasoning on the roll if like. Chill the roll in the fridge while the oven heats up.

5. Preheat oven at 200 C and put in the bacon roll. Bake 1 1/2 hours uncovered. Check on the roll now and then to make sure that it is not burnt. At the end of cooking, glaze with a bbq sauce if like.

Christmas Dinner 2011

2011-12-26T15:07:00.000+08:00

I went straight from church to my kitchen where I worked until the guests arrived. I didn't even have a chance to shower or step into the washroom! I had moved my Christmas dinner to Christmas Day (Christmas dinner is always on the eve this part of the world) and forgot that my helper celebrates Christmas at home too so I had to do everything myself. Dinner parties are a cinch here because we have help to clean the house, set the table, prepare the ingredients and all that. Anyway, Vero came in after 4 pm and she helped me more than all the three men in the house did the whole afternoon. For that, I gave her Boxing Day off so we'll just have bread and turkey soup today.

Okay, I should give credit where it's due. Hub arranged the tables, got the drinks and did last minute shopping. He did a great job chopping nearly 1.7 kgs of pork because I forgot to tell the butcher I wanted ground pork. Machine-minced pork is rather pasty and not right for what I wanted to make. Ming set up the speakers in the patio and was in charge of music. We had Michael Buble and Diana Krall singing for us. So good, especially Diana Krall. Buble's too commerical for me. Wey helped here and there, disappearing upstairs to play computer games whenever I'm not looking. I miss my daughter. The family just misses her so much this time of the year but she was on Skype with us and she was happy at yet another dinner party, third in a row this week. Shanghai seems like the happening place for expats.

Initially it was just a party for 17 including my family but the guests swelled to 24 so at the last minute I bulked up the veggies and added an English trifle. The trifle was the worst I've made and I think the spoilers were the cheap rum and store-bought Swiss rolls. The surprise hit of the night was something new to us: Bacon Explosion, which is really a pork meatloaf wrapped in a layer of weaved bacon strips. I am told that it was very very good--I didn't get a chance to eat it except for a thumbnail-sized bit when S was about to stab it with her fork. I did eat the what was left--the bacon bits and dried cranberries--and it was SO good, the crispy, tasty, smoky, salty bacon and sweet cranberries were perfect together.

Great food, wine, music, weather, friends and family and a reminder that we are so blessed because Jesus was sent to redeem us.

Roasted turkey with traditional chestnuts stuffing.

My version of Bacon Explosion.

Radicchio (which I've learnt from this dinner, should not be cooked if you want to keep the pretty color), mixture of brussel sprouts, baby carrots and asparagus, and fennel.

English trifle.

White Christmas log of creamy silky coconut cream and durian Swiss roll!

Dark choc cupcakes with marzipan stars.

Traditional fruit cake with home-made marzipan.

Australian cherries.

Pumpkin soup (pumpkin from my garden) and bread photos to be uploaded later.

Merry Christmas 2011!

2011-12-25T01:15:00.000+08:00

Merry Christmas everyone! I know you are all tucked in bed, tummies full of wine and turkey and excited about Christmas Day tomorrow. I'll be busy tomorrow so I'm uploading some photos of tonight's Christmas Eve's dinner at my friend Elaine's house.

Elaine is a terrific cook. She throws elegant dinners where people stay and stay because the company's always fun and her home is beautiful and welcoming. I wish I have a long dining table too and a house with glass walls from where I can see the city lights. I was stunned by the spread she had on the table. Simple dinner she said, so I offered to make a couple of simple desserts and when I saw her table I just wanted to go home and whip up something more befitting to the occasion.

I need to get up early to prepare for tomorrow's dinner so I'll stop writing and just upload my photos.

I couldn't find marzipan anywhere so I thought I'd make my own. If there's one thing I'll remember about this Christmas, it's that I made my own marzipan and it's darn easy and cheap too! Just knead 500 gm ground almonds, 500 gm sifted icing sugar, 2 egg whites and either 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla essence or a few drops of almond essence until well-blended and smooth. Chill until ready to use. Home-made marzipan tastes way better than store-bought (store bought usually has more sugar and less almond) and this recipe makes a great-tasting marzipan that's not too sweet.

I thought this photo was pretty funny. The guys had to carve. Looks chaotic but it was fun.

Excellent turkey with stuffing.

New Zealand leg of lamb done so well I decided it's better to eat than to look slim.

Delicious cookies. Must get the recipe.

My fruit cake, covered with marzipan.

Candied fruits.

Chocolates and stollen.

My choc cupcakes.

Merry Christmas, dear friends!

Katong Laksa, Singapore

2011-12-23T14:16:00.001+08:00

Katong has been made over since my last visit 3 years ago. I love how they have conserved the old shophouses and made everything look so...touristy-nice...but when I was in Katong at noon one day two weeks ago, there were only a handful of people walking around. I don't know it if's the heat (Singapore is all about air-conditioned malls) or the sterile, perfect 'Tourists Welcome' look of the place. What it needs is more people to liven up the place. Maybe it is different at night. Next time, I'll go at night.

The one thing people come to Katong for is the most famous Singapore laksa stall at 328 Katong. 328 is not the original laksa operator in the shoplot but it has literally cashed in on the original operator's reputation for the best laksa after the original operator moved out when the rent was increased. There's a lesson to be learnt from this: don't build up a reputation and leave, thinking that somebody else can't do the same thing.

3 years ago I found 328 laksa too creamy-thick. This time, I loved it. The soup was just nice, not too thick or thin, there were lots of dried shrimps, the cockles were plump, sweet and crunchy, the noodles slippery-smooth and delicious. At S$4/5/6 (S/M/L), who says Singapore is one of the most expensive cities in the world? In KK, you can't eat a decent bowl of noodles for below RM6 (and you shouldn't convert the currency unless you are a tourist).

Otak otak is something I don't particularly like. Or dislike.

The lady of this quaint Peranakan/Eurasian shop cautioned me about taking photos inside when I stepped in. Perasaan because I didn't think of doing so. I did buy two of her old-fashioned curry puffs, the ones that are made with short crust pastry and baked, not deep-fried. They were kind of hollow and dry but still tasted heaps better than the awful spiral pastry deep-dried curry puffs we get these days.

The red agar was rose syrup-flavored, cold, very firm and not too sweet. It reminded me of simpler days when desserts were just that, simple agar agar jellies.

These banana loaves smelt heavenly but nobody wanted to share a loaf with me so I stood smelling and drooling but the lady didn't offer me a sample. Which isn't so bad because one of my friends stood drooling at the window of a Chinese dimsum place in London years ago and a waiter came out with a doggie bag and told her to go away. Lesson: wear a good coat when travelling.

I know some people say Awfully Choc's choc slice is overrated but I love it.

Straight from 328 Katong to Katong Mall for the Hainanese chicken rice! This was at Delicious Boneless Chicken Rice stall in the food court of the mall. What can I say? We had two plates of the chicken. That was less than 30 minutes after eating Singapore laksa and we each had a bowl. Why am I not surprised that when I went to town yesterday 3 people said I've put on weight? Two said I look "fatter and different". That's brutal.

Mixed pickles and refills are FOC with the chicken rice.

Singapore started as a free port nation about 50 years ago. Due to its strategic location in the Straits of Malacca and good management, Singapore tied with Rotterdam, The Netherlands as the busiest ports in the world for decades until about 6 years ago when Shanghai took over that spot. This photo was taken from our apartment which is not near the port but even so, look at the number of ships out there.

'Good' Job NS Planners

2011-12-23T13:29:00.001+08:00

I both like and dislike this time of the year. I am stressed just going to town. The roads are jammed, the queues are long and nothing gets done because people look like they are working but they are just faking it.

I am a terrible procrastinator and I work only when stressed. Would you believe me if I told you I still haven't done my shopping except for the turkeys and the only thing I've made so far is my traditional Christmas cake? Yet I have plans to make panettone, host 3 dinners in one week and am preparing to send my son off for national service on 1/1/12. We just got the prep pack from the Ministry/whoever two days ago, that's how competent they are. Why did they send the pack so late and during this period when nothing gets done--my son has to open a bank account, get a medical check up and report done, get all documents and personal items ready and there are all those holidays between now and 1/1. For CNY, the NS trainees get 5 days off. Yeah, thanks for the break and consideration about family reunions but better planning would be welcome because the air tickets have all gone up. It will cost over RM1200 to get my son home for what will effectively be 3 days of holidays, with time lost travelling from Rawang to KLIA to KK and back. And where the heck is Rawang? Why do the trainees have to be sent across the seas since they will be isolated in a camp anyway? I'd rather pay less for my food, my utilities bills and taxes than have my son sent to Rawang to get up at 5 am to learn to make his own bed. I wish it will but 2 1/2 months will not make a soldier out of him. It's time to rethink the NS program. Does the program really benefit the trainees for life or just for 10 weeks? If it is life-changing, it should be compulsory for all young people. If it isn't for all, then it is an unnecessary program and is being done just for the sake of doing. Continuing with the program just because it's implemented ages ago doesn't merit the expenses. I am for anything that will instill discipline and good habits in my kids but I doubt NS will make an iota of difference. The only thing it will do is make my son miss home. I hope.

Singapore Dec 2011-2

2011-12-20T20:39:00.019+08:00

Orchard Rd was busy and merry as usual. Two new malls have sprung up since my last visit. Ion and 313@Somerset. I found Ion more pleasant. A couple of restaurants looked really tempting. One of them, Ippudo Ramen, had people queuing even at 3 pm.

This was the end of the queue at Starbucks in one of the Orchard malls and we were incredulous that Singaporeans were so crazy about Starbucks coffee. A couple from Finland stood near us and wondered at the same thing too. Starbucks is kaput in Australia I heard but Singaporeans can't get enough of it.

I was with a friend in the Isetan Supermarket when she spotted this pretty young thing and made me take a photo with her. Turned out that she's Fiona Xie, a Singaporean actress. I was so unnerved I forgot to take a shot of her mile-long legs. Remember AngelaBaby whom I saw in Hong Kong?

A resting place for tired shoppers somewhere in Gallery Mandarin. Apparently tired shoppers not only eat and nap, they pet too.

Abercrombie & Fitch had a week-long promotion of their about-to-open store on Orchard
Rd and flew in some dishy hunks who stood outside the store half-naked. The women bystanders went crazy, their bfs or hubs fidgeting and sucking their bellies in. Someone pushed me forward and I ended up looking stupid with a bunch of hunks half my age.

These boys kept their shirts on but I bet they have abs too.

The cakes at Antoinette looked SO good but we just had a big lunch and my guys didn't want any dessert. I tell myself that next time, I will make a trip to Singapore with my girlfriends and we will sit down for tea.

At Tangs, I met up with my son Ming who had flown in from Melbourne via KL and Hub who had flown in from Penang and the first thing Ming ate was chicken rice and choy sum. This was in one of the food courts on Orchard and Ming said it was 6/10.

If you've never been to Marina Bay Sands the casino, go. From far the buildings look
ridiculous, like a ship is marooned on top of two buildings but close up the grandeur of the whole project is just awing. The casino is HUGE and classy and there are lots of restaurants and shops if gambling is not your thing.

We were wearing jeans, so we chose to eat dinner at Mario Batali's Osteria Mozza (2 Bayfront Ave, Tel: 65.6688.8522). The dang thing about the place is you have to decide whether you want pizza or pasta at the entrance. Pizza diners go right, pasta lovers go left. You can't have both, isn't that silly. Hard decision but I chose pizza.

House salad, about S$10++. Boring and the dressing was pH 4 maybe, so acidic I couldn't finish it.

An appetiser of calamari with beans, S$10++. Not a bit impressive.

The main course of the day was braised lamb shank, S$36++. It was good, tender yet still attached to the bone. Yum with the thin pieces of crisp bread.

This was worth the wait (they said 45 minutes but this came in 20 minutes). Fennel and sausage pizza, about S$28++ I think. I've never tasted a similar pizza, not even in Italy. The crust was thin, puffed and crisp and the fennel and sausage were so good together. I would surmise that the oven temperature was over 400 C? Awesome.

3-mushroom pizza, another awesome creation.

The pizza crust was made even more crispy by a coating of semolina.

The caramel ice cream with peanuts, about S$15++, was a disappointment because it was too sweet and ordinary. Really those pizzas were a hard act to follow. I wished I had ordered the ice cream with olive oil. Next time.

We stepped out of the building and faced the Louis Vuitton store with the Singapore river and city skyline as back drop. People were dining al fresco and the cool night air blew through giant palms, making the place seem so laid back and beautiful. This part of Singapore reminded me of Sydney Harbour but Sydney Harbor seems so tired and old in comparison.

Singapore Dec 2011

2011-12-19T07:36:00.015+08:00

Dinner on my first night in Singapore was at Putien, a Fujian-Heng Hua restuarant in Marine Parade. I'm not familiar with Fujian cuisine and found it similar to Cantonese cuisine. I found Putien's dishes at par (albeit some misses) with the fine restaurants in China and the elegant, modern Chinese decor very pleasant. Not sure about the prices though because the tab was picked up by Hub's cousin.

Thin belly pork slices with a garlic soy sauce. The pork slices were so thin that it was hard to tell whether it was pork or imitation meat. Though tasty, this was too delicate a dish for me. I want my meat to taste like meat.

This is one of Putien's best dishes, tender spinach in a rich sauce of three types of eggs: century egg, salted duck's egg and chicken egg. I'm not sure about this version of 3-egg spinach which though very tasty and flavorful, was rich and creamy compared to the common version where the sauce is lighter and clearer. The spinach was also slightly bitter.

Oh chien or baby oysters omelette is one of the greasiest but yummiest dishes you must feast on in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. This deep-fried version is dry and boring.

I've always disliked Singapore lor mee, noodles in a thick gummy gravy but Putien's version was different and delicious. The soup was rich and very tasty, slightly thick and the noodles just the right texture.

This dish of sweet and sour fish was perfect, the sauce just nice and the fish delicious, superfine and fresh.

I love taro, and one of my dining companion commented that taro is a ladies' favorite and I think he's right. The or nee (taro paste) was lacking in taro flavor. The pumpkin dessert can be improved by using deep orange-colored mature pumpkins. Still, nice change from the usual red beans or peanuts and I enjoyed the coconut ice cream.

This was AF's breakfast the next morning at a stall behind a mall in Katong. I've noticed that char siew in Singapore is always lean and dyed orange-red, like the char siew in Kuching. A no-no for me.

I didn't try B's noodles with stewed chicken feet and mushrooms because I was saving my stomach for my first bowl of Singapore laksa in nearly 3 years.

The cockles were big and raw, the noodles el dente and even though the soup was too thin and lacking in deep flavor, I walked away very contented.

Maybe because it was my first day in Singapore but the economy buffet dishes looked better than those in KK.

I was in Singapore to meet up with Tina but our schedules didn't allow us to spend much time together so Tina suggested that I go to her mom's apartment for lunch.

It's always a treat to eat home-made mee siam. Everything, from the gravy to the sambal, was home-made. So much work--that's why I've never cooked mee siam.

Tina's mom's delicious nyonya-style mee siam is a more sour and lighter version than the mee siam I'm used to.

A bottle of home-made salted fish, either straits Eurasian or nyonya-style. Reminds me of mango chutney, only this was better. I'll have to get my brother to bring this for me.

Jelliriffic! Prize Presentation

2011-12-18T01:05:00.035+08:00

Hi I'm back! Don't you just love this time of the year when everyone is in a holiday mood? The kids are on holidays and there're no school or tuition runs. Bliss. Lots of dinner parties and catching up with friends and family from now until Chinese New Year, which is on 23rd Jan. One of my nieces got married on 15/12, the first in her generation, and I am hoping to eat some roasted suckling pig tonight.

As you know, my whole family was in Kuala Lumpur for the Royal Selangor Jelliriffic! Challenge (see October posts) prize presentation 12th and 13th Dec. If I were to write about it, I'll need to do a whole week of posts but instead of that, I'll let the photos do the talking. The photos are from several sources because I made the most horrifying mistake of forgetting to load my camera with the battery that day and the RS' factory and head quarters were an inconvenient 20 minutes' drive away from the hotel. Not far, when I think of it now, but with so many things going on, and seeing how the whole family (except Wey, who was sulking as usual and also down with flu) was enjoying the factory tour and everything, it was hard for me to insist that anyone go back to the hotel to get the battery. I kick myself still, and I hope that this is the last time I forget memory cards and camera battery. If any of you have any photos of the event, please send them to me.

We started the day with a tour of the Gallery, which houses beautiful RS products from the time RS was founded in 1885 to their latest collections. The Gallery brings you through the history of how tin and pewter developed into important business for the country, and also tells the story of how the founder of RS, Yong Koon, grew a small business into the largest and best-known pewter company in the world. What amazes me is that RS is running stronger than ever under the management of the 4th generation, making RS the oldest privately owned company in Malaysia.

RS' School of Hard Knocks was where we got to hammer pieces of pewter sheets into bowls to bring home. It was fun. Pewter is a very easy metal to work with because it is soft. The RS Visitor's Center where RS' products are for sale was filled with tourists and shoppers but unfortunately we didn't have time for a visit. The Center is open to the public 9 am to 5 pm daily and is truly worth visiting because the collection of products is extensive. RS' products are famous for their craftsmenship, design and quality so do check out their online site when shopping for Christmas presents.

The guests and press started arriving at 2 pm. After the prize presentation, the audience were asked to join Team Billy and Team Terri in making jellies (each team had 8 people making a jelly each) with the theme "Love, Life and Humour"--the tagline for the Nick Munro mould used for RS' yearly fund raising for the Breast Cancer Welfare Association. That was followed by Olympus' workshop on how to take photos of food using the new PEN Lite micro four thirds DSLR cameras. We were having such a fun time that nobody took much notice of the storm that was raging outside. The storm resulted in Jalan Tun Razak, a major road in the city, being flooded and impassable for a couple of hours.

Besides promoting breast cancer awareness and aiding the Breast Cancer Welfare Association, RS is also involved in a drive to protect the environment and conserve nature and these efforts are totally characteristic of RS now that I've met and spent some time with its management and staff. It was an honor for me to be part of RS' yearly fund-raising event for the Breast Cancer Welfare Association. Hats off to RS' management and staff!

Did you know that no two RS hammered products are the same because the little dents on RS' hammered products are all hammered by hand, mostly by this lady who has worked in RS for over 40 years? I had a go at hammering and it was a difficult task because you have to hammer each dent twice at the same spot and with even pressure.

At RS' School Of Hard Knocks, we hammered our own pewter bowls (Billy's bowl was the best, deep and round) from a thin sheet of pewter. Pewter is a soft metal made of tin, antimony and copper and has a low melting point of 250 C, which is why the Jelliriffic! moulds were not to be baked.

RS' cafe serves a large selection of dishes and desserts. The vertical surface of the counter is made of pewter tiles, giving a contemporary and classy look to the cafe.

Curry laksa was the special of the day and it was very good but I only ate half a bowl because I had put on 1 kg in 3 days in Singapore.

These delicious cakes (L to R: cheesecake, Guinness cake, tart and choc fudge cake) were all made by the gorgeous wife of RS's GM. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of them but we were totally taken by this charming, easy-going and friendly couple who epitomizes RS' elegance and class.

This is a replica of the famous melon tea pot made by the founder of RS, Yong Koon. The original is displayed in RS' gallery and it just makes sense that Yong Koon became a tinsmith rather than a tin miner because he obviously was very artistic and skillful.(Hint: I covet the melon teapot and the lidi basket.)

Here's evidence of what I've been accused of constantly--I laugh and gesture too much. Here's a link to an online article about the Challenge.

Jelllies by Team Billy in the top and bottom horizontal rows while jellies made by my team are in the middle rows.

Practising their new photo skills.

With the beautiful RS ladies who organised the competition.

Muddy City!

2011-12-13T10:15:00.011+08:00

My older son Ming, my hub and I arrived in Kuala Lumpur ("lumpur" means muddy) late on 10th Dec and met our my daughter at the airport as she arrived at the same from Shanghai. Can't tell you how happy we were! Wey arrived the next day, and the family was complete. Mandarin Oriental Hotel is 20 steps away from KLCC and we spent our first afternoon in the fantastic mall which was packed with Christmas shoppers. Thank you, RS, and thank God for all his favors.

The first night in KL, we hit Jalan Alor (we had wanted dinner at Fatty Crabs but the restaurant is in PJ, too fat away from the city center) and the atmosphere was just crazy, with cars passing within 1 foot of us as we sat on plastic chairs by the roadside. Used tissues were scattered everywwhere and especially under the tables, making me uneasy as I ate my fried cockles and Hokkien mee. The street was packed woth locals and tourists, all in a happy and fun mood. A couple of buskers stood in front of us singing my kids' songs (i.e. songs I don't sing to), a white guy stood in the middle of the street taking photos with his new locals friends, somebody let out a burst of confetti into the air and cried
"Selamat Hari Raya!" making the diners laughed and clapped. Yi clasped her hands tightly and said "I love KL, it's as crazy as Shanghai!".

Yes, KL has its charm. It's chaotic, dirty, exciting--everything that Singapore is not. It's just funny how the two cities are so unlike. Singapore is like that aunty who comes to stay
and her hair is always coiffed and she drinks tea with her pinky pointing out while KL is like the aunty who laughs with her head thrown back (and sometimes falls off her chair) and maybe even toots a little when she laughs. Which aunty am I? Guess.

RS, true to the company's spirit of excellence and style, has put together a wonderful program. Yesterday, we were taken on a walking tour of KL. The weather cloudy, warm but not hot, and our guide Mr Lee Choo Sim was a walking Wikipedia who not only knew all about KL's history and architecture, but also food; where to eat and how to cook a good nyonya stew. We (except Wey, who as usual was uninteractive because he wanted to get back to his video game which Hub had confiscated) all enjoyed the tour and are so happy to have had the chance to see and learn all the interesting historic facts about KL.

OH dear, I wanted to upload photos but it's now 10:12 am and RS' car will arrive at 11 to pick us up for today's event at their factory and visitors' center. If you have time, do drop by. I think they wouldn't mind extra people there. Now I have to decide. Should I wear my jeans or that new shift dress. I wish there's a hair salon nearby.

Lion City!

2011-12-08T12:00:00.004+08:00

No lions in Lion City but there are plenty of gigantic rain trees! That's the first thing that strikes me everytime I come to this city. Why is it that Sg can have such big lovely trees shading their highways and roads, making everywhere green and fresh, when we, next to Sg, have mazes of concrete flyovers and bare dusty road dividers?

Why is it that the Sg dollar, once at par with Malaysian Ringgit, is now 2.4 times higher, despite The Little Red Dot, city and country being same size (247 sq km, Wiki) as the city of KL (243 sq km, Wiki) and having no natural resources? Why is it that EVERY street and corner is clean and devoid of thrash yet in Malaysia you can't step into a coffee shop without used tissues sticking to your shoes and chairs? Why is it that buses are new and clean, run on time, plentiful and fares are cheap? Why are Sg taxi drivers rated the BEST in the world while KL taxi drivers are notorious for not using their meters and picky when sending passengers, discriminating about locations and even the weather?

Why is Sg rated the best place to live (albeit now rated the 6th costliest) in South East Asia (or the whole Asian region)? Why are the literacy rates, education and living standards of
Sgreans among the highest in the world?

Off For A Week

2011-12-06T20:43:00.002+08:00

I will be in Singapore tomorrow (I LOVE Singapore laksa daily and chicken rice) and then on Sunday, I will fly to Kuala Lumpur for the Royal Selangor Jelliriffic! event and prize presentation, 11th to 13th Dec. RSP has lined up a great program and I am excited and nervous about the whole thing. What do I wear, what do I say? I had a haircut last minute and it is too short. If I diet from tomorrow on, will I look slimmer in 5 days? I think I'll forget about the dieting and wear black instead. My family will be there too because RSP has generously provided our airfares (including my daughter Yi's) and stay in a top hotel, except for my son Ming who'll fly in on our expense (I didn't dare ask for so much). I've not made many public appearances (ok, I've not made any, at least not this way) and this will be quite an experience. Yi and I have been dieting for the trip (I gained instead of lost weight) and we are going to paint KL rainbow color! I haven't seen big boy Ming in 10 months and am dying to hug them both.

Do check in and keep in touch!

Loh Bak Bun

2011-12-06T11:03:00.021+08:00

Loh bak bun (white carrot/radish 'flat cakes') is my mom's favorite Chinese go or kuih before she forgot it's her favorite. She bought it whenever she saw it on breakfast stalls and now I buy it for her whenever I see them. She needs me to remember things for her and sometimes it's very frustrating for me. Ok, it upsets me sometimes but I know the frustration comes from not wanting to accept that she's not the way she used to be.

Mom made very good kuih (a Malay word that originated from the Hokkien word koe for teatime snacks, usually made of rice or glutinous rice flour and steamed) but her generation never wrote their recipes down in paper or blogs so many recipes have disappeared. There is hope though because daughters and sons remember the taste of what their moms (or dads) cooked and through many tries, family recipes can be recovered.

I got the recipe for loh bak bun (the bun is pinyin and doesn't mean bun as in steamed flour buns, but it means a flat 'cake' or snack) right on my fourth try. The first time, mom insisted on adding rice flour to the glutinous rice flour so that the bun wouldn't be too sticky. The bun turned out hard and got harder when it cooled. The second batch was made with pure glutinous rice flour and I liked the stickiness but there was a floury texture, like the bun wasn't cooked through even though I re-steamed it.

The most common bun recipe, especially in West Malaysia I think, is made of wheat starch and tapioca flour, like for ha gow. The wheat starch makes the wrapper or 'skin' translucent and shiny while the tapioca starch gives the skin some structure because wheat starch, when cooked, is very soft and slightly sticky. I was sure that's not how our local loh bak bun are made so wheat starch was out for me. The third time, I made the wrapper or 'skin' with glutinous rice flour and cornstarch and it was totally not the right texture. The fourth time, I added potato starch which I had plenty of.

Bingo. The texture of my fourth batch of loh bak bun was soft, smooth, sticky, slightly (and very slightly, I didn't want it any more than that) chewy--exactly how I like it. The filling was delicious and I gobbled two bun within a minute. How am I going to face the people in KL next week, with my wobbly thighs and turkey neck and droopy buns (the human type)? Why can't we just eat without growing fat?

Besides being a snack, loh bak bun is eaten at breakfast too. What I do is fry the filling the night before so that it cools and the liquid dries up. The next morning, it just takes 3 minutes to make the dough, 5 minutes to fill the bun (cut the banana leaves night before) and another 5 to 7 minutes to steam them. I make my bun twice as big as what I get at the stalls. It's robbery at the stalls because the loh bak buns are now 80 sen each, some RM1, and they are half the size of my palm with hardly any filling. I made about 20 large loh bak buns for RM5/USD1.60. RM1.50 for the radish, RM1.00 for the dried shrimps, about RM2.50 for the glutinous rice flour and the banana leaves are from my garden. That's 25 sen for each bun, and they are nearly twice as big as and with lots more filling than the ones sold in stalls. I'd get rich if I have a breakfast stall at some kedai kopi.

The traditional shape for loh bak bun is the flat pillow shape.

Loh Bak Bun (makes 20 large palm-sized bun)
The filling:
1 Chinese radish ("white carrot"), about 400 gm
2 to 3 T dried shrimps
2 t veg oil + extra for brushing
salt, white pepper and chicken stock granules

* you can add some carrots if like

The dough:
4 cups packet of good glutinous rice flour
3/4 cup potato starch flour
2 cups boiling water

--banana leaves, cut into palm-sized oblong pieces

1. Grate the radish (I don't remove the skin) into very fine strips. Wash the dried shrimps, soak 5 minutes in water to soften (keep the water) and then mince them finely.
2. Heat up a wok/frying pan and add 2 T veg oil. Fry the dried shrimps until fragrant, about 3 to 5 minutes or until you can't standing their jumping about. Add the radish strips, then season with salt, chicken granules (commercially, msg is used) and plenty of white pepper. This snack should have the flavor of the radish, dried shrimps and white pepper. Add the soaking liquid from the dried shrimps, cover the wok for a couple of minutes, then remove it and continue to fry under medium heat until the radish is transparent and all the liquid has evaporated. Taste and season if necessary. Dish out and cool.
3. Put the flours into a large bowl and pour the boiling water over, using a pair of chopsticks or spoon to mix the water and flours in circles. The resulting lumps of flour will become semi-transparent. If you don't use boiling water, the dough will break apart and be hard to shape.
4. Put the dough on the counter and knead until smooth, about 1 minute only.
5. Divide the dough into 20 or more portions, rolling them on your palms to make them smooth. Cover the dough and dough balls as they dry quickly.
6. Flatten a dough ball, put 1 tablespoon or more of the filling in the center and fold the two sides together. Pinch the sides to seal. You can either make a ridge along the sealed edges or turn the bun over and shape into a 'pillow'.
7. Cut and grease the banana leaves (so the bun won't stick to the leaves), place the filled buns on the leaves and steam 5 minutes for small buns and 7 to 8 minutes or longer for larger buns. When buns are nearly done, brush them with a light coating of veg oil.

Sakura Swiss Roll

2011-12-02T14:02:00.010+08:00

Swiss rolls (jelly rolls to the Americans) are one of the hardest things for me to make because they always turn out dry and hard. Traditional/western Swiss rolls are made using genoise sponge and the hallmark of the genoise is the crumbly and dry texture, which is why they are often sandwiched with jam and cream. I prefer Asian Swiss rolls for the dense yet soft texture but I don't want to use Ovalette, a magic cake stabilizer that makes fine-textured, soft, no-fail cakes. I asked two bakeries if they used Ovalette and they confirmed that they do. There's no way that I would knowingly feed my family with Ovalette. It looks like waxy orange cholesterol.

I tried a couple of traditional Swiss roll recipes from the Net but none of them turned out good. I finally gave up on genoise and decided to make my Swiss roll using the separated egg sponge cake recipe, and I chose the recipe from here because it looked so good. My Swiss roll turned out soft and moist but the texture didn't seem to be the same as in Sotong Cooks. I was tickled to find that my Old Fashioned Butter Cake was among the recipes in the blog. It's an beautiful blog with tons of wonderful recipes; do visit it. There's no information on the person behind the blog but from the recipes and the way it is written, I think the blogger is Singaporean. Which brings to mind one of my thoughts when makng my jellies for the Jelliriffic! Challenge: thank goodness no Singaporeans were invited because there are so many great cooking bloggers in Singapore!

After going through 4 packets of my precious salted sakura no shiozuke (remember the sakura jelly? I made another one with gelatine and it turned out much better), I now prefer to leave the flowers quite salty so that the flavor, taste and color are retained.

For the first couple of sakura rolls that I made, I used meringue buttercream flavored with blackberry jam (couldn't find cherry jam) and the filling tasted pretty good. For the Swiss roll in the photos, I used whipped dairy cream instead (less work) and improved the flavor of the filling through a chance discovery. I was cleaning my fridge out and found my daughter's secret stash (I ban dried plums because they have preservatives) of seedless dried plums. I am so pleased with the result because the dried plums tasted like the salted sakura and went very well with the whipped cream. Even the color was a correct match because the dried pulms were reddish instead of the more common white dried plums. Perfect.

This is a cake ladies would love because it's so pretty and because most ladies (who grew up eating salted plums) love salted plums. The guys would probably find the sweet and salty taste rather strange. But seriously, if you can, get hold of some sakura no shio zuke and make this prettiest of rolls.

Salted dried plums.

Salted dried sakura.

The 'skin' of the roll can be peeled if you invert the hot roll on a piece of baking paper.

Sakura Swiss Roll

80 gm egg yolks (4 large yolks)
20 gm caster sugar
2 T + 1 t corn/canola oil
2 T + 1 t water or milk (I used milk)
75 gm cake flour

160 gm (from 4 large eggs) egg whites
60 gm caster sugar

about 1 T salted sakura flowers

1. About 3 hours before baking, wash the sakura flowers and soak in plenty of water for an hour. Rinse and soak again for another hour and repeat.

Dry the flowers on paper towels. Grease a 12" X 12" Swiss roll pan, line with baking paper and grease the paper. Arrange the flowers in the first third section of the pan, making sure there's a border of about 5 cm without flowers because that part will be tucked under the roll.

2. Put the yolks, 20 gm sugar, veg oil and water/milk into a bowl and whisk it until well-combined.

3. Using a cake mixer, whisk egg whites until frothy and then add the 60 gm sugar, whisking until stiff.

4. Fold 1/3 of the beaten egg whites into the egg mixture to lighten it and make it easier for the rest of the whites to be incorporated. Fold in the remaining white until just combined; be careful not to deflate.

5. Pour batter into the prepared pan, level and bake 8 to 11 minutes or until cake when pressed lightly in the center springs back. Cool cake for 5 minutes in the pan and then turn over onto another piece of baking paper to cool completely. Invert cake onto another piece of paper and peel the brown 'skin' of theSwiss roll off, if like.

6. Spread the cream on the cake, with the part that has no flowers towards you and the part with flowers furthest from you, leaving a seam of 5 cm or more at the edge away from you so that the cream won't spill out. Start rolling from the flowerless part, using the paper to roll and tuck in snugly. You can make a couple of shallow cuts horizontally along the first part of the roll because that part of the roll is more curved and would be more likely to crack. Wrap the roll firmly, tuck in both ends, and chill for several hours before cutting into 1.5 to 2 cm slices.

The Filling
250 to 300 ml dairy cream
2 T caster sugar
2 T Dalfour's blackberry jam preserves
1 T seedless salted plums, chopped finely
--whisk the cream with the sugar and the jam until stiff. Stir in the chopped salted plums.

Rose's Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake

2011-11-29T19:12:00.023+08:00

Dreamy, pretty, romantic-looking Southern Coconut Cake was moist and delicious.

For years I've wanted to make the Southern Coconut Cake and last weekend I had a good reason to make one because it was a friend's wedding anniversary. I have tested several coconut cake recipes including those from Saveur but they weren't what I was looking for, especially those made with the traditional 7-minute frosting. I so believe in Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipes that I not only made a whole recipe of her coconut cake, I even made her Silky Meringue butter cream which is so laborious that only someone as dogged as me will put herself through it, a buttercream made up of three recipes: a creme anglaise, an Italian meringue cream and the blending of both creams with butter. Was the effort worth it? You bet, because the frosting lived up to its name and was the silkiest, lightest buttercream I've ever eaten. The cake was a huge hit at the party. It's the best coconut cake I've tasted so far and again, I wonder why, with coconuts being a tropical fruit, coconut cakes are non-existent here.

Making the cake batter was unusual, something I've never done before, but the resulting cake was beautiful in texture. Butter, sugar, salt and flour are whisked together first and then the butter is whisked in, followed by the unwhipped egg whites and coconut milk mixture. Only egg whites are used in the cake batter, which is why the cake is very light yellow. The yolks are used to make the creme anglaise. As usual, I reduced the amount of sugar by nearly half. Sugar adds moisture to cakes and taking away too much of it will affect the taste and texture of the cake but I can sacrifice a bit of moistness in the cake for my kidneys and arteries. I also reduced the salt by more than half and it didn't do harm to the taste of the cake because I think the reduced saltiness was balanced by the reduced sweetness. I think that it's quite redundant to add a lot of sugar to balance a lot of salt in a cake. Cakes really are quite unhealthy and this coconut cake is not an exception although the buttercream is made a lesser evil by reducing the butter and bulking up with meringue.

I've given the recipe for the cake, adapted for my taste, but I think other than copyright considerations for the Silk Meringue, the 3-page recipe is just too much for me to type. You'll have to get Rose Levy Beranbaum's heavenly cake cookbook, Heavenly Cakes, for that or Google for it.

A friend described the cake texture as "between a sponge cake and a buttercake". If you are tired of airy spongecakes, you'll love this cake.

Rose's Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake (adapted)
6 large egg whites, room temp
1 1/3 cups canned (10.6 fl oz) coconut milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp coconut extract
400 gm cake flour, sifted
270 gm superfine sugar (I hand-blended caster sugar)
5 tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp salt
227 gm (2 sticks/1 block) unsalted butter (firm but not hard is best)

Frosting: meringue buttercream

1. Oven preheated at 175 C. Prepare two 9 by 2 " round pans by lining with baking paper, then greasing them and lightly flour them.
2. Use a hand whisk to whisk the egg whites, 1/3 cup of the coconut milk, vanilla and coconut extract until just combined.
3. In the bowl of a standmixer, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt at low speed for a couple of seconds.
4. Add the butter and remaining coconut milk. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened, then increase speed top medium and beat 1 1/2 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl.
5. With the mixer at medium speed, gradually add the egg white mixture in 3 parts, beating at medium speed for 20 seconds after each addition.
6. Divide the batter evenly between the two pans and bake 30 to 40 minutes or until a wire tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean or the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center.
7. Cool the cakes and ice with your favorite meringue buttercream to which about 2 cups of fresh grated coconut is added (I preferred not to). Use a mixture of dessicated sweetened coconut flakes and freshly grated coconut to cover the whole cake. Chill if not serving immediately and take out from fridge 1 hour before serving.

This cake is best served at room temperature.

Kim Chi Veg & Beef Soup

2011-11-24T15:13:00.005+08:00

I'm sorry for the quality of these photos. I don't know how to take night photos yet don't like the harshness of the flash, and I didn't want to turn dinner into a photo shoot session.

I hardly watch TV. It's not that I don't have time. I just can't sit still in front of the box for long although I've done marathon sessions on the couch until 3 am for consecutive days watching Korean and Chinese TV series. Once in a while I'd catch some interesting program, standing up. The other day, I was walking by the TV room and the dish on a Taiwanese cooking program was sour cabbage soup with thinly-sliced sirloin. Since sour cabbage is not a common ingredient here, I thought kim chi would be a good substitute so last night this was what I cooked:

1. Put a cup of sliced kim chi into a claypot or glass/ceramic pot. Add enough chicken stock (or water + 1 chicken stock cube) to cover.

2. Add sliced Chinese napa cabbage, cover and boil about 10 minutes or until cabbage is nearly the texture you like.

3. Add two sliced potatoes. Cover and boil 5 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, sear 1/2 kg thinly sliced (these weren't thin enough) sirloin on both sides quickly. Sear the beef in several batches, each time using about 1 tsp butter. Do not cook through. Remove onto plate.

5. Add about 2 cups soft or semi-soft tofu to the soup, scattering them over the soup evenly.

6. When the tofu begins to boil, add 1 cup of chopped chives (these were from my garden. Chives are perennial so do grow some at home), spread them over evenly and cover. Taste and season with salt and white pepper.

7. When the soup boils, switch off the heat and add the seared beef. Serve the whole pot at the table.

8. Drizzle some chili oil on the soup and eat with plain boiled rice and another dish, such as a fried fish dish.

Wey pronounced the soup perfect and motherhood was worthwhile again.

Btw, Wey said MasterChef Malaysia is an awful and embarrassing show. Any thoughts, anyone who has seen it because I haven't. I watched Hell's Kitchen for the first time last week and I enjoyed it and was happy that Paul, the underdog, won. To be honest, I avoid reality food shows because they are so...staged. I've only watched MasterChef Australia once, the finals between Callum and Adam, and I only watched it because my friend Elaine kept calling me when the show about to start so we sort of watched it together in our own houses but with our handphones to our ears. Guess who got all the answers right? Wey. He named all the fruits and sauces (except for Romesco sauce, if I remember right) and he didn't even have to taste them!

Pork & Kim Chi Stir-Fry

2011-11-22T23:02:00.010+08:00

Were you caught in the flood last Saturday? I was. I drove out to pick my son from tuition at 6:00 pm and was surrounded by water on the Jabatan Air road. Although I was driving an SUV, the stretch of flooded road in front was long so I drove into the Jabatan Air compound, with a small car following behind me. One by one, another 5 cars came into the compound too. We all sat in our cars waiting for the wind and rain to calm down. By 7:15 pm, I was totally bored and going insane sitting in my car so I drove through the water and onto the short stretch of road to get back to the main road. After picking Wey up, we got back to the Lido area and it was totally jammed. Jalan Penampang from Lido up towards KK was flooded. Lido Market was flooded. Houses were flooded and the access road to my housing area was flooded too.

Anyway, that was one of the worst floods in the last 20 years or so.
.
I had let Vero off early because we were going to my MIL's house for dinner but since the roads were flooded and restaurants nearby were all closed, I had to cook dinner quick because it was about 8:30 pm. I found a bottle of kim chi made by my friend Flora and some belly pork in the fridge and just made a quick stir fry of them. Surprisingly, Wey loved the pork and kim chi stir-fry even though he dislikes spicy dishes. He asked for the same thing the next day and then the day after.

This is my fourth plate of belly pork and kim chi stir fry. Wey said it isn't my best because 1) the pork was fried too long, making it hard and dry 2) there's sugar in the dish. Guilty as charged, I have to admit. I had rendered most of the oil out because I was concerned for the fat boy ("But the point is I like the fat!" he said) and I had added sugar because the store-bought kim chi was extremely sour. Wey is my Gordon Ramsey, telling me exactly what he thinks of my food and the thing is, he's right nearly everytime.

I'm sure there are many ways to stir-fry pork and kim chi but this recipe is the fastest (takes 15 minutes only to prepare and cook) and you need just two basic ingredients. Sometimes the simplest dishes are the best, especially in emergencies.

The amount of belly pork to kim chi is up to you. The pork must be quite fatty.

You can add some oil to the pan but I prefer not to.

This is overdone. Fry the pork until just done.

Add the kim chi and fry at medium low heat so that the kim chi flavor gets onto the pork.

Add the scallions and drizzle some sesame oil over.

Pork & Kim Chi Stir-Fry
1 cup thinly-sliced skinless pork belly
3/4 to 1 cup kim chi, cut same size as the pork
1/4 cup scallions, cut into short lengths
sesame oil

1. Arrange the pork single-layer on a non-stick pan and turn on the heat to medium high. Turn over when half done and fry both sides until lightly golden and just cooked. Do not overcook or the belly pork will be tough and dry.

2. Pour as much oil from the pan as possible, keeping the pork in the pan. Return the pan to the stove, add the kim chi and stir to mix the pork and kim chi over medium-low heat for about 2 minutes.

3. Add the scallions and drizzle some sesame oil over. Plate up and serve with hot plain rice.

Turkey Pie and A Perfect Crust

2011-11-20T08:35:00.046+08:00

Fabulous turkey pie.

MIL's relatives visited from China so I roasted a turkey. It's an early Thanksgiving dinner I suppose. Turkeys are totally uncommon in China and I thought my guests were pretty happy until one of them said, when going out the door, "If I were cooking the bird, I'd add some soy sauce, some chili flakes and just more salt, you know." I suppose you can, I said.

With the leftover turkey, I made PW's chicken pot pies from her book The Pioneer Woman Cooks because she made them look rustic and not too advanced on the cooking scale. I love pies but the thought of making the crust just puts me off. Turned out that PW's pie crust is not only perfect--short, flaky, delicious--but also perfectly easy to make. There's no way it won't be perfect because there's so much shortening in it, 3 cups flour to 1 1/2 cups shortening. I replaced 1/2 cup of the shortening with butter and the pastry was still good. PW insists on using Crisco and no butter for that perfect flaky pastry. I made a second batch using Crisco only and it was the same as the one with butter but I'll still take PW's advice and use Crisco only because I couldn't tell the difference between the two pastry in terms of flavor. Fat is 9 calorie per gram so I made a large pie without a base (pot pie) so that there's less pastry to eat and then with the leftover filling and pastry, I made little pies that I can freeze.

PW's pie crust is better than that in my chicken and leek pie recipe and my lattice-top apple pie recipe. I think the difference, besides the higher amount of shortening, is that the dough is not kneaded at all. That sort of negates everything about fraisage in my apple pie crust recipe but then again there's water added to that recipe to make the pastry strong enough to weave. PW's pie crust pastry is too short for weaving but is perfect for both savory and sweet pies and tarts.You can see how she makes the crust step by step here.

My son Wey devoured the pie. I thought that it was a little bit too watery and not creamy enough. I also don't like celery in my pies. I'm still searching for that elusive chicken pie recipe that will remind me of the chicken pies I ate at Max's Coffee House (I think that's the name) in Kampung Air in the 70s. Max's was the only western cafe and going to Max was a real treat. The pies at Max's were always served with a bottle of Lingham's sweet chili sauce. Absolutely heavenly. Have you ever wanted to eat something that reminds you of your childhood and then when you eat it, years or even decades later, it's not as good because your standards are different now? I suspect that probably it's the memory of swimming in the sea in Kampung Air and then eating at Max's when I had extra money that make me crave for them.

In the recipe below, I've increased the amount of chicken/turkey and flour to get a thicker gravy. I don't like celery in my pies so I've replaced that with mushrooms. I also added a bit of garlic and my favorite gravy flavoring, Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry for that oomph.

Add the beaten egg to the crumbly mixture of flour, salt and shortening.

Add the ice-cold water and vinegar, stir to mix well. Finally, do not knead, just gather the dough together into balls.

If you are rolling directly on the work surface, flour it first.

PW's Perfect Pie Crust IS perfect: light, very short and delicious. And super easy to make.

You can have the perfect pie recipe but if you burnt the pies...

Chicken/Turkey Pie (makes 2 large 9"/ 23 cm pies or about 30 small muffin-sized ones)
Filling:
3 cups of cooked turkey/chicken, deboned and cut into small bite-sized pieces
1 cup white or Swiss brown mushrooms*, sliced
1 carrot, diced about pea size
1/3 cup plain flour
1 cup frozen peas
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced (optional)
1 tsp dried thyme or marjoram or parsley (as you like)
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 chicken buillion/stock cube
1 cup dairy cream
salt & pepper to taste
2 tbsp Bristol Cream sherry
2 tbsp butter

* or 2 stalks of celery, cut pea-sized

1. Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, mushrooms/celery, carrots and saute until the veggies turn transparent. Add the peas, then the chicken/turkey and sprinkle the flour over, stirring to combine. Let mixture cook and bubble for two minutes, then add the chicken stock and stock cube. Now add the cream and mix well. Cook over low heat until mixture thickens, about 4 to 5 minutes. Season with the sherry, herb, salt and pepper to taste.

2. Pour the mixture into a pie dish, level.

Perfect Pie Crust (enough for two 9"/23 cm pot pies only)
3 cups plain flour
1 1/2 cups shortening (I used Crisco)
1 large egg
5 tbsp cold water
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tsp salt

egg wash: 1 yolk + 1/2 tbsp milk or just whisk an egg, half the white removed

note: this recipe will make more than 2 x 9"/23cm pie crusts for pot pies (i.e. no base) but to make 30 small pies, you need 2 times the recipe amount.

1. Put the salt (I add this now to get it evenly mixed in but PW adds it with the vinegar), flour and shortening into a large bowl and use a pastry cutter to cut the shortening in until the mixture is coarse-crumbly.
2. Beat the egg and add to the flour mixture, stirring to blend egg in. Pour the water over and then the vinegar (in a large circle) and use the pastry cutter to mix well. Gather dough together; no need to knead. Chill the pastry for 10 minutes.
3. Divide the pastry into two, roll each between plastic sheets.

Making the large pies:
1. Preheat oven at 200 C.
2. Scoop filling into two 9"/ cm glass pie dish to the rim. Use a rolling pin to roll the crust larger than the pie dish and transfer the pie crusts onto the pies with the rolling pin. Brush the crust with the egg wash. Make decorative edges, snip a cross in the middle to let steam out. Brush with egg wash and bake 25 to 30 minutes.

Making the small pies:
1. Preheat oven at 200 C.
2. Roll pastry out, cut into circles large enough (I used a large ring cutter) to fit the muffin cups to the rim. Put some baking weights or beans (I used soy beans) on the base of the pastry and bake 10 to 12 minutes.
3. Remove muffin pans from oven, fill the muffin cups with the filling and cover with a circle of pastry. Pinch the edges of the top and bottom pastry together and use the tines of a fork to press a pattern around the edge.
4. Brush egg wash on the tops of the pies, snip a cross with scissors in the center and bake 20 minutes.

Yi Copying AWW

2011-11-17T16:27:00.016+08:00

thought my daughter's post today was interesting so I got her permission to re-post it here. She's working in shanghai and loving it.

NOV 16, 2011

"Wei Wei Who?"

If you've been following the news lately or are working in a creative industry, you cannot NOT know who Ai Weiwei is! He's a total headline grabber - some days I'd walk into the office and my colleagues come up to me even before they say good morning and report to me that Ai Weiwei's in the news. Again. And that the Chinese authorities are after him. Again.

Weiwei was recently named Artview's most powerful person in the art world and is also in TIME magazine's Top 100 people of 2011, which is why I was really surprised when friends back in Australia only gave a 'huh?' response when I rambled on about his recent issues with the Communist Party of China. And when I accused them for living under a rock, the response was, "Hah...you're becoming too Chinese...who knows what's going on there?!" SIGH! That seems to be what everyone's been telling me when I go on about stuff going on around here!

Now, if you're clueless about who he is, I'll be nice and tell you a bit about him. :)

Weiwei is an artist, photographer and curator, best known for designing the Beijing Olympics Bird's Nest Stadium, a collaboration with Swiss starchitects Herzog and DeMeuron. In the art world, he is highly respected but to the Chinese authorities, he means trouble. Through his works, Weiwei has spoken out about rights issues in China and criticized elitism and authority in the CPC.

One of his most controversial works, "Dropping the Urn", shows photos of Weiwei nonchalantly dropping a priceless Han Dynasty urn. I'm not sure how you'd intepret it, but when asked, Weiwei said he did this on a whim, 'to show how gravity works'. Whoa. An apple would've been cheaper. I can't help but wonder how he was like as a kid. His poor mother!

Another famous piece by Weiwei was his installation in the Tate Museum in London in 2010, 'Sunflower Seeds'.

At first glance it doesn't look like much - but take a closer look and you might notice that these are not actual seeds; they are hand-painted replicas made of porcelain. Weiwei gathered 1,600 people to to individually hand-make one hundred million seeds, to speak about the mass-production, 'Made in China' phenomenon taking place today.

While I admire and applaud Weiwei's amazing talent, wit and courage to speak out against issues he is passionate about, my friends who have met and worked with him said that he's arrogant.

I was inspired last weekend to do a portrait of Weiwei. Initially the idea was to just do a small A4 sized portrait of him but then I thought I'd bring my materials out to the little lanes of my longtang, and do a portrait of him in public...what an attention-seeker, huh? But Ai Weiwei does that too! Oh, guess what medium I used? No, not paint - that's so BOH-RING...! I collected 100,000/7kgs of sunflower seeds, and this is what I did:

My curious neighbours came over to check out what I was up to!

...and more curious people gathered around! Eventually, someone said, 'Hey! That's that Beijing artist...Ai Weiwei!' WHEW! At least someone could tell!

Mark my words, this dude's gonna be a Chinese icon in due time... I bet you'll see his face printed on mugs and t-shirts soon!

Durian Tang Yuan

2011-11-16T07:13:00.003+08:00

Durian mochi/tang yuan--sooner or later someone will come up with this or maybe someone already has but this is my version.

I had a bit of leftover durian flesh and had no idea what to do with it. Then I saw a copy of Silkroad, the Dragonair inflight magazine that Yo had brought for me. The latest issue featured Hong Kong dessert houses and the new desserts, the most unusual one being a bitter gourd sherbet. Now that's a dessert I can't wait to try next time. It must be quite an eating experience!

Instead of red bean or sesame paste, I filled my tang yuan (glutinous rice balls) with the lefttover mashed durian flesh, sprinkled some dessicated coconut (fresh shaved coconut would've been perfect but I was too lazy to run out for that) over and drizzled a light gula melaka (palm sugar, the best-tasting sugar in the world) syrup over. I served the tang yuan warm because tang yuen hardens when chilled.

The durian-filled tang yuan, covered with sweet coconut flakes and gula melaka, was stunning. I hope this has not already been done before because I'm patenting this for my dessert house! I'm kidding but I think if I have a dessert house, this item will be a huge hit. If there's one thing I've gained from the Jelliriffic! Challenge, it's the obsession in creating new recipes. The mushy durian is a little bit tricky to handle but you can half-freeze it. You must make this.

How good can durian get? This good.

Durian Tang Yuan (makes 7 to 8 balls)
3/4 cup finest, freshest glutinous rice flour
1/4 cup room temp water
1/4 cup durian flesh, mashed with a fork and hard clumps removed & half-frozen
Topping: fresh or desiccated coconut shavings
light gula melaka syrup*

* if not available, any other sugar syrup

1. Mix the flour with the water until the dough comes together. You may have to add more flour or water. Divide into 7 or 8 small portions.
2. Dust your palms, roll one portion of dough into a smooth ball, then press it into a flat circle (not too thin or the durian will seep through) and put a teaspoon of durian flesh inside. Pinch the edges together to seal and roll again into a smooth ball. Repeat until all the dough is done. Place tang yuan into fridge to firm up, about 15 minutes.
3. Bring a pot of water to boil. Take the tang yuan out from the fridge. Dust your hands again with glu rice flour, roll the tang yuan between your palms until round and smooth and drop them into the boiling water. Immediately use a pair of chopsticks or slotted spoon to move the balls so that they don't stick to the bottom of the pot. Turn the heat to medium. When the balls rise, they are done. I like to switch the fire off, cover the pot and wait a couple of minutes.
4. Scoop the balls out with a slotted spoon onto a bowl. Sprinkle coconut shavings over and drizzle with sugar syrup.

Durian Pillows

2011-11-14T19:31:00.011+08:00

Durian pillows.

My pancakes were too thick. I like the durian flesh and cream separated although taste-wise it doesn't matter. The filling was mushy because the pillows were not chilled before the photo session.

Store-bought durian pillows were thin-skin and small enough for only one mouthful or two dainty bites.

Hub and I were at a dinner last Saturday and the host served durian and mango 'pillows', thin crepes stuffed with durian or mango and cream, folded into the shape of a puffy rectangle pillow. The dainty durian pillows cost RM8.90 for 3 (RM5.90 for mango pillows) and were so small that one of them can fit nicely into a Chinese soup spoon. The cream and durian were blended together, a clever way of scrimping on the durian. Durian is so strongly flavored that a little bit of it can jazz up a large amount of cream. In Hong Kong and Peninsular Malaysia, the cream and durian are in distinct layers of about 50:50.

I found the recipe for the pancakes here and was happy with it because the pancakes turned out very smooth. However, my pancakes were three times as thick as the store-bought ones, which was why the corners of my pillows broke and also why I couldn't get the pillows to look puffy without making them the size of an egg. I took one of the store-bought pillows apart and found that each pancake was half a pancake. Maybe the trick to getting a very thin pancake is to pour the batter into a cool non-stick pan, swirl the batter so that it spreads out thinly and then put it over a low fire and cut each pancake into half. I'll do that next time.

I thought I'd like the 50:50 ratio of durian to cream but found that the pillows taste smoother and better if there's more cream. The best durian for this is kampung (village) durian because they simply taste better. Also, I find that some of the new hybrids have a strong raw onion flavor. I used coconut milk as per the recipe but I've changed that to fresh milk in the recipe because I found that coconut milk messes up the durian flavor. The store-bought pillows didn't have any coconut flavor. With the replacement of rich coconut milk by the fresh milk, a bit of melted butter will keep the pancakes softer and tastier.I used organic eggs to give the pancakes a bit of color.

This dessert is simple and quick to make and you'll get plenty of "ooohhhs" and "yummms" especially when the pillows are served very chilled, with a good coffee. Allow at least 4 a person; the pillows are really that good.

For making durian cakes and desserts, boxed durian will work out a lot cheaper. Get them late at night when the vendors slash their prices.

Durian Pillows (makes 16 x 12 cm diameter or 8 to 9 large ones)
The Pancakes:
160 gm plain flour (some recipes use Hong Kong flour)
350 ml fresh milk (coconut milk will tone down the durian flavor)
1/2 Tbsp butter, melted and cooled
pinch of salt
2 organic eggs*

*as advised by Zurin, an extra yolk will make the pancakes softer and easier to fold.

1. Mix the pancake ingredients together. Pour batter over a sieve into a bowl to get a fine and smooth batter.

2. Lightly grease a non-stick frying pan with melted butter and pour in a small ladle (you'll have to find which size is best; try making a large pancake and cut that into half) of batter and swirl the batter around to get a very thin pancake. Cook over a low fire until the pancake is done. It takes less than 30 seconds. No need to turn over but if you do, turn over for two to three seconds only. Repeat until all the batter is done. Cool. If like, you can grease the frying pan before every ladle of batter is poured.

note: as advised by Sonia, to get thin pancakes, pour more than enough batter into the frying pan, swirl the batter to cover the whole pan and then pour the extra batter back into the bowl of batter.

Filling:
300 gm fresh dairy cream (estimated)
1 tbsp caster sugar (to taste)
2 cups durian flesh* (estimated)

* or pieces of mango or other soft, flavorful fruits

1. Whip the cream with the sugar until stiff. Chill
2. You can blend the durian flesh or mash it with a fork. I think I prefer to mash with a fork because the blended durian was too mushy and the fibers were all cut up.
3. You can mix the cream with the durian or leave separate.

To assemble:
Put a heaped tablespoon of whipped cream onto the center of the pancake (smooth/unfried side facing plate), top with a level half tablespoon of durian flesh, and fold into a small, puffed rectangular pillow. If you have mixed the cream and durian, just plop a large tablespoon onto the middle of the pancake and fold. Chill very well before serving.

Winner Of Olympus Camera!

2011-11-11T00:20:00.007+08:00

My Internet connection was restored by re-wiring the Internet and phone lines but the IP number was changed by the previous technician that I had engaged so the line was connected to the phone instead, which means I didn't have wi-fi service. The technician came tonight and hooked up the IP thing and all's well now. I am just thankful that the Internet disruption happened around Day 20 of the Jelliriffic! Challenge. I very nearly went crazy running between my Hub's office and home some nights, trying to post before midnight.

I thought of getting my son Wey to draw the number for the lucky winner of the Olympus camera but he and I are upset with each other. He's writing his SPM next Monday. Anyway. Today's a special date, 11.11.11, so I thought that I'll give the camera to the person who made the 111th comment. As I scrolled down the comments, I could see a friend from Melbourne, a reader who makes regular comments, another blogger in the Jelliriffic! Challenge--all people to whom I wish I could give a camera! Comment No. 110 was from someone I know (my daughter!) and the winner would've been her if a comment before that was not deleted by the writer. Comment No. 112 was from a friend with whom I car pool. So guess who the 111th comment writer is? I'm so happy for her!

Zurin said...

Hey I missed this! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the colours and the idea behind it :))))) youre really on a roll :P

October 6, 2011 12:58 PM

Zurin is the blogger behind Cherry On A Cake, a beautiful blog of true and tried recipes. You must visit her blog! Congrats, Zurin!

Vanilla Cupcakes Bake Off

2011-11-10T16:40:00.021+08:00

Hummingbird's vanilla cupcakes on the left, Magnolia's on the right.

Hummingbird's cupcake pulled away unevenly because the batter was coarse while Magnolia's cupcake didn't stick so much to the paper.

Yes, it's cupcakes bake off of the recipes from two of the most famous bakeries in the world, Hummingbird Bakery in London, England and Magnolia Bakery in New York, USA.

I was fortunate to be able to squeeze myself into the Hummingbird Bakery in Portobello Street, London last year. Unfortunately, I had no idea that they were that famous so I didn't bother to queue for their most famous product, the red velvet cupcake. The bakery was so packed with tourists--Americans and Koreans--that I figured that it was one of those tourist wonders, you know the kind of establishments that tourists break their backs for but the locals wouldn't touch. Magnolia Bakery in New York is another one of those top bakeries the world is mad about. My top fave bakery is Miette in San Francisco even though I've never eaten any of their cakes. I am in love with Miette's Vanilla Tomboy, a beautiful, simple but elegant cake of chocolate layers sandwiched with vanilla frosting, with a single pink icing rose on top. Miette's cakes are the closest to my ideas of how cakes should be decorated--plain, simple but elegant. I was delighted that Rose Levy Beranbaum's Heavenly Cakes, a book I just received last month, had the recipe for Miette's Tomboy. Turned out that the girls behind Miette started baking with Rose's first cake cookbook, The Cake Bible. I've made one of Rose's choc cakes and it was superb. Get the book if you like baking.

Just by looking at the recipes, I knew that Magnolia's cupcakes would turn out better than Hummingbird's. Hummingbird's unusual method of mixing the flour and butter together resulted in lumps which were hard to incorporate smoothly with the liquid. If I were to make Hummingbird's vanilla cupcakes again, I'd put everything into the mixer all at once. Magnolia's method of beating the butter and sugar and then adding the flour and milk was more conventional and gave a batter that was fluffy, stiff and smooth while Hummingbird's batter was watery, flat and slightly lumpy. However, there's nearly 3 times more butter in Magnolia's cupcakes and oddly, Hummingbird's cupcake batter though watery, rose more than Magnolia's and didn't fall.

Although both Magnolia's and Hummingbird's vanilla cupcakes tasted good, I declare Magnolia Bakery's vanilla cupcakes way better than Hummingbird's because the texture was soft and smooth and the cake was moist. However, if you like your cupcakes coarse and rustic (a useful word), then you'll be okay with Hummingbird's cupcakes. The only thing is when you serve Hummingbird's cupcakes to your friends, they might insist that their cupcakes are way better than yours.

Hummingbird's vanilla cupcakes.

Magnolia's vanilla cupcakes.

Magnolia Bakery's Vanilla Cupcakes (makes 2 dozens muffin-sized cupcakes/3 dozens cupcakes)
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1 1/4 cups all purpose/plain flour
1 cup/2 sticks/225 gm unsalted butter, softened but still firm
2 cups sugar (I reduced by 1/2 cup and it was still too sweet for me)
4 large eggs, room temp
1 cup milk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1. Preheat oven @ 170 C. Line two 12-cup muffin pans or 3 cupcake pans with paper cups.
2. Cream butter with the sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs one by one, beating well after each addition.
4. Sift the flours together. Mix the milk with the vanilla extract.
5. Add the flour in 3 parts, alternating with the milk mixture. Scrape down sides of bowl.
6. Spoon batter into the lined cupcakes/muffins pan, 2/3 full. Bake 20 to 25 minutes until skewer inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

Hummingbird Bakery's Vanilla Cupcakes (makes 12 cupcakes)
120 gm plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
140 gm caster sugar (I reduced to 120 gm)
pinch of salt
40 gm butter, room temp
120 ml whole milk
1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
1. Preheat oven @ 170 C. Line a 12-hole cupcake pan with paper cups.
2. Sieve flour and baking powder into a mixer bowl, add sugar, salt and butter and beat with a paddle attachment at low speed until sandy and combined.
3. Gradually pour in 1/2 the milk and beat until just incorporated.
4. Put the remaining milk, egg and vanilla into a small beaker or bowl and whisk until well-combined.
5. Pour the milk and egg mixture into the flour mixture and beat until smooth; don't overbeat.
6. Spoon batter into paper cases 2/3 full and bake 20 to 25 minutes until a wooden skewer inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.
Note: I think it's even better to put everything into the mixer and beat until smooth.

Thanks!

2011-11-08T16:09:00.003+08:00

You can see that I haven't moved on. This is the Mt Jelliriffic that I had in mind for the last post.

HI! Many friends have asked me why I'm so quiet after the win.

It's the Internet service to my house, it's totally gone since yesterday afternoon. The TM Net people have finally sent someone over and this time they suggest re-wiring the connection. Last week, a computer guy came and concluded that the Internet configuration was damaged by thunder or lighting. Charged me for that and never came back again when the Internet failed to connect an hour after he left. I am thoroughly fed up. I've also been quiet because we have visitors from overseas and I've been cooking. I only got away to my hub's office now because there's a water cut to the whole area, can you believe it?! No Internet and no water, yes, the next thing will be the electricity.

But I am so thrilled and I want to thank all of you who bought the moulds, came to this blog, gave suggestions, egged me on and rooted for me because I wouldn't have finished the race and won if not for the FEAR of letting you guys down! Seriously, I think I won because I had more time than the others because they had to balance work and kids. Thank you again to Royal Selangor Pewter and Olympus, and to the other bloggers because they set the standard for me to keep up.

Now I have to go and cook. Btw, Hub didn't get me the tricolor beagle (there's always Christmas) but got me an iPad instead which I haven't been able to use the whole day because of the Internet. How nice is that. Oh yes, it's my birthday today:))

Spanish Brekkie Omelette

2011-11-03T10:09:00.013+08:00

Spanish-style omelette of chorizos, potatoes and home-grown cherry tomatoes.

Made a quick brekkie of Spanish-style eggs, like a thinner tortilla, which I ate in Melbourne last year at Chimmy's. Sniffer liked it but then he likes anything charcuteried, which isn't healthy so I limit his intake and it becomes a vicious cycle: the more I limit it, the more he likes it and the more he likes it, the more I limit it.

Time is always a constraint isn't it, so I suggest that you parboil the potatoes the night before. Also, cut them thinner than I did. You can throw in some thinly sliced onions too, always good to eat more veggies. I love Spanish food although strangely I didn't enjoy Mexican food (but I love tacos and enchiladas) when I was last in the States. It's time to travel.

Spanish Brekkie Omelette (serves 1 or 2)
3 large eggs
1/2 chorizo
1/2 large potato
1/4 tsp salt & a few shakes of black pepper (to taste)
a dash of cream or milk
a sprinkle of grated cheddar cheese
3 to 4 cherry tomatoes
fresh herb to garnish

1. Peel the potatoes or leave unpeeled, cut into small chunks and boil briefly in water until a metal skewer goes through the center but the potato is still firm. Slice the chorizo into small thin chunks. Whisk the eggs with salt, pepper and cream. You can add the cheese now or at the end.

2. Put 1/2 tbsp olive oil into a non-stick or cast iron pan and fry the chorizos and potatoes until golden. Remove.

3.Heat the same pan again (unwashed), pour in the beaten eggs. Let omelette fry a minute until just firm. If your pan can go into the oven, there's no need to turn, just scatter the chorizo, potatoes and tomatoes over and put pan in at about 200 C, preheated, until the top is set. If pan can't go in the oven, continue cooking and scatter the chorizos, potatoes and tomatoes over it and let it cook over medium-low heat until set. You can lift the sides of the omelette to let the uncooked egg run into the pan to cook faster. The omelette cooked over the burner will not look as rustic as that cooked in the oven. You can try turning it over when it's firm enough on the first side and then scatter the toppings over but the toppings may not stick.

4. Sprinkle the cheese over, garnish with fresh herbs and serve immediately with toasted bread.

Breast Cancer Myths And Facts

2011-11-01T10:43:00.020+08:00

(updated post)

My friend Su called to ask how I am. As we chatted, she asked me if she could help me with anything. I said, "Well, you can buy a Jellirrific! mould." She said that she doesn't make desserts that much. I told her that it's for the breast cancer association. With that, she said of course she'll buy a mould.

I told Hub what a friend Su is. He was surprised that I haven't asked any friends. I haven't, because I don't want to be pushy or get my friends to 'buy' a vote for me. I'm even delaying buying a vase until after the competition, I told Hub, because I don't want to be seen as buying my own vote. Hub gave me an incredulous look. He reminded me that this thing isn't about my 'creations'. It's about raising funds for the breast cancer association. "It isn't about your jellies, it's how much they raise for breast cancer patients!" Oh. That's why he's the one bringing the dough home.

Story short, I urge you to buy a mould. Today is the last day to give towards the Breast Cancer Association Of Malaysia. You don't have to vote for me (but I hope you do). The mould, btw, is very beautiful and is designed by Nick Munro, the award-winning British designer famous for turning bed springs into egg cups. RSP is very highly regarded, kind of like the Royal Doulton of Malaysia. I kid you not and this is not ass-kissing. I wouldn't have taken on the Challenge if I didn't like the products or the cause.

Updated post 1/11/11.

Two nights ago I talked to a dear friend who lost her best friend and her sister to breast cancer within the last 5 years. I don't know much about breast cancer and although the Jelliriffic! Challenge is over, I'd like to share some basic myths and truths about breast cancer that I've learnt from here: Breast Cancer Foundation Inc, USA and here: About.com

1. Myth: Finding a lump in your breast means you have breast cancer.

Truth: 8 out of 10 breast lumps are benign,or not cancerous. However, you should still consult the doctor and have regular check ups.

2. Myth: Men do not get breast cancer.

Truth: On the contrary, men do get breast cancer although the rate is lower than women.

3. Myth: A mammogram can cause breast cancer to spread.

Truth: A mammogram is one of the best tools to detect early breast cancer. The pressure from mammograms and mammograms DO NOT cause cancer to spread.

4. Myth: Having a family history of breast cancer means you will get it.

Truth: You will not necessarily get the disease but you are in a higher risk group so you should have regular mammograms.

5. Myth: Breast cancer is contagious.

Truth: Outright myth.

6. Myth: If I don't have mutated BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes I am not at risk.

Truth: It is not an absolute correlation that alterations in these genes can predispose you to an increase risk of the disease. Only 5 to 10% of people with breast cancer have these mutations.

7. Myth: Antiperspirants and deodorants can cause breast cancer.

Truth: Researchers at the National Cancer Institute say there is no conclusive evidence to link antiperspirants and deodorants to breast cancer.

8. Myth: I'm too young to have breast cancer.

Truth: Women (and men) of all ages are at the risk of developing breast cancer although the risk rises with age.

I think the Jelliriffic! moulds are still for sale although the competition is over. Even if you can't vote with your purchase of a mould now, your contribution towards the Breast Cancer Welfare Association Of Malaysia will help the association in their program to provide support for patients and increase awareness in breast cancer in the country. Facts: 1 in 20 women in Malaysia will get breast cancer. Although the incidence of breast cancer in Malaysia is lower than in western countries, the rate of increase is rising faster than in western countries.

Mt Jelliriffic!

2011-10-30T23:53:00.022+08:00

"Celebrate life, love and humour"

I think the cone done up this way would be great for a promotion cake, or a graduation cake to signify achievement because the mould was inspired by mountains that challenge us to overcome our fears. It's all about relishing life and living it with a purpose and passion. In Nick Munro's words, "Celebrate love, life and humour".

What I really wanted to make for the finale post for the Jelliriffic! Challenge was a chocolate marquise using After Eight Mints that my friend Su had bought for me from KL (none in KK, can you believe it!), as per Gordon Ramsey's recipe in the Nov 2007 issue of Good Food. I wanted a chocolate shell that fits over the choc marquise, with the lines of the mountains but that failed because the choc shell couldn't be pried off the mould without breaking.

So what I did instead today was covered the choc marquise with melted dark choc with the intention of drawing the outline of the mould using a metal skewer but because the marquise was frozen (and it had to be or it'll melt fast in hot weather because it's so rich), the melted choc hardened quickly when smeared onto the choc marquise. It was impossible to draw the lines on hardened choc. With trembling hands, I peeled the hardened choc off. Parts of the marquise came off with the hardened choc too. What a mess! In the end I drew the lines of the mountain on the marquise. It wasn't what I wanted but I was thankful that at least it wasn't so bad looking.

I like using the mould to hold flowers too. It's small and looks elegant on a wedding cake, don't you think?

So there you are, my last 2 ways to use the beautiful Jelliriffic! mould. It's been a ~~stressful sleep-deprived~~ fun month. I want to thank all of you for staying with me and supporting this Challenge. Goodnight!

Choc marquise is a very rich choc dessert (basically it's just whipped dark choc) which I usually can't eat more than two spoonfuls of but the addition of mint in this recipe makes the choc marquise very refreshing and SO yummy! Thumbs up Gordon!

Gordon Ramsey's Choc Marquise (1 cone + extra)
60 gm dark choc, melted over a bain marie
30 gm unsalted butter, softened
30 gm caster sugar*
1.2 tbsp cocoa powder (I used Valrhona), sifted
1 egg yolk (I omitted this; don't want raw eggs)
90 ml double cream
60 gm After Eights

* you may want to half this amount because the mints are very sweet or you can make the layers of choc deeper so that there's less mint.

1. Whip the butter with the sugar (if using the egg yolk, use half the sugar at this step) until light and creamy. Beat in the cocoa powder. If using egg yolk, whisk it with half the sugar until pale and creamy.

2. Mix in the melted dark choc, the egg yolk mixture and the double cream.

3. Put a spoonful of choc marquise into the grease proof paper-lined mould and place a small piece of mint on top. Repeat until mould is full. Cover with wrap and chill until hardened. In cold weather, take dessert out of fridge 10 minutes before serving so that it is easier to slice.

This is a good dessert to make days ahead so that you don't have to rush on the day of the dinner.

Jelliriffic!

2011-10-30T19:15:00.001+08:00

O Christmas Trees

2011-10-29T21:01:00.014+08:00

"Love, Peace & Joy"

Traditional Christmas puddings covered with sugarpaste double as edible Christmas decorations.

Less than two months to Christmas! I love the spirit of Christmas, the message of salvation through Jesus, the joy of families getting together in the last few days of the year, and of course, the food, the fun and the whole atmosphere of love, peace and joy.

Making the Christmas puddings brought Christmas to my house yesterday. I was singing Christmas carols and missing my daughter and oldest son. This will be the second year that my daughter won't be home for Christmas. I'm looking forward to having my son Ming around. He was Masterchef Monash two years ago and it's great when he and Wey are in the kitchen. Ming's the guy we trust with risottos while Wey not just cooks great pasta, he makes them. I love it when Ming and Yi have their friends over for rowdy nights of volleyball, cards (yes, but no gambling), Guitar Hero and new games that Ming brings home from Melbourne. 7 weeks to go.

The cone-shaped Jelliriffic! Nick Munro moulds are perfect for making little Christmas puddings which you can decorate into Christmas trees and give as presents to friends. I've used moulding sugarpaste/fondant to cover the puddings because they can last longer than buttercream. Sugarpaste is such a cinch to work with and I had so much fun this morning making these trees. If I had more time, I'd make a tree with the tiniest ornaments. Candy sticks, wrapped presents, bells, ooh.

We got the pudding burning alright but the flames didn't show on the photos so we moved into the storeroom where it was dark. It was fun and gorgeous when the 'tree' lighted up, flames of blue, purple and red dancing on the tree and around the plate. I can imagine the drama of bringing a lighted Chistmas pudding to the dining table, with all the lights switched off. Yes, that's what I'll do this Christmas. Thank you, Olympus for the giveaway camera and Royal Selangor Pewter for the beautiful moulds. I hope the collection from the sales of the mould will be beyond expectations. I am sure the other 9 bloggers are also relieved to have completed (almost) the 30-day Challenge and happy that their efforts have helped to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Welfare Association Of Malaysia. If you haven't yet bought the mould, tomorrow is the last day to do so. In the spirit of Christmas, give generously to bless others!

My Christmas pudding is white. That's what happens when you omit the treacle and forget the sugar! No worries, I have the moulds and I'll make more for Christmas. The flames didn't show up in this photo.

Lucky that today is Saturday and Hub was around to help me light the pudding. The last time I flambeed anything was when I made crepes suzette (remember those?) to impress my ex-boyfriend. He's now my Hub.

In our dark storeroom the flames were beautiful. Even the plate was lighted up.

Christmas Pudding (1 cone)
15 gm plain flour
50 gm brown sugar
25 gm suet (I substituted with butter)
15 gm breadcrumbs
1/8 tsp each of ground cinnamon, nutmeg and mixed spice
100 gm mixed fruit and peel
25 gm raisins
10 gm nuts (almonds or hazelnuts etc)
1/4 apple
zest of 1/2 orange + the juice
1/4 tbsp rum
1 tsp treacle
1/2 egg
milk

1. Mix everything in a bowl, adding some milk or water to make dropping consistency. Cover with wrap and leave in fridge overnight.
2. Grease the Nick Munro mould and spoon the pudding batter in, packing firmly.
3. Cover the top with a piece of foil and secure with a piece of thread to prevent spill.
4. Steam 1 hour at medium heat.
5. Re-heat to serve. Pour whisky or brandy into a large ladle until 1/4 full and heat the ladle over a fire. The brandy will catch fire quickly so get everything ready and everybody seated. Pour the lighted brandy over the pudding.

Serve with a brandy butter: Whisk equal amounts (20 gm each) of brandy, sugar and butter.

For the Christmas trees, use store-bought fondant or make your own to cover the tree. I used a pair of scissors with sharp tips to snip the leaves of the green spruce. To attach ornaments to the tree, use a bit of the fondant paste mixed with water.

Pink Velvet Molten Choc Cake

2011-10-29T00:04:00.032+08:00

"Velvet hand iron glove"

Rich, smooth chocolate ganache enclosed in a soft, superfine cake that was steamed, not baked, complemented by a pink coconut milk-flavored 'doily' (roti jala).

The Royal Selangor Pewter (RSP) Jelliriffic! Challenge is a stress test too because a recipe a day for 30 days is tough. There's the rush to make the jelly which may not turn out right, the rush to take photos before the sunlight goes, the rush to write before the midnight deadline and in my case, the extremely frustrating struggle with an unstable Internet service in the past 10 days. TM Net has been looking into the problem but so far cannot solve it.

My friend Veronica had suggested that I make a lava/volcano/molten chocolate cake with the moulds. I had thought of that very early on but RSP had confirmed that the moulds can be steamed but not baked. If I steam my cake, how will it turn out? Will the cake be too soft? Will the lava flow or set?

Against my resolve, I did leaf through Rose Levy Beranbaum's Heavenly Cakes two nights ago. One of the recipes in the book was the molten choc cake and even Rose had problems getting the 'lava' sometimes, something I've experienced too when I left the cakes in the oven for a split second too long. Rose's solution, the clever girl, was to make choc ganache balls, freeze them and place them into the cake batter. More hassle than the usual lava cake recipe but definitely something to try if it is guaranteed to give lots of lava.

As I started to weigh the ingredients, I suddenly thought of the infamous red velvet cake, a cake I feared eating because a standard 9" round cake has a bottle of red coloring in it. So there I was, very excited as I started to make not just a steamed choc molten cake, but a steamed red velvet molten choc cake with the Jelliriffic! mould. Wow, I thought, you're quite creative. As I took my food coloring out, I suddenly thought "Hey, why red? Pink is the color of the month!" And that's how the red velvet became pink velvet. I felt SO clever.

The first cake broke when it was turned out. The cake was too fine, too soft and there was so much lava that it had seeped through the cake and weakened the cake in the middle. The mould was narrow where the ganache ball was placed. It was about 2 pm but I didn't panic because cakes are easier than jellies. Jellies need time to set.

For a minute I thought about going ahead with the jelly Christmas tree that I had already made the night before. I took a spoonful of the failed cake and jumped. The cake was soft, fine, moist, delicious and there was plenty of rich smooth choc lava oozing out of the cake. I had to re-try the recipe again, tweak it for the mould, and share it with you all. But I had a problem. How do I prevent the lava from seeping through the cake, and how do I prevent the cake from breaking in the middle where the lava was?

It was more work but what I did was steamed 2/3of the cake, then placed the frozen ganache ball on the steamed cake, top with more batter and steamed again. That this cake turned out so well is one of the best moments for me in the Challenge. I really am very proud of this cake but the real credit goes to Rose for her fool-proof lava and a recipe that makes the best velvet cake, pink or red. I've increased the amount of flour to make the cake firmer for the mould and replaced the buttermilk with milk because buttermilk is not available here. The only thing I'll change next time is the color because I wanted a baby pink but my cake turned out a salmon pink unfortunately.

But wait. Just a minute ago when I was waiting for my photos to load, I googled and found lots of people have beaten me to the pink velvet cake. It's just that I didn't know about it. No matter, I still feel pretty good that I thought of it too. And oh, don't you love that pink lacy crepe? It's a Malaysian crepe called roti jala ("net pancake") made with flour, eggs and coconut milk and is usually eaten with curries. I've blogged about it here and here. If you've never eaten it before, you must try it. It tastes and smells as good as it looks.

Moulding the choc ganache balls.

This was the first cake.

An egg stand comes in handy in holding the mould upright.

Yum!

Pink Velvet Molten Choc Cake ( 2 cones)
The choc ganache balls:
30 gm dark choc, 60 to 62% cacao
40 gm heavy cream
--Heat the cream until just about to boil, add the choc and stir until choc is melted. You can also melt the choc in the cream over a double boiler.
--Line 3 ice cubes cavity or small jelly moulds with cling wrap and spoon the ganache in. Fold the wrap over to cover or use another piece of wrap, and put into freezer for 2 hours or until frozen.

The Cake:
1 egg white + pinch cream of tartar
30 gm cake flour *+ 1/4 tsp baking powder
25 gm caster sugar
1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 tbsp canola oil
1 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup milk
a drop of pink coloring

*If not steaming in the Jelliriffic mould, use 25 gm flour.

1. Prepare a bamboo steamer or a steaming pot.
2. Whisk egg white with the cream of tartar until just after soft peaks stage.
3. Sift the flour with the baking powder.
4. In a bowl, mix the butter and oil using a hand-held electric whisk and whisk 1 minute, then add the flour, milk, vanilla and color.
5. Add the egg white into the flour mixture in 2 parts, beating 30 seconds each time.
6. Place two Nick Munro moulds on heat-proof stands and line with grease-proof paper. Fill the moulds 2/3 up and steam 10 minutes. Keep the remainder of the batter in the fridge.
7. Carefully place a ganache ball onto the centre of the steamed cakes and fill up the moulds with the remaining batter almost to the top, leaving 1/2 cm for the cake to rise. Steam 15 minutes this time (the mould is thick). Remove and let cool (can still be warm) before turning out onto a plate carefully. If weather is cold, you can put the cake in the microwave for a few seconds to warm through. Serve with vanilla ice cream. For the lacy crepe, go here.

Cinque Terre Update

2011-10-28T10:25:00.004+08:00

Update: The latest news is that Monterosso is damaged but not wiped out. I'm sure they'll rebuild and Cinque Terre will be even better and more beautiful than ever.

Picture of Manarola, my fave of the five villages, taken from here. We ate at the restaurant in the yellow building with the red roof on the village square, which is really small, just a triangle of flat land overlooking a cliff. The whole of Cinque Terre is very hilly and is the perfect place for hiking.

Drunken Cones

2011-10-27T21:24:00.020+08:00

Chinese saying & song: The drink doesn't take a person; the person takes the drink"

Aspic of chicken in Shao Xin Hua Tiao wine on a bed of jellyfish salad and oyster-sauce mushroom roses.

Aspic of pork belly in Shao Xin Hua Tiao wine.

Have you noticed that height is important in food presentation? Noodles are twisted mile-high, salads piled as high as they can hold and tall cakes always look better than short ones. On a buffet table, dishes are of varying heights, not level and low, and even I have been unconsciously taking a lot of vertical photos of the food for this blog. So yes, my point is, the Jellyriffic!Challenge moulds can give your food that the lift, like those new platforms you just bought. Only 3 more days to go for you to buy a mould and contribute to the Breast Cancer Welfare Association Of Malaysia. I forgot to mention in my previous post that besides contributing to the Association and getting a chance to vote for your fave blogger, you get a good chance of winning the new Olympus PEN Lite E-PL3 camera, which is what I'm coveting too. Also, it's time to drop me a comment (need more comments) to keep my spirit up and also to get that Olympus VG-100 camera!

While cold appetizers are very common in Shanghainese cusine, the Cantonese are not big on cold dishes except for the huge cold appetizer platter that is served at the start of a banquet dinner. The Cantonese appetizer platter is the most expensive item in a banquet meal because a lot of skills are put into preparing the varied items which must be pleasing in taste, color and texture and also because expensive ingredients, such as abalone, sharks' fins, prawns, dried oysters, corn-fed chicken and the best Jinhua ham are used. I've not had a really good cold platter in a long time because restaurants are scrimping on ingredients and making appetizer platters of cold and hot items which downgrade the platters because the hot items, which used to be dainty hors d'oeuvres, are now stir-fried stuff, like top shells with dried chilies or deep-fried processed meat made into different shapes.

The first week of the Challenge, I made beef in aspic. Both kids said "Yuks!" at the jelly with slices of meat suspended within and refused to eat it. That recipe was not posted. Today I thought I'll try again, making the aspic Shanghainese with the addition of Shao Xin Hua Tiao wine. The aspics do look kind of weird, almost like preserved specimens in the lab. I must say I prefer not to serve drunken chicken this way.

If I were making this platter for CNY, I'd include cold cuts of abalone, pork tongue and Shanghainese red-braised beef shin. A Sichuan peppercorn and chili dip goes best with the aspic meat. I can almost hear the 'dong dong chang' and smell the fire crackers.

Chinese, like the Koreans, generally love gaudy bright colors and over-the-top decoration which they feel bring cheer, especially on festive and special ocassions such as birthdays and weddings. The most welcome color is red because they believe it's the color that brings happiness, prosperity and life. This cold platter would be considered very auspicious on CNY

Drunken Cones
Aspic Chicken:
1 whole chicken leg, skin on
one small slice of ginger
1 small stalk of spring onion, tied into a bundle
1 cup of water
1 tsp gelatine (3/4 tsp in cold weather)
1/4 tsp salt + 1/4 tsp salt (extra)
white pepper
1/2 tsp chicken stock
1/3 cup Shao xin hua tiao wine
--Simmer the chicken with everything for 10 minutes except the gelatine, extra salt, pepper and wine.
--Remove from fire, put 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid, the 1/4 tsp salt, white pepper and wine into a bowl and soak the chicken leg in it until cool. Taste and season the liquid if necessary. Cover and put into the fridge to chill.
--When chicken is fully chilled and firm, debone it and cut into small slices.
--Put 80 ml of the soaking liquid and the gelatine powder into a small pot, cooking over a low heat until gelatine is dissolved. Put in 2 ice cubes to cool.
--Rinse a Nick Munro mould, scoop in 1/2 tbsp of the gelatine liquid and arrange the chicken slices in the mould, spooning more gelatine liquid in as you go. Chill until set.

Aspic Pork Belly
200 gm* piece of pork belly, skin on
a thin slice of ginger
1/2 tsp salt
enough water or stock to cover the pork
1 tsp gelatine powder (3/4 tsp in cold weather)
salt & white pepper to taste
1/3 cup Shao xin hua tiao wine
* there will be leftover
--Simmer the pork with the ginger, salt and stock for 20 minutes. Check by putting a skewer or chopstick through. The chopstick should pass through easily but for a good, bite, don't cook the pork too soft. Remember though that the pork will firm up when chilled. Remove and cool, then chill in the fridge to set the pork to make slicing easier.
--Cut pork into very thin slices.
--Do the same as for the chicken, making a gelatine with 80 ml of the cooking stock.

Aspic Prawns
6 to 8 small prawns
enough water to cover the prawns
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup Shao xin hua tiao wine
1/2 tsp gelatine powder
--Trim the prawns & remove the dirt vein.
--Boil the prawns until just cooked. Drain, remove shells and put into a bowl with the wine (no cooking liquid). Cool and chill. Make gelatine as per the aspic chicken.

Mushroom roses
3 to 5 black Chinese mushrooms (remove stems), soaked in warm water until soft
2 tsp oyster sauce
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
--Put the mushrooms in a small pot with the above ingredients with just enough cooking liquid from simmering the chicken or pork to just cover, simmering about 20 minutes. When cool, slice the mushrooms thinly, slanting your cut to get a larger slice. Arrange into roses, using black thread to hold the 'petals' together.

To serve, arrange the aspic meat on a large platter with other cold cuts if like and serve with:

Sichuan garlic dip:
1 tsp chili oil
1/4 tsp toasted and grounded Sichuan peppercorns
3 pips garlic, minced
2 tsp grated ginger
2 to 3 tsp light soy sauce
1/3 tsp caster sugar (to taste)
a dash of msg (optional)
--Mix everything together. You can add a tsp of black vinegar too.

Cinque Terre Storm

2011-10-27T11:26:00.019+08:00

Update: the latest news is that Monterosso is damaged but not wiped out:)

Vernazza, as seen from a hill above the city, was partly destroyed yesterday.

Picture from here of Manarola

A buzz on my phone early this morning woke me up. A friend had messaged me about the storm that hit the Liguria region of Italy yesterday, killing 8 people and destroying villages. Two of the most badly hit villages were in Cinque Terre ("Five Lands"), and my hairs stood when I read the message. Monterosso, the first village and Vernazza, the beauty queen. I can remember these places so vividly, like I just came back from there. I remember the train rides from Genoa to the Five Lands and within the villages, accessible only by boats and trains.

I googled the news and what I read made me tear. I was in Cinque Terre just a year ago with my daughter and we talk about the place often. Yi says she'll honeymoon in Cinque Terre, not places like the boring Maldives, which is the top destination for China-Chinese honeymooners who walk around in matching shorts and count the hours to the next flight home. We had never heard of Cinque Terre until my friend CY sent me Rick Steves' Europe and Cinque Terre was described like a best kept secret. Of course when we got there, it was totally invaded by the Americans.

Cinque Terre is one of the prettiest places I've been to, apart from Banff, Canada (more majestic and beautiful than Switzerland!) but they are different. Of the five villages, Vernazza is the top favorite among tourists but my fave is Manarola, which is smaller than Vernazza but less touristy, if that can be used to described these places which were fishing viallges but now survive on tourism. I can't believe that Monterosso, the first village, has been completely wiped out. It's so sad. I hope they rebuild and recover quickly.

I'll never forget Cinque Terre and the perfect day my daughter and I spent there. My big regret is that I didn't make any hotel bookings and refused to pay through my nose to stay the night. I should have done that.

This is the Monterosso beach which is the first thing you see when you get off the train station. We didn't see the village of Monterosso because it was quite a walk away and it was too hot. As of yesterday, Monterosso village no longer exists.

Babao Fan

2011-10-26T21:03:00.018+08:00

" Baobao yao chi babao fan ma?"

Babao fan (eight jewels rice): glutinous rice with sweet red bean paste filling and a shell of 8 sweet 'jewels': candied cherries, dried longans, red dates, gingko seeds, lotus seeds, walnuts, dried apricots and raisins. So Chinese New Year.

I had the ultimate jelly for the last day of the Jelliriffic! Challenge and I just tested it today and it failed. I wanted to make a hard chocolate shell (like the Dairy Queen dipped cone) of the Nick Munro mould, with the lines of the mountain embossed on the chocolate, but the chocolate couldn't come off the mould in one piece. I have to come up with Plan B but I'm afraid to disappoint. Anyway, I've done my best and I really hope that many of you are convinced enough about the versatility of the Nick Munro moulds to buy at least one because the proceeds are going to the Breast Cancer Welfare Association Of Malaysia in aid of breast cancer awareness programs and women with breast cancer. Buying a mould or more is a terrific way to contribute towards helping those with the disease and those without the disease too because the stats are pretty scary: 1 in 3 cancers diagnosed in the US is breast cancer and in Malaysia, breast cancer is the No. 1 killer among women with cancer. Only RM290/USD100, and you help the Breast Cancer Welfare Association and women who are in need plus you get a mould which you can make jellies with, serve soup and ice cream in and even hold your favorite bouquet. And of course, you get a chance to cast your vote for the winner of the Jelliriffic! Challenge. Just four days to go so hurry!

Because of the Challenge, I finally got off my butt (and part of my butt got off me because I lost 2 kgs) and made many jellies and desserts which I would otherwise not have made. After making a dessert a day for the last 25 days, I've gained confidence, learnt to manage my time better (not, because I forgot to pick my son up yesterday!) and found that I really enjoy developing new recipes.

Today's babao fan (eight treasures/jewels rice) is one of those things I was too daunted to make. I didn't even particularly like this traditional Chinese dessert until two years ago. Every third day of Chinese New Year (CNY), we eat dinner at Uncle and Aunty Lu's (friends of my in-laws) and the highlight at the end of the meal would be Aunty Lu's eight treasures rice pudding. Eating the pudding is such a treat that I'd hear my in-laws say on the way home, "Mrs Lu's ba bao fan is the best ever this year," or "Mrs Lu's ba bao fan was a little too hard this year" or "I didn't even manage to grab a spoonful of Mrs Lu's babao fan". Uncle Lu is from Ning Bo in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region, where cities such as Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi and Yangzhou are located. I always felt that Mrs Lu could've made a bigger babao fan with more hongdousha (red bean paste) and more bao (treasures) because with a crowd of about 30 people, one serving was one scoop of rice pudding with one tablespoon of red bean paste and maybe a gingko nut if you are lucky. That wasn't enough for a once-a-year dish. MIL said that that's Lu Aunty's trick to make people crave her pudding even more.

Two years ago, Hub's cousin brought a babao fan from Shanghai when she visited for CNY. It was the best babao fan I've ever eaten and if I liked babao fun for the rarity of eating it once a year, that babao fan made me a fan of the fan (pronounced "fun"). Wey says my puns are terrible.

With all the reverence given to this traditional Chinese dessert, I never considered making it. The old folks talk of the patience needed to make the red bean paste and how the best bean paste must be made with lard. Then they tell me that a lot of skills and experience go into buying the perfect glutinous rice and making sure it is cooked to the right texture and sweetness. Wouldn't you be daunted too?!

The last time I bought red bean paste, I felt so bad serving the red bean baos to my family. The bean paste was cheap (RM3 per 1/2 kg), looked real dark red and after refrigeration, had a white layer of solidified oil. I threw away the remaining bean paste and swore that I'll never buy it again. You know what? I made red bean paste last night and it took less than one hour. I know what goes into the paste (the best red beans, less sugar and oil) and the best part was, the paste was delicious and bursting with red bean flavor. I felt like I've climbed a culinary mountain.

How was my babao fan? It's funny how things turn out, even food. I've told you how I wished that Lu Aunty's babao fan could be more loaded with treasures. My babao fan was so overloaded that every mouthful was full of treasures. I realized something then. Babao fan should be about the rice first, then the red bean paste and then the treasures. The treasures are necessary but in small portions to sweeten the rice, to give different flavors and bite and to pretty up the dessert. If I make babao fan again, I won't cover it with treasures. Like an overmade-up face, more is too much.

Boiling the treasures, guihua (osmanthus, the vanilla of China), blending the red beans and frying the beans. I didn't remove or sieve away the skins from the red beans.

I found 9 types of treasures (substituted candied cherries with maraschino cherries) in my kitchen. The candied ginger and citrus peel were mistakes because the ginger gave a hot taste and the candied peel was too intense. Green or golden raisins would've been a better choice than the ginger and citrus peel.

This was the first time I used the moulds for steaming. The moulds survived the heat.

The Nick Munro mould makes such a modern babao fan. Lately everything looks cone-shaped. Did you realize that the Martha Stewart Dreamy Coconut Cake is cone-shaped too?

8 Treasures Rice (for 2 moulds)
Choose 8 jewels:
6 lotus seeds, soaked, halved & green 'heart' removed
6 gingko seeds
5 Chinese dates, deseeded and halved
5 glace cherries, halved
10 dried longans
4 walnuts, quartered
almonds
2 pieces dried apricots
a spoonful of golden or green raisins
melon seeds

1 cup finest glutinous rice
1 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp veg oil
red bean paste

Syrup:
2 to 3 tbsp brown or 'slab' sugar
optional:1 tsp dried guihua (osmanthus)
liquid from boiling the lotus seeds
--Put the liquid (about 3/4 cup) from boiling the lotus seeds and red dates into a small pot with the guihua and sugar and boil until reduced to half. The syrup shouldn't be thick. Sieve the syrup and throw away the guihua.

Red Bean Paste (there'll be leftover paste):
1 cup red beans, washed
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup veg oil
--Boil the beans in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes with enough water to cover the beans. Leave in the pot to cool. There shouldn't be much liquid. If there is, drain it away leaving just enough for blending. If you want to remove the red bean skin, push the beans through a sieve. I think that's a waste of fiber and vitamins so I don't.
--Use an electric hand-blender to blend the beans until very fine.
--Heat a wok, add the oil, beans and sugar and fry under low heat for about 10 to 12 minutes, until the beans become thick and pasty and don't run when parted with the frying ladle.

1. Wash the rice and boil it with about 350 ml of water or enough water to cover with a level of about 1.75 cm above the rice. Turn the fire to low when the rice boils, add the oil and sugar and let it cook for 10 minutes. Check if rice is done. The rice should preferably be soft rather than hard.

2. Put the lotus seeds, red dates, longans and gingko nuts to boil with 1 tbsp of sugar and enough water to just cover. Boil 5 minutes only and drain, reserving the liquid for making the syrup.

3. Grease the moulds. Begin with a couple of jewels, then rice and then a layer of bean paste. Alternatively, you can have the bean paste as a filling in the middle.

4. Cover the mould with strong aluminium foil and steam for 45 minutes. Serve when still warm, with the syrup. The pudding can keep in the freezer for months.

Jackfruit Custard With Passionfruit Sauce

2011-10-25T17:28:00.039+08:00

"Jack-in-the-cone"

Chilled custard with chopped jackfruit, layers of puff pastry and passionfruit sauce--what's not to like?

Yesterday's United Colors Of Jello was actually based on a reader's suggestion to make a jelly of the headgear worn by local Bajau horsemen but I was in such a hurry and couldn't wait and the jelly turned out as a big fat murky blob. Luckily, I had made an extra jelly using the leftover Jello and cream and that became the post for yesterday!

Some readers asked where the ideas for the Jelliriffic! Challenge are from. When I confirmed joining the Challenge, I made a list of the jellies I wanted to make based on the desserts I've always wanted to make and the desserts that I love. Many times, the jellies were inspired by the flora around me. I deliberately stopped reading food magazines and cookbooks so that my jellies will be original. Last week, my dear friend NC lugged back Rose Levy Beranbaum's Heavenly Cakes for me from New York and I haven't yet peeked at the book but am very tempted to. Delayed gratification is sweet. I'm so looking forward to curling up on my sofa next week with this book which I've wanted for a long time, and all those food magazines that I buy but never seem to have time to read. Next week I'll do that, and I hope it rains in the afternoons like it's been doing since the Challenge started. If so, I'll be sipping coffee and eating a piece of quiche or something. Not jelly.

I was at the once-a-week tamu (meeting place/market) in Donggongon last Thursday and there were so many local produce, some from the jungles and some from the back yards of the villagers. I came home with these goodies:

We've eaten most of what I bought except for the tamarillos and the jackfruit. While cleaning my fridge out this morning (what a lot of expired rubbish!), I found a small tub of frozen passionfruit pulp that my friend Yo had given me last year (or the year before?), organic home-grown stuff from her back yard. I usually just make a drink out of passionfruit but passionfruit reminded me of the vanilla slices I ate in small towns Australia. Why not make a Malaysian custard with the jackfruit and a passionfruit sauce to sweeten it?

Anyway, the custard turned out fabulous (do people still use this word) except for the passionfruit sauce which was too sweet and next time I make this, I'll use crushed biscuits instead of puff pastry because in our weather, the pastry becomes chewy instead of crisp. I am so relieved to eat a custard for a change because frankly, I've had too many jellies. I'm thinking hard about what to make for the remainder of the Challenge. I just hope I don't end up stuffing rice into the moulds (against my initial resolve against doing that, that's just what I'll be doing next!).

Mix egg yolks with custard powder and sugar.

Pour egg yolk mixture into the coconut milk and cream mixture.

Cook, stirring, until smooth and thick (but this was too thick so I thinned it with extra milk).

Mix the jackfruit into the custard.

Jackfruit Custard With Passionfruit Sauce (for 2 cones)
The custard:
1/2 cup fresh thick coconut milk + extra
1/2 cup cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp butter
3 heaped tbsp Bird's Custard powder
2 egg yolks, beaten lightly
2 tbsp caster sugar (or to taste but remember the sauce is very sweet)
The biscuit layer:
5 to 6 Marie biscuits or McVitie's Digestive biscuits or Graham crackers, crushed*
3 tbsp melted butter
* or 3 small pieces of puff pastry baked at 200 C for 10 to 15 minutes until crisp
--mix well.
Passionfruit sauce:
1 tbsp passionfruit pulp
3 to 5 tbsp icing sugar
--just mix until you get the consistency you like.
Jackfruit:
4 pieces jackfruit, deseeded and chopped
extra jackfruit, sliced, to serve

1. Put the vanilla, cream and milk in a small pot. Remove from heat when just about to boil. Let it cool.
2. Mix the cornflour, sugar and about 2 tbsp milk in a small bowl and then mix in the beaten egg yolks.
3. Add the yolk mixture to the cream coconut milk mixture (can be warm) and boil over a very low fire, stirring all the time. When the custard begins to thicken, taste it to see if it has a floury taste. If so, it is undercooked so add more milk and continue to cook, stirring all the time. If the custard gets too thick, add more milk, stirring until you get a smooth, thick but not too thick custard.
4. Mix the chopped jackfruit with the custard.
5. Line two Nick Munro moulds with baking or greaseproof paper. Put a tbsp of the custard into the mould. Top that with the pastry (cut to size) or with a spoonful of crushed biscuits, pressing down firmly to level. Repeat until the mould is full, ending with a layer of pastry/buiscuit. Cover and chill at least 3 hours.
Serve with the passionfruit sauce and sliced jackfruit.

United Colors Of Jello

2011-10-24T21:14:00.008+08:00

"Dreams Really DO Come True"

United Colors Of Jello: Jello and cream of different flavors all in one cone and M&Ms to boot.

I was out all day and came home at 3 pm with no idea what jelly to make for the Jelliriffic! Challenge today. I had to pick my son up from school at 3:30 pm and was worried that there wouldn't be much time to take photos by the time I get back.

Whenever I travel, I love to check out supermarkets and bookstores because the supermarkets and bookstores here are absolutely pathetic. It's no wonder that I hate grocery shopping here. Not one supermarket is well-stocked. Last week I had to go to 3 supermarkets just to get Jello. I think that the selection and variety of products are getting worse as the economy slides.

So what could I make quickly and be set by the time I get back? Jello of course. I had plenty leftover from making Broken Hearts.

I know this is similar to Broken Hearts but you know what, it tasted good and was easy to make so you might want it for your kid's birthday party. I usually avoid coloring but I'm partial to Jello. It's refreshing, fun to eat, looks pretty and is really quite delicious. The addition of cream makes Jello taste even better and with five different flavors, you've got the rainbow covered. Almost.

United Colors Of Jello
1/4 packet each of 5 to7 different Jellos
150 ml dairy whipping cream
Garnish: mini M&Ms
1. Make each 1/4 packet of Jello with 1/2 cup boiling water. To speed up the setting, you can use 1/4 cup of boiling water to dissolve the Jello and then add 1/4 cup of ice-chilled water. Make each Jello in a small bowl and put into the fridge to chill until thick and syrupy. Meanwhile, whisk the cream until stiff and leave in fridge.
2. When the Jellos are syrupy (not set or they won't mix well with the cream), mix 2 heaped tablespoon of cream into each Jello with a small whisk. If the Jello becomes too runny, put it into the fridge to set for a minute or less, depending on how set the Jello is.
2. Rinse a Nick Munro mould and scoop a tablespoon or two (vary the amount) of each color into the mould until the mould is filled. Press each scoop of jelly firmly so that you won't get pockets of air. I did not and you can see pock marks on my jelly. Leave in fridge to set. Garnish with the M&Ms.

Readers' Vote

2011-10-24T08:29:00.004+08:00

Sorry. Please vote again. The previous vote excluded the lemongrass coconut mousse.

poll by twiigs.com

Lemongrass Coconut Mousse

2011-10-23T18:35:00.021+08:00

"A Lifetime Of Love"

A dreamy-looking dessert of light lemon sponge cake layered with lemongrass-scented soft creamy mousse, fresh coconut milk and fresh and dessicated grated coconut.

Tastes as gorgeous as it looks and is one of my favorite jellies so far.

What I really wanted to do was the original recipe from here, a lemongrass coconut ice cream, but I don't have an ice cream maker and making it with a cake mixer will take hours to chill. I'm not fond of mousses generally although I do like tangy fruity mousses. I've also wanted to bake a Southern US coconut cake for years but never got around to doing it. Coconut cakes with all those coconut flakes look so dreamy and soft, perfect for a tropical wedding cake. Coconut cakes just need minimal decoration, such as big white gardenias or in Martha Stewart's coconut wedding cake, no decoration other than coconut. Simply gorgeous.

Martha Stewart's Dreamy Coconut Wedding Cake.

I feel good after making this. Like I said, have always wanted to make a Southern coconut cake and although this isn't the same thing, I love the effect of those white delicate flakes of coconut on the cone. Besides looking gorgeous, this was a delicious piece of cone. The lemongrass as a flavoring for desserts is new to me. Lemongrass is usually used in cooking curries and other spicy savory dishes. Makes me think that there are so many other ingredients that are yet to be brought out of the box. The coconut milk goes well with the lemongrass, giving it the rich wonderful flavor only fresh coconut can give. What I'd do differently if I had more time is bake my own sponge cake. It's Sunday and I just don't have the time to slave in the kitchen. Betty Crocker's cake mix tasted just like regular cake mix. Ugh. It's been over 10 years, maybe more, since I've made a cake from the box and it looks like there's not been any improvement.

Another week to go before the whole Jelliriffic! Get Your Jelly On! 30-Day Challenge ends. I'v learnt a lot about jellies, made many mistakes and ate many jelllies but I'm looking forward to lunching with my friends again without worrying about the afternoon rain and how my photos will turn out or struggle with the slow erratic Internet service. Personally, the best thing about the whole Jelliriffic thing is I've lost 2 kgs in 3 weeks, something I couldn't do the whole year! Maybe jellies are the new Atkins diet.

I hope many of you have bought the Nick Munro mould, proceeds of which go to the Breast Cancer Welfare Association of Malaysia. That is the real reason for the whole Jelliriffic! Challenge, to raise funds for the Association which is a non-profit organisation set up by medical specialists to help women with breast cancer. There's still time to buy a mould. It's a beautiful, shiny piece of designer mould and its versatility has been proven by all the participants of the Challenge. Get it here.

The lemongrass is an Asian herb, used mostly in savory dishes where it gives a lemony citrus flavor that's very refreshing. Most backyards inMalaysia, and even in public parks, have a bush or two of lemongrass growing wild.

Can you imagine a multi-layered cake of many coconut cones decorated with cascading white Sabah orchids? Wow.
Lemongrass Coconut Mousse
1 1/2 cup freshly grated coconut
1 stalk lemongrass, smashed
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp sugar (or more to taste)
1/2 tsp gelatine powder
3 tbsp water
60 ml dairy cream
2 small pieces of sponge cake cut to fit the mould

1. Boil the lemongrass in the water for 10 minutes. Cover to infuse. Let cool. Strain.
2. Mix 1/2 the lemongrass water with the grated coconut, massage well and squeeze out the milk through a sieve.
3. Dissolve the gelatine powder and sugar in the remaining water over heat. Cool, chill until slightly syrupy.
4. Whip the dairy cream until stiff, stir in the gelatine syrup with a whisk and pour into a rinsed Nick Munro mould stopping halfway to add a layer of sponge. Pour another layer of the mousse and lay a final layer of sponge over the mousse. Wrap and chill at least 3 hours until set.
5. Sprinkle with freshly grated coconut (no brown bits). Serve very chilled.

Cosmopolitan Pink Lady

2011-10-22T23:51:00.038+08:00

"Two Times A Lady"

Seriously kick ass jelly: Two pink cocktails combined in a jelly: gin, vodka, cointreau, cranberry juice, lime, cream, grenadine syrup and egg white.

The cosmopolitan and pink lady are ladies' cocktails, pretty in pink. However, just by their looks you can tell that one is more Miley Cyrus and the other Megan Fox.

Pink Lady, a girlie drink.

The Cosmopolitan, the real woman's drink.

I thought it would be fun to combine these two pink drinks, each with its distinct looks and taste. I tested the drinks on my nieces (all above 18) tonight as we gather to celebrate my mom's birthday for the second time this year. Any excuse to get together and eat and talk. We had a great time talking about the fights we had. My younger bro, my older bro and I boxed our way through the house. My older sister and the youngest bro were gentle people who never fought. When my sister did fight with me, it was with her talons. I hate long nails because of her. Anyway, these are stories for another time.

Joe, my younger bro, made a disgusted face when he drank the Pink Lady. "It's de-worming meds!" "It's paracetamol for kids!" said my nieces. The gin does taste kind of weird. The Cosmopolitan however was well-received. "It's ching (clean, light)" said Joe. It's "Not bad" said my nieces. I tried both and I have to agree. The Cosmopolitan actually reminds me of the margarita because of the lime. I like it, yes, I like The Cosmopolitan.

Then I brought out my Cosmopolitan Pink Lady jellies for the Jelliriffic! Challenge. Somehow, in the form of jellies, the Pink Lady tasted fine and they liked it. I think I'm onto something. I think even Mikey will like this jelly now that's he's not 4 anymore.

I didn't want another boobie jelly but because the maraschino cherry is a traditional garnish for the Pink Lady, the jelly had to have a cherry. The twist of lime is in the bottom layer.

Cosmopolitan Pink Lady
Pink Lady:
1/2 tsp gelatine powder
50 ml water
1 1/2 tbsp gin
2 tsp grenadine syrup
1 to 2 tsp cream
1/2 egg white
a maraschino cherry
1. Melt the gelatine powder in the water over a gentle flame until gelatine is totally dissolved.
2. Rinse a Nick Munro mould, put in 1/2 tsp of the gelatine liquid and drop in the cherry. Chill.
3. Mix the remaining ingredients in a shaker (if you don't have a cocktail shaker, use a salad dressing bottle or any glass bottle) and shake well. Pour into the mould and chill.

When Pink Lady is nearly set, work on the Cosmopolitan.

Cosmopolitan:
3/4 tsp gelatine powder
1 tbsp vodka
1/2 tbsp Cointreau
1/2 tbsp fresh lime juice
1/2 cup cranberry juice
1 to 2 tsp caster sugar
a twist of lime
1. Put the cranberry juice, sugar and gelatine powder to boil, stirring well until gelatine is totally dissolved. Cool.
2. Mix everything except the twist of lime and pour onto the Pink Lady. Drop in the twist of lime and chill until well set.

Last layer: Yes, there really is a third layer of clear red-pink jelly in my Cosmopolitan Pink Lady. I didn't have enough Cosmopolitan jelly--sipped too much of the drink--to fill the mould so I made another jelly liquid of pure cranberry juice to fill the mould up.

Almond Tofu 2

2011-10-22T23:49:00.006+08:00

Pink ribbon almond tofu.

In my Pink Ribbon Almond Tofu post last week, I said part 2 of the post will be coming up and here it is, late but better than never.

I've made a pink jelly or cone once a week for the last 3 weeks, to remind myself and readers of the reason for the Jelliriffic! Challenge. Every October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, companies around the world promote pink ribbon products (think pink KitchenAid cake mixer) , with the proceeds from the sale of these items going to support breast cancer research and awareness of the disease. Famous buildings around the world are lighted in pink too, in solidarity for the fight against this disease which is the most common cancer among women in Malaysia. In the US, breast cancer accounts for 1 in 3 cancers diagnosed in women. The high rate of this cancer is an indication of how prevalent this disease is today but doctors emphasize that a healthy diet and lifestyle and early detection are the best ways to prevent the disease.

I can think of three women whom I know who had breast cancer. The first lady, an acquaintance, had one chemotherapy treatment and stopped. She died months later. The second lady, the sister of a friend, did not tell anyone, not even her husband, until a year after her diagnose. She died two years after being diagnosed. The third lady, a friend, was in her 30s when diagnosed. She had a mastectomy and finished her treatment. That was 10 years ago and she's healthier now than ever. The message is we have to check often and take action when diagnosed.

I don't know if the Petronas Twin Towers are lighted pink but here's my daughter's version.

Dragon's Eyeballs

2011-10-21T23:54:00.020+08:00

"I'm all eyes"

Fresh longans in pure sugarcane juice jelly, sitting on a spider web made of grass jelly.

Whatever your feelings about Halloween, unless you've experienced it, don't get too paranoid about this tradition. I went through four Halloweens and not once was I spooked. In fact, I'd rather Halloween than Hungry Ghost Month, especially in Penang. I don't want to be in Penang in the 8th lunar month.

Three years ago, I was in Penang during the Hungry Ghost Month and I was spooked the three days that I was there. I remember how one night when we were walking in an alley looking for a famous tofu jelly stall and we turned a corner and suddenly in front of us on the road was a stage with thin red sheets blowing mysteriously, eerily in the night wind. I held my breath as the wind blew, almost revealing what was behind the sheets. I expected to see an ancient wooden coffin or yes, a real ghost, and I could feel my skin contract. We quickly turned and ran down the street, which was fittingly empty. I'd rather go through Halloween than Hungry Ghost Month. Western ghosts are funny. Asian ones are drop dead scary.

I thought maybe I'll do a wacky jelly, one with eyeballs like those Halloween jelly eyeballs. But instead of eyeballs made of jelly, I wanted 'real' eyeballs. In Cantonese Chinese, the fruit longan ("loong ngan") translates to 'eyes of the dragon' and it's obvious why. Under the translucent flesh of the longan is a hard, shiny black seed that looks like the pupil of the eye.

I searched supermarkets and grocery stores but there were no fresh longans. I could stuff black grass jelly into canned longans for the eyeballs but I really wanted some eyeballs with fresh longans. My longan tree has been very leafy this year, bearing very few longans. Where can I get fresh dragon's eyes?

Last year when running with my daughter in a nearby housing estate, we passed a house that had very sweet longans over the fence. Would there be any longans on the tree now? I drove to the house, pressed the bell and asked the lady if she could just help me find a handful of longans on her tree. She let me in. I was surprised that she did. I think we both were acting out of character. I don't normally ring doorbells and ask for fruits.

Was I lucky because there were little bunches of longans here and there. J is from England, doesn't eat the fruits and welcomed me to take as much longans as I wanted. I offered to pay her, but she waved me off, saying that that's her little contribution to the Breast Cancer Welfare Association. I insisted, so she said that I should visit Sally's Bar in KK Times Square one night.

Fresh longans are translucent and so they didn't show up too well in the jelly. I also used the juice from the sugar cane stems that my mom had dragged home one morning last week. If you were to make this jelly, I think that you'll get better results using canned longans for the eyes and longan juice for the jelly. Whatever, this is my wacky jelly for the week for the Jelliriffic! Challenge. I haven't had sugar cane juice in a long time and it was just so good.

I've done 21 jellies and things with the beautiful Nick Munro mould so far. Are you not convinced yet that you should get one mould and make some of those jellies? Remember, your money goes to help women with breast cancer.

These longans, some bigger than a 50 sen coin, were some of the biggest longans I've seen and they were very sweet, flavorful and juicy.

Dragon's Eyeballs

6 or 7 fresh longans*
3/4 tsp konyakku powder
a small pinch of citric acid
200 ml longan juice or sugarcane juice
grass jelly for the spider web

*or use canned longans and stuff black grass jelly or very dark red Jello for that evil eye effect

1. Peel the fresh longans and remove half the flesh, exposing the black seed.
2. Put 100 ml of the juice into a small pot and scatter the konyakku powder over it. Wait 2 minutes for it to swell and soften.
3. Heat and stir until the konyakku powder is all dissolved. Take off the heat and add the remaining 100 ml juice.
4. Rinse a Nick Munro mould. Pour about 2 spoonfuls of the liquid jelly into the lould, drop in one or two longans and put the mould into the freezer to set the jelly quickly.
5. Repeat pouring the liquid jelly into the mould and dropping the longans (pupils facing out) into the jelly. You may have to re-heat the jelly in the pot if it sets.
6. Cut thin strips from the grass jelly and arrange into a spider web on a plate. Place a Nick Munro mould over the center of the web, press down hard to cut the hole for the jelly to sit into. Place the jelly on the center of the web.