Veal in white sauce (Blanquette de Veau)

Quite a few very traditional French dishes actually go well with rice, and Blanquette de Veau is one of them.

I always thought that rice is very Asian, and in Camille's classic French cookbook, she has recommended rice as the accompanying side dish for several recipes, which left me wondering. It's quite common for Rémi's family to serve rice, but I have always assumed their family is the exception than the rule.

So, I learned that Carmargue in Southern France is actually a rice-producing region. This place is famous for pink flamingos, which incidentally can't read signs telling them to keep off crops and thereby a headache to the French rice growers (there's this interesting book History of Food that gives a fascinating history of rice, among others, google to read extracts of the book).

How do French cook rice? From what I heard, I'm afraid their version of boiled rice is incomparable to that churned by any Asian rice cooker. That they cook rice like pasta, boiling them in water, and straining them.

So, I'll rather serve my delicious veal with Thai rice, cooked with my trusty rice cooker. The white sauce goes very well with rice.

Veal in white sauce (Blanquette de veau)
Serves two

250g veal (meat of young calves)
1 big carrot
1 onion
1 leek (I substituted with asparagus, probably not a good idea, but it's not every week that I have leek in stock)
1 onion
2 sprigs of parsley, 1 sprig of thyme and 1 bay leaf
1 clove

For white sauce:
15g butter
15g flour
1 egg yolk
125ml fresh cream
1/2 lemon
salt and pepper

Stick the clove into the onion. Put vegetables, veal, herbs, salt and pepper into a pan and cover with water. Bring to boil and simmer for about 2 hours. Remove the white froth forming at the surface.

Before serving, melt butter and mix in the flour and 3 big scoops of the vegetable broth. Beat the egg yolk, fresh cream, lemon juice together and stir into the butter and flour mixture. Add in more vegetable broth if necessary. Season with salt and pepper.

To serve, put veal and vegetables on serving plate and pour white sauce over. Serve with rice.

The vegetable broth is very rich and tasty too, I'm currently freezing it as vegetable stock. Not sure how I can use it yet, but it's going to be an experiment.

Chinese Egg tart with a French twist

I definitely wasn't expecting good results for my first Chinese egg tart experiment, but I was in for a pleasant surprise.

I've googled different egg tart recipes, and there's so many different ways of making it, just as there are many types of egg tarts.

Some are almost like an egg orgy, using more eggs than the crème brûlée. Me being the prudent, health-conscious, stingy homemaker, I opted for one that uses the least number of eggs. I found this egg tart recipe among the stack of old recipes I brought back from Singapore, and its source is unknown. Whoever gave me that, I'm deeply grateful and happy to share. And it is extremely easy to make.

But being too lazy to experiment with a new crust altogether, and definitely not up to making a flaky crust, I've opted to use the French sweet pastry crust (pâte sucrée) by Christelle Le Ru. Even lazier, Rémi, the pastry maker helped me with making the dough the day before. So I just have to gather the egg mixture together, put everything in shape and voilah!

Chinese Egg Tarts with a French twist
Makes about 14

1 sweet pastry dough (pâte sucrée)

Sugar syrup:
200ml water
100g sugar
4 pandan leaves

Custard filling:
Sugar syrup above
2 eggs
50g milk (original recipe calls for evaporated milk, I uses normal milk, with 1 spoon of liquid cream for an extra boost)

Make the dough and chill for 15 minutes.

Press the pastry with your fingers over the base and sides of the prepared cup cake pastry tin. Prick all over with a fork and bake for 10 minutes at preheated oven of 200C.

Make sugar syrup by boiling all the ingredients together. Cover for 10 minutes and allow to cool before using. Remove the pandan leaves (it's possible to find frozen pandan leaves in Asian grocery stores, as how I do. They give the sugar syrup a tinge of very nice and essential fragrance).

For the egg custard filling, mix all ingredients together, including the sugar syrup. Use a strainer to get rid of the unwanted bits from the eggs. The mixture should be smooth and silky.

Pour the egg mixture into the already cooked pastry and bake at 160C for 20-25 minutes.

The egg tart filling should be soft and moist, yet not liquid. And yet not overcooked. So start watching the oven after 15 minutes. The egg custard should be a little puffed up when it jellies.

Original recipe asked for 1 drop of egg yellow colouring, but as I'm quite against food colourings, I omitted it and the natural colour of eggs looked great.

Getting Apple Tart right

For the past few years, finding the key steps to making the simple Apple Tart seems as elusive as understanding a woman having PMS. We tried so many times with different types of apples, we tried pre-cooking the tart dough. We also consulted at least two French mothers who are good at it (this being a very traditional, typically French dessert), and who in turn told us to simply put sliced apples on top of the raw dough and bake it. To them, it's as straightforward as frying an omelette, there's just no science behind it to help you get it right.

Well, out of the say 6-10 times we made the apple tart, we probably only got it right 1-2 times. Either the tart base wasn't cooked well enough, or the apples too dried out, or both. And we couldn't understand why it was successful on those rare occasions. Luck? Maybe.

Last night, we may have found the answer. That is to squeeze as much apples as you could into the tart, so that they will ooze out just enough juices for the perfect apple tart. We had been too stingy with apples before, perhaps.

Apple Tart
1 tart dough (Pâte brisée)
at least 4 apples
sugar
cinnamon powder

Preheat oven at 180C.

Roll out tart dough. Line on a prepared tart tin. Spread apple slices onto the tart, packing as tightly as possible, and into nice patterns if you like.

Drizzle sugar (amount according to how much of a sweet tooth you are) and sprinkle cinnamon powder over.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Jamie's incredible baked lamb shanks

Jamie described his baked lamb shanks "incredible", and I'll say the taste is quite truly so. The first time I baked this, I may have baked a tad too long, as the vegetables were all melted into almost nothingness. Last night, on my second try, I'd shortened the cooking time, so the lamb was less brown, but it tasted as good nonetheless.

The lamb was baked for so long in its own fats, as well as butter and olive oil, that it was almost like a confit. The onions and carrots added a sweet twist to the otherwise savoury dish. I omitted leek, simply because I didn't have it in the fridge.

I find Jamie overly generous with oil, so I've reduced the amount of butter and olive oil used. My version may be less good than his for sure, but it'll be less sinful as well. Especially as I also exercised portion control and shared one shank between two persons.

To maximise oven usage, throw 1-2 potatoes to bake together (but for half the time). Serve the lamb with mashed potatoes or just simply baked ones. Below is his recipe done it my way, as I remember it.

Jamie's incredible lamb shanks
for 1 shank

1 lamb shank
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
1 sprig of thyme
1 spoon of cold butter, quantity according to conscience
4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
1 carrot
1 onion
extra virgin olive oil
salt and black pepper
white wine

1-2 potatoes
fresh cream or milk
salt and black pepper

Preheat oven at 200C.

Chopped 1 small sprig of rosemary and the thyme into small pieces if you're using fresh ones. Yeah, my rosemary and thyme plants are still surviving after battling gales and storms. Original recipe also uses sage leaves, which I omitted. So please use if you have them. Mix with butter, salt and pepper.

Make incisions into the lamb shank and stuff the flavoured butter into the cut pockets. Rub the lamb with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Finely sliced carrot and onion (and leek if you have). Cut an A3 sheet of aluminum foil, place the vegetables, remaining rosemary (and sage leaves) and whole garlic in the centre. Put the lamb shank, bone upright on top. Splash some white wine over and wrap up entirely in foil.

Bake for about 2 hours or longer, until the meat is tender. Halfway through the baking, throw the potatoes into the oven. When the potatoes are done, mash with some milk or cream, salt and pepper.

Berry Christmas Chocolate Log Cake

Christmas to the French is what Chinese New Year is to the Chinese. It's holiday season, and a time for family reunion. Another similar trait is that each French family eat and do the same thing every year for Christmas, just like the Chinese. Or so I believe.

On the eve, by default tradition, my family would gather for steamboat. The double steamboat would have a spicy tom yum soup base on one side, and chicken base on the other side. Steamboat ingredients consist of abalone, pork, beef, fish, squid, mushrooms, lots of vegetables and balls (meat balls, fish balls, sotong ball...). Then, you go to the temple to wish for good luck for the new year.

Lunch on the first day of the new year would be leftovers from the night before, as well as food offerings to ancestors, like roast chicken, roast pork, steam fish...There's no guesswork necessary to know the menu for lunches and dinners for the first few days of the festivities, though each family have their own variations.

For Christmas, I was to discover the same thing happening for the French. Christmas service at the church on the eve before the big reunion dinner on Christmas. The yearly menu is fresh oysters (yum yum), salmon, prawns and fois gras. Dessert comes in the form of the yule log cake. Then, there's the Christmas presents exchange, just like there's ang bao giving for the Chinese.

Christmas day itself, there's always the roast turkey.And leftover log cake (or even a second one with a different flavour). For snacks, there's chocolate truffles, just like the Chinese have their new year cookies and pastries.

The log cake recipe is from Rémi's mom. Berry mousse and chocolate topping are from Christelle Le Ru. Decorating the log cake was fun. I even found recipes for making meringue in the shape of mushrooms, but didn't go to the trouble of doing it.

Berry Christmas Chocolate Log Cake
Serves 6

Cake roll (roulade):
3 eggs, yolks and white separated
100g sugar
80g flour
pinch of salt

Berry Mousse:
100g mixed berries, pureed
50g icing sugar
juice of 1 lemon
100ml fresh cream (for whipping)
50g mixed berries

Chocolate Topping (chocolate ganache):
150g dark chocolate
100ml fresh cream

Start with making the chocolate topping and berry mousse first as you need to use them immediately when the cake is done.

Puree 100g mixed berries (we used blueberry, raspberry and strawberry). Sieve to remove the seeds and mix with icing sugar and lemon juice. Whip the fresh cream. Gently fold the whipped cream into the fruit purée. Carefully mix mixed berries into the cream and refrigerate.

For chocolate topping, melt pieces of chocolate over a water bath. Boil the fresh cream and pour over the melted chocolate. Stir until the chocolate is fully melted and the mixture is creamy. Leave to cool.

Preheat oven to 200C.

Beat the egg yolks and sugar in a mixing bowl until the mixture is smooth and forms a pale yellow ribbon when lifted.

Beat egg whites separately until it is thick and foamy. Gently fold in half the flour, followed by half of the egg whites. Repeat for the remaining half until the mixture is well mixed.

Pour the mixture into a tray (about 35cm by 30cm) lined with greased baking paper. Cook for 10 minutes until golden brown.

Flip out the cake, spread the berry mousse immediately, leaving about 2cm clear on all sides. Roll up from the short end.

Coat the cake roll with the chocolate topping and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Serve with mixed berries

Tips:
- For ideal results in whipping cream, make sure your cream, beater and mixing bowl are COLD. Refrigerate them for half an hour if necessary.
- For better success in making the egg white meringue, bring eggs to room temperature if they come from the fridge.

The five fragrances of Ngoh Hiang

The Hokkien Five Spice Meat Roll is more commonly known as Ngoh Hiang in Hokkien or Wu Xiang in Mandarin, literally meaning "five fragrances". Well, the famous Five Spice Powder (Wu Xiang Fen) used in Chinese cuisine is also literally translated as "five fragrances" from Chinese.

Five spice powder is so named as it contains all the five flavours (or should we say fragrance) - sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty. Although the specific combination of spices varies nowadays, two standard combination are: 1) Chinese Tung Hing cinnamon (a type of cassia), powdered cassia buds, powdered star anise and anise seed, ginger root, and ground cloves. 2) huajiao (Sichuan pepper), bajiao (star anise), rougui (cassia), cloves, and fennel seeds.

The powder is the key spice in making the Ngoh Hiang. As the meat roll is quite tedious to make, it is a festive dish in Hokkien households (from my observation of my extended family and friends). Besides death anniversaries of ancestors (this may sound strange to foreigners, but anniversaries are celebrated with rich offerings of food in traditional prayers, and the extended family gather together to offer their respect. I see it more as an occasion for family gathering), Chinese New Year is the main period when grandmothers, mothers, aunts etc make this meat roll, along with a big feast of other traditional goodies.

Of course, you can easily find Ngoh Hiang in hawker centres nowadays, but nothing beats the homemade one. Especially when those commercially-made-in-factory ones taste more flour than meat (just like chicken nuggets from MacDonald).

I got the below recipe from my friend PY's mom, who make one of the best Ngoh Hiang. As with most Chinese home cooks, the proportion of ingredients is more by instinct than precision, so use your discretion, as I do when I reduce the quantity in making it. The quantity is huge, as this is a festive dish and so, cooked to feed many many mouths and to last over several meals during the Chinese New Year period.

Yesterday was my first try. There's room for improvement.

Ngoh Hiang (Hokkien five spice meat roll)
makes perhaps 12 rolls

1 large sheet of bean skin
1kg minced pork
300g prawns
20 water chestnuts
2 large onions
2 carrots
10-15 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked
5 stalks coriander leaves
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp salt
pepper
corn flour
1 packet of five spice powder (I'm not sure how much is this, but use generously, possibly 1 tbsp)
2 eggs

Grate carrots and chopped all ingredients finely. Marinate and set aside for one hour.

Cut the bean skin into smaller squares (or rectangular). Clean them with a damp cloth. It's very fragile, so be careful not to tear it.

Divide up the minced mixture accordingly and roll as tightly as possible like a sausage.

Deep fry in hot oil until cooked (I prefer to use less oil and turn the meat rolls until all sides are cooked). Cut diagonally into 1 inch slices.

Serve as a side dish with rice.

Rye bread and why it should be left to the professional

Yesterday was certainly a busy breadmaking day. Aside from Pizza, Rémi also finally put his rye flour to good use. My conclusion is, unless you have a bread machine, it's more worthwhile letting the baker earned that 5 bucks.

It's just too time-consuming. Three rounds of kneading, and two rounds of glazing, it took half the afternoon and night to complete the full course of making the bread, that due to inexperience, has rooms for improvement (although I would say that his rye bread is excellent, given that it's his first time making it).

I've grown up on soft white bread and love the softness of those traditional white bread loaf you spread your kaya and butter on. Not the commercial square white bread you use for making those triangular sandwiches. So it took me a while to get used to those harder country bread that the French loves.

The French takes much pride in their bread, almost like they do with their cheese. In France, it seems that you can't call yourself a boulanger unless you have some certification, and artisan bread are highly valued.

For the undeterred, I reproduce the recipe from the "Making Fresh Bread" cookbook.

Ryebread
Makes 1 large loaf

450g rye flour
225g strong white bread flour plus extra for dusting
2 tsp salt
2 tsp brown sugar
1 and 1/2 tsp easy blend dried yeast
425ml lukewarm water
2 tsp vegetable oil
1 egg white for glazing (we used milk)

Sift the flours and salt together into a bowl. Add sugar, yeast and stir to mix. Make a well in the centre and pour in the lukewarm water and oil. Stir with a wooden spoon until the dough begins to come together, then knead with your hands until it leaves the side of the bowl.

Turn out on a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes, until elastic and smooth.

Brush a bowl with oil. Shape the dough into a ball, put in the bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Leave to rise in a warm place for 2 hours, until the dough has doubled in volume.

Brush a baking sheet with oil. Turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface and knock back with your fist, then knead for a further 10 minutes. Shape the dough into a ball, put it on a prepared baking sheet and cover with the damp tea towel. Leave to rise in a warm place for a further 40 minutes, until the dough has doubled in volume.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 190C. Beat the egg white with 1 tsp of water in a bowl (if you're using it for glazing). Bake loaf for 20 minutes, then remove from the oven and brush the top with the glaze. Return to oven and bake for a further 20 minutes.

Brush the top of the loaf with the glaze again and return to the oven for a further 20-30 minutes, until the crust is a rich brown colour and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the base with your knuckles. Cool before serving.

Ying-Yang Rectangular Pizza

Pizza, along with guacamole, counts as one of the frequent dish we make when we entertain.

As usual, Rémi would be the bread-maker, ensuring that we have a crispy thin crust that we could cut easily with a pair of scissors.

And our pizza is never round. We always make a rectangular shape crust and line it on the big black oven tray. It is just perfect for feeding four persons, or two persons over two meals.

Being maker of your own pizza, you get to choose your own topping, and we normally have two sides with different flavours.

Below is our pizza dough recipe, that makes two big rectangular crust. You may consider freezing the second one for use another day. To freeze, roll out the dough to desired shape, line with baking paper, and gently roll the sheet like a scroll of paper. Use within two weeks.

Pizza dough
makes 2 big rectangular crusts

12g yeast (ready to use dried yeast)
8g salt (I guess a pinch would do)
250ml water
500g flour
50g olive oil
1/2 can tomato paste
4-5 ripe tomatoes

Sift flour. Mix flour, salt, yeast and oil. Mix with water and knead for 10 minutes. May need to add more flour if you find that the dough is too oily (or maybe reduce the quantity of oil).

Keep in the mixing bowl, covered by a damp towel, in a warm place for 60-90 minutes. Warm place could be on an open oven door, with the oven switched on at low temperature. Or beside the fridge.

The dough should have doubled in size. Knead lightly and press out the uneven pockets of air. Roll to desired thickness and shape, but the thinner, the crispier.

Place the dough on a floured tray. Spread with tomato paste on the flattened dough. Lined with slices of tomatoes all over.

Spread with your desired toppings and bake in preheated oven at 180C for about 15-20 minutes.

Topping suggestions:
Fresh mushrooms
Onions
Bacon
Olives
Anchovy
Basil leaves
Calamari (how about stir fry in sambal first?)
Prawns
Salmon
Dash of mix herbs all over
Mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese

Somehow, we are lacking in imagination when it comes to pizza toppings and always end up with the same things every time.

Sexing up Fondant au Chocolat

Certain French and English words may have such vastly different meanings despite sharing the same spelling.

Lately, I have been translating recipes from Camille's Classic French cookbook using google's online translating tool (meaning I type out word for word the full French recipe onto the computer, without help from Remi). Some of the results can be quite hilarious.

Like the below Fondant recipe, one of the steps requires that I "rape" the chocolate. So, I was to learn later, to my relief, that I do not need to sexually assault my chocolates, but just to shred it to pieces.

Well, the French would have their fair share of jokes about English words. Like you will never see "add a little BIT" in a French recipe. This is because "bite" (pronounced 'bit')in French refers to the male sexual organ.

Other times, the direct translation is totally clueless. Like this chicken stew recipe requires me to cook potatoes by letting them "jump" in butter. Huhhh?!?! The original French word is actually simply "sauté".

Nevertheless, google translate is still 90% accurate in helping me decipher this melting chocolate cake recipe from Camille. And after all the trouble, Remi came home early to make the cake himself.

Fondant au Chocolat
serves 4
(if you only have a big cake mold, double the quantity)

100g dark chocolate (ideally about 70% cocoa)
100g butter
2 eggs
65g sugar
1/2 heap tablespoon of plain flour

Preheat oven to 150c. Butter the cake mold (small one), line with baking paper and butter it again. Don't forget to butter the sides too. Some people use individual serving ramekins, which works well too, like what we do here.

Melt the chocolate squares in a bain-marie (over a water bath). Do not burn the chocolate. Add the butter cut into small pieces and stir into the chocolate till it is melted.

In the following correct order and mixing well between each addition, add the sugar, flour and eggs. Don't know why, but stick to this sequence.

Pour the batter into the pan and cook the cake for about 35 minutes in the oven.

The oven should not be too hot so that the cake does not dry during cooking

Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream. The inside should still be warm and moist.

Note: Just like the guacamole, there's also one million superb ways to make a melting chocolate cake.

The never right way to make Guacamole

A perennial favourite among our friends whenever we have lunch or dinner parties in Singapore, the guacamole is super easy to make and easy to please.

A problem with buying avocados in supermarkets is that they are always not ripe enough. So be certain to buy a few days in advance, if you are planning to use it for entertaining guests. We have resorted to burying our avocados in our rice bucket, in the hope that it would ripen in time, but nope, it didn't work.

And I found out that there are as many ways of making guacamole as there are the number of people making them. Everyone have their concept of what they think are the essential ingredients to making the best guacamole. There's even a big debate out there as to whether tomatoes should be included. Many people use garlic, but I've never added it.

Well, here's my way of making what I like, and it's up to you to decide if you like it or not.

Guacamole
should be enough for 4 if used as a dip

2 ripe avocados
1 onion
Juice of 1 lemon
cumin powder
salt
1 tomato (optional, I've omitted this lately)
chili (the authentic Mexican way is to use jalapeno pepper, I use chili flakes or a thumb size of red chili, chopped)

Half the avocado and spoon out the flesh. Mash with a fork.

Chopped onions and tomato and chili (if using) finely. Mix into the avocado and sprinkle lemon juice, cumin powder and salt. I am generally quite generous with cumin powder, adding it until I feel it is strong enough.

Cover and chill for about half an hour before serving. Not recommended for keeping overnight, as the avocado tends to discolour quickly when exposed to air.

Serve with tortilla or tortilla chips. It's hard to stop dipping chips with it once you start.

Of Morilles, Poularde and cream of chicken with forest mushrooms

Poularde de Bresse Aux Morilles is an interesting dish, that gives me a chance to introduce two very French food culture.

First is the Morel (or Morille in French), a very tasty but expensive mushroom popular in French cuisine. I remember buying a small bottle, say 20g for 20 euros a couple of years back. It is small compared to the big button or portobello mushrooms that we're used to, but just a little is enough to give a distinctive taste to your dish. So it's common to mix them with other cheaper variety of mushrooms.

And mushroom picking is perhaps unique to France, an autumn 'hobby' which I have unfortunately not had the chance to participate in yet. It is a convenient marriage of their love for hiking and food (They also have season for plucking wild berries). So a typical French household would have a book on mushrooms to help them identify edible and poisonous mushrooms. If in doubt, ask the local pharmacists. They are supposed to be trained to identify poisonous mushrooms as well.

Local knowledge is also essential in determining where are the best places to find mushrooms, and what is permissible by law so that one does not intrude into other people's private property. And not everyone is lucky, as there are about 30 deaths a year from eating the wrong mushrooms. Read more about this peculiar French hobby here.

A poularde, I learnt today from this blog, "is a fatty chicken that is grown in a particular way to avoid that it reaches sexual maturity. It consists of a young hen which is raised free range for the first part of its life and fed with corn, cereals and milk. Then just before it reaches sexual maturity, it is placed in a cage and maintained in the dark to be fattened for few weeks. In this way, the young hen do not reach sexual maturity, resulting in a very meaty bird (around 1.8Kg), covered of an important layer of fat, with a very tender, moist and milky flesh, but slightly on the bland side". Another distorted French way of rearing poultry, like what they do to geese for foi gras. The Bresse region of France is famous for poulardes.

I found this recipe of cooking "poularde from Bresse region with morels" in Camille's cookbook of classic French dishes. The word poularde caught my eye, because it is somewhat different from poulet, which is a "normal" chicken, and also because the recipe asks for a "beautiful" poularde. Weird isn't it? Maybe it's just a stupid French romanticism for their food.

Me and Remi have cooked this dish several times in Singapore to great compliments. And of course, we use a normal chicken, or chicken thigh pieces, to be precise. Having morels certainly helps to enhance the taste, but an assortment of dried forest mushrooms (which may be found in Carrefour or Cold Storage, though we had "imported" our mushrooms from France then) can be used in place of the morels.

I translate below the original recipe from Camille but give the dish another name more befitting what a non-French would understand and cook according to.

Cream of chicken with forest mushrooms (Poularde de Bresse Aux Morilles)

1 beautiful poularde from Bresse (or a young hen), cut into pieces
200g fresh morels (or use an assortment of forest mushrooms, fresh or dried, or just simply button mushrooms)
30g butter
glass of yellow wine of Jura region
200ml fresh cream
salt and pepper

In a frying pan, heat the butter and cook the chicken pieces without browning them.

Add salt, pepper and cover. After about 15 minutes, drizzle with the wine, cover again and simmer for 20 minutes.

Put the cleaned mushrooms in the pan with cream. Simmer half covered for 10-15 minutes until the broth has been reduced. Serve immediately, with rice or potatoes.

And trust me, despite the crappy picture above, this dish is easy to make, very tasty, even if you do not use chicken from Bresse, or wine from Jura, or mushrooms from Paris (button mushrooms is incidentally known as champignons de Paris).

Tips:
- To prepare mushrooms, cut the foot and plunge them for 10 minutes in cool water to remove sand.
- If using dried mushrooms, soak in warm water for 30 minutes. As the water is bursting with the flavour of mushrooms, you may add them in together with the cream.
- For a proportion of about 6-7 drumsticks, I finished my 30g bottle of dried mushrooms.
- Yes, yellow wine does exist, although a Singaporean friend of mine has been sneered by a French lady for saying that. It is unique to the Jura wine region of eastern France. Can use white wine in place of the yellow one.
- The suggested proportion in the recipe is just a guide. Adjusting the amount of cream, mushrooms, wine and butter according to your own instincts works too.

Lemon and Almond Biscuits

My quest to use up the fresh lemons in my fridge is still on-going. Last night, dinner was roast lamb shank, seasoned with lemon juice, olive oil, lots of garlic...c'est bon! Dessert came in the form of lemon biscuits with vanilla ice-cream.

Now, this lemon biscuits, recipe from Christelle le ru, is supposed to be quick and easy. Fast to make such that you basically just have to mix all the ingredients together, like the cupcakes.

Alas, it took me much longer, first because my other half forbid me from buying icing sugar. So I have to pound my own icing sugar from normal white sugar. Then, I have to further ground my own almonds from my current flaky almond stock. This took even longer, as all these grounding and pounding are done with a stone pestle and mortar. Now, my wish list for Christmas would be a proper blender! And being allowed to buy proper ingredients.

Second disaster came in the form of not watching over the oven even if I'm in the midst of a tasty dinner. So when the timer screamed, I was absolutely horrified to see almost burnt cookies. Saving grace is that I still have one-third of the cookie mixture left for a successful second batch.

If not for the above two follies, this biscuit recipe is easy to follow and almost fail proof. And me and Remi couldn't stop licking the tasty uncooked paste from the mixing bowl.

Lemon and Almond Biscuits
Makes about 18

100g unsalted butter
100g icing sugar
1 egg, beaten
rind of 1 lemon
juice of half lemon
70g ground almonds
125g flour
raisins or half almond (optional, for topping)

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a biscuit tray.

Melt the butter in a pan. Mix in icing sugar, egg, lemon rind and lemon juice. I use a hand beater, but using a wooden spoon may be fine too.

Add the ground almonds and flour and mix well.

Place spoonfuls of the mixture onto the prepared tray, leaving some room between each biscuit. You may like to top the biscuit with say raisin, almond. I topped with half cranberry for the burnt batch, but forgot to do it for the second batch.

Bake for 10-20 minutes or until golden brown. Leave to cool.

Pleasure in simplicity: Spaghetti with Garlic and Olive Oil

I used to take pride in the fact that homecooked food has allowed me the freedom to add as much ingredients as I like. Think pizza. It's not a surprise that my homemade pizza is overladen with more than enough ingredients, bursting with too much taste that the flavours of some food are buried among others.

This spaghetti recipe is surprisingly minimalist, and handy when your fridge is empty. It is also recommended as a hangover dish, according to my Olive Oil cookbook by Tess Mallos.

Spaghetti with Garlic and Olive Oil
Serves two

125g dried spaghetti (about a handful)
1/4 cup (70ml) extra virgin olive oil
3-4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 finger-length red chili, thinly sliced, chopped (optional)
1 big tablespoons chopped parsley
salt and black pepper
canned anchovy fillet, to serve (optional)

Toasted breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons soft white breadcrumbs

Prepare the toasted breadcrumbs first by heating olive oil and tossing the breadcrumbs over medium heat until golden and crisp. Takes just 1-2 minutes. Set aside.

Bring a large saucepan of lightly salted water to boil and cook the dried pasta until just tender. Remove from heat and toss with 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. Cover and set aside. It must be ready to use immediately after the next step.

Heat remaining olive oil and saute the garlic and chili over medium heat until fragrant and just golden. Do not overcook. Remove from heat and immediately pour into the pan with the spaghetti. Add parsley, salt and pepper to taste and toss until well blended.

Transfer to serving bowls and top with anchovy fillets and serve with the toasted breadcrumbs.

The toasted breadcrumbs may be optional, but they really make the pasta taste better. The chili is considered as the hangover cure.

Fresh parsley is always preferred to dried ones, but my pot of parsley is half dying, so have to use dried ones so that I don't kill my half-dead but still surviving parsley.

Milo cupcakes, Nutella cupcakes and double punch dark chocolaty cupcakes

My sis-in-law I.S. passed me her super easy cupcake recipes recently. So easy that her little girl is able to help her with stirring the mixture.

Now, being Milo addict, and Remi being an ardent fan of Nutella, I've decided to make chocolaty variations of the cupcakes, and all 3 versions turn out fabulously.

Now, her recipe is useful for those who do not have a kitchen scale.

As I'm used to weighing my ingredients on a kitchen scale rather than a measuring jug, I've possibly messed up the proportion of flour, sugar to butter by not converting millimeters to grams. But it still works!

Cupcake basic mixture
Makes 6 cupcakes

100g melted butter
100ml flour (I conveniently use 100g)
125ml sugar (I also conveniently use 125g, also used half white and half portion brown sugar as I ran out of white ones)
2 eggs

Melt butter and allow to cool.

Mix all ingredients well together in a big bowl using spatula.

Put the mixture/ batter into the paper cups for cupcakes. Enough for about 6 average sized cupcakes.

Bake at 200deg cel for about 15-20min. That's it!

Sprinkle icing sugar on top of baked cupcakes or serve warm with ice cream just to get that extra sugar boost! =)

Variations
Milo flavour: Stir 1 big spoon of milo into 1/3 of the cake mixture.
Nutella flavour: Take 2 teaspoons of nutella, and twirl them into 1/3 of the cake mixture
Double punch dark chocolate flavour: Stir a big spoon of cocoa powder into 1/3 of the cake mixture. Break 2 squares of 70% dark chocolate and stuff into the middle of each cupcake. The resulting taste is bitter dark chocolate flavour, which is what I like. So if you prefer sweeter chocolate taste, reduce the amount of cocoa powder and use milk chocolate instead.

And a sprinkle of almond flakes always works extra wonders!

Clarifying differences between squids, cuttlefish, octopus, sotong, calamari, and how to stuff squid with vegetables

Am I getting more sotong? I find myself asking questions that should have already been addressed in primary school science, like what is lamb and how is it related to sheep, or how many tentacles does a cuttlefish have, as opposed to a squid and are we talking about the same sea creature?

According to my Ultimate Book of Fish and Shellfish, they are "cephalopods" (now, this word is definitely new to me), a type of mollusc which makes them a closer relative to snails than to fish.

Cuttlefish: Has a flattened oval head and eight stubby tentacles and two long tentacles for catching its prey.

Squid: Has elongated heads and slender torpedo-shaped bodies. Also ten tentacles, two of which are very long. In French, squid is calmar; in Italian, it is calamaro...so now I know why we also call squid calamari. And finding that I am still having trouble telling squid and cuttlefish apart, Remi explains that squid has longer tentacles than cuttlefish.

Octopus: This is easier to differentiate, as it has eight equal-size tentacles and a roundish head.

And yes, it's not exactly that common, but we've sighted cuttlefish while snorkelling/diving in Tioman and Tarutao, just like on the right.

Now the confusing part. Using an online English-Malay translator, I try to clarify what exactly does the Malay word sotong stand for - squid, cuttlefish or octopus (Grilled sambal sotong is one of the must-haves when you go for beach holidays in Malaysia). Cuttlefish is translated as "sotong", squid is also translated as "sotong", and octopus is translated as "sotong kurita ". >00< And different websites give different answers. Total confusion.

The confusion seems to clear up when it comes to the cephalopods' Chinese names:
Cuttlefish: 乌贼/墨鱼/花枝
Squid: 鱿鱼
Octopus: 章鱼/八爪鱼

Except that I realise that what I thought for years to mean cuttlefish in Chinese is actually squid.

And a few fun facts about squid and cuttlefish.
Sotong, in Singlish/Malay lingo, also mean dumb like squid (even though squids have proven to be smart creatures)...used with "blur" which is a mental state somewhere between spacey, oblivious.

And in Chinese, "fry squid" (抄魷魚) actually mean you're being fired by your boss.

And the Chinese word for cuttlefish, 乌贼, literally mean black thief, in reference to its ability to emit black ink.

Now to the main point on how to cook Vegetable-Stuffed Squid. Other than carrots, I've interchangeably used red peppers or leek (as suggested by original recipe). It's quite flexible in terms of what type of vegetables you can use to stuff the squid.

Vegetable-Stuffed Squid
Serves two

2 medium squid, skinned and cleaned
2 tbsp of butter (it is absolutely important to use butter for the taste)
2 tbsp fresh white breadcrumbs
1 shallot, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 peppers (red, yellow or green, you choose), finely diced
1 carrot, finely diced
1/2 cup chicken stock
olive oil
chopped parsley
salt and ground black pepper
2 tomatoes, sliced (optional)

Preheat oven to 220C. Cut off tentacles of squid and chop these finely. Set aside.

Melt half the butter in a large frying pan. Add fresh white breadcrumbs and cook until they are golden brown. Stir to prevent them from burning. Set aside.

Heat the remaining butter, add the chopped vegetables and cook until softened but not browned. Stir in the stock and cook until it has reduced and the vegetables are very soft. Season to taste with salt and pepper and transfer to bowl of breadcrumbs. Mix together.

Heat olive oil in frying pan, and add the chopped squid tentacles over high heat for 1 minute. Stir in the vegetable mixture, and then the parsley. Well, I used frozen squid, so I conveniently skipped this step.

Using a teaspoon or whatever, stuff the vegetable mixture into the squid tubes. Do not overfill them as the stuffing will swell during cooking. Secure with toothpicks.

Heat olive oil in pan and placed the stuffed squid in the pan and cook until they are sealed on all sides and lightly browned.

Transfer the pan to the oven (if it's oven proof, if it's not, to an oven proof dish, making sure you spoon out the leaked out juice into the dish) and roast the squid for 20 minutes.

For juicier results, lined the sides of the dish with sliced tomatoes, sprinkle some olive oil and herbs (like basil leaves, or oregano).

Serve with rice or cous cous.

Ice Lemon Cubes

I just learned today that 1 lemon is roughly equivalent to 50ml, which is about the volume of five ice cubes. And the zest of one lemon is equivalent to 1 teaspoon.

It's a lemony day today, as I exhausted my morning squeezing juice out of some 15 lemons.

You see, our friends B&Z are leaving Welly, meaning our free supply of organic, pesticide-free lemons is coming to an end. So we decided to pluck lemons from their bountiful tree one last time, and greedy we are, having gotten ourselves over maybe 30 lemons? There's just one big bag full that we didn't bother counting this time.

How to make full use of these lemons?

We reckon fresh lemons can last about 2 weeks in the fridge, but we're definitely not going to consume 30 lemons within 2 weeks.

So the idea is to squeeze lemon juice and freeze them in the ice tray, and when we need the juice, we just pop the lemon cubes into say, our ice tea...and taaaaddddaaarrr...refreshing ice lemon tea!

Maybe I should start a series of lemony recipes.

Sesame nightmare

Don't try this at home, unless your objective is to punish your other half by making him/her make this.

I found this Black Sesame Paste dessert recipe in my Cantonese cookbook and was very motivated to try it out myself.

Alas, the short description of the steps to making the sesame paste much underestimated the tediousness of the process, especially if one doesn't own a proper blender.

To achieve a supposedly smooth and watery sesame paste, one has to first stir fry the sesame seeds, grind them in a blender, sieve out the shells in a metal sieve, then sieve again through a muslin cloth.

Well, this is simply too tedious. From a full bowl of sesame seeds, I reckon the amount of paste left after the first sieve reduced my paste to less than half. Thankfully, I don't have a muslin cloth and conveniently skipped the 2nd sieve, proceeding on to cooking the paste. And also thankfully, Remi came to my rescue and helped me with blending the seeds with our hand blender, sieving the paste and cooking it.

Everything about the recipe is just wrong, and the resulting taste is also far from perfect. For so much work, I'd rather pay S$2.50 for my tasty bowl of black sesame paste. There's this very nice dessert shop named 记得吃 opposite Chinatown Point, along Upper Cross Street in Chinatown. Their steamed milk is also very good. Hmmmm....I'm missing all my favourite deserts...like mango desert with pomelo, almond paste, walnut paste, peanut soup with dumplings...