Absolutely homemade Ramly burger attempt

Had a craving for Ramly burger, an almost must-have for me whenever I go to Malaysia, and after one cafe failed to give me a satisfying burger, I was determined to go DIY.

Problem was, I couldn't find any Ramly patty recipe at all, and Ramly burger is not known for its uniformity, different stalls tend to use different sauces. So I could only improvise according to my likes and taste.

The beauty of making my own beef patty is I know the patty is 100% real beef, not those factory processed patty that may use more flour than the meat itself.

Fangie's Ramly Improvisation
serves two

Patty:
2 handfuls of minced beef
1-2 shallots, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
half egg, beaten
1-2 tbsp breadcrumbs
Maggi seasoning
Black pepper

Other condiments:
1 egg
1 tomato
cabbage, chopped
Tomato sauce
Maggi sauce
ground black pepper
ground paprika

Burger bread

Season beef with shallots, garlic, Maggi seasoning and pepper. Add in breadcrumbs and half a beaten egg slowly and mix well. Adjust quantity of breadcrumbs and egg accordingly, so that the beef is able to hold its patty shape. Using your hands, mold into 2 patty.

Heat butter in frying pan, fry the bread in butter until it is lightly brown and crispy. Put aside.

Put the patty slowly into frying pan. Cook each side for about 5 minutes or until beef is fully cooked. Put aside.

Beat an egg into the still well-oiled frying pan, and quickly toss and turn the pan until the egg fully covers the pan. You may also add in the remaining half beaten egg left from the beef patty. After about 2 minutes, when the egg is more or less cooked, put the 2 beef patty on top, sprinkle with Maggi seasoning and pepper over the beef, and wrap the eggs over the patty. It is also common to add mayonnaise and Worcestershire sauce over the patty.

Cut up the eggs, and serve the egg-covered patty on top of the bun, with tomatoes, cabbage, tomato sauce...or rather, whatever you like to go with your burger.

Photo did not turn up well, and couldn't see the beef, but we had managed to get the eggs to cover the patty pretty well.

Black Pillow

What was meant as freshest Olive and Sun-dried Tomatoes Bread for picnic on Tulip Sunday at the Botanic Garden turned out to become a black pillow.

Everything went perfectly well, Rémi did the dough the night before, we woke up early so he can knead further. We even had time to finish baking a Pear Tart almost from scratch (with pre-made frozen dough). But things started going horribly wrong, we suddenly remembered it's the first day of daylight saving, and we're one hour behind time.

So, we quickly pushed the perfectly risen bread dough into the oven, set timer for oven to stop 40 minutes later, and went Sunday marketing/supermarketing to replenish our near empty fridge, including buying 4 different types of flour - from bread to rye to rice flour.

Two hours later, we came back, absolutely horrified at this black hard pillow. The oven did not listen to instructions and was still blasting at full heat.

Saving grace was that the inside was still soft and edible, after we broke through the blackened shell. And we managed to savage enough of the remaining leftover unburnt bread to use as breadcrumbs for our absolutely yummy homemade Ramly burger beef patty for dinner.

Freshest Pitta Bread

I bought a new cookbook Making Fresh Bread two days ago and Remi got more excited than me.

So before I had even browsed through all the pages, he has studied the recipes carefully and decided we're going to have the freshest Pitta Bread, straight from the oven for breakfast today.

Now, that's nice. He tweaked the kneading process a little bit, so that he could prepare the dough the night before, leave it to expand slowly in the fridge the whole night, wake up early to knead quickly the 2nd time, go back to sleep, then wake up to put the completed dough into the oven. And it took just 5 minutes to bake, as opposed to other breads that takes longer.

Freshest Pitta Bread
makes two breads

175g white flour (use bread flour if you have)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dried yeast
1/2 tbsp olive oil
100ml lukewarm water

Sift flour and salt together into a bowl. Stir in yeast.

Make a well in the centre and pour in the oil and lukewarm water. Stir well with wooden spoon until the dough begins to come together.

Knead with your hands until it leaves the side of the bowl. So, what does kneading mean? If you've learn pottery before, it is somewhat similar to kneading clay. Using your fingers, you try to gather the flour together and evenly distribute them into the dough. You also do this by folding the dough into half, knocking it with your fist, and repeating the steps until there's no uneven lumps of flour in the dough.

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead well for 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Brush the bowl with oil (so that the dough will not stick to it). Shape dough into a ball and put it into the bowl. Cover with a damp tea towel and put into fridge to rise through the night.

The dough should have doubled in volume by morning, with uneven pockets of air inside. So knead more for about 5 minutes on a lightly floured board to remove the uneven pockets of air, divide into 2 balls and leave to rise for 30 minutes to an hour, in a bowl covered with damp tea towel.

With floured hands, slightly flatten a dough ball and roll out on a lightly floured surface to an oval (somehow, he did 2 round pitta breads).

Meanwhile, put a lightly floured baking tray/sheet in oven and preheat to 230C. Transfer pitta breads to the heated trays, spacing them well apart, and bake for 5 minutes until puffed up and golden brown.

Fresh bread for breakfast.

家乡味: homely Braised Pork Belly

Above braised pork belly may not look the best, neither is it anywhere close to perfect. But isn't this what homecooked food all about? Warmth, familiarity, even to the point of nostalgia, where you remember its perfections and imperfections by heart. These are the qualities that even the best chefs in the world find it hard to match.

Think Ratatouille, the Pixar animated movie. The heart of the toughest food critic in Paris will still melt at the memory of his mother's homely cooked food.

Braised Pork Belly is a very typical Hokkien dish, common in everyday cooking as well as during festivities. I remember it as my grandfather's favourite dish too. Like many Chinese men, he is an ultimate pork lover and there's always pork in every meal, whether as a main dish, in soups, or as condiment in stir fried vegetables. Well, he was a pig farmer too.

I tried hard to retrace the steps my mother took to cook this dish. But I was lacking in spices such as star anise, cloves and cinnamon sticks, and maybe missing a step here and there. Below is my 'agar agar' guesstimation recipe, that is open to suggestions for improvements.

Braised Pork Belly

Three-layered pork belly (you decide the quantity based on how many you're cooking for)
1 square of Tau Kwa (beancurd with its skin fried)
1 Taw Kee (beancurd sticks)
dried shitake mushrooms, soaked
hard boiled eggs
note: other than pork, the accompanying ingredients are optional but good to have.

3-4 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1-2 star anise
several cloves of garlic, some chopped (depending on how much of a garlic lover you are)

Seasoning for pork:
Dark soy sauce
Sesame oil
Five spice powder
White pepper powder
2 cloves of garlic, chopped

Start preparing at least 2 hours ahead of serving. Sliced the pork into chunky pieces. Do not throw away the fatty part, even if you're not going to eat it, as the fats are crucial to a tender texture of the lean part. Season and leave aside for as long as you can, so that the seasoning is well absorbed into the meat.

On how much soy sauce to use in seasoning pork, my rule is to have all the meat "darkened" by the sauce. And maybe 1 tbsp of sesame oil and 1 tsp of five spice powder. It's very random here, use your nose.

Heat oil in a saucepan (you can use sesame oil or just vegetable oil). Fry garlic until it is fragrant but not burned. Throw in the pork and stir fry until it is semi cooked. Throw in the rest of the ingredients and fry for a few minutes.

Add water until it just covers everything. Here's where more of my estimation comes in, as I drizzle the dish with more dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, five spice powder...one recipe I saw uses brown sugar, though I'm not sure of its significance on taste.

But bring the liquid to boil, and turn down heat to simmer for 1-2 hours, until the pork is tender, the dark sauce is fully absorbed into the beancurds and eggs.

Serve with plain rice and a plate of stir fry vegetables. And do not throw away if you can't finish, as this dish still taste as good, or even better overnight. Can serve with plain steam buns too.

Asparagus season is in: cooking risotto with it.

I found a book The Country Store that wrote about discovering the pleasure of the changing seasons amidst our busy and hectic modern life, from baking, pickling, preserving to natural remedies, seasonal decorations and food:

The sowing of seeds, even if it is just a pot of parsley on the windowsill, is the beginning of a relationship with the plants that germinate, the picking of apples from the garden follows the beauty of spring blossom and the slow growth of the tiny green fruit to their full-flushed maturity when we can enjoy the satisfaction of our own harvest".

- Stephanie Donaldson

Coming from tropical Singapore, seasonal changes are guided by window displays in shops, screaming SUMMER SALE, NEW WINTER COLOURS, GSS SALE NOW ON; or when my father declares that the durian season is in with the fragrant smell of the fruit filling up the house; or when the rainy season sets in and I can't leave home without my brolly.

Our taste buds nowadays are hardly guided by seasons, as we import fresh produce from both the Southern and Northern hemisphere and we are able to indulge in every culinary whim whole year round.

Kiwiland being so far from everywhere, the sense of changing seasons is more marked now that 1. we shop for our grocery weekly; 2. we see more and more new produce appearing in markets with the arrival of Spring; 3. we feel the price difference between seasonal produce and imported food.

And it brings me great pleasure to welcome the Asparagus season!!! Soon, I'm sure I'll be able to smell strawberries in the air soon.

As asparagus do not keep long in fridge, I've been scouring my recipe books on how to utilise my new bunch to the fullest.

This Asparagus Risotto recipe comes from Jamie again. I'm very convinced by his guide to making me a better cook (and Christele Le Ru rocks in the dessert department), as it contains many useful and easy to cook dishes.

A word on making risotto. It's expensive to buy the real rice, so we've tried making it with Thai rice several times. Though it can't be compared with the real thing, it is more economical when it comes to practice. For this dish, we used medium grain rice. And we used a wok to cook the risotto. Worked well.

Asparagus and Lemon Risotto
serves two

Basic risotto:
1 cup risotto rice
about 250 ml vegetable or chicken stock
olive oil
1 tsp butter
1 medium onion
80 ml white wine

6-8 stocks of asparagus (stems sliced finely, but tips kept intact)
6 prawns (more if you're less stingy than me)
125ml chicken stock
grated Parmesan cheese
zest and juice of half a lemon (yes, our lemony quest continues)
sea salt and ground black pepper
olive oil

Bring stock to a simmer in a saucepan. Put olive oil and butter in separate large pan, add onion and celery (we didn't use celery) and cook gently for 15 minutes until soft. Add rice and turn up heat, stirring continuously.

Quickly pour in wine, stir until wine has evaporated.

Add stock into rice a ladle at a time, stirring and waiting until it has been fully absorbed before adding the next ladle. Cooking with low fire/heat, continue to add ladlefuls of stock until all have been absorbed, and the rice is beginning to soften but still a little bit firm.

Now, according to Jamie, if you're not cooking your risotto immediately, you have to put the part-cooked rice into a waiting oiled tray, spread them out evenly to cool down. And you can keep this risotto base in the fridge for a couple of days in a tupperware container.

But since we're hungry for our dinner, we went straight to the next steps, which involves pouring in the second batch of chicken stock into the risotto base with the asparagus stalks and tips and the prawns. And stirring all the time, bring gently to boil, and turn heat down and simmer until almost all stock has been absorbed.

Add the rest of the stock a ladleful at a time until rice, asparagus and prawns are cooked. You do not need to finish using all the stock.

Turn off heat, beat in Parmasan, and almost all the lemon zest and juice. Add salt and pepper if needed. Original recipe uses mint as well, so add some fresh mint leaves if you like a minty taste.

Serve with a drizzle of olive oil and more cheese if you like it more cheesy.

Sizing down Potato Rösti

With the luxury of time to try out a different recipe almost every time I cook, almost everyday is a good day when it comes to dinner time (and sometimes even lunch time). No more avoiding eating that chicken rice, just because I had it 3 days ago.

But we certainly do not want all the goodness of our diet to go to our waist. So portion control is a concept that we are working on (and what everyone should).

Portion sizes have definitely gone up. And a plate of char kuay teow in kiwiland is worth two in Singapore. That Starbucks grande cafe mocha with whip today contains as much calories as a full meal, and four times bigger than a cup of coffee than 20 years ago.

We reckon the reason why French restaurants use large plates but give small portions, is so that the diners can enjoy a full complete course of food without being 110% full: from appetizer, salad, main course to cheese and their favourite dessert.

So we may have bought two new large plates to enhance the presentation of our food, but doesn't mean we are going to fill it up entirely. The above plate of Baked Salmon, Broccoli with Anchovy Rosemary Sauce and Potato Rösti actually fed both of us. And we still had space for some cheese and a slice of Lemon Cake, recipe courtesy of joyofbaking.com after the dinner.

On the Lemon Cake, it was alright, but somewhat lacking in oomph. It's important to make the lemon frosting even though we made too little and too thinly. To make icing sugar, grind castor sugar on a mortar board, as Rémi insisted and did.
(Afternote: adding freshly squeezed orange juice enhances the taste and texture of the cake)

Preparing Baked Salmon was very straightforward: rub it with salt, sprinkle some lemon juice and drizzle with olive oil. Pop it into the oven at 200C for about 10-15 minutes and it's done.

Broccoli with Anchovy Rosemary Sauce and Potato Rösti comes from Jamie's guide to making us a better cook. But Rémi simplified the steps for making the Rösti. The Rösti was thin and crispy and I wished I could have more. But it's easy to indulge on too much potatoes, especially that upsized pack of French Fries or plate of Wedges from the pub. So be bold in adjusting quantities in recipes to fit your waist.

Potato Rösti
serves two small eaters

2 small potatoes, peeled and cut into matchsticks.
olive oil
knob of butter
salt and pepper to tase
a few sprigs of rosemary leaves
2 cloves of garlic, peeled

On a non-stick frying pan, heat some olive oil. Add butter and toss the potatoes with a pinch of salt and pepper, rosemary leaves and whole garlic cloves. Fry on medium heat until the potatoes are soft and cooked.

Gather the potatoes into shape, and using a suitable size plate, press down on the potatoes to flatten it. When the underside is crispy, flip and press down to flatten on the other side.

Lost and Found French Toast

Perhaps inspired by my brother's French Toast experiments, or simply because our bread in stock is getting old and dry, Rémi decided to relish the French Toast he used to have.

Unlike French fries, French toast do have French roots, except that they call it "pain perdu". Besides having a very sweet tooth, French love their bread, and they like only hard bread, usually handmade with love by their favourite artisan baker. But this type of bread becomes stale, dry and harder very quickly. So to save them, they dip it in milk and eggs and fry it to reclaim its goodness.

As this Frenchman has never made French Toast before, he has to google to find out what ingredients goes into a so called real French Toast. We found that other than eggs, it is common to add milk, sugar and even vanilla essence. We substituted part of the milk with yogurt because we do not have milk in stock.

And as if the fried toast is not sweet enough, we topped it with more sugar before putting it into our mouth.

Super easy steamed tofu with minced pork

It takes only five minutes to prepare, though I may have spent more time during my clumsier days.

I was in secondary two, and had an upcoming practical examination for Home and Economics, where I needed to cook two dishes. I did not know how to steam rice or fry an omelette at that time, neither did I know how to cook instant noodles. So my mother taught me this super easy minced pork and tofu dish, plus stir fry mixed vegetables.

And she even helped me to cheat. As I was clumsy with cutting, and kept forgetting to add in one or two seasoning, she seasoned the pork and tofu, and peeled the carrots for me before I brought them to school for the examination (we were supposed to provide our own ingredients).

I still have no idea if my teacher Mrs Goh saw through it. I remember classmate Indrawati cooked a complicated looking vegetarian fish, while Min's stew potatoes wasn't fully cooked.

Tofu with minced pork
1 piece of tofu
a handful of minced pork
1 dried shitake mushroom, chopped (optional)
chopped coriander leaves

seasoning for pork:
pepper
1 tsp black bean sauce (or just simply soy sauce and sesame oil)


Season pork. We experimented with black bean sauce instead of the "usual suspects". Tasted good.

Add dried mushrooms and coriander leaves.

Rub tofu with salt. Up to you to dice it or leave it whole. Top with pork. You may add a few shreds of carrot or chili to enhance the colour.

Steam until cooked. Serve with rice and another vegetable dish.

Zest for lemons

I don't think lemons feature prominently in Chinese cooking, its most famous lemony creation being the lemon chicken (google lemon and Chinese and you'll get what I mean).

After all, Chinese do not have a sour tooth, with the sour taste of lemon chicken and the equally famous sweet and sour pork being heavily neutralised with lots of sugar. So if you are a fertile woman who likes to indulge in sour food like preserved sour plum, the first question you're likely to encounter is: are you pregnant?

Lemons are less famous than its citrus cousins or sour friends such as the mandarins or pineapples, also for the reason that Chinese have a curious obsession with food that have auspicious names. So, since lemons do not bring 大吉 (big prosperity) or 旺来 (prosperity coming), and sour taste being synonymous with a sour life, it is best avoided on festive occasions. More money, more honey please.

And I have to admit that Rémi's first attempt to impress me with his culinary skills was Lemon Curd, and I wasn't won over. After all, I have a Chinese intolerance for sour food.

But lemon rocks, I was to discover, and a few drops of it adds much zest to the taste of food. So it was with much delight when we went lemon plucking in B&Z's garden on Sunday and came back with more than 10 lemons. Since we can't keep the fresh lemons forever, lemons feature very much in our cooking this week.

Monday: Mediterranean Salad, with lemon juice used in dressing
Tuesday: Ice Lemon Tea, Singapore coffeeshop style
Wednesday: Lemon Chicken Noodles (it was just alright, nothing to shout about or recipe to share, but it was interesting to pour the lemon sauce over the dry noodles. Also interestingly, a recipe on a Chinese website, which I didn't use, spent more time describing how to carve a rooster out of a turnip to garnish the plate of lemon chicken, even detailing the direction the cock should face)
Thursday: Lemon Tart (originally wanted to make my favourite Frozen Lemon Tart, but it requires freezing the tart in fridge overnight)

Seven more lemons to go, what next?
Ideas so far include: tabule, lemon curd, lemon and apple marmalade, tajine lemon chicken (Moroccan style), preserved lemon, lemon cake, roast lamb chops marinated with lemon and garlic (as our friend LC, who also harvested lemons from the same tree have tried), roast chicken with lemon (which we've done before and it's fabulous)...

More lemony days ahead, that's for sure.

Cooking for one

Cooking for two is already full of limitations, like I can't cook a whole chicken unless I'm prepared to eat the same dish, leftover for consecutively three days in a row.

How have I managed to survive cooking lunch for just myself alone for two months? Everyday is a struggle on what is the easiest and most hassle free way of cooking. And no one (a.k.a Rémi) to stoke my ego and praise my cooking except myself (hoho...maybe that's why I'm blogging now). Friends and even myself have questioned how long I can sustain. Dining out is still not an option: $15 a meal + $5 bus fare is just too much.

Here's my survival guide so far:
- Instant noodles with lots of veg has so far been kept to a minimum, perhaps once every week or fortnight
- Fried rice/noodles and the likes
- Pasta with ready or super easy sauce
- Cook more for dinner and reheat leftover for lunch the next day

New strategy:
- Salad (ever since we begin to stockpile a lot of fresh veg from Sunday marketing, and so that I don't grow fat)
- Entice Rémi to come back for lunch (He works nearby, I get more motivation to cook, and we save money)
- Get a job (to justify eating out everyday, but this has been unsuccessful so far)

The pictured salad was done for two (when Rémi came back to pick me up for my physiotherapy session during his lunch break), but the portion can easily be increased or reduced. It was adapted from my Ultimate Book of Fish & Shellfish by Kate Whiteman. Also be flexible in changing the type of veg use according to what is available.

Mediterranean Salad
Serves two

3 handfuls of chunky pasta
half cup of frozen green peas (original recipe uses fresh green beans)
2 large tomatoes
Half can tuna fish in oil, coarsely flaked
2 eggs
5-6 anchovy fillet
basil leaves
black olives and capers to garnish

Dressing:
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp chopped basil (fresh ones are always desirable, but until I grow my own basil, they are not so readily available)

Mix all the ingredients for the dressing together, season with salt and pepper.

Cook pasta in lightly salted boiling water with the frozen peas. Drain well and set aside to cool.

If you haven't thrown away the boiling water, use it to boil the eggs. If you're like me, who doesn't like overcooked hard-boiled eggs, then cook the eggs for just 5 minutes in the boiling water. The yolk will still be slightly semi liquid.

Slice tomatoes and arrange them on the base of salad bowl (or serving plate). Pour some dressing over and sprinkle with dried basil leaves. Toss the pasta with some of the dressing and the tuna and pour over the tomatoes. Arrange eggs on top with the anchovy fillets. Pour remaining dressing and garnish with olives and capers.

Serve immediately.

The original recipe uses a lot of fresh basil, which is always a good complement with tomatoes. So again, if you have them, would be good to use fresh basil instead of the dried ones.

The moon-shaped Blueberry Tart

One advantage of working in a big media company (a.k.a. SPH) is you get to try all the best mooncakes in town everyday during the season.

In the newsroom, all the restaurants/hotels/PRs will send you the best to either get you to write about it or get in your good books. So, even if you're a nobody journalist covering crime and passion, you'll still get to taste the mooncakes given to that star columnist or ever so important editor, as most are graciously donated to the snacking corner for all to enjoy. Then, as I moved to the next department doing events and branding, mooncakes came from suppliers and contractors, though you also became the "givers".

So, 2008 marks my first mooncake deprived Mid-Autumn Festival.

And since my taste for mooncake has become atas, I am not very adventurous when it comes to buying mooncakes here in Welly.

Now, what has mooncakes got to do with Blueberry Tart?

Well, being moon-shaped, as most tarts are, it became our substitute for mooncake on that moon-lit evening.

We had a very yummy local dinner of bak kut teh, ginger chicken and stir fried veg with a group of Singaporean friends. Rémi's responsibility was the dessert, while mine was simply to eat.

Side-track a bit here, you have to be very atas to make blueberry tart in Singapore, because they are so expensive. Maybe $20 for a very small pack? We paid $15 for a 1kg frozen pack here.

Blueberry Tart
serves 6

Sweet dough (pâte sucrée) - it's even easier than the salty tart dough
50g white sugar
1 egg
125g melted unsalted butter
270g flour

500g blueberry
50g sugar
icing sugar (optional)

To make the dough, mix sugar, egg, butter together. Add flour and chill for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200C.

Press the pastry with your fingers over the base and sides of the prepared tin. Prick all over with a fork and bake for 10 minutes.

For the filling, mix blueberries with sugar. Pour over the cooked pastry and sprinkle icing sugar over it for a glossy look (we didn't have icing sugar to do this).

Bake at reduced temperature of 180C for about 10-15 minutes.

*sweet pastry recipe from Christelle Le Ru's Simply Irresistible French Desserts.

The crumble that's easier than tart

Apple crumble counts as one of our favourites because it tastes wonderful and it's hard to make a bad one.

That said, we've also had our fair share of failed apple crumble that became an inverse apple pie. We were to find out later that we had our proportion of ingredients wrong. Our recipe comes from this dictionary thick French cookbook 500 menus by Mariel. So Rémi had translated and copied the recipe onto a piece of paper, with the quantity of everything halved except the butter. So we've used the wrong proportion blissfully at least twice. Sorry, to those who had been unfortunate guinea pigs to our failed crumble experiments.

Crumble is said to originate from wartime Britain due to scarcity of flour, fat and sugar. So it's not French, and it's easier to make than the classic French Apple Tart (which is supposed to be easy to made, according to instructions from Rémi's mother: you make the Pâte brisée and lay slices of apples with sugar on the dough and bake, but we never manage to make it even nearly as good as hers), less troublesome as you do not need to roll out any dough.

Take care to get the right type of apples. The crunchy big apples from China or equally crunchy Fuji apples are out.

Apple Crumble
serves about 6

5 apples (recipe says 1kg apples, but only the grocer will bother to weigh your apples. Use about 5, or adjust according to size of your tin)
200g flour
150g sugar (brown sugar gives a more chewy, caramelised texture)
150g butter (cold, straight from fridge)
cinnamon (a quick dash if using powder, or 1 stick)


Peel apples and dice.

Cook with cinnamon and a bit of water (about 3tbsp) for about 10 minutes under low fire. If you have a really sweet tooth, you may cook apple with some sugar, but the crumble itself is sweet and I'll rather reduce my sugary sin.

For the crumble, rub cold butter into the flour with your fingertips. Mix in sugar. The resulting mixture has to look like a crumble, if you know what I mean. It is dry and doesn't stick to your finger or becomes a dough, and all the flour has been incorporated with the butter.

Pour the cooked apples (minus the cinnamon stick) into a tin. Top with the crumble. Bake at 200C for 20-25 minutes, until the crumble is golden brown.

Eat warm with vanilla ice-cream. C'est bon.

The many faces of dumplings

The English translated term "dumpling" does much injustice to the many possibilities it could stand for in Chinese cuisine.

According to merriam-webster.com, dumpling is a: a small mass of leavened dough cooked by boiling or steaming b: a usually baked dessert of fruit wrapped in dough.

In Chinese culinary terms, I can think of at least seven delights that are unfortunately being loosely translated as "dumplings" -- 水饺(shui jiao)、粽子(zongzi)、汤圆(tangyuan)、小龙包(xiaolongbao)、虾角(har kao)、烧卖(siew mai)、饺子(jiaozi)... all in different shapes, colours, sizes, ingredients and cooking methods. Sweet and savoury as well.

And they are naturally confusing for Rémi, who loves all of them but can't find appropriate words to describe them all.

Above is our attempt at creating shui jiao noodles. The dumplings tasted good, but the tossed dry noodles was just average. Arrwww...I miss hawker food in Singapore (just like any overseas Singaporean).

The cooking method needs little explaining: minced pork, prawns, water chestnut (I used parsnip), dried shitake mushrooms (soaked) and spring onions (or coriander leaves). All chopped, mixed and seasoned with light soya sauce, sesame oil, white pepper and some corn starch for smoother texture. And then wrapped in ready made wanton skin. Seal with corn starch and some pinching at the edges. Cook in boiling water for a few minutes.

As for the noodles, I need to brush up my skills further. Recipe from Indar involves frying shallots in hot oil until it is crispy. Toss the cooked noodles with the crispy shallot and oil, as well as dark soya sauce and sesame oil. A good sambal chilli helps enhance the taste.

The confusing world of lamb, mutton, sheep and goat

I used to dislike roast lamb due to bad experience. Many years ago, I was staying at this residential college while on an exchange programme in Melbourne Uni, and on days when roast lamb was on the menu, I'd switch to a vegetarian diet. It was simply too strong and smelly, I had decided.

But give me Soup Kambing and I'll slurped it till it's finished. Nope, I'm not put off by the stronger taste of mutton.

So me and Remi would have disagreements over the difference between lamb and mutton (when we're away from the computer of course, otherwise we would verify instantly), and I used to think that mutton comes from goat and lamb comes from sheep.

Here's the answer from about.com:
"Lamb is a sheep less than a year old, typically slaughtered between the ages of four and twelve months. Older sheep is called mutton and has a much stronger flavor and tougher meat that many find distasteful."

So I was wrong, but then, in the world of mutton dishes in Indian and/or Malay cooking, it seems that goat meat is used interchangeably with sheep meat, according to an entry in wikepedia. I may be right too.

Anyway, sheep or goat, when it comes to cheese, I dislike it all the same. But when it comes to eating the meat, I've converted and now enjoy lamb almost as much as I do with other types of meat.

Last night was my first attempt at roasting some unidentifiable cuts of lamb we bought at the Sunday market. As usual, I can't find any recipes that uses that part of lamb, and which I have all the ingredients. So, the below recipe is an improvisation from a stuffed lamb leg recipe from Jamie's Italy.

Lamb roasted with herbs
serves 2

6 small pieces of lamb
about 6 cloves of garlic
mixed herbs (parsley, oregano, thyme - recipes always recommend fresh herb, but I only had dried ones)
1-2 anchovy fillet
2-3 tbsp fresh breadcrumbs (yes, I crumbed my own bread with my hands)
1 tsp pinenuts (they are not cheap, so I use sparingly)
sea salt and ground black pepper
rosemary
2 bay leaves
olive oil
1-2 potatoes (I used 1 cos I only had 1)
fresh mushrooms (portobello is nice whole, but if using button mushrooms, sliced them in chunky pieces)
red wine

Preheat oven at 200C.

Chopped half the garlic and the anchovy fillet up finely. Combine with breadcrumbs, mixed herbs, pinenuts, salt and pepper. Add a little olive oil and rub on the lamb pieces. Season with more salt and pepper if you think it's not enough.

Slice potatoes and lay them in a roasting tin, with the mushrooms, bay leaves and remaining garlic over it. Sprinkle with rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper. Put the roast lamb on top.

Roast the lamb for about 1 hour (or until cooked). After about half an hour, baste the lamb with some red wine over the meat. Can continue doing this every 15 minutes until lamb is cooked.

Serve with simple greens like boiled french beans (because trust me, the meat is very oily).


Afternote:
1. Cooking time may be reduced, and having the lamb covered for the first half hour may be useful in achieving juicier meat.
2. Can also serve with pasta tossed with a dash of olive oil.
3. The part of lamb used in this recipe is loin

Thoughts from Lasagne

I recently came across a quote saying "if you can organise your kitchen, you can organise your life". It reminds me of my late mother, who not only singlehandedly managed her kitchen to feed many mouths EVERYDAY (no weekend breaks), but also gave comfortable lives to her children.

She worked her kitchen with ferocious efficiency. On the rare occasions when I have to break into the kitchen to prepare for my Food and Nutrition practical tests, she would gladly dish me plenty of advice, but also chide me for my habit of using too many utensils, leaving a big pile of washing at the end. To her (and also to my domestic helper Indar), the chore of everyday cooking can be lighten by efficient cooking, which involved using just 1 wok and 1 pan for 3-4 dishes, and constant washing along the way, so that you don't get the pain of having a huge pile of washing at the end. After all, a dishwasher is not a luxury we have.

So when I was attempting this Lasagne recipe from Jamie's Italy, I wasn't comfortable with its use of 4 pans. Too technical for someone like me, who is still struggling with keeping my kitchen neat while cooking. And I don't own so many pans.

I altered the recipe slightly, using ready made pasta and replacing roasted shredded meat with minced beef. Not sure what went wrong, but the sauce was too juicy the first night we ate it. When we had the remaining half for lunch the next day, it was just perfect.

Lasagne alla minced beef
serves 2-3

Lasagne
Parmesan cheese for grating
mozzarella cheese (according to taste, I personally prefer my pasta to be not overly cheesy)
a handful of fresh sage leaves, if available
olive oil

for tomato sauce:
150-200g minced beef
olive oil
2 cloves garlic, sliced
rosemary
2 bay leaves
1 tin plum tomatoes

for white sauce:
300 ml milk
sprig of parsley
pinch of nutmeg
1/2 onion, sliced
2 black peppercorns (I used white ones)
30g butter
20g plain flour (quantity estimation, as I've divided the original quantity by 3)
Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
sea salt and ground black pepper


Heat a pan and add some oil. Fry garlic until lightly coloured, add the minced beef. When it's more or less cooked, add the rosemary, bay leaves and tomatoes. Cook gently for 45 minutes with a lid on.

When the tomatoes are nearly done, put milk, parsley, nutmeg, onion and black peppercorns into another pan and bring gently to boil.

Melt the butter in a 3rd pan and add the flour. Mix well, then strain the milk and add slowly, stirring well until you have a thick smooth white sauce. Bring to boil and simmer for a couple of minutes, then take off heat and add Parmesan. (adjust consistency with milk or flour if necessary)

Preheat oven to 180C and butter a baking dish.

Bring a pot of salted water to boil, add some oil, blanch the dry lasagne stripes 2-3 at a time until they are relatively cooked, then cover bottom of dish with the pasta. Top with some tomato meat sauce, then some white sauce followed by Parmesan. Repeat layers until tomato meat sauce is finished. Top with white sauce, sprinkle more Parmesan and scatter mozzarella and sage leaves over. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 45 minutes until golden.

So we had our dinner past 8.30pm again. It was good, but being a slow cook, I will do it only if I have more time.

Sunday market

Sunday market beside Te Papa Museum. Our first visit, and likely to become a weekly affair, where we can get fresh produce direct from the farmers at a cheaper price than at the supermarkets.

Interestingly, the majority of the farmers here are Chinese (don't know which generation, but they speak Cantonese on top of very good English). We were told they are commercial growers from Palmerston North, not your backyard gardeners. It's almost like a Chinese market, where you can find youtiao and douhua, and we got pork buns and chee cheong fan for lunch here too :)

First attempt at porridge

No, we do not eat tarts everyday.

And yes, we cook Chinese food regularly, except that when it comes to Chinese cooking, instinct took over step-by-step recipes. Like simple stir frys based on memory of mom or maid's cooking. Or throwing whatever vegetables and meat we can find in our fridge into soup for noodles, or rice cooker for an all-in-one pot of flavoured rice (black bean sauce, I discovered, works pretty well, same for chicken stock with garlic and ginger for chicken rice. No more spending money on those ready claypot rice mix).

We love porridge, but never attempted them, believing that it takes hours to achieve that smooth, tasty consistency. But we have to start sometime, especially when faced with an almost empty fridge just before our weekly grocery shopping on a lazy Saturday late morning.

My cookbook "Porridge for Lazy People", bought in Xiamen, came in handy. The proportion of rice to water is about 100g rice to about 7 cups water. Add in some frozen prawns, canned and dried mushrooms, chicken stock, soya sauce, simmer for about 40 minutes (according to the recipe, we are supposed to boil violently in high fire the rice and water before starting the simmering process) and voilah! A tasty porridge, just enough for two for a Saturday brunch.

It's Lemon tart now

After the orgy of olive oil, let's move on to butter!

This was freshly done last night, and we made 4 doughs at one go, plus the butter necessary for the lemon filling, we used up 350g of butter. Good that the kiwis sell their butter in 500g block here.

There are 2 different types of tart base in Remi's world of French cooking -- Pâte brisée for savoury dishes, which is also used in the classic French Apple Tart; and Pâte sucrée, which is sweet and has a more buttery/crumbly texture and is used in Strawberry Tart and the like.

We can't agree which tart base we should use for our lemon tart this time (as we have made this many times, and our notes didn't precisely specify and we may have tried both). So we agree to disagree by concluding that both work well, and we used Pâte brisée for yesterday's Lemon Tart, so that we can keep the remaining doughs for our next quiche.

And a word on the lemons we used: it came from our friends B&Z's garden. According to B, a lemon tree bears more than 2000 fruits a year. I want my own lemon tree!


Lemon Tart
1 dough
2 lemons (use 3 if your lemons are small or if you prefer a more tangy flavour) - for both its zest and juice
3 eggs
100g sugar
100g butter

Pre-cook dough in a preheated oven at 200C.

Melt down butter.

Mix melted butter, sugar and lemon juice and zest. Stir strongly together.

Pour on the cooked crust and bake at 200C for 15-20 minutes.

More tarts

Onion lovers: here's a wonderful main course of onions!

I know friends who do not like onions, garlic, parsley, olive, anchovy...the list goes on. But we love almost all kinds of food that comes with a strong taste, so if you have a chance to try out our cooking, it pays to let us know your dislikes. Otherwise, if you hate onions, there's no way you can remove the onions to the side of your plate in this dish

We found this Onion and Olive Tart on an Olive cookbook by Tess Mallos. Extremely oily, as you basically simmer the onions in extra virgin olive oil. hmmmm....makes it so soft and juicy (and of course fat). And the leftover tart keeps well overnight and taste just as good (or even better) for our lunch the next day. I've halved the original quantity so that it feeds about 2-3 persons.

Onion and Olive Tart
Anchovy (optional, enough to spread around your tart - thankfully for us, anchovy is surprisingly more affordable in NZ)
4-5 pitted black olives, halved
1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Topping
3-4 onions, thinly sliced
30ml olive oil (it's very sinful, so adjust according to your conscience)
1/2 bay leaf (we didn't have bay leaf first time we cook this, works well)
2 cloves garlic
chopped thyme
chopped rosemary
salt and black pepper to taste

1 tart base as in previous post


Make the pastry base first.

To make the topping, combine the onion slices, oil and bay leaf in a wide saucepan. Cover and cook over low heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally until the onions are soft but not browned. Add all other ingredients and cook uncovered over slightly increased heat for about 10 minutes until moisture has evaporated. Remove from heat and discard bay leave and cool.

Preheat oven at 200C. Cook tart base for about 15 minutes. Reduced heat to 180C.

Spread the cooled topping over cooked tart base. Top with anchovy and olive halves in a fancy pattern if you like. Brush with (more) oil and return to bake for 25 minutes until cooked.

Picture above shows the tart in pre-cooked state, so don't be afraid to brown the onions a bit.

Of tarts and quiches

These are typically French quick and easy dishes. Not the type of Haute elaborate fine cuisine you find in those super expensive restaurant, where the plates are much larger than the food within. But rather, what you would typically find in a French mom's oven.

To speed up our infamously slow cooking process, we are now used to making 2-4 tart bases at one go, and freeze the remaining ones. So anytime we feel like having a tart or quiche, the base is already done. Just need to defreeze for 1 hour and roll it out. Voilah!

Basic Dough (Pâte brisée)
250g plain flour
125g unsalted butter
pinch of salt
80ml water

Preheat oven at 180C.

Mix flour and butter using your fingertips. Add water slowly.

Knead gently into a dough, do not over knead.

Keep in fridge for 30 minutes.

Roll out thinly on a floured board (thin crust is nicer) and line on a prepared tart tin. Using a fork, poke holes around the base and cook the base for 15-20 minutes (or until cooked and lightly brown).

The above quantity is generally enough for two 20cm tarts. So we like to keep half of the dough for our next cooking.

What goes into the tart?

To get inspiration, check out supermarkets/cafes on what they have. That's what we did while grocery shopping. And you get your key ingredients ready at the same time.

Or, if you're a tomato lover like us, who always have a ready supply of tomatoes in your fridge, try the super easy and yummy Tomato Tart. Spread Dijon Mustard (not the English types, but those with a lot of visible seeds gives extra good taste). Cover with tomato slices. Spread more mustard over the tomatoes, sprinkle with cheese (optional) or basil leaves (optional) and bake for 20 minutes at 200C.


Quiche of Spinach + Onions + Feta

1/2 pack of fresh spinach
1 onion, diced
bacon (optional, quantity as much as you like)
Feta cheese (also according to taste)
1 tsp chopped parsley

2 eggs
80ml cream
150ml milk
salt and pepper

Fry onions with some olive oil. Add spinach and bacon and cook until spinach is wilted.

In a mixing bowl, beat eggs, milk and cream together. Add seasoning and cheese and the rest of ingredients.

Pour into the pre-cook tart base and bake at 200C for about 20 minutes or until the quiche is golden brown.

Accidental milo meringue

It is hard to miss spotting the decadent and yummy looking meringues in French bakeries. But my maiden French meringue experience didn't quite turn out well. It was 2003. Me and Gwen finally gave in to temptation and bought one meringue to share when we were backpacking in Southern France. It was verrrrry sweet, dry and hard, and still too sweet. We didn't finish our sugary sin.

So, when Rémi and I were left with 4 egg whites after making Crème Brûlée, meringue didn't come to the top of my mind. I searched through my favourite, fail-proof dessert cookbook by Christelle Le Ru but only her chocolate meringue recipe is willing to take in my four egg whites.

It's a choice between wasting the egg whites altogether or experimenting on a new recipe. To substitute for our lack of cocoa powder, we use our favourite milo. The result is a surprise treat -- soft and chewy, with the distinctive malted chocolate flavour that we so love. It can be enjoyed on its own, or broken into small pieces and indulged with plain yoghurt.

Milo meringues
4 egg whites
pinch of salt
230g white sugar
2 big spoons of milo powder
1 teaspoon cornflour

Preheat oven to 180C.

Beat the egg whites and pinch of salt into soft peaks. Add the sugar slowly until the mixture is shiny and glossy. Fold in the milo and cornflour.

Spoon the mixture onto greased baking trays. Leave sufficient space for the mixture to expand.

Bake for 5 minutes. After which turn off the oven but continue leaving it in the oven for 30 more minutes.

The original recipe indicated a quantity of 25 meringues, it filled up 3 trays when we made it.

* recipe adapted from Christelle Le Ru's Simply Irresistible French Desserts.

The dummy guide to polite French

I can't say I can speak French (at all). Having a French husband doesn't mean you get a free French language teacher, not especially if he is more familiar with python and c++ language.

While it is my long term goal to master this beautiful language, I am far from being able to converse in it, having only taken lessons for a mere 5 months couple of years ago.

But in case you're planning on a French holiday, it's fast to pick up a few quick French favourite phrases, that will sure boost your image in front of your French hosts.

The usuals:
bonjour - good day
salut - similar to good day, common when you do the cheek to cheek kiss
merci beaucoup (pronounced bu-koo) - thank you
au revoir (pronounced or-voir) - goodbye
bon nuit - good night

The 'extras' to impress:
c'est bon - it's good: said especially after taking the first bite of any food you're trying. If it's not good, you don't say so, but anything else, even if it is just ordinarily nice, say it's good. It'll make your French host very happy. French are optimistic lot and like to give good comments to most things. So why not go with the flow.

c'est magnifique - it's magnificent: if good is not good enough, make it magnificent!

tres bien - very good: again, everything is very good.

c'est jolie - it's beautiful.

How do we say "bad", "ugly", "lousy"...in French? I'm afraid I do not know at all and do not need to know. The above are useful enough in striking a friendly and polite image in a French household.