Southeast Asian night 2

Our Southeast Asian dinner night continued for the second day. Once I open a packet of coconut cream, I have to finish using it.

This time, no French dessert distraction. Just simply divine sago gula melaka. And we are very pleased to have come up with a more attractive way of serving up this Malay dessert. We have definitely made a giant improvement on the presentation part.

But we still ended up with making too much sago. 100g is too much even for 4 persons. Perhaps I should measure sago by tablespoons next time, and allocate at most 2 tablespoons per serving.

Main course comes in the form of Opor Ayam with Nasi Lemak, Enda's specialty which I misses every now and then.

And I have found tempeh here too, although at a much inflated price. It is a traditional Javanese food that binds fermented soybeans into a cake form and is very rich in protein. It is one of Enda's favourite snacks, and I used to snack on it with her when she's cooking dinner. Tempeh is very cheap in Singapore (and even cheaper in Indonesia), but here in New Zealand, it costs 6 times more, as it is found in organic grocery stores rather than Asian grocery shops.

Part 3 of my Southeast Asian night would be pineapple rice. The pineapple I bought last Sunday is still waiting to serve its gastronomical purpose.

Not slacking on desserts

After one week of dessert deprivation in Tonga, followed by another week of after dinner yoghurt due to post holiday rest, we're back to our rigourous dessert régime.

Saturday's lunch dessert was rhubarb tart, with lots of butter going into the crust, and tablespoons of sugar dumped into the rhubarb. Dinner's dessert was some leftover Chinese sago layered cake with red bean paste filling, not quite a success but not to be wasted.



On Sunday night, Rémi made choux pastry for the first time (for the record, I've tried making choux pastry several times years ago with mixed results) while I busied myself with cooking assam fish for dinner. So we're having profiteroles for 3 consecutive meals and still counting.

Have we put on weight? Thankfully not. I'm still a comfortable distance from 50kg and Rémi is still way below 70kg. And no, we don't pump irons in gyms to maintain our waistline as well.

Despite having enjoyed more desserts than I ever had in Singapore, I seem to have an easier time keeping my weight constant. I think eating more homecooked meals really helps.

I do a fair bit of Chinese cooking at home every week, simply because it requires less research for me, less hassle and also healthier. Well, Chinese food in takeaways are very oily and often deep fried. But homecooked Chinese food is more about soups, steamed fish, stir fried meat or vegetables with plain rice.

And of course, portion control every meal, so that we can always have space left for dessert.

How about snacking? That's kept to minimum, and I'm now resolved to snack only on fruits. Mandarins make a fine snack by the way.

Super Sinful Kouign Amann

There are some foods where just by eating one serving will fulfill your monthly quota of calories intake. Duck confit is one of them. Kouign Amann is the dessert equivalent of duck confit, except that instead of the letting the duck drumstick swim in duck fat, you drown the cake dough in a sea of butter and sugar. Don't be deceived by the harmless looking crust of the picture I took.

Kouign-amann (pronounced ku-nya-marn) is a celtic specialty from Brittany. The name comes from the Breton words for cake ("kouign") and butter ("amann"). It's quite like bread (think croissant), made by folding bread dough several times so that you achieve a multilayer cake/bread. Like croissant, it is oily, as you have to spread 10 times more butter on it than on kaya toast (assuming you use 1 tablespoon butter for kaya toast). It is more sinful than croissant, in the sense that after pouring 10 big tablespoons of butter, you dump yet another 10 big tablespoons of sugar onto it.

The result is a bread-like crusty cake that has a deceptively light but oily layered texture, with crispy sugar that caramelise in between the layers.

Thankfully, we shared our sin with M (who decided to work doubly hard at the gym for the week after the dessert).

Rémi did everything, I just provided eye power. No recipe sharing here since I have no idea how he did it, except that he took the recipe proportions from Camille's cookbook, and followed the steps from the following video clip.

More on pork and saucisson

In my humble opinion (not that it counts for anything), saucisson ranks very highly in French food culture, besides wine and cheese.

Saucisson is large dried sausage, normally pork cured with salt, and eaten sliced as a cold cut. Sounds straightforward? Until you go to a saucisson gourmet shop and you'll be spoilt for choice with the varieties available. Like cured with Provencal herbs, garlic, nuts, peppercorn...or from pork to wild boar to donkey meat!

Yeap, we tried the donkey meat saucisson in Meribel, right in the Savoie region famous for its saucisson, it's powerful! I think Corsica is another region famous for its delicious varieties of saucisson, particularly the wild boar ones and we enjoyed it just as much.

Besides eating it sliced as appetisers, saucisson is handy in picnics and makes excellent sandwiches in between long hikes. We also tried fusion, by adding it to Chinese pork porridge with pork floss and ham. Just for fun.

Our affinity for 'pungent' food probably explains our obliviousness to the testosterone raging smell of nz pork.



I also remember fondly of the butcher shops we visited in Barcelona two years ago. The Spanish may be more obsessed with their ham than the French of their saucisson. Seeing so many hanging legs (complete with the trotters) straight in your face can be a bit off-putting, but the thinly sliced ham never disappointed us during our trip. Prices vary widely too, according to the breeds of the pig, their feeds, the region of origins, age etc. Just ask the butcher and he'll rant off all the subtle differences that possibly could only be picked up by a local or gourmet.

It's a pity we can't bring saucisson or ham from our trips back to New Zealand.

Dissecting Pork

All my Singaporean friends swear that the pork in New Zealand has a strong smell, unlike those in Singapore. Me and Rémi are quite oblivious to this 'smell' so far. But even my brother in faraway Sweden complains about the 'smelly' pork there. Hmmm...is this due to different breeds of pig or feeds used in Western countries? But wait, Singapore imports frozen pork from Australia.

My father, a retired pig farmer, solves the mystery for us.
Male pigs are inherently smelly due to the testosterone raging in their balls.

I further quote from Wikipedia:
"In domestic pigs the taint is caused by androstenone and skatole concentrations stored in the fat tissues of the animal after sexual maturity. It is released when the fat is heated and has a distinct odor and flavor that is widely considered unpalatable to consumers."

So male pigs, before they reach puberty, are castrated by Asian farmers (at least in Malaysia or Indonesia, where Singapore gets its pork supply), making them barrows! Well, when I see pigs in farms or zoos, I do not particularly check how their male anatomy looks like, but according to my father, pigs that can't be castrated due to, say inward growth of their balls are usually sold at steep discounts to the butchery, and used for making smoked sausages or ham.

What about Australian pork? As the Chinese are so picky about the odour, butcher in Singapore only imports female pigs from Australia, since they may not be able to influence the farmers there to remove the male pigs' manhood.

Maybe that's why it leaves only male pigs for sale in the Western market, if all the female ones have been exported.

Since I can't tell the butcher in kiwi supermarkets I only want female or castrated pork, my father has this advice: buy cuts that steer clear of the hind of the pig.

Which comes to the next problem: which cuts should I buy? Especially since pork sold here are cut more for cooking chops. And that I'm more used to Chinese names for different cuts for Chinese cooking.

Here's my suggestion for Chinese cooking, some of which are still subjected to further trials and experiments:
Fillet or Tenderloin (腰柳，腰嫩肉，小里脊): The long thin muscle, that is the most tender and more expensive cut in Singapore. Called premium cut fillet on supermarket shelves here, it is excellent for slicing into thin strips for stir-fry or in soup. It is much better than the already sliced pork which is from possibly a lesser cut of the pork and usually less tender.

Loin chop (里脊肉): Being located on the back, they are by default far from the testosterone raging part of the male pig. And lean too.

Shoulder/Blade(肩胛肉，梅花肉): Same as above. Supposed to be good for mincing or dicing for stews. That's also where the spare ribs come from.

Pork belly (五花肉): Fatty, but we love it stew the Hokkien way, richly seasoned with five spice powder, dark soy sauce....never mind smell or no smell.

Mountain food, Swedish food, holiday food

Finally back from my long break. The holiday is mainly about spending time with family. But we also get to eat lots of good food, reminisce lost tastes and discover new delights.

In Singapore, it's more about gorging ourselves with as much local delicacies as possible without suffering from indigestion. Managed laksa, nasi lemak, dou hua (sweet beancurd), steamboat at home, xiaolongbao, bak chor mee, to name a few. Also grabbed 2 new cookbooks about local desserts and claypot dishes.

Over in France, Rémi's mom cooked a lot of mountain food in Meribel, an alpine ski village where we spent one week. Like the Tartiflette, a specialty of the Savoie region. To make it, boil potatoes, peel and slice, top with crispy bacon and generous blocks of the Reblochon cheese and bake. It was yummy. Other hearty meals include cassoulet, a casserole containing meat (eg pork sausages, duck and mutton) and white haricot beans, wild boar stew and more.

In Sweden, the Semla (above) is a must-have at Swedish cafes. A wheat bun stuffed with almond paste and whipped cream, it is traditionally eaten before fasting in Lent starts. They are available in bakeries and shops between Christmas and Easter.

Then, there's the lingonberry, that is eaten with almost everything, from toast, syrup to meatballs. I managed to try this Swedish bak-zhang (meat dumpling), like a potato meatball accompanied with lingonberry. Not bad.

My DIY plastic bags holder

While it is absolutely inedible, this candied felt bag or box (however you see it) is an integral part of my aim to keep my kitchen tidier.

I draw my inspiration from those plastic plastic bag holders by Ikea, which has many holes for you to draw out plastic bags. But first, there's not a single Ikea in the entire New Zealand (whose presence would otherwise drive the local furniture industry out of business). Second, my kitchen cabinet is not big enough for its tall holder anyway.

Stiff felt is the chosen material as I like it. Also, it holds the shape, yet is more resistant to water than paper. The shocking pink colour was chosen by Spotlight, as that's the only colour available. I combined it with my leftover black and fuchsia pink felt from an earlier project to make cup coasters, so that the final colour combination is less shocking.

On the same trip to Spotlight, I have bought a cheap wine red 6 ply cotton thread, intending to use it to sew the felt pieces together. And a piece of off-white thick textile from the clearance bin, wanting to use it as a table cloth for food photography. As I was drawing the threads out of the textile to create a fray effect on both ends, I collected enough thread to sew my felt box together! Even more cheapo (whole project costing less than S$5, with leftover materials for next project).

So, a good part of Sunday afternoon was spent sewing the felt pieces together using box stitches. The size of the box is partly determined by the size of the felt, which I had halved to form each face. A strip connects the top face of the box to better hold the shape of the box together. Plastic bags are loaded from the top. A hole is cut through one of the face of the box, so you could draw plastic bags out, like tissue paper. This is the part where you can be creative. Rémi rejected my suggestion of cutting a heart shape out of the hole. So the next easiest design I could think of is making a sweetie pie looking flower.

I even contemplated hanging the box from the ceiling. But well...

Discovering Dukkah

We discovered this delicious Egyptian dry mixture of chopped nuts, seeds and Middle Eastern spices and flavors at a Christmas market in Wellington.

We love festive markets like this, as it's a chance to experience new flavours and tastes, especially local produce, home-made jams, dips and honey. It's like going to a Japanese supermarket, where you get to sample different food products, all for free. And it's no surprise that we ended up buying a lot of stuffs.

This Dukkah mix of sesame, almonds, sunflowers, garlic, oreganum and basil has lasted us quite some time. To enjoy, dip your bread into extra virgin olive oil (or avocado oil), then onto the nuts. Yum yum.

When to enjoy? Do like the French do, with their endless courses for dinner. Start with Dukkah as "apperatif". This is before the formal dinner, when everyone relaxes in the living room or garden with finger food or snacks. It's common to invite friends for just chitchat over "apperatif" without the dinner option. Less work to do in the kitchen.

After which the dinner begins with starter, main course, cheese, desert and ends with coffee or tea (and small slice of chocolate).

Our Pre-Christmas dinner

Since we may be stuck in some remote small town, or even in a tent in the South Island on Christmas, cooking instant noodles over a small camping stove, we thought we might as well have a nice dinner one week earlier.

Being in recession mode, and also for the pleasure of cooking something fancy, we decided against going to a fancy restaurant. Afterall, we've been dining out quite a lot recently.

Yet, being in festive mode, we spent some effort in gathering nice ingredients, and more time and energy in preparing it. After three intensive hours, the result was quite rewarding.

Starter came in the form of Scallop Ceviche, a Latin American dish. Main course was Open Ravioli with Parma Ham, Asparagus and Basil Butter. Dessert was Tiramisu presented in a delicately 'crafted' choclate cup. No extra space for aperitif, cheese or bread.

Will share recipes in upcoming posts.

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.

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.

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.

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 :)

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.