Basil Pesto

I love having fresh herbs. Unfortunately with apartment living, it is hard to keep my pots of herbs alive for long. They either don't survive the onslaught of wind outside, or the greedy bugs, or their roots outgrow the pot too fast. Especially my favourite basil.

We still like to have fresh basil in our salads every now and then, whenever we feel like it. And we do not like to buy the cut basil leaves from the supermarket and leave them to rot in the fridge (since we never know when we will feel like having basil in our salads). So what we're doing is to buy 1 pot of fresh living basil plant from the supermarket. It can usually last about 1-2 months with some tender loving care instead of just 1 week in the fridge.

And since we know my pot of basil will not survive long enough to provide for 100 servings of salads, we will almost always make some pesto to make full use of plant.


Here's a recipe from our favourite easy Italian cookbook.

Basil Pesto

20 large basil leaves
6 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
handful of pine nuts (well, recipe says 50g but we're very easygoing on this)
125g Parmesan cheese, grated
250ml olive oil (I can't bear to look at this)
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Either chop or puree basil, garlic, pine nuts and cheese in a blender (glad we've got one now). If using the blender, add a little oil so that the mixture can turn well. Pour the olive oil slowly while stirring until the sauce emulsifies. Season to taste.

Goes well with gnocchi.

Simple berry delights

I love summer in Wellington. The weather still sucks, but at least there's more sunny days and it is marginally less cold.

The best part of summer is the berry season. Because of the crappy weather, we have been missing out on buying lots and lots of berries at the Sunday market. But we are still enjoying lots of berries from the supermarket.

They make perfect quick dessert. Like here, we have blackberries and strawberries in our natural plain yoghurt. Topped with vanilla sugar and some bit of cream.

Mix and match quiche

I'm feeling bad about not updating my blog for a long while. Since finding a part time job, I'm finding less time to experiment new dishes in the kitchen. What I'm getting good at though is cooking very quickly, and for multiple meals, as I pack my lunchbox most days.

For instance, I like to cook extra for dinner, so that I have some leftover for next day's lunch. It could also mean preparing for next day's lunchbox (like a tabbouleh salad) while cooking tonight's dinner. Or even better, on days when I have French till late, I would pack my lunchbox while preparing dinner during breakfast time. This is usually a slowcook dish, like chopping up vegetables to make ratatouille or a Chinese pork ribs soup.

Lunchbox tomorrow: Zucchini and Prawns Quiche with onions.
Making quiche to me is becoming more like cooking Chinese fried rice or noodles, there's a lot of improvisation. I would throw in whatever ingredients I can find in the fridge into the egg mixture.

So using the Quiche Lorraine recipe's proportion of eggs to cream, I vary the ingredients that goes into it.

Here's some mix and match combination which is definitely not exhaustive. Feel free to be inspired at cafes and supermarkets too.

- zucchini and prawns
- tomatoes and black olives
- spinach and bacon
- bacon and feta cheese
- salmon and leek
- onions and chicken
- mushrooms and ham

Parisian designer style Quiche Lorraine

I didn't make this up. This recipe was inspired by a Parisian designer friend. Tall, slender, pretty and fashionable, she exudes the type of style that we imagine all fashionable Parisian ladies to be. And she proves that fashionable big city Frenchwomen are just as good cooks as moms and grannies. You can also rightly imagine her to cook in super sleek modern kitchen.

We had the pleasure to taste her Quiche Lorraine, to which she added a strong goat cheese. I normally find goat cheese too strong for my liking, but the quiche just brings out the taste of the cheese perfectly.

So I was determined to replicate her Quiche Lorraine. Using Camille's traditional Quiche Lorraine recipe (cheese is not an ingredient of original quiche Lorraine recipes), I experimented with goat feta and sheep feta on separate occasions and liked both very much.

Quiche Lorraine with goat cheese
Serves four

1 portion of pâte brisée tart dough
approx 200g bacon
3 eggs
200ml crème fraiche
goat feta (or be daring to experiment with different types of goat cheese)
salt and pepper

Prepare the tart dough and leave in fridge for half and hour.

Preheat oven at 180ºC. Roll out tart thinly and line on a prepared tin (either floured or greased). Using a fork, poke holes all over the base.

Cut the bacon into small slices and sprinkle all over the uncooked tart base. Put into oven and bake for 10 minutes. I like Camille's way of crisping the bacon without using an additional frying pan.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs with the cream together. Add salt and pepper. Pour into the precooked tart.

Here's why I left out specifying the quantity of the cheese earlier. Cut the feta into small cubes, just enough to spread all over the tart.

Bake the quiche in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Serve hot.

Oeufs Au Lait, Creme Brulee's not-so-famous cousin

Good friend PY was wondering why I haven't been updating my blog as often. I'm still cooking on a near daily basis and enjoying plenty of good desserts every other day. But not every dish is worth documenting, I supposed. And then I have been busy writing other much more boring stuff.

Thought I'll introduce this perhaps lesser known French dessert. We all know crème brûlée. We all love crème brûlée. And we all like to order crème brûlée at our favourite French restaurant. I would imagine, as its lesser known cousin (or even twin brother), Oeufs Au Lait must feel extremely neglected.

Actually, crème brûlée has at least 2 not-so-famous cousins (or twin brothers, whichever you see it). The other being crème Catalane (Catalane is the region in Southwest France that borders Spain) and bears an even closer resemblance to crème brûlée. And it is widely served in restaurants in this region. It is as sinful as crème brûlée in terms of the number of egg yolks used, and has a more citrus taste than traditional vanilla flavoured crème brûlée. The difference lies in the cooking method. There is no baking in crème Catalane.

And don't ask me which of the creamy/eggy desserts is the most original or has been invented first. I'm sure the French haven't agreed on the answer yet.

As for Oeufs Au Lait, its name tells us what it is: eggs with milk. It tastes like a sweetened version of the Japanese steamed egg Chawamushi. And it may have less sugarly sins than crème brûlée.

So now we know French dessert is not all about crème brûlée even though it stills rank highly in my list of favourites.

And predictably, I like to refer to Camille's cookbook of French classic dishes to try out all these classic French desserts. Hmm...looking through the dessert pictures in this French cookbook, I suspect that besides crème Catalane and oeufs au lait, two other desserts -- blanc-manger au lait d'amandes and oeufs à la neige -- may also be possible distant cousins of our favourite crème brûlée.

Oeufs Au Lait
Makes two small ramekins (we did it on a day when we have only 1 egg left, feel free to increase the quantity proportionately)

130ml milk
1 egg
a few drops of vanilla essence
15g sugar (perhaps 1 teaspoon?)

Preheat oven at 150 degrees Celcius.

Add vanilla essence into the milk and boil. You may like to use vanilla beans instead. If using that, let the vanilla beans infuse for 5 minutes before removing the vanilla pod.

Whisk the egg(s) with sugar. Gradually add the hot milk while stirring. Pass the creamy egg mixture through a sieve into small ramekins.

Place the ramekins in a mould or tin and fill up with water to form a water bath. Bake in oven for about 30 minutes.

Serve cool. You may also make a caramelised sugar syrup and pour a thin layer to the oeufs au lait before serving.

Crumble of Pears and Dates

Hmmm....my food presentation skills are not doing justice to this tasty and easy to make crumble. Now it looks like some gluey fruits that has been messed around on a kid's plate.

Looks aside, it is a pretty light dessert after a heavy dinner, as the crumble pastry is just a sprinkle on the pear rather than a thick crust

The recipe is adapted from the Crumble cookbook by Martine Lizambard, published by Solar Editions. And it's so easy to adapt the portion size that I'm regurgitating the recipe based on memory.

Crumble of Pears and Dates
Serves two

2 pears (1 pear per person)
A few dried dates (Persian dates, not Chinese red dates, can be replaced with figs)
Some honey (about 1 tablespoon)
Roughly 1 spoon of butter (after adding my reduced quantity of butter, I regretted it as omitting the butter would make healthier dessert)

For the crumble:
30g flour (or 1 heap tablespoon)
15g cold butter
20g brown sugar (or about 1 tablespoon)
Sprinkle almond flakes or walnut pieces

Preheat oven at 200 degree Celcius.

Peel pear and quarter it. Put in a small pan with butter over low heat. Add honey. Cook for about 3-5 minutes.

Cut the dates into cubes. Mix into the pear mixture. Put everything into a baking tin.

Prepare the crumble by rubbing butter into the flour until all butter are evenly mixed into the flour. Add sugar and mix well.

Sprinkle the crumble over the pears. Sprinkle nuts over the crumble. Bake for about 20 minutes until the crumble is golden brown.

Nice and still easy Creme Brulee

It's been almost one year since I last attempted Crème Brûlée. Now I'm back with an improved version, even though I still use the same recipe. This is because I now have 2 not-so-secret weapons: real vanilla beans and blow torch. And each time I do it, I am reminded again of the simple steps in making this favourite French dessert.

We had bought vanilla pods with the remaining of our Tongan dollars at the airport when we were holidaying in the country. Despite my love for all things vanilla, I'm clueless as to how the real thing looks like and thankfully, youtube comes to my rescue to show me how to even open it!

As for the blow torch, we were actually shopping for electric toothbrush at Moore Wilson. Being rather put off by the hefty price tag of fancy electric toothbrushes, our attention were instead attracted by the colourful blow torch on display right next to the oral hygiene devices. Well, I guess anyone with a sweet tooth needs to work harder on keeping their pearly whites clean.

Anyway, to keep the long story short, we were happy to sacrifice our dental health in the name of holy good creme brulee.

Below is the recipe from Camille's French classic cookbook, slightly amended from my last post.

Crème Brûlée
makes 6 cups

1 whole egg
4 egg yolks
80g castor sugar
half vanilla pod or a few drops of vanilla essence
400ml liquid cream
brown sugar

If you're using vanilla beans, slit the pod lengthwise into two and scour the beans out from half the pod with the back of your knife. Check youtube if you're unsure. Add half the pod and the vanilla beans to the 400ml cream and heat over medium-low fire to infuse the vanilla flavour until the cream is just about to boil.

In case you're short of say 100ml cream (which we are always short of, as cream do not seem to come in 400ml packaging), top it up with milk. (Maybe that's my secret to making a lighter version of creme brulee...hmmm)

Set aside for 15 minutes. Preheat oven at 130 degree Celcius.

After that, pour over a sieve to remove the vanilla pod. Don't throw the vanilla pod away, dry it and keep it in a jar of sugar to make vanilla sugar.

Whisk the egg, egg yolks, castor sugar (if you're using vanilla essence, add it during this stage) together (just a manual balloon hand whisk will do), then add the cream in slowly until well blended.

Pour mixture over a sieve (to remove bubbles) into individual ramekins (coffee cups may work well). This quantity makes 6 cups.

Cook in preheated oven of 130C. The cups have to be placed in a tray of water to moderate actual heat going through and prevent the eggs from become omelettes.

Cooking time is about 40-45 minutes, but be sure the cream has gelled in the cups. What we do is shake our oven a little bit (or tilt the cups), and you'll also see the custard surface a little puffed up, indicating that the inside is cooked.

You also wouldn't want to overcook the custard. We cooked our perfect crème brûlée in 45 minutes in our fan-baked oven, but every oven is different, so some careful observation is necessary here. If still unsure, you may consider sacrificing one cup by piercing through the surface to check if it's cooked inside.

Put in fridge for 1 hour before serving. To serve, sprinkle generously brown sugar on top and grill in a very hot oven (say 200-250C for 5 minutes, watch carefully to avoid burning the top) for the surface to caramelise before serving, or better still, get a blow torch.

Camille has another suggestion which we have tried with half the batch of creme brulee with good results: leave the creme brulee to cool in the oven door open, and cool overnight. Then repeat the last step above.

Also, if you like to experiment with different flavours, just replace the vanilla beans with say lemon zest, coffee liqueur, almond essence....

Southeast Asian night 3 with tropical fruits

We had a fruity dinner of pineapple rice and papaya sago dessert. Serving the food in the hollowed out fruits is sure a fancy way to impress guests (in my case, my other half).

As for the recipe for making pineapple rice, I found that there are as many versions of it as there are for fried rice. So as usual, I cooked it according to the prevailing ingredients I had on hand, except for the precious pork floss specially imported from Singapore, and the pineapple, that was specially bought for the occasion.

I had referred to Baking Mum's recipe to help me begin and adjusted the ingredients and taste accordingly.

A close-up look at the papaya sago dessert. It definitely looks better than it tastes.

The original plan was to make mango sago dessert with some leftover sago from the sago gula melaka, but a last minute trip to the supermarket yielded no mangoes. So we switched quickly to plan B with papaya.

Then my plan B was also quite fluid. Finding no suitable recipes online that used both papaya and sago, I concocted my own. Scooped the flesh out of the whole papaya, pureed them, added milk to make some kind of milkshake, but then I didn't have enough milk, so it's somewhere between a milkshake and papaya puree consistency. Thankfully, the papaya was rather sweet, though we ended up adding some more sugar to it.

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.

Improvised blueberry charlotte

I have a little of all the key ingredients leftover from previous dessert experiments. They are not enough to make another cake or tart, but too precious to waste. So a blueberry charlotte is created out of no recipe. Which is the beauty of charlotte, since no cooking is involved. You just mix and match what you can find in your pantry or fridge and voilah! A satisfactory conclusion to a great dinner.

My improvised blueberry charlotte
Serves two

A handful of blueberries
2 tablespoon good quality berry jam (I used mixed berry jam)
100ml fresh cream
Sponge biscuits
1 spoon icing sugar (castor sugar will do too)
a few drops of vanilla essence

Remembering that these are mostly leftover ingredients, the quantity is not really precise and that important. Just use what you can find.

Mix the blueberries with jam over low fire for a few quick minutes, so that the jam softens and you kind of get a thick coulis. Leave to cool.

Whipped the cream with sugar and vanilla essence until it becomes creamy. To get perfect whipped cream, keep your mixing bowl and beater sticks in the freezer for 15 minutes before you start to whip it. And the cream is ready when it leaves a trail. Overwhipping it makes the cream becomes butter and buttermilk (which means it is not really wasted, just make it into butter for your breakfast).

Arrange the sponge biscuits together in the way you like in a dessert glass or bowl. Crush some small pieces to line the bottom of the glass. Spoon the whipped cream, followed by a spoon of the berry mixture. Put a few small pieces of biscuits, followed by another spoon of whipped cream. Topped with berry mixture.

If you like the sponge biscuits to be soft like cake, make a quick syrup out of jam and dip each biscuits briefly in the syrup before using them.

Leave in the fridge for about 4 hours before serving.

Balinese style satay with Tumeric Rice

We went to Tonga recently for holiday. If you don't know where's Tonga, you're not alone. We had to google to find that it is somewhere in the South Pacific, somewhere close to  Fiji and Samoa, not too far from the equator...but give me an unlabeled map of the world now, I still won't be able to tell the extremely tweeny islands of Tonga from those of Fiji or Cook or the likes or maybe even locate it in the vast ocean.

The South Pacific is a different tropical paradise from the one I have come from. The sea is always greener on the other side, so my friends from back home in sunny Singapore are green with envy about my trip. But one striking similarity is the abundance of coconut trees. There's definitely more coconut trees in tiny Tonga than there are in little Singapore. And so, the number one souvenir I brought back is not any of the beautiful handicrafts woven by the local women out of grass, but a coconut grater done by a village man. And the number one skill acquired by Rémi from the locals was how to open a coconut without making a big mess.

Yes, I'm still sore by the absence of freshly grated coconut in Wellington. But the grater I bought would only be useful if I mount it on a wooden bench. Even then, I still don't have the Tongan convenience of plucking a coconut from the tree whenever I need one. So up till now, the grater remains unused, and for making the satay, I conveniently substituted freshly grated coconut with dessicated coconut. Not quite the same, but for a satay deprived person, the taste buds are less picky.

Balinese style satay is different from the meat satay I'm used to in Singapore, mainly because it uses ground meat. I don't recall having it when I went to Bali years ago. As I have bought ground lamb meat by mistake, I decided to try the recipe I found in "Authentic Recipes from Indonesia" even though it is a recipe for chicken/duck satay.

Balinese style Satay
Makes about 10 sticks

About 250g ground chicken or duck (or in my case, I used lamb)
1 cup (100g) freshly grated coconut (I used dessicated coconut and added some coconut milk to hydrate the coconut flakes)
2 kaffir lime leaves, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon shaved palm sugar
some salt
10 bamboo skewers. The stem of lemongrass can be used as skewer too.

Spice Paste
2 candlenuts
1 cm fresh galangal, peeled and sliced
1 cm kencur root (another kind of ginger which I can't find and so left out)
1 cm tumeric, peeled and sliced, or half teaspoon ground tumeric
1 red finger-length chili, deseeded
3 shallots, peeled
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 clove
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
half teaspoon black pepper
pinch of ground nutmeg
half teaspoon dried shrimp paste
1 tablespoon oil

Make the spice paste by grinding everything except the oil into a smooth paste. Even though I've bought myself a blender now, I still like to use the pestle and mortar for making spice paste, as it helps to release the fragrance of all the spices.

Heat oil over medium heat and stir fry the ground spice paste for 3-5 minutes until fragrant. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

When cooled, mix the spice paste with ground meat and all the other ingredients (logically not the skewers). Set aside to marinate for 2 hours in the refrigerator.

If using the bamboo skewers, soak them in water for 4 hours before using. Press the meat mixture onto each skewer firmly to form a kebab. Repeat until all the meat mixture is used up.

Grill in preheated oven for about 3 minutes or more on each side, basting with the marinade, until cooked and the meat is browned but not burned.

Served with sambal kecap (sweet soy sauce sambal), made by combining sliced shallots, sliced red chillies and sweet Indonesian soy sauce (kecap manis). I used normal sambal chili sauce and they go well together too.

As a meal, serve with tumeric rice and another vegetables (like stir fried bean sprouts) and tempeh.

Tumeric rice
Serves two

1 cup long-grained rice, washed
1 level teaspoon tumeric powder (it's very overpowering, so always better to start with less than more and adjust to the taste you like the next time you cook)
1 onion, diced
1 cm piece ginger
1 star anise
2 cloves
3 cm piece cinnamon
1 pandan leaf

In a rice cooker, place all ingredients together. Add 1 and half cup water and switch on the rice cooker. Well, being a Chinese, who grow up on a daily diet of rice, an electric rice cooker is the most useful appliance in each household and I don't know any Singaporean family who doesn't own a rice cooker or cook rice over the stove.

Mountain of peanut butter cookies

I can't say peanut butter is my favourite spread. The thickness and richness sometimes feel too heavy and dry to my liking. Yet, there are times when I crave for it. So, although I do not bake cookies often, I had an urge recently to make peanut butter cookies.

What I have learnt from this peanut butter cookie session:
1) As the recipe uses only 1 egg, I can't divide the portion and so ended up with a big heap of cookies;
2) I know why I don't bake cookies often, because although I like to eat cookies, I don't like to eat heaps of cookies;
3) With the amount of butter and peanut butter that goes into making the cookies, it is best that I share them with more friends to distribute the fat sin.

I found the peanut butter cookie recipe from Elise's Simply Recipes, one of the food blogs I frequented.

Improved Blueberry Tart

Certain French food can be extraordinarily seasonal. Or it seems to be the case for Rémi's family. And blueberry tart is made mainly during the blueberry season. While you can probably get frozen blueberries from the supermarket out of season, the pleasure is partially derived from picking wild blueberries in the countryside. And since the season is particularly short, the window for enjoying blueberry tart is particularly short.

Anyway, this is his third attempt at making blueberry tart with frozen blueberries. And it just get nicer and nicer.

The recipe is still the same as the last one we did. The main difference this time:

1. The dough is not pre-cooked;
2. After flattening the dough on the tart mould, sprinkle ground almonds over the base of the tart, followed by sugar;
3. Then you spread generously the blueberries, filling up the tart, and sprinkle more sugar;
4. Bake for 30 minutes or more, until the blueberries just start to wrinkle.

Sup Kambing in slow cooker

My slow cooker has introduced me to an American boxing champion. Even more awesome, my slow cooker actually carries his autograph and has his smiling face gleaming at me from the instruction manual and cookbook. I've never been so up close with the boxing world. Boxer celebrity names are always alien to me, unless he has made a name for himself in some sensational murder or rape trials that hit newspaper headlines so often I can't avoid not reading about them.

So I was quite surprised when Wikipedia told me the namesake of my slow cooker - George Foreman - was a former boxing champ. I know a boxer has lean muscles, but a boxer's lean muscles are not quite alike the lean meat I stew in my slow cooker.

What's even more amazing about this slow cooker is that I am supposed to preheat the device for 20 minutes before I should start using it. That's also new to me.

Nevertheless, I have to live with my choice (though I think next time I will not jump at every boxer endorsed cooking products), and besides the nuisance of having to preheat it, this slow cooker has served me well enough.

My Sup Kambing (mutton soup) recipe comes from "Indonesian Kitchen" by Pancy Seng. I have adapted it to my slow cooker's strange habit and opted to cook everything all in one pot to save on washing, as usual.

Sup Kambing (Mutton Soup)
Serves two

About 500g mutton or lamb (I found this spare ribs cut that was so tender after the slow cooking), chopped into pieces
5-6 shallots
3 cloves garlic
1 inch length of ginger
some 800ml water
cooking oil
1 pandan leaf tied in a knot
salt and black pepper to taste
fried sliced shallots and Chinese coriander leaves or spring onions to garnish

Mixed Spices:
half teaspoon cumin powder
half teaspoon fennel powder
half teaspoon coriander powder
1 cm cinnamon stick
half star anise
2 cloves
2 cardamons

You may like to use a separate pan for browning the meat with the spices first, but what I do is to preheat my celebrity slow cooker for 15 minutes, then throw some oil, cover and wait for the oil to heat up.

While waiting for all the preheating and heating, I slowly chopped the shallots, ginger and garlic, tears leaking all the way such that by the time I finished with the chopping and mixing of spices, the oil is reasonably hot enough for me to throw the shallots, garlic and ginger in.

Fry them briefly, add the mixed spices and fry until fragrant. Toss in the lamb or mutton and fry for a few minutes. If you're using normal pan on normal fire, pour in water and bring to boil before throwing everything into the slow cooker. If using the all in one pot shortcut like me, add the water, salt and pepper and pandan leaf and leave everything to cook slowly for hours until the meat is tender and it is lunch or dinner time.

Before serving, you may like to consider thickening the soup with flour or corn starch. And also to scoop out the sinful layer of oil floating on the surface.

Otherwise, just add the garnishing and serve with plain rice.

Ikea meatballs hack

I found out that there's a group of Ikea hackers out there, who takes pride and pleasure in refurbishing or personalising their Ikea furniture. Like reupholstering their tired sofa with designer fabric, or reconfiguring a LACK shelving unit into a bench.

Now there's no Ikea in New Zealand to turn me into another Ikea hack, but I have half a dozen Ikea's cheapo pine photo frames bought from Singapore, those that has filmsy cardboard backing such that they won't stand properly. So I was inspired by the hackers' DIY spirit to modify my photo frames into something like what you see on the right. Just as in cooking when I try to use as few utensils as possible to reduce washing, my reborn photo frames minimises the number of hooks used. That's important, since staying in a rented apartment restricts your freedom in hammering hooks onto the wall.

Besides modifying Ikea products, I also managed to 'hack' the famous Ikea meatball recipe. Or rather, improvised it according to whatever ingredients my fridge was able to cough out, plus incorporating ideas from other Swedish meatball recipes.

Of course, Swedish meatballs would not be complete without the all important lingonberry jam. Similarly, my jar of lingonberry jam given with love by my bro and carried with due care by yours truly all the way from Sweden would never be satisfied until I eat them with the meatballs.

Ikea meatballs hack
Serves two

After buying only minced beef, I found out that Swedish meatballs actually uses a mixture of beef and pork, and the proportion of beef to pork varies from region to region. As for amount of meat used, I reckoned each person shall have about 10 meatballs, hence apportioning 20 heap teaspoons of minced meat.
1 onion, chopped finely
about 5 tablespoons of breadcrumbs
enough milk for soaking the breadcrumbs so it just covers
about 1 tablespoon chopped parsley (I like to jump at all opportunities to pluck parsley from my pot of herbs)
1 egg to bind everything together
salt and black pepper for seasoning
Butter for frying

For the cream sauce:
about 50ml cream, don't have to be precise about exactly how much. same with stock
about 100ml chicken stock (or beef stock) - made quickly with ready stock cube
1 teaspoon corn starch or flour to thicken
salt and pepper to season

Soak breadcrumbs in milk so it softens.

Heat a little butter and stir fry the onions until soften but not brown. Mix all ingredients for meatballs together.

Using your hands or 2 spoons, shape the meat mixture into balls about the size of a ping pong.

Heat some more butter. Fry the meatlballs in batches if necessary until cooked on all sides.

Prepare the sauce by boiling the stock. Add cream, thicken with the flour and season to taste.

Serve meatballs with the cream sauce, uncooked lingonberry jam and a salad (or boiled vegetables like what I did). It seems Common traditional to serve with potatoes (mashed, baked or fried) but I have no potatoes. What the heck.

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.

Onion pasta

I've found a good way to use up cooked onions leftover from making Onions and Olive Tart. It's easy, fast (since it's already cooked) and yummy.

Here's my improvised recipe, if you're making this from scratch without making the onion tart first.

Onion pasta
Serves 2

about 3 onions, thinly sliced
plenty of extra virgin olive oil
1 bay leaf
chopped thyme
chopped rosemary
1 clove garlic
salt and black pepper

2 slices of bacon
some olives, green or black
pasta for 2

Heat oil. Be as generous with olive oil as you think your waistline can tolerate. Combine the onions and bay leaf. Cover and simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes until it is soft but not brown. Stir occasionally. Add garlic and the herbs and season to taste, cook uncovered for another 10 minutes over slightly increased heat. Set aside.

Start cooking pasta.

Meanwhile, cook the bacon until it is slightly crispy. Add onions and olive. Mix everything with cooked pasta and serve.

Caramelised Apples in Coffee Syrup

Apples are probably my favourite dessert ingredients because they are so easy and versatile, and as legend goes, helps keep the doctor away. Plus apples are easily available all year round.

Besides the elusive French apple tart and our specialty apple crumble, we also like to cooked diced apples with cinnamon over low fire. The warm soft apples with some raisins added goes extremely well vanilla ice-cream. It's not necessary to add sugar or butter when cooking the apples, as some recipes suggested.

I've been wanting to try this caramelised apples recipe I got in my Chocolate and Coffee Bible cookbook published by Hermes House. Although it was Rémi who made it in the end, I'm still satisfied and already looking forward to trying it again.

Caramelised Apples with Coffee Syrup
Proportion based on 2 apples, one apple per serving.

2 eating apples, peeled but left whole
Approx. 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted (don't have to be precise, just need enough butter to coat around the apples
Approx. 30g sugar
sprinkle of ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons strong brewed coffee

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Cut a thin slice off the base of the apple to make them stable if necessary.

Using a pastry brush, coat each apple with the melted butter. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a shallow dish, and roll the apple in the dish to coat it all over with the sugar mixture.

Arrange the apples on a shallow baking dish that just fit, so that they can stand upright. Pour the coffee into the dish and sprinkle the remaining sugar mixture over the apples.

Bake for 40 minutes. In between, brush the coffee over the apples two or three times during the baking. During the last basting, pour out the juices into a small pan, but continue keeping the apples in the oven.

Boil the juices rapidly until it reduces to a thick syrup. Pour over the apples and bake for about 10 more minutes or until the apples are tender. Serve hot with a spoon of cream or ice-cream.

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.

Apricot Clafoutis

Nothing new, but here's a variation of Clafoutis that I did last week.

I did the same thing twice, first with just half an apricot. There was too much crust and not enough fruits, so I tried by putting more than one apricot, all diced up, into each muffin round.

Making individual servings of clafoutis is useful for bringing them out on, say a picnic, no messiness with cutting the cake up.

I wish spring and summer to come soon. Right now, everyday fruits is always apples, pears, kiwis and oranges. I'm already looking forward to cherries, peaches, apricots and all kinds of berries.