Cannelés: Bordeaux caramel cup cakes

Just like angkukueh or mooncakes, cannelés (pronounced 'can-ner-lay') are not considered cannelés when they are not made with the right mould. A cannelé mould is somewhat like that of a normal cupcake, except that it has a smaller diameter, and dodecagon in shape. And a real traditional one has to be made of copper.

A specialty of Bordeaux, they are said to be created by nuns. Commonly found in French patisseries, they can be eaten for breakfast, tea or as dessert.

My first experience with cannelés was in Bordeaux Bakery in Wellington. It was good, although exactly how, I can't remember. But I was determined to make my own, even if I do not have the mould.

Alas, by a twist of fate, Rémi snatched the task of making cannelés from me as I was preparing the prawns.

Anyway, here's our recipe from Camille's cookbook, even though we use a normal tartlet tin, and omitted Rum from the recipe. It's still yummy, best eaten hot, when the caramel crust makes the outside chewy while the inside remains moist and custard-like.

Cannelés
Makes about 10

250ml milk
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
50g flour
125g sugar
25g butter + a very generous amount for greasing the mould
25ml rum
vanilla essence
pinch of salt

Mix the milk, vanilla essence and melted butter.

Meanwhile, mix the flour, sugar and then add the eggs at once. Then pour the milk mixture, and mix until smooth and fluid.

Let the mixture cool down before adding rum. Refrigerate for one hour.

Preheat oven at 180C. Grease the mould with generous amount of butter. Bake for about an hour, or until the crust is dark brown in colour. Our baking time is about half an hour. You may have to adjust the temperature of the oven if you find it browning too fast.

Prawns in coconut sauce, Indonesian style

The past two weeks spent in Singapore has been very intense for the stomach, as I tried to enjoy as much good foods as I could everyday, to the extent of indigestion and puking. I didn't cook a single dish eventually, blissfully blaming the faulty oven. Actually, I was happy to relive all the foods I missed, especially hawker fare and Japanese foods, and of course, the home cooking of Enda who is from Indonesia. Inspired by her, I am richer by 2 new Indonesian cookbooks back here, among the 6 cookbooks I brought back.

Keen to start using new spices brought back from Singapore (which are all available in Wellington's Asian grocery stores, but 2-4 times more expensive than in Singapore, which are already costing more than in Indonesia), my Indonesian culinary experience began with prawns.

Prawns in Hot Coconut Sauce (Sambal Petai Udang)
200g medium prawns
2 pods stinkbeans (petai) (optional)
1 cup thin coconut milk
1 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced
1 small carrot, peeled and sliced
1 red chilli, deseeded and sliced (optional)
1 tbspoon tamarind juice
salt to taste
crispy fried shallots to garnish

Spice paste
1-2 red chillies, deseeded
2 shallots, peeled
1-2 cloves garlic, peeled
1/4 teaspoon dried shrimp paste (trasi), dry-roasted

I've given up on frying my own crispy fried shallots, opting instead to buy the ready made ones. But if you want to try it, peel shallots thinly, and pat dry with paper towels. Heat oil in wok over medium low heat and stir fry until golden brown or crispy for 3-5 minutes. I always tend to use too little oil and burn the shallots.

I didn't use the stinkbeans, so not sure how they taste.

In making the spice paste, grind all ingredients to a smooth paste in a mortar or blender, adding a little oil if necessary to keep the mixture turning. My alternative to the lack of shrimp paste and chillies is to use ready made sambal chilli sauce, and pound with the shallots and garlic.

Heat oil in wok over medium heat and fry the spice paste until fragrant, for 3-5 minutes. Add the stinkbeans if using, and coconut milk and bring to boil. A word on coconut milk, if using canned ones, dilute about 2 parts water to 1 part coconut cream.

Add sliced potatoes, carrots, chillies and tamarind juice and mix well. Bring ingredients to boil again and simmer until vegetables are cooked and the sauce has thickened. Add prawns and simmer until prawns are cooked. Season with sugar and salt. Serve hot with steamed rice.

I think my first attempt in making this dish leaves much room for improvement, but it tastes good nonetheless.

Recipe from Authentic Recipes from Indonesia by Heinz von Holzen and Lother Arsana.

Drowning Burgundy Beef Stew with Wine

I guess only the French obsession with wine would lead them to drown their meat with it. Or maybe Burgundy has too much red wine, thus they have to find all ways to drink them to the last drop without getting drunk.

So, the Burgundy Beef Stew is born, which involves soaking 1.5kg of beef in 1 whole bottle of red wine overnight, if you're planning on cooking for your whole family of 5-6 people.

Our initial objective was simply to put our newly bought beef casserole to tasty use. When we found out last night that the recipe involved marinating the meat overnight, we hastily plucked parsley from our garden, chopped the vegetables and meat, all at 11pm, so that we could have a nice stew for dinner the next day. And yes, we used up 1/3 of our bottle of red wine. The stew tonight better be good.

Recipe translated from Les Classiques de Camille.

Boeuf Bourguignon (Beef stew Burgundy style)
serves 2

500g beef casserole or stew, cut to chunky pieces
50g bacon
1 carrot, sliced
1 big onion, chopped
1/3 bottle of burgundy red wine (25cl)
1 bay leaf
3 sprigs of parsley
1/3 tablespoon flour
salt and pepper

Marinate beef with carrots, onion with meat, salt, pepper, herbs and wine overnight.

The next day, strain the beef. Stir fry the bacon in a stew pot. Once the fats have broken down, add the beef and cooked until golden on both sides. Set aside.

Add onions into the stew pot. Once cooked and softened, add meat, pour the flour in slowly. When the meat is golden, add the meat marinade. Season with salt and pepper.

Simmer under low fire for 3 hours. Add more water/wine if the juice dries up too much.

Serve with steam potatoes and some parsley. Also possible to serve with rice or cous cous.

Sweet and Sour Rhubarb Tart

Interestingly, I started reading up about this Chinese medicinal plant because of this French dessert. First tasted Rhubarb tart in France, would only say that it left an impression on me due to its sour taste.

It's curious who would first think of cooking this sour vegetable as a sweet dessert, especially as it has been used as laxative for over 2,000 years and has poisonous leaves.

Known as 大黄, large doses of the Chinese rhubarb is used to treat constipation, while small does amazingly have the opposite effect of treating diarrhea. I can imagine the word 大黄 being inscribed on every traditional Chinese medicine cupboard but I'm not sure if it is ever used in Chinese cooking.

The garden version used here is supposedly much less potent in terms of causing toilet visits, but I wouldn't imagine binging on rhubarb tart now that I know its medicinal wonders. Only the stems are used, and it looks somewhat like celery stem dyed red to me.

Rhubarb Tart
serves 6

1 tart dough (pâte brisée)
1 kg of rhubarb
50g sliced almonds
2 tablespoons of semolina flour
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
6 tablespoons of sugar

Flatten the dough and line onto a prepared tart tin. Keep in freezer for 30 minutes.

Pre-heat oven at 180C. Peel the rhubarbs and rinse them. Dice.

Pour half the quantity of sugar onto the tart base, then sprinkle with almonds and top with flour. Lay rhubarb all over.

Top with remaining sugar and bake for 45 minutes.

Serve warm or cold.

Tricks from Rémi (well, as with most tarts, I didn't cook this, especially since rhubarbs are foreign to me until now):
-------
- As rhubarb is sour, be more generous with sugar if you have less tolerance for sour taste.
- Be generous with the quantity of rhubarb, it must be tightly packed on the tart to prevent the rhubarb from drying out. Rhubarbs are supposed to release juice when cooked, giving rise to a juicy tart. Quantity of rhubarb could have increased for the picture shown above (our rhubarb in stock didn't add up to 1kg, as indicated in recipe). Also, our rhubarb was one week old, so a bit dried out too.

Recipe comes from Les Classiques de Camille. Watch out for more French classics from her.

French Creme Brulee Everyone Can Do

The French have a peculiar way of counting. While they do count from one to ten, their numbering system becomes different when it gets beyond 60.

So, 60 is soixante, 70 is soixante-dix, meaning 60+10. 71 is soixante-onze, which is 60+11. 80 is quatre-vingts - 4x20, 90 is quatre-vingt-dix, essentially 4x20+10, and so on and so forth. Now, if you're like me, struggling with simple mental calculation, you'll take a while to learn how to count in French.

And in French, 100 is "cent" (pronounced sont). So in French cookbooks, you're likely to come across this measure of volume, known as "centilitre", which is equivalent to one-hundredth of a litre. This has baffled me in the beginning, and led to a failed crème brûlée attempt by our Singaporean friends whom we passed our recipe to.

Although Crème Brûlée may be a dessert highlight of fancy expensive French restaurants, it is actually quite easy to make. Only thing that will potentially hold you back is the number of eggs that actually goes into it. You can still have a tasty crème brûlée even if you do not have a blow torch to caramelise the top surface.

Crème Brûlée
makes 6 cups

1 whole egg
4 egg yolks
80g castor sugar
a few drops of vanilla essence
400ml liquid cream (it was written as 40cl cream in cookbook)
brown sugar

Mix egg, egg yolks, vanilla, castor sugar together with a hand beater, add the cream in progressively. 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), you can always top it up with milk.

Pour mixture into crème brûlée cups (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 last night, but every oven is different, so some careful observation is necessary here.

Last time, we didn't check, the crème brûlée was still liquid when we served. So this part is essentially the trickiest part of the recipe. 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 brown sugar on top and put into 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. The advantage of having a blow torch is, the inside would still be very cold.

Even without a blow torch, you'll still be able to achieve a crispy caramel surface and hear a crispy hollow sound when you tap surface gently with your teaspoon. Heavenly.

This recipe comes from Camille Le Foll's Les Classiques de Camille, a classic French cookbook which has been regretably underused despite being full of wonderful French recipes. Not my fault, as it's all written in French.

And don't throw the 4 remaining egg whites away. Freeze them if necessary to prolong its lifespan and use them to make milo meringues. I'm also looking at other alternatives like macarons.

Easy Pear and Almond Pudding

While my savoury Yam Cake is steaming and giving all signs that it's going to be a disaster, I thought I'll write about this easy to make, hard to fail fruit, fast to prepare pudding to give myself a boost of confidence. Too many failures in the kitchen recently.

Still from my trusty Christelle Le Ru's Irresistible French Desserts that I received as a birthday present. I chose to make the pudding to finish up the ripened pears and soon to expired cream.

Lacking in ground almonds, I soon found myself pounding sliced almonds with pestle and mortar. The unevenly ground almonds actually gave the pudding a nice coarse texture, so do this if you don't mind flexing your arm muscles.

Pear and Almond Pudding
serves 2

20g sultanas
2 pears
1 egg (use 3 eggs if you're doubling the quantity, as I had halved the quantity of original recipe, and it was still enough for both of us the next day)
30g white sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
50g ground almonds (pound sliced almonds yourself to give it a coarse texture)
15g flour
50g crème fraîche (thickened cream)
75ml milk
sprinkle of blanched almond

Preheat oven to 180C. Pour boiling water over sultanas to soften it. Peel and cut pears into slices. Now, you can also use apples, or mixture of both. Divide the fruits into 2 ovenproof dishes along with the drain and dried sultanas. Or just one will do, if you don't mind sharing from the same dish.

Beat eggs, sugar, cinnamon and ground almonds. Mix in the flour and cream. Flour may be omitted or reduced for a lighter texture. Gradually stir in milk and the resulting texture is creamy and somewhat more liquid than a cake mixture. Pour the mixture over the fruit.

Scatter almonds over and bake for 20 minutes. Serve warm.

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