Food Glorious Food!

Frankly, I don't know what I do with my time. The days just seem to pass so very quickly and one week has gone by and another has started. Before you know it, I'm so behind my blog entries for the last few weeks.

I haven't exactly been lazing around. The days flew by becos I think I was busier. Busy with cooking/baking mainly. I had my first "order" of muffins, albeit it was from my cousin, to bake 20 muffins for her school's event and I charged only at cost :) Still, its nice to have some reaffirmation that these home-baked muffins are yummy enough and not the often polite but encouraging comments meant to spur me to greater culinary aspirations. For the occasion, I decided to bake two varieties of muffins;- blueberry muffins and chocolate banana mascarpone muffin.

As for my other passion-of-the-month, I've also cooked 2 more Korean dishes, Sundubu Chigae and Jab-Chae. In one of my earlier postings, I've mentioned about Sundubu Chigae and how this little humble soup of tofu in a spicy broth made me a Korean cuisine convert. Thus, it is only natural that I should attempt to learn to make this dish on my own.

Surprisingly, it was a relatively easy dish to make and again, you don't really need any special Korean condiments. In order to make an "authentic" bowl of Sundubu, I'd convinced myself that I need to use the right equipment i.e. an earthen bowl. I'd procure my little "find" at the Korean grocery stall, Sol, located at the basement of Orchard Cineleisure. While there, I was very very tempted to buy another stone bowl to make Dosul Bibimbap but sanity and caution prevailed.

The verdict according to my dear hubby was that it tasted as good as the ones we had in Woo Jong, the Korean restaurant in Paris, as well as other Korean restaurants. The total cost of it (minus the cost of the earthen bowl) was only at a fraction of the ghastly amount these restaurants charged. Additionally, it taste better than the bland versions served up in many of the local foodcourts too.

Jab-chae, a festive noodle dish made of sweet potato noodle wasn't as successful. While final output was passable, the proportion of sesame oil used in the recipe had resulted in a rather oily plate of noodles. I figured that I would just need to tweak the proportion of sesame oil used the next time to get it right. Till then, here's the recipe for Sundubu Chigae.

Sundubu Chigae

Ingredients

1 tbsp red chilli oil

2 cloves crushed garlic

1 tbsp chilli powder

1 tsp light soy suace

1/2 onion, peeled and sliced

30g kimchi, roughly chopped

100g minced beef

1/2 beef or chicken stock cube

300ml water

1 tube silken tofu, sliced into rounds

1 egg

1 leek, sliced

Method

1. Heat the earthen bowl or a clay pot until hot. Reduce heat and add in chilli oil, garlic, chilli powder, soy sauce, onion, stock cube, kimchi and minced beef. Stir fry for 5 minutes.

2. Pour in the water and bring to a boil. Add the tofu rounds and simmer over low heat for about 10-15 minutes.

3. Crack the egg into the soup and remove from the heat. Sprinkle the leek slices and serve.

Random Musings on a Friday night

It's been a while since I've written. And when I don't write, I seem to get the feeling that I'm losing my grammar and vocab. I have this imagery of a woodpecker slowly chipping away at my "English" part of my brain - each moment chipping away at bits of vocab and grammar. Maybe this woodpecker is called "Aging". Or perhaps it is "Fatherhood" :) So here goes my random musings on a Friday night....

On Bumbo Consumer Recall As a parent, I have been now more aware of Consumer Toys Recall - each time I see one (e.g. the Fisher Price recall in China), I keep an eye out for whether Faith owns the toy. To my surprise, I just saw over the news that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Bumbo, announced a voluntary recall of the Bumbo seats that Faith has. It turns out that CPSC has received 28 reports of young children falling out of the Bumbo Baby Sitter seat, including three skull fractures, which occurred when children fell out of chairs that had been placed on tables.





When I checked the company website, I realised that the company was not offering refunds. Rather, it was offering to make replacement sets. Because the warning labels currently embedded onto the back of the seats are not that visible. The warning label warns that consumers should "NEVER use the Bumbo Baby Seat on any elevated surface. Also, because the Bumbo Baby Seat is designed not to be totally restrictive, never leave a child unattended in their Bumbo Baby Seat. A child can get out and get hurt."

Verdict: Faith has outgrown the seat in anycase and is more into her high chair. To be safe, we'd probably not be giving the Bumbo to anyone as a hand-me down.

"Goo, gaa, grr?" Today over dinner, I had my first sight of Faith's new expression of anger or displeasure. Where in the past she used to just frown and/or scream, she has now gone further. She has started to hold her breath and scream so that she goes slightly red - the same expression she has when she wants to 'poo' except that she holds that expression much longer when she is angry. I asked Eve if this was the first time she is seeing this - she said no. - Faith has done this in the past afternoons as well. My first thoughts were: imagine myself, a hubbie/father who comes home rather punctually by 7 and yet I miss this milestone. What more would one miss if one travels overseas?

Rock-a-crawl-baby Along with her new-found expression of displeasure, Faith has also started to more visibly "crawl". Actually, it is now more a "rocking" of her buttocks when she is balanced on her hands and knees. I think Eve is convinced that Faith will benefit from having knee guards when she starts, so we'd probably shop around for a pair this weekend.

Faith and Mother in Law Faith has had the fortune of having very doting grandparents who take turns to take care of her over the weekday and weekends. My mother-in-law comes over every weekday around lunch time to look after her without fail. On her way here, she also buys lunch for Eve and more often than not groceries for dinner as well.

We can all see that Faith is very special to my mother-in-law. She's very proud of Faith's every development and she is quick to let her neighbours know of Faith's milestones. And even though she occasionally "beat- Faith's backside" when she is naughty, you can tell her heart melts when Faith starts crying (e.g when she is resisting to take her nap). It is not easy to look after Faith especially since she is getting more demanding by the day, and the fact that MIL looks after her for the most part of the afternoon, sometimes having to manage Faith alone (Eve does need some alone time after all).

Faith, if you read this, pls be grateful for all you have received in the past. Our only hope is you grow up reminding yourself of how fortunate you have been to have been so loved.

Little Family's Little Holiday

There's a lot of firsts in our parenting experience with our first kid. I guess that is only natural. Thankfully, we survived our first holiday all on our own and enjoyed ourselves at the same time too.

What we learnt was that Faith loves to travel. We think she's got the travel bug in her. Either that or she thinks the entire holiday is one big long outing with her 2 favourite people. Faith was a great and well-behaved baby on the trip -- doling out smiles rather generously at all the staff at the resort, tourists and strangers alike.
Going on a 3D2N trip is akin to planning for a similar length event for a "VIP" -- there's a lot of coordination that we needed to do to ensure that this little "VIP's" routine would be able to fit into all the travel logistics. And becos she's now on 2 meals of solids a day, we had to chug along the slow cooker, a thermos, chopping board, knife, vegetable peeler, blender, dishwashing liquids, yaddah yaddah yaddah, along for the trip.

Being the anal mom that I am, I absolutely refuted all suggestions of bringing jars of baby food. No siree! If I can cook all my food from scratch for family and friends, I most definitely am not going to subject my baby to commercial baby food. Even if that means I'm lugging part of my kitchen along for a short trip.

Of course, this being Faith's very first trip, we wanted to capture all memories of it as future evidence to our little one that we did bring her out somewhere. This also meant that my fingers were pretty much trigger-happy and we were not the least abashed at clicking our camera away throughout the trip. The good thing was that Faith seemed to be in baby heaven. As a result, many of her pictures had her smiling her toothy grin gamely.

Our aim for this trip was to relax as much as possible and enjoy food from the 3 restaurants within the resort. On our last trip to Bintan , we discovered that all 3 restaurants served very good food. Now that we have a baby in tow, we decided against travelling out to any of the neighbouring resorts or the Kelong but just dine in.

However, we later realised that our choice of restaurants whittled down from 3 to 2 as Saffron, their signature Thai fusion restaurant do not allow babies. Oh well... :)

After settling into our villa, we headed to the all-day dining restaurant, Tree Top, for our tea. The bread they served while we waited for our appetiser was great, especially when you slather French butter liberally on it -- or at least I did. And they served us both a little "amuse bouche" of grilled beef skewer too even though we only ordered an Indonesian appetiser sampler to share between the two of us. I think its true that we eat with our eyes too cos all the stunning display of dishes with adornments certainly make the food that we ate tastier.

Thereafter, we headed back to our villa where we changed Faith into her swimming costume and let her have a dip in the jacuzzi. I'm not sure if she knows the difference between the jacuzzi and her bathtub at home cos she was just too engrossed in chewing her little rubber ducky the entire time ;) We didn't really have that much time left after the jacuzzi dip. It was nap time for Faith, fed her her dinner, had ours and then back to the villa to rest for the night.

And so ended our first day. We wanted to keep the pace of the entire break relax and restful. On account that we are now parents of a baby, there has to be some responsibilities involved. Thus, R&R time for the entire trip pretty much revolved around Faith's routine of sleeping, eating, napping, playing and pooping ;) We kept her on Singapore time even though Indonesia is one hour behind Singapore and it worked out advantageously for all of us.

Day 2 of the trip was what I most looked forward to. A MASSAGE! After nearly 1 1/2 years where I couldn't have any while pregnant and had to wait another 4-6 months post-delivery becos of the C-section, I finally got a full body massage! It was heavenly! After Louis and I took turns having our massage, we brought Faith out to the beach for a walk and a dip in the pool. All too soon, it was her nap time, dinner time and then off to bed for all of us.

Day 3 of the trip was a short and uneventful one on account that it was the last day of our stay and our ferry back home was in the early afternoon. Thankfully, my MIL was there to pick us up from the ferry terminal. So, we didn’t have to lug baggage, strollers and barang-barang, along with Faith into the cab.

My mom, anxious about her grand-daughter’s first overseas trip called on Sunday to ask how her little one was doing. And I think she missed Faith too cos she repeated ask if we needed her to come over when we return. So, we told her to come on over and it was a good thing too. Cos even though it was meant to be a relaxing trip, all of us were tired out after the trip. Its really great and fortunate that we have both our families on hand and nearby to help out.

That night, it was early to bed for all of us :)

Happy Birthday, Nicole!

Its my niece, Nicole's 7th birthday today.

My mom, who had been looking after her since she was around 1 1/2 yrs old until late last year, asked if I could bake her some blueberry muffins. Of course!

So, here they are, all packed up in a box, which my mom would be bringing to her this evening. Especially for the birthday girl, there's more than the recommended portion of blueberries called for in the recipe.

Happy Birthday, little Rabbit Princess :)

Korean Noodle Salad (Salad-Guksu)

Louis and I are still hooked onto our Korean dramas via cable Channel 55. Right now, we are catching Jumong, Prince of the Legend and The Song of Prince every weekday nights. Unfortunately for Louis, his Korean drama addiction is causing him to sleep much later cos The Song of Prince is airing at 11.40 pm to 12.40 pm, Mondays to Fridays.

Seeing that I have bid farewell to my cupcakes baking, I thought I should dedicate something to Korean food to match our addition. Korean cuisine is one which I only discovered when I was in France. A Korean friend of ours once organised a class get-together at a Korean restaurant, Woo Jung, in Paris. Woo Jung is located in the 16th arrondissement (Metro: Passy), very near to the Eiffel Tower. In fact, you can see the tower while standing on the sidewalk of the restaurant. We tried to return to the restaurant again last year when we were in Paris. Alas... it was closed and the staff were on vacation. Sigh...

Prior to that, my knowledge of Korean food was limited to what was sold in our local food courts. Quite frankly speaking, most weren't authentic and the repertoire were limited to different types of stir-fry hot plates such as Bulgogi. In Woo-Jung, I was exposed to the many different side dishes, many of which were deliciously prepared and were quickly gobbled up. And it was where I tasted my first tureen of Soondubu Chigae, a kind of spicy soft bean curd stew, that started me on my obsession on my return to Singapore to find chigae with exactly the same taste as those served in Woo Jung.

And I slowly learnt that there are many other Korean dishes that I was totally ignorant of, but once my eyes were opened to this "new" cuisine, I quickly lapped them all up. I especially love the bean sprout salad (kong-na-mul-mu-chim), seasoned spinach (si-geum-chi-mu-chim), stuff cucumber kimchi (o-e-so-bae-gi), sweet potato noodles (jab-chae), braised short ribs (gal-bi-jjim), spring onion and seafood pancake (pa-jeon) and a whole lot more. Most often than not, I just love the little side dishes that are served at the table and can never get enough of them.

So, I started perusing my Korean cookbook by Lee MinJung, as I watched my Korean dramas every night, pondering and deciding which of the dishes shall I attempt next. Since I had lots of soba on hand in the fridge and the list of other ingredients and condiments were easily found in the compartments of my fridge and kitchen, I decided to make Salad Guksu, a cold noodle dish mixed with vegetables in a spicy sweet sauce.

The recipe called for soba noodles but I had some spare cha soba, so I used that instead. For the vinegar, I used Japanese Mizkan grain flavoured distilled vinegar, but you can use any white vinegar The recipe for the salad noodles is as follows:

Salad Guksu
Adapted from Feast of Flavours from the Korean Kitchen by Lee MinJung

Ingredients
2 bundles Cha soba or soba noodles
5 leaves lettuce, julienned
1 medium cucumber, julienned
1/2 carrot, julienned
4 sticks crab stick, shredded

Sauce
3 tbsp light soya sauce
3 tbsp vinegar
2 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
1 tsp wasabi
1 tbsp chilli powder
1 tbsp sesame oil

Method
1. Combine the ingredients for sauce and blend well. Refrigerate.

2. Blanch noodles in boiling water until al dente, then wash under cold running water. Drain well.

3. Remove the smashed garlic from the sauce. Mix noodles with chilled sauce and some vegetables and crab stick.

4. Garnish with remaining vegetables and crab stick and serve.

I find that if you put the noodles back in the fridge and let it sit for a while, the noodles will absorb the flavour of the sauce better. I like that the sauce is a little sweet and spicy, interspersed with the flavour of sesame oil, giving it an uplifting fragrance. Perhaps the next time when I make it, I would add some sesame seeds into the mixture to give a slightly crunch.

The uglist cupcakes ever

Cupcakes and I just don't cut it. And I think I've baked my second and very last batch of cupcakes. Ever.

Last week, I baked the first batch of cupcakes based on a recipe from a renowned local culinary school that a friend gave me. It was absolutely disastrous! The instructions warned to be careful when mixing the liquid butter into the batter to ensure it emulsifies properly or you would see the butter melting out of the cupcakes while in the oven, creating a dodgy cake texture. Guess what? I didn't beat the butter in properly and it wasn't emulsified. True enough, I could see the butter leaking out from the cupcake cups while in the oven.

I wanted to throw the entire batch into the rubbish chute but my mom insisted on bringing half of them back home for my dad. According to her, he devoured them all and loved it. I was flabbergasted. The remaining half of course ended up in the dustbin cos Louis wasn't too keen on it and I felt it tasted like rancid oil. Urrgghhh!!!

After the failed session, I "researched" on the Internet, ploughing through a number of cupcake recipes from cooks/chefs that I admire and finally settled on a mascarpone cupcakes with strawberry glaze recipe by Giada de Laurentiis, a Le Cordon Bleu trained Italian-American chef who has a smashing figure and great face to go along with the smarts.

This time around, the sponge itself turned out great. It was light and fluffy, helped by the use of mascarpone cheese. My only grouse was that the recipe used an instant cake mix -- making it fail-proof -- which coming from Giada, I was a teeny-weeny bit disappointed cos it feels like I'm cheating. The glaze or icing was a totally separate issue.

I decided to use lesser icing sugar so that it wouldn't be too sweet. Of course, I didn't realise until later that the portion of icing sugar used makes a different to the thickness of the glaze and how quickly it would dry up. Hence, when I coated the first few cupcakes, it was all runny and the glaze was dripping down the sides of the cupcakes onto the kitchen counter top. So, I added more icing to make it up to the original amount stated in the recipe but still, it was a bit runny.

Which leads me to my conclusion and the first two sentences of this post. I've baked my last cupcakes and I doubt I will ever bake another again. Why, you may ask. The third time might be the magic. But I highly doubt it. The problem lies not with the recipes or even how practice makes perfect. The problem lies with me.

You see, I always feel that when you cook or bake something, you have to have passion and a healthy dose of respect or even awe for what you're doing. Unfortunately, I've neither that much passion, liking nor respect for cupcakes. Perhaps, that's why my 2 batches of cupcakes went south :)

Don't get me wrong. I totally respect the skills and creativity of the many people who have baked and decorated beautiful and dainty cupcakes. I think its an art. Just one that's not for me.

I don't really like to eat cupcakes. To be fair, I haven't eaten that many cupcakes but from accounts by a few friends, cupcakes are more aesthetically pleasing then pleasure to the 5 senses. Plus, there's no audience for my cupcakes. Louis isn't too keen on them. And I think the "demand" from the rest of the extended family for cupcakes is lacklustre at best. Furthermore, I only want to bake cupcakes, not eat them myself.

Maybe its the green-eye monster in me that's oozing everything sour at my two failed attempts while seeing others happily baking their nth batches of cupcakes. Damaged pride aside, I think I should focus any remnant energy from being a mother to something that yields a much higher ROI. If cupcakes ain't it, there's a whole universe of other desserts, pastries and different cuisine for me to experiment.

So, au revoir cupcakes and hello to everything else ;)

"Marblelous" Gift

After more than a year of staying in our home, Louis and I still love it very much. Coming home after a few hours away or after work is always pleasurable and restful. Its definitely more than a house. Its our home. Filled with creature comforts, knick-knacks and memories that we like and love. And I think Faith feels the same way too. Whenever we are out after a day and when we bring her home, we'll put her in her cot and turn on the mobile at her bed. And she would have a delighted smile, at times, kicking her hands and feet in excitement and pure pleasure.

Louis and I took nearly half a year of intense house hunting before we finally found this unit that we loved at first sight. Everything felt right about our house. Naturally, the kitchen takes pride of place in the entire house and its where I love to potter, cook and bake. The wall between our kitchen and living/dinning room is separately by glass halfway from the waist up to the ceiling. While I'm in the kitchen doing my baking or preparing Faith's food, I could always see what she's up to in the living room.

Really, there's nothing that I don't like in the house, although I sometimes daydream that if we have another house and/or a bigger renovation budget, I would like to have a marble kitchen counter top. We currently have a gray with white speckles solid surface that looks pleasing and serves its purpose. Except that when I want to roll out rich doughs (doughs enriched with more butter), its a little of a challenge given our humid and hot weather.

I used to bake and make a lot of apple galettes, a type of open, crispy and crusty apple tart, when I was in France. When I returned and tried making them in my kitchen, the toughest challenge is always rolling out the dough. Just out from the fridge, it would be too cold and hard to roll. After a few minutes of rolling, the dough goes from softer and pliable to become wet and sticky, that no amount of flouring would help. And I would end up having a holey dough at the end as I try to transfer the dough from the counter top to the tart tray.

A marble counter top would be useful as it is cool and would hopefully make it easier to roll the dough without it getting wet and sticky too quickly. I've read that in some professional kitchens when they do a lot of rich doughs (e.g. those for croissants), their steel counter tops would be fitted to have cold water running underneath it so that counter top remains cool. That makes it easier to handle the doughs. I'm not a Michelin-starred chef nor am I'm running a professional home-kitchen myself. Which is why I am perfectly happy with just a marble kitchen counter top ;)

My friend, Ching has been renovating her new house and has generously given me a rectangle slab of marble cut out from her bathroom sink. Actually, she was so generous that she gave me the bigger of the 2 marble slabs she had. Plus, she had her contractor chamfered the marble slabs so that there wouldn't be any rough edges.

So, while I do not have a marble counter top, I have the next best thing now... a nice slab of marble (very heavy though). I think I shall make me (and her, of course) a nice apple galette with it very soon ;)

Thanks much, Ching :)