To the start of artisan bread-making... hopefully

2nd time success at Focaccia bread making

I've been trying my hand at baking recently, specifically bread at that. I used to bake my breads in the bread machine that I found in my MIL's cupboard. But it keeled over one fine day while I was trying to bake a cranberry pecan bread and that ended my bread-making sessions.

Since then, I hadn't made any cos I wasn't too keen on kneading bread by hand -- tried once and my arms ached after. Until most recently. I finally haul out my spiffy KitchenAid that was sitting idle on its side in my kitchen cabinet. I had bought it during my 3rd trimester but hadn't had the chance to use it post-pregnancy.

And so it was, I decided to make sundried tomato focaccia, inspired by the ones that Louis and I have eaten at Pete's Place at Hyatt Hotel. The first time I made it, it was using the recipe from Beth Hensperger's "The Bread Bible". It wasn't too bad for a first time attempt, but the inside of the bread was rather dense, not chewy. I was wondering if it was becos I didn't shift my flour.

Then, I decided to use another recipe from "Baking at home with the Culinary Institute of America". The recipe required an overall longer time for the bread to rise and it also used bread flour as opposed to plain flour in Hensperger's recipe. Lo and behold! The bread turned out to be fantastic with a crispy crust and airy, chewy interior. In fact, it was the best bread that I've ever made!!

Bread-making is definitely very satisfying, seeing how simple ingredients like water, yeast, flour and oil could turn out something so beautiful. Eating a good loaf of bread always brings back memories of our one-year stay in France, where boulangerie abounds and you can get pretty good baguettes wherever you go. In Singapore, the best baguettes so far come from Delifrance, but somehow, they don't keep as well. Whatever that is bought has to be eaten the same day.

Back in France, I used to buy a few loaves of baguette au levin (baguettes that taste a little like sourdour bread) on market days and store them in the freezer, popping them into ovens whenever we wanted some bread. They were good with practically everything, ranging from sandwiches, to pizza, with cheese, as accompaniments to a main meal etc. And they always taste so good. Contrary to popular belief, croissants aren't as popular as baguettes, which were staples to the French like rice is to Asians.

I remembered when we first arrived in France, we were rather amused when we see the French carrying their baguettes everywhere. What shocked us really was that their baguettes are not fully wrapped in neat size packaging like the ones we get in Singapore. Instead, the bakeries would simply wrap a small rectangle or square piece of paper onto the middle of the baguettes, leaving a large part of the 2 ends "naked". And so the French would strolled out of the boulangeries with their baguettes tucked under their arms (hope they don't have smelly armpits), or stuffed into their grocery bags, dumped onto the back seats of their car etc.

After a while, we got used to it and fancied ourselves localised such that we carry our baguettes stuffed into our grocery bags and walk around nonchalantly. Admittedly, we never dared to tuck them under our arms, even though we showered at least twice even in winter.

Thus, for every bread that I successfully bake -- or not -- it never failed to evoke fond memories of Europe and especially, how good the breads were in that part of the world. And we conceded that the French baked the best breads in the world.

Pumpkin Soup

My first taste of pumpkin soup was back when Louis and I were honeymooning in Europe. It was winter and the weather in Brugge, this little quaint town in Belgium, was so chilly and cold that a tureen of soup sounded really heartening and warming. Although I must say that I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about pumpkin soup at that time -- actually, I've never eaten pumpkin anything prior to that. That was an experience that changed my perspective on pumpkin and pumpkin soup. I came back a convert on pumpkin soup and googled many a sites before I stumbled onto a pumpkin recipe that is now my favourite.

It was only a few years later that I come to learn that pumpkin contains high levels of antioxidants and carotene, notably vitamin C and E and therefore may lower cancer risk, heart disease, cataracts and strokes. So, I'm always congratulating myself for being unwittingly discerning whenever I make pumpkin soup. Hahaha...

Anyways, I've decided to put up this post becos Jean has requested for me to share my pumpkin soup recipe. Unfortunately, I've lost that recipe and even though it was found on BBC's Good Food website, I've since been unable to find that same recipe again. Nonetheless, I've made it enough times to remember the ingredients, although not necessarily the proportions. To the best of memory, the below portions are guesstimate, so you might need to add or reduce some ingredients to adjust the taste a little.

Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients:
400-500g pumpkin or butternut squash, diced
1 medium carrot, diced
2 small-medium size potatoes, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, deseed and diced
2-3 stripes of streaky bacon, diced (optional)
8-10 cherry tomatoes
1.5L chicken stock (good if its home-made, otherwise Knorr's clear chicken broth with no MSG is also good)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Method:
1) Sautee the streaky bacon in a pot big enough to cook the soup until the fat oozes out. If you like, can add a little olive oil too. Next, add in the diced pumpkin, carrot, potatoes and bell pepper and mix well, about 2-3 minutes.

2) At this point, I usually reduce the heat, cover the pot and let the vegetables sweat in the pot for about 5-8 minutes. Thereafter, add in the chicken stock and cherry tomatoes. Bring it to a boil. Lower the heat and let the vegetables simmered covered until tender, about 20-25 minutes.

3) Puree the mixture (be careful there!) and then transfer it back to the pot again. Bring the soup back to a boil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve it hot with crusty bread if you like :)

This sounds like a lot of ingredients to chop and dice but I really like it a lot. The other way to make pumpkin soup is to cube the pumpkin into about 3 cm pieces, lay them on a single layer in a baking dish. Drizzle generously with olive oil and put into the oven to bake for about 30-45 minutes (depending on size) until tender. Puree the roasted pumpkin, transfer the pureed pumpkin into a pot and add chicken stock. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Personally, I prefer the recipe for the first pumpkin soup. Even though it involves a lot more work chopping and dicing, the end result is well worth the effort :)

Happy cooking!

What's cooking?

I was talking to Louis over the weekend and I told him that I miss cooking terribly. I don't mean the quick vegetables stir-fries and steamed fish type of daily cooking done hurriedly while my mom is babysitting Faith.

The kind of cooking that I enjoy is the whole works starting from perusing cookbooks, deciding on what dish to cook/experiment, shopping for ingredients and that satisfying process of transforming all that myriad ingredients into the final product, be it a cooked or baked dish. Pre-pregnancy and Faith's arrival, I used to look forward to the weekends to grocery shop and cook either for dinners or dishes that I shortlisted on a weekday. That was my ideal of a relaxing weekend, to the delight of Louis who loved entertaining to a home-cooked meal at home.

These days, cooking usually entails the first and the last part of the entire set of steps I've described above i.e. I would shortlisted the item to cook/bake and the key ingredients would be assembled (usually by Louis). All I need to do is to dump them into the cauldron, stir like a witch and abracadabra... my dish poofs out magically ;)

Seriously, when I think of a dish I want to cook these days, I would give Louis a shopping list of ingredients that he could get for me from Tekka market or when we put Faith with my MIL on weekend afternoons, a quick zip to the NTUC supermarket at Ang Mo Kio Hub. Somehow, its not quite the same as a leisurely stroll of my own up and down the aisles of the gourmet supermarket chains like Marketplace or Jason's. Sadly, I miss terribly the morning trips to Tekka market where I am always intrigued and fascinated by the amount of local and "ang-moh" produce, vegetables, fishes and what-have-yous .

Selfishly, its moments like this when I wish Faith could quickly grow up and start eating solids 3 meals a day. That's so I could put her with my MIL earlier or even overnight so that I can have a little more time on the weekends to indulge in the experience of sourcing for my ingredients. Am I evil or what?

I am eternally grateful to my mom cos she comes in every weekday afternoon to help me take care of Faith, allowing me a good 2-3 hours to indulge myself in cooking/baking. To-date, I've managed to do some fairly simple stuff like pumpkin soup, quiche, tiramisu etc on occasions. Like today, I'm trying to make sun dried tomato focaccia *fingers crossed*

On a positive note, Faith is entering her 5th month and it would be another 2 more months before we start weaning her. And that's gotten me so excited that I've gone out and bought 2 books on cooking solid foods for babies -- speaking of which, I've ran out of bookshelves to put all the new cookbooks I've purchased. I know I should not get overly excited and build unrealistic expectations that Faith would take to solids at her first few attempts. Nevertheless, I can't stop myself from anticipating and looking forward to all the different types of food I can cook for her in time to come;- pumpkin, avocado, sweet potato, brown rice cereal, fish porridge, leek etc etc

My next milestone in cooking would be less on the intricate dishes that I can churn out but cooking for a potentially finicky eater and rising to the challenge of getting her to enjoy a wide spectrum of food :)

And the winner is....

Now that I'm based in Singapore for a project, Eve and I have settled down from our frenzy of luggage packing in early July. At that time, we were under the impression that the family would be posted to Beijing for three months. As a result, we had prepared not only Chinese visas all round, stand-by medication for Faith, a medical kit for the two of us, and a suitcase of new baby stuffs as a contingency. Today, the suitcase still remains packed....

As parents, we have quickly learned that such "contingencies" are inescapable. In fact, one can often distinguish experienced parents from people like us by the amount of contingencies in their budget. Of course, by trial and error, there are also gems we picked up early on which we swear by today. Besides such purchases, we've also learnt that sometimes, things don't really turn out the way we plan it...On this occasion of Faith's 4 months, the Faith awards go to...

1. The most useless equipment that Dad (ie. moi) bought

Bought during Eve's third tri-mester, this equipment was purchased at Mothercare along with two Winne the Pooh "night-lights" (which come to think of it, we haven't used as well). I think I had felt guilty then that I didn't buy anything for My Baby then, so thought that this "Projector" was way-cool for my little one. After all, which Baby can resist a ceiling full of night stars? Plus, you can change the slides so that it projects a moon, kaleidescope of pictures etc. This Philips Magic Theatre SCD940 costing around $100 takes its (dusty) place as the most useless equipment we've bought

2. The "darkest horse" purchase

I still remember that we were "cautioned" against investing in a baby monitor. In fact, one of our friends had early on, even offered to find his hardly-used baby monitor for us to use, so that we could see for ourselves, how truly useless it was. Plus, even our experienced confinement lady had told us that we would hear more interferences than Faith's cries. Despite these horror stories, we desperately needed something that would allow Eve to keep watch on Faith without having her physically present in the room (e.g. when she was cooking). Thankfully, Hui Fang recommended a Baby Monitor that was running digital comms and as such, served our needs to a tee. Even at check-out, we were a bit apprehensive about spending close to $150 for the Philips SCD496 DECT Baby Monitor, but we've never looked back since. Had not been for this monitor, Eve and I would not have had the chance to watch our Korean TV, read in our master bedroom, etc

3. Our most wishful thinking so far

When we were expecting Faith, we had heard "horror" stories of how kids who were sleeping in their parents' rooms, found it very difficult to later adjust to sleeping in their own rooms. Being the smart parents we were, we decided - hey, why don't WE sleep in Faith's room instead of her sleeping in our room. That way, she'd get used to the surroundings, and we can easily shift back into our rooms. Today, we are still sleeping in a pull-out convertible queen-size bed from IKEA in Faith's room. Meanwhile, our king-sized Simmons bed sits idly in our master bedroom.

In all, I'm sure there are many more regret purchases, the can't do without buys and the unfulfilled wishes. As Faith enters her 4th month, we are hopefully getting wiser and smarter - one can always hope :)

Happy 4th Month, Faith :)

Faith is all of 4 months old today and yet again, it seem like ages when she was born. I've been told not to wish for my baby to grow up too quickly but to enjoy her in all her stages. Most times, I do. But sometimes when I see moms with their little girls going out together hand-in-hand, shopping, playing, baking and all, I long for Faith to grow up quickly so that we could do all of these together.

At 4 months, Faith seemed to have come a long way from birth. Her cognitive development is still the strongest at this stage. She likes to conduct conversations with adults and that's usually the best way to get her to smile and gurgle at you. She's starting to recognise people and with it, a preference for some too.

By now, she's learn how to grasp at rings that we give to her and other soft toys that are easily grabbed by small fingers. Slowly but steadily, she's learning to bring these toys to her mouth to bite and also passing objects from one hand to another. The latter is still something that she's just started doing and may not be quite as adapt yet. However, her favourite thing to grip is of course human fingers. And this, she would hold on and grip very tightly.

When we prop her up on a pillow, her body seems to arch forward, as if she's wanting to sit up and play. Faith would have to be a little more patient and wait for her back muscles to develop before she can muster the act of sitting up. Then, her view of things that she can take in would definitely be more interesting.

Unfortunately, she's caught a cold since last week and the nose swab that the paedi did only came back today with the result that she has a bacterial infection. As her nose continues to be blocked and is heavy with mucus after 5 days, we've asked the doc to prescribe antibiotics. Keeping my fingers crossed that Faith would recuperate soon with the dose of antibiotics.

Happy 4th month, Faith and may you continue to grow and bring smiles and joy to the people around you :)

No more bottle milk!

Faith dislike of bottles isn't anything new. But hunger strike is. Its as if Faith has had it with us giving her the bottle and she's decided to put her little foot down once and for all. She decides to go on a hunger strike for the times that we feed her bottle. We can't get her to drink past 20-30 ml for the last few days.

In dispair and worrying that Faith would go hungry, my mom and even my MIL have caved in and asked that I breastfeed her. This was even though both had earlier felt the need to bottle feed Faith as they were worried that she wouldn't take to the bottle in the future if she was exclusively breastfed.

And so it is that I'm now feeding Faith. There would be some logistic constraints over the weekends when she goes over to my MIL's place in the afternoons, or that it would be hard for anyone to have to look after her for prolong period of time as she wouldn't drink much from the bottle otherwise. In this instance, Faith is too smart for her own good -- or is it for ours?? I guess those would be times when she would go a little hungry. But over the months, I've read enough and learn from my little one that she would drink if she's really hungry. Otherwise, she would rather skip one or two bottle feeds and wait for the "real thing".

I hope this would mean that apart from the fact that my baby is smart, she would also be a discerning gourmet in the future :)

Real life or reel life?

I've been an avid fan of the current 108-episode Korean drama "Be Strong, Geum-Soon!" that's running on Channel U, Mondays - Fridays at 7 pm. Occasionally, when Louis is home in time to catch the show with me or when we view the recorded episode after putting Faith to sleep, he would be commenting or lamenting about some of the scenes.

Yesterday, the episode featured the father-in-law of the lead character absolutely seething and furious with his eldest son becos the latter hid the truth from his parents and did not tell them he married a woman who was a divorcee with a son (whom her ex has custody of). The father was so disgraced and humiliated that he refused to talk to his son and daughter-in-law and even asked them to move to stay on their own asap.

My dear hubby was next to me and asking if Koreans are still fundamentally conservative and consider a divorce woman to be social stigmas or pariahs, who not only brought disgrace upon her parents but is doomed to a fate worse than the lowest of human form and never to remarry. I certainly don't profess to know any better.

However, I once heard from our Korean friend that in S.Korea, if an old lady deign to scold or lecture a person on the streets (i.e. a stranger), one should be grateful becos the elder cared enough to want to help correct the person's behaviour.

Anyways, the long and short of it was that my hubby was curious enough to drop an email to our Korean friend after the show and asked her about it. I'm curious myself to know too. While I'm a Singaporean Chinese, its not an unknown fact that we're much influenced by Western (more American, I suspect) cultures so much so that the Chinese think of us as bananas (yellow on the outside, white on the inside). Even though the government is concerned about rising divorce rates, I believe the society is tolerant of remarriages for divorcees.

As soon as our friend replies, we'll share whether the scene from the show depicts real or reel Korean values and culture.