Tonkatsu

[9.57pm, 28 Jul 04, Wednesday] Just settled down after a short jog and a leisurely dinner with my husband. We haven't had a relaxed night like this in a while. So, am grateful to God for the pleasant change and feeling quite content.

For tonight's dinner, I made tonkatsu! This is Japanese for deep-fried breaded meat. The generic term for the Japanese bread crumbs used is panko and it can be used to deep-fry pretty much anything, though pork is by far the most common, and in my opinion, the best choice. I say this because pork chops are comparatively thinner than, say, a chicken boneless thigh fillet or a beef steak, and the thickness of the chop is fairly uniform throughout. This makes for easier and faster cooking. Moreover, pork has a subtle sweetness and when cooked quickly, as in this recipe, it retains its juices and flavour very well. Tonight, I tried tonkatsu chicken. Here's the recipe, which you can use for pork, shrimp or even, oysters: (hmm, breaded oysters, yum!):

Tonkatsu

1 cup of panko *

1 egg

1 cup of flour

2 boneless chicken thigh meat **

* Panko can be found in any supermarket with a Japanese section. I identify it by the image printed on the packet, which usually consists of a breaded shrimp. Pl note panko is different from tempura flour!

1. Remove the fatty skin of the chicken and use the back of a spoon to flatten and tenderise the meat. ^

2. Season the meat with salt and pepper.

3. Cover the meat in flour, then dredge it in egg. Finally, cover the meat in panko. Make sure all parts of the meat are covered evenly. ^^

4. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. ^^^

5. Heat up the oil. When oil is ready ^^^^, deep-fry the meat in batches till golden brown.

6. Slice the meat into 1 inch strips and serve with worcester sauce, japanese mayo, ketchup and chilli sauce on the side.

^ Try to flatten the meat as much as possible as this will aid in the cooking process later

A walk in the woods - a nature and heritage trail!

[9.46pm, 25 Jul 04, Sunday] Today, we explored Kent Ridge's flora (and fauna) and toured Reflections at Bukit Chandu, a World War 2 Interpretative Centre. We were guided by a bunch of giggly students from Saint Andrews JC and a very friendly Malay lady who's volunteering with the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research. (Did you know we had one?!)

I was fascinated by the plants we saw. Above is a shot of Simpoh Air - its big leaves are used to hold nasi padang and wrap nasi lemak! Whoo...

We also saw curry plants and eucalyptus trees, both of which had very fragrant-smelling leaves! The award for the most-unexpected plant though, went to the mistletoe. That's right. Blink blink. I'm not kidding. Did you know we have mistletoe in Singapore? These plants attach themselves to other plants for survival and we spotted one "attached" to an Acacia tree, see below. Incidentally, mistletoe comes in male and female varieties and only the female versions produce the brightly-coloured fruits that have become associated with Christmas... one of the many things I learnt today :)

The plant we most frequently spotted was the local tembusu. Its wood is used to make chopping boards because it is so hard! Also, its flowers are amazingly fragrant, so much so that the scientific name for the tembusu flower is, literally, Fagraea Fragrans:

All in all, it was a very enjoyable trip. I've been to Kent Ridge to "gai-gai" several times but never knew anything about all the plants up there! Those nature guides were a real fun and cheery bunch and it got me thinking that there's a lot of simple good-natured fun in learning about nature. At the same time, nature provides a lot of interesting food for thought - like the story about the fig and the wasp. Fig trees have bunches of little round nobes that people often mistake for fruits. We actually got to peer inside one and guess what we saw? A flower! Within the hardy nobule is a beautiful pink flower that can only be pollinated by a special type of wasp. The wasp crawls in via a small hole (which, apparently, was made solely for the wasp to crawl in) and because the hole is so small, the wasp loses its wings in the process and cannot escape. So, it lays its eggs in the fig flower and then, it dies. When the eggs hatch, the female wasps break out of the fig, carrying the pollen with it, and continue the cycle of crawling-into-other-fig-so-as-to-lay-egg-and-pollinate-fig-and-die-in-meantime. And get this, the male wasp never makes it out of the fig. It never sees light of day. Its sole purpose in life is to have sex. Nature is weeeird.

Beer-batter fish & chips

[3.07pm, 24 Jul 04, Saturday] Mel came over to hang & pray with Bim, so I decided to make fish & chips! It's the kind of fun, afternoon dish that doesn't require much work. And the best part is, I finally got to use the ton of fish my mom gave me when we visited her recently. ^__^. Here's the recipe for the beer-batter fish. (I just baked frozen chips in the oven, so no need recipe for that!)

Beer-batter fish from Great Cooking Classics (The Australian Women's Weekly Cookbooks)

1.5 cups (225g) self-raising flour

1 egg

1 can (375ml) of beer

10-12 fish fillets *

1 cup japanese mayo

1 tbsp lemon juice **

1 tbsp finely-chopped chives ***

* I used frozen dory fillets, for no particular reason than I had so much of it in the freezer. But dory does work well, because it has a firm texture, so it's actually not a bad choice at all.

** Personally, I find 1 tbsp lemon juice too much. The tartare sauce was a bit too sour for my liking. I'll probably skimp a bit on it the next time.

1. Whisk the flour, egg and beer together in a mixing bowl until smooth^, cover; refridgerate 1 hour.

2. Heat up oil in large pot.

3. When oil is ready^^, deep-fry fish in batches, until browned and crisp.

4. To make tartare sauce, combine the last three ingredients and stir well.

5. Serve with chips, ketchup, chilli sauce, aeoli^^^ and tatare sauce.

^ I just used a fork. Don't think there's need for an electric whisk here.

^^ Here's a tip: to test whether the oil is "ready", throw in a bit of batter. If the oil is ready, the batter should sink and immediately float up to the surface. If the batter sinks, stays there for a while and then floats up, the oil is not hot enough. If the batter doesn't sink, the oil is a wee bit too hot!

A new look - HTML still rocks!

[8.56pm, 22 Jul 04, Thursday] You'll notice that my blog is looking spiffier now! Truth be told, I've been wandering into other people's blogs and feeling a bit sad that mine looked so "amateur". So, with a bit of creativity and 1.5 hours to spare, I re-designed everything, and all using basic HTML still! The secret: it's all in the tables. Really. Oh yea, and when I couldn't figure things out, there was always webmonkey and arachnophilia to help out. Do let me know what you think of my new look!

Isaac - cute baby!

[11.31pm, 20 Jul 04, Tuesday] Had to put up this picture of Isaac, Kelp & Huiling's sumo baby of joy. He's a huuuge bundle of joy to our DG (we meet at their place now!) and today, he was kind enough to stay relatively still, so that I can snap this shot. Isn't he adorable?

 

A tourist in my own land

[11.19pm, 20 Jul 04, Tuesday] It's sad that we are seldom tourists in our own land. Today, I wandered around Little India and Chinatown and was amazed at how many beautiful sights Singapore has that I've never seen before. Above and below are some shots of the Abdul Ghafoor Mosque in Little India. Built at the turn of the last century, it has stained glass windows, a surprisingly western touch!

We also wandered into the Church of True Light, a spartan Anglican Church with a huge ideogram of the Chinese word for "love" at the centre of its altar.

Finally, some of us had our hands "henna-ed". I resolve to be a tourist in my own land more often!

Indian dinner for 4

[10.53pm, 18 Jul 04, Sunday] Was quite pleased with tonight's dinner with Mei & Ed. It consisted of grilled tandoori chicken, tumeric basmati rice with raisins and cashews, a medley of purple onions, cucumbers and tomatos (all roughly sliced) and a surprise addition from Bim - Japanese curry! Surprisingly, the japanese curry, with its mild sweet tang, provided a calming gravy-ed wetness to the somewhat dry Basmati. Mei & Ed brought apple struedel for dessert. It was a lovely time catching up on how married life has been treating us and what we've learnt so far. I realised once again that I really value honesty and openness in people and I appreciate it when people are able to share the good and the bad. After all, there is nothing to be ashamed of amongst brothers and sisters in Christ. We are all but sinners saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Living for Jesus - short Korean flash animation

[3.05pm, 18 Jul 04, Sunday] A friend sent me this link some time back. It's a very touching short Korean flash animation about what it means to live for Jesus. Whenever I'm feeling out of focus, this link always reminds me in very clear terms what it's all about. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Rijsttafel - Rice Table

[3.59pm, 17 Jul 04, Saturday] Last night, we ate until we fainted. It was alto's birthday gathering and in true Singaporean style, what better way to celebrate than to gather all your friends and eat until can die. Rijsttafel is Dutch for "Rice Table". At the International Building, 2nd floor, (next to Isetan Scotts), a restaurant by the same name has been dishing out amazing Indonesian food for years. Here's how it works: you sit down and before you can figure out how to pronounce "Rijsttafel", the waiters bring you 16-18 dishes of really yummy Indonesian food. It's all automatic. You don't have to go through the hassle of ordering anything. You have no choice in the matter. You have to eat 16-18 dishes worth of really yummy Indonesian food, whether you like it or not. And the best news is, you can order whatever dishes were especially yummy, over and over again - it's like a ala carte buffet heaven, Indonesian-style!

Here is my husband after 2 hours of Rijsttafel:

And here is a random pix of alto and Chin. Happy Birthday alto! (Nami nami!)

Read more about Rijsttafel and some recipes here.

A silver lining - reflections on Moraimar

[4.50pm, 16 Jul 04, Friday] Was in a reflective mood today, so started flipping through old photographs. This is a photograph of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, taken at night. We had arrived early for dinner at the Restaurant Moraimar in the Moorish part of town. (In Spain, restaurants only open at 8 or 8.30pm!) Being cold and hungry, the waiters took pity on us, brought us in and showed us to a balcony area on the top floor, where we would be "out of their way" as they busied themselves opening shop. The balcony was directly oppposite the Alhambra and we managed to capture this view. Quite romantic, since it was a private balcony, sealed off, and it was just me, my husband & the beautiful view (on our honeymoon!).

But of course, with all real romantic memories, if you dig hard enough, it's not always as picture-perfect as it seems. I do recall that we were having an on-going fight about why we were eating in the Moraimar in the first place. My hubby wanted to try the food because it was "recommended in Lonely Planet". But that meant waiting in the balcony for at least 30-45 minutes more. I was hungry and just wanted to eat anything. It didn't help that that balcony was freezing. We're talking temperature drops of 10 degrees at night here. We ended up in sullen disagreement for so long that the restaurant opened and we were able to eat! The food turned out to be not that great, but with warm food in our bellies, our spirits were much cheered and we began to laugh at our white-knuckled hands and red ruddy noses.

In times of stress (be it due to cold, lack of food, or other things like busyness at work, busyness at home), it's very easy for the world to look bleak and hopeless. It's very easy for small things to become big things and to overwhelm us. But, there really is a silver lining in every cloud. We may have fought that night and starved momentarily, but we also got to enjoy an exclusive romantic view of the Alhambra, which most others would never experience. I really thank God that He blesses us like that. The next time we face a Moraimar, I'll look for the beautiful view in the distance and focus on it.

Basmati experiment

[7.46pm, 15 Jul 04, Thursday] Today, I decided to experiment with basmati rice. It's apparently the "health king" of all rices, being richest in amino acids and other nutrients like iron, phosphorous, potassium, riboflavin and thiamine. And it doesn't taste that bad at all! In fact, it sort of tastes like regular white rice, except without the starchiness. It's also got a certain nutty flavour to it and is somewhat "drier" than regular rice.

When it comes to non-white grains, I'm a personal fan of adding weird ingredients so as to enhance the flavour of the dish. I tried that once with cous cous - added green peppers, cranberries and cashews, all chopped up into little pieces and it was delish! So, with today's basmati, I tried parsley, cashews, (dried) cranberries and raisins. I actually couldn't decide between cranberries and raisins, so dumped them both in! After tasting the dish, I'd have to say that cranberries really give the dish a "fusion" feel. Raisins are more "traditional", so I'll probably just go with them the next time. What I really like about mixing stuff is the weird and wonderful tastes that are produced. The already-fragrant basmati blended with the smell of parsley, the roasted nuttiness of cashews and the juiciness of raisins. It's a really simple dish but worth trying! Serving tip: serve the basmati with a wet curry or a gravy-ed meat. This is because the rice though yummy tends to be a bit "dry".

Chocolate Chunk Cookies

[11.48pm, 13 Jul 04, Tuesday] I received several requests for this cookie recipe, so decided to share it with all. Baked them on my birthday, when I took leave from work and found myself idling away at home, and must say, am quite pleased with the result. They are sweet, yet not too sweet, with a nice buttery, but not oily aftertaste. A few notes to share: first of all, these are dropped cookies. The significance of this did not quite hit me during the first batch. You see, I did not realise that dropped cookies tend to expand in size in the oven. They kinda move from being odd squiggly shaped lumps to being expanded perfect rounds due to the heat. I had placed them too close to each other, not knowing they would "grow". The result was that my dropped cookies expanded into each other and became a veritable pan of cookies, right before my horrified eyes. Well, to salvage the situation, I cut the "pan of cookie" into smaller squares and served them to people as unique cookie squares (think I managed to fool them that I had intended for them to be square all along!). I am happy to report that this debacle did not actually end up compromising the taste of the cookies, i.e., cookies round or square taste equally delish!

Chocolate Chunk Biscuits from The Complete Book of Home Baking by Heilie Pienaar

200g butter or margarine

100g caster sugar *

65g light brown sugar

2 large eggs **

1 tsp vanilla essence ***

250g self-raising flour ****

150g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped *****

* I skimped a bit on the sugar as generally speaking, I find westerners have a sweet tooth and western recipes tend to over-state their sugar amounts.

** I couldn't find LARGE eggs so just settled for normal-sized eggs. Of course, I stuck to the tried-and-tested Seng Choon eggs, which actually do produce a yellower texture in other kinds of desserts.

***I am a personal fan of vanilla essence, so naturally, I added 2 tsp, instead of one.

****Have to admit, after adding the flour, the mixture still looked rather "liquidy", so, I did add in about two dashes more. Thankfully, the cookies turned out fine - not too dry, still very moist indeed!

*****This was a fine opportunity for me to get rid of all the half-eaten chocolate bars in my fridge (so as to prevent my lovely husband from snacking on them!). I used Cadbury's Fruit and Nut, Lindt as well as some random liquered chocolate. I think it doesn't matter how much chocolate you use - so long as visually, it looks as if each cookie will have a substantial but not overwhelming amount of chunks in it. Once again, it's personal taste. If you'd like to add more, I would advise to reduce the sugar amount by just a bit, so as not to make the overall product too sweet.

^One last piece of advice - cookies sometimes suffer from an oily aftertaste. I suspect that this is because the butter in the mixture begins to melt during the preparation stage or while waiting for the earlier batch to bake in the oven. To prevent this from happening, place the mixture in the fridge anytime you suspect your butter is melting. For me, I had to do this once or twice during preparation stage, because I'm such a slow poke at mixing things. And while waiting for the earlier batches to bake in the over, I dumped the mixture in the fridge too. Try it! And now onto the recipe...

1. Cream the butter and both sugars together. Add eggs and vanilla essence and beat well until light and fluffy.

2. Sift flour and add, mixing well. Stir in chocolate chunks.

3. Drop teaspoonfuls onto a greased baking tray and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees C for 10-12 minutes

4. Remove biscuits and place on a wire rack to cool.

Farewell to Lora Vogt

[10.29pm, 12 Jul 04, Tuesday] We had a farewell party for Lora, who's leaving our tiny isle for Turkey. We blindfolded her and made her guess fruit like durian, jackfruit and duku langsat. And of course, there was the customary feasting-on-oily-hawker-food-that-is-truly-Singaporean. Lora is off to teach in a mission school in Turkey that is part of the Network of International Community Schools. It's probably not a very safe time to go to Turkey, but you can't tell that from the way she's acting. She's absolutely thrilled to be following God's calling. I really admire that and long for the day I too can pick up and go and follow where God leads. Perhaps after my bond is over...

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