my little cyberspot

7.08pm, 31 October 2004, Sunday

Steak success

Many thanks for Stef of da*xiang for giving her advice on how to cook a great steak. This is my hubby's second attempt and I have to give it an all-round two thumbs up! Broccoli side dish was taken done according to this recipe. *happy belly*

10.51pm, 29 October 2004, Friday

City living - and culinary finds

I'm one of those weirdos that lives in the city and works in the suburbs. It may sound counter-intuitive, but it has its advantages.

For example, on work days, most people face the hectic traffic of rush hour as they squeeze into the downtown area. We, on the other hand, find ourselves in relatively light traffic as we cruise on the highway headed for the boon docks.

Another advantage is that we live so near to almost everything. People are always in a mild state of shock when we tell them that we can jog to Funan Centre in 15 minutes. Trust me, it's jog, not sprint. (My sprinting days are looong over!) And no, our watches aren't lying. A similarly-timed jog will also get us to Mt Faber or Tiong Bahru, depending which direction we head out.

Living in the city also means the walks in our neighbourhood never fail to yield new discoveries. Two weeks ago, I chanced upon a gourmet culinary school called Gourmet Haven nearby (along Tras Street). Set up by a bunch of yuppie foodies, the school-cum-restaurant appears to be have found a loyal following. I attended a short culinary course one lazy Saturday afternoon and learnt how to make crispy-skin chicken (the restaurant kind) and nutty chilli crab, among other things. It was great! And what made it better was, it was so near my house!

Then, just a few hours ago, we made another delightful discovery! Walking back after a power jog to Tiong Bahru and dinner, we found ourselves wandering through the quieter lanes of shophouses along the outskirts of the Tiong Bahru area. We suddenly saw a lighted corridor, a row of huge steel steaming pots and a bevy of women scurrying to and fro. It turned out to be another culinary school - Creative Culinaire. Intrepid me quickly laid my hands on the school's class schedule for the next few months. Led by Chef Judy Koh, the school specialises in baking cakes and breads, but also have gourmet classes. What luck!

It's nights like these where I feel really blessed to have found a lurve nest in the city. My colleague & I have been travelling around the island this past few days, for work purposes, and it's sort of reinforced in me the feeling that there's no place I'd rather live than where I currently am. God has this really amazing way of blessing us in unexpected ways. As I look back, I can only give thanks that He has given us this home, exactly where it is. I look forward to more walks and uncovering more gems!

6.45pm, 27 October 2004, Wednesday

Recipe for chocolate charlotte

For all those who asked for the recipe to the chocolate charlotte I made last week, here it is! Cheers!

Chocolate charlotte cake

about 22 sponge fingers

9 oz plain chocolate

150ml whipping cream

4 eggs, separated

150g sugar *

1. Line the base of a 7 or 8-inch tin with baking paper. Then, line the sides of the tin with the sponge fingers. **

2. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of steaming hot water. Remove from heat and stir in the cream.

3. Whisk the egg whites in another bowl, till standing in stiff peaks. Gradually add sugar and whisk again till stiff.

4. Add egg yolks to the chocolate cream mixture and combine. Then, add the egg white mixture to the chocolate mixture and combine thoroughly. Take care not to knock out all the air.

5. Pour the mixture into the tin and chill for at least 5 hours.

6. When ready to serve, let the cake stand for 5 to 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

* As usual, I didn't put the full amount of sugar as I find recipe books tend to over-estimate the sweetness quotient. I think I put in about 130g of sugar.

** Now this is important stuff so listen up! Firstly, if your sponge fingers have rounded and flat sides, the rounded sides should be facing outside. And if your sponge fingers have sugared and non-sugared sides, the sugared side should be outside. Secondly, you'll need to trim the sponge fingers so as to create a tight fit. Don't worry if in the first instance, your sponge fingers keep falling. That's because they have no chocolate pudding to hold them together. Just do your best to line them up and trim the last finger so as to create a tight fit. Then, don't move your tin around, otherwise your fingers might start falling all over again! The final thing to note is the height of your fingers. You might want to trim the base of each finger so that they stand up to the height of your tin, or slightly higher. Note that all this trimming and adjusting has to be done before your pour in the chocolate pudding mixture! Cheers!

11.01pm, 26 October 2004, Tuesday

Lemon cheesecake

A few people have asked for this already, so I thought I'd better put it up quickly. Here's the recipe for the lemon cheesecake I baked over the weekend, after recovering from cooking "burnout". Cheers!

(Sorry, no picture as I forgot to take one!)

Lemon cheesecake (adapted from Kyoko's Kitchen)

200g cream cheese (room temperature)

50ml milk

3 eggs, separated

75g sugar

2 ts honey

30g cornflour

4-5 tbs lemon juice

1/2 ts cream of tartar

1. Pre-heat oven at 175 degrees. Line a 7 or 8-inch cake tin with greaseproof paper and grease the sides with slab of butter.

2. Place egg whites in a bowl, whisking till they form stiff peaks. Add about half the sugar and continue whisking till mixture stands in stiff peaks.

3. Soften the cream cheese with milk in another bowl. Add the remaining sugar, honey, egg yolks, cornflour, cream of tartar and lemon juice. Combine together.

4. Fold the egg white mixture into the cream cheese mixture and combine thoroughly using a wooden spoon.

5. Transfer the mixture into the tin, level the surface and place the tin into a larger roasting tin. Pour boiling water into the roasting tin to create a bain-marie.

6. Bake on lower shelf for 35-40 minutes. Allow to cool and then remove from tin. Serve hot or chilled!

10.33pm, 25 October 2004, Monday

Ngoh Hiang

Hwee Y came over for dinner today, so I made Ngoh Hiang. It's a Hokkien dish of minced pork, with chestnuts, onions and spring onions finely chopped and seasoned with lots of five spice powder, sesame oil and soya sauce.

I had scoured the internet to find a decent recipe, but didn't find much. My mother-in-law helped by rattling off instructions, but they were in Mandarin and so I couldn't understand half of it! Hee.

Still, being the risk-taker that I am, I went ahead to make Ngoh Hiang. My recipe? Well, it was based on many years of eating Ngoh Hiang and knowing what it should taste like and also, a good amount of common sense.

My husband's verdict - yums! But a bit on the salty side. In the recipe below, I've adjusted the seasonings accordingly. Ngoh Hiang is simple & yummy - try it!

Ngoh Hiang (makes 6)

6 dried beancurd skins, cut into roughly 20 X 25 cm pieces

300g fatty minced pork

1 spanish onion, chopped

8 - 10 tbs spring onions, chopped

12 peeled water chestnuts from can, chopped

2 tbs fish sauce

1 tbs sesame oil

1 tb bicarbonate soda

1 ts rice wine

1 egg

1. Whip out the electric chopper/mincer and chop the onion, spring onions and water chestnuts together.

2. Add chopped ingredients to the minced pork, together with the fish sauce, sesame oil, bicarbonate soda, rice wine and egg. Combine thoroughly.

3. Lay out a beancurd sheet. On one end of the 20cm side, put the meat mixture, then fold up the sides and roll like a spring roll. * Seal the sheet with a bit of water. Repeat for the other sheets.

4. Heat up oil and deep fry the rolls till darkish brown, turning intermittently to ensure even heating. (about 5 minutes).

5. Slice and serve hot, with chilli.

* When putting the meat mixture, be careful not to put too much meat as the ngoh hiang tends to expand when cooked and you don't want to burst the skin!

8.05pm, 24 October 2004, Sunday

Ink, a rare find!

We found a rare treasure today. Ink is a cafe-cum-bookstore snugly located on the 2nd floor of Robertson Walk (where the DBS Arts Centre is). The ceilings are high, the space is huge and half of the place is dedicated to shelves and shelves of second-hand books! Here's a pix of the lovely dark wood shelves and the warm yellow lighting:

Ink also sells second-hand CDs and VCDs. I bought a Swingle Singers CD for $5!

The other half of Ink is dedicated to the cafe proper. Food is cheap & good (burger & fries for $4.50 etc.,) and the service is warm. Check out the menu and the "ink" mark on the coffee in the pic:

Ink markets itself as the "definitive alternative to pubbing", it being located right smack in the centre of pub-central (Mohamed Sultan is just round the corner). The owner told us that the cafe has many regulars and true enough, when we were there, there was a bunch of people lounging around, sipping coffee, listening to bossa nova and flipping through magazines. It's truly a very nice place to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon!

12.00pm, 23 October 2004, Saturday

Cookbook recommendations

This week, I only cooked once! And that was on Monday - made Ca Ga, which is a Vietnamese dish of fish stir-fried with tumeric, basil, mint, dill and ginger. For some reason, didn't have the usual 'desire' to experiment and create. Guess it might be cooking burn-out? Has anyone ever experienced that? Is there such a thing? Teehee.

Well, instead of cooking, I have found myself busy thinking about cookbooks. I don't have that many myself, and was wondering if people could share their top favourite/best cookbooks with me, so that I could expand my cookbook shelf. Any suggestions, one and all? I'm particularly interested in non-Chinese cooking. It could still be Asian, just not Chinese, as that is too familiar to me already. Thanks! Would really appreciate it!

8.11am, 17 October 2004, Sunday

Chocolate charlotte cake 1

My first attempt at a chocolate charlotte cake. Used recipe from an ephermerously-named book, "Greatest Ever Chocolate". Not a glam book, no celebrity endorsements, no fancy pictures. But I found the recipes quite successful so far, this one included. ^__^

Hope K & Hwee L enjoyed it as much as I did!

7.47pm, 15 October 2004, Friday

Like playing chess

Every once in a while, you get the feeling that your life is like playing a game of chess, it's your turn to make a move and you find yourself needing to pause to ponder, analyse and pray.

Today, I was reminded of the sufficiency of Scripture in guiding my life and 'chess moves'. Praise God that He is in control and no matter what, all things work out for the good of those who love him. Amen!

9.38pm, 14 October 2004, Thursday

Life without a TV

Most people are surprised when they learn that we don't have a TV in our house. In fact, it garners so much interest that we have spent entire conversations on it. I guess it's because to the average Joe Singaporean, heck, to the average Joe citizen of most countries, TV is a given.

It's not that we can't afford one. It's just that we choose not to have one. And believe it or not, life without a TV is actually fulfilling, meaningful and rich. No, really.

I've gotten so used to being without a TV that everytime I see a TV screen these days, I kinda have to stare at it for a while, in fascination. Ooh, moving pictures, people talking, sound coming out of a box. People laugh at us, because we're like country folk from the boon-docks.

Heh. The past few days have been filled with staring-at-TV-moments. Last night, at husband's family's place, we sat around watching Changing Lanes on Channel U. (Not bad. Scripting on local drama serials has reached American Soap Opera level.) Then, we went to my brother's place to visit 3-week old Samuel and we watched Something-or-other on Discovery. This evening, while visiting a friend at the hospital, I caught the news and another Chinese drama serial. And then, by sheer coincidence, my dad just called to ask if we wanted an extra TV set that he had.

Is this some kind of conspiracy, God? Well, I don't think TV is evil or bad or anything. But, I've just gotten used to not having it. I stopped watching TV while I was in college in Chicago. Coincidentally, my husband actually felt the same way about TV that I did. It's true love I tell you. So, when we were buying furniture for the lurve nest, we happily abstained. ^__^

So how do you keep abreast of latest events? Ahem. We have this thing called broadband. It's like really current yknow. So what do you do after work? Hmm. Well, we cook, read, blog, play with Meow and drumroll, talk to each other. Gee, that's really stunning, but it's actually enjoyable! Tee hee. No, really!!!

Well, I guess I'm this close to being called a Quaker, so I better quit while I'm ahead. But, if you're feeling radical or wanting to be different, try abstaining from TV for a week. And get all your friends and family to do the same. I guarantee you, you won't miss it.

9.32pm, 11 October 2004, Monday

Zha Jiang Mian (Beijing noodles with thick minced beef sauce)

Don't ask me why, but in the afternoon, I suddenly developed a massive craving for Zha Jiang Mian. I think it's because I was planning to cook khai pad gaprao for dinner (ok ok, I'm showing off - it's simply thai for stir-fried minced chicken with basil) and I was also thinking of how to use up the cucumbers in my fridge. So, me with the lateral mind went from minced chicken to minced beef, from leftover cucumbers to thinly sliced cucumber garnish. Add garlic, ginger, onion, hoisin, sherry and voila! A whole new other dish popped into my brain. And I started salivating. ^__^

For the uninitiated, zha jiang mian is a delish bowl of flat white noodles with a warm, thick and sweet minced meat sauce over it. It's usually topped up with cucumbers slices, which are a perfect foil to the thick meaty-ness of the dish, or sometimes, with chopped onion shoots. Most people will like to add some spicyness to the dish, i.e., chilli flakes etc., but since I can't take hot stuff, I'm naturally omitted all forms of spice. Still, the warm sweet gravy of the dish is enough to satisfy me.

And here's the lovely recipe. Cheers!

Shanghai noodles with thick minced beef sauce

300g minced beef

2 tb soya sauce

3 tb hoisin sauce

2 tb cooking sherry

1/2 cup chicken stock

1 thumb length of ginger, chopped **

1 large onion, chopped **

3-5 garlic, chopped **

1 ts cornflour, dissolved in about 3 tb of chicken stock

1 cucumber

Taiwanese noodles (enough for 2)*

1 tb sesame oil

* These are the flat, white noodles. They don't come fresh - that's a different type. You buy them dried, in packets, and they're made from wheat flour.

** The ginger, onion and garlic needs to be very finely chopped, so if you have one of those electric choppers/mincers, here's the time to put it to good use! Just throw in all three ingredients and mince away!

1. Mix the soya sauce into the beef and set aside.

2. Combine the hoisin, sherry and chicken stock well.

3. Heat up some oil and fry the ginger, onion and garlic mixture till fragrant.

4. Add the minced beef and stir continuously to achieve a light brown colour all-round.

5. Add hoisin, sherry and chicken stock mix. Lower fire and cover for 10 minutes. Open once in a while to stir.

6. In the meantime, combine the cornstarch and a bit of chicken stock, if you haven't done so already, and add to the beef.

7. Finely chop the cucumbers into middle finger-length strips.

8. Add noodles to boiling water . Follow packet instructions to cook - probably 4 to 5 minutes.

9. Drain water and add sesame oil to noodles.

10. Finally, arrange noodles in bowls, add beef with sauce on top and top off with cucumber strips. Serve hot!

10.21am, 9 October 2004, Saturday

Bee Bim Bap

I have a long-standing love affair with Korean food. It started in college, where I met loads of Korean-Ams and they used to have Korean food fests in the dorm. Almost inevitably, someone's mother would pack him a large ziplock bag of bulgogi and the entire dorm would frequently permeate with this amazing fried garlic smell as he stir-fried it all up. Other friends would bring huge bottles of pickled vegetables (one guy even had a bottle of pickled whole garlic bulbs! eeow) and then all and sundry would huddle round a small rice cooker and gobble up freshly steamed rice with strips of seaweed and pickled veggies. It sure beat the sloppy joes and the jello in the cafeteria!

I also picked up a taste for Korean food from the most unexpected source. A small ice cream shop near my Uni, called J K Sweets, was a popular hangout for us college kids. One day, we started noticing strange hand-written signs being hung on the window - "Bee Bim Bap, $4.00". Coming in from the stern cold winter, I ordered my first "Bee Bim Bap" in that shop and I still remember it till this day. It very quickly became my favourite place for Asian food. Gradually, the shop owners, who were Korean, added more items to their "under the table" menu - Galbi (Korean pork ribs) and Tonkatsu were also my favourites.

But, back to Bee Bim Bap. While I learnt how to make Bulgogi from a Korean friend, and while I learnt through trial and error how to make Japchae and Korean pancakes, I didn't make Bee Bim Bap until recently. I guess it's because the taste of J K Sweets' Bee Bim Bap will always be the 'real thing' to me and I felt I could not possibly compete with it.

Anyway, I've yakked enough. ^__^ SY came over for dinner this past week & it was a great time to catch up with an old friend. I guess subconsciously, because she's an old friend, I felt like making something that also reminded me of old times - and what better thing to make than good ol Bee Bim Bap? My husband had been begging me to cook it again, since I made it for him shortly after we got married. So here it is:

As I make this dish from memory and agar-ration (I never really had a recipe), I'll have to apologise if the measurements given below seem a bit out of the ordinary. But the good thing about cooking is it's all about estimation and personal taste. So, don't let the weird-ness stop you from making this lovely dish!

Bee Bim Bap (makes 3 bowls, 1 bowl per person)

3 fistfuls of beansprouts

3 fistfuls of chinese spinach (cut and washed)

9 crabsticks

4 fistfuls of shitake mushrooms, with caps removed and thinly sliced

3 eggs

2 medium steak medallions

1 large white onion, chopped into rings or half rings.

1 tb soya sauce

10 garlic, thinly chopped

1 tb sugar

1 - 2 tb toasted sesame seeds

3 tb green onion shoots

2 tb sesame oil

Steamed jasmine rice, enough for 3 persons

1. Start with the beef as that needs the most work. Slice across the grain, into thin slices, as thin as possible.

2. To the beef, add the soya sauce, garlic, sugar, sesame seed and onion shoots. Mix well and place in fridge for at least 20 minutes.

3. Using boiling hot water, blanch the beansprouts and then, the chinese spinach and remove. Separately, add 1tb of sesame oil to the beansprouts and the spinach. You can also add a bit of soya sauce to taste. Set aside.

4. Heat oil in a wok and fry the onions till translucent and fragrant. Bunch them to the side of the wok and lower heat.

5. With fire still going, add strips of beef to the wok. Think of it as a BBQ pit, so, it's best to add the beef in batches, covering the wok with only one layer of beef at a time.

6. The key is to fry the beef very very quickly. Turning each strip individually and then removing quickly. The beef should taste tender, sweet and garlic-y. (You have just made bulgogi beef! Yay!)

7. After removing the beef and onions (which by now are amazingly fragrant and soft), stirfry the shitake mushrooms. Keep heating the mushrooms till you see them releasing water and decreasing in size. Stir fry a bit longer, remove and add a bit of soya sauce to taste.

8. Spoon rice into 3 separate bowls. On top of each rice bed, arrange the beansprouts, chinese spinach, onions, shitake mushrooms, bulgogi beef as in picture, leaving the middle portion empty.

9. Make three sunny-side up eggs and add one each to the middle portion.

10. Serve with Korean hot sauce!*

* This is not really a must. But Korean hot sauce does complement Bee Bim Bap tremendously! You can get Korean hot sauce from Koreana, a Korean supermarket behind Amara Hotel. Let me know if you need more info! They sell really cool Korean stuff there. But, if you're lazy, like me, you can eat the Bee Bim Bap without the sauce. In fact, I've never had the sauce before as I don't like spicy stuff. My husband loves it though!

12.02pm, 4 October 2004, Monday

You know you're old when...

1. You play captain's ball and your legs start aching all over for the next three days.

2. You watch a play featuring "songs of yesteryear" and you recognise all of them.

3. You start meeting more and more working adults born in 1980.

Well. To console myself, I have decided to blame the abovementioned no. 1 on my lousy sports shoes. They are 8 years old and have no more support left in them! (Yes, I have had the same shoe size for 8 years, yet another reminder of how old I am ahhh!)

As for no. 2, there's simply no denying that the "Drink to Dumex full cream milk!" jingle is no longer considered current. Together with the "OK, OK, Pocky" and the "Ho Ho Ho Horlicks" jingles, these "songs of yesteryear" are precious memories to a select generation of Singaporeans that is no longer considered "youth". Sniff.

And as for no. 3, what can I say? I met a guy recently who mentioned he graduated from Urbana-Champaign, Illinois in 2004. 2004? That's this year! Wait, that means you're 24,... wait that means you were born in... AIGHHHH!!!!

What was really frightful was that he was in the workforce. I mean, if you tell me you're born in 1980 and you're still a student, that's not half as scary. But the fact that he's working means that I'm old enough to have colleagues that were born in the 1980s and that is not a pleasant thought.

To top it all off, Cloud has been plucking white hairs from my head constantly. While discussing a project the other day, she closed in on three unsuspecting ones and eliminated them swiftly. She also plucked white hairs from my sad old head over lunch. I quickly lost my appetite.

Growing old is inevitable. And I suppose the most proper way to deal with it is gracefully and with a bit of spunk. The play that we watched - Sing Song by The Necessary Stage - was excellent as it reminded me of all the songs we used to sing as teenagers, including a few jingles, and it did so in a way that warmed the heart. Remember songs by Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, A Ha, Wham! and the inebrious NKOTB?!? Then, let's not forget Belinda Carlisle, PM Dawn, MC Hammer, Whitney Houston and Boyz to Men... HOHOHO. The play was about how some songs have very personal memories attached to them. Like, I still remember crouching in the hallowed stairwells of my JC compound with friends and harmonising to "Only Heaven Knows"and "And I Swear"... those were the days. My a capella buddies in school & I were always scuttling off to dark quiet corners to harmonise this or that. We even put the school song to harmony once, to the chargrin of others. We made up tunes for our teachers' birthdays, we sang jazzy numbers like "Summertime" and "The Rose", we even wrote songs... man. What a trip down memory lane.

Well, there really is no end to reminiscing is there? So, if you're reading this and have a favourite memory or song to share, do let me know. Maybe we can reminisce together and then, growing old won't feel that bad after all.

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