Yesterday, we made a trip to... no, not Batam, not Bintan, not Tioman, but... Sentosa! Hey, here's a big secret: Sentosa is really lovely! Especially if you go early, around 9.30 or 10 in the morning. It's empty. No crowded hordes of campers, bikers, and roller-bladers like at East Coast Park. The above picture was taken from a shaded spot we found, right next to the water. I thought it was really cool that they built shades right at the waterfront, see:
I spent most of my time lounging, while Husband indulged in some quality time with Daniel:
Then, after our lazy sprawl, we headed for the Underwater World. Daniel was quite fascinated by the fish, while I was mesmerised by the lovely jellyfish:
I find jellyfish quite hypnotic. OOH ^__^
Reading the bilingual cookbook "Quick & Easy Hawker's Fair" is really bringing out my inner hawker. After the recipe for Drunken Chicken with Black Fungus turned out well, I decided to try the Braised Assorted Mushrooms with Beancurd (one of the scant few dishes in the cookbook that did NOT require deep-frying, which I'm trying to avoid!)
The result was yums and the dish was so quick and easy to prepare too - there's something about mushrooms that lends an earthy, rounded body to a dish. Methinks I'll be experimenting with mushrooms more in the future! Enjoy!
Braised Assorted Mushrooms with Beancurd (adapted from Quick & Easy Hawker's Fair)
2 fistfuls of fresh shiitake mushrooms, each sliced into half
1 packet of fresh golden pin mushrooms, roots chooped off
1 tb oyster sauce
1 ts soya sauce
1 ts sugar
1 ts sesame oil
1 cup water
1 box of white beancurd
1. Steam beancurd for 7 minutes. Set aside.
2. Mix the oyster sauce, soya sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and water together. Heat some oil in a pan on medium heat. When oil is hot, throw in the shiitake mushrooms and golden pin mushrooms and stir. Cover and lower heat and let mushrooms "sweat". After a few minutes, add the sauce and stir. Cover and continue to let the mushrooms "sweat" for a few more minutes.
3. Place steamed tofu on dish. Pour mushrooms & sauce over the tofu and serve with freshly steamed rice & oyster veggies.
The other dish I promised to share the recipe of is Buta Kaku-ni, Japanese stewed pork. This recipe is adapted from my trusty Izakaya recipe book and was first used by my Husband last week - here we go!
Japanese stewed pork (adapted from Tapas from Japan, Popular Izakaya recipes)
800g pork belly *
8 cups water
1/2 cup sake
1 stalk green onion
1 thumb ginger, sliced
3 1/2 tb sugar
1/2 cup mirin
1/2 cup soya sauce
* The amount of pork belly can be adjusted depending on how many people you are serving. This amount should serve 4 people. If you cook more or less pork belly, I'd suggest to keep to the quantities of the other ingredients, as they make up a yummy sauce in the proportions given.
1. Cut pork into 5 cm (2 inch) chunks.^ In a pot, bring water to boil and add pork. Return to boil, removing any "scum" which floats up to the surface.
2. Add sake, green onion, and ginger to the pot. Simmer for about 2 hours, uncovered, removing "scum" frequently.
3. When liquid has decreased to the level of the meat, i.e., the surface of the meat is showing, add sugar and mirin. Cover and simmer a further 30 minutes.
4. Finally, add soya sauce, cover, and cook another 30 minutes. Serve!
^ The recipe calls for each pork cube to be tied like a parcel, using a cotton thread. Although we did this step, in retrospect, I think it may not be necessary, so I didn't include it in the recipe steps above.
^^ The recipe also gives the reason for adding the seasonings in a staggered fashion, instead of all at once in the beginning. Apparently, the ingredients become tender first and more easily absorb flavours ?! Apparently, we should always add sugar, then mirin, and lastly soya sauce, in that order, for any braised dish that requires these seasonings ?!
Since I'm on a roll writing about non-food topics, I thought it a good time to share about one of my favourite baby books - The Contented Little Baby Book by Gina Ford. I found the book sitting pretty in Kinokuniya way back when I was preggers and Husband and I were searching for good preggie books to read. Gina Ford may not have "M.D." at the back of her name, like Dr Miriam Stoppard, but she is one of the U.K.'s most experienced and successful maternity nurses. Although her book was devoid of glossy pictures, it was the wealth of practical tips and down to earth sharings that attracted me and I ended up devouring the book while barely scarcely flitting through other more beautifully illustrated and well-designed books.
One thing about Gina Ford is she is a bit counter-cultural. You can call her radical if you like. While most other books promote something called "demand feeding", which is basically feeding the baby whenever he wants to be fed, good ol' Gina recommends feeding the baby on a more regular schedule. While there's nothing inherently wrong with the concept of feeding the baby whenever he wants to be fed, it becomes problematic when you're dealing with a very young, usually very sleepy infant. What typically happens when you're feeding a squidge is after less than 5 minutes of nursing, he falls asleep. Now, if you were to follow the demand feeding principles, you might mistakenly think your squidge has fed enough and is full. So, you might leave him be, only to have him wake up 1/2 hour to 1 hour later screaming for more milk. Following the demand feeding principles of feeding the baby whenever he wants, you'd proceed to feed him again. And typically, the squidge might fall asleep again after less than 5 minutes. This pattern might continue throughout the day (and night), with the mother ending up being more tired and frustrated than anything. Thinking that the child could not possibly be hungry when he cries shortly after being fed, the mother may then resort to other methods of quelling the kid, like picking him up, rocking him etc., The main problem with demand feeding seems to be that the prerogative is on the child to decide how much he wants to drink - but he may be a bit too young, or in this case, sleepy, to make that decision!
Gina recommends giving babies more milk during each nursing session - at least 25 minutes per breast, in the beginning. For me, my initial nursing sessions in the first few months were 45 minutes to 1 hour long. I was constantly waking Daniel up during feeding - infants are really sleepyheads! - so that he would continue feeding until he was really full and not just falling asleep. With this arrangement, he naturally fell into a three hourly feeding pattern, practically from birth! I found that I also had more time to rest in between feeds, which accounts for the voluminous amounts of milk I had!
Gina also lays out a schedule for naps and sleeping times. While the way she writes is rather authoritarian, e.g., "At 7am, the curtains must be drawn and the baby must be awake", if one can just get over that, one will see a lot of sense in the principles behind her schedules. For instance, she recommends that newborns be awake for no longer than 2 to 2.5 hours at a stretch. And she structures her naps so that they are short-long-short, i.e., one short nap in the morning, one long nap at noon (2 hours), and one short nap in the afternoon. I never really followed Gina's exact timings - I think it's perfectly ok to deviate by a few mintues, or even by half an hour here or there - but I understood her principles: the baby should have his longest nap in the middle of the day, NOT towards the evening or the morning. If his long nap is too close to the evening, he may not sleep till really late at night, because he's so rested from his long evening nap! Conversely, if his long nap is in the morning, by the time he gets to evening, he may be extremely tired and fussy.
Some may think that putting a baby on a schedule is a funny idea. I used to fear the derision of others, and so never really mentioned that Daniel was on a schedule. But then, the testimonies of other mothers confirmed my belief in the benefits of scheduled naps and routines. One mother who started her baby on a schedule only after 8 months said, "It was like having a totally different baby. He was much less fussy all the time and more happy." The strongest testimony, however, came from my other friend whose 6 month old was waking up every 2 hours at night. One day I received an SMS from her saying, "Yesterday, we vowed to follow Gina Ford to the tee and guess what? My daughter slept through the night 10 hours. Praise the Lord!"
For myself, Daniel has actually been sleeping through the night since 7 weeks old, following Gina's schedules, adapted here and there! (These days, he sleeps from 8pm to 7am!) It's really been a blessing - Husband and I actually get to sleep at night. And Daniel is growing well - he's happy. Or at least, he looks it. ^__^
So ya, nowadays I highly recommend Gina Ford to all mothers. I think when babies are young, sleeping and feeding are probably the most important things to take care of. Issues like discipline, intellectual stimulation, physical coordination skills etc will come later. For sleeping and feeding, Gina has really made a difference for Daniel. And thank God for that!
Two disclaimers though: I think it's important for parents not to follow schedules blindly. Gina Ford's schedules are not magic pills or anything. It's still necessary to use your brain, listen to your child, and most of all, understand and adapt Gina's thinking and principles appropriately to your child. The second disclaimer is a less critical one - when it comes to weaning solids - I think Gina's suggested recipes are not really very helpful as they are more western in nature. I'm still trying to figure out what a corguette is?! But still, Gina's schedule for weaning and her principle that the baby should be given a variety of foods seems sensible enough.
OK, I don't normally recommend stuff - but here it is. My secret is out - I support Gina Ford. She tends to garner either rave reviews or strong criticisms. All I can say is that she has definitely worked for Daniel. (OK, but here's the third disclaimer - there are other things we did with Daniel which are not mentioned in Gina Ford, like letting the baby cry it out and not picking him up too much etc, so I guess we can't give her all the credit? Or I'm not sure how much of the other stuff mattered, but definitely her schedules and principles were key!) I am truly grateful to God for leading me to this book. And be assured, I'll be using it on number 2 as well! Hope this entry has been helpful to all mothers and mothers-to-be ^__^
By the way, any other Gina Ford mothers out there? Give me a shout ya?
p.s. ok I absolutely promise to share the Jap braised pork belly recipe next!
It's always fun to gather a bunch of babies and see what happens. But compared to the first GOB, this photo shows that our kids are growing up, and thus, getting more active. Sitting still is not a skill they've mastered yet, unfortunately. ^__^:
It is not often that a highly-anticipated movie gets such a low rating on rottentomatoes.com. Click here.
This seems to confirm my hunch that the superficial glitzyness of Hollywood would only serve to make the plot of the story seem even more unbelievable and ludicrious that it already seems. And in case you're wondering, the plot is a veritable load of tosh.
The dust has barely settled on our busy weekend of cooking - and as I settle back into the routine of weekday life, which at this point, I am thoroughly loving, I am reflecting on how good God has been to us as a family. Barely 8 months ago, a parcel of flesh and bone by the name of Daniel Lau Joo Yen popped into our lives and rearranged our entires schedules. Cooking became extinct in our family; we had to rely on oily tingkat for sustenance; meals were quick and often interrupted by the wails of a forlorn infant who wanted attention, food, burping, you name it.
Fast forward to 8 months later, life seems to have returned to normalcy - with Husband and I starting to open our house to guests and dinner parties once again. This weekend, we went Japanese. Husband made a fantastic unagi rice dish and a Japanese lor bak (braised pork belly), both of which I will share the recipes of soon. For me, it is somewhat a pity that I stuck to some tried-and-tested dishes - chilled soba salad, wasabi prawns, and pork rib and daikon soup - so un-typical of me, who seldom likes to cook the same thing twice. But I guess I was trying to be cautious. It is slightly harder to cook with an infant around, yknow.
A most fantastic Japanese braised pork belly by husband.
Chilled soba salad scores!
Wasabi prawns
Unagi rice - not the best picture unfortunately
The one dish I did experiment with was oshizushi (pressed sushi). Following Joone's recommendation on her lovely blog, I tripped down to Meidi-Ya Supermarket at Liang Court last week and picked up an oshibako (wooden mould to make sushi). What a lovely contraption! So simple, yet able to yield lovely pieces of sushi so quickly!
My sushi, made from my oshibako
Here's a look at the contraption itself. It's just a box!
You put the rice and whatever ingredients you want inside, then use the wooden top to press down. While doing that, gently life the box itself and voila! Pressed sushi! Just cut to the size you need!
The only tip I have to something so simple is - make sure you line the bottom of the box and the wooden top with baking paper. This is because Japanese rice can be quite sticky - and you want to be able to remove the sushi from the box, obviously. Oh, the other tip is to dip the knife in vinegar or water before slicing up the sushi, so that the rice won't stick to the knife!
All in all it's been a busy busy weekend. But a rewarding one too. I think I'm officially off Japanese food for a while - but I'll post the recipes for the unagi rice and the braised pork belly soon. Remind me if I don't, ya?
How
does one make chocolate bread pudding look good in photographs? Well,
I'm still working on attaining food photography nirvana a la Chubby
Hubby and J of Kuidaore
, so for now, this picture (left) will have to do. This recipe was passed
to me by the intrepid S. of The
Apothecakery - it's taken from Real
Simple, a magazine that I will definitely subscribe to when I get to Palo
Alto. I have come to love the mag for its neat tips & tricks, recipes
& smart household solutions. (It's like Martha Stewart Living + Martha
Stewart Baking/Cooking all wrapped into one magazine, and without the over-pretentious-ness
of Martha). Anyway, if you are interested in the recipe, do email me. Good
recipes need to be passed on, just like good persistently
non-political podcasts about Bak Chor Mee. ^__^
Daniel: Over the weekend, mommy & daddy brought me to Botanic Gardens! Whoohoo!
Daniel: Instead of leaving me in the pram (like they always do!), they decided to let me walk on the grass, in my pair of squeaky shoes no less!
Daniel: Welll... I can't really walk on my own yet. But I love to walk. It makes me really happy! Mommy and Daddy also took some time to throw me around (out of love, I presume!) What a work out (for them I mean! I'm heavy you know!!)
Daniel: And then, I got to make some international friends too! A pair of Japanese twins & a pretty blond! (Mommy didn't take a pic of the pretty blond - what a pity! Maybe she's jealous nyet nyet!)
Daniel: Ohio go zai mas! All in all, it was a terrific day out! I didn't know the Botanic Gardens was so lively and fun on Sundays! I'll definitely be back! Maybe with more friends the next time!
The key to pan-frying the perfect salmon is timing. Salmon is really delicious on its own, but a lot of restaurants, even good ones, cook it until it is well-done. I prefer a slightly under-cooked salmon, leaving the centre creamy, not dry and flakey. My method is to start frying the salmon skin side UP - so that the "meat" side charrs a bit and the marinade calmelises on it, creating this nice brown-slightly seared texture. I only fry the salmon for 1 minute or less per side. (If your salmon is 1 inch thick at the thickest part, go for 1 minute. If less thick, go for slightly shorter time.) I know, most books will tell you to take a longer time, but oh well - try my method and see if you like it. Yesterday's 500g salmon piece (the hugest slab of salmon I've seen in a while!) was marinated with 1/2 cup mirin, 3/4 cup soya sauce, 1 cup sake and 2 tb sugar. Cheers!
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