Your very own bowl of tiramisu

 

Everyone loves tiramisu. It’s a good lazy thing to do as its not complicated and with a few good ingredients, you can create a wonderful dessert. Just get the mascarpone and ladyfingers. The rest of the ingredients will usually be at hand. Its special to have individual portions rather than scooping portions out from a large dish. I bought these from a shop in Chinatown which is a few shops down from Sia Huat. I can’t remember the name but you would definitely be able to find it as it looks a lot like Sia Huat and is just down the road.  They have really beautiful things. I bought these small glass bowls for $1 each. I bought some jam jars, yes my next big project would be jam making. I’ve been reading up a lot on pectin content in fruit. I also bought some small square glass bowls. They had the cutest little glass jugs that would look so nice with  individual portions of syrup for pancakes or some cream for a warm cake. Unfortunately some things were out of stock. Most of the bowls and plates costs between S$1-$4. For the tiramisu, I layered coffee dipped ladyfingers with the mascarpone cream in 2 layers for an individual portion. It started to drizzle while I was taking these photos outdoors so those little spots appeared on the surface. These bowls would look good with a trifle or a nice jelly. Nice crockery just makes everything taste better! 

Tiramisu

Makes 10 small portions 

Ingredients 

250g ladyfingers

500g mascarpone cheese

5 eggs

75 g granulated sugar

400ml strong coffee

Cocoa for dusting 

Method 

Separate egg whites from yolks. Be careful not to break any of the yolks as the fat will make the whites refuse to rise. Put the yolks and the sugar into a clean bowl and whisk over a saucepan of boiling water. (Double boil the mixture) Whisk quickly to stop eggs from scrambling. The mixture should be yellow and syrupy. Leave to cool. This is an important step as the hot yolk mixture will cause the mascarpone cheese to feather and you’ll get a grainy texture rather than smooth creamy tiramisu. Beat mascarpone cheese into cooled yolk mixture. 

Beat egg whites on medium speed with an electric mixer till soft peaks form. Beat half into yolk and mascarpone mixture. Fold the rest of the whites in gently. 

Now assemble the dish. Dip ladyfingers into coffee mixture briefly on both sides. Do this quite quickly as the ladyfingers tend to absorb coffee fast and may even disintegrate in the coffee. Break the fingers into half and line the bottom of each bowl. Put about a large heaped tablespoon of creamed mixture into each bowl. Layer with another layer of ladyfingers. Finish with a layer of creamed mixture. Sift a generous amount of cocoa on top. Leave in the fridge to set for at least 2-4 hours.

A walk thru Little India

Come walk with me thru Little India, a stretch along Serangoon Road that is beginning to light up in preparation for Deepavali. We often grocery shop at Little India and I buy crockery and cutlery at some fantastic little shops in Chinatown.

  

First, we had our thosai fix at Kamala Villas. Kamala Villas not Komala villas the commercialized fast food chain. This place has very good thosai and really good, big, cheap portions. I paid S$6 for two thosais with drinks. This paper thosai is really long, it goes off the table. It come with a white coconut chutney, a red coconut chutney and a good heap of dhal.

 

H had his with a masala potato filling which is nice, yellow and smashedly good. I think it takes a certain amount of patience when you’re ravernous to respond to a “stop eating!!” and oblige to some shots.

 

I had mine plain. As you can see, its really thin and hollow. Very crispy. It takes an amazing amount of skill to make such a huge, thin and crispy pancake. Its something I don’t think I’ll ever able to recreate at home.

Lots of Indians are vegetarian or vegetarian on some days. So this is a great place to buy fresh vegetables cheap. There’s also lots of variety and lots of leaves and roots I’ve never seen or cooked before. Jen made a beautiful recipe out of eggplants.

I thought of Erika when I saw these beetroots. Strangely I thought that these were difficult to find in Singapore. But I guess maybe I just wasn’t looking.

Rounded up the trip with some thick sweet iced lassi or yogurt drink.

Even the post box seems festive!

Mmmm HummmMMuUs

Inspired by Erika’s hummus post, I worked hard to make this. It was the ingredients that was hard to come by. I finally found the tahini at Jason’s the supermarket Raffles city. It was hidden at one of the top shelves and I almost didn’t see it. I thought it was going to taste more exotic than it did. I did some research on how it was made, and it seemed a little complicated. But it just tasted like blended unsalted sesame seeds. It was almost similar to unsalted peanut butter. I think I’ll make my own next time. I bought my chick peas from Mustafa centre which is a fantastic place to get many things. I will post about that in a while. After soaking the chickpeas, I boiled it at a low simmer for 3 hours. Then was the easy part, just put everything in the blender and it was ready. I made mine in 2 batches and the second batch came out better as I was more generous with the oil and water so it blended real smooth. I kept a third frozen in the freezer for another time. I can’t really think of another dish to put chick peas in though. The only think I can think of is a curry. Chickpeas are not widely used in most cuisines I think. I can’t even think of a single Asian dish that incorporates it. I guess I’ll look around for something. H and I enjoyed this for lunch with bread and it was really filling. The hummus turned out a wonderful yellow as a result of the deep yellow of the olive oil.

In pursuit of HappYness

 

A lit candle for the birthday boy

So much has been said of Tanglin village at Demsey Road especially with the opening of Culina and Jones the grocer. It lies near the top of the list of places and things to do that make me happy. It’s a fantastic place to go during the weekend where there’s loads of families, kids, young couples and friends. The beauty of the place really lies in the huge trees and the crazily high ceilings of the cafes and the stores. I just love the sense of space, maybe shops here have just been too small. H and I have been going to Tanglin village almost every weekend, picking up a little bit of this and that. I’ve bought my sumac from Culina’s and haloumi cheese from Jones. When I checked Jones again lately, the haloumi was out of stock. Besides everything being ridiculously expensive, (my jar of olives costs 30 bucks), it is good place to enjoy a cuppa and just soak in the atmosphere.

 PS café from the outside

We usually eat at Samy’s curry house which unfortunately is closed for renovation till this weekend. And I usually eat the dessert at PS café. I like unusual desserts where you go “How DO they make it??. I’ll never get the brownie or the cheesecake. At PS café, I love their flourless orange cake. It is seriously good. The whole cake is kinda grainy from I’m guessing ground almonds, its soaked in an orange syrup, plated on butterscotch sauce and has a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. Last weekend, H celebrated his birthday. The best way to celebrate one’s birthday is to go to a familiar place, eat all your favourite food and talk about what happened in the past year and plan our yearly getaway. We shared the passion creme brulee at Jones. It was more a passion fruit mousse with a caramelized crust than a creme brulee. It was served with a dish of passion fruit pulp which was nice and sour and some passionfruit shortbread which tasted like just shortbread to me. Overall it was just ok. But H really enjoyed his cappucino and my iced latte with brown sugar syrup was excellent.

 

Parmesan toast dippers with soft boiled eggs

I remember eating one soft boiled egg every morning when I started school at the young age of 7. I would eat it in a small plastic saucer with cartoon pictures at the base with a little bit of salt. I still love my soft boiled eggs and I always have it with a good pinch of pepper and lots of salt. I never understood why Singaporeans ate their soft boiled eggs with soy sauce. Just the mix of yellow and brown didn’t appeal to me. And you lose the taste of the egg under the strong soy flavour. For weekend breakfast, I decided to give the good old frying pan a rest and simply boil up some eggs. Instead of boring old toast, I was inspired by a certain recipe in French by Damien Pignolet. He used fresh asparagus, blanched, then dipped in soft boiled eggs and rolled in toasted breadcrumbs. The idea was to have fun dipping the asparagus in the boiled egg then rolling it in the crumbs. I loved the idea of having a stick of something to dunk into the soft salty eggy mixture. So I simply sliced up some wholemeal toast, melted some butter in the microwave, grated some cheese and these were the results! The parmesan cheese melted to a crispy crust and the combination of salty cheese flavour with the creamy yolk and soft set whites dripping off was delicious. In fact, I think we were both still kinda hungry after it was all gone.

Parmesan toast dippers with soft boiled eggs

Serves 2 

Ingredients

4 eggs

6 slices of bread

A good chunk of parmesan cheese, grated

3 tablespoons melted butter

Salt and pepper 

Method

Preheat grill. Stack the bread and slice into 4s lengthwise. Brush both sides with melted butter. Top with grated cheese. Grill 6-8 mins. Put eggs in a saucepan and cover completely with water. Put on high heat and and I turn it off after 5 mins. Boil as hard or soft according to preference. Wash with running water and crack open. Season well with salt and pepper. The toasts should be nice and brown about now.

 

Dig in, and eat is as messily and greedily as you would allow yourself to on an indulgent weekend.

Happy and blessed Eid!

The ketupat is one of the many Asian dumplings wrapped in leaves. This one is made of intricately woven coconut leaves and is the symbol of Eid among the Malays. The leaves itself are not eaten but the rice cake is split open and the leaves carefully peeled away. The rice cake then is eaten with savoury curries and “sambals” or spicy chutneys. After weaving the shell, its simply filled with rice and boiled for hours. A true ketupat can be kept at room temperature for weeks and not spoil. However, the yummy soft sticky ones which are usually homemade doesn’t last that long. The difference is texture is based on how much rice you put into the ketupat shell. Less rice and you get a softer sticky rice cake. More and a dense harder one results.   

Happy and blessed Eid!

A word of caution:Keep your ketupat away from wandering paws and sniffly noses

Saturday morning fry up!

There is only one meal a week that I cook and we eat in daylight which is usually Sunday morning breakfast. This is my first Saturday not working so what better way to celebrate it than a Saturday morning fry up? A fry up is a great opportunity to use up all those odd bits and ends that’s in the fridge at the end of the week. The basic ingredients would be bacon and a couple of eggs. Everything else can be improvised. This week’s fry up was scrambled eggs with shallots and tomato, crispy bacon, mushrooms with swiss raclette and baked beans. We had this with my stovetop latte, shaken Jamie Oliver style. With careful juggling of time, this whole meal is prepared by the time H comes out of the shower. Or maybe H just takes a really long time to bathe. He patiently waited while I fiddled with the camera and the memory card before tucking in. H suggested I take the picture against the light so I got the background completely white. I’ve always wondered how that was done, now I know!

H’s Saturday morning fry up 

Ingredients

3 eggs

3 small shallots

1 small tomato

1 red chilli

A good amount of bacon

4 button mushrooms

Slice of cheese

Tin of baked beans 

Method

Pull out frozen bacon from freezer and plop onto a pan.  Trim ends of button mushrooms and place carefully around perimeter of pan with bacon.  

Peel and slice shallots, dice tomato and finely chop a red chilli. Meanwhile stir bacons in pan and they’ll start to separate and crisp. Add a little bit of olive oil over mushrooms and flip over. Plop the mushrooms and bacon onto a plate.  

Now clean the pan cos it’ll be really brown and greasy from the bacon. Wipe with a kitchen towelette and rinse. You can skip this step if you want a brown instead of yellow scramble. Put back on stove and add 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Or a blob of butter if the bacon grease isn’t enough artery clogging goodness for the day. Fry the shallots till fragrant, add chilli and tomato. Break the 3 eggs directly into the pan. Give it a good stir and season with salt.

Now the assembly. This is the fun part. Push the eggs to a neat corner. Pour in the baked beans. Place mushrooms and put the cheese on it. Pile the bacon in another corner. Its ready when the cheese starts to melt and the beans bubble.  

Pop in bread into the toaster, the milk in the microwave and start the stovetop espresso. Make the coffee, serve the toast and enjoy!

   

The culprit who ate my share..