Breakfast is..

Just a cup of tea, now nearly empty at my bedside table. Recovering slowly from a nasty bug. I have been in bed for the longest time.

 

Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes and the gifts. My camera is away in Surabaya, Indonesia, holidaying without me, with my parents. I’m waiting for it to post up some of the wonderful things that I received especially this really amazing handmade gift from Quizas dedicated to happygrub.

 

I know I’ve been bad, promising you recipes that I’ve not put up yet, but I will get around to doing it! Somehow things including cookbooks have been going missing around here. Please be patient with me!

 

Post call granola

Its always interesting to ask around what doctors do post call. A night call is when you stay and work while everyone goes home, providing medical coverage for a large number of patients and handling new admissions in the night. This can translate to a 30 hour work day. I think there is a 1:1 ratio of those who crash out and those who try to do as much as they can to make up for all the lost time working. For me, I spend a lot of time during my call actually thinking of what I’m going to do after the call. Of course, it has to be something I enjoy and something I can do alone. Not many people are available on a weekday afternoon to hang out with! Sometimes I cook for H a meal that takes a little more time, like pizza that needs some time rising or chapati and an Indian meal. Other times I do those things that you never seem to have time for like banking, going for a haircut and visiting the dentist which I especially like. Don’t u feel squeaky clean afterwards? And my dentist is quite a colourful “tai tai”(I have no idea how to describe this word in English) designer clad porcelain faced ferrari driving skinny lady who is quite hilarious. Anyway I digress, maybe its the tiredness setting in. Whatever I do, nothing makes me happier than baking and it does sweeten others up too!

 

Anyway what started this granola was the realization that my brother eats 60 eggs a month and more! He eats 2 scrambled eggs for breakfast everyday. I was shocked. I think its ok to eat eggs but in moderation and this is a whole lot of eggs. When asked why he ate eggs everyday he said that there were no other breakfast options, so I thought it was time to make a breakfast granola that can be enjoyed many ways and can be sprinkled on top of my dad’s oatmeal porridge and packed into mom’s lunckbox too. And besides its so easy.. With some fruit and nuts mixed in and full of Manuka honey goodness (oops, sorry mama, I used ur expensive honey but there was erm no other options) its perfect to jumpstart your day.

 

A good homemade granola is supposed to smell like spice and honey. I flavoured mine with one scaped vanilla pod and a good grating of nutmeg as I was out of cinnamon. The result was a not too sweet granola with a great crunch and a hint of vanilla and almost undiscernible nutmeg.

This is for you Adzfar!

Homemade granola

Ingredients

2 cups of rolled oats

2 cups of mixed grains (I bought this from Phoon Huat sold in small 200g packets labelled as mixed grains: oats, rye, linseed and sunflower seeds)

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup corn/canola or any other neutral tasting vegetable oil

1 scaped vanilla pod

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Mixed fruit and nuts as desired. I added small raisins and cashews my dad bought from his recent trip to Yemen and big moist plump jumbo raisins from Mustafa Cantre

 

Method

Preheat oven to 180C. Mix everything except fruit and nuts in a large bowl. Spread mixture in a thin layer on two baking sheets lined with silicon mats. Put in oven for 3o mins. Stir at 10 mins intervals. When the granola is golden brown, take it out of the oven and give it a good stir, breaking it up at 10 minute intervals to stop it from cooling into one solid sheet. It’ll be soft when hot but will harden when cool. When cool, mix in toasted nuts and dried fruit. Store in airtight containers.

 

10 serving suggestions

1. Sprinkled on a mixed fruit sald

2. With Greek yogurt and fresh fruit layered in a glass like parfait

3. On top of hot oatmeal

4. Mixed in with other favourite cereals

5. With milk or soy milk

6. Mash some bananas and stir thru

7. Grate apples, stir in a small amount of yogurt and a good handful of granola

8. As a streusel topping on top of breakfast muffins

9. Bake into cookies

10. Of course straight from the jar!

 

How do you eat your granola?

A sweet email

This lovely photo of an Indian sweet was mailed to me by my friend Sheerin. I had a taste of it sometime back and it was delicious. It is a puff pastry stuffed with a sweet filling which I am not eactly sure of the content, then deep fried and soaked in syrup. I always marvel and the time consumed in making these sweets and how difficult it is to find here in Singapore. Sheerin is always patiently explaining all my questions on the ins and outs of Indian cooking. My favourite questions usually revolve around sneaking looks into other people’s shopping carts, especially at Mustafa and then asking Sheerin what were the many items that I have never seen yet alone bought before. Usually she has the answers. Perhaps you wuoldn’t want me to be sneaking up on ur shopping cart over your shoulder but isn’t it the so interesting what other people buy and you’ll always learn something new!

 By the way, I was fiddling with my blogroll when all my links disappeared. I’m currently in the process of reorganizing and reuploading them. Leave me a message if u’ll like you blog linked!

Cream Cheese Raisin and Walnut Rolls

 Some people have been asking where I find the time to cook and bake. Well, I think most of the stuff on the blog features stuff I didn’t make! Like the cream cheese raisin and walnut rolls that my mom made above. Most of my baking takes place during the weekend but I do cook after work everyday for H. But I don’t really think it qualifies as cooking. Its more like assembling salads and sandwiches. I stock my freezer with homemade pasta sauces, homemade or bakery bought pita, marinated meats and my fridge with salad leaves, cheeses and olives. Preparing a meal usually involves the oven or grill and some stirring of a salad dressing. This usually takes less than half an hour. And since H is quite shutter happy, we usually have lots of photos in the laptop and I fish out some random things to blog about sometimes, like these rolls which were made last december with the help of my little cousin Alyaa.

This was the first time my mom tried this recipe and it was really really good. The cream cheese rather than remaining like a filling actually baked into the dough sort of turning the whole thing to a bready cheesecake that was as light as air. I loved it.

This is how we cut the long roll into slices. With a piece of floss put under the roll than pulling the ends in opposite directions ie. the left floss goes right and the right goes left as they cross over each other and the roll is cut intact as opposed to being flattened by a knife.  

 A closer view. Kids just love to bake and we had the younger one who is 3 to help out too.

 

These are the rolls rising.. Recipe coming soon..

Shafaa: if u’re reading, these were the rolls u had that day last year!

 

If anyone is interested in some handmade cards, check out Mel’s Ink!

Tea break is..

My madeline recipe with a dollop of nutella filling in little cakelets.

A BBQ for 15 people

It all started out with H saying for the past one month that he felt like getting some steaks and having a small barbeque. So I promised that we would have one after I was done with exams. What started as plans for a small bbq ended up with a rather large crowd of 15! We decided that since we were already going to prepare the food, we might as well prepare a good amount and share it with everyone. We woke up late so ended up marketing till 2 pm at 3 different places. We started out at Geylang for minced beef and chicken breasts, then Giant for everything else. I was disappointed as they were out of fresh lamb and beef sausages. And they didn’t have good meat for steaks either! So we went to a meat wholesaler along Jalan Masjid which is a little gem of a shop introduced to us by H’s aunty. They had excellent tenderloin which is melt in your mouth juicy, for $30 a kilo and worth every cent spent. They deliver to your doorstep too if you spend more than $100 and you can just give them a ring. I’ll post the address later, I slipped the receipt in the car. It really is a great place to stock up on meat for a bbq. The chicken wings go for $3.60 a kilo and they are the supplier to many markets. I still have some meat in my freezer so it’ll be good for several more dinners for the meat loving H.

 

We spent the next few hours marinating meat, shaving parmesan for the salad, skewering kebabs, stuffing potatoes for twice baked potatoes, spreading garlic spread on french loaves and filling up our car boot with everything we would need before going to mother-in-law’s for the bbq. Thank you to the lovely Sheerin for sharing the recipe for her delicious kebabs! This photo was taken some time back, we just didn’t have the time to snap! The star of the night were definitely the steaks which was really excellent, they didn’t need any help at all, just a sprinkling of salt and pepper. We had a great time preparing the meal and would love to do it again, just perhaps not so soon!

Kebabs

 

Ingredients

500g beef/lamb/chicken cut into 1 inch sized pieces

3 cloves of garlic, pounded

2 cm2 ginger, pounded

 2 tablespoons cream cheese 

 100mls cream

15 ground cashew nuts.

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 teaspoon of chilli powder/paprika/garam masala (optional)

 

Method

Mix everything in a bowl and leave your meat to marinate for 2 hours in the fridge or overnight. Skewer onto sticks (the extra long and thick satay sticks can be bought at Mustafa) alternating with colouful bell peppers and white onion.

Bbq over fire, lightly brushing olive oil over them as they cook. Serve with tahini sauce which is equal amounts tahini and yogurt seasoned with salt and pepper.

Raclette night continued..

From Wikepedia: 

Raclette is also a dish indigenous to parts of Switzerland, Wallonia and France. The Raclette cheese round is heated, either in front of a fire or by a special machine, then scraped onto diners’ plates; the term raclette derives from the French racler, meaning “to scrape”. Traditionally, it is accompanied by small firm potatoes (Bintje, Charlotte or Raclette varieties), gherkins, pickled onions, dried meat, such as prosciutto and viande des Grisons, sliced peppers, tomato, onion, mushrooms, pears, and dusted with paprika and fresh-ground black pepper.

Raclette was mentioned in medieval writings as a particularly nutritious meal consumed by peasants in mountainous Switzerland. It was then known in the German-speaking part of Switzerland as Bratchäs, or “roasted cheese.” Traditionally, the Swiss cow herders used to take the cheese with them when they were moving cows to or from the pastures up in the mountains. In the evenings around the campfire, they would place the cheese next to the fire and, when it had reached the perfect softness, scrape it on top of some bread.

After trimming the cheese as the previous post shows, assemble some young men to fix the cheese onto the raclette machine.

PLug it into a socket and keep the machine on a separate table. In tropical Singapore, and in this recent heat wave, being near the machine is VERY bad.

Once the cheese is done, which can take around 5 mins, scrape onto a waiting plate.

The cheese will be melty and very stretchy.

Eaten with new potatos, gerkhins and pickled onions.

A much nicer photo from Wikepedia.

 When there are about 10 people waiting for a portion of cheese and each portion taking 5 mins to prepare, it will be one and a half hours till ur turn for a slice of cheese comes next. It may be helpful to curl up in a corner and nap for a while.

 Or you could fill up with some pannetonne my mom made.

Still waiting..

 It was a delicious meal. All our thanks to Aunty Faridah who lovingly hand-carried the cheese from Switzerland including lots of food gifts like gorgonzola, gruyere, swiss chocs, biscuits and kitchen tools. We have had so many delicious meals at the in laws and at home, H and I decided to throw a bbq party for everyone as a belated mother’s day gift, Since we missed the celebration preparing for my exams. More soon..

Raclette night

 

A giant block of cheese and more to come..

 

Bali part 3

I am now clearing the 4,000 photos that are cluttering my laptop. I’ve dug up more photos from Bali.. Again! Well, here they are..

 Spices packed neatly

 Market in the early morning

At Bedugul, a cold mountainous area by a huge volcanic crater lake. We had “mi bakso” of beef/chicken meatballs with noodles in a soup. It was 20 cents per bowl.

 Be prepared to bargain!

Kuala Lumpur in a whirlwind

We flew on jetstar for S$150 for a return ticket. It was a cool 50 mins, better than the 5 hour coach ride. We then took the KLIA express which is a 28 minute train ride to the city center from the airport, non stop. That costs RM$35 for each ride. It was a comfortable trip and we did what we had to do, sit for the 6 hour exam and flew back the next day. We had such a wonderful time, mostly because of a dear family who hosted us, kept us well fed and drove us around.

 

Our flight was delayed for 2 hours but we had a fun time walking around the not so new terminal 3, had a piece of cake and coffee with this guy above. Looks like H, but not H.  

 

This underwater creature at a chinese restaurant was begging for his shot to be taken.

 

 

 Lychees post exam on a wonderful outdoor deck.

 

 

Lychees are either incredibly sweet or incredibly sour. These were sweet, lucky us!

 

 

Cappucino number #1

 

 

Teddy bears at a cafe, can u guess where?

 

 

Cappucino number #2

 

 

At a beautiful English cafe, Harrods in KLIA. Our flight back was delayed too!

I didn’t take many shots of the food, I was in between feeling completely jittery before the exam, tired after the exam and really headache-y after the malls on the way back. H with his bubbling enthuisiasm that comes out forth in chorus of songs, dance and laughter whenever we travel was having a ball of a time trying to drive me up the wall.

More photos of our little trip here.