Recipes from and for the people I love
This is a little overdue, but Quizas and I have come decided that our blog grubliving would come to an end, please visit her lovely new blog at love-quizas for more of her beautiful creations. I will continue to post here, if I ever do anything creative which seems to be very few and far between. Meanwhile thank you for reading our blogs!
I managed to squeeze a few last minute “kuih lapis” or layered cake from my Dad’s cousin who has been our supplier for years for the Chinese New Year. We gave some away to H’s bosses, the neighbours and my dear friend Quizas. Kuih lapis(lapis meaning layered in Malay) is a rich layered butter cake made of egg yolks, sugar, lots of butter and flour. Its then baked layer by layer and can be flavoured with fruit or spice. The plain cakes are usually spiced with “rempah kuih” or cake spice sold at specialty bake stores. The popular fruit cakes are prune, chempedak (a local fruit similar to jackfruit), durian and recently I discovered an apple kuih lapis. Homemade is definited superior to storebought because its rich in yolks and butter which is usually skimped on in storebought varieties.
Happy Chinese New Year to many of my dear friends!
..Image above from Flikr, a little too sick to take photos but seemingly well enough to blog..
This week has passed by slowly as I’ve been sick. I was sick since carpet shopping on Sunday. I’m allergic to dust so all the displaying, pulling and dusting carpets made me sick the same day, then a cold started to develop. I tried to sleep it off but I’m still under the weather. So this week is passing by super slowly. I can’t wait till the Chinese New Year, I’m in need of a break, but then again I always feel that I am. I guess its natural right, who would feel in need of some work. Like no one would say “I’m just dyyying for some work..”
Anyway just a little note on the finishing touches to the breakfast that last weekend. I finished the eggs off with a sprinkling of dried dill and coarse ground black pepper,both from Phoon Huat. It is cheap to buy dried herbs from Phoon Huat and they are very fresh(well as fresh as dried goes) and delicious. Well I guess fresh off the garden is better but I don’t really have green fingers. Dried herbs I keep in my spice drawer are usually basil, oregano and my latest addition is dill. Dill is quite subtle but it looks pretty. I finished off the plate with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I love balsamic vinegar, as much as I am in love with mustard. I think sour is a fantastic dimension of taste, I need it quite often in my meals. I guess my pantry can be better stocked but I find certain things indispensable in my larder. I always have things that keep and I can’t live without:
-dried herbs: as mentioned. I also have sumac which is for H’s middle eastern stuff and it just looks pretty, the bright reddish purple in an onion salad or on top of hummus
-dried spice: chilli powder, curry powder, I’m not that adventurous with spice
-dried stuff: pasta, H likes angel hair so I always have some, its good in Asian stir fries too, it tastes so much like egg noodles and its pretty good in soup too. I have chickpeas for hummus too.
-canned stuff: anchovies in olive oil, I use this for pasta sauce and also for Caeser’s salad, tinned tomatoes, really useful and I keep this for back up when I run out of fresh tomatoes. A couple of tins of medamas beans for H as he loves his foul.
-oils and vinegars: corn oil, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Soy sauce, usually Indonesian.
-fridge stuff that keeps: A jar of olives in olive oil, a bottle of tahini. Mustard: Dijon and wholegrain. Bottled chili sauce and I have a whole collection of Nando’s sauces because I love it on my sausages, with my chicken and with burgers. Its from Mustafa if you really wanna know where its from! Its $2.90 per bottle.
With all these in the pantry, I need just one or two things to cook a meal and usually when we discuss dinner in the car, H wants a home cooked meal so these things come in handy especially when its been some time since we last grocery shopped. Having said that, I always try to have some vegetables and fruit at hand (in case you’re thinking we make a meal out of olives and balsamic vinegar) and always buy vegetables that has a range of shelf life, some longer than others so it can stretch thru the week. Like brinjals, peppers, corn, cauliflower and broccoli usually keep well. I use my mushooms sooner and any leafy vegetables or salad leaves. Likewise I buy underripe papayas, bananas and mangoes to stretch a while. I always make sure H knows whats where because like you probably know, I spend a couple of nights in the hospital. So H should have no reason to starve, though he always acts like dinner is a disaster when I’m not around.
There seems to be a lack of Asian ingredients in my pantry and thats because I frequently sponge of my mom’s table, taking it all in like I haven’t eaten in ages. I just can’t cook like mom and my Indonesian helper so why bother trying. A lot of times my helper prepares pastes and stores it in the freezer for me and all I have to do is add assam (tamarind) juice, water and fish to make assam fish. But what she doesn’t know is that I don’t have assam, or pandan, or kaffir lime, or lemongrass or galangal or even belachan in my fridge. See, I just can’t do it. The most Asian I go is with soy sauce, I think H has had multitude of soy sauce dishes whenever I cook rice. That’s the only thing I know how to do, soy sauce chicken, fish, egg, meat. All with slightly different twists. I think I need to go back to the kitchen and actually learn how to cook decent Malay dishes.
By the way, I have some salmon sitting in my fridge and I’m dying to have some super delicious fresh corriander with light soy sauce (!) and ginger steamed salmon with piping hot white rice this weekend. This dish when done just right and with a sprinkling of firy bird’s eye chilli on top is really good. The salmon has to be just right, flaking without being overcooked and tough like tuna. And the sauce which is the steamed juices from the salmon with the fragrant ginger, shallots and fresh corriander is just fantastic. I hope I can share it with you soon. Oh I still owe you that once a year fruit tart don’t I?
Above image from http://www.howardhouseinc.com/
The house is coming along, the lights are being fixed and the flat looks like a fright. We met our very nice neighbours and their baby when we popped by the flat last Saturday. We bought our furniture based on what we liked, what we thought was comfortable and practical. We also bought items we felt were of quality and would last us a lifetime. Sometimes it meant paying a little bit more. It also made me realize that our tastes and our budget do not match! Somehow we are always picking out expensive pieces, I’m not sure if its because the expensive thing just looks that much more beautiful or if we’re going to all the wrong places. Being on a budget, we look really really hard and have managed to get a couple of bargains. I find myself feeling a little apprehensive about how the entire look will turn out. I think, will putting all these random things that I love together create a cohesive look? I think your guess is as good as mine. I I have no idea how the flat will look in the end. I just can’t picture it in my mind, how the curtains will look, how the carpet will look on the floor, how the lamps will look above the dining table. Eventhough I’ve seen all these pieces individually, I don’t know how they’ll look like together. In a way I guess it makes things a little exciting. I know some other people are building a nest too so I’ve decided to compile a list of resources.
thelifeshop for beautiful pieces of outdoor furniture, I bought some pieces during their sale where their funiture was slashed between 40-70%. I bought some outdoor wicker funiture is an off white. A long sofa, an arm chair and a small side table. Its all weather wicker which is pretty expensive if you check out the shops at Demsey or other stores selling outdoor stuff. We bought a side table from thelifeshop too. I was in love with a swing but we didn’t have space.
Getz gallery for a pair of cub chairs going for 50% off. This was when we ventured out to Sungai Kadut. The place was almost deserted and we were a little put off by the “hardsell approach” of the sales people in general. But the Getz people were fine.
I bought my sofa from SY living at Enterprise One, they have a branch in Beach Road too. This was a gift from my mom, I thought it was a little expensive but my mom seemed to think it was a good buy.
theshophouse for inspiration, I wonder if the suff will ever go on sale. It is pretty expensive at $80-100+ for tiny cushions
Ierus is having a sale with all pieces going for 50-70% off. We bought a large mirror for the living area which costs close to a thousand but got it for less than half with delivery and installation included. Their look is mostly heavy mahagony pieces which doesn’t really go with our decor but the mirror looked quite modern, no intricate carvings so it was fine
Quraish or Quraishy? at the 5th floor in Centerpoint Shopping Center for carpets. H wants to get the underlay to protect the carpet and give it a better feel. We plan to check this out. We recently bought a runner and a living room carpet from Quraish at a really good price for hand kotted Kashmiri silk on cotton carpets.
A place I absolutely love for accesories is Recaptured at Enterprise One in Eunos. I bought a couple of kitchen acessories like the coffee, sugar and tea jars and a butter dish with a decorative plate from this place. Seen here. I am in love with a carpet for our dining area but its close to a thousand dollars. Being machine made, its hard to pay more than we did for our hand knotted silk carpet. We’re putting it on hold for now. Since its meant to be for the dining room floor with heavy duty use and dragging of the dining chairs, we don’t want to have a very expensive piece. At the same time, the cheap pieces are really ugly or not exactly cheap at all. We kind that Ikea doesn’t really have a wide range or a large size. Their largest seems to be 230cm by 180 cm or something of that sort which will definitely cause your chairs to hand off the edge.
For our coffee table, we bought a simple glass piece from Barang Barang during its 50-70% storewide sale
iwannagohome for our dining room table, also at a 40% discount.
Like I said previously, we have not bought our dining room chairs but recently I chanced upon a beautiful 4 piece set of chairs from the Manhattan Collection being sold second hand by a “workaholic couple with no kids who hardly used the set”. I’m still liasing with the owner, keeping my fingers crossed, he quoted a price less than half the original and they are really beautiful pieces.
We bought lights from a shop in Geylang and one in Balestier with simpler lights from Geylang as they were cheaper and from Balestier we bought our dining room lamps. We bought bathroom accessories from a shop in Joo Chiat and curtains from 2 different shops both in Tanjong Katong complex. I will put up the contacts soon. For electronics like the fridge, washing machine and oven, we are purchasing from a small wholesaler in Tampines, we’re still looking at models and placing the order. I’ve not been there personally, its a contact from mother in law. If the deal goes thru I’ll post up the contact.
We are still in need of a TV console and the elusive dining chairs. We’ve seen so many but just can’t find the right one. I’m hoping the Manhattan chairs will be good.
In terms of the budget, we set it as not more than 20k, so far we’ve spent 15k+ including the small renovation works to fix up the lights. I’m not sure how much other people spend on their home, I suppose it would be more if the fixtures in the home are put in. But our house has all the toilets, kitchen as well as airconditioners and water heaters installed so we did save a bit on that. I think its still a lot of money to spend but I guess we really wanted to get things we love, that will last for a bit and make the house a home.
Hope this helps one out there furnishing their home. Since I’ve been spending so much time looking at furniture, thought I should spare someone the time!
I guess if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know how much I love breakfast. Most of the time I try to make some sort of cooked breakfast for the weekend as weekdays are dominated by cereals and sandwhiches assembled in a hurry.
Most of my fry ups are made up of a few components: the eggs, starch, meat and veg.
For the eggs, you can choose a variety of ways and a lot it has to do with the technique. There are so many ways besides the scrambled and the omelettes, some taking a little more time. Today’s breakfast were scrambled eggs, here’s a video for perfect scrambled eggs. I find that cooking on the lowest heat my stove can go and adding one tablespoon of heavy cream per egg gives me good results for a homogenous soft yellow scramble. I use corn oil instead of butter to cut down a little on the saturated fat. (guess every single bit of cutting down helps if you’re gonna eat bacon and eggs). I take it off the heat when its slightly undercooked as it continues to cook off the heat. Other techniques for egg include
Omelette this is Gordon Ramsay’s step by step vegetarian omelette
Poached Gordon Ramsay shows it in his kitchen
Coddled a youtube video of coddled eggs, and interesting but a little time consuming way of preparing eggs.
Boiled: soft or hard its not really difficult, just a matter of personal preference how set you want the yolk to be. Generally I put my eggs in cold water and turn it off after it boils for about 2 mins.
Sunny side up, this doesn’t really need much explaination does it? Kylie Kwong does these amazing eggs which are super tasty, my grandma made them for me when I was young but I had it with a drizzle of soy not oyster sauce. The crunch of the deep fried whites contrast with the soft yolks.
Having some vegetables add colour, what works is you love and what you have in your fridge. I like mushrooms, tomatoes, asparagus, capsicums or peppers sometimes even corn.
For the starch, it could be simple like slices of a sandwhich loaf. Swissbake has great unbaked croissants that bake and puff up deliciously in your oven. They have mean wholemeal loaves as well as dinner rolls. If you don’t have bread which happens to us pretty often, I grate some potatoes for a hash or mix some batter for pancakes.
Indian cardamom tea going thru the strainer
Mug a little gift from when we were dating, I was a poor student then, couldn’t afford much but H loved the mug so much he drank his tea from it everyday since he got it.
The frother device from Ikea, only 4 dollars for millions of cups of foamed milk.
The good thing about being stressed is that I get verbal diarrhea on this blog, well that may be a bad thing. I guess this is a place where I can get some things off my chest and look at all the pretty photos which make me happy on the other blogs, a lot of whom are written from people who have become my friends. I was looking at my archives and realized that the last time I baked these rolls were in August 2007, that’s more than a year ago! I realized that the time lapse between when I make a recipe again can lapse to more than a year. Then again, I know the recipe for pizza dough off the top of my head and double it into a foccacia recipe, and it works for pita too, just increase the temperature of the oven. On the other hand, I made this peach sour cream ice cream just once and only made this leek and fish stir fry today after a year. I guess there are some recipes that make the base of your meals and which you revisit again and again and there are those that you make it once in a while and leave you satisfied for a long time before the urge comes to make it again. I loved these rolls, they remind me of having a nice dinner in a great restaurant and digging into their bread basket.
I’ve been sharing a lot of my dreams lately, like about my dream job, which I suspect may make me laugh out loud a year from now or feel terribly embarrassed. But if I could just continue dreaming, I dream that I will do more cooking in my new place, having the kitchen as my playground and feeling completely free to do what I want. I would sew cushions and tablecloths and watercolour the paintings on the wall. Well needlework isn’t my strong point but at least I can learn. I think. Just like all of a sudden my husband seems to be able to do carpentry (?!), like “its ok, I can just get some planks and cover the planter box, just nail it in place with some supports!” hmmm.. Asking if people will fall thru when they step on it was a valid question, of course the answer was a indignant no. In the end we agreed to leave it open and put some plants. Well, it is called a planter box anyway..
Thats what we talk about when we go for our runs lately, what we will put in our store, where to put the vaccuum cleaner, how many doors our fridge should have. Very domesticated don’t you think. I think this is our first big thing together. Everything is done with discussions at length but when I want things my way (which is like all the time but I’m trying to suppress the 2 year old in me) I resort to feminine wiles and occasional tantrums discussions. Most of the time I just feed H, he tends to give in easier after, especially after his favourite cup of cardamom chai.
I’ve almost had no sleep at all in the last 40 hours but well because of the call last night which was awful and involved a kidney transplant, not fun at 4 in the morning, when I left, there was house stuff to do. I was so sleepy in the car that my mom took over the wheel and then reversed into a pillar at our new house. Oh well. I was shocked when I saw the huge dent then in a few seconds it popped back out like a pop up button on a jam jar. Wierd but true. Apparently some cars are made that way. Anyway all thats left is a long scar. I think I’ll think twice the next time my mom drives. And she complains about my driving!
I had a really good olive foccacia recently. The kind of bread that’s super moist with the olive oil and hearty and filling and it really tasted good on its own. I’m still looking for the perfect foccacia recipe, I think it probably involves some sort of starter (a sort of preferment prepared with water, yeast and flour made for a few hours or days in advance for the yeast to mature before being added to the final dough). I imagine the dough has to be really loose or soft to create a really soft yielding loaf. I was looking back at some old photos that H had of us while we were dating and there was one of me in the kitchen making mexican buns. Those were the times when “RottiBoy” a franchise was so popular that there was a real craze going on everywhere. When I asked H what he wanted to eat recently all he says is homemade bread. The only thing that bread needs is time and patience and it seems that I’ve been running short of both lately. 
I’ve had a crabby time, well, at least I’m on course tomorrow and Thurs and there’s that long new year holiday and I took a day off next Monday because I really need the break. So I’m hanging on till the long weekend! I have loads planned including breakfasts and some bread baking.
Don’t you feel that time just flies by, its the 11th day of the year and the new year felt like it was just a couple of days ago. So little time and so much to do! After the rather depressing last post, I’m picking myself up, thanks for all the uplifting comments. I still don’t think I can do any other job, but this certain rotation is proving very taxing. A couple of people shared with me recently what was their ideal job and strangely I could really imagine them in those jobs. A fellow medical officer said that she wanted to own a pet shop, and I could soo imagine her doing it. My mom on the other hand who is a teacher, has always wanted to be an interior designer and thank god she’s around to help me with the house. I on the other hand, have imagined my dream job to be a doctor (yes, still) employed by a hotel chain as their in house resort doctor. They would rotate me to beautiful resorts all around the world where I would tend their medical center a few hours a day and spend the rest of my time soaking up the country and the people and the food.Every few months they would rotate me to another destination. In the meantime I will be tending to sunburns and minor coughs and colds. Perhaps jellystings occasionally, sometimes a dog bite, sometimes a weary mother who needs to get away from her active toddler and has a headache. I’m digressing.. These banana cakes were actually for my 2 mothers (mom and mom in law) for their patience in being dragged to countless showrooms and time spent at the flat.
Furnishing a house is quite expensive. I’m trying to keep things small and within budget but its really hard sometimes. Especially when there’s something really really nice that you’re absolutely in love with but just won’t pay the price. I love this certain fabric for my living room curtains and it costs as much as all my living set combined and more! Its ridiculous.. So we’ve decided, no curtains for now! We’ll just fix up the blinds in the rooms and leave the sliding doors which open to the balcony as it is. I’ve bought all my lights, the ceiling fans, the furniture for the dining and living except the dining chairs as well as the bed which is all that will go into one of the bedrooms. We’re leaving the rest of the rooms empty for now. We’ll probably be able to move in by Chinese New Year which is the 26th of January. Things are a little tricky in a way when all the furniture shops deliver only during office hours so I have to plan it according to our tight schedules. I’m also starting to lose track of the furniture delivery times because they keep on changing it and usually call me when I’m busiest at work. I will share some photos of the house when we finally move in and it looks decent.
Back to the banana cakes, recipe found here. It is a soft warm fluffy cake best eaten with a tall glass of cold milk served to you while watching BBC Top Gear, well at least thats how H has his.
A close up of the fluffy insides. With so much raising power, 2 tsp baking powder AND 2 tsp of baking soda, it doesn’t matter how much you mess up the batter, this cake will rise and make you seem like a domestic goddess. And with the whole block of butter and moistness from the bananas and the added milk, it will never ever be dry either. Try it, it won many hearts for me.
Recipe from chubbyhubby, one of the first food blogs I started to read way back in 2005. Its based in Singapore and a lovely read with great recipes and restaurant reviews.
Banana cake
Makes 20 to 24
21⁄4cups (295g) flour
2tsp baking powder
2tsp bicarbonate of soda
1⁄2tsp salt
1cup (210g) sugar
240g unsalted butter
4 eggs, beaten
4 bananas (roughly 375g), mashed
5Tbs milk
1tsp pure vanilla essence
Sift flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a medium bowl. Cream butter and sugar until creamy white. Add beaten eggs a little at a time. Beat well after each addition. Add vanilla, milk and mashed bananas. Fold in flour and blend well. Pour mixture into muffin cups and bake at 180˚C for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Of course it should preferably be a cheap teacup. I wonder if the roots will grow into it and crack it like roots do to pavements?
From Apartment Therapy.
On a personal note, I’m really tired today. I feel totally worn out from work. I feel slightly resentful that we are so short of manpower and how the department was functioning on 12 medical officers previously and how we are now working with 7. With 1 on leave at any one point of time and one gone post call in the afternoon, we are so short and the patient list so long. Its a combination of factors thats making things a little more unbearable than usual. I know there are difficult people everywhere but somehow I feel the set of patients I am working with now are more difficult that the ones I’ve had in the past few years. I have a patient who is verbally abusive and with a personality disorder and I find myself handling distress calls from the nurses and having to handle this patient’s drug addictions really tiring. I feel that as healthcare workers, we take so much abuse from patients and their families even when we try our very best, and we are defenseless when people use foul language and throw things at us. Apparently when I try to seek help everyone is saying there’s nothing we can do and that only if this person physically harms me would there be some action. I called the police on this patient yesterday because he was becoming unbearable so the nurses and I filed a police report against him. But I guess there’s so much the law can do because ethically we still have to treat this person. At the same time, my patient list is getting shorter because patients are sick and dying, sometimes so quickly I still get a little shocked and paranoid because I feel a little like we failed in some odd way. I had 2 patients turn bad yesterday afternoon, one with a heart attack and another with seizures. I then attended to another new patient with a heart attack and my colleague had attended to another 3 admissions in the emergency department. The lady with seizures died soon after and I felt bad for the family. I guess I have to remind myself that a mere 15 years ago, anyone with kidney failure would die as there are no options for treatment. Now with dialysis, patients are living longer and longer but eventually with demise in different ways. I just get super paranoid, like anyone with chest pain has a heart attack and anyone with seizures may have a stroke and anyone with shortness of breath has a pulmonary embolism. All of which happen with greater frequency than the average patient population. I guess I’m ok with that, I just have to work super hard but its harder when you’re trying to keep calm and patient with people who are just plain rude. I’ve had to explain to patient’s relatives about why the doctor on call last night was late in attending to their mother, knowing very well that the doctor was probably resuscitating another patient and his mother was stable. I had to calm another relative down who was upset with how a senior doctor had spoken to her. When I tried to reassure her, she asked if I was being genuine or patronizing. Honestly I was really surprised at how everything just seems so wrong, I was trying to help her and yet she was so defensive and so upset, all stemming from her distress that her father was sick. I’m not an angel, sometimes I feel like really really saying whats in my head, like I feel my patience are being stretched way to the limit, like I’m going to explode one day, like I wish we all should treat each other as humans and be nice even when you’re sick, your parent is sick or your child is sick. Is that an excuse for another person to be abused, verbally or physically. If anything goes wrong, we are open to lawsuits and complaints, but there’s no vice versa, I can’t complain if someone treats be badly, is rude to me or abuses me verbally. At most I can just write it here, and you’re reading.
On a brighter note, I received a card from an old patient who has moved back to London, his wife sent me a nice Chistmas card from their hometown. It was also a nice surprise to receive a box of cookies and chocolates parcelled from Japan from another sweet young patient I looked after for a while. I guess when life is really crappy, its these nice little surprises that perk you up. And……… I received THE APARTMENT keys today! I spent the whole evening opening and closing the kitchen cupboards, so much space! And they’re all mine..!
Breakfast with Quizas on New Year’s Eve
I’ve been wanting to post a reminder to myself on how I will eat and cook this year. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had gained a little weight, I was 42 kg pre medical school and 44 kg after. After 3 years of marriage I was 49.3kg a month ago. I’ve been gaining at a rate of 2 kg a year which is quite scary considering that I’ll be 100kg at the age of 76. So my New Year’s resolution is some weight loss, perhaps down to 46 kg and to be a whole lot healthier cardiovascularly as well as in bone age and weight. I’ve started running everyday and doing some strength training in the last 2 weeks. It is exhausting but I’m down to 48kg as of today. At least with all the exercise I still can eat and not starve and my heart will be stronger (hopefully literally and figuratively seeing how crazy work has been getting). So for 2009 I will like to cook and eat healthier and better and prepare stuff I’ve never done before and do some stuff I’ve been doing more regularly. Here are my food resolutions:
1. Make homemade yogurt often enough to have a good flowing supply
2. Make my own sauces, like mayonnaise (erm, eat things in moderation?), ketchup, chilli sauce
3. Make my own jam, I still have the pectin I bought at least half a year ago..
4. Make sorbets (and occasional ice creams) often and fully break in my ice cream machine
5. Explore roasts.. Large leg of lamb, try to perfect roast chicken, make a beef wellington.
6. Make bread often such that I don’t have to buy and I can freeze pita bread, french loaves and dinner rolls in the freezer
7. Make convenient breakfast foods, like homemade granola more often, or a dried fruit and nut mix to spice up oatmeal
8. erm, improve my crappy piping skills and aim to bake every single birthday cake and not resort to store bought ones? I think I’m being ambitious
9. I dream of magically having batters and doughs in the freezer to whip up madelines and financiers and shortbread cookies for tea when we have guests
10. COOK from the many many cookbooks I have and hold on to the urge to keep buying more!
Those are my food/cooking resolutions.. You know how much I would love to hear from you my friends, Laureen, Zhullie, Brenda, Linda, Rosie, Shaheen, Is, Hanne, Tommy, Bordeaux and all of you reading who have tried the recipes on this blog and dropped me sweet emails just to day hi..
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