Things I Buy at Culina’s

H has been trying to maintain the weight loss he’s achieved during Ramadan and has been eating a lot of salads. I’ve been trying to come up with new dressings and salad combinations to keep things exciting. H steers away from cream based dressings but occasionally he allows himself to have a Caeser salad. We use the Caeser’s dressing from the bottle as I have no time to make it from scratch now! But I still find time to make simple vinaigrettes. I recently bought a bottle of hazelnut oil from Culina’s and made a basil and hazelnut pesto to dress his salad with. Pestos are great as dressings and the possibilities are endless! I saw a beetroot pesto and Jones the grocer and was really intrigued by its pretty pink hue. I can’t wait to come up with more combinations. Its one of the reasons I bought my new kitchen gadget, a food processor..! Another reason I made such a ridiculous purchase (I mean with the baby and all, who has any time..) is because Giant stopped bringing in halal sausages. So it looks like I have to start making my own cos H keeps on talking about those sausages!

I was surprised Culina sells parmesan at a price 50% cheaper than cold storage!

I don’t routinely shop at Culina’s but there are some things we just can’t find elsewhere. We get our olives in olive oil at Culina’s. Everywhere else its sold in brine and these olives are really really delicious.

Another thing we often get is french butter. Carrefour carries it too but occasionally its out of stock. This is not good for post partum weight loss..

Culina carries a range of Tetsuya’s truffle products. I’ve only had it once in scrambled eggs last Sunday. My mom on the other hand has been spreading it on her buttered toast every morning!

I have coffee on my mind

Nespresso in particular.

Bad Bad H for suggesting we should get a nespresso machine. I’m supposed to be off caffeine!

My best friend’s married!

I started writing this 2 weeks ago, a little belated but rather late than never!

My best friend’s married! It was a busy week for Mel and finally after many many weddings as the best friend and bridesmaid, she’s legally married to someone who can’t be luckier, Haikal! It was such a lovely wedding with fantastic food, family, friends I haven’t met in a long time. Congratulations Mel and Haikal! The set up was gorgeous, the food honestly the best I’ve ever eaten in any wedding and the bride and groom looked fantastic. I’m sorry we were not able to be there the whole time, I would really have loved to. But somehow timing and circumstance is such that my grandma broke her hip and is now scheduled for a hip replacement soon. As with old folks and especially with her dementia, we are trying hard to cope with her delirium and spells of confusion.

 Photo courtesy of butterflyrubrics

I had a little incident with the making of the mint tea. Pouring hot tea into a glass jar is a very bad idea. There was a shower of tea down my kitchen counters and into the cabinets with a dramatic shattering of glass. It was lucky Yati brought the drinks including iced tea so that was poured into the mint filled jugs instead. I was really happy that all the planning paid off and the girls each played their part with the lovely goodie bags prepared, the door gifts, the individual gifts for Mel, the “games” and just being so participative and enthuisastic about the dancing. I now have video evidence that some of us just can’t move with the rhythm, I’m definitely in that list! Of course some moved like they’ve been born with it!

 Photo courtesy of butterflyrubrics

 Kebabs grilled by the ever helpful H. We struggled with the disposable BBQ pit, it lit promisingly at the begining but unfortunately wasn’t strong enough and died out pretty quickly. We had to use additional charcoal and lots of fanning before it worked well enough. Though the kebabs looked a little charred, it still tasted pretty good! I marinated it with ginger, garlic, chilli powder, salt, pepper and a little yogurt. It was skewered with bell peppers and pieces of white Bombay onion which grill up and turn really sweet.

I spent several days preparing for the party, including the trial run for some of the recipes. I made baba ghanoush, recipe from one of my favourite blogs on Middle Eastern food and more.  

Tahina from Mustafa

I tried a new recipe for pita bread the weekend before the party. I was attracted to this recipe as it involved little kneading and an overnight rise in the fridge which cut down my prep time on the day itself. For lunch I had topped the dough with minced beef inspired by this, baked it and topped it with a cucumber and yogurt salad when they were slightly cool.

 

Dessert was semolina cake, vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of fresh passionfuit pulp.

Semolina Cake or Basbousa

 

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

1 cup superfine sugar

2 small eggs

2 cups fine yellow semolina

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

Dried apricots, cut into quarters

Syrup (recipe follows)

Cream the butter and the sugar and then beat in the eggs. Stir in a 1/2 cup water. Sift together the semolina, baking powder, and soda, and stir into the butter mixture to form a smooth batter. Preheat the oven to 170C. Lightly grease an 8-by-12-inch cake pan and pour in the batter. Spread it evenly with the back of a spoon and then score across the top of the cake parallel lines going from the bottom left corner to the top right and vice versa, to form diamond shapes. Place an apricot piece in the center of each diamond. Bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes, when the cake should be firm and lightly browned. Prepare the syrup as described below and pour it, spoonfuls at a time, over the hot cake. Stop when the cake will not absorb any more and set the cake aside to cool before serving.

 

                Syrup

1.5 cups sugar

½ cup water

Juice of 1 lemon

Over a medium heat dissolve the sugar in  water, add the lemon juice and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and gently boil the syrup for 10 minutes.

 

A carpet made me sick

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?

Some things..

I got to know today that I passed the MRCP Part 2 written examination. What better way to let my friends, family and all of you who left me such sweet comments know than announce it right here! Now I have the last and final leg (and most daunting!) of the exam which is the clinical part to clear. I’m not looking forward to examining a patient than presenting and discussing with 3 pairs of eyes on me. But oh well.. I just want to get out of this whole studying rut. I’m tired of studying! I want to come home from work and do absolutely nothing. Anyway I’ll probably take the exam in November earliest but realistically I’m thinking January 2010. Which sounds far away but its only in a year.

 

Foodwise, I’m still dreaming of the dinner I had last night which was really really great. Thank you to Aunty Faridah for the hard work, the turkey was fabulous. The turkey with the morrel  cream sauce, roast potaotes, baby onions and steamed greens. Yums. H brought our panasonic instead of the SLR so the photos weren’t great, I’ll see what I can dig up when I’m home (yup, I’m sleeping in a hospital bed tonight, at work that is). I made a starter of crostini with smoked salmon, Boursin garlic cream cheese and smoked mussels. Shopping for ther dinner was hell though, the crowds in town were ridiculous. And I did not manage to get my ingredients at one place so we were bouncing from Carrefour in town to the Cold Storage and was tempted to go down to Takashimaya but we were greatly deterred by the traffic. I couldn’t find the sponge fingeres for the tiramisu, I think they were sold out in Carrefour so we had to move on to plan 2 for dessert. We had Christmas stollen with vanilla ice cream and toasted almondsand my brother brought along a blueberry cheesecake which he made. I love men who cook.

 

I also made the Caeser salad with Thomas Keller’s Anchovy Dressing from his French Laundry Cookbook. It was simple and delicious. It split when I left the dressing to stand though, I’m not sure why it happened, but on the dressed salad I guess no one could tell. I’ve never had a Caeser’s till I met H, I’m just not a salad kind of person, but well Caaser’s salad is a super unhealthy salad so we became friends pretty fast. I made the croutons by tossing cubed Delifrance baguettes with olive oil, salt, pepper, dried oregano flakes and pecorino cheese. Is it just me or is the parmesan you’ve been getting lately tasting completely bland. I think I will go for the pecorino from now on. Anyway the salad was made of the croutons, Romaine lettuce, more shaved pecorino and pan seared Hokkaido scallops.

 

I will share the recipe for the dressing soon, along with the banana cake that I’ve promised and will bake soon enough! Counting down till the new year.. In the mean time, just one more call after tonight and 3 weddings over the weekend. I’m totally exhausted. But happy. And really grateful, that I passed!

There’s light.

Sorry for the super blurry photo in the last post, I find that I can’t upload vertical photos, they turn out blurry. So here’s the bottle again, with some light this time.

Thanks for all the love and support and the lovely comments, I’m not sure why I was so stressed this time round, but I was. Almost incapacitatingly so. Oh well, its back to work now. I received an sms from a colleague a couple of days ago “we’ve not had time to eat lunch!”. So then I felt stressed and guilty. Yikes.

Anyway, I bought this expensive bottle of white truffle oil for the one person that inspired me to go thru this long and so difficult struggle thru internal medicine. I first met him when I was a 4th year medical student. He is a big character and voice in a 75 year old body. He had a little old clinic in my neighbourhood and I was rotated to his clinic with my good friend Quizas for a month long rotation. It really was the funniest few moments in medical school. This guy spoke perfect English like the British who taught him but only read American medical journals and swore by their texts. Oh yes, and he swore a lot to. To his patients, to any one who would hear and they kept on coming back for more. He has a photo of the President in his clinic, and yup, he was the President’s family doctor. I feel that I learnt a lot from him, not just about medicine but about love and service. He was a brusque old man, but with a heart of gold. I remember that every new diabetic was given a glucometer and taught blood glucose monitoring, he screened and looked after his patients to the standard of the most well published guidelines which is not something that can be said for most in the healthcare system. All that and telling you that your headache is actually your husband and your sick baby is an ugly little thing, in the most affectionate way of course. Actually in a rough and shouting way, what am I saying. He is quite a character. He came for my wedding. And I attended his famous son’s art exhibition at the National Museum. He sometimes mused at how his son, being not the brightest of his brood (or so he says) turned out the most successful. I guess in a way to have such an unconventional man as a parent played a part. While others were going for math tuition, he sent his daughter for dance and his son for magic lessons. Some of the lessons he taught me were-

“When the patient isn’s getting better, don’t point the finger at him and say he’s not compliant to the treatment, there are four fingers pointing back at you, have you got the WRONG diagnosis, or the WRONG medication or the WRONG dose or the WRONG duration, then if its not all these, its that patient.”

And The most famous line, Quizas you remember this:

“Stop practicing COOKBOOK medicine, concocting your own plans, always show me the EVIDENCE ( meaning published papers”

And my absolute favourite..

“The orthopaedic surgeons are carpenters, the urologists are plumbers, the gynaecologists, they know nothing from the waist up, the specialist knows more and more about less and less. But the internist, he knows more and more, about more and more.”

Here’s to you Dr Wong.

Birthday breakfast

There was a big “WOW!” when I brought the breakfast tray in.

This breakfast was straight from packs and boxes and doesn’t involve much cooking so I think anyone can make it. (well anyone who is willing to awake an hour earlier than the other half )

Though some parts appear a little burnt, H still ate it all declaring in between how good it was.

Delifrance pastries straight from the box, it goes form frozen to fresh from the oven in 7 mins. if you get it from the bakery its a lot better, I’m not sure if I’ve overbaked it or if it just tastes like a day old. We also had homemade yogurt with assorted dried fruit (sultanas, apricots, figs) and a drizzle of Indian honey. Butter pat and mini jug (filled with syrup) both from Chinatown. Recognize by new second hand plates? Orange juice courtesy of Sunkist and masala tea by me. Made easily with cardamom flavoured milk and 3 Roses tea (both from mustafa)

Clockwise from top left: breakfast beef (from Segar), pancakes (trusty White Wings) and fresh beef sausages from giant.

 

Can’t wait for the rest of the day!

Indian night

This was the post I promised you from last Friday’s evening break fast. Start with a basketful of stuff from Mustafa.

 

Pandanus water, distilled from male pandanus flowers, is popular in Northern India and mainly used to flavour the fantastic sweets Indians can prepare from so commonplace ingredients as milk and sugar. Some common Indian sweets, especially attributed to Bengali cuisine but available all over the country, are ras gulla [रस गुल्ला] (balls of chena and flour cooked in syrup), gulab jamun [गुलाब जामुन] (fried balls of khoya and flour served with syrup) and ras malai [रस मलाई] (chena balls in a rich, creamy rabadi sauce). In order to not waste the delicate scent, pandanus water is sprinkled over the balls just before eating; only the ras gulla are often let steep in pandanus-flavoured syrup for longer time, but in that case it’s important to have the container tightly closed. As an alternative, saffron may be used to flavour the milk-based ras malai sauce, but for the other recipes, saffron wouldn’t work so well.  

Shan is the best

But this was lousy, it wasn’t nice. Homemade garam masala is still the best.

This was used for the butter paneer dish, I didn’t know fenugreek had leaves.

My unappetizing looking mint chutney. I think I need to ask Sheerin for the recipe.

Just a touch of ghee in the briyani, I was surprised how sparingly this is actually used in the Indian kitchen. My grandma used to use lots and lots.

My samosas which ended up looking like a spring roll because I didn’t have the right sized wrapper.

Dry prawn masala

Raita freshly made as the sunsets

Razlyn helping me with some mixing. Before we ate, she said: I better wash my hands, I’ve been touching patients the whole day. Lucky for us–

– we didn’t get her to roll out the roti

Only made with Pillbury atta!

 

It was a real adventure, but the pleasure was all mine as H ate so happily, it was such a long time since I managed to cook.

 

I’m on call this weekend!! Goodbye sleeping in on Sunday! Goodbye sleeping in on Sunday night!!

grocery shopping

I wish there was a one stop grocery shop where I could get everything I needed. Unfortunately there isn’t and we shop around at a couple of places to stock up our kitchen. It seems like we are grocery shopping all the time but I think we both enjoy it. I think nothing screams more couplehood than loading a large supermarket trolley with stuff that you need. I’m not sure how it ended up this way but we by our steak from a supplier in Eunos, our chicken in the Geylang market, this is the only place I know that will sell me just the breast of the chicken because we don’t eat the other parts, we buy our fuit mostly from Giant because its the cheapest and we seem to consume a lot of fruit as we always run short. We buy our Middle Eastern and Indian stuff form Mustafa because they stock up on things you just can’t find elsewhere like foul, hummus and tahini. As well as that essential chapati flour, Pilsbury atta flour. Herbs and baby potatoes are also cheap at Mustafa. And then of course there’s Carrefour for cheese and Cold Storage or Jason’s for things you just can’t find in the other places like anchovies, special dressings, ok I did say I always make my own but the dressing below is seriously good.

 

Have you tried Boursin cream cheese? It is so addictive with chip or crackers. Its H’s favourite entertainment tool. He calls his friends over and they have cappucino with chips and Boursin. He leads a good life. 

I love mustard. I’m not sure how this love came about and how to explain it but I think nothing beats steak and mustard of that sausage with a dollop of mustard. I think Maille makes the best mustard and I only buy Maille Dijon or wholegrain. I don’t like the mustard in the squeezy bottles. The Caeser dressing to the right is seriously good. Making a Caeser dressing is a lot of work from the egg yolks to the grating of the parmesan. This is lovely and fluid and great on top of those croutons, cos lettuce and a soft boilled egg with a runny yolk on top.

Another thing I can’t live without is my Barilla pasta. Barilla is good, and I think can only be found in Carrefour/Jason’s or Cold Storage. I might have seen it at Giant but I can’t be sure

This is the secret to those chocolate chip cookes akin to Famous Amos with a golden brown caramelly bite.

I like anchovies in my tomato based pasta sauces, it adds a layer of flavour that just makes it all round tasty. I usually buy the ones without the capers and add the capers myself if I want them in the sauce.

The new issue of donna hay is out, so before I plow thru that, thought I would share some last pages from the last issue. What better way to spend a Sunday then slow with some slow roasts?

I’m not so great with meat, so I’m roasting a whole bag of bell peppers I bought today. The possibilities are endless.. Pasta, on burgers, in sandwhiches or salads. Slow roasting really mellows the flavours.

We walked at the beach last weekend. It was nice and cold as the eratic weather has been lately.

I’m not sure how soulful my contemplation will be this weekend, all I know is that Sunday will be terrific because..

Husaini’s in transit in Singapore! To those who don’t know Husaini, he’s equivalent to our soulmate as a couple. (husaini you’ll probably laugh reading this) And he has the coolest job. He flies with a company that does medical evacuations so he was from Johannesburg transitting here and going back to his new home in New Zealand. And he has a new food blog which has quite an interesting concept.. More soon..