Week 8, 2015

Feb 16 (Mon)

 

I baked a rye bread from the Five Minute Artisan Bread book.

 

and made Oxtail Stew with Tomato and Bacon to dip it with.

Excuse the horrible photo but trust me it's a very nice and substantial dish. I use a pressure cooker to speed things up, but even with that you should cook it for about 50 minutes to one hour so the oxtails can soften to the point where the meat falls off the bones.

Swiss Chard w/ Pancetta, Corn & Cannelini Beans

 

I used back bacon instead of pancetta for this, and fresh corn. I think all the veggies balance out the bacon, don't you think?

 

Feb 17 (Tue)

  

Sea bass with warm rosemary black olive vinaigrette

 

 

Another tried and true recipe. The OJ makes the dish. I usually skip the radicchio, because very few supermarkets sell it. Which means, this can be a pantry meal, if you keep some frozen fish and grow your own rosemary ;o)

Apple Beet Salad with Creamy Dill Dressing



Never use canned beetroot if you can help it. Fresh ones are so much better, and the peels can be fed to horses. Nothing goes to waste!

Feb 18 (Wed)

Chinese New Year eve is traditionally a time for families to gather and have reunion dinners, but our family never really placed a lot of significance on CNY so most of the time we tend to travel during this time. This year, however, we didn't plan any trips, and since both sets of parents are in Singapore, we had a small reunion dinner. J requested his favourite dishes from Chinese restaurants in the US that you just can't find anywhere else.

Hot and Sour Soup

I've been using this recipe for a long time and the only thing I change is that I use half water half chicken stock. I can honestly say it tastes better than most of the hot and sour soup served in restaurants.

 

General Tsao's Chicken
 

 

I've been making this since our Tokyo days, and you can read my blog post from those days here. I realized that the original recipe that I followed was deleted from Allrecipes.com for some reason, so I replaced the link with a similar version. Again, I would recommend dipping the chicken pieces in corn starch after coating in eggs instead of mixing the corn starch into the marinade, so you get a crispier exterior.

My mom's family is from Beijing, where it's a tradition to eat dumplings on New Year's eve. So I made pan-fried dumplings. The fillings is made with a recipe in Harumi's Japanese Cooking, and the wrapper is made from scratch. I will write a separate blog post on this with videos to show you how it's done. But here's the final result:

 

We eat this dipped in Chinese dark vinegar.

I stir fried baby kalian with duck liver sausage and regular Chinese sausages again. The recipe is in this earlier blog post.

Finally, my mom made an eight-treasured rice for dessert. It's a steamed glutinous rice dish with red bean past filling. There are supposed to be eight ingredients, usually a variety of dried fruits and nuts, that have auspicious meanings, but the key is to make it look pretty.

You can buy these ready made sometimes but I like her version because it's not too sweet, and she even made her own red bean filling. Here's a detailed recipe I found online. I haven't tried it, but the instructions are pretty good, so you can get an idea of what it is. I'll post my simplified recipe if I make it again.

Feb 19 (Thur)



Chinese New Year day! I went to walk Istria first thing in the morning and brought along Cherry Garcia. She just turned seven!

I worked up an appetite after walking and grooming Istria, and feeling nostalgic, I wanted to make some traditional home cooking styled dishes and the first thing that came to mind was scallion oil noodle （葱油面）. The Crystal Jade La Mian restaurant in Singapore has a pretty good version, so I set out to replicate it.

Another dish I really miss having is scallion braised pork chop （葱烤大排）. In Shanghai, scallion is used generously in a lot of braising dishes. Another one of my favorite is braised river carp. It's impossible to find fresh water fish in Singapore, so I'm settling for pork chops. I scored some kurobuta bone-in chops from Isetan and did recipe searches online. I combined a few recipes to come up with one I thought was the best. 

In Shanghai plain noodles are sometimes served with a topping, so I'm using the pork chops as topping for my scallion oil noodles. The recipe below is for both dishes, since the scallions need to be fried in oil for both dishes. Don't skimp on the scallions. They look like a mountain before cooking, but will shrink a lot. What's more, they soak up all the pork flavors so you would be wishing you had used more scallions, trust me!

Ingredients:

6 pork chops, bone-in, but not too thick, about 1cm is the best
at least 250g spring onions, cut into half or leave as is
1/2 - 1 cup cooking oil

5 slices of ginger
salt
2 tsp Chinese cooking wine
2 Tbsp light soy sauce
2 tsp dark soy sauce

3 star anise
2 Tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
2 Tbsp sugar
corn starch

For noodles:
1 Tbsp Chinese cooking wine
1/4 c small dried shrimp, chopped
2 Tbsp Maggie Seasoning sauce (optional)
250g thin white Chinese noodles

- Wash pork chops and dry with paper towel
- Use the back of a kitchen cleaver to hit the pork chops all over, until tender
- Place pork chops in a bowl and sprinkle with cooking wine and salt. Add ginger and soy sauce. Marinate for at least 3 hours   
- Soak shrimp in some warm water and cooking wine.
- Remove pork chops and dip in a dish filled with corn starch to coat both sides
-  Heat some oil in a wok until very hot but not smoking. Add all the spring onions and deep fry in oil, remove before turning yellow. Fry pork chops one or two at a time, until surface turns white.
- Pour out most of oil and reserve (this is for the noodle), leave just a little in the wok.
- Stir fry shrimp a little bit, until fragrant. Remove and set aside.
- Heat up a little more oil, add ginger from the marinade and stir fry until fragrant
- Add star anise, pork chops, most of the spring onion and light soy sauce. Pour some water into the wok until pork chops are almost completely submerged.
- Cover and cook on high for ten minutes.
- Add sugar to taste, may need more (Shanghainese dishes always have a sweet undertone)
- Add dark soy sauce for colour, but don’t make it too dark.
- Reduce the sauce on high heat uncovered, but leave some to pour over rice or noodle

- Cook the noodles according to instruction. Rinse in cold water
- Place noodle into bowls and toss with scallion flavoured oil, season with salt and Maggie        seasoning. Top with some browned scallions and shrimp.
- Place a pork chop on top of noodles and serve.

Feb 20 (Fri)

In anticipation of all the eating ahead, I rode Istria at a clinic with horse trainer extraordinaire A. Due to Istria's girth gall, I had to ride bareback, which I think earned me two more pineapple tarts.

Our friends J&M invited us to their house in the afternoon and her helper made a really wonderful Mee Soto dish from scratch!

 

It was absolutely delicious. I've shamelessly asked J to invite us back for some more =oP

 

They hired some lion dancers to bless the house with good fortune. I've never seen lions so up close before. At one point the lions were spitting out little toys for all the kids to grab, so it was great fun for everyone.



At night we went to T & A's house for more eating. They adopted one of the dogs from SOSD after I fostered him for a little and basically brought him to their house so the kids could fall in love with him. Since my dogs knew their dog, they went along too.

A even found the drink that matches my manicure!

We had another round of Lo-hei

And ate ourselves silly again with barbecued Korean beefs and burgers, scallops in butter sauce, and the sweetest corns.

Feb 21 (Sat)

My riding buddy G is taking part in a dressage competition at another club for the first time, involving transporting her horse across the island. I went to support her by helping her plait the horse and bringing lunch.

 

It was such a scorching hot day. I was so glad I wasn't the one who had to warm up under the hot sun.

 

Since she will need lots of energy I made some high protein food: mashed avocado with yuzu salt, and my favourite Egg Salad

My tarragon had died a few weeks ago so I used baby fennel fronds instead. Everyone liked it and G won 1st place in her class. I would like to think the food gave her the energy and stamina she needed to win ;o)

There was another Lo-hei with my fellow SOSD volunteers in the evening. The eating never ends...

Feb 22 (Sun)

Another clinic with A

 

Some serious eating at H & A's house for dinner. H co-owns and runs one of Singapore's best small plates restaurant Lolla and he likes to think of his friends as having the capacity to eat double portions whenever we are at his place. This was no exception.

 

 

H made a huge pot of eight treasured rice (similar to claypot rice, not to be confused with the sweet version my mom made), sautéed Carabineros prawns, water chestnut and kailan, pork soup and A made ngoh hiang with H's mom's recipe. The ngoh hiang was pan fried instead of deep fried, which made me feel less guilty to down five pieces.

 

 

This was my first plate. I lost count after the second bowl of rice. Carabineros prawns have very sweet and firm flesh, but the best part is all the juice that comes out of the head when you rip it off. I made sure the rice caught all the juice so there was no wastage.

 

Ten more days of Chinese New Year, but I think I need to slow down with the eating, or Istria will be protesting against a heavier load on her back =o(

 

 

 

 







Week 3, 2015

Jan 12 (Mon)

Superfood Crunch Salad and Honey Lime Chicken Skewer

Pomegranates are everywhere! The shiny red skinned huge orbs were calling my names every time I pass by them in the supermarket so I had to buy some. There's a misconception that pomegranates are hard to peel, but with a little bit of patience and technique it's rather simple. My favorite way is to find the membranes between the sections and slice down so entire sections can come out at one go. Here's a Youtube video showing you how. Forget about using water or whacking the poor fruit with a wooden spoon. It's messy, and pom juice stains everything! Now I just need to get myself a handy little knife like that to make it even easier.

It's not a dinner that will blow your mind, but it's easy to make, tastes good, and serves its purpose as a healthy dinner on a Monday. Incidentally, I had my health screening this morning. I should've had this for dinner on Sunday instead of all that duck sausages...

Jan 13 (Tue)

Today's smoothie

1 c cantaloupe 

A couple of pieces of pineapple (leftover in fridge)

1 kale leaf stem removed

Half a frozen banana

1/2c home made yogurt

4 dates

I always feel super healthy when my smoothies are green :0P so I saved a kale leaf when making salad the night before. This smoothie turned out really yummy and kept me energized during my private riding lesson this morning

J is in HK for two days so it's my chance to eat carbs!!! Ever since he went on this low-carb diet six months ago, I could only cook things where the carb portion can be separated so he doesn't eat it. That leaves me no chance to make any pasta dishes. Even Chinese food was hard because how do you eat it without rice? At his most fervent stage it was strictly NO-carbs, so he didn't even eat soya products, fruits high in sugar, or starchy vegetables such as corn or potato. Thank goodness that stage is over, but still, with him away, it's my chance to carbo load =o)

Spaghetti with lobster  

This is a pasta dish that you won't feel guilty eating. The sauce is tomato based with no added cream or cheese so it's light, but the lobster makes it extra flavorful. I hit the jackpot today and had a lobster with roe in it too! I've also made this with crabs and prawns before, and today I used home made fettuccine instead of spaghetti

Radicchio, Pear, Gorgonzola Salad

This salad has a strong flavor due to the balsamic dressing, and the gorgonzola cheese kicks up the flavor by another knotch. It is a nice contrast to the light and delicate pasta.

Jan 14 (Wed)

My day starts at 6am on Wednesdays. I have a jumping lesson at 7am and I never know which horse I'll get until I'm at the stables. Today I was assigned Mimo. She's a great little jumper but getting her to the jumps usually takes everything out of me. Thank goodness I had this smoothie on my way to the club

1 c pineapple

1/2 c cantaloupe

1/2 a frozen banana

1/2 c home made yogurt

After riding I take a quick shower and have breakfast before heading to SOSD to walk the shelter dogs from 9:30-12:30. Needless to say, I need a lot of energy for that, so I always make an overnight oatmeal. The basic recipe is really easy: 1/2 c oatmeal and 1/2c milk, stir and soak overnight. I usually top it with whatever fruits I have on hand, and add a little honey or maple syrup to sweeten it.

From studying horse feeds I learned that oats give a lot of energy, which is why polo ponies are always fed oats before a game. In this case, what works for the horses also works for the human. This kept me going until past 1pm =o)



I've been talking to some friends about my favourite cake at PS café recently so today I went there for tea. I almost always order the chocolate doorstop cake and the sticky date pudding. They are soooo yummy but very sinful, so make sure you share!

For dinner, I'm continuing to carbo load, before J comes back tomorrow =oP

Carrot Ginger Pork Buns 

My favourite Shanghai dim sum item is Sheng Jian Man Tou (生煎馒头) and it's very hard to find an authentic one outside of Shanghai. I've tried to make it myself but the dough proves challenging. It is semi-risen, and it's very hard to control just how much rise, so most of the times the dough turns out too fluffy. The meat filling of recipe is similar to Sheng Jian Man Tou in flavour so this time I tried to rest the dough for less time and it worked somewhat. However, because I was at tea I had to rely on my helper to make the buns and she made the skin too thick and couldn't resist turning them right side up after frying =o( (authentic Sheng Jian Man Tou is always fried seam side down) Here's a recipe on CNN, which I have not tried yet, but you can see what they should look like.

Cabbage Soup

Because the pork buns are quite time consuming to make, I paired it with this super easy cabbage soup. It turned out surprisingly tasty, kind of like the Russian borscht.

Jan 15 (Thur)

Asian Style Chicken Quinoa Salad

Going healthy again after yesterday's artery clogging cakes and pan fried buns. It meets J's low carb standard too, with quinoa and chicken as the main ingredients. I also like the raisins and cashews in it.

Jan 16 (Fri)

I had breakfast with some girlfriends after riding today. We were supposed to go to the Missing Pan, but the construction noise was so loud that we promptly escaped to Choupinette a few doors down. Choupinette is probably THE oldest French bakery/cafe in Singapore way before cafes are popping up on every street corner, but it was my first time there. I ordered Eggs Florentine and I have to say the eggs were really nice. My friends who ordered the eggs Benedict said the ham was extra tasty because the edges were perfectly charred. The coffee, on the other hand, was too weak for my taste. 

One of the dishes we always order when we go for crab meals at seafood restaurants is the steamed prawns. Some restaurants have an herbal version but my favourite is the plain kind, eaten with a light soy sauce dip. Chili crabs are hard to make at home, but this one is really easy, especially if you have a steamer oven.

Steamed Prawns
1 lb of whole prawns, cleaned
3 tbsp Chinese wine
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
4 spring onions, each cut into 3-4 pieces
1" ginger, sliced

1. Arrange prawns in a shallow dish. (I find grey prawns work better for in this dish than tiger prawns, because the meat is sweeter.)

2. Combine wine, salt and sugar, and pour over prawns. Place spring onion piecess and ginger on top.

3. Heat steamer oven to 100% 100C, steam for 10 minutes (12 min if shrimps are large). If using conventional steamer, bring water to a full boil, then put dish inside and steam.  

Another signature Shanghai dish I always make if I have Spring bamboo shoot is the braised bamboo shoot in soy sauce. It's pretty intense in flavour and the longer you let the bamboo pieces sit in the sauce the more the flavours develop.  That's why I like to make this a couple of hours before it's time to eat, and leave it sitting, with the the occasional stir so all the pieces have a chance to soak in the sauce. Like most Shanghai dishes, this has a sweetness to it, which I love. If you're not used to having your savoury dishes slightly sweet, decrease the sugar, but I think it tastes infinitely better this way. Can you believe that when eaten together, the bamboo shoot had more umami than the prawns? I wish I didn't have to rely on friends who happen to come visit from Shanghai during the short two months or so that the bamboo shoots are in season, but I won't complain, at least I have been able to get them once a year for the past few years.

Braised Bamboo Shoots
5-6 spring bamboo shoots
2 tbsp dark Chinese soy sauce
1 tbsp sugar

1. Peel the skin and chop off tough bottom from bamboo shoots, and roughly chop into irregular pieces
2. Heat 2 tbsp oil in a wok and stir-fry bamboo shoots for a little until well coated in oil
3. Add soy sauce and sugar, stir evenly, then add 1/2 c of water. Bring to a boil over high heat
4. Simmer for 3-5 min with lid on. Stir to evenly coat all the bamboo pieces.
5. Turn heat to high to evaporate most of the sauce except a little left on the bottom.


Jan 17 (Sat)

Buttermilk Waffles

 

I followed the recipe except I didn't add blueberries into the batter, because I didn't want to deal with burst berries burned to my waffle iron =o( I really liked the flavor of this waffle batter, but find the texture a little dense. I don't know if this is due to the fact that I had to keep them warm in the oven for ages waiting for J to get up, but it's worth giving it another try on a day when he's already up when I started making breakfast...

A while ago I found a buttermilk powder on iHerb.com. I don't know about you but I have no use for buttermilk except when baking, so when I buy a container, I can never use it up before it expires. The alternative is to add lemon juice to milk as a substitute, but this powder is really the best thing. All you need is water to reconstitute, and it's even low fat.

Today's smoothie 

Bottom layer: 1/2c mango, 1/2 frozen banana, 1/4c OJ. Top layer: 1/2 frozen banana, 6 strawberries, 1/4c homemade yogurt. A layer of homemade granola in between and some on top

Roast Chicken with Kimchi Smashed Potato



It looks like we've been having roast chicken and potato every Saturday this year, so here's another one. If you like kimchi you'll like this dish. I always use more chicken than the recipe calls for, because J loves chicken. I also used watercress instead of arugula. If you missed it last week, I posted a link on all the good things scientists have to say about watercress. This is another one dish meal that's easy to prepare on busy days.

Jan 18 (Sun)

 

J's New Year's resolution for 2015 is to learn how to cook, so I signed him up for a chef in training course at the school I used to teach. It's an 8-wk course taught by the executive chef of Absinthe, who's also a friend. Last week J learned how to make roast chicken, potato, seafood saffron soup and mushroom soup. Yesterday's menu was eggs Benedict, scrambled egg with smoked salmon, braised lentils and quiche Loraine. The eggs he ate at the school, the lentils and quiche he brought back. I have to say I was quite impressed. 

Since we didn't get to taste the eggs, he offered to make them for us for breakfast. I will have breakfast waiting for me when I come home from riding? Instead of scrambling to put something together without even showering first? Imagine that! 

Long story short, after burning the bread to a char (10 minutes was what he thought the timer should be set) and making the Hollandaise sauce way too early, causing it to split by the time we ate, they turned out pretty well. I especially like how he seasoned the spinach.

Spurred on by my encouragement, he said he'll make the scrambled eggs for next Sunday's breakfast. Woohoo! 

Happy 2015, Week 1

I've been planning our dinners weekly on excel sheets for the past 3-4 years and a lot of friends say they wish they could just follow my weekly menus so they wouldn't need to think of what to make everyday. So starting this year I'm going to upload my weekly menus here (click on the recipe title to go to the link) and as much as I can, take a photo and write a short review for each recipe after I've made them, cos you know, not every new recipe turns out to be worth repeating.

So here it goes, week 1:

Dec 30th (Tue)

smoked salmon egg salad
 

This recipe was supposed to be made in a jar, but works as a normal salad too, of course. I only made half of the egg salad, as 4 eggs/person seems too much. I found some extra skinny baby haricot vert so used those instead. All in all, a very tasty and easy to put together meal, because you can't really go wrong with smoked salmon, egg salad, and Dijon mustard, can you? ;o)

Pineapple Mango Ginger Smoothie
This is pretty nice, with a nice spicy kick from the ginger. Enough for two

Dec 31st (Wed)

Thomas Keller's Roast Chicken

This one is a tried and true favourite. I made it for Christmas eve dinner and my MIL loved it so much she asked for it again for NYE. It's so easy to make but turns out perfectly every time. The only thing you need to look out for is that the chicken has to be very dry when you put it into the oven so it doesn't end up steaming. So I usually leave it in the fridge uncovered for a couple of hours to dry prior to baking.

Tartiflette (make half)

I had a very nice tartiflette at the Panoramic restaurant on the ski slopes of Val D'isere a couple of weeks ago and really loved it, so I bought some Reblochon cheese from the local market, lugged it back, and made it again. The dish I used was a little small so I couldn't fit in all the cheese but it turned out really well nonetheless.

Green Salad

 

This is a standard green salad at my house, no recipe needed. Use whatever greens you like (I used baby Romaine this time), tomatoes and whatever else you want to add. Drizzle olive oil and balsamic glaze on top, sprinkle Maldon salt and shaved Parmesan cheese. Et Voila!

Chocolate Amaretto Crepe Cake

 

This cake looked so promising but ended up such a disappointment. My in-laws said they liked it, but I'm not sure if they're being polite, or because they've never had other millecrepe cakes I've made before, but J and I certainly didn't like it. The crepe batter has no butter in it, which may explain why the cake felt too doughy, but the filling is also partially to blame. Maybe the author of this recipe lives in a much colder climate, but the whipped cream filling was melting as I was putting the cake together, even though I put it on a big bowl of ice water bath. I should have just stuck to my instinct and made a chocolate pastry cream and fold in the whipped cream, as I normally do. I think it would've at least made the filling more substantial, and maybe then it would've feel like we're just eating crepes with not much in between.

Jan 1st, 2015 (Thur)

Pork Ramen Noodle with stir fried green veggie

This was pretty yummy, and the house smelled so nice all day with the pork in the slow cooker. However, I'm not sure if caramelizing the pork actually adds anything to the dish. I think if I make it again I'll just shred the pork and leave it at that. The roasted butternut squash was very nice though, and could be a side dish on its own.


Jan 2nd (Fri)
Paprika Chicken & Spinach, white wine thyme sauce

This was a very simple one dish meal. I doubled the amount of spinach so I wouldn't have to make another side dish and ate it with rice. The sauce has a very nice flavour and it has J's approval.

Jan 3 (Sat)

Sat is one of the rare days I get to sleep in, so this was an impromptu brunch thrown together with what's in the fridge. J's still watching his carb intake so the eggs are his. I warmed up the leftover crepes from the crepe cake and caramel cinnamon apple from another cake earlier in the week. I need to make more crepe cakes in the future so I can have breakfast like this! The rest of the brunch is pretty healthy: cantaloupe with prosciutto, homemade yogurt drizzled with raw honey and topped with fruits.

For dinner we had Soy Lemon Flank Steak Salad

 

When I was traveling in the Languedoc area of France last May there were a lot of flank steaks on the menu as plat du jour and they were all very tasty, so I decided to give it a try instead of the usual marbled wagyu. This dish requires a little prep work (need to marinade the flank steak), but is very quick to put together. I was out all day but had dinner on the table within half an hour after coming home. Having never grilled a flank steak before I used a meat thermometer to monitor the internal temp. and grilled until it registered 140F, let it rest for 10min while boiling the marinade and washing the salad leaves. The sauce turned out to be very tasty and J loved it.


Jan 4 (Sun)

Another quick lunch thrown together after riding. The cheese were brought back from our trip to France, from 3 different cheese shops =oP Clockwise from bottom left: Petit Gaugry (similar to Epoisse), 18 month aged Gouda, truffle cheese, aged Mimolette, and 27 month aged Comte. The truffle cheese was from a famous cheese shop in St Germaine market. It was great when we tasted it but now the truffle seems too overpowering. My favourite is still the Comte. We also had chorizo and a saucisson with beaufort cheese inside.

The pina colada shake was very easy to make and tastes great
3/4 c pineapple chunks
1 frozen banana
1/2 c coconut water
1/3 c plain yogurt

For dinner we had:
Fig Gorgonzola Stuffed Pork Tenderloin and Green Beans w Hazelnut and Lemon

The pork was definitely a lot of work. I think I overbaked it by about 5-10minutes because the pork, although not dry, had a very tight texture. The sweetness of the figs and the pungent gorgonzola went really well with the pork and the sauce was a nice addition. I may try this again some time to see if a slightly shorter baking time and a different brine can make a difference.

The green bean salad is an all time favourite. It definitely works better with baby haricot vert, and make sure the hazelnut is toasted until fragrant, but not burnt.

So that's what my kitchen churned out in the first week of 2015. Until next week!