Sharing Is Caring

I guess in my case, sharing was part of caring for my cousin's son, Brayden. It seems like he always like to share whatever I'm eating, or at least check out what I have in my food bowl, and there are certain foods which he would sit absolutely still to enjoy.

Today was no different, and the thing that got him to be an very good boy was a crunchy, juicy Fuji apple.

App Testing

Was a little bored and decided to play around with the app, Photo Grid, which I've been using when I need to get a collage of pictures to post. I've been using the app for a while but have yet to try the 'Template' function in it. So I open it up only to find a very limited number of templates which were definitely not what I'd ever use for the photos I take. Then I found the list of new templates which I could download and started clicking on a whole load of them. 

As I was going through the templates, this one caught my eye and I decided to give it a go first. It started out with just a few pictures from London, and in the end, it ended up as a little summary of Adi's trip to England! Guess I'm happy with the result and it's obviously something I would use with the kind of pictures I take. 

Marathon Time

Mom took a nap after her babysitting gig and woke up around 10 to catch the latest episode of NCIS. All of us then seemed to be wide awake and with no other new series on tv, mom finally decides to watch the stuff I've got on the computer. Basically, this would be the first time we've used the Apple TV since my sis left. Now it's time to get the drinks and snacks, sit back and get comfy for the longhaul.

Test Kitchen

Once in a while, the moods and ideas just gel together and I would end up getting a few recipes tested out in the kitchen. Once in a while I'm joined by Adi. Once in a while they fail, and once in a while the results are awesome.

So this weekend, I was actually craving something like a lemon meringue tart, just without the meringue. Yet, I didn't want something gummy like a lemon bar. Plus, I was too lazy to go all the way out just looking for a lemon tart, and I couldn't seem to find any everywhere I went. Since I planned to make Nutella tarts to help finish the bottle Adi opened a while back, I decided to try making lemon tarts. The idea to make Nutella tarts also came from the idea someone posted about Nutella Day, with a recipe for Nutella Dream Cookies, which we decided to try as well.

Mom also asked to try out a chilli crab recipe my aunt, Jeannie, mentioned a few days before. That led to us getting a few ingredients from Jurong Point, that led us to a Philips fair selling the air fryer my cousin wanted, which saw us buying a set for him, and then sending it to their house in Teck Whye Lane. On the way, I suggested picking a few belimbing, and so dad went hunting while mom and I continued on with the delivery. That's when the cooking list increased with a few more ideas to try.

In the end, within the 2 days, mom, Adi and I made Nutella Dream Cookies, Nutella Tart, Lemon Tart, Chilli Crab, Whole Apple Pies, Belimbing Chutney, Belimbing Pickles and even Candied Belimbing. PHEW!

Airport Nosh

Once again, the album dug out another dish that made me drool with both the hunger to eat and travel. This was the chicken pate served at the bar in Heathrow Airport's terminal 1 departure area. Oddly I can't remember the name of the place, but it was on the left corner right after immigration. The strange thing about this pate was that it was exactly like the one I remembered having a few years back, before immigration, at terminal 3. However, looking at the list of pubs and restaurants available, there doesn't seem to be any in both terminals of the same name. Stranger still is that both serve their pate the same way, on a board. The strangest thing is, I didn't take a photo of the first one I ate!! 

Anyway, this definitely made skipping the inflight sandwich worth it, and I would definitely lengthen a transit in Heathrow, or just fly there for this one. 

One Of The Best Things About Singapore

One of the best things about Singapore is that the food scene has been expanded to a point where you can get almost any country's famous dish. Anyone can say that every particular dish will always be best sampled in the original country, but you can't deny that proud countryfolk wouldn't try their best to replicate them. Other than particular ingredients that might be hard to come by in Singapore, most streetfare and grandmothers' recipes require what is readily available.

Lucky is someone like me who loves my travels and food. With the ease in which I can satisfy my cravings for food from foreign lands without having to bring along my passport, I'd say I'm a happy camper in Singapore. Just like heading down to Malaysia Boleh at Jurong Point to get a lovely, flavourful and well-balaced bowl of Penang laksa. The lines for the Penang char kway teow and oyster omelette were really long as the frying process was really slow. However, good things come to those who wait, in this case at least.

It was like dinner in Penang again, and topped off with the cendol for dessert. Big savings on the travel and accomodation, with just as big a satisfaction in the tummy.

For The Love Of....

As I was posting the travel photographs onto Facebook, I couldn't help drooling when I got to these 4 pictures of the early dinner we had at the Lobster Pot at Portland Bill. The crabcakes, crab salad, crab sandwiches, and scones with jam and clotted cream are to die for. I would definitely travel all the way to Dorset just to have that, and have done so the 3 times I was there. So far, I've not had anything done so good, and so simply really.

Now I need to find a way to replicate this or find cheap airfares!

Need Some Colour

My room is turning out whiter than I'd like and I'm wondering if I should add some colour or do some stencil work on the cupboards. It might be nice considering my birdcage candle holder has a nice pattern I could try to replicate yet I think that would be a little too much. 

Or I could fill empty spaces up with colour?

The One Thing I Like About Paris

After the 2 days in Paris, I realise that it is one city I did not like, and other than to visit Disney Studios which we didn't have enough time for, I probably will not go back there again by choice.

However, I did enjoy the food, and one of the first things I had in Paris was a Croque Monsieur from Disneyland. It was really well done, considering I took the one with a huge patch of browned cheese. The sliced brioche had a really good toast on the outside, and yet stayed really soft. Cheese in the centre, just like the top, melted into that perfect stringy texture. Even the ham was lovely, not too salty and thin enough to give a nice flavor and texture to the whole dish.

Now that is one thing I crave from Paris, but I still rather go to other parts of France for it if I ever was that desperate.

Childhood Favourites 05

Today mom made another one of my childhood favorites, although she didn't use my favorite or 2nd favourite filling. My grandmother called them potato cutlets, and was the one who made the first ones that the blew my mind. They're made like bergedils, the potato balls that go great with soto ayam, but my grandmother's twist was to mix them with luncheon meat instead. The luncheon meat kind are my 2nd favourtie filling though. The one that really captured my heart was when she made them with sardine. A potato-sardine cutlet, eaten with a green chilli akin to prawn vadai - absolute heaven!

Mom made a new version with corned beef or mutton, depending on what she found in the pantry. We never had corned beef as my grandmother was a buddhist. Since my dad, grandfather and brother-in-law love their corned beef, as well as it being halal for Adi to enjoy, it was quite easy to see why mom decided to make these instead - more mouths to finish a big batch!

Spreading Some Pepper Love

During this year's reunion dinner, my cousin Javier took a liking to my battery-operated pepper grinder as it was quite easy to use and was just as simply designed. My pair was bought while on my trip to Australia and it really has come in handy, especially with you need to pepper your food while cooking, or even when marinating, and you don't have 2 hands to work a manual grinder. The best thing it is for is actually for pasta and soup, when you just need that bit of freshly ground black pepper to add a lovely hit of earthly spice

So while out with Angie at JEM, I was walking in Robinsons when I saw them being sold there, and with a discount to top it off. Since I was looking for another one myself, I ended up getting Javier a pair  instead of waiting till his birthday in November. Goes to show how much he liked it as he sent his dad to pick it up the day I posted it out to him online.

Beggars Aren't Choosers

Went out with Angie today and I felt like I needed to have a cup of coffee the whole day, preferably with some soy milk. In the end, we went to McDonald's after dinner and shopping and I got some iced black coffee from McCafe. Honestly, the coffee is alright, but somehow, even with 3 shots of espresso in it, they still managed to make it diluted. Guess I've to ask for an iced espresso next time, if there is a next time. The whipped cream didn't even help either. Thank goodness for the brownie though.

An Addict Since Four

I got my first blue passport that allowed travel between Singapore and West Malaysia in 1985, and that also meant that it was the first year I started getting out of the country. Ever since, I've been enjoying my adventures out of the country, but my adventures have gone much further than West Malaysia after I got a red passport.

I remembered the first few trips were mainly to Malaysia, and by long car rides. A memorable one was to Genting and I remembered 3 things very clearly - my grandmother having a go at the sharp shooter game near the casino, "chicken in a basket" dish (which was so good, I could eat everyday), and frozen in fear over crossing the bridge over the swimming pool (which I still am some what uncomfortable with). Obviously, this trip was probably the one that got me hooked as it was basically awesome new experiences and 99% of the memories were awesome.

The second big trip definitely got me hooked on flying. Well, I don't exactly love turbulence that comes with flying, but it is the fastest way to get to far off destinations. However, my first flight was only to Kuala Lumpur on a big Malaysian Airlines plane that had little bumps on the way. The take off was exciting and I was seated next to some guy with mom and sis behind me. After landing in KL, we were soon onto our second flight to Pangkor on a tiny little propellor plane that took about 10 passengers. Everyone was a bit skeptical about it, but it obviously got us to our destination, and boosted my confidence in air travel.

If only we had digital cameras then, so that taking photos would be much easier as you would know if the shot was good in an instant. However, I didn't have a camera, and mom was too busy making sure we didn't freak out to take pictures out of that tiny plane window to compare them to what I do now.

Twisting An Old Recipe 02

I've always loved the chilli crab sauce, but eating crab while it's hot isn't one of my favourite things. A while back, I had a chilli crab pasta and it gave me an idea to substitute the crab with prawns. Since it could work as a pasta sauce, I didn't see why I couldn't work as a dish alone. Then just before CNY, I got a few bags of frozen crayfish and thought I do a chilli crayfish instead. However, the freezer wasn't closed properly yesterday, causing the prawns to defrost. So I ended up with a big pot of chilli prawn and crayfish.

What better to do when  you have a big pot of food? Share! So I told Uncle Dennis to come for some and they brought the perfect accompaniment, mantous!

Twisting An Old Recipe

I wanted to test the oven on the apple pie recipe again, but didn't want to bother with making 9 mini pies. Since I already tried this for my sister's birthday party, I decided on making the apple slice so mom could have a try. 

Seems like we managed to get the oven setting right this time as the party didn't get to dark. So now we've got a new version we could do for Christmas so everyone can share, along with the little pies to take home. 

Seasonal Experiments

Just last year, my mom reintroduced me to this super sour fruit. She didnt have much ideas as to what to do with them other than slicing them into her sambal belacan, and that was best eaten with fried fish. Furthermore, we usually got only a handful or two of these at a time when they are in season, which made it hard to experiment with. 

Lucky for us, her cousin has a huge tree that happens to be bearing a lot of fruit just as Uncle Raymond visited them for CNY. He brought about 10 handfuls of fat, juicy fruits back to our place, more than enough for Uncle Dennis and experiments. The suggestions then came in with stories about people using it as replacement for tamarind and made me wonder what else I could do with it. Mom also wondered how it would taste if it was pickled. 

Guess it's time for some experiments.

Childhood Favourites 04

Went to the Floating Platform at Marina Bay today for the annual River HongBao and found another favorite of mine in the food corner. Putu Piring, similar to Kueh Tutu, but there's less rice flour mixture, lots more gula melaka, and no pandan leaf to sit on. The texture also differs from the chinese version as this is more like a dense sponge cake even if it's over-steamed. The kueh tutu somehow feels like gum paste in the mouth when it's over-steamed. 

Anyway, I can't really remember when I first ate one of these, but I do remember mom getting some kueh tutu from the coffeeshop under the Tai Chung building. They were either filled with the sugared shredded coconut or peanuts, but I loved the chewy texture of the rice flour mixture and the lovely panda smell. However, once I tried a putu piring, the gula melaka just got me hooked. There are some stalls that place these on pandan leaves, and that just makes it all sooooooo good!

Learning From Kids

Manvinder's son, Aaryan, got his own bowl of noodles and a plastic spoon so he could feed himself as we had dinner together As all of us were enjoying our dinner and were chatting about the mundane, we caught sight of how Aaryan was eating and it only brought laughs to all of us. So it's no problem if you eat messily as long as you enjoy it so much that you lick the spoon clean!

Beach Combing

The tide was really low and we went to Changi beach again to check out what yummy gems we could get. Other than the edible stuff we got, there were a few cool finds hidden in many spots across the exposed seabed. Fat starfish, skinny starfish, lots of hermit crabs, corals, weird weeds n anemones. Cool to know there's a good amount of sealife even with the traffic in our surtounding waters.

Christmas Treat For CNY

Gong Hei Fatt Choy!! Day 1 of Chinese Lunar New Year and everyone came over to our place for dinner as planned. We had a few usual things on the menu and mom had place the christmas pudding on the trolley together with the rest of the sweet stuff. Looking at the pudding, I decided it was no better time to cut it up for everyone to eat as everyone wouldn't mind something new. Looking at the box, it was named "hidden orange christmas pudding" and I wondered how hidden the orange would be. Cutting into the pudding, I realised they hid the whole orange in the pudding, and it was really nice with the liquor and sugar soaked into it. Other than it being really sweet, it was a refreshing treat to the same old CNY goodies.