Kimchi making season again

Gebraten hähnchen mit Kartoffeln

Welche aßen wir am Kleinmarkthalle. Es legt in Frankfurt, Deutschland. Die Hähnchen war das Tagesgericht. Ich fand es ein bißchen trocken sein aber schmeckt gut.

Easy Apple Cake

175g self raising flour
175g soft butter
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs beaten
1. 5 medium sized cooking apples peeled and cubed
1 level teaspoon cinnamon
grated rind of 1 lemon
60g raisins
Icing sugar to dust
18cm square baking tin

Set oven to 180 degree celsius.
Put sugar, butter,  and flour in a bowl.  Add eggs and beat well. Stir in apples cinnamon, lemon rind and sultanas.

Bake in oven for forty to fifty minutes until cake has risen and feels firm to touch in the centre and a skewer comes out clean after insertion into the cake.

Leave to cool in tin for ten minutes then transfer to wire rack to cool.  Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Basic Pancake Recipe

125g plain flour
1/2 level tsp salt
1 large egg
300ml milk
oil
15cm pancake pan

To make the Batter
Put flour and salt in a large bowl,. Add the egg and half the milk and mix well with an electric hand-mixer for a minute or two until it is really bubbly. Stir in the rest of the milk and pour into a jug and leave for about 20 minutes.

To make the Pancakes
Heat the pan and add some drops of oil. When it starts to smoke, pour in enough batter, tilting the pan to coat the base evenly. Cook until the pancake edges start to curl away from the pan and it browns underneath. Use a palette knife to flip it over and cook for another 30-45 seconds, and slide it out onto the plate. Make the rest of the pancakes, oiling the pan as necessary. Separate pancakes with kitchen or greaseproof paper.

To Freeze
Cool, put in a food bag or wrap in foil, seal and label. Use within three months.

Rich Chocolate Torte

250g dark chocolate
175g soft butter
125g caster sugar
200g packed ground almonds
4 separated large eggs
4 teaspoon apricot jam
23cm buttered tin

Set oven to 180 degrees celsius.
Melt 175g chocolate.  Cream 125g butter with sugar until light and stir in almonds egg yolks and melted chocolate and beat well.

Whisk egg white till stiff and fold into mixture.  Pour into tin and bake 50 to onehour until firm to touch.

Remove from oven and rest for five minutes then turn onto rack.  Warm jam and spread on cake. Melt chocolate and butter and spread over cake.

Beef Bier Stew and chestnuts

The veggie uncle had chestnuts for sale. What was interesting was that the nuts came half-shelled. I'd prefer if they had been fully de-shelled. Still, it had been a long time since I last had any, and a bag of butter roasted chestnuts is dreadfully expensive, even those sold by the illegal hawkers.

I asked him for some instructions. He directed me to just boil them as they were, and peel the shells 20 minutes later before eating. So I cooked some beef stew and made a salad. I was going to have the chestnuts to go with the salad.

Turns out Bobo doesn't like chestnuts, and I had such an awful time peeling them (I do not maintain long nails, so I scrapped my nails badly while trying to peel the stubborn shells off) that I was a bit sick of them by the time I ate them. After peeling the shells off, I fried the chestnuts in butter. They tasted quite yummy, but half a kilo by yourself is no joke. Sure cured me of my craving.''

I poured a whole can of Asahi bier in with the beef before dumping ketchup. Really easy dish to make, though Bobo was really angry when he found out his bier had gone into dinner.

Did you say "semen" cake?

I wanted to bake blueberry muffins on Sunday, but I was engrossed with delivering and helping to write Vater's rice dumplings. Fat bears do not do well on bicycles. Bobo said my wrestling with the foldable bike everytime is like watching a bear performing at a circus. I think wrestling with the bike made me so tired that was why I took an afternoon nap.

So I tried again yesterday evening except I was too lazy to refer to a recipe (I did google some, but decided to trial and error). I opened the can and poured half a can of blueberries, sans juice, into some butter which I mixed a bit too enthusiastically... until the whole mixture turned into a grey mixture. I just poured some milk, an egg, pinch of baking soda and sifted flour and mix the whole lot together. Still looked a bit grey, and I did not add much sugar (only like 20g, because I thought the syrup might be sweet), so I poured in the syrup.

Well, it still looked cement-like so I told Bobo, who came into the kitchen to make some honey lemon water, so. He said "what? Semen cake?"

>.<"

Anyway it came out pretty tasteless, even though it did rise a little in the oven.

Roasted and fried chicken dinner with boiled corn

I tried to confit the whole chicken for hours before frying it to seal in the juices and give it a nice sheen. But I didn't try to fry it at too high a heat because I had used olive chicken and not butter in the confit.  Thereafter I roasted it in the microwave oven so that it would cook properly. I also fried the veggies in the leftover oil and born some corn to go with the meat.

Vanilla cupcakes with loads of chocolate chips

Borrowed this book from the library, and the recipes looked easy enough to try. I chose to make "Our Favorite Vanilla Cake", except I halved the recipe, converted the recipe to metric and made cupcakes instead.

Original Recipe

Makes a double layer 9-inch round cake/ one 9 by 13 inch cake or 24 cupcakes

3/4 cup butter

1 cup + 2 tbsp sugar

4 eggs

2 1/4 cups flour

2 1/4 tsps baking powder

3/8 tsp salt

3/4 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350 deg F. Grease two 9 inch  pans or place cupcakes in a 24-cup cupcake pan.

2. In a large bowl or mixer, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time.

3. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.

4. In a measuring cup, combine the milk and vanilla.

5. Add the flour mixture little by little to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk and vanilla and mixing as you go. Do not overmix.

6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 to 35 min (18 to 20 min for cupcakes) or until a toothpick comes out clean.

7. Cool the cake completely before removing from the pan. Run a butter knife along the edges to help ease the cake out of the pan. Ice with the frosting of your choice.

My attempt

Makes 12 cupcakes

115g butter

100g sugar

 2 eggs

150g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

400ml milk

1 pinch salt

1 tsp vanilla extract
Loads of chocolate chips (which I mix with a little bit of flour)

1. Preheat the microwave to 160 deg C (I may try 170 deg C next time). Prepare 12 paper cups.

2. Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy and pale in color, then mix in the eggs one at a time.

3. Double sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. 

4. Beat the milk and vanilla extract.

5. Mix in the flour mixture and milk mixture into the butter and sugar mixture, alternating mixtures.

6. Pour in the chocolate chips and fill the cups. 

7. Bake for 20 minutes.

Almost vegetarian Kway Chap

I love the kway chap sold by the vegetarian stall at *censored*. I am trying to replicate this dish. This was attempt 1.

I was too lazy to buy all the spices needed for kway chap, so I tried to buy the ready made spice packet. Went to my favorite market stalls, but they only sold ba ku teh (pork rib tea) mix. Ok, I thought about it, it tasted close to the vegetarian stall's, which had a nice herby flavor (not like the actual kway chap), except that it had a lot more peppercorns in the sachet.

So I bought that, thinking that I will not steep the sachet into the soup too long, and add the other condiments necessary for kway chap (like soya sauce). While I got water boiling, I chucked in the ba ku teh sachet. Once I smelled the peppery fragrance, I poured in dark soya sauce (for color), and light soya sauce for taste. For ingredients, I put in squares of tofu, chinese yuba, tua pok (another kind of soy product), oyster mushrooms, and bumanji mushrooms. I initially wanted to make it a all vegetarian dish, then I thought about Bobo (who would complain that I am starving him), and put in some pork slices and meat balls.

I also put in some mirin and the rice noodles (I couldn't buy the big square kind, and ended up with kway tiao) towards the end. Ok, it didn't really taste much like the kway chap sold by the vegetarian stall but it still tasted pretty nice.

I can't remember when I made this?

That's the problem with being too  many things to think about. Took the photo, and forgot about it until such a long time later. Still it looked pretty yummy, so I decided to upload it still...

I really like roast chicken, especially since I only need to clean the microwave and not wipe down the whole fucking kitchen. Besides this is the only thing that my menopausal microwave can cook without burning the damn thing.

HamBagel

I bought some frozen bagels at ION's Jasons (I am still pretty shocked that Ms Bear told me that she has never gone to ION before. She said she is waiting for the hype to die down. Good luck with that, considering that the MRT is connected to the building. I must say most of the human traffic is underground though).

One lazy Saturday I took them out because I wanted a quick breakfast before heading to Mutter's garten. Zapped one, tasted eh... a little bit of salt. Bobo hated the taste, but I have like 4 more (I ended up chucking the last 2). So what did I do?

I made a hambagel, using minced pork. I shaped minced pork which has been marinated with mirin, sesame seeds and garlic, into patties before frying them. I really like to have eggs on my patties, so naturally I topped one on my patty. Accompanied the whole thing with some stir-fried duo miao with garlic, and lightly fried turnip squares. If not for the butter on the bagels, I would say it looked pretty healthy.

Breakfast at Pension Gerlinde

This was one of the fantastic breakfasts we had at Gerlinde. It came with our board, and because Onkel H is one of their regulars, we got to have a discount on our stay as well. Love Love. :)

I loved this bread the most. Unfortunately it isn't simple to make if not I would eat this every damn day. Onkel H said this bread is called vollkornbrot.

Frühstück at Gerlinde is awesome because they also operate as a cafe so some days they have cake slices leftover from yesterday's tea. Naturally greedy me will grab a slice, especially if it is blueberry tart!

Nakajima Suisan Grilled Fish

This is my favorite food at Takashimaya. Yes, it takes bloody long to wait, but I love to eat grilled fish, especially gindara (it's cod, for crying out loud, besides I am sick of salmon). I would go there to eat whenever I am in the area for buying art supplies at Art Friends or books at Kinokuniya. Read my book, swing my feet (I love to sit at the booth), chew away and appreciate how the salt bring out the sweetness of the meat *drool*. It is Forever Alone at its best.

It helps that I live somewhat near the place so it is easy for me to either bus or train down to the place .

Cold dish @ a Singaporean Chinese Wedding Banquet

Clockwise from top left: spring roll on top of kelp, jellyfish shot, suckling pig portion with hoisin sauce (worded in "joy"), prawn cocktail, and sauteed abalone clam.

Spring Onion Pajeon

This spring onion pajeon is made from spring onions that I grew from kitchen scraps.

It was very easy to make. I whisked 1/2 cup of plain flour, 1/2 cup of water, 1 tsp miso and 1 tsp sugar, before frying the spring onions in olive oil. I spread out the spring onions before pouring the batter on it. Unfortunately because the batter was so thick and my spring onions so spindly, they were pushed aside by the batter.

Clockwise from left: Mein Elterns homemade chilli, homemade samgyetang, homemade kimchi, spring onion pajeon, fried cherry tomatoes and egg tofu

I think next time I will use a bigger frying pan. The pajeon will taste nicer if it wasn't so thick.

ich liebe tacos

I love tacos. Too bad Taco Bell closed down in Singapore. So I am reduced to making my own tacos or go to the Mexican restaurant in Holland Village.Unfortunately I am always too lazy to make the meat for the tacos, so every time I buy taco shells, they end up expiring without us ever eating them.

So this time I was very determined to make them. I made two kinds of taco fillings. I sweated swiss white button mushrooms with onions, and fried julienned beef steak with garlic and HP sauce. We topped up the reheated tacos with Brie, Cheddar, Parmesan, tomatoes, mesclun salad and cashew nuts, and had them with some hot Borsch.

Tempura Lunch

I had frozen scallops and was feeling a bit adventurous. So I decided to make tempura. Note to self, should find some way to dehydrate the mushrooms first, before frying them. Because the water in the mushrooms kept coming out as I was frying, which made for some angry oil popping at me.

I also ran out of tempura flour. So I searched online for the recipe. It was pretty bad because the batter came out pretty thick. Instead I had to add some water to it (a bit too much water, so I am modifying down the water in this recipe).

Nibblezware Tempura batter Substitute

1/4 cup wheat flour

1/4 cup corn flour

1 large egg

50g cold water

Try not to mix the batter too well, and fry quickly.

Korean Dinner of 김치 찌개 (using my own homemade 김치 )

The weather in Singapore is like me, bloody emo. Changes easily so much until it was extremely sunny on Saturday, and raining everyday since Sunday.

My Homemade 김치

Like I said before, I made my own 김치 two Sundays ago, and by last Saturday it was pretty ripe. 김치 is great any day between 7-14 days of "ripening". So it was most excellent for using in a kimchi jijae, 김치 찌개. I like to do mine as a hotpot dish.

김치 찌개

I love Korean cooking. It is healthy (soups and stews don't require oil, and uses loads of fresh veggies), spicy, and dead easy to make. Throw, chuck stuff in, and mix in miso and Gochujang, and you are done! So what I did was rapidly cut silken tofu, golden mushrooms, homemade 김치 and julienned carrots, japanese cucumber. Everything was put into the boiling water according to how fast they could cook, e.g. carrots, and cucumbers first. And then finally I put in rolls of pork belly and konnyaku noodles. It's quite funny, everytime I want to buy konnyaku noodles (Japanese), I can't find them, and end up buying sweet potato noodles (Korean). And the one time I want to use sweet potato noodles, there isn't any in the house and I end up using konnyaku noodles. Sigh.

Served with more kimchi and takuan (pickled daikon)

I wonder if it is possible to make my own takuan. Anyway, I was so preoccupied with making a Korean feast, I overcooked and made spicy rice cakes. As I stared at the two pots bubbling away on the stove, I realized that I made too much. B1 was consulted and he suggested that we have one small serving of rice cakes to top up any empty spaces after the 김치 찌개. 

So I brought the hot pot pipping hotpot to the electric stove to ensure the continued cooking and served everything with takuan and more of my homemade 김치. Seems like I am too adventurous and did not wash off the salt too much, so the 김치 is quite salty this time.

Simple Chinese Lunch

Clockwise from left: potato stewed in tomato sauce, leeks fried with bacon and onion omelette

The Chinese Taco: 三层肉包

I had some frozen pork belly in the freezer and I missed eating lotus leaf buns. So obviously I would make braised pork belly sandwiches.

Assembled by B1's loving hands

Lotus leaf buns are not made from lotus leaves but they have the shape of little lotus leaves folded into two. Anyway I call them the Chinese tacos, very suitable for sandwiching food in between the two soft dough pads.

So I tossed the pork belly in with my leftover roast chicken to boil for stock. When the pork fat had turned soft and gelatinous, I took the pork belly slices out and braised them in some of the same stock, with the added condiments of sesame seed oil, garlic, soya sauce and mirin (I was too lazy to use Chinese wine and sugar). 

What's fast food without bier?

In the meantime I steamed the buns, and juliened some preserved daikon, Takuan (沢庵), which will provide a unique texture and contrasting flavor to the slightly sweet bun and the salty (and sweet) meat.  I retrieved the meat from the pot after half an hour and added a cornflour mixture to thicken the gravy. I then poured the gravy on the meat. I also used the remaining chicken + pork belly stock to make a quick corn egg drop soup with some creamed corn and leftover chicken bits. And to complete this "fast food" ensemble, we had fries.

We had fun assembling our little buns, first a bun, then lettuce leaf, then the Takuan, and the pork belly. Munch munch munch. B1 complained that we had tacos last weekend and now I was feeding him Chinese tacos. Some people just need to take S$4.50 and buy himself a noodle soup. (0.o")

Egg drop corn soup

My version of lazy ass Banana Bread

Note: Scheduled post. This was baked on Monday night.

It's quite mind-boggling how the two of us can be so lazy. I had been thinking of making banana bread or chiffon cake for the last few days, and over the last few days, have been slowly acquiring the necessary ingredients. Like cockroach-less bananas, which is a whole other story in itself.

I even bothered to pop home earlier to settle a solid block of frozen butter on the countertop to thaw before running to my other home for dinner. So imagine how annoyed when I was ready to bake banana bread (it won because the bananas were ripening really fast and B1 refused to eat bananas ever since the previous episode) and there was only 120g of sugar left...

I had earmarked this recipe by Elise from Simply Recipes, and had converted the recipe to metric system.

Banana Bread Recipe

Ingredients

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
• 40g melted butter
• 200g sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 225g of all-purpose flour

Method

No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

Yield: Makes one loaf.

"B1, help me get sugar from downstairs ok?!" I yelled from the kitchen.

"No!!!" equally loud from the bedroom. Argh. Threats of scheidung left him unmoved. Damn, used this trick too much. To think the supermarket was only downstairs. Wtf. That's how lazy the two of us were.

I looked into the fridge. No Honey. Hmm but there are those mini pots of yoghurt that I bought on discount last Tuesday. Only mixed berry flavor left...So here's the adjusted recipe:

Nibblezware-modified Banana Bread Recipe

Ingredients

• 5 ripe bananas
• 40g melted butter
• 120g sugar 
• 60g mixed berry yoghurt (or whatever yoghurt you like)
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon banana essence (no sugar in the house, but banana essence? no problem)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 225g of self-raising flour

Method

I preheated the microwave oven's convection function to 170°C. Mistake, that emo bitch likes it 20°C lower. Note to self to use 150°C next time.

<s>Mash bananas with butter. Leave some little bits of chunk.</s>Mistake #2 Forgot to measure out flour and sugar first.

Measure flour and set it aside in the colander (yeah you heard me, I use a colander to sift my flour. Not enough space in the galley so some utensils have to double up duty).

Measure sugar and pour into the bowl. Measure butter and dump into the bowl too. Use the butter knife to butter the sides of the pyrex loaf pan, while moaning my fate. Then peel 5 bananas, slapping away at the fruit flies which have gathered. They were really dumb and easily killed.

Mash bananas into the sugar with butter. Leave some little bits of chunk.

Break an egg in and mix thoroughly. Dump in the banana essence, and baking soda and salt. Sift the flour into the mixture and give the bowl a vicious drub.

Pour the mixture into the pan and set to bake for 1h 10min at 170°C. At first I was relieved that the mixture was rising in the oven after sitting pretty for the first 10 minutes. Then I noticed after the 30 minutes that the top was turning brown yet the inside was wet. So I switched off the convection, and reduced temperature to 150°C for the next 30min. And cover the top with a corningware lid (no choice, the baking dish doesn't come with a cover).

Turned out pretty nice :).

Slow poached eggs

[from Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan]

1. Fill your biggest, deepest pot with water and put it on the hob over the lowest possible heat.

2. Use something to keep the eggs from sitting on the bottom of the pot where the temperature will be the highest. E.g. a cake rack or steamer rack.

3. Use an instant-read thermometer to monitor the tmperature in the pot. If it is too hot, add cold water or an ice cube, once the water is between 60 to 63 degree celsius, add the eggs to the pot.l let them bathe for 40 to 45 minutes, checking the temperature regularly with the thermometer, or sticking your finger in the water  (it should be the temperature of a very hot bath water) and moderating it as needed.

4. You can use the eggs immediately or store them in the fridge  up to 24 hrs. if you plan to store them, chill them until cold in an ice water bath. If you refrigerate the egss, warm them under pipping hot tap water for 1 minute before using. 

5. To serve the eggs, crack them one at a time into a small saucer, the thin white will not and should not be firm or solid; top the dish to pour off and discard the loosest part of the white and slide the egg onto the dish it's destined for.