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