Okinawan dinner?

We were running low on natto so we did a grocery run at Meidi-ya. The cashier suggested that I become their member. The Japanese must be crazy, I would have to pay S$2 for a supposedly life-time membership and then accumulate points that must be used up every half a year. And... for every S$1 I spend, I get 1 point, and I would have to spend S$502 in 6 months to get a S$5 voucher....

There isn't much natto and half-price sashimi that I can buy for S$5.

So anyway we walked around Liang Court looking for a half decent eatery to settle our hunger. In the end we went back to the Okinawan diner. I forever associate Okinawa with pork and papayas. Anyway the joke was on me because I already had okawa in the afternoon, and my dinner set also came with okawa (think: Sekihan, the glutinous rice served with red beans to celebrate events, e.g. a girl having her first menses *gross... think about everyone celebrating your first tampon*)

The noodles was interesting. Reminded me of my usual Chinese egg noodles.

B1 had the ginger pork. Each set came with pudding-like tofu *I love* served with a thick soy sauce, minced ginger and spring onions. There were also two interesting sides of miso buta and radish (preserved with bonito and seaweed?).

Old Cucumber Soup 老黄瓜汤

老黄瓜汤功效:黄瓜性寒，味甘，有清热解毒、利水消肿等功效；白糖性寒，味甘，有润肺生津、和中益肺、舒缓肝气等功效。

黄瓜营养成分 黄瓜，又名王瓜、胡瓜。黄瓜富含蛋白质、钙、磷、铁、钾、胡萝卜素、维生素B2、维生素c、维生素E及烟酸等营养素。 黄瓜食疗药效 黄瓜中含有精氨酸等必需氨基酸，对肝脏病人的康复很有益处。 黄瓜所含的丙醇二酸，有抑制糖类物质在机体内转化为脂肪的作用，因而肥胖症、高脂血症、高血压、冠心病患者，常吃黄瓜既可减肥、降血脂、降血压，又可使体形健美、身体康复。 黄瓜汁有美容皮肤的作用，还可防治皮肤色素沉着。 黄瓜顶部的苦味中富含葫芦素c的成分，具有抗癌作用。 

Old cucumber is a good "cooling soup", very suitable for hot humid places like Singapore. It is anti-aging, helps with weight loss and good for the skin. It is also high in dietary fiber, calcium, iron and rich in vitamin A, B6, and C. I made it not because of the abovementioned benefits, but because it was going for a discount. I was shopping at the neighborhood mama shop because I wanted to buy cinnamon powder for the buns and saw that the shop still had some veggies left. Normally I would be very against the idea of buying veggies so late (you know the early bird nonsense) but I hadn't bought any on Saturday morning because B1 attended a wedding lunch and I stayed home to wrestle with *censored*.

Usually everyone would leave the ugly ass brown skin on while cooking this because they worry that the skin would be too mushy and disappear into the soup. However because I use an electric crockpot and not a claypot on the gas, I don't need to worry about that and I think the skin is goddamn disgustingly hideous and unhygenic, so I happily shaved the skin off. 

I dumped scallops, pork ribs, old cucumber, dates and wolfberries and boiled the hell of it. Accompanied by a simple beef stew (no wine was harmed in the making of this dish) and baby xiaobaicai (I can never understand why this green veggie is called xiaobaicai, literal translation: little white veggie).

Part 2 of "I CRAVE for Cinnamon Buns" - Using whatever I got

I used this recipe but modified it to my own taste. I missed Cinnabon which used to have branches in Singapore.  I was sehr tempted to make the calorific cream-cheese coating but I think I will hasten death some other way.

Ingredients:
1 cup of warm milk (45 degrees C)
2 eggs
76g of butter 

476g of all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt
100g of white sugar
1 package fast acting yeast

<s>220g</s>100g of brown sugar
100g of ground cinnamon

50g soft butter (actually I just used whatever was left)

The dough puffed up no end while I ran home to grab some stuff and bought dinner and some groceries. I love how dough puffs up!

Sigh burnt a little because I was too busy playing CoH. Should have turned the tray when I smelt it from the room. Anyway I expected the burning because I had been too eager to use up the brown sugar and cinnamon mixture.

I love how "holey" the bread is =D.

Part 1 of "I CRAVE for Cinnamon Buns" - Measurements are stupid

Especially those conversions from American cups to British grams. Drives me nuts everytime. And the conversion is different for different kinds of ingredients. And I think I just got the amount wrong for brown sugar and cinnamon power which I need for my cinnabuns.

See what I have to put up with? Recipe says 0.5cups white sugar, 1 cup brown sugar and 4.5 cups flour.

In the metric kitchen, I am told white sugar = 100g, brown sugar = 180g and flour 120X4.5 = 540g. While allrecipes.com says white sugar = 100g, brown sugar = 220g and flour 128X4.5 = 576g. I gave up and chose to chuck in 176+300g flour. Hmm still sticky.  Poured the baby out onto a floured surface and massaged the hell out of it while I thought evil thoughts about people I don't like (this is why I am developing a love for baking bread, I can knead out all my frustrations. People should just save money visiting therapists. Just give them some dough and tell them to knead the hell out of the mother fucker) until the dough sits obediently on the table. At this point, B1 came in seeking his bier and was alarmed to see me pounding the dough on the kitchen surface, which he claims might not be very clean (then you should have made it clean when you were washing up just now *sour*). I pointed out that both of us didn't die the other time when I made my crusty loaf, so we will be just as fine now.

I have used up my dough but I still have the cinnamon-brown sugar mixture. Pissed. What a waste of ingredients. I tried to pour more of the mixture onto individual buns, but I now realize I may cause the damn thing to burn. Stupid!!!!

More on the cinnamon buns later when I am done.

I forgot about this meal - "Russian Peasant" Soup

I do apologize if I sound rude to the Russians, but I call this soup my Russian Peasant soup, filled with cabbage and bit of bacon, pork balls (yes I said I would cut down on processed foods but bacon, pork balls and octopus balls are things I considered my "soul food") lurking around the surface like flotsam. 

I just think that my favorite Mr Piggy goes well with cabbage *drools*, which I am glad as a big non-fan of cabbage. 

Actually I cooked this back in cold December and forgot to blog about it. Perhaps because of the prawns which I do not eat. B1 complained that I would not cook prawns because I do not care for them. So I agreed that I would cook them if he would peel them. We even argued on how much peeling he would do (he wanted to merely strip the heads, but I made him strip off the legs and the body leaving only the tail, then gingerly holding each prawn by the body with a pair of tongs I cut away the dirty black vein *I am fastidious to the last*). I cooked them with butter, chinese wine, lots of pepper and salt, and had to stare at the prawns in order to tell whether they were cooked just right. Sigh.

Don't look at me! I am actually a baked potato dish

I contain milk, potatoes, cheddar cheese, bacon, eggs and parmesan cheese. I am death in a dish.

<u>Updated!!!</u>

Oh apparently, I am also called Pommes Dauphinoise. =D Guess I didn't invent the dish. Sigh. I saw the recipe later when I was reading A Table in the Tarn *haha*.

玉米汤 Corn Soup

适用范围：脾胃虚弱、食欲不振、疲劳、心悸、乏力等症者，尤其是慢性胃炎和胃、肺部肿瘤手术后的患者。

Corn soup is good for the spleen and stomach, especially for people suffering from loss of appetite, fatigue, palpitations, fatigue embolism and lung cancer patients recovering and going for operations.  

I made this the week after the 甜玉米羹 because B1 complained that the latter was technically not corn soup. Okie.... the man is also obsessed with having pork ribs in the soup, even though he does not eat the corn nor the pork, unless under severe duress (seriously as the person who pays for the groceries, it makes my heart bleed seeing these going to waste).