And my bunny is no different. Today’s her birthday, and since I’ve made a habit of baking something on Mondays - my off day - I decided to let her pick what I’d bake this week. I had hardly finished asking her when she immediately squeaked, “CAAAN WE HAAAVE CARROT CUPCAKES? WITH THE LITTLE BABY CARROTS?”

She was talking about these little sugar decorations that we’d chanced upon while in Sydney over my birthday, which I’d conned her into buying.

When we first moved in together, Bunny and I would go out for a nice dinner at least once a month - “date night” we called it. Date Night was really just our excuse to go out and splurge on ourselves. Ever since we moved into our current apartment that came with a nice kitchen that I’ve since fastidiously decked out, instead of going out to spend time together, we now love nothing more than being able to have a quiet night in, just the two of us, over a meal that I’ve cooked for her. Since I’ve started work, we obviously can’t eat together - whether at home or dining out - as much as we would like. As such, I thought I’d not just bake cupcakes, but cook dinner for the two of us at home. On the menu were Pork Chops with a Mustard Sauce (from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries, a book that’s bursting at the seams with oodles of thoroughly English recipes), a beautiful orange sorbet from the same book, and - as requested - Carrot Cupcakes.

I know many people (my age) looking in would imagine that she and I lead rather boring lives - we both go to work, we hardly see each other till after 11 at night. We don’t even get weekends together. When we have time to spend together, instead of going out and painting the town red, we opt to stay in and lie in each others’ arms, just enjoying the quiet silence of each others company. Yet, there’s nothing more that I could want in this world. Nothing gets me through those days where I spend 12 hours standing in a hot, humid kitchen, assembling starter and dessert after starter and dessert than knowing that at the end of the day, she’ll be there for me to climb into bed right next to and fall asleep with, and that no matter how smelly I am, and no matter how loud I snore, she’ll be here by my side.

Happy birthday baby. I’m so glad I’ve been able to spend the last 3 with you, and I look forward to the next 50 together.

So I have this friend, and she and I have this longstanding love affair, only we can’t be together ‘cos we’re both with other people. To cope, she decided to settle for second best:

friend: you know something?
me: YOU LOVE ME.
friend: okay now you will never know.
friend: eejiot.
me: :(
me: tiao me.
me: priiiiis.
me: i lubchiu.
friend: lol
me: -tugs sleeve
friend: okay i lubchiu too (so easy)
friend: aww
me: *teh to the maxness*
me: wait that was it?
friend: OKAY MY NEXT GF’S AUTOMATIC RESPONSE TO EVERYTHING WILL BE LUBCHIU TIAO ME TUG AT SLEEVE
me: oh god.
friend: that’s right.
me: no. oh god. you just based the prototype of your next gf on something i said.
friend: don’t you love it? LEER LEER.

Anyway, we were talking online today, as usual, and I was whining - also as usual - about how I want more teeshirts. And I showed her this one.

friend: i like that tee too! and i will marry the girl who goes and makes me one. LOL
me: hahahaha yes and tugs at your sleeve to get your attention right? once she’s made you the sammich.
me: omg i’m blogging this. won’t name you.
friend: lolllll do it. hahahahha.

So if there exist any (preferably Japanese or Vietnamese) girls out there who are at most 167cm in height, and you spot a cute chick (LEER LEER) wearing this teeshirt, you know what to do.

Culina has been not just one of Singapore’s major produce suppliers to restaurants, but also where most serious foodies-who-cook will make pit stops at to pick up items that may be difficult or near impossible to find in their local supermarkets, especially when preparing for a dinner party. Recently, Culina opened a third branch at Dempsey, alongside their existing Bukit Timah and Orchard Boulevard retail stores.

To be completely honest, I’m really not a fan of the Dempsey area. I used to go there to eat at Samy’s (southern Indian curry) when I was younger, and always associated it with a mildly rural-ish sort of feel, considering all those funny little bike huts and art galleries scattered around the area. I loved it then. I liked it still when a wine bar opened, and I was even quite anxious to check out PS Cafe when it opened. (I was quite disappointed, apart from the brunch.) However, ever since it’s become the hip new place, I’ve been steering clear of it. It’s probably similar to how I can’t stand One North @ Rochester Park - too often, I get scared by hip places as - and I know I’m stereotyping - too often they spell high prices, bad food, mediocre drinks, and horrific patrons.

However, just before I started work, Bunny and I had been not just trawling Sydney for the best food we could get our grubby hands on, but also exploring as much of Singapore as we could, seeing as I wouldn’t have much of a chance to eat out with her once I started in the F&B industry. One of the places we wanted to check out, was Culina Enoteca - or the little café/restaurant in Culina’s Dempsey branch. We popped by on a Monday just before noon, were pleased to find that we had almost the entire area to ourselves, and settled in for a quiet lunch.

Now, Bunny has a long-standing love-hate relationship with bagels. She’s probably be hugest fan of bagels one could find in Singapore, aka the land where “bagel” is synonymous with Starbucks, at best, and at worst, a ring-shaped brick of stale dough. You can imagine her delight when she found that the smoked salmon sandwich (pictured above) was served in a fresh onion bagel, that’s right, she went a bit mad. And she had every right to, as this bagel was amazingly fresh, and beautifully fluffy, all while retaining its crisp exterior. The filling, however, disappointed a little, as it looked a bit more like a cream cheese bagel topped with a light scattering of smoked salmon, instead of a smoked salmon bagel with a little cream cheese. The onions, also, were sliced a little too thickly and had to either be avoided, or they’d completely overwhelm the flavour of the salmon and cheese.

My steak sandwich (pictured at start of post), however, was delicious. The beef was really juicy and had just enough fat such that it was oozing with flavour, but no huge chunks to make me gag on. (I don’t like eating soft fat. I only eat the crisp sort - like on siew yoke.) The beautiful ciabatta buns were also smeared with english mustard, which had just enough kick to it.

It was, in fact, the most fruitful morning, as I even managed to pick up some truffle honey (I will make ice cream soon) and had a stroll through jones the grocer where I found a few other bibs and bobs.

While I can’t vouch that Dempsey will be as pleasant an experience on weekends, I had a lovely time there that Monday morning, and I intend to visit it soon on one of my off days.

Culina at Dempsey
Block 8 Dempsey Road #01-13
Tel: 6474-7338

I like donuts. I’m not one of those who will queue for three hours, nor someone who insists that friends studying/working in cities like London or Sydney must buy me Krispy Kremes whenever they come back on summer/winter break. (I only requested for Krispy Kremes once!) But I do like donuts. And I don’t understand this donut craze in Singapore now, though I reckon it’ll phase out soon enough - just like what happened with Bubble Tea and those Roti-Boy/Mama/Papa/family-member coffee buns and so on.

As those of you who read this space should know by now, I recently started work in a restaurant kitchen. It’s definitely tiring stuff, but I’m enjoying it. However, one thing that cooking for a living has made me miss is cooking at home for fun - pottering around in the kitchen just ‘cos I feel like making [insert dish], because I’m having dearly loved friends over and want to whip up a meal for them that I’ve spent days or even weeks planning, or - better yet - because I want to surprise my bunny once she gets home from work.

Thankfully, being in a professional kitchen 6 days a week hasn’t made me want to hurl the moment I step in my house and set eyes on my own beloved kitchen. That would pose a few problems, the biggest of which being that this job is clearly not for me. I’m glad to report that on my first day off, after having spent the morning rolling around in bed and getting a (foot) massage, my main activity of the day constituted flour, eggs, milk, yeast, sugar, and deep frying - that’s right, I made donuts. Mini donuts, if you will, since I didn’t feel like doing the entire recipe (I halved it) and used a tiny cutter since this way the entire thing can fit in your mouth (albeit rendering you unable to speak for a minute or so) and one won’t sprinkle sugar everywhere when munching on these deep-fried, sugar-coated goodies.

So here’s the recipe I used, and for those of you who love donuts, but - like me - can’t be arsed to spend hours at a time queueing for them, I’d recommend making your own. Sure, it also takes about 3-4 hours from start to finish, but at least you’re not stuck in a line, and most of that time is just spent letting the dough rise. Besides, none of those shops can beat a fresh donut, rolled in sugar while it’s still hot out of the oil.

Yeasted Doughnuts
(adapted from Baking Illustrated)

1½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus 3 tbsp, and extra for dusting
¼ tsp salt
3½ tbsp caster sugar, plus extra for rolling (about ½ cup should suffice)
1/3 cup milk at blood temperature (about 35°C)
1 egg
1 1/8 tsp instant dried yeast
3 tbsp unsalted butter, softened but still cool, cut into 6 pieces
vegetable oil for deep frying
1 tbsp ground cinnamon, optional

Beat the milk, egg, and ½ a tbsp of sugar together lightly in the bowl of your standing mixer, then add the yeast and stir it in gently. Set the mixture aside in a warm place for 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk together 1½ cups of the flour, salt and the rest of the sugar in a medium bowl. Once there are bubbles on top of the yeast mixture, secure the bowl in your standing mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment, add the flour, and mix on low speed until a ball of dough forms; about 3 minutes.

Add the softened butter once piece at a time, waiting about 15 seconds between additions. Continue mixing for about 3 minutes longer, adding up to 3 tbsp of the remaining flour if necessary, until the dough forms a soft, but elastic ball.

Place the dough in a lightly oiled medium bowl and cover with cling film. Let the dough rise in a warm and draught-free place for 2 to 2½ hours. After it has nearly doubled in size, scrape the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and, using a rolling pin, gently roll it to a thickness of 1-1½cm. Cut the dough out using a 1½-2 inch cutter, gathering the scraps and re-rolling if necessary. Place doughnut rings and holes on a floured baking sheet. Loosely cover with cling film and let rise at room temperature until slightly puffy, 30-45 minutes.

Meanwhile, fit a candy thermometer in the side of a medium saucepan. Place oil in until the pan is at least half-filled, and there should be at least 2 inches of oil. Gradually heat the oil over medium high heat until it reaches a temperature of about 180-190°C. Fry the doughnuts 3-4 at a time until golden brown, about 20-30 seconds per side for the rings, and 15-20 seconds per side for the holes. Remove the doughnuts from the oil and drain on a rack lined with kitchen paper until cool enough to handle, then roll in sugar (well mixed with the cinnamon if using) and eat as soon as possible!

Yields about 20 small doughnuts, and will keep for a day in an airtight container at room temperature.

Hello all. I’m alive. Just finished my first week of work and in fact I even found the inspiration to make donuts today. But that’s not the point of this post. (And I’ll write more on that later.) Unless you live under a rock, or in a tree trunk or maybe in the middle of a deserted island with no internet (but then how are you reading this post?), no phone, no newspapers and no anything, you’d know by now that section 377A of the penal code exists. And that it shouldn’t. Or maybe you think it should exist because you think that homosexuals are sick people who should be shot or jailed or shot in jail. But in that case you wouldn’t be reading this blog because you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me, seeing that I’m a bisexual woman in a homosexual relationship.

Sign it. You know it’s the right thing to do. As much as I am not any kind of activist, this isn’t about activism, it’s about a human being’s right to privacy at his or her most basic level - and homosexuals are human beings. Humans deserve the right to love, and by NOT DOING ANYTHING, you are, by default, condoning our government’s preference for imprisoning two people for loving each other and being physically intimate with each other. That doesn’t sound right, does it? And even if you don’t think that homosexuality is alright, I’m sure you also know by now that for most people in homosexual relationships, sexual orientation is not a choice. And it’s not fair to imprison someone on the basis of something that they haven’t chosen. It’s like being imprisoned just because I’m female. Or because you’re male. Or because my hair is black, or my eye colour brown. Hell, it’s like imprisoning me because I’m above 150cm tall.

Do it. And tell everyone you know to do it too. You know it’s the right thing to do.

Some suppose that New South Wales is so named because it’s the new, southern hemispheric version of Wales. These are probably the same people who describe much of Australia as “England with better food, weather and quality of life” - and of the three, I can personally vouch for the first two. British food has often gotten quite some flack for being generally overcooked, dry, stodgy, and only existing to be washed down by that pint of beer, and while I am actually a fan of quite a few British dishes, the food in Australia is certainly something else.

Bunny and I spent a week in Sydney scoffing down as much food as we could find. Generally ignoring the touristy sights (though we didn’t really have much else to see, considering how our room at the Shangri-La had quite the view), we made a beeline for as many restaurants as we could fit into our trip.

Many would say that a culinary tour around Sydney is not complete without a visit to legendary restaurant Tetsuya’s, by the time we’d decided to make the trip to NSW, there wasn’t an available lunch or dinner reservation in sight. Lucky for us, we managed to get seats at a dozen other establishments, one of which being Yoshii, which is rumoured to be better than Tet’s, on the first night we arrived. Of course, I’m in no position to cast any opinion on that, but I can say that our dinner at Yoshii was nothing short of phenomenal. The next day, we headed off to the Sydney Fish Market and had the best fish and chips I’ve ever tasted, along with our first whiff of oysters for the holiday at Doyles. We were so impressed with the food here that we also decided to head back on the last night of our trip to their original location on Watsons Bay.

For dinner on my birthday (Tuesday), we got ourselves a cosy little table at Rockpool - a two hat establishment right on The Rocks helmed by prominent Australian chef, Neil Perry. Having already snacked on macarons at Lindt in Darling Harbour, we decided not to overwork our stomachs and stick to the five course fixed price menu, instead of the chef’s tasting menu which had twice as many courses.

On the next night, we ventured out by ferry from Circular Quay to Rose Bay, where we had my favourite dinner of the entire trip at Pier. A tiny little 55 seater that juts out over the marina, this restaurant had been awarded three chefs hats, and rightfully so. Every single dish of our (restrained) three course meal that night was thoughtfully put together, with bunny and I - for a change - without words to describe the gastronomical heaven. My favourite of the night was my dessert, which was a green apple ‘cloud’ served with pistachio ’soil’.

On our last full day in the city, we finally managed (after 3 days of wrangling) to procure a table at The Tea Room at Gunners Barracks. With beautiful china and an even more delectable view, it really was a pleasant end to our stay in Sydney.

The one thing about Sydney - besides the food - that really stuck with me was the level of service we received wherever we dined. I once read a post about a top restaurant in Singapore where an Indian waiter calmly accepted rude behaviour when a white man insisted on addressing him as “Brownie”. Instead of being praised for his professionalism, the writer went on to indicate that such tolerance of racism is what allows it to permeate society. An incident at Pier reminded me of this, when a local couple - clearly drunk from too many bottles of wine - started making a ruckus by screeching waitstaff who’d pass by their table. One of them even ended up being called all manner of inappropriate names, and while I, as a paying customer, would have preferred that the management evict the twosome, said waiter calmly attended to them as if the insults and shrieks of laughter were merely a figment of my imagination.

Being someone who loves food as much as I do photography, I often carry my camera around in hopes of documenting all the food I consume (in nice restaurants, at least) digitally. Unfortunately, in Singapore, I’m often not allowed to take photographs of the food - or sometimes even the interior of the restaurant. As a result, whenever I’ve got my camera with me, I now make a habit of checking with a waiter to make sure that it’s fine. Another thing that took me by (pleasant) surprise was how the waiters A) were all surprised that there was a need to ask at all, and B) effusively urged me to do so. So far, Singapore is the only city in which I’ve ever encountered an issue with taking photographs in restaurants, and I hope that our local restauranteurs will take a page from cities far more established in the world-wide culinary scene, especially if we want to advance to the same level.

All in all, the past week was probably the best holiday I’ve had this year. I may be a good 5 kilos heavier from all the crustaceans I’ve imbibed, but all the better to tide me through the work-day. For those of you who have a death wish, feel free to take a look at my (finally) complete Sydney Photoset on an empty stomach, but consider yourselves warned. My personal recommendation would be to browse through it after lunch while you’re combating the food-coma and about to get cracking on an afternoon of work ahead.