Okay, okay, I know I owe you guys a post on a certain restaurant in Spain. But I wrote my post down somewhere on a piece of paper when I was on a bus back from KL and I can’t find it. So let me talk about something a little more recent which I did and which I’m rather proud of.

There comes a point in a cook’s life where he/she stops copying recipes and starts creating dishes. The transition is actually generally a lot more prolonged than what you might think, as it starts with making slight changes to recipes to suit your taste (or, similarly, to suit different ingredients that might be available in your part of the world/during a particular season), or pulling different components from different recipes to assemble into an entity of its own. For me, I reached a sort of nirvana when I started cooking multi-faceted dishes with different components, most of which I’d come up with on my own.

As I’ve always said, cooking is really about a bunch of simple, basic techniques more than anything else. Whenever I cook/bake/make something for friends, I always find myself surround my hysteria - friends screeching, “HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY MAKE ALL OF THIS? IT’S SO COMPLICATED!” To which I more often than not reply, “But it’s all really simple!” And I’m not being a show-off/overestimating my friends’ skill sets. You see, if you know how to boil water for instant noodles, or do a simple Chinese style vegetable stir-fry, you’ve got all the techniques down pat for making a simple pasta from scratch - you can boil water, you can judge doneness for noodles, you can cut/chop/slice (chances are garlic will be in the mix for both types), you can sauté, and you can check for seasoning. Likewise, if you can make cupcakes (following the most basic of butter cake recipes), and you understand the flavour pairing of strawberries, vanilla, sugar and softly whipped cream, you can assemble a multi-layered berry cake with crème chantilly easily. Even better: if you’ve ever played with playdough, or made a simple dough for messing around with and rolling around as a kid, you can make your own pasta. See? It’s all simple. Just break everything down into its components.

Now, one of the other things I like to do is to re-create dishes based on classic street food. Bunny observed the growth in my skill set by how I went from one modification to another - I started out simply looking for new ways to present the dishes (such as in the case of my Bakkuttini), and slowly I started remodelling one aspect at a time of each dish.

My latest creation is an amuse bouche based on Laksa. It started out with a good friend demanding to taste Laksa Pesto. I was bored of this - I didn’t find it challenging enough anymore, and I’d made it too many times - so I wrangled my way out of it by telling her I’d do a different Laksa dish for her instead. Another friend had been itching to try a self-saucing laksa ravioli, and after tossing ideas around, I came up with a list of ingredients that went into a traditional bowl of Laksa, and came up with this:

It’s - again - really quite simple. (This time, though, I will admit that the entire dish is rather time consuming to make, even though the individual parts aren’t actually very challenging at all.) I made ravioli using egg-yolk-only pasta (roughly 150g of plain flour to 2 large egg yolks, with a little salt), which I opted for because I wanted it to mimic the richness and texture of the springy egg noodles normally served in Laksa, and filled this with a mixture of minced prawns, XO sauce, minced laksa leaves and fresh chilli (i.e. your basic laksa pesto) with a little oil to bind, and served this with two sauces: a fragrant prawn stock which was heavily reduced until almost syrupy, infused with lemongrass, galangal, and some carrots for colour and sweetness, and the second sauce was a ready-out-of-the-packet coconut cream. (I decided that I wanted the coconut cream to actually come off with a very clean flavour on the palate in contrast to the rich shellfish broth, which would - in itself - be quite interesting since coconut’s usually the rich, cloying component in these dishes.) I topped it with a prawn coated in salted-egg-yolk (quite a common dish on many Chinese menus) which embodies both prawns and eggs - i.e. two of the common toppings in laksa, and finally garnished it with a crisp fried laksa leaf to pay homage to the humble beginnings of this dish.

(You can see the entire sheet of paper with my doodlings, scribblings and conceptualising on this scan which I’ve uploaded into my flickrstream.)

The best part of it was that when you sampled a mouthful of each of the components, it actually really tasted like Laksa. Also, it means I now know how to make Laksa, which could prove handy considering I’m now HK and very far away from my local Katong Laksa stall.

Laksa Amuse
(serves 6)

For the prawn stock:
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and bruised
4 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
1 small white onion, peeled and roughly chopped
1 carrot, peeled and diced into 1cm pieces
Heads and shells of 20 tiger prawns, roughly chopped
Pork bone stock (or chicken stock or water) - I probably used about 1.5 litres
2 1-inch pieces of galangal, bruised
1-inch piece of young ginger, bruised
3 lemongrass stalks, bruised and roughly chopped (white part only)
Vegetable oil

For the pasta dough:
150g unbleached all-purpose flour
2 large egg yolks
a pinch of salt

For the ravioli filling:
Meat from 14 prawns
2 tbsp XO sauce (I used some from the Peninsular hotel in Beijing which I got as a gift, but any brand you like the flavour of will do - e.g. Lee Kum Kee which is easily available in many supermarkets)
1 large red chilli, deseeded and roughly chopped
1 handful of laksa leaves (I used about 3/4 of the packets you get in Cold Storage)
2 tbsp chilli-infused sesame oil (or the oil from your XO sauce)

100ml coconut cream/thick coconut milk
6-10 pretty laksa leaves
1 salted egg
20g unsalted butter
6 prawns, peeled and deveined but with the tails intact
potato starch/flour
oil
sea salt
finely ground white pepper

Peel and devein all 20 prawns, but reserve 6 with the tails intact. Set these 6 aside. Blend the flesh from the other 14 prawns with the rest of the ingredients for the ravioli filling and season with salt and pepper. If necessary, add a little more olive oil or vegetable oil so the mixture binds. Cover tightly with clingfilm and set aside in the fridge. (Can be prepared up to 1 day in advance.)

In a stockpot, gently sweat the onions, carrots, shallots and garlic in a little oil until softened, but not browned, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat. In a sauté pan, fry the prawn heads and shells in a little oil until all the shells turn a deep orange and are very fragrant. Tip the shells into the stockpot. Do this in batches if necessary to prevent the pan from overcrowding. Deglaze the pan with 1 cup of the stock, ensuring the scrape up all the caramelised bits at the bottom of the pan. Pour this liquid into the stockpot, and top it up with enough stock to cover by about an inch. Bring this to a gentle simmer, then add the lemongrass, ginger and galangal, and simmer for 1 hour, skimming off any impurities that rise to the surface. After 1 hour, strain the stock through a china cap, pressing on the solids with the back of a wooden spoon to extract all the liquids, into a smaller pot. Strain this again through a fine-grained sieve without pushing any particles through this time, then simmer gently to reduce until you have about 1 cup of liquid left. Season with salt (it’s important that you only season at the end), and set aside until ready to assemble. If desired, you can prepare this in advance, then cool and refrigerate until needed.

To make the pasta dough, lightly beat the egg yolks with the salt and add the flour - about a cup first, then slowly add in the rest until the dough is no longer sticky and wet. It should feel a LITTLE bit too dry. Knead for about 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and satiny, then wrap well in clingfilm and set aside at a cool room temperature for 30 minutes to relax. Dust your work surface and rolling pin with flour (or set up your pasta roller), and roll the pasta out until it is about 1mm thick (slightly thinner than you would roll it out for noodles like tagliatelle). Cut out 12 circles, each 5cm in diameter, then place a heaped teaspoon of the prawn filling into the centre. You should have enough dough and filling for a few extras in case of breakage. Place the ravioli on a tray lined with a sheet of waxed paper dusted with flour or semolina, dust with more flour, place another sheet of wax paper on top, and wrap well with clingfilm and keep in the fridge until needed. You can prep this a few hours in advance, or even freeze it. (If cooking from frozen, add another minute or two to the cooking time, but do not defrost it first.)

Fry the reserved laksa leaves for garnish in a little oil until crisp and translucent. Be careful not to burn them. Set aside on some kitchen towels to drain. Separate the salted egg, and steam the yolk for about 5 minutes. Allow it to cool, then chop finely.

When ready to serve, bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Reheat the prawn stock, keep warm, and bring the coconut cream to room temperature. Dust the reserved 6 prawns in potato starch, then fry until the flesh turns pink and the flour is golden brown and crisp. Drain on some kitchen paper. Wipe out the sauté pan, and melt 20g of butter in it, and when it starts to foam, add in the chopped, steamed salted egg yolk. Stir the yolk in until you get a foamy buttery sauce, then add the prawns to the pan, tossing to coat. Once the prawns are warmed through and well coated, remove from the heat. Cook the ravioli for 2-3 minutes (fresh pasta cooks VERY quickly, so be careful not to overcook it!), then drain onto an oiled pan (to prevent sticking).

To plate, place 2 tablespoons of the prawn stock into the bottom of each small dish. Place the cooked ravioli in the sauce, then spoon over 1-2 teaspoons of coconut cream. Top the ravioli with a prawn crusted in the salted egg yolk, and garnish with a fried laksa leaf. (See the dish/illustration.) Serve immediately, and enjoy. :)

If I can be completely honest, I’ve been dreading writing this post. Yes, I went to Heston Blumenthal’s world famous, three Michelin star restaurant, The Fat Duck. Yes, the experience was amazing. What more do I say?

To make matters worse, I know one of the key ingredients that make dining at The Fat Duck an even more incredible experience is the surprise factor - i.e. you walk in thinking you’re going to get a “conventional” meal (which begs the question “What is food?”) and you get these gastronomical alchemist’s creations. And I kinda shot myself in the foot, since I had read up about The Fat Duck before, and I’ve seen posts of other bloggers describing their meals. When I sat down, I glanced at the menu, and half of me was proud that I recognized most of the dishes, but the other half was a little disappointed that not much had changed. Silly me.

Don’t get me wrong though - the flavours and creations were everything I thought they would be. (Except maybe the Pommery Grain Mustard Ice Cream which really didn’t float my boat.) Right from the start, with the Nitro-poached palate cleanser of lime and vodka which looked like a meringue but disappeared in your mouth, leaving your mouth feeling absolutely sparkling clean. (This was especially important to me as I had a sinus infection and my mouth was feeling crappy.) It even cleared up my sinuses which meant I could take in the aroma of the Oak Moss and Truffle Toast. Speaking of truffle, how decadent is it to have truffle TOAST! And how awesome. I honestly think that was one of my favourite dishes, seeing as it’s so rare that you get to enjoy the flavour of truffle where it’s truly the star of the dish and doesn’t have a million other flavours contesting for your attention. And I’m sure all of you are wondering about the legendary Sound of the Sea. I have to admit that I went in a skeptic, but was pretty much blown away by how the feeling of the shoreline was recreated in front of me. I still kind of feel like the iPod delivering the sound of seagulls crowing and waves crashing was a tad indulgent, but I do get where they were coming from - it makes it an entire experience, which heightens your attention so you look at the dish more as though it were a beach scene, which in turn helps to elevate the experience that little bit.

Probably one of the most exciting dishes for me was the much talked-about snail porridge. Having been brought up in an Asian (and predominantly Chinese) culture, I don’t automatically associate the term “porridge” with the ang moh style, i.e. oats. I generally think of it as watery rice, and so I had to remind myself that it probably wasn’t going to be the case. And indeed it wasn’t. On my plate was a little mound of green stuff. It kinda looked like barley, but I wasn’t sure. Sitting on the green stuff were a couple of snails (the extreme right one kind of looks like it has a face which started freaking me out haha), julienned ham and shaved fennel in a beautiful almost floral arrangement. This was pretty much a visual kick in the face, and all before I’d even had a bite. As if it could get any better, the flavour and texture that exploded in my mouth was sublime. The slight chewiness of the snails juxtaposed with the almost al dente bite the porridge gave, add together the crunch and slight bitterness of the fennel, with the entire mouthful married together by the smoky saltiness of the ham was amazing. I love snails, but who knew that snails and porridge could go so well together? Mr Blumenthal, obviously.

My hands down favourites, however, had to be the “breakfast” portion of the meal. After dessert, we were given a little cereal package each of parsnip cereal (which tasted SO much like cornflakes only better x1000), served with a small jug of parsnip milk (sweet and creamy, but with the lightness of semi-skimmed milk that hasn’t lost its flavour). My personal winner was the Nitro-scrambled egg & bacon ice cream, which was served on pain perdu with tomato jam and candied bacon. Setting aside the obvious tableside theatrics of the re-filled egg shells cracked into a copper pot over an unlit stove and frenetic scrambling action once the liquid nitrogen was added into the mix, the flavour was seriously out of this world. The bacon was both sweet and savoury, with a hint of that smoky bacon flavour (I mean SRSLY who doesn’t love bacon?!!) all in a super smooth custard, placed atop a slice of brioche that was cooked so it was crisp and caramelised on the outside with a gooey, eggy, almost molten interior. I love the full english breakfast, and I am delighted to report that a re-constructed, sweet, frozen version definitely hit the spot.

There’s so much more that I want to say about the four-hour dining experience we had at The Fat Duck, but I really must show some self-restraint. The last thing I will give mention to, was that if I had to pick the single most outstanding part of the experience, I would have to give it to… the water. That’s right. I was feeling under the weather (and rather heavily medicated) on the day we made our foray into Bray, so I decided to stay off the alcohol. And while I was a little jealous of the champagne carts that visited the surrounding tables, I must say the water served at The Fat Duck was phenomenal. The still water which accompanied the majority of the meal was Wattwiller from Auvergne. This water contains no nitrates at all, which supposedly accounts for its remarkably clean and neutral taste. Towards the end of the meal, we were given another type of (still) water, Glenlivet from Speyside, which has one of the lowest mineral contents of any bottled water. This lends to it an almost sparkling, cleansing (not just clean) quality. I know it sounds a little ridiculous that I’m waxing lyrical about the bloody bottled water from this restaurant, but seriously. If you can get your hands on a bottle of either brand, try it, then you’ll understand what I mean.

To see photos of (almost) all the courses I had, check out my flickr photoset of The Fat Duck.

.. stars, that is. (This is the only post that I’m counting stars, since I don’t think I’m doing another combined-restaurant review.)

So it’s quite obvious that when Bunny and I were in London earlier this month, we weren’t really doing a lot of sight-seeing. Or, well, we were - but the sights we were interested in mainly came on a nice white plate (in most cases), on a table, in a restaurant. That’s right, we ate ourselves silly. Some might say we ate ourselves sick, but we’ll protest very loudly that it was crappy seafood in Barcelona that got us sick, not the copious amounts we ingested. One of the restaurants that we went to was Pétrus, located in The Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge, London. Some of you may have heard of Pétrus because of how 5 bankers from Barclays were sacked after having spent over £44,000 on a half dozen bottles of wine there. And indeed, the size of the wine list alone was rather impressive. But I wasn’t there for the wine.

Marcus Wareing, one of Ramsay’s many protegés, helms the kitchen of this two star establishment. To be honest, I didn’t even know that this was his place until a few months back when I was trying to figure out where to eat on this holiday. He’s probably better known for his time spent at the Savoy Grill, where it earned its first Michelin star with him at the helm. And I’m glad to say that the meal definitely didn’t disappoint with all that anticipation leading up to it.

The food at Pétrus was fantastic. It was fairly simple fare, but that didn’t detract from how impressive it was, especially for a set lunch. Anyone who’s heard me whine about the general state of “fine dining” restaurants in Singapore will know how highly I value good, fresh ingredients, since what you eat is really only ever as good as what you put in it. From the amuse of a foie mousse served with parmesan croutons (the foie had the texture of peanut butter, and I love peanut butter, so that was heavenly), all the way to the chocolate bon bons (pictured at the start of post) that we picked off their Bon bon trolley, every single dish that appeared in front of us was very well designed to showcase the natural flavours of the dish, without distracting or detracting from the main ingredients.

My favourite, however, was my main course. I know this sounds a bit silly because we mostly expect the main course - i.e. the main event of the meal - to be the show-stopper, but often it’s not the case. At Pétrus, however, I opted for the red mullet (above), which is a rather fatty round white fish that’s very common in Britain and the Mediterranean. It’s as beautiful as it is tasty, and the couple of times that I’ve chanced upon it here, I always have a lot of fun eating (and/or cooking) it. Here, it was served poached, with a wild garlic pesto. The flesh was firm and flaked beautifully, and the (relatively) simple cooking method meant that its flavours really shone through. The pungent pesto (and pesto croutons) on the side were brilliant at enhancing those flavours.

Another place from Gordon Ramsay’s empire that we went to, of course, was his eponymous restaurant at Royal Hospital Road. Here, we did the a la carte lunch menu, which provided a little more choice than his set lunch offerings. We couldn’t really face the Menu Prestige (far too many courses), as jealous as we felt when we saw some of the courses being served to the other diners, seeing as we’d had a slightly heavier breakfast that morning.

The first thing that hit us, here, was the impeccable service. It was very personable, without being intrusive (a fine line that service staff in Singapore are wont to trip over), and made us feel very comfortable despite the very amusing and very posh English families that were seated around us. (You could just about see some of those kids having their debutante balls!)

Although it would be unfair to compare Ramsay’s with Pétrus, seeing as we didn’t have the set lunch here, it’s probably fairly safe to say that the fare at Ramsay’s was significantly more refined. And I’m not just saying that because of how liberally our plates were littered with slices and cubes of black truffle. The menu here went beyond showcasing the feet-on-the-ground good flavours of fresh ingredients in skilled hands, and arrived at an impeccable presentation of the season’s produce. It was impressive to witness the use various cuts and parts of an animal in the same dish. For example, my main course of Best end of Cornish lamb with confit shoulder and thyme jus (above, lower right picture) showcased the fillets, the shoulder and the stock all made using lamb which were married together on one phenomenal plate.

But the dish I enjoyed most here was my starter. I’m a little hung up on sweetbreads at the moment, which has been the case for the last couple of months. I thought, at first, that this had something to do with the lack of availability in Singapore (not many restaurants that I can afford to regularly patronise offer it), but after veritably gorging myself on the stuff in Europe, I’m still hung up on it! My starter was sautéed foie with roasted sweetbreads (above, lower left picture), all tied together with two slightly sweet accompaniments - carrot purée and almond velouté. Three weeks later, I’m still drooling when I look at a picture of, or think of this dish, so I’m going to give myself an easy out by not describing it. Suffice to say it was a dish with simultaneously the best foie gras and the best sweetbreads that I’ve tasted. I must mention, though, that the restaurant seemed to revolve largely around veloutés of all shapes, forms, and names (sometimes being dubiously dubbed a cappuccino - but you can’t fool me!), which was a bit amusing to observe.

The last restaurant which I’m writing about here is one that I went to without Bunny. London is a city that has been stealing my good friends from me for the last four or five years, and one of them who is finally coming back to Singapore around the time when I’ll make my indefinite departure (so maybe it wasn’t London that she was running to, but me that she was running from!!) is an old friend from school. She picked a restaurant that I - in my ignorance - hadn’t heard of before. It’s a newish joint in the Soho area of London known as Arbutus, which boasts both a ridiculously affordable set lunch menu (about 15 quid for a 3-course meal), and bold offerings of offal.

Unfortunately, the only offal on the menu when I was there was stewed pigs head (the biggest picture in the above collage), and it wasn’t on the set lunch menu! So we decided that one of us would order a la carte (me, being the greedy one), and one of us would have the set lunch so we could compare the food. My dining companion, A, was really tickled with the idea of eating a pig’s head. I suppose the way the dish was phrased, an active imagination could lead to you wondering if the entire head was going to appear in front of you (it definitely crossed my mind), but what I got instead looked a little like a slice of a terrine, bearing no resemblance to the part of the pig that it came from. The fatty meat (slightly reminiscent of pork belly, only with much more tender meat), was served with a little pile of caramelised onions and a swoosh of potato purée. The texture of the purée was incredibly smooth, and while I enjoyed the dish marvellously, I think it would have been taken into a whole new level if a little texture contrast had been injected into the dish.

Interestingly, her set lunch main course beat my a la carte one to a pulp. The breast of lamb (bottom left corner) was very flavourful, impeccably cooked, and the accompaniments, while lacking a little on the presentation scale, tasted amazing. My bavette of Scottish beef had a slightly strange texture, which sort of felt like it was marbled with cartilege, only a little chewier. It was tasty, but still a bit strange. Arbutus, for me, will go down as the king of potatoes in London. After my perfectly creamy purée from the starter, I had dauphinois potatoes served in a mini cast iron coccotte, and while I daresay I was biased strictly because of the vessel it was served it, the alternating texture of creamy potatoes that still held some bite, and crispy, cheesy crust was delicious. Awesome potatoes, delicious no-fuss food, and charmingly friendly and casual service all for a great price made this restaurant a great experience.

So now you can probably see why within the first week of my arrival in London, I was crazy excited about the rest of my trip. With a start like that, who can guess what’s to come? Besides The Fat Duck, that is. But that’s another story for another day. :)

To see the rest of the photos that I took at the above restaurants, you can access them in my flickr sets here: Arbutus, Pétrus, and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. In the descriptions of the sets, as well as in this post, I’ve included links to the restaurant websites.

I just got back from one of the awesomest holidays I’ve ever had (and when I say awesomest, I mean awesomest). I spent slightly under 3 weeks in England and Spain (namely London, Madrid and Barcelona - plus a day trip out to Brighton if you count that), with the majority of the time spent in London.

It was bloody brilliant to be able to spend time with one of my best friends in the entire world. On our last day there, we realised that it’s pretty much been 4 1/2 years since the two of us have been permanently based in the same country, as I’ve been in Singapore and she’s been jetting all around the world with the last 3 years spent in London. Come next year, we’ll both be in China, which is as scary as it is exciting, and everyone should join me in casting meaningful looks her way in hopes of getting her into the same city that I’ll be in - Hong Kong.

When bunny came up to join me, we proceeded to eat our way around that bit of Europe, and I’ve collected a total of 12 Michelin Stars in the past 18 days. I know putting it that way makes me sound like I have something to do with restaurants that have earned Michelin Stars, but really I just ate in them. A whole bunch of them. And while I’m the last person to say that stuffy chi-chi fine-dining is the only way to eat, it’s definitely something that’s not easy to do in Singapore, so I’m really thankful for the opportunity we had to taste the creations of some of the greatest chefs of this time.

To give you guys a teaser of the proper posts to follow, you can already see from my flickrstream that I went to Petrus and Arbutus, but I also visited two of the three establishments which each have been awarded 3 of the coveted stars in England, namely Restaurant Gordon Ramsay (at Royal Hospital Road in London) and The Fat Duck (in Bray). The best meal of the trip (and - dare I say - that I’ve ever had), however, I will have to keep a secret for the time being, but all I’ll say is that it took place in Spain.

Keep your eyes peeled, and I’ll try to get the photos and posts up and headed this way as soon as I can. :)

It’s good to be back.

I finally picked up a Le Creuset cast iron pot about a week or two ago, and I’ve been in heaven ever since. The reason why I never owned one before this is really just because they’re so bloody expensive, and also there’s a bit of a space issue going on in my kitchen right now. But free vouchers solved one of the problems so I’m glad to announce that I’m now the proud owner of an awesome deep-frying, stewing, risotto-making machine. Or, well, vessel, rather. And it’s yellow. :)

The first thing I did when I got back with it, apart from taking it out of the box to ooh and ahh a little more, was dig up some stew recipes I’d been wanting to try. I love stews, first because they taste so damn good, and second because they’re generally hassle free: you have about 15-20 minutes of active time prepping your food, then you ignore it for a good 30 minutes (or more) and all of a sudden dinner’s ready! Unfortunately, stews generally happen in larger portions than even bunny and I can finish, so I had to ring up a friend and bribe her into popping by for dinner. With dinner.

The first dish I cooked was a delightful chicken stew, which is sort of a play on Coq au Vin (i.e. Chicken in Red Wine), only I used a hen and cooked it in a white wine (namely, riesling here). I also decided to thicken the gravy a little by enriching it with cream before I reduced it into a luscious sauce, and all that was missing was a crusty loaf of bread to mop up all the sauce with.

Now, although most of us generally use cheap/crappy wines when we’re cooking with it (especially in such copious amounts), I would advise you to not just go out and get the cheapest bottle you can get your hands on. As with all ingredients, your quality of your final dish is always limited by the quality of the ingredients that you put into it, so while I wouldn’t waste a $800 bottle of wine in a dish where I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the subtle nuances of the wine, go pick up a decent bottle - which you should easily be able to within S$35 at your local supermarket.

Poulet au Riesling

2 tbsp olive oil
20g butter
150g streaky bacon, cut into lardons
1 large chicken (about 2kg in weight), chopped into 2-inch pieces
2 carrots, roughly chopped
2 medium white onions, peeled and quartered
6 cloves of garlic, peeled but left whole
1 bottle of Riesling
400ml whipping cream
200g baby button mushrooms
Italian flat-leaf parsley, chopped

In a large, heavy bottomed pan, melt the butter with the olive oil on medium heat. When melted, add in the bacon and cook for a few minutes until lightly browned. Remove the bacon from the pan with a slotted spoon, and set aside in a bowl. Turn the heat up, then brown the chicken (in a few batches, if necessary - to prevent overcrowding). Remove the chicken from the pan, then lower the heat, and slowly cook the carrots, onions and garlic until the onion is softened but not coloured (about 5-8 minutes). Return the chicken and bacon to the pan, turn up the heat, and add all the wine.

Quickly bring the liquid to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer partially covered for 30 minutes. Remove the chicken pieces from the stew, add in all the cream and boil to reduce the liquid until your desired consistency. It should have thickened enough to form a smooth sauce (somewhere around the consistency of whipping cream). While it is reducing, add in the mushrooms, stir through most of the parsley (reserving some for garnishing) and season with salt and black pepper. When ready to serve, add the chicken pieces back in and warm through.

Yield: Serves 4

So a couple of days ago, Chubby Hubby posted about a dessert that kinda flopped for reasons he and S couldn’t figure out.

I’ve mentioned before that my bunny isn’t a fan of anything chocolate at all, which means that I don’t really get the opportunity to play with chocolate very often. And while I’m not the world’s biggest fan of the stuff, I do enjoy it now and then. So the only logical thing for me to do was summon my chocolate fan friends (to consume it) and check out the recipe - and this way I could do something chocolatey without the bunny whining about not having a share of the dessert.

As you’ll have read in CH’s post by now, the dish is really a white chocolate soup topped with chocolate whipped cream. The individual components are pretty easy to assemble, just melting the two types of chocolate separately in a bain marie, and mixing the white with single cream and milk to form a chilled soup (which actually tasted a little like condensed milk to me), and folding the dark (with a little cocoa powder) into lightly whipped cream, which is them loosened slightly with milk to form a mousse-like cream. Now for the assembly.

The first one I tried was a little strange - the chocolate cream definitely floated, but because I kind of carelessly plopped it into the glass, it ended up suspended somewhere in the middle. Much like a very sad, dark brown iceberg. Because of the texture, I decided to try and let it “cling” to the sides of the glass, which seemed to work, until I got from one side to the other (moving across the diameter of the glass), where the white chocolate soup splashed up a little.

Third time’s a charm, evidently, since I finally figured that since it was clinging easily to the sides, I should run a little around all the sides, then fill up the middle, essentially letting the dark cream cling onto the cream that was clinging onto the sides. If you understand my rather convoluted syntax.

At the end of the mild adventure (once I’d gotten it right - everyone else wanted a go at it), I re-read the recipe to run through the steps again in my head. It seems like I may have overwhipped the cream a little in the dark chocolate layer, as I was only supposed to whisk it “until it just starts to thicken”. I went a liiiittle further and got it to in between “just starting to thicken” and “soft peaks”, which is what got me to that texture which was a little thicker than I would have liked if I were meant to drink that shot through a tiny straw, but hey - it worked. And it went through a normal straw just fine.

Related: The upside down chocolate shot on Chubby Hubby (where you can also find the recipe to this dessert).

I have a confession: I love KFC. I know it’s disgusting, I know it’s greasy, I know it doesn’t really taste like chicken and is served with stuff that doesn’t really taste like coleslaw and mashed potatoes either. But it’s KFC - its so bad it’s good.

If I could, I’d probably veer towards Popeye’s for my fried chicken fix every so often. Problem being, the only Popeye’s I know of are both in Changi Airport (in Terminal 1 and 3), and that’s not exactly what you’d call my backyard.

A friend of mine came back from Hong Kong for the long weekend, and I decided to make dinner for her. On the menu, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and coleslaw - that’s right, we were having homemade KFC.

The chicken was really easy to do, I steeped it overnight in buttermilk that I had first infused with some dried rosemary and nutmeg. When ready to eat, I just dredged it thickly in all-purpose flour that was seasoned with a little more nutmeg, crushed dried rosemary, a couple of random other things I might have thrown in, salt and pepper. I then deep fried it at 180C until golden brown on the outside, and finished off the cooking in a 180C preheated oven.

The sides were equally easy. I julienned half a head of purple cabbage and 1 large carrot, chopped some radishes into matchsticks and very finely sliced one scallion. I then tossed this to evenly distribute the vegetables before adding in my premixed dressing of 1 small bottle of store-bought mayonnaise (225ml), 5 tbsp of white wine vinegar (since I didn’t have any cider vinegar), 3-4 tbsp of caster sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. When well mixed, I just covered the nonreactive bowl with clingfilm, and chucked it in the fridge to sit for at least an hour. The potatoes were done in my usual style, i.e. peel them, boil them in salted water until tender, then mash with copious amounts of butter, season to taste with salt, then whip with cream and milk.

The entire dinner was a breeze to make - especially since all I had to assemble at the end was the fried chicken. Once I crack a gravy recipe, I may just have found a KFC replacement; and right in my own kitchen!

For the past year, there’s been one thing in particular that my bunny has been begging me to make. Ever since last Easter, she’s been pleading with me indefatigably to make her hot cross buns.

All of us have one of those dishes - something that transports you back to your childhood; which reminds you of those times you’d spend curled up with your mom (or [insert significant relative here]), sneaking off to buy these treats which the two of you shared in secret, lest your dad find out and scold the both of you again for wasting money. That’s what hot cross buns are to bunny, and since last year I didn’t manage to make them for her, I made up my mind to get it done by hook or by crook this week.

Now, that’s really easier said than done. You see, the last time I ate a hot cross bun was at least 10 years ago. Maybe even 15! I have no idea what they taste like anymore - apart from them being mildly sweet and being filled with dried fruit (which I don’t particularly like). All I really remember of them is that tune, and - even then - I often confuse it with the “Three Blind Mice” tune. Not a good start, I know. And although I’m more comfortable cooking savoury dishes, even when it comes to baking and desserts, I tend to prefer choosing recipes whose flavours and steps I can sort of envision as I read through them. None of the hot cross bun recipes I found really did that for me, so I ended up sorta winging it - taking a little from a Donna Hay book that I got last year, another from an issue of Waitrose Food Illustrated, and filling in the gaps in between with other recipes online, and then taking some creative leaps of faith.

Baking them, too, was not altogether uneventful. Because of the mixture of recipes, I ended up not really having a guide to follow. I realise now that I probably should have tried one recipe in its entirety first before having taken some creative license, but hey, at least it turned out pretty well.


Hot Cross Buns
(based mostly on a recipe from Donna Hay’s Modern Classics Book 2)

1 tbsp active dry yeast
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 1/2 cups milk at about 35C
4 1/2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tbsp mixed spice
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp fine salt
50g unsalted butter, melted
1 egg
2 cups sultanas, mixed peel, candied cherries, or whatever else you can get your hands on
1/2 cup extra flour
2 tbsp vegetable oil (use something mild tasting)
1 tbsp water

For glaze:
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp water
2 tsp powdered gelatine

Gently stir the yeast into the milk with 2 tbsp of the sugar. Set it aside for about 5-10 minutes until it begins to froth, so you know that the yeast is active. Sift together the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, mixed spice, and salt.

Add the egg and melted butter into the yeast mixture, stir in the remaining sugar, then - using a small spatula - stir in the remaining dry ingredients until a sticky dough forms. Scrape the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, then knead until an elastic, springy dough forms (about 10 minutes). I re-dusted the surface with 2-3 tbsp more flour during this period. Place the dough into an oiled bowl, then cover with a damp dishcloth and set aside in a warm, draught-free place to rise until it has doubled in size (about 1 hour).

Preheat your oven to 190C, and grease a 9″ square cake tin, then line with non-stick greaseproof paper. (I don’t have a 9″ square tin, so I used a couple of smaller ones.) When the dough has risen, scrape it back out of the bowl, and divide it into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a tight ball, then place into your prepared baking tin. Leave to rise for another 30 minutes, or until the balls of dough have expanded such that they are very snugly sitting next to each other in the tins. Mix the extra flour, oil and water together, then pipe crosses onto the buns. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until well browned and springy but firm to the touch.

While the buns are in the oven, make the glaze. Place the sugar and 1/4 cup water into a small, heavy-based saucepan on high heat until it dissolves. You may need to remove sugar crystals from the sides of the pan using a pastry brush dipped in water. Sprinkle the gelatine over the remaining 1 tbsp water, then add this to the pan once the sugar has dissolved. Boil for 1 minute, then remove from the heat.

When the buns are done, remove them from their pans onto a rack to cool. Drizzle or brush the glaze over, then cool completely on the rack. Eat them toasted with plenty of butter. :)

Yield: Makes 12 buns

Note: Okay wow, I just youtubed the Hot Cross Buns nursery rhyme, and it’s not at all like how I remember. It’s actually rather awful. I know some of you are on your way to youtubing it now, so here you go. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

When I throw dinner parties, people seldom request for particular dishes. I’m virtually incapable of making any decisions, which means that while I can most likely put together any recipe that makes sense, make variations on traditional recipes, or come up with my own, I normally end up with a ridiculously long list of possible dishes, and it’s generally near impossible for me to cut them down and shape them into an N-course dinner.

But that’s most people. Once in a while, someone will make a statement that starts to shape my menu along like, “I don’t like duck confit - it’s always very dry or way too salty.” And I’ll volunteer to change that perception. Or even better, “I WANT PROFITEROLES.”

Those two statements, however, shaped up my menu for Wednesday’s dinner party. Profiteroles are something most people left behind in the 80’s, along with bad hair and strange music videos, but I personally love them. If done well, the fresh choux pastry forms a pillowy hollow into which vanilla bean-infused crème pâtissière is piped. Dust over with icing sugar, and then serve with chocolate sauce running down the sides of of the buns, and you have a nugget of heaven - ready to be consumed, leaving you speechless (or incapable of speech, perhaps, depending on the size of the pastry), as the flavours of the slightly salty choux, sweet and velvety custard, intense chocolate sauce come together in your mouth.

Profiteroles with chocolate sauce

1 quantity choux pastry (recipe follows)
1 quantity crème pâtissière (recipe follows)
100g dark chocolate
20g butter
whipping cream
honey
icing sugar to garnish

Preheat your oven to 200C. Make the choux pastry, then fill a piping bag with a large plain piping tip. Pipe onto a large baking sheet lined with wax paper (or a silpat), forming about 30 mounds, leaving space between each mound for expansion. Bake for 15-18 minutes, until puffed and golden brown. Remove from the oven, cool on a rack and store in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

Make the crème pâtissière, and store in a piping bag with a small plain nozzle in the fridge for up to 3 days. I personally prefer making it fresh, as it becomes a little stiffer and harder to pipe after it’s been sitting in the fridge.

When ready to serve, melt the dark chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water until completely melted. Mix in honey to taste (I used about 1 tbsp?), and when fully incorporated, pour in enough cream so that the consistency of the chocolate is that of pouring cream. Using the nozzle of the piping bag, poke a hole in the base of a profiterole, and pipe in the custard until it starts to spill out of the bottom. Repeat to fill all the profiteroles. Stack them together on individual serving plates or in a huge mound in the middle, dust with icing sugar, then drizzle the chocolate sauce over.

Choux Pastry
(based from Gordon Ramsay’s Just Desserts)
5 tbsp milk
5 tbsp water
2 tbsp sweetened condensed milk
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
70g unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
85g unbleached all-purpose flour, sifted
3 large eggs, lightly beaten

Put milk, water, condensed milk, salt and butter into a heavy-based saucepan. Heat gently until the butter melts. Bring the liquid to a boil, then add all the flour in at once. Remove from heat, stir until the mixture starts to come together, then return to low heat, beating vigorously until it becomes a smooth, thick paste that comes away from the side of the pan cleanly.

Tip into the bowl of your standing mixer and leave to cool for about 5 minutes. Secure the bowl to your standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, then gradually work in the eggs a quarter at a time, increasing the speed to high for 10 second bursts between additions to aerate the mixture. Continue until you have a smooth paste which is roughly the texture of a stiff cake mix. You may not need to add all the egg.

Cool until the choux is thick enough to spoon or pipe (5-10 minutes).

Crème Pâtissière
(adapted from Eggs by Michel Roux)

4 egg yolks
85g caster sugar
25g plain flour
3300ml milk
1 vanilla pod, split and scraped
a litle icing sugar or butter

Combine egg yolks and 30g sugar in a bowl and whisk it to a light ribbon consistency. Add the flour and whisk in thoroughly.

In a saucepan, heat the milk with the rest of the sugar and the vanilla pod. Once it comes to the boil, pour it into the egg yolk mixture, stirring as you go. Return the mixture to the saucepan, and bring to the boil over a medium heat, stirring continuously. Allow the mixture to bubble for 2 minutes, stirring all the while, then tip it into a clean bowl. To prevent a skin from forming, dust the surface with a veil of icing sugar or dot all over with flakes of butter. Once cool, the pastry cream , still stirring, for two min, then tip it into a bowl.

To prevent a skin forming, dust the surface w a veil of icing sugar or dot all over w little flakes of butter. Refrigerate once cool if not using immediately.

Yield: 30-35 profiteroles, i.e. serves about 6-7.

Photo credit: Photo at the start of the post was taken and uploaded by jon lin.

Bunny’s friend came over for dinner last night, and since she’s been whining a little (okay a lot) about us leaving for HK, I decided to do a slightly nicer menu that I usually do for occasion-less dinner parties. I was originally intending to do 5 courses - a tasting portion of XO scallop pasta, cream of mushroom soup infused with thyme and truffle oil (which I talked about here), a roast pork belly, duck leg confit, and profiteroles for dessert. I got lazy in the end and scrapped the pasta, but still ended up with a 4 course dinner that managed to impress.

While watching the Asian Food Channel one day, I saw a recipe for Pressed Belly of Pork on Gordon Ramsay’s The F Word. It seemed simple enough, and after a spot of googling, I found the recipe and decided to try it out. It was a great success, and everyone crunching away happily on their crackling loved it. I especially loved how tender the meat was, and the thin layer of soft fat remaining melted beautifully in contrast with the crackling. Also, it’s fairly simple to do, and - like most great recipes to pack away in the Entertaining section of your recipes folder - it’s best prepared the day before. I would probably add a splash of vinegar to the gravy though, as I thought it could have done with a slightly tart angle. Alternatively, spread a little dijon over your pork before digging in.

Pressed Belly of Pork
(Adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s The F Word)

1kg fresh pork belly, skin on
2 heads of garlic
a bunch of fresh thyme (about 7 or 8 sprigs)
white wine
chicken stock (I made stock using a carcass and mirepoix of vegetables)
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
optional: dijon mustard

Preheat the oven to 175C. Lay the pork belly on a clean cutting board, and using a very sharp knife, score the skin of the pork belly evenly in a criss-cross pattern. Season well on all sides with salt and pepper, a couple of glugs of olive oil, and rub the seasoning into the skin. Use the pork to mop up all the seasonings on the cutting board. Cut the garlic heads in half crosswise, then lay them - cut side up - in the bottom of an ovenproof pan or roasting tray. Rest the thyme on top of the garlic, then lay the pork belly over the garlic. This will prop the pork up to allow the fat to render out, and infuse the pork with the garlic and thyme while cooking. Pour about 100ml of white wine into the pan around the pork, cover loosely with foil, and roast for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, take the pork out, let it rest on a cutting board, and make your gravy. Pour/spoon off all but 2 tbsp of oil from the pan, then heat it over a high flame. Deglaze the pan with white wine (I probably used about 200ml), then use a wooden spoon to scrape all the bits off the bottom of the pan, and mash the garlic heads and mix it in. Reduce by half, then add 100ml of chicken stock, lower the heat, and reduce to 1/3 the amount. Strain the gravy, pressing down on the garlic with the back of the wooden spoon. Let it cool, cover with clingfilm, and keep refrigerated.

Transfer the pork, skin side up, to a non-reactive dish, and cover with another dish, pressing down. Weigh the top tray down with some tins, and chill in the fridge for 6 hours or overnight. When chilled, the flattened, compact shape will have set.

When ready to serve, preheat oven to 250C. Cut the pork into cubes, and place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the crackling is crispy, and the meat is completely warmed through. Scrape off the layer of fat from the gravy, then bring to a boil in a saucepan. Correct seasoning, then serve the pork belly with warm gravy

Yield: Serves 6-8.