Free Lunches

It was a North Indian buffet lunch with a twist.

Food would be delivered to the tables instead of diners having to help themselves from the common food display.

The spiced papadoms came. Spicy!

The sutchi fillet curry, the mung bean dhal, and the pureed spinach with chickpeas came. So did the bryani rice and a stack of quartered naans.

Then something that was terribly burnt arrived at the table - chicken tikka. I rejected the dish. No way would I accept something so burnt. There were enough charred bits for me to discard every single piece of chicken without a second look.

The waiter insisted that the dish is supposed to be burnt. Hello... I'm Chinese but this is not my first Indian meal! I asked for tandoori chicken. The waiter said my dish was "normal." I queried him why the rest of the tables get tandoori chicken while we get burnt chicken tikka. So he said he'll bring the tandoori chicken.

A millennium later, the tandoori chicken came. The first piece I took was more than half uncooked. I'm ok with slight undercooking but uncooked. I rejected the dish. The waiter did not protest this time, since he saw the condition of the food.

Then lamb shish kebab came. Not the best but it was meat. Then I wanted my tandoori chicken. What is a North Indian meal without tandoori chicken?

Yet, two millennia later, another dish of chicken tikka appeared. I rejected the dish, saying that it wasn't what I ordered. I want my tandoori chicken. Alas, it was out. The kitchen ran out of it.

Fine, what about dessert? I wanted dessert to round off the meal.

We have gulab jamun and assorted ice cream. I was told. I asked to have both and the waiter noted the order.

The gulab jamun came, burnt to the core. The ice cream was ok.

Bill time. I called one of the non-uniformed guys and asked if he was the boss. He said he was a partner. So I told him about my meal and told him that if his restaurant went under, he has his wait staff and his kitchen to thank.

He was apologetic. I was measured and courteous.

We got a free meal. There are free lunches after all. All you have to do is to be at the right place at the right time.

Sweet Sour Pork Ribs

An easy piece-y recipe which yielded me excellent success, succulent ribs and an immediate offer to take-away the leftovers by a friend who couldn't decide if she liked the rib or the sweet and sour sauce better. In the end, she cleaned out the container, raw romaine leaf bottom and all, without missing a single drop of the dipping sauce.

Preparation time 20 minutes
Cooking time 20 minutes

1 kg pork ribs cut into 4 cm pieces
1 lime/lemon juiced

Seasoning A (mix together)
1 tablespoon plain flour
1 tablespoon corn flour
1.5 tablespoon soya sauce
1.5 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 large egg
water, if needed

Seasoning B (mix together, when doing step 2 below)
2 tablespoon white sugar (Brown sugar will NOT do.)
1.5 tablespoon Chinese dark vinegar or malt vinegar (chemical "white" vinegar is not good)
2 tablespoon tomato ketchup (Del Monte is recommended for its tartness.)

1. Wash ribs, pat dry and season the ribs with seasoning A. The ribs should be coated with a lush layer of the seasoning. If too dry, add water half a tablespoon at a time. You should not need more than two tablespoons. Season for at least 2 hours. Better, if seasoned overnight.

2. Heat 1 litre of oil in a large wok. When oil is beginning to bubble, add ribs and turn down the fire to medium. Deep fry till golden brown. Do not go high heat all the way or you risk having golden coloured but bloody, undercooked ribs.

3. Remove ribs from oil and drain away the oil and leave about 2 tablespoons in the wok.

4. Add seasoning B to the wok and stir the mixture over a medium flame for about 2 minutes or till it begins to boil and thicken slightly.

5. Add ribs to the boiling mixture and coat them evenly with the sauce. Taste to add more sugar, salt or vinegar if necessary.

6. Add the lime/lemon juice just before turning off the flame.

7. Serve on a few leaves of any leafy salad green, raw. Garnish with parsley and top with a sprinkling of sesame seeds.

This dish is good with rice, or, as a replacement for BBQ ribs at beer chugging sessions.

Broken Bow(l)

Well, the title was really a pun on one of my favourite songs, "Broken Vow," by David Foster and Josh Groban.

But broken bowl caused me some grief, indeed, last night.

I had steamed rice in a stoneware bowl in a Chinese wok. When I was about to serve dinner, I tried to retrieve the bowl with a pair of calipers typically used by restaurants to take out hot crockery from ovens or steamers. So as I crimped the calipers on the side and tried to remove the bowl out of the wok, the bowl broke.

I am not sure if the bowl slipped, hit against the wok and broke, or if the bowl fractured, slipped and hit against the wok. However, not that it might matter that much. The combined weight of the bowl and the rice and the resulting force caused by the dropping of the bown of rice tipped the contents of the wok - hot water - right down my thighs and the top of my feet. I had just turned the fire off from steaming the rice some 20 minutes before, so the heat was pretty high still.

I dropped everything, went straight to the bathroom and hosed scalded trotters under running water.

A while later, I re-emerged and cleaned up the mess. The broken pieces were picked up and thrown away, the rice tossed into the bin and I clean the floor for stoneware fragments. There were extremely sharp shrapnel, which I managed to pick up.

Right after, I slathered my burnt legs and feet with some cream and had dinner.

Despite the pain last night, I believe the burns were mostly first degree. By this morning, most of the pain is gone and I'm back.

What an evening!

Chemical Burns

Cleared out the remaining romaine lettuce sitting in my fridge last Sunday after the class gathering last Saturday.

Ate it with an onion, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. And right after, my mouth felt just wrong.

Just saw a doctor after lots of misery. A weeks' worth.

After checking me, doc decided that my bumps, oral dryness (there is lots of saliva produced, no thirst but the skin feels so parched), and the suspect discomfort is a case of chemical burns from food.

Don't ask me. I don't know any better either.

Boing! Boing!

The food fair at Singapore Expo Hall 5 was jam packed with mindless, brainless, motionless bodies.

Mindless because they should have planned how they wanted to navigate the simple labyrinth of stalls (hey, it is just 6 rows of them, so what is a mentally trivial exercise).

Brainless because they should know better than to bring their prams and wet market shopping carts that are so bloody obstrusive. And why the heck would anyone think of bringing young kids to a shove-fest like this? Hey, this is not a Proposition 8 Demonstration! At least, over there, I'd get my fill of good looking people in their leather and gear. Oops. Have I revealed too much? But heck, it was so depressing looking around that my friend pointed out to me a girl whom he christened "A human Cabbage Patch Kid" after I came out of the toilet. It was a rather mean remark; I saw her earlier as I exited the washroom but from the place he stood, she was indeed one! She'd put the CPKs to shame, goddammit!

Motionless because many of these people wanted to sample food at the various stalls. Fine! Get the food and move aside. You don't need to eat in front of those stall holders! They already half guessed, ok, nine-tenths confirmed that you are just a cheapskate glutton who will eat and not buy anything. No need to pretend. Take the thing, MOVE ASIDE and eat. Then you can f--- off quietly since the next crowd would have engaged the stallholders and they wouldn't have time to care if you indeed wanted to buy anything. If people simply stood in front of these stalls to demonstrate how food should be eaten to the people who have cooked those samples, then how the f--- do you expect the rest of the crowd to move along? Hey, many of those food samples are that - samples. You taste, show a face and find the nearest dustbin. I even wonder why they come and peddle their wares. What we liked were mostly sold out.

So, after traversing the various corridors, I am really heaving my spoils and trying to make my way out of that progressively crowded place. If the place was 65% filled when I first went in, it was approaching 95% now. And so with people doing particulate brownian motion, it was not long before a gaseous, high mass, high energy molecule like me is going to whack into someone.

She moved right into my right shoulder as I broke out of the two man blockade. And she bounced right off me, took two steps back as I zoomed past her to the next roadblock.

It felt good. I should go to such fairs more often. In future, I'll just bump into and bounce people off for the fun of it. Shopping? That can wait.

Oh, there was another who went "Hey!" after she knocked into me. Hey what? Like I care, babe! Move along and eat my dust, you hopeless lethargic low life.

Obituary of the Pillsbury Doughboy

Dear Friends,

It is with the saddest heart I pass on the following:

Please join me in remembering a great icon -- the veteran Pillsbury spokesman.

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71. Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The gravesite was piled high with flours.

As longtime friend, Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy, describing Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers.

He was not considered a very "smart" cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he even still, as a crusty old man, was considered a roll model for millions. Toward the end it was thought he would rise again. But alas, he was no tart.

Doughboy is survived by his wife, Play Dough, two children, John Dough and Jane Dough; plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart.

The funeral was held at 3:50 for about twenty minutes.

Call me bitchy...

Interestingly, there was too much bee hoon (rice noodles) compared to laksa gravy at the promotion treat today. Hard to eat plain, dry rice noodles without the gravy!

And there was really not quite enough food. For instance, the yam ring ran out before most of us managed to get any.

But as the vice principal said, "We thank Lord for providing the feast we are going to have despite the global shortage of food yadah yadah yadah." So, apparently, we should be happy that there is food at all. However...

Eh, I think the 20 promotees paid for the meal lah!

Improvisational Cooking

I have been watching too much AFC. (I am so shy to even tell you what it stands for. But what the heck - Asian Food Channel.) I have been watching the likes of famous chefs such as Jean-Christoph Nouvelli (usually on Saturday/Everyday Cooks), Michael Smith (Chef at Home/Chef at Large), Anna Olsen (Sugar), Gordon Ramsey (Hell's Kitchen/The F Word), Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall (River Cottage Series), Jamie Oliver (Jamie's own cooking series), Robert Rainford (License to Grill) etc. I know I would be accused of being silly to put Nigella Dawson here but hey, she whips up a mean supper (the Brits got it all wrong - supper's for late night; it's dinner). So challenge me!

And I must say that these great cooks have one thing in common: they are not sticklers of recipes.

There is no better teacher than experience. Cooking is about getting your hands dirty and finding out in the end if things work out.

If you are where I am at, things like parsnip and lamb and whatever you need in those "atas" (high class) cook books cost an arm and an leg. You are better off not following them than following them because you are going to be a couple of items short of the complete recipe. To acquire that missing item at the atas supermarket, that item's cost will probably be 50% or more of the remaining stuff you need. (I believe they call it the Pareto Principle - and it's for the cost and not for the taste.) People are worried about their food not turning out right. They are worried about not getting the correct flavour. They loathe to make replacements.

But these great chefs on TV keep emphasising one thing - whatever you already have at home can do the job well enough. I think I have benefited from their wisdom. I change my food preparation techniques so that I get my onions out in half the time I used to. I taste my marinades before I dump in the food. I taste my food before I serve. I throw in my seasonings without measurement. I know when a dollop of butter, a dash of olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar, a squirt of fish sauce, a touch of pepper, a sprinkling of sugar or a few twists of my miracle salt will do the trick.

And most importantly, you need a group of friends who are most adventurous and supportive of your culinary experiments. They should be people who tell you that there is no failed experiment. Cooked food is good food. And before you know it, you are off to even greater culinary heights.

PS. I am usually floored by simple dishes and small portions. I burnt a pot of quick cooking oats I prepared for two persons' breakfast yesterday. *Blush*

"Leducing" Leftovers

 

(Ok, lame try at alliteration. Hahaha....)

Leftovers, leftovers, leftovers. What better than to pile everything together and bake bread pudding?

The Recipe

 

Foreword: This is a very healthy recipe. No oil is added. If you are feeling ascetic, you could even remove an egg or a yolk, reduce the sugar, omit the chocolate medallions, omit the nuts if you are nut-resistant and omit the honey. It is really a free for all recipe.

2 cups of milk (I used low fat, high calcium.)
2 eggs - 2nd egg or 2nd egg yolk optional
3 tablespoons of sugar (instead of 4, and there will be a variation to the typical bread pudding!)

Mix the liquids and the sugar together. Make sure that the sugar dissolves.

8 slices of stale bread

Dunk into milk-egg mixture and let it soak up the mixture.

1 tube of stale coarsely crushed chocolate chip cookies (there - here's the variation. This is where the fats and additional sugar come in!) - optional
1 large handful of raisins (I used organic this time.)
pinch of cinnamon powder
pinch of nutmeg powder - optional
pinch of ginger powder - optional
(or you can replace the 3 spices with a liberal dash of vanilla extract)

Add the other dry ingredients and fold them in. Do not pulverise the wet bread.

Pour one-third baking mixture into baking tin lined with wax paper (I hate washing. That's why the wax paper.)

3 handfuls of dark chocolate medallions - optional

At the top of this layer, add a layer of dark chocolate medallions (about 1.5 handful). Repeat with next one-third of mixture. Top up mixture with the final portion, making sure that all the mixture covers the second layer of medallions. If you are baking this in an oven, feel free to divide up the mixture into as many portions as you want and place in as many layers of chocolate medallions as your arteries could possibly accommodate.

Crushed walnuts - optional
Crushed almonds - optional
Honey - if you want to leave this out, then drizzle 2 tablespoons of soft brown sugar on top of the mixture before baking so that light caramelisation takes place

Scatter freshly crushed walnuts and almonds. Drizzle a liberal amount of honey over the nuts.

Bake at 160 deg C (fan assisted) for 50 minutes - forget about preheating. Turn up to max heat for last 5 minutes.

For those using a bread machine, pack in the baking mixture and add the medallions. You probably can have about 5 layers. Set it down to bake with the bake function. Let the machine do its work.

Now, I need to recipe for a custard sauce to go with this.

My Honey Nutty

 

See those luscious honey coated walnuts and almonds on top of the pudding loaf? Yum!

It's really an SOS!

 

Another shot of this wonderful bread pudding that was given away to a dear friend the next morning because, honestly, I am facing a food SOS. There is too much food left and I need to clear out, clear out....

What's that rumble in the background...?

Amish Bread

I read a recipe for making Amish Bread and I tried it.

The sweet smelling, pretty, crusty loaf is now cooling down in the microwave oven.

I honestly do not know how long it is going to last but I'm sure it's going to be well-loved.

I'll be making a few more loaves.