the makings of a red reptilian treat,

Scarlatus Turtleus Kuehus, species: kueh, genus: dessert, of the kingdom of food, more commonly referred to as

ANG KU KUEH

(Please pardon my ineptitude and liberty in zoological etymology, but I’m trying my best to make Ang Ku Kueh sound cool, as if it isn’t cool on its own already >.<)

under the kind instruction of a true master cook, we were shown both varietals of peanut and green bean fillings , shaped into both the turtle form and the “mound” form. The peanut mounds were ridiculously iffy to make, and I’d much prefer green bean anyway.

 

sometimes i really freak myself out.

I have reached the highest zenith of motoring idiocy today. I pretended I was a bus >.< I turned into a bus interchange, thinking it was the entrance for a car park. Noticing my mistake, a constant stream of “oh f**k” was voiced in a dull attempt to rectify the situation. I probably swore as much in that single minute than I ever did in all of NS. I then tried to u-turn out, which obviously didn’t work. After swearing a little more, and noticing a bus bearing down upon me from behind, I decided to just zoom through the bus interchange and get the hell out as fast as I could. Upon reaching the exit, I was so freaking scared shitless I didn’t even notice the red light @_@ I just turned. Really lucky I didn’t bang into anything or person.

so that ends my day. I don’t think I’ll be driving for quite a while. Now I shall be spending the whole of the next week waiting for a traffic summons that may or may not appear. More likely than not, it will involve rather large numerical values. And not the kind that you record high scores for.

Hooray for public transport.

 

listening to the Dawn (and 2 others)

as in Dawn Ng, an advertising-turned-full-time-artist with some really mind blowing ability to evoke emotions in her work, emotions that we often feel but don’t know/dare to say out loud, specifically to do with nostalgia, remembrance and home. Issues which many jet-setting, study-abroad-then-return-home Singaporeans deal with often. Attended an art critique session last night at fill-your-walls gallery, and heard her present on her more recent works, such as “Singapore Cuts”, which recently showed at the Singapore Art Show at SAM.

Massive Attack by Dawn Ng, image linked from Today Online

Had a pretty fruitful discussion about her direction as an artist, the limitations (and soon to be evident, homogenity) of the theme of nostalgia that local artists are often transfixed upon. The crit had many chances to turn into long winded, ungrounded philosophical intellectual masturbation that wouldn’t achieve anything with value, but it didn’t. I think it was great that as most of us there were either real painters or real novices in the field (i.e. me), we all kept it well grounded and constantly reverted back to foundational issues like concept development, execution, and most importantly, visual aesthetic.

I wasn’t too convinced about the second presenter, who dealt with digital art, collages and such, so I shan’t discuss too much. His works were, curious, at best. I’m not sure about the rest of the audience, but to me it just felt a little too… … (sorry to say this, but I must be honest) bleh, rather nondescript, and definitely overworked.

William Sim’s work, as usual, were beautiful and innocently happy. Aesthetically very strong, effort and craftsmanship were clearly very evident. Too bad we didn’t get to talk about it too much since it was getting rather late.

 

ragingly ridiculous ravioli rumble

Pumpkin and walnut ravioli in lemon butter, RRRrrrraaaandom salad, and Vanilla bean panna cotta with poached pears. This was a few weeks ago, just a random weekday family dinner I felt like putting in too much effort for >.<

It was unexpectedly troublesome to roll out the dough thin enough to make the little ravioli parcels, otherwise I think I would do this more often. I’m pretty sure that more than just a few drops of my sweat dripped into the dough while I was repeatedly rolling and feeding the dough through the rollers trying to get the sheets supple and paper thin. But everyone is still alive so I guess I must have been doing something right. Browned a little butter and garlic, then spiked that with lemon juice, zest and a nominal sprinkling of herbs, salt and pepper to finish.

Something funky happened with my vanilla beans. Instead of the vanilla particles being suspended throughout the panna cotta, the little buggers just communally decided to sink to the bottom of the molds, resulting in a weird field of black spots on the top of the puddings. Kinda like an inverse milky way, black stars against a white sky. Actually the puds were just meant to go with the really pretty looking pears I saw at Fairprice Finest at Thomson after my jog. Browned the slices in a little butter and brown sugar before deglazing with some wine to get like a nice little “caramellish” syrup, I shouldn’t call it poached pears since I don’t think that counted as poaching, but I guess its nice anyway, plus I’m a sucker for the alliteration in “poached pears”

Salad, random vegetables. Dressing, random vinaigrette. Preparation, very little (thankfully). Appreciation, much.

 

prata lunch, movie afternoon and pasta night =D (photos courtesy of Jia Hao)

This is a way overdue post, like 3 weeks late @_@

On a friday that I couldn’t remember the date for, we had a mortar lunch at The Roti Prata House, thereafter adjourning to Bishan Junction for some mindless thriller movie, to be specific, 2012. Before that, we watched Wing and Jiahao totally own at Jubeat, some new fangled rhythm-based arcade game, kinda like DDR for hands. Obviously GuoHong and me have quite some way to go before we don’t look like dorks playing it. After that fun little afternoon, I suggested we cook dinner at my place, since Jia Hao mentioned to me before of his keen interest to learn how to cook. After a quick run into NTUC, we were ready for our little pasta cookout!

Wanted to keep it as a simple one dish meal, something we could all do easily at home for most any occasion, something which suits most peoples tastes, something that can be varied easily, something that can be made in an Asian kitchen, so I decided on Spaghetti and Meatballs.

For the benefit of JiaHao and Jeremy, here are the directions and “recipe” I promised to write out. Dear friends: tsp = teaspoon = something like the spoon you get at the cookhouse, measured flat, tbs = tablespoon = roughly a chinese soup spoon, slightly heaped up. In reality I can’t be bothered to measure anything, I don’t like washing that many spoons @_@

Spaghetti with Meatballs, the convenient way, in an average Singaporean kitchen (serves 4)

* = ingredients optional. Just add whatever you think you like >.<

For the Meatballs (makes around 16, enough for 4 people):

450g minced  pork or beef, whatever makes your belly happy

250g diced streaky bacon

4 shallots, finely minced

4 cloves of garlic, finely minced

1 egg

1 tbs corn starch (any starch or just plain flour is fine)

1 tbs bread crumbs (can use flour if you’re lazy)

1 tbs Ketchup (thats 1 packet)

3/4 tbs Ground black pepper

2 tsp soy sauce

1 tbs Oyster sauce

1 tbs Worcestershire sauce*

1 tbs Mustard*

1 tbs Paprika*

3/4 tsp of whatever dried herb or thingy you like* (that night we used rosemary and oregano. Just parsely would be nice. In a pinch, you could just use MIXED HERBS =D )

16 little pieces of cheese*, around the size of a marble (we used the laughing cow cream cheese, the kind that comes wrapped in foil in little triangles and sold as a round wheel with a picture of a cow printed on it, but kraft cheddar block, the kind sold in the blue boxes, should be alright too)

Mix everything except the cheese in a big bowl, till everything looks kinda mixed. If its too wet, add a little more flour or starch to help hold things together. Form into balls with the little bits of cheese in the centre, try to cover the cheese well so it won’t leak out when you fry them. Put 1 tbs cooking oil into a pan, heat it up really hot, and fry the little buggers at medium high heat, around 3 minutes a side should be more than sufficient. Don’t try to move them around too much or they might break apart.

This also makes great hamburgers, just shape them like patties and don’t bother with the cheese, will make around 4-5 patties.

Tomato Sauce (enough for 4 people)

2 big yellow onions, diced

3 shallots, diced

2 small carrots, diced

1 rather large stalk of celery, diced

5 cloves of garlic, minced

6 mushrooms, sliced* (shitake or swiss brown are alright, just not the ones that come from a can)

2 cans of diced tomatoes (or a 700-800g jar of ready made tomato sauce if you’re lazy, Prego’s herb garlic mushroom thing is decent)

To taste: mixed herbs, salt, pepper, splash or two of wine or chicken stock

Saute onions and shallots in a saucepan (or wok, whatever is handy) with 2 tbs of olive oil at medium heat until onions start to look translucent, takes abit more than 5 min, add garlic and fry till slightly fragrant, followed by the celery and carrots. Stir occasionally till everything starts to brown slightly and carrots are just slightly soft. Then add mushrooms, if using, and cook till brown. Add in diced tomatoes including the juice from the can, and wine/stock if using, followed by whatever herbs you want. Cover and let simmer for at least 20 minutes at a really low heat.  Salt and pepper to taste, if sauce is too dry, add a little water, if its too wet, then just let the moisture simmer off. If necessary, you can now cheat by adding a dollop or 2 of ketchup, but don’t tell anyone this. This is specially if the tomatoes are really sour or tasteless, which isn’t rare.

Cook the pasta according to instructions on the packet. Even though the packet would say otherwise, a 500g pack of pasta usually serves about 6 moderately hungry chinese fellas, so don’t cook the whole packet if you’ve been following everything above exactly!

Serve, eat, talk cock, sing song and have fun!

I kind of misjudged the amount of sauce needed to plate 5 portions of pasta and only chucked in 1 can of tomatoes (which is usually alright when I'm serving Mummy+Daddy+myself). This explains why it is rather skimpily dressed.

 

Foccacia Attempt #1

Olive and Rosemary

It’s rather scary how much olive oil goes into a foccacia. Add that to the list of things we’re better off not knowing >.<

 

wow that was fast.

Yay! I’m on culturepush! Do take a look there, but please skip the first few lines about my educational background, didn’t realise they would actually copy that from my CV, I sound like a really obnoxious and arrogant prick @_@ but I gotta say, they do work very fast in getting these posts up, I only just sent them my stuff 36 hours ago.

 

Gallivantry, pedantary, luxury, and how I am clogging my artery.

All in Hong Kong whilst staying over at my cousin’s apartment.

 

gateux attempt no. 6

I just attended an espresso workshop last night in town, were we spent 4 hours just pulling shots and learning to steam milk for cappucini and latte, and of course making the cool swirly patterns on the top of the cup. Having drunk most of our end products, the result was a brain swimming in caffeine.  Inability to sleep was a given, therefore I decided to devote my time to shutter-gushinging my newest baby in the fridge instead.

Blackforest cake frosted with chocolate ganache, studded with chocolate meringue batons.

 

the level of satisfaction derived from the scene depicted below,

… can hardly be described in terms of words. However verbose a display of superlative would never suffice to describe the enlightened state of mind achieved from having crafted the object shown below, a manifestation of the most basic of human desires.