Monthly Archives: May 2009

Curry laksa with beehoon

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Curry Laksa with Beehoon

Sorry folks, as much as I love to share the recipe, I don’t have one. I just used a curry laksa mix, add the necessaries – ground onions, coconut milk – and then serve it with noodles topped off with shredded chicken, peeled prawns and bean sprouts with a couple of sprinkles of fried onions. Would have added fried tofu pieces but I couldn’t find them here so I just settled for the basics.

The curry laksa mix was meant for a 10-person serving but I suspect that it meant making the broth watery which isn’t what I look for in GOOD curry laksas. The perfect laksa is always thick, creamy and flavourful. This one, which served four (lunch and dinner for both of us), is that and Nil is utterly in love with it – even muttered outloud that he wouldn’t mind a second bowl. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any leftover. Haha.

Now, for some dessert in the form of some Manhattan cheesecake with fresh strawberries – I have to finish it, no?

The cutting action I’m seeing…

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Cutting up fabric

…is coming mostly from my rotary blade!

Am working on Quilt #3 and I must say that it’s tedious work when you buy fabric by the meter then cut it up into rectangles, squares and such. I ran into some issues because of one mistake – I cut width-wise instead of length-wise. This basically means instead of getting strips of 6.25 cm by 105 cm, I got 6.25 cm by 45-50 cm.

Aiiiii…that basically threw a spanner into the whole thing. I had to go back to the board and recalculate stuff, cut additional strips and still, as I’m left with half more to cut down into size, I’m wondering if I’ve got enough strips, rectangles and squares prepared.

O’well, we’ll find out soon enough when the piecing part kicks in. :)

Strawberry Manhattan Cheesecake

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Strawberry Manhattan Cheesecake

Thanks to Mum’s birthday which passed recently, I developed a sudden craving for cake – all that online shopping for flowers and cake didn’t help ONE bit at all! I didn’t want to go for something with chocolate, nuts and dried fruits even though the pantry is stocked with almonds, dried cranberries, cocoa powder, cooking chocolate and all.

So after consulting the recipe books and such, I finally settled on cheesecake even though Nil doesn’t really like the stuff – in fact, he doesn’t like cake at all. But too bad for him since I’ve been dying for cake and not just any other cake for the past few days. So we stocked up the fridge with the necessities for a nice cheesecake, one that isn’t chilled 100%. Yes, I usually avoid baked cheesecakes because I find them to be a hassle but I thought what the heck, why not try this one.

As with all my baked goods, I cut down on the sugar content by reducing the amount and then substituting refined sugar with raw cane sugar. I am not too sure if other people out there feel the same but I noticed that when I use refined sugar (which is white), it tastes too sweet even though I’ve reduced the amount whereas with cane sugar it’s just either right or not sweet enough. (Could I be wrong on this one?) Hence why I prefer consuming raw cane sugar – less sweeter.

Anyway, it’s no different with this cheesecake – less sugar and less fat. Instead of regular cream cheese, I opted for the low fat one – raw, it doesn’t taste quite as rich as the original block of cream cheese but after adding the eggs and such, it was just as good. The original recipe called for a blueberry topping which basically is jam but with more liquid to it. I didn’t really fancy the idea of putting on jam which is sweet on top of something which is already sweet so I pulled out the bucket of fresh strawberries. Of course, I could have added chunks into the sour cream itself but I forgot all about it until it was too late. O’well, that’s what happens when you’re pregnant – you tend to forget stuff all the time!

Oh, just in case you’re wondering, I didn’t exactly bake this in a bain marie. I just placed this on the rack and poured some water into the roasting pan sitting below the rack. The result was a very moist and steamy oven, and the cake turned out quite well, I might add. No cracks and such. :)

Strawberry Manhattan Cheesecake
Adapted from The Cook’s Companion by Lisa McCormick

Ingredients
6 tbsp butter
200 gms graham crackers – crushed
1 3/4 cups cream cheese
2 large eggs
Slightly less than 3/4 cup cane sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups sour cream
Fresh strawberries – quartered

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 190 C and brush a 9-inch springform pan with butter or line with baking paper.
  2. Melt the butter over low heat and once ready, stir in the crackers and spread out in the pan evenly.
  3. Place the cream cheese, eggs, 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract in a bowl and mix until smooth. Pour over the cracker base and smooth the top. Bake for 20 minutes until set (add some water to the oven – see explanation in the notes before the recipe). Remove from the oven and leave for 20 minutes. Leave the oven switched on.
  4. Mix the sour cream with the remaining sugar and vanilla extract in a bowl and spoon over the cheesecake. Return to the oven for 10 minutes, then remove to let it cool and then chill in the refridgerator for 8 hours, preferably overnight.
  5. When needed, remove the cheesecake from the pan, arrange fresh strawberries over the top and serve chilled as is.

Chinese crullers and such

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Chinese crullers & Ham Cheem Peng

First up, don’t let the size of the plate deceive you. These Chinese crullers and ham cheem peng (Chinese crullers with five spice powder in it) are mini ones – about 10cm to 4cm in size (length or diameter). I like them smaller and such but the trouble with making them this small is that I had to not stretch the Chinese crullers or roll out the ham cheem peng which resulted in a slightly dense texture for some. BUT one saving grace is that they did puff up well so next time around, I’ll be stretching and rolling them out a little. Hehehe.

Second, I didn’t make these from scratch simply because I’ve been having problems looking for ingredients like alum and ammonium bicarbonate here. So I settled for the next best thing when I went to Lyon a couple of days back – a flour mix from Thailand. Yes, they have the same stuff there except that it’s called patongo! In case you’re wondering how it looks, you can check out a pic of the flour mix here. I didn’t use the entire box simply because it states that 500 gms makes 60 pieces and there was no way that I would be having 60 pieces of Chinese crullers for breakfast even if I wanted to! :)

This mix made my life much easier – honestly. All I did was add water and some oil together with the flour into my bread machine and about 1.5 hours later, the dough was ready to be cut and shaped into crullers for frying! Just a quick note though – you might want to dab the surface when you’re stacking one dough on top of the other instead of just sandwiching them together with a stick. Otherwise, you might just end up with two separate doughs instead of the regular Chinese crullers!

Anyway, I have half left and I’m planning on making some another day to go with some porridge (century egg porridge sounds super at the moment) and this time, instead of ham cheem peng, I’m going to try another favourite – crullers with glutinous rice! Now…I wonder if I can find the same thing here in Neuchatel. Hm.

Quilt #2: Autumn Heaven

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Quilt #2: Showing off the binding and backing

Quilt #2: Autumn Heaven
Width | Approx 68 cm
Length | Approx 92 cm
Pattern details | 3″ 100% cotton squares from Ebay, cross arrangement, alternate colour schematics
Batting | None
Backing | 80-20% cotton-polyester fabric from Textile Ambience
Binding | Single fold 100% cotton tape in cream-yellow from Textile Ambience

This turned out surprisingly well even though it was slightly smaller than the first blanket I made and with a number of errors (lets go through them one by one).

For starters, the pattern this time isn’t random. The cotton squares I purchased come in several designs and each design has about 20 pieces cut down to size (3 inches). So I decided to rotate several colour pairs by way of inversion and such. To top off the pattern, I put an all-brown border, again repeating some colours, and then finally an all-white border. After sewing together the pieces, I discovered right towards the end when all of the squares were pieced that one of the cross in the patterns is off and the white border on one end has been switched around. Aiii…talk about something not matching its twin.

Then of course there is still the matter of getting the seams of each of the squares to match. Somehow I screwed up on piecing them properly. At one time while fiddling with the machine, I nearly sewed over a pin so the resulting line wasn’t straight with ended up with more fabric “eaten” to compensate for the seam. So some squares were quite off but again, thankfully, it’s just some. Again, definitely more work on the accuracy and such is needed.

Then there was the matter of sewing the bias. I can’t seem to find double fold bias tapes and somehow despite pinning this, I ran into some issues halfway while sewing this – I didn’t sew down a smallish portion of the tape so I had to run through the whole blanket twice and the offending section four times. ARGH! Luckily the thread is the same colour as the tape, otherwise I would be kicking myself!

Anyway, the finished piece is still very lovely and I am utterly tempted to keep this for myself but Nil said no. So off it’ll go as originally intended. I hope the recipient will like it as much as we do. 8)

Quilt #2: Fresh from the oven

Blanket #2 in the making

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Quilt #2 in progress

This time, it’s smaller squares with similar patterns BUT at least two mistakes plus a couple of off-center squares…I think I ought to NOT put my patches together when it’s late at night – bleary eyes and all.

The patchwork design this time is slightly different. I was aiming for an all-white/cream outer border followed by an all-brown second border and then a number of crosses in the same pieces of fabric but inverted alternately. The error, sad to say, is towards the end – the pieces that I last worked on. Note to self – must NOT take breaks in between sewing blocks. I had done things differently this time, choosing to work on sewing up half of the squares into 4×4 blocks instead of doing all of them at one go. Hence the errors.

Nil didn’t even notice it until I pointed it out…well, actually I didn’t notice it until I took a closer look at the picture just moments ago. His remark was funny to say the least – “Never mind, it’s for so-and-so” and promptly gave me the cheekiest grin ever.

Yes, I married a good AND funny man. 8)

On a totally unrelated topic, can someone tell me if I would still look good in a lace teddy? Being pregnant, I can hardly fit into my undies let alone sexy undies. Hm…maybe I should just wait till after Eva is born to fit into a lace teddy.

Pork trotter in black vinegar & ginger

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Pork trotter in black vinegar & ginger

Pork trotter in black vinegar with ginger is a common dish served during confinement periods after pregnancy as it is said that the calcium in the bones and the heat from the ginger helps to revitalise and replenish nutrients in the new mother’s body. I do know of friends who serve this dish up for Chinese New Year so I guess it can be more than just a confinement dish staple.

The key ingredients are two things – ginger and vinegar. Matured ginger is used here because it imparts a stronger and more intense flavour. Forget getting tender, young buds; you need rough and tough old ginger, the kind that looks wrinkly and old. Now, while white vinegar is common in Western dishes, black vinegar on the other hand is another story altogether. It is usually made from black glutinous rice and most of the time, these bottles of dark acidic liquid come from China. And no, I wouldn’t even think about telling you that it’s okay to substitute black vinegar with normal white table vinegar because that’s just sacrilege.

One of the reasons why I made this is because Mum has been bugging me about whether the black vinegar sold here is “authentic” – I have no idea what she means by authentic since even back at home, we buy imported black vinegar. For this dish, I used the Narcissus “Yongchun Loagu” Black Vinegar which I discovered is also sold back at home (see here (under “black vinegar” category).

It turned out to be exactly how I remember it except that Mum made hers much thicker and in a claypot (I used a normal stainless steel pot) – I think I went overkill on the vinegar. She uses a whole bottle for over one kilo of meat while I just had around 600 to 800 gms of meat. Eeks. Still, I was very generous with the ginger and all. I wonder if I can keep the “stock” in the freezer for another time. :)

Anyway, time to go back to my sewing (thought I’d pop in and share this recipe), use some of my eye creams and moisturisers (I seriously need a full facial and such). Geh.

Pork trotter in black vinegar & ginger

Ingredients
Approx 800 gms pork trotter
Approx 500 gms (or more) matured ginger
650 ml black vinegar
500 gms cane sugar
1 1/2 tbsp sesame oil

Method

  1. Boil the pork trotter to remove impurities and such for 5 to 10 minutes. Wash, drain and place aside.
  2. Keeping the peel on the ginger on, wash and slice into thick chunks. Fry in sesame oil until fragrant before adding in the black vinegar and sugar (adjust the sugar to taste). Bring to a boil and then lower the heat to gently boil for about an hour.
  3. Add the pork trotters in and lower the heat to a simmer and boil until they are soft. It’ll take about an hour. The resulting fragrance should be sweet and gingery.
  4. Serve hot as is or with a side serving of rice and other dishes.

** Cross-posted on the baby blog **

Eva’s Red & Pink Cuddly

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Quilt #1: Showing off the binding and backing

Quilt #1: Eva’s Red & Pink Cuddly
Width | Approx 78 cm
Length | Approx 105 cm
Pattern details | 5″ 100% cotton squares from Moda’s Charm Park Candy Kisses (Ebay), random arrangement
Batting | None
Backing | 100% cotton fabric from Textile Ambience
Binding | Single fold 100% cotton tape in black from Textile Ambience

I’m seriously in love with the colour – the black makes the red pop out (white would have muted the colours and blended in) but hey, Nil and I weren’t exactly looking for the typical baby receiving blanket when we chose the colours. We were quite tired with pastels (y’know how it is with baby clothes and all) and sometimes I think Nil feels that pastels are only great when you’re dead or sick. Ugh.

We did, however, had some problems agreeing on the colour for the backing. Nil wanted something much darker since he felt that the colours were already bright enough but I wanted something that co-ordinated with the colour scheme like red or cream.

After checking out the textile shop nearby, we finally decided on this lovely dark blood red fabric with equally gorgeous dark flowery design for the back. Cutting it down to size and sewing it to the squares weren’t an issue. Working with the bias tape on the other hand was another story altogether. I had purchased about 4 metres of single fold bias tape without realising that I ought to have bought DOUBLE fold instead. Gah.

So after much hunting online for tutorials and what-nots on using bias tapes, I decided to turn this single fold into a double fold. Then there was the issue of sewing it on and such. Mind you, when I was learning sewing in school, working with trimmings and bias tapes was something that I never liked doing…simply because I sucked at it. So I did more read up, referred to a couple of online videos and braved the whole bias tape thing.

The end result was neat but not quite perfect. Still, Nil proclaims that it’s looks great for a first timer. Now this little baby will head off to the washing and storage while I get back to work on Quilt #2 and figuring out which looks better – a suit or a tuxedo. Heh.

Quilt #1: Fresh from the oven