shiokadelicious!

It Depends On Whether You Are A Romantic Or A Realist…

…as to which Mid-Autumn Festival legend you are more likely to believe or even enjoy.

There is of course the romantic, if somewhat tragic, legend of Chang Er, the immortal beauty who lives on the moon. There is also the story of stoic patriots who overthrew the evil occupiers that ruled their land.

Continue reading "It Depends On Whether You Are A Romantic Or A Realist…"

Activating My Green Fingers, If Any

Happy Monday to you! Hope you had a fantabulous weekend!

I’d like some advice please.

I’m thinking of starting a tiny patch-sized herb garden. I’m tired of the constant “struggle” of buying fresh herbs from the supermarket / market, not using all of them up, and feeling guilty when they end up having to be thrown out.

Continue reading "Activating My Green Fingers, If Any"

Smooth, Snowy Sweetness

Perhaps you may have noticed : in the last few weeks, I’ve been going through a phase of desiring, and thus indulging in, a fair bit of homey Chinese comfort foods. Maybe it’s the tremendous work pressure I’ve been under lately, but I’ve just been wanting lots of restorative, soulful foods. And being one with a sweet-tooth, more often than not the comfort foods that I crave are sweet. So I’ve been working my way through my little repertoire of traditional Chinese sweet soups or tang shui / tong shui.

This is another very simple, terribly easy to prepare, and yet highly satisfying and enjoyable tong shui…

Continue reading "Smooth, Snowy Sweetness"

Glad Tidings

Just a quick note : I have been informed by Cold Storage that they have a new shipment (from their new distributor) of Arnott’s Tim Tams - - in the Classic Dark flavor! (And of course, also in the regular milk chocolate flavor too.)

So, for those who have been missing these bikkies and been suffering withdrawal symptoms (or am I the only incurable addict around here? ), they should be available at Cold Storage outlets. I’m not sure if they are available island-wide though.

As for me and my mum? We’re two happy campers today… now that we have gotten a whole new stash of our daily sugar fix!

Thanks to Cold Storage for making it happen.

Going Looney Over Mooncakes

This is the time of year when I really do go quite looney (not that I don’t display vestiges of such behavior from time to time during the rest of the year) over mooncakes. I love mooncakes; but I can also be quite finicky about which ones I’ll eat. They have to be worth the while, if you know what I mean – worth all that sugar, fat and calories!

What has been somewhat odd for me this year – during my annual ‘mooncake binge’ – is a seeming shift in the desires of my taste-buds; my palate seems to have gone all traditional on me.

Continue reading "Going Looney Over Mooncakes"

Shall I Bring a Piglet Home With Me?

For me, an integral part of each Mid-Autumn Festival is the Takashimaya mooncake bazaar. This is the place to go to sample, under one roof, all the different mooncake offerings from most of the major food players in town – hotels, restaurants and bakeries both modern and traditional – plus, some foreign hotels and restaurants as well. Here, you get to discover what the “hottest” new tastes in mooncakes are for the year ; what the creative juices of the chefs have thrown up for the current festival. Deep in the labyrinth of its aisles, your spirit starts to soar with the infectious festive joy and excitement.

The fair is a heady, pulse-elevating, taste-buds-working-over-time experience. Stall after stall of mooncakes and more mooncakes! Tasting samples of all flavors, aromas and shapes are thrust at you from all directions. Your eyes work furiously to take in all the colors and textures. Your palate falls into a deep, swirling whirlpool of tastes and smells. It’s almost trance inducing. It’s intoxicating. It’s exhilarating. It’s pure gluttony - or gastronomy, if you prefer.

Continue reading "Shall I Bring a Piglet Home With Me?"

IMBB 8 – Part II: Boozy Potatoes

Yes, I know. I served up dessert (IMBB 8 – Part I) before the savory course. But that’s not too unusual, given how much I love desserts and how, when dining out, that is the section of the menu I always peruse first, before making any decisions about what I will order for the rest of my meal!

This dish wasn’t a planned IMBB entry; it just sort of happened. On Friday evening, I was flipping through my newest gem of a cookbook find, “The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen” by Eric Gower. [This is a very interesting and lovely cookbook ; almost all the recipes sound and look tempting, and also seem incredibly simple to execute. The fusion food angle is very subtle and fine-tuned; nothing ridiculous – no wild and unrestrained dumping together of any and every ingredient into a frenzied marriage of East and West. It’s not fusion for the sake of fusion; Gower seems to have an innate understanding and sensibility about Japanese cooking which comes through. And he does a good job of coupling this with his Western culinary background. I’m really enjoying this book – especially now, after I’ve tasted the results of this potato recipe.]

Anyway, as I was saying - I was flipping through the book, looking for general food ideas and inspiration, when I came across this page. The title leapt out at me: Boozy Japanese Potatoes. Now, how could anyone not stop and give their undivided attention to a heading like that. The picture was gorgeous. The recipe sounded wonderfully easy, simple and incredibly tasty. I just had to try this. I decided this was what I was going to serve up for Sunday brunch. It was only as I was cooking the potatoes that it occurred to me that this was absolutely perfect for this month’s IMBB. And thus, this bonus post - on top of my original IMBB entry of the “spirited” chiffon cakes.

Continue reading "IMBB 8 – Part II: Boozy Potatoes"

IMBB 8 – Part I: Two “Spirited” Chiffon Sisters

Random food ideas sometimes have a funny way of creeping – unannounced and most often uninvited – into my consciousness. And very often, once there, they refuse to leave until I get off my derriere and do something active about them – in the kitchen; creating whatever entity it is that has been preoccupying my mind. Occasionally, these ad hoc “inspirations” (if you can call them that) feel like insidious invasions; they can be triggered by the most innocent of stimuli, and yet, once happily ensconced within the recesses of my mind, they simply will not budge until I bring them to life in the physical dimension.

Take for instance my recent bout of “preoccupation” with chiffon cakes. It started with a grocery buying trip to Carrefour hypermarket. I happened to stroll past the rack displaying rows and rows of pandan chiffon cakes. The huge sign above them screamed their special offer price of only $2.99 (US$1.75) for one whole cake. Sub-consciously, I mused: why is it that chiffon cakes in this part of the world are almost invariably pandan-flavored? I mean, they are ubiquitous in all the supermarkets and bakeries. They all look the same, taste pretty much the same, and in all likelihood all come from the same one (or maybe two) factories. The most exciting that life gets for a chiffon cake here is perhaps to be flavored in chocolate rather than pandan!

And that was the simple trigger that set off a whole chain of baking activity. Once started, the thoughts on chiffon cakes could not be stemmed. Even as I continued to place items into my shopping cart, my mind stayed resolutely on chiffon cakes. I’ve never made a chiffon cake before. Would you believe? Decades ago, in the time before commercially available chiffon cakes, my mum used to bake them quite regularly – also in the pandan flavor. But it has been literally decades since I’ve last eaten a home-made chiffon cake (I mean, at only a few dollars for a whole cake in the shops, few can be bothered to heat up the oven and make one from scratch). I’ve even forgotten what a “true” chiffon cake tastes like – my only active memories are of not-terribly-exciting, hardly-very-tasty commercial ones. Hmmmm… maybe… maybe I should try my hand at making a chiffon cake. Maybe I can jazz it up a little, and give it a more exciting spin…

Continue reading "IMBB 8 – Part I: Two “Spirited” Chiffon Sisters"

Matrimony is Good for Your Eyes

That title probably caught your attention!

But no, I’m not talking about marriage, but rather the “vegetable” Matrimony Vine. This is actually the branch and leaves of the same plant from which the Chinese wolfberry (gou qi) comes. In Chinese, the vine is (naturally) referred to as “gou qi cai” (in Mandarin) or “kou kay choi” (in Cantonese). [In other parts of South East Asia, it takes on the names “daun koki” (Indonesia) and “phon kao ki” (Thailand).]

Just as the dried fruit (gou qi) is very often used in Chinese cooking – most commonly in soups, both sweet and savory – so too are the leaves of the Lycium Chinensis plant cooked and eaten.

Continue reading "Matrimony is Good for Your Eyes"

A Light Caress Upon My Palate

After yesterday’s meaty post, I thought today I would write about something light and delicate, and yet very sustaining, soothing and restorative.

Continue reading "A Light Caress Upon My Palate"