December 2, 2022November 28, 2022 by Sharlene

Eating Singapore 2022

Well, this post is several months late, but I wanted to chronicle some of the great food I ate when I was in Singapore in July and August. We were there for slightly over a month!

Singapore style seafood at Jumbo at Dempsey Road. Chili crab, deep-fried baby squid, Hokkien mee and more.

I have no idea what this place is called but it’s under a block of flats somewhere, and is a really good place for Singapore local food called “zichar”. There’s sweet and sour pork, beef horfun, butter crab, prawn paste chicken, and more.

Sushiro is a conveyor-belt sushi joint from Japan and seems to have sprung up so many branches in Singapore over the past few years. The variety and quality of the sushi is really good and we ate there several times.

The kids’ favourite Singapore food is satay.

Another Singapore treat is kueh pie tee. This is a cooked mixture of thinly sliced turnips and carrots inside a crispy tart shell. We had ours topped with half a prawn and some chili sauce.

This is roti prata which is eaten with curry.

Haidilao is a popular hotpot chain from China. It’s always crowded and when you wait for your table, you can sit outside the restaurant and have snacks and drinks.

While we have several Thai restaurants where we live, I find that Thai eateries in the US tend towards the sweeter side, except for those in Thai town in LA. I love Thai food and my friend recommended this one called Nakhon Kitchen. The food was delicious!

I love eclairs. This is a bakery that sells only eclairs and aren’t they such beauties?

Left to right: Lemon meringue, Earl Grey, Lychee white peach, dark chocolate

I met my friend at this place called Rhubarb. It had a lovely omakase lunch that started with these scallops and grapefruit.

A fun restaurant in the downtown area called Holy Crab. Full of punny food names, like this one called Crabtree and Evelyn. Before the waiter cut up the broccoli, he said, ok you can all take photos first. It’s sitting in a beautiful crab sauce, hence the name.

But one of the best things to eat was surprisingly this salted egg yolk corn dish. So addictive.

November 25, 2022November 23, 2022 by Sharlene

#WeekendCooking Spam Egg Rice Sandwich

So I’m not entirely sure what the official name of this is. I’ve seen it called a “folded kimbap” as well as “onigirazu”. Essentially it’s a “sandwich” of sorts made with seaweed, rice, spam, egg, and really, whatever filling you might want to put in that works well. The 9yo and I first came across this on the Cooking Haru YouTube channel.

The boys love spam and we ate so much spam musubi when we were in Hawaii, as it was quick and available at all the supermarkets.

Cooked some short grain rice. Cut a slit through a quarter of the seaweed (see the video for details), scooped rice onto the first bottom lefthand corner, added some sesame oil, green onions, sesame seeds, and kimchi. The quarter above gets two slices of fried spam, and some sliced cucumbers. I decided that was enough for me.

This one was for my son. He wanted to have it exactly like the YouTube video, so there’s rice, spam, some Kraft cheese, and a fried egg. The spam and cheese was salty enough so I didn’t season the egg. He later declared that it would be better without the cheese, and replaced it with cucumbers.

We wrapped up a couple of them for my 11yo, who has been at science camp in the mountains the past couple of days. It was a fun meal to try.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page

November 4, 2022November 2, 2022 by Sharlene

Black Forest Birthday Cake #WeekendCooking

It’s November and that means we’ve been having our fill of homemade Black Forest cake. I make one every year for the husband’s birthday (this is last year’s).

I used this chocolate layer cake recipe from King Arthur. But this time, instead of boiling water, I made coffee instead. I used frozen cherries to make the cherry filling (recipe here).

I decorated with freshly whipped cream, shaved chocolate, and fresh raspberries.

It’s a five layer cake! Best consumed within the next few days.

June 10, 2022June 6, 2022 by Sharlene

What to do with (almost) 20 pounds of cherries #WeekendCooking

Brentwood, CA, is full of cherry farms. And during weekends in May and early June, the farms are full of families who’ve driven up from the Bay Area to pick cherries. Along with some friends, we drove an hour to RC Farms one Sunday morning, making sure to get there when the farm opened at 9am. Our family ended up with two buckets full of cherries.

So besides eating them fresh, here’s what I did with the cherries.

Cherry pie. This was the first time I’ve made cherry pie. I’ve made other pies, like blueberry and apple. I used this cherry pie recipe from Sally’s Baking Recipes, as well as the all-butter pie crust recipe on the website. The recipe was well written and easy to follow. And it turned out really delicious! I like how the half the cherries are to be left in halves (the rest are quartered) so that we had nice large pieces of cherries in the pie.

Cherry turnovers.

I made a bit of a cherry compote with some cherries, cooking it down slightly with a bit of sugar and vanilla essence. Then added it to some cut out store-bought puff pastry (it was right there and easy!). Another layer of puff pastry goes on top, and the sides are crimped with a fork. Brush with some egg wash and bake. A quick and yummy breakfast!

We also ate the cherry compote with yogurt. My younger son thought I needed to put more sugar in the compote but it was sweet enough for me.

Chocolate cherry ice cream

My absolute favourite of all these cherry treats was the chocolate cherry ice cream. I based it off David Lebovitz’s Chocolate Ice Cream recipe from his book, The Perfect Scoop. But added the cherry compote, just chopped up finely. He has a Toasted Almond and Candied Cherry ice cream in the book, but I didn’t have almonds plus my kids aren’t fond of nuts, so I figured that chocolate and cherry ice cream would do just fine. In his cherry ice cream, he uses 1 cup of the chopped candied cherries but mine was quite a bit more than 1 cup.

If you’re looking to make ice cream at home, I highly recommend The Perfect Scoop. His recipes are clear and easy to follow and more importantly, everything I’ve made from this book has turned out delicious.

May 6, 2022May 5, 2022 by Sharlene

Tangzhong marble bread #WeekendCooking

I love tangzhong bread (also known as milk bread). If you’re not familiar with that, it’s a type of soft bread that’s made with a roux or tangzhong. It just requires an extra step of making the tangzhong but the end result is a very lovely soft bread. I first posted about tangzhong bread here.

For a few years now, I’ve been using this recipe from Christine’s Recipes. It’s an easy chuck it all the in bread mixer recipe (at least for the first part). It does result in delicious and soft tangzhong bread. But when I came across the book, Milk Bread and Mooncakes by Kristina Cho, I wanted to give her recipe a try.

So her Mother of all Milk Bread recipe is a little more involved than the one I’ve been using. Cho’s recipe asks for the milk to be scalded. Whereas, previously I had just been adding the milk in straight from the jug. Also, when adding the cut-up butter, it asks to add it piece by piece, so that the butter is fully incorporated before the next piece is added. With the other recipe, I would cut up the softened butter and just toss it all into the bread machine. The dough is a lot less wet and sticky than the recipe from Christine’s Recipes.

So when I browsed through the book, a version of the milk bread that stood out was the Matcha and Black Sesame Marbled Milk Bread recipe. I had matcha powder but didn’t have black sesame. But there was also a recipe for a chocolate version of the Mother of all Milk Bread, which was just adding 3 tbsp of cocoa powder to the dough. So I thought, I could do a chocolate marble bread instead!

It’s essentially making one loaf of Mother of all Milk Bread and then one loaf of the chocolate milk bread version. Then divide the dough into several portions. Roll one ball of regular dough out. Roll one ball of chocolate dough out. Then place one on top of the other, tuck in the sides, then roll it up, like when making regular tangzhong bread.

April 2, 2022April 1, 2022 by Sharlene

Black Forest Birthday Cake #WeekendCooking

You may know that I’ve been making Black Forest Cake for the husband’s birthday for a few years now. (This is last year’s)

But this year, my older son decided he too wanted a Black Forest birthday cake. I made him a chocolate birthday cake last year.

Cherries still aren’t in season though, so I stuck with frozen cherries. But I still used my favourite chocolate layer cake recipe from KAF. The cherry mixture and whipped cream recipes are from from this blog.

I like to make the cake layers ahead of time and freeze them. So that way I won’t get too flustered by having to do too many things on one day! It helps that we have a large upright freezer in the garage.

I am of the opinion that cakes should be at the very least three layers of cake. But birthday cakes should reach for the stars with five layers.

This time I added some chocolate ganache to go on top.

To avoid bad icing handwriting, a Happy Birthday sign (that plays music) always is a better bet!

March 12, 2022March 11, 2022 by Sharlene

Pork rib and lotus root soup #WeekendCooking

I must be missing Singapore again, as I cooked some Singapore food this week.

Pork rib and lotus root soup

Lotus root is actually the stem of the lotus. I love its crunchy texture. Even after cooking it for a few hours, it remains crunchy. But it will start to discolour after peeling, so peel it just before cooking

This is one of my favourite Chinese-style soups. It’s easy to make but it does take a bit of time to cook. It would probably be faster if you have an instant pot, which I don’t.

Some recipes call for soaking the ribs for an hour. Others just require the bones to be blanched in boiling water. This helps to remove the blood from the ribs, and gives you a clearer soup.

But essentially, it’s a soup made from pork ribs, sliced lotus root (washed well and peeled), some slices ginger, and some salt and white pepper to taste. I simmered my soup on the stove for about four hours. And served it with some pan-fried miso-marinated salmon fillet, garlicky zucchini, and rice.

Pulut Hitam or black glutinous rice

My kids love this dessert. If you can find black glutinous rice, it’s really easy to make too. Please note that not all black rice is glutinous rice. So make sure the packaging states that it’s glutinous or sticky rice!

This is the type of black sticky rice I got from my local Asian supermarket.

It’s pretty much like making a porridge, just rinse the rice and then cook it with water, a bit of salt. When you rinse the rice, the water will remain purplish in color. That’s normal. This recipe uses 5 cups of water to 200 g of rice. Check on the water level regularly when it’s cooking and add more water if needed. I used my slow cooker and it took a few hours for the rice to break up and soften. Add sugar to taste. We like to serve it with coconut milk.

February 1, 2022January 17, 2022 by Sharlene

Happy Lunar New Year! #WeekendCooking

Happy Year of the Tiger! 新年快乐！万事如意！

During our trip to Singapore in December and January, my mum ordered yusheng, a popular “salad” that’s supposed to be good luck when eaten during Lunar New Year.

It has lots of different fruits and vegetables like carrots, radish, shallots, pomelo, ginger, yam. Usually these are shredded into long strips. Raw salmon is a popular topping.

The different ingredients are symbolic. The fish (yu) sounds like the “yu” word in the saying 年年有余 (nian nian you yu), which means abundance through the year. The sweet plum sauce is supposed to represent 甜甜蜜蜜 that life will be sweet. In a restaurant, the server will utter all these various auspicious sayings as they place the specific item on the plate.

When the dish is ready, everyone takes a pair of chopsticks, and the “lohei” begins. It essentially is a tossing of the yusheng ingredients, while saying various good luck wishes. The higher you toss, the better.

As a kid, I never liked eating yusheng. There was too much ginger in it for me. I would grudgingly eat a few mouthfuls for good luck and look forward to the next course. But I love it today. It’s fresh and tasty and has a great blend of ingredients!

January 17, 2022 by Sharlene

What I Ate In Singapore #WeekendCooking

We had a bit of a whirlwind trip to Singapore in December. Winter break for the kids is only about two weeks here, so we usually don’t go to Singapore for Christmas. But since we hadn’t seen our families for 2.5 years, and Singapore had recently announced the Vaccinated Travel Lanes (where flights are only for vaccinated travellers and no quarantine period is needed), we had to go back.

Being on the Vaccinated Travel Lane required us to take rapid antigen tests for the first seven days. The first PCR test we had to do was at the airport. Days 3 and 7 were supervised rapid antigen tests at government centres. And the rest were done at home, with results submitted online, before we could leave the house.

We tried to minimise our movements to less crowded places for the first few days. But that didn’t mean the eating had to be minimised. Also, since it was the festive season, that meant Christmas Eve and Day dinners with families. And also New Year’s Eve and Day meals too. Here are some highlights of our 2.5 weeks there.

Christmas Eve dinner featured ham, sausages, salads, smoked duck and more.

Christmas Day lunch was British-style, with turkey, bread sauce, Christmas pudding.

Christmas Day dinner. Lots of seafood! And my mum made pecan pie.

A lot of meals were takeout, to minimise any risks, especially since we stayed either with my parents or in-laws.

Fishball noodles

And the hawker centre stall that the fishball noodles came from. You can pick from the different types of fresh noodles (the flat type I had is called meepok) and whether you want it to be spicy. It also comes in a soup version.

One of my favourites – rojak. A kind of salad with pineapple, cucumber, mango, bean sprouts, youtiao, jicama, grilled dried squid, and mixed with a kind of sweet sour sauce that has tamarind and shrimp paste. Also, satay in the background

Modern Singapore food at Rempapa

Massive crabs. One was cooked with a chili crab sauce. The other is in an “imperial broth”. The fish noodles in the big box behind were really delicious too.

The Sweet Stuff

Loved this eclair-focused high tea with a friend at L’eclair Patisserie.

Being back in December-January meant that Lunar New Year favourites were available. The rolled up biscuits are known as love letters. They’re very thin and delicate. The flowers are kueh bangkit, which are made from coconut milk, tapioca flour etc to create a melt-in-your-mouth delight.

It’s not so easy to find these fried pastries anymore. This one is known as butterfly bun. We also bought some goreng pisang (fried battered bananas).

I was also delighted to have mangosteens. One of my favourite fruits!

Weekend Cooking was started by Beth Fish Reads and is now hosted by The Intrepid Reader and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, beer, wine, photographs

November 12, 2021November 8, 2021 by Sharlene

Black Forest Cake 2021 #WeekendCooking

The husband’s favourite cake is Black Forest cake. And I’ve been making one for him for his birthday every October since at least 2013. And this year’s was the tallest one yet.

Here is last year’s Black Forest cake.

As I’ve done for the past couple of years, the cake layers are made using this King Arthur Flour recipe. It’s a hot water chocolate cake and it’s simple and nice and light. This is important in Black Forest cake. The layers of cake sandwich whipped cream and cherry preserve, so a rich cake is just too much.

For the cherry preserve, I used frozen cherries since they’re not in season in autumn. I use this recipe for the cherries and the whipped cream, slightly reducing the icing sugar in the cream to about 200grams. I didn’t add the chocolate ganache but instead topped the cake with chocolate shavings that I peeled from a bar of dark chocolate.