Teochew Brasied Duck

I'm a Teochew and one of my all time favorite Teochew dishes is the Teochew Braised Duck.  I've bought this recipe book: Chinese Heritage Cooking last year but I only recently started to cook some of the heritage dishes and so far, the recipes had turned out really well.

Above was my first attempt at the braised duck and I was really pleased with how the duck turned out. Actually that was half a duck as I wasn't confident to braised one whole duck, so for my next attempt, I will definitely buy a whole of duck.

With this recipe, I don't have to buy overpriced braised duck during Chinese New Year anymore! I can braised my own duck. Whippee!

Pig's trotters in black vinegar

Inspired by Petunia's post on pig's trotters in black vinegar, I decided to cook my very own as well! It has been a long time since I had pig's trotters in black vinegar. I used 2 front trotters, some "muscle meat" for my hubby who prefers lean meat, black fungus and eggs.

Pig's trotters in black vinegar is a classic confinement dish and it is my all time favorite confinement food. I can eat this every week, I swear. Thankfully Hubby and my in-laws are huge fan of pig's trotters in black vinegar too, so that big pot was finished to the very last drop in one setting. No left overs at all!

Looking at Petunia's recipe, she used 2 types of black vinegar: sweet rice vinegar and black rice vinegar. For me, I only used 1 type: the Bull Dog Brand Black Rice Vinegar.

It comes in "single strength" or "double strength" where "double strength" is about 1.5X the price of the "single strength". I have previously only used "double strength" since that was what my mom and my confinement lady used as well.

But this time round, I've decided to give "single strength" a try, to test whether is there any difference. The verdict: no significant difference. However, the "single strength" wasn't as sweet as the "double strength", so I had to add a lot more black sugar, in order to have the same sweetness.

Another interesting fact that I have learnt about this Bull Dog Brand Black Rice Vinegar: it is manufactured in Singapore. Wow... our very own local brand!

Yummy. Looking forward to cook another pot in a month's time! ;)

Jewel Cafe at 129 Rangoon Road

Beanie and I checked out Jewel Cafe at 129 Rangoon Road yesterday. There are so many of these artisan cafes nowadays that they are bringing such a vibrant cafe buzz to Singapore. I love it!

In fact, for the past few weeks, we have been to a few establishments, e.g.: The Coastal Settlements at Changi Village, Piccotin at Turf City, The Orange Thimble and Tiong Bahru Bakery at Tiong Bahru, Omakase Burger at Turf City, Da Paolo at Rochester ... etc.

And so far, my favorite: Jewel Cafe at Rangoon Road.

This cafe serves really GOOD coffee. I must say that I have not had such a good cup of cappuccino for a very long time. Food was very decent for a cafe too, and not too pricey.

So for good, solid coffee, Jewel Cafe will definitely satisfy the inner coffee connoisseur in you.

As for Beanie, she was busy acting cute in front of the camera. My friend, M was totally smitten by Beanie that she was kind enough to babysit Beanie while I was sipping my coffee. Ahhh... bliss for 5 mins.

Beanie is at a very "enjoyable" age now, I can usually just let her loose in a cafe and she will then go around socialize with fellow patrons and leave me alone to drink my coffee or eat my breakfast. However, not everyone is into kids, so if i detect a frown somewhere or at times, Beanie can simply be overbearing, then I will cull Beanie over and strap her to a baby chair.

Thankfully, most of the times, Beanie can get away by acting cute and I can get away by pretending that Beanie is not my child and I'll go hide in one corner to drink my coffee in peace. ;)

What a X'mas dinner!



Little Beanie also joined us in the X'mas feasting!



Home-cured salmon with poached quail eggs and caviar 



Choco lava cake, absolutely YUMMZ!



Cheers to Chef Han for the very delicious X'mas dinner!



Wines for the night. These people sure can drink!

 For the past few years, Hub and I have been organizing charity Christmas dinners where we would provide the food and wine, and the guests would donate accordingly. We would then choose a charity organization to donate the pooled money that we had raised during the charity dinner.

This year, we will be donating to Lions Home for the Elders.

And I must say that this year, we had the best X'mas dinner ever!

First, we had the best fortune to have Chef Han, a promising up and coming chef, who is looking to open a restaurant next year, to prepare and cook for us. For the very first time, I wasn't slaving away in the kitchen and could actually sit down and enjoy the food and wine. ;)

Secondly, the food prepared by Chef Han was like a hundred times better than mine. It was RESTAURANT standard with restaurant presentation. We had 5 courses and everything was exquisite yet home-made by Chef Han. Even the cured salmon! It was the best "private kitchen" dinning experience ever.

Beanie had a lot of fun too, mingling with everyone and raising her water bottle to "cheers" with the guests. Very very cute!

All in all, it was a wonderful X'mas dinner. We can't wait to throw another one next year. However, by then Chef Han will most probably have opened his own restaurant, so I doubt he can be our guest chef anymore...

Nonetheless, it was a wonderful evening to have my hubba, Beanie and good friends with me on Christmas's eve. What a X'mas dinner, a perfect close to 2012!

Beanie, the little coffee connoisseur

"Mmmmm... the coffee tastes good!"

"Wah! The Pecan Lime Tart looks yummy too!"

Chye Seng Huat Hardware: A very cool and chill-out place.

Check out the retro laps and window grills!

Beanie is acting cute in front of the camera again

We checked out 2 very cool coffee joints recently: Chye Seng Huat Hardware (a review by chubby hubby) and Loysel's Toy Cafe (review by Lady Iron Chef). Both blogs wrote excellent reviews on the cafes, thus I will not repeat.

What I will add is that both cafes are opened by the same guys who are behind Papa Palheta, so the coffee is good. Both cafes are situated at really "ulu" places but they are always packed??!! Both cafes have really cool vibes and are surprisingly very baby-friendly.

And yup, we did bring Beanie along to conduct our baby-friendy-or-not tests and both cafes passed with flying colors! Both cafes have open spaces for little tykes to run around, so parents can actually sit back, relax and smell a decent cup of coffee.

Ahh..... .... bliss.

So if you are looking for a chill-out place for a lazy sunday brunch or a catch-up with friends, both cafes are recommended if you are adventurous enough for something off the beaten track. 

Rice, not as easy as it looks!

Somehow, I always mess up dishes that are related to rice. Especially FRIED RICE. My fried rice is always too wet, too sticky. As hard as I've tried, I simply cannot achieve the fragrant, fluffy fried rice like the zhi-czar stalls. Argh... *pull my hair out*

Fried rice = too wet and sticky

Porridge = too sticky and not fragrant

Baked rice = also too sticky! Wait.... baked rice is supposed to be sticky. Heh...

Rice is my nemesis, but I will never give up on rice. I'm a rice-loving Chinese!

Thankfully, the baked rice above turned out ok. And thanks D for the beautiful picture. (as always!)

Note to myself: I really should learn how to take pictures from D.

How much is "1 cup"???

The measurement of "1 cup" really baffles me! I just had a failed attempt at making Banana Cake. ;( Since it was a failed attempt, I'm too embarrassed to post any pic.

The recipe called for 2 cups of plain flour. My measuring cup indicated that 1 cup = 200 ml. But when I googled "1 cup", WikiAnswers and many various websites indicated 1 cup = 236 ml or 240 ml. Then there were also websites that indicated 1 cup = 250 ml. Well, I figured that 10 ml shouldn't make too much of a difference. So I used 480 ml (2 cups) of flour.

But as I was folding the flour into the wet mix, I knew that something was wrong. The mixture was too dry... but I didn't know what I should add to a dry mixture. More eggs? More yogurt? More milk? I had no clue...

Since I was already "committed" to making the Banana cake, I might as well finished it, dry mixture or not, I simply just put it in the oven and hoped for the best...

As expected, the cake turned out to be too dry. So... maybe I should have used 200 ml = 1 cup instead?

I am so confused.... I guess I just have to try another time to figure it out!

Pizza vs Foccacia

2 weekends ago, I tried making some pizzas. Recipe for the crust seemed easy enough and my brother even made some self-made kimchi as topping. The dough wasn't as sticky as I thought it would be and the crust turned out to be very crispy. All in all, my brothers and I had fun making and eating the pizzas...

So, thinking that bread-making would also be as easy-peasy, I made grand plans to make some foccacia bread on the following weekend. I was especially inspired by another blogger, Petunia and her very delicious-looking picture of her grape-with-rosemarry foccacia.

But my first bread-making experience turned out to be a scary one!

It started all good on the Saturday morning, until I really couldn't figure out the recipe as provided by Petunia. The proportions were in "cups" and after translating the measurement to "ML", it still seemed rather strange to me. So, I last minute googled another recipe which I thought look rather simple and easy to understand.

Following the recipe, I mixed the dry and wet ingredients together to get a REALLY sticky dough. In fact, it was sooooo sticky that I freaked out a little, and ended up adding more flour. But, it was still very sticky! After 5 mins of trying to knead the dough, I gave up and dumped the sticky dough to my KitchenAid. I used the dough hook instead to knead the dough.

So while my KitchenAid was kneading the dough, I was clearing up the huge, sticky mess that the dough had made on my table top. I had pieces of sticky dough all over and, I tell you... these sticky bits refused to be washed down the sink! I had to use boiling hot water to dissolve the bits.

After almost 8 minutes, my KitchenAid started making weird noises and I peeped into my mixing bowl. Woah, the sticky dough just got STICKIER!!! Argh...... so, I freaked out once again and added more olive oil. By now, I doubt I was following the recipe anymore...

I stopped the KitchenAid (in case the sticky dough spoil my prized KitchenAid mixer), and decided to knead by hand all over again. So, I kneaded and I kneaded and I kneaded, but the sticky dough simply refused to yield... and it continued to be as sticky as ever, so I added more and more flour... until a "smooth, elastic dough that stretches" was finally formed.

By then, my table top was all messy again. Argh...

Anyway, I could finally start proofing the dough. I put the sticky dough into an oiled bowl and cover the bowl with cling wrap. The recipe indicated 1-2 hrs of proofing until double in size.

So while the dough was proofing, I rushed down to RDA to fulfill my volunteer duties. 2.5 hrs later, I was back and yup, the dough was double in size by then.

I transferred the dough to a square baking tin and let it proofed for another 1 hour or so. Ok, by then my guests would start appearing any moment, so I just had to send it to the oven. A quick dressing of sea salt, cherry tomatoes and thyme leaves from my dying thyme, and in the oven, it went.

25 minutes later, I presented: the Foccacia bread. It was edible, thankfully. Despite of all the additional olive oil, flour and more flour! The bread did not rise as much as I would like, but... at least it did rise!

After this experience, I think I'll just buy a foccacia bread from my Delifrance! Pizzas are definitely easier!

p/s: Thanks E for taking such beautiful pictures of the bread. ;)

Recipe: Braised Beef cheeks

This recipe is from The Sunday Times. Yup, I regularly cut out the recipes featured on The Sunday Times and keep them in a folder. Most recipes are rather easy and from my experience, taste really good! This dish is definitely one of my favorites, the cheeks were very flavorful and so melt-in-your-mouth. All my guests and Hub love it too!

Note: I bought my frozen wagyu beef cheeks from Mmmm! at Square 2 (novena), and they cost about $20 per 450-480g, which could feed either 3 not-very-greedy people or 2 really greedy/hungry people.

Ingredients:

1 tsp dried parsley flakes

1/2 tsp dried thyme

2 bay leaves, coarsely chopped

1.25 L of red wine

130 g carrots, diced

150 g yellow onions, diced

50g celery, diced

4 cloves garlic, crushed with skin on

2 beef cheeks. 450g each

salt and pepper to taste

flour for dusting

1 tbs canola oil

10g butter

Method:

- If using frozen beef cheeks, do rem that they will take about 24 hrs to thaw in the fridge!

To marinate the cheeks:

- Put the dried herbs in a muslin sachet and place it in a large pot, together with 750 ml red wine, carrots, yellow onions, celery and garlic. Bring the mixture to a boil with the lid off, then cool to room temperature.

- Place the beef cheeks in a large resealable plastic bag, add the red wine marinade (with all e herbs + vegetables!) and leave in the chiller for up to 24 hrs.

To cook the cheeks:

- Remove e cheeks and set aside.

- Strain e marinade into a bowl and leave aside. Reserve the herb sachet and vegetables.

- Season the cheeks with salt and pepper, then flour it lightly, dusting off excess.

- Heat a heavy skillet, add canola oil and evenly brown the cheeks on all side on medium heat.

- Pour away excess beef fat rendered in the pan and use the pan to saute the vegetables.

- Placed the sauteed veg, beef cheeks and herb sachet in a casserole dish and add the red wine sauce, and the remaining red wine. Bring to a simmer and skim off surface scum.

- Transfer to a pre-heated oven at 140 deg C and braise for between 3.5 and 4 hrs. The red wine should just cover the top of the cheeks.

- After 3.5 to 4 hrs, remove the beef cheeks and set aside. Strain the sauce into a small saucepan and skim off the layer of oil. Discard the veg and herb sachet.

- Reduce the sauce over low heat until thickens. Season with salt and pepper.

- While waiting for the sauce to reduce, slice the beef cheeks into about 2 cm thick, then sear in a hot pan with butter. By now, the cheeks will be fork tender, so flip it just once when searing.

- To serve, drizzle sauce over the beef cheeks.

Ta-dah! Yummy Braised beef cheeks!

I followed the recipe word for word, until the part of reducing the sauce. My guests were hungry and so, I used Worcestershire steak sauce instead of waiting for the red wine sauce to reduce. The effect was still rather pleasant since the cheeks were already bursting with flavor.

Hopefully you'll enjoy the cheeks as much as I did!

Pear and Chocolate cake with Ice-cream

Chocolate Meringues

Lemon drizzle cake with ice-cream

Braised Wagyu Beef cheeks

Mushroom soup

Above are some pictures of the recent baking and dinning sessions.

Instead of throwing a huge house-warming party, Hub and I have been hosting a series of small group dinners for our friends for the past weeks. And I've been cooking and baking for every weekend for the past 6 weeks or so.

Although it has been fun getting accustomed with my new oven, hob and hood. I'm getting a little tired of cooking and cleaning continuously for the past weeks. Some dinners were held on Fridays, which mean that I've got to start preparation from Wednesdays and there were times when I had to cook soup/bake desserts on the day before until 1.30 am, so that my guests would have something decent to eat.

I need to "close shop" for 2 weeks to recuperate!

Me and my “picky” mouth…

I’m not picky about food, in fact, I eat EVERYTHING. I choose not to eat certain items like shark’s fins, bird nests, blue fin tuna … etc due to environmental concerns. But technically, nothing really disgusts me and I’ve tried cooked bugs or even some raw stuff that normal human beings do not usually eat…

However, it really upsets me when I have to eat bad quality hawker food. Guess I’m spoilt by my mum’s home-cooked dinner since young and now that I’m married and camping with the in-laws, dinners are usually take-aways since my in-laws do not cook.

And I am SO SICK of hawker food! They are either too oily, salty, or at the other extreme end, tasteless and bland. So, whenever I can, I’ll cook my dinner. Be it a steak, pasta or sometimes, a complete Chinese meal of 3 dishes and 1 soup.

And since I stay with the in-laws, it can be a bit tricky if I only cook for myself and Hub, and leave them out. So, I’ll have to be the dutiful daughter-in-law, and rush home to cook dinner on a weekday to feed myself, Hub and the 2 elderly.

It’s not that I’m complaining. Since I’m the itchy backside that wana cook dinner. Nobody is forcing me to do so.

It’s just that I’m picky and want to eat some, wholesome, home-cooked dinner after a long day in office. Although cooking is a hobby for me and I do find it therapeutic, There are times that I do wish, FOR ONCE, I can come home to a home-cooked dinner, instead of being the mad woman who has to hustle around in the kitchen after work.

Now that I’ll be moving to my new place very soon, I’m thinking of buying a slow-cooker to enjoy stews or Chinese soups when I’m back from work. No more yucky hawker food for dinner!

But that will mean that I’ll have to prepare for dinner, on the night before. Haiz, Still no free meals anyway!

Café Le Troquet

I have not been to the one in Paris, but I must say that the Le Troquet in Singapore is pretty damn good!

BF and I decided to check out the place last Saturday after hearing so many good things about the restaurant. In fact, we did not make any reservations as the restaurant is located in Balestier, thus assuming the place should be empty. (Despite being a Saturday night, but who wana hang out at Balestier on a Saturday night?!?!)

And we were right.

There were only 4 tables being occupied, although the restaurant can easily sit about 26 people (inclusive of the “al fresco” area outside). It was a very simple restaurant, no frills. The crowd was casual, we had a group of Ang Mohs in a corner, a young couple behind, and another two older couples beside us.

The restaurant has a set dinner that cost S$48 NETT, with a glass of wine, starter, main course, dessert and coffee/tea. We took the set, although I exchanged my starter to “Pan fried Foie Gras” (you have to pay a bit more) and that was absolutely delicious!

It was crispy on the outside but totally soft in the inside and melted in my mouth within seconds. Wow… it had been a while since I had such well made foie gras.

BF’s starter was salad with cold cuts and that was absolutely delicious too! The cuts were of good quality and tasted really fresh, like fresh, good quality sausages. Yummy…

Oh, before I forgot, they also served WARM bread with Greek beans by the side for pre-starter. The bread was mini-baguette which I remembered eating in Nice and Paris… ahhh. So nice.

I ordered steak for my main course and BF had the Duck Confit. Oohh… the duck confit was excellent! The chef flew in the ducks from France and thus, they are so plump and juicy. A very well executed duck confit… highly recommended!

As for my steak, it was well made; however, it paled in comparison to the duck confit.

By the way, Le Troquet carries a very good range of French wine, which is not expensive at all. We ordered a bottle of red from Rhone Valley and I totally enjoyed it. (I couldn’t remember the label though).

As for the dessert, we went for the cheese selection, where 3 kinds of cheese were served. I believe they are blue, bree and camembert. I personally love blue cheese… thus I gobbled that within minutes. I did not try the sweet desserts, thus I cannot comment much on that.

All in all, it was an excellent dinning experience where I had good quality French food, in a relax environment where I don’t have to pretend and speak in a fake accent to get my orders done.

The owner of the restaurant is Suzanne Leong and she stayed in France for a couple of years. Thus, that explained the authentic French food.

She is very friendly, but a bit blur as she misunderstood my orders twice. Nonetheless, she is warm and sincere to serve the best food to her customers at attractive prices.

I really like the place and will definitely go back again.

By the way, both BF and I wore berms and slippers, but had good French food and wine. And nobody is there to sniff their noses at you because everyone there is so casual!

I love this place.


The address:

Café Le Troquet

529 Balestier Road #01-01
Singapore 329856

Tel: 6736 1070