Laksa Risotto

 

 

I can’t believe it’s been nearly half a year since I’ve posted a recipe here! Then again, a lot has happened since January: I got promoted to a new, more challenging department; I went on a few holidays including one that was pretty life-transforming; and I’ve started afresh as a singleton. So I guess it’s no surprise that I haven’t been cooking or baking much

Anyhoo, enough with the blabber. I thought up of this dish the other day while making beetroot risotto (which deserves its own post another time), and decided to make it just for kicks. Laksa, in case you don’t know, is a popular Malaysian and Singaporean dish: it’s rice noodles in a rich spicy coconut broth, and usually comes with prawns, cockles, beansprouts, fish cake, and tau kwa (dried beancurd). 

Above all, this is a really easy recipe as long as you can get your grubby mitts on a packet of laksa paste, which is available at all local supermarkets (if you’re overseas, it should be available in Asian supermarkets). It’s lovely and rich,  and translating the heartiness of laksa into a new medium that has a different texture somehow makes the flavours really pop up. I wish I thought this up when I was living overseas because it’s the kind of thing I would have loved to nosh on when it was 5 degrees outside!

Recipe after the jump:

Warm Couscous Salad with Grilled Red Peppers and Halloumi

This is one of my all-time favourite party dishes for potlucks; it’s tasty, light, and suitable for vegetarians/vegans. It’s also good for a quick and easy dinner after work, as it takes only about 20 minutes to prepare and assemble.

I love everything about halloumi - how it’s buttery, tasty, and mysteriously unable to melt when you apply direct heat to it.  Sadly, halloumi has disappeared from supermarket shelves in Singapore recently. I used to be able to get it (Lemnos brand) from Carrefour and some Cold Storage outlets. In desperation, I recently bought frozen paneer from Mustafa, and it was a surprisingly good and cheaper substitute - it only cost me $3 compared to the $7 I used to shell out for halloumi. The only  thing is that you need to salt it generously while grilling it (halloumi usually comes salty, I believe).

This salad is even better when it’s been sat in the fridge overnight and all the flavours has infused into all the ingredients. So don’t be afraid to make extra and take it to work for lunch the next day - it’s good warmed up after a quick high-power minute in a microwave, or chilled too!

Aaaaand here’s the recipe:

Good English Food. Really.

 

Dorset apple cake, from the Engine Room in Poundbury, Dorset.

Last month’s trip back to the UK was lovely, not least because of all the wonderful food we had. I know “good English food” is an oxymoron in most people’s minds, who tend to think it as stodgy fish and chips, 1970’s prawn cocktails and boiled cauliflower  (I know I did before I went to uni). But there’s lots of good eating to be done there, honestly.

I know of someone who hates food blogs which only talk about food made by other people, instead of food made by the blogger him/herself. Sorry F, but this is really just an exception! Normal recipe service will resume shortly.

More delicious highlights after the jump!

Wasabi Beef and Sweet Potato Open Parcels

We had a cookout at our monthly book club meeting yesterday. I paired up with Pauline and our secret ingredients (assigned by P, who was also the host) were “beef” and “dumpling”. Dumpling? She clarified later that she meant wonton skins. So we decided to make small parcels and put mini meatballs and chunks of roasted sweet potato in them, topped with wasabi mayonnaise, torn Thai basil, and shichimi togarashi (Japanese red pepper seasoning).

And they turned out pretty good I would recommend them as a nice hor d’oeuvre dish for a party. Five or six of them would be enough as a light meal too.

101 Chin Chai Meals

Yet another quick post: the Observer Food Monthly has come up with a fantastic list of easy, 10 minute summer meals. Those 10 minutes don’t include cooking time for pasta, rice, etc, and a lot of the recipes require good fresh produce, some of which are probably expensive to buy in Singapore, but there are still many recipes which should be cheap and easy to reproduce within half an hour.

Some faves: prawns in beer, baked mustard mackerel, and ‘almost merguez’ (lamb burgers). I think I’m going to start working my way down the list this week!

Ch-ch-changes

A quick gripe: you would think that accuracy would be essential for a cookbook, but while surfing around Nigella’s site I came across the ‘Changes’ page buried somewhere, which lists some 20-odd mistakes in her various books. Some of them are guaranteed to ruin your creations: 3 tablespoons of yeast instead of 3 teaspoons for a pizza recipe, using half of a fruit mixture for a cake instead of the whole thing, 50g golden syrup instead of 150g syrup.

I really can’t understand how she didn’t doublecheck her recipes, and how the printing process can be so loose that so many mistakes could be introduced along the way. What’s worse is that Nigella also gave some half-baked advice about sterilising jars in microwaves and using clingfilm to line pans, and the site now retracts such statements because “it can be hazardous”. No shit sherlock.

Just goes to show that you can’t put all your trust in what cookbooks sometimes tell you, domestic goddess or not!

White or Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla or Raspberry Buttercream Frosting

Mmm. Cupcakes. Chocolate cupcakes. White and dark chocolate cupcakes with vanilla or raspberry buttercream frosting. You can never go wrong with that.

I found a cheap pastry decorating kit at Carrefour (only $4.95, with 6 different nozzles!) and had lots of fun making proper cupcake icing for the cakes I made for Peishan’s book club last Sunday. They were a hit with the girls. Yay!

For the recipe, I basically used the one for the Magnolia Chocolate cupcakes. For the white choc ones, I replaced the dark choc with Cadbury white chocolate and cut down the sugar by half a cup.

As for the buttercream frosting, here’s the recipe:

Basil Pork Noodles with Sliced Red Peppers

I’ve realised that so far none of the recipes I’ve posted here are actually really chinchai, so I thought I’d share one of my simple ones today. Today I made a variation of Chubby Hubby’s Simple Pork Noodles (which itself was a variation of dan dan mian). By adding basil and red peppers, I gave the dish a nice sweet and fragrant kick, as well as something crunchy as a counterpoint to the soft udon and tasty chewy pork.

Prok!

The best thing about this recipe is that it’s really easy and fast. It probably took me 15 minutes from prep to plating, so it’s perfect when you’re tired from a long day at work and just want a quick and nice meal. Why eat instant noodles when you can make something healthier like this for just a bit more effort and time?

Chocolate Ferrero Rocher Cake with Nutella Ganache

“Why do you always bake cupcakes?” grumbled A the other day, when I told him about plans for a fourth batch of cupcakes. I had been obsessing over them for the past week - I was thinking of vanilla with a chocolate filling and crunchy chocolate frosting, but no matter how I thought about it, somehow it didn’t sound aesthetically pleasing (it’d look too much like a white cupcake with a big brown turd sitting on top).

A was right. It was time to diversify my baking repertoire. Fuck the diet, and fuck aesthetics, I thought, this time I’m going to go the whole hog and create the most awesome chocolate creation that would bring any chocolate fan to her knees. And what better ingredients to use in the creation of this weapon of mass destruction than everyone’s favourite chocolate-hazelnut snacks, Ferrero Rocher and Nutella?

From L to R: the cake, smugly basking in the glow of its chocolate perfection; and a close-up of its cross-section.

After much research, I decided on a recipe culled from blogs, the New York Times and Food Network for this sinful treat. It’s basically a layer cake with a milk chocolate and Ferrero Rocher filling, covered with a blend of Nutella and cream. It’s a wee bit mafan (troublesome in Mandarin) but if you have about two to three hours to spare and want to create something delicious for dessert or teatime, then this is it.

This cake gets quite hard when it’s chilled, and it’s at its best when it’s at (Singaporean) room temperature. That’s when the chocolate from both the frosting and the filling is so gooey, it’s like drinking from the chocolate river in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. A was a veritable Augustus Gloop when he tried it. He took a bite, and his eyebrows shot up into his auburn hair. “It’s amazing!” he declared, before vacuuming up every single crumb of the cake.

Recipe after the jump!

Scrumptious Cottage Pie

You know you’ve made a damn good cottage pie when an Englishman swoons over it. My boyfriend A was ecstatic during tonight’s dinner, and making orgiastic noises while gobbling up two huge scoops. At the end he solemnly took my hand in his and kissed it. “Thank you,” he said, emotionally. “Good. Now do the dishes,” I commanded. He nodded meekly and scuttled off to the kitchen with our licked-clean plates.

You would think that he loves it because it’s a taste of home, but actually this is a ‘fusion pie’. Instead of cooking it the traditional way (read: boring), I used all kinds of sauces normally found in Asian cooking, and even coriander. Why settle for salt for seasoning when you can use soya sauce, which has a much more complex taste?

That said, eating the pie tonight brought back really fond memories of my time in Bristol. I loved making cottage pie when I was an undergrad in England back in the early ’00s. It was easy, simple, and really comforting to eat in the winter while stretched out on my couch, watching a Channel 4 documentary or Jonathan Ross on Beeb 2. Those were the days…

(recipe after the jump):