John & Belle Have A Blog

SWPL: Cucumber Sandwiches

Ta-Nehisi Coates doesn't "get" cucumber sandwiches:

There are many, many tribes of whiteness in America which I don't particularly understand. I didn't get how some white people go off to expensive colleges and then spend their friday nights, french-kissing a keg of the world's cheapest beer, until they're rendered unconscious. I remember the first white parties I went to, in my early twenties, and I was shocked to see people standing around clutching plastic cups, music playing, but no one dancing. It took some time for me to get blue-collar comedy. I'm still not up on cucumber sandwiches--but judging by the diabetes rates here in Harlem, maybe I should be.

As to the first question, no harm will be done by continuing to think that white college kids throw some lame-ass parties. On the other hand, cucumber sandwiches really are delicious. Here's how my grandmother, Janet Parsons Wainwright, aka "Nan" did it:

Cucumber Sandwiches:
Use peeled hothouse cucumbers, those thin-skinned ones, or if they are normal cucumbers, peel, cut in half, and remove the seeds and gelatinous middle bit with a spoon. Slice cucumbers paper-thin. Use Pepperidge Farm Very Thin White Bread, spread with Hellman's mayonnaise. Lay the slices of cucumber down, top with fresh mint leaves, and add salt and freshly cracked ground pepper. Top with another slice, cut the crusts off after completion, and cut each sandwich into four triangles (now it feeds four times as many people!). You may wash this down either with iced tea with a splash of orange juice and fresh mint, or with Nannie's traditional libation, a triple bourbon on the rocks.

UPDATE: if you want to take the sandwiches on a picnic you may substitute softened unsalted butter for the mayo, being careful to coat the bread thoroughly--that way they won't get soggy.

Blue Ginger

We're going out to eat at Blue Ginger tonight--it's a great Peranakan restaurant and I recommend it highly if you're in Singapore. There are some wonderful pork rolls they have, wrapped in I don't know what--probably tofu skin. They're called ngo something; I'll update later, because everyone should eat them.  Well, OK, not observant Muslims or Jews, or vegetarians.

Skewered

John and I went to Nanbantei of Tokyo this evening. It's part of a very small chain with an outlet in San Francisco, which used to be a favorite special night out spot for us when we lived in the Bay area. (Other locations are Hong Kong, LA, Manila, Seoul, and Copenhagen.) It's just as tasty as I remembered, and I don't know why we haven't been to the Singapore one in ages. It's a yakitori place, similar in form to a sushi joint, where instead of a sushi chef presiding over a bar there are two men carefully cooking skewers over a coal-fired grill, while the strongest oven hood in the world whirs above them. Their main job seems to be to stand there flicking salt at the roasting foods in a thorough but delicate way, and thoughtfully prodding and flipping the lamb-chops. The well-known principle that wrapping things in bacon makes them better definitely applies here, with perhaps the best being the asparagus. The very-fresh salmon wrapped in bacon was delicious as well, with tiny cubes of butter placed on the top as it was taken off the grill. Yum! It's quite close to our new house, so we'll certainly be going more often.

Aplets and Cotlets

Many years before I moved overseas and became able to savor various types of real live turkish delight, a friend of my dad's introduced us to Aplets and Cotlets, America's only premier fruit and walnut confectioners. Aplets and Cotlets, and all their fruity variants, are just turkish delight by another name; the company was started by Armenian immigrants. I sometimes get my mother-in-law to send them to me from the lovely Pacific Northwest, but Sunday I found them at our very own Cold Storage, for SGD$12.90, which is less than a straight conversion of the US $9.50 price would suggest. Free shipping!! I even passed up a chance to get some Arnott's Mint Slice! In truth, Aplets and Cotlets are better than most types of turkish delight I've tried from Turkey, except for the rose flavor, so readers who want to get some of that downhome Narnian goodness should just go and eat some Aplets and/or Cotlets. Mmmm, Cotlets. (An early version in which raw veal was mixed with walnuts and sugar, called Aplets and Cutlets, was less sucessful.)

Antipodean Ambrosia

One of the interesting things about living in a city with a large and prosperous expat community is that you get to try the packaged snacks of far-off, mystical lands such as Australia. There are grocery stores where the downcast American wife, who never wanted to move out of Ohio, can find the marshmallow Fluff that will salve her soul. Likewise with the downcast French people, who can go to Carrefours. Even the cheerful expats, wives or otherwise, may want Bovril, or marmalade, or poppadum chips (mini chips in a Pringles-like can. Mmmm, tiny poppadums.) Yesterday I discovered one of the tastiest cookies ever: Arnott's Mint Slice. Arnott's is better known to me as the maker of TimTams, which are themselves quite nice, though I'm not just mad about them the way Australian people seem to be. (I have lots of anecdotal evidence that the ship of many an Australian's diet plans have foundered on the rock of...an entire packet of TimTams with tea.) Mint Slice, though, is sooooo good. Crunchy chocolate "biscuit" part, a layer of mint creme, and all dipped in chocolate. They advertise as having real mint oil, which they certainly do.  I think, and I know this is crazy here, and it may just be the equatorial heat talking, but I think they might be better than Girl Scout Thin Mints. John and I polished off the package after dinner, with very modest assistance from the girls (they each had one, and the chocolaty fingers to prove it). If I had these in the house all the time, I actually would start to gain weight. I imagine this is a real problem for bulk shoppers in the states; a packet of Mint Thins is one thing, a case quite another. Now I'll just have to hope I don't find a packaged cookie as good as Girl Scout's Samoas.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

I don't know that I ever had these at someone's house before having them at a fancy Southern restaurant, so they're not really a South Carolina thing as far as I know. They're super-tasty, though.

Ingredients:
3 c flour
3 heaping t baking powder
1 1/2 t salt
2 t brown sugar
2 heaping T Crisco
4 T unsalted butter cut into cubes (or you could use all butter. Or all Crisco!)
1 1/2 c mashed cooked sweet potato (2 potatoes)
heavy cream as needed; start with 1/3 cup

1. Preheat oven to 450F.
2. Put flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in bowl of a stand mixer (or normal bowl if you're doing it by hand, which I hasten to add is very easy.) Mix dry ingredients together.
3. Add Crisco and butter. Mix with flat paddle attachment till fat is well cut in and mixture looks sandy (or, use two knives or a pastry cutter to do the same.)
4. Add mashed sweet potato and fold it in with a rubber spatula (you're trying to stir less rather than more, and in any case stop before it's fully combined).
5. Add cream plus more cream as needed to make dough. Stir till combined, favoring a less-is-more stirring strategy.
6. Pat out dough into a circle 2 inches thick on a floured board. Cut into biscuits, placing them as close together as possible. (NB if you put all the biscuits that are made from re-rolled scraps on one side you will be able to avoid them and fob these less-tender ones off on unsuspecting husbands or children.)
7. Bake 15 or so minutes. Let them get well-browned, since they are damp.
8. Take two four, and butter them while they're hot.

(Mostly) Sugar Free Brownie Pie

I didn't get organized early enough to make mango cheesecake, so I made this instead. It was wildly popular, although some people seemed to be imagining it was low-calorie, which it was not. (One person raved about how the topping was "so light tasting!" Honesty compelled me to admit, "that's actually crème fraîche with equal in it.") Still, I guess it was a decent bit lower in calories than the same thing made with sugar.

Crust:

3 T unsalted butter, melted.
crumbs made from 8 McVitie's Digestive biscuits (or about the same number of slabs of graham crackers. If I had been able to find special sugar-free graham crackers for diabetics I would have used those, but I didn't)
5 t Equal Spoonful (I hear Splenda is better but they didn't have any at my local Cold Storage)

1. Preheat oven to 350F (150C)
2. Mix crumbs, butter and Equal together. Press into bottom and slightly up the sides of a springform pan.
3. Bake 10 or so minutes, till slightly browned.

Filling:

6 T unsalted butter
1/2 c fruit only marmalade (I used St. Dalfour's kumquat which is really nice)
5 oz Valhrona chocolate, chopped (I used the 70% bittersweet, which meant there was sugar in there too; a more careful baker would use unsweetened and up the sugar substitute slightly, I think)
1/3 c very strong espresso
1/3 c heavy cream
1 egg yolk
1 t vanilla
1/2 t Boyajian orange oil
1 1/2 c Equal Spoonful
1/2 c flour
4 egg whites
1/4 t cream of tartar
1/2 t salt

1. Heat butter, marmalade, chocolate, espresso and cream in top of a double boiler set over simmering water until chocolate is just melted. Let cool slightly.

2. Add egg yolk, vanilla, orange oil and Equal and stir still smooth. Add flour and stir just till no streaks remain.

3. Whip egg whites and cream of tartar together in a clean bowl till they hold stiff peaks; without sugar to add at this stage they will not get glossy and will become fully whipped when still dry and somewhat grainy looking.

4. Stir 1/4 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Fold remaining whites in gently. Pour into crust and bake 25 minutes. Middle will not be totally firm. Run a thin bladed knife around the edge so that it won't crack while cooling.

Serve with crème fraîche sweetend with a little Equal. Suprisingly tasty, all in all. Not just the sugar-free-est thing ever, obviously, but I gave fair warning and I didn't kill anyone. Better diligence could yield a fully sugar-free version.

Some Unrelated Thoughts

1. This review makes me homesick for San Francisco.
2. I have to make a cake for a diabetic friend. Reviewing the options, it seems to me the best thing will be to make a cheesecake sweetened with fresh mango puree and Splenda or whatever. Cheesecake doesn't actually need that much sugar anyway. But then, aren't the sugars in the sweet mango just the same old thing? Is fruit-only jam, sweetened with white grape or apple juice concentrate, better for diabetics than normal jam? Well, it would have to be some better, but is it much worse than jam made of fruit and fake sugar, as it seems to me it should be? And lots of the recipes I looked at seemed indifferently diabetic/low calorie; is there any reason I should be going for low fat, too? I hope not, or this ain't going to taste real good.
3. This Onion article is funny, but extraordinarily biting. It elicits only the single, punched-in-the gut guffaw that might be barked out by the audience at a Beckett play.

Tuesday Random Legion Panel!

And history's three greatest villians are? Answer under the fold. (By the power of Random Legion Panels, I will drive away this blog's readers!)

Healthy?

A White Bear has a really interesting post up on weight and body image. She relates how she underestimated the capability and strength of her own body for a long time. I'm not actually thin at the moment, just normal weight, but I have often had the opposite experience, being the unhealthy thin person. "You must work out a lot" people would say. Um, more of the lying in bed. When people ask how I'm feeling and I feel like being honest (which I often don't) they often come back with "but you look great." This is usually meant very well, and of course it's nice for people to say. Naturally it beats feeling and looking sick, and I'm hard to please I guess because I really don't like to hear "you do look ashen" either. When it comes from guys that are sort of hitting on me, though, I find it supremely irritating. It's like they're saying, "well, you may feel bad, but you look pretty f%#kable to me, and that's all that matters!" I know someone like this right now who has a skeevy crush on me and he's always saying this ("you look great, anyway") like it's a big favor and he's granting me the power of hottness. Grrr.

Mystery Mini-Mangoes: The Tragic Dénouement

It turns out that "tastes like burning" is nature's way of telling you not to eat something. Now have hideous rashes all over so bad I'm back on the Predator. Ha ha ha. But they were so tasty!! Y'all can just go ahead and shoot me know.

Yum

Well, I've finished the last mystery fruit. Still getting a chemical heat off them; it abrades the interior of my mouth slightly. No rashes, though. The tastiness comes from the skin being very sour, and the flesh very sweet, sort of like with a plum, or with Lick'em Stix (the girls got some as a party favor). Zoë says it tastes like lemonade. Violet refuses to try them and wants more blueberries. Blueberries are reeeallly expensive here, alas.

Mystery Mini-Mangoes

I have a new favorite fruit. I ate it a few times last year when it was in season and I just bought a bunch today. They look like mini-mangoes, which I guess they are, but you can eat the skin of them. The flesh inside is kind of jelly-like, like a ripe persimmon, and delicious. It has a flattish seed, but thicker (proportionally) than a really flat mango pit. I ate about 8 of them just now, and there's a wee problem. I'm allergic to mango skin (as are a lot of people). I gorged myself on 2 for a dollar Mexican mangoes in Berkeley one time and ended up with a hdeous rash on my face. Had to go on oral steroids and everything. I had scored the flesh and then turned the skin inside out and just eaten the flesh off the inner skin, which amounted to me rubbing (the inside of) the skin all around my mouth. (At least I was better off than the man my doctor told me about who had been using mangoes in sex play!) I was lying down with Violet just now and I realized my face is tingling like crazy...Slathered hydrocortisone on and hopefully I can head it off at the pass. I guess I'll have to try cutting them up and eating them with a spoon. I don't even know what their name is, because my fruit-seller only knows the Chinese name, which I promptly forgot. Anybody know?

Happy Easter!

I was lobbying for a Boba Fett cake. But I guess I'll have to settle for Zoë's drawing. She drew this from the picture on the cake mold box (no kidding!)

Anyway, see under the fold for Easter stuff.

When We Say When, We Know You'll Think It's Too Much

Sometimes my inner libertarian just starts jumping up and down and yelling. I think she's the "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn this way" one in the red dress and horns on my left shoulder. From an NYT article about Bloomberg's food policies:

The nearest thing New York city government has now is Mr. Thomases, the food czar, who works deep inside the enormous collection of city departments called Health and Human Services. In an interview, however, he said that his job is not to set policy or offer vision.

“I prefer not to think of myself as the food czar,” said Mr. Thomases, who is making $85,000 a year, a figure that some in City Hall say would be higher if the position held more power....

And while organizations like food councils and positions like Mr. Thomases’ are a start, no major American city has yet established a Department of Food, in the way New York has a Department of Cultural Affairs or a Department of Environmental Protection. Although Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, recently weighed in on the 2007 Farm Bill and many mayors have taken up the anti-obesity cause, no mayor of a large urban city has stood up and become, in essence, the Alice Waters of city food politics.

In the Bloomberg administration, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden is as close as it gets [to a Food Czar]. As head of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, he has done more to change the mayor’s thinking about the government’s role in how we eat than anyone else in the administration.

So many things are wrong with this. First, we're supposed to be unhappy that the kinda sorta Food Czar only makes $80,000 a year, because it indicates his relative lack of mojo? And then there's the "enormous collection of city departments called Health and Human Services." Not per se unreasonable; NYC is a huge place with a rather unique set of challenges. But something about "enormous collection of departments" strikes me as...sub-optimal. And the pained chagrin over how no city has yet created a Department of Food to join other such obviously great ideas as the Department of Cultural Affairs. And then we learn the Food Czar function is essentially duplicated, with yet another, more connected guy doing what one imagines is the same job? For the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene? For reals? Look, I'm sorry they started your department in the 30's or whatever, but could you at least change the damn name so you don't sound like a cut-rate Serbsky Institute for Forensic and General Psychiatry?

The funny thing is that I support some of the policies discussed in the article, most obviously, the move to feed schoolchildren better quality, more nutritious food. You've got the damn kids right there and you're feeding the poorest of them two out of three meals a day; it only makes sense to do this job properly. Experimental programs I've read of seem reasonably effective, not just in feeding the kids well at school, but influencing their tastes more generally. Now, it's no magic wand, and kids are still going to want to eat fries--which is fine, because fries are delicious. And erring on the side of marinated tempeh all the time is just going to piss people off, which is why they should stick with stuff like pizza, but with a 50/50 wholemeal crust, and fresh toppings (like we ate last night, mmmmm.) Still, a reasonable policy, and pretty self-evidently something the public school system should be doing. And then you've got your trans-fat ban and your preemptive banning of sous-vide cookery, just as a precautionary measure until complex legal guidelines can be established. "Oh noes it is illegal doughnuts." Blogger, please.

Cream Puffery

I hear that Beard Papa Cream Puffs is opening in the US. The chain is based in Japan. There is one here in Singapore in the basement food court of Takashimaya (at Ngee Ann City). They make the pastry cream every day, with real vanilla, and then load it into a chrome pastry cream dispenser. When you order a cream puff, they fill the choux pastry right before your very eyes, thus avoiding the danger, all-too-present in Singapore, of soggy pastry. They are delicious and I recommend them highly. Don't wear black because you will get powdered sugar all down your front as you wander through the Japanese grocery store.

Mmm. The line was long for a while as a cream puff craze swept Singapore, but fickle fashion seems to have moved on. Damn sight better than the BreadTalk pork floss buns everybody was obsessed with a while back. (Basically a very soft yeast roll filled with Japanese-style mayonnaise and topped with pork floss. Pork floss itself is good, like fluffy pork cotton candy, but...)

Memory Lane

I was taking a trip down blog memory lane not long ago looking up my cheescake recipe. The comments thread is very instructive. That was back before the Fafblog sublimed on us*; damn, I miss those guys. Funniest part:

Fontana, agreed. I left the OED out of my first comment, expecting universal acclamation and thanks, but then everyone ignored me, and damn, you can't ignore a blogger.

Posted by: ogged

How good that we agree.  What's really sad about this whole thing is that we don't get 20-something comments on anything at that other blog and Belle does it with dessert.

Posted by: FL

Yeah, it's sad that nobody comments on unfogged.

*I think Emerson said this first but I'm willing to be corrected.

Vital Corrections

Oh No! I was looking through some recipes just now and I found two mistakes. This is why real cookbooks have editors and people who try out all the recipes. Moldy Mice actually have one STICK of butter per cup of flour, not one cup, a mere doubling of the crucial ingredient. Also, back in my ginger-cake schooldays I left the white sugar out of the gingerbread. It needs 2/3 c white sugar in addition to all that other stuff. So, sorry holiday bakers! I'll update the original posts later. Also, that pumpkin-seed brittle I made at Halloween is even better with hazelnuts instead of pumpkin seeds (using 2 /12 c rather than 2 cups because there's more empty space in a cup of hazelnuts) and one more T butter, and put it into a smaller pan, like a 9x13 glass baking pan, so that the brittle ends up about 1-inch thick. And line the pan with foil. It's more like what Australian people call honeycomb. I did walnuts yesterday and it's very good as well, but I think hazelnuts are the best. And can I recommend the fudge? Merry Christmas everyone!

Holiday Pavlova

Where are my Australian holiday dishes, the masses demand. Well, Australian people eat Pavlovas all the time, but this is a particularly festive one.

For the Meringue:
6 egg whites
1 c super-fine sugar (caster sugar), or granulated is OK
2 t corn starch
1 t white vinegar

1. Separate the eggs when they are cold and then let them come to room temperature before proceeding. Make sure the bowl is completely clean and grease-free, and maybe give it a good wipe with a cut lemon to be sure. Or if you have a copper bowl, now is the time to bust that out, because here's its big moment. Preheat the oven to 250. Put a piece of baking paper on a cookie sheet and trace around a big plate to put a circle in the middle.
2. Beat eggs whites till fluffy, and then begin to add the sugar by tablespoonfuls, and keep beating till the mixture is glossy and stiff.
3. Gently fold in the vinegar and corn starch. Use a wooden spoon or spatula to put a generous half of the egg-white mixture on the sheet so it fills up the circle evenly. Then spoon the remaining stuff around the egde, forming a rim. Bake for 1 hr 15 minutes, and then prop the door of the oven open with a wooden spoon handle and let cool completely. Easiest just to do this at night and let it cool overnight. It will keep for a few days in an air-tight container.

For the Cranberry Curd:
1 12-oz bag fresh cranberries
juice of one lemon
1 c sugar
2 t cornstarch
2/3 c water
4 egg yolks
6 T unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1. Bring cranberries, lemon juice, sugar and water to a boil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook for 5 minutes or so, partially covering with a pan lid since the cranberries will pop. Smush them around with a wooden spoon.
2. Force the berry mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl; clean the pot. Mix up the yolks with a whisk and add them to the now-somewhat cooled berry mixture. Return the mixture to the clean pan and cook over medium heat for about 4 minutes more, stirring constantly. The curd should thicken slightly but don't let it boil. If you draw your finger down the back of the wooden spoon it should leave a clean trail in the curd. If you are worried about it you should keep a dishpan full of ice water nearby and if it starts to separate plunge the bottom of the saucepan into the ice water bath and whisk like crazy.
3. Pour the cranberry curd into a bowl and add the butter a few pieces at a time, whisking all the while, until all have been incorporated; put a piece of plastic wrap over the surface of the curd and refridgerate till very cold. (Again, why not do this the night before, then it's really easy).

To Assemble:
1 pint whipping cream
1/3 c super-fine sugar (or regular)

1. Whip the cream and sugar till it holds soft peaks. Fill the well in the meringue disk with whipped cream, and pour the cranberry curd over the top (I reserved about 1/4 of it to have on toast because it seemed like plenty.)

Very festive and actually pretty easy, which makes me wonder why this recipe is so long. Hm. Looks great, though, and is like eating a tasty, tart, marshmallow scruptious-mush. Yay Australia! Yay Russian ballet dancers!

For The Love of Little Apples!

Sorry we haven't been posting much around here. John has been busy with work stuff and I have been sick. Sooooo sick. I'm really getting bored with being sick, although that's actually a big step up from the two days I was too sick to be bored. I've been watching Veronica Mars and I just finished Season One. I thought it was great, and I'm hoping Santa will bring me Season Two, although I'm curious about what they'll do without the Lilly Kane multi-story arc to hang things on.

I have to get on the plane in 6 days for a 20-hour flight. WhadmIgonna doooo, d00dz? Erg! No, wait, that's a unit of measurement. Urg! What do people eat when they don't want to eat anything, besides saltines and toast? I'm making some roasted sweet potato wedges, that sounds moderately palatable. Maybe, chicken salad? Oh, I know, the BRAT diet--applesauce! (Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Turbot. No, it's actually Trout Toast.) Maybe the auntie sells applesauce. Or she sells apples, I could just make applesauce, or have John make me applesauce (?).

Everybody send me good mojo so I get well soon. Weller. I'm going to suggest to my specialist that he load me up with a special 24-hour drug cocktail judiciously composed of anti-nausea medication, painkillers, and diazepam, with maybe a little something in the extra energy line, so I can get to the US in one piece, but foolish doctors often don't trust my nigh-instinctual Rx powers. If only we lived in a libertarian utopia, I wouldn't have all these guild-member types gatekeeping on me. Monopolists! Rent-seekers! Jim Henley and I shake our fists at you!

LIKE AN UPDATE, EXCEPT I DIDN'T HIT POST YET: John is making me applesauce. He can learn how to use the food mill. It, like, mills food.

Lileks Watch

Hmmm:

AND NATALIE, PUT YOUR SOCKS ON, IT’S TIME FOR WENDY’S.

I’d promised a trip to Wendy’s tonight, since Mom was at a law-related gathering at the Guthrie. We had fun; the muzak was all late 70s disco hits, and I mortified Gnat by singing along to all the tunes.

Dad stop it, you’re creeping me out.

I upped the soul-face quotient and sang some more.

DAD STOP.

In general, what with the terrifying Thanksgiving dinner at Holiday Inn in Fargo, the weekly (!) trips to eat the pizza at Chuck E. Cheese's, and the documented love of Uncrustables, I feel that much of James Lileks' general dyspepsia could be cured with the application of some actually good food. I mean, doesn't the laughing about the regrettable foods of days past ring a little hollow otherwise? And doesn't he go to NYC sometimes? Wait, though, I have a vague memory of his claiming that NYC pizza wasn't better than Domino's. Well, I guess when Gnat becomes a sullen, emo vegan at 13 she'll have to learn to cook some things, maybe the eats at Jasperwood will pick up. (I really encourage you to read the Thanksgiving link; it is genuinely disturbing. He describes how he drove a long way to spend one night at the Holiday Inn, sleeps in his clothes on the sofa, gets up without showering or changing, and then eats repulsive food in a holiday buffet. It's interspersed with passive-agressive snipes at his step-mother and wife, and bitter complaints about the incompetent people who work at Wendy's. It makes me sad just to think about it. I think eating cold grits and gravy in the county pen on Thanksgiving would be way less depressing.)                            

Could I Get A Thin Rubber Mayonnaise Insert?

An idea whose time has come. I didn't know I wanted one, but now I see there's a gaping velvet-lined emptiness in my jewellry box. Ladies and gentlemn, just in time for all your holiday shopping needs: The BLT Ring. Hopefully it comes in large sizes, so you could get one for the bacon-lovin' man in your life. A heart-warming symbol of love...of bacon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Why don't you make cornbread--it's really easy, even easier than biscuits.

1 3/4 c cornmeal
1-2 T sugar (depends on how sweet you like it. My dad is screaming 'noooooo' because he considers sugar in cornbread a yankee abomination, but too bad)
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 c buttermilk (or add 2 t white vinegar to a cup of milk and let it clabber up a little)
1 egg
2 heaping T Crisco (you could probably use unsalted butter but I've never tried. Or bacon grease is nice.)

1. Preheat the oven to 375. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Break the egg into the cup measure with the buttermilk and stir it up good with a fork.

2. Put the Crisco in a 8-inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat, till it melts all the way, and turn the pan around till it's evenly coated.

3. Mix the milk/eggs into the dry ingredients, then pour on the sizzling grease and stir well. Scrape batter into the hot frying pan and put in the oven. Cook 20 minutes or till nicely browned.

Simple as that.

Gingerbread House

We're in the process of making a gingerbread house right now. Potential problem: the decorated sides seem to be getting soft in the humidity. I worry that when I put the thing together it's going to look great for about 45 minutes and then slowly slump to bits. We don't do 'crisp' in Singapore. Since I've always been a crafty person one of the things I looked forward to about having kids was doing fun stuff like this. Now I realize, though, that kids are a massive hindrance rather than a help at many cooking/decorating tasks. (Not all--Zoe is good at peeling garlic, washing root vegetables, and picking herb leaves off of stems and such.) Today I was thinking, 'darn kids! I want my gingerbread house to have a color theme and be decorated in a symmetrical way! And I want to make a gumdrop snowman with individual non-pareils for eyes and a carefully cut sour ribbon scarf!' Then I realized I was crazy. So we will have a nice house with swedish fish glued randomly to the exterior. I'll try to take a picture of it before it collapses.

Edible Ink

I was looking at the printed frosting pictures from Sugarcraft (linked from b0ingb0ing) and saw the link to this scrapbook cake (well, it doesn't seem to have been applied to a cake yet in the picture, but that is an icing sheet you can just lay on top of a cake. They have lots of hideous templates as well.) It's not my style, cake-wise, but there's something really sweet about it. I love the one in the kitchen with the husband smoking. I wish them many happy returns of the day.

It seems like there should be some cool possibilities with this technology--it's ink-jet printing with food-coloring cartridges for ink. You can buy your own! I just know there's some great Martha Stewart adaptation out there. Victorian clip art? Tasteful black and white family shots? Still not feeling it. Close-ups of Japanese robot toys? Warmer. Warhol-style photo-silkscreen cakes of The Legends of Rock? Tattoo flash art? Hm.  Oh, how about scans of streetmaps? Or scans of vintage fabrics? Ukiyo-e woodcuts? Album covers? (You'd have to have your own for many of these, since they're dicks about copyrights. That's a pretty darn specialized piece of kitchen equipment. Then again, people are always encouraging me to sell cakes...)

Pumpkin Seed Brittle

I made this today for our Halloween party; you all have to run out and make it RIGHT NOW!!1!11! Really, it's wicked good.

2 c sugar
1 c light corn syrup
1 c water
1/2 t salt
2 c raw, hulled pumpkin seeds, aka pepitas (or you could use seeds from a pumpkin you carved if they were washed well and toasted slightly so they were quite dry. In that case I'd add them when the sugar syrup hit 250.)
2 t baking soda (smoosh out the lumps)
3 T unsalted butter

1. Heavily butter a 15 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 1 pan (i.e., a regular rectangular cookie sheet, but with sides) and also an offset spatula (or use a regular one.) measure out the butter and the soda into little dishes and put them, along with the pan and spatula, next to the stove. Go on, it'll make you feel like a TV chef.

2. Stir sugar, corn syrup and water in a heavy-bottomed saucepan with a candy thermometer, over medium heat (err towards the high side) until sugar dissolves. Add salt and cook to 260 (it will take a while to get there, but you don't really need to stir it at this point. Just every now and again.)

3. When the mixture hits 260, add the pumpkin seeds and start stirring. Keep stirring until you reach 290 (hard crack stage.) The temperature will fall but will rebound pretty quickly. Some of the seeds will pop, and they and the syrup will get amber-colored.

4. Turn off the heat when it reaches 290, and add the baking soda and butter. Stir furiously while the mixture foams up (only a few seconds.) Quickly pour it into the prepared pan and smooth it out with the spatula. Let cool completely and break into pieces.Save the dust to put on ice cream (precious, sparkly dust.) Put in an airtight container. This would probably keep for a while, but you ain't never going to find out.

If you've never made candy before, words like "hard crack stage" are scary. Candy is not, actually, all that hard to make, though it's easier to do so in a dry place. It has a chemistry-set aspect to it: as long as you follow the rules precisely, and manage not to burn yourself, it will turn out as advertised. (The burn-yourself danger is greatest with caramel; when you add the cream to the sugar syrup it goes nuts. Other types of candies, not so much, but your kids can't help you.) You do need an accurate candy thermometer, which you should periodically test by putting it in boiling water and making sure it registers 212. My mom gave me a nice one a few years ago, with silicon grips. Make sure the thermometer isn't touching the bottom of the pan, as it will give a false reading. in general, it takes longer to cook than you think, although for the most part you're not actually doing anything. There's a bit of waiting around as you stare at the thermometer--is it ever going to go up?! It is, and will heat more quickly at the higher temperatures (I can't think why.) Make this candy! Make this candy nooooooowwww!!! /Giblets, PBUH.

Tasty Fish!!

A Nice Johnny Apple article about high-end restaurants in Singapore. I think I've only tried one of these, Jade at the Fullerton hotel, which is excellent. Inventive Chinese food that is served in a western, plated style, in small servings, so that you can try lots of different things even if there are only two of you--though, of course, they do have several banquet rooms. You see the waiters rushing in to the banquet rooms with roast suckling pigs and what not. The last time John and I went to a super-expensive Japanese restaurant I felt that it was very good but not worth the $. I want someone to rock my world with the kaseiki; it sounds like I need to finagle a dinner invite to the Japanese Club.

Ginger Cake

Mmm, ginger-cake. Just like they made back in my ginger-cake schooldays. Long list of ingredients but very fast to make and fun for kids. It keeps well because it has a lovely damp texture. Grate the ginger and lemon zest into a big bowl and then add the wet ingredients to them; it makes less mess. Measure out the oil and then use the same measuring cup for the molasses. The molasses will all come out instead of sticking to the sides.

1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
4 t ground ginger
2 t ground cardamom (freshly ground is much better)
1 t ground cinnamon
1/2 t ground cloves
1/2 t salt
2 1/2 t baking powder
2 T unsweetened cocoa
1/4 c finely chopped crystallized ginger
1-inch piece peeled ginger, grated
grated rind of one lemon
1/2 c vegetable oil or melted unsalted butter
1/2 c molasses
1/2 c brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 c boiling water

1. Preheat oven to 350. Butter 8x8 inch square pan. Mix all dry ingredients together and whisk well. Stir in crystallized ginger.

2. Whisk grated ginger, lemon zest, oil, molasses and brown sugar together. Add egg and mix well. Add the wet ingredients to the dry in 3 batches, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add the boiling water last and mix well. Transfer to pan and bake 30 minutes.

You can top with sifted confectioner's sugar if desired. Whipped cream or lemon sorbet could make it fancy, but it's bascially homely in all senses. Popular lunchbox fare.

Chocolate-Raspberry Tartlets

I got these mini-tart pans last weekend at Daiso, the Korean all-items-$2 place in IMM in Jurong. Pretty amazing place, acually, though it was so crowded I kind of had to run away. Maybe I'll try it on a weekday sometime. The dough is enough to make 8 mini-tarts, but if you only make 6 and make cookies from the scraps you can be carefree about the rolling out. The dough tears easily but patches well. Up to you; you might make a bit more filling, or just let them be smaller. This is a good dinner party dessert since you can do all the cooking in advance and then just put them together at the end.

Hippie Complaints, Plus Photos

I have a really earnest hippie complaint to make. Children's books and videos, in an effort to appeal to kids, often revolve around the premise that children don't like to eat vegetables. The thing is, lots of children like vegetables just fine. And they would probably like them even more if they weren't constantly being told that normal kids hate them. I mean, maybe some Indian Singaporean readers can help me out here, but I really doubt that it's a staple of South Indian children's tales that kids hate vegetables--because they're mostly all vegetarians! Kids want to eat ghee (a la Krishna), kids want to eat sweetmeats before they've even finished their dhal, sure, I'll buy that. This terrible Curious George computer game John got for Zoë ages back inculcated in her an irrational dislike for peas, because it had a little song about how the kid liked all other vegetables, but "please, please don't make me eat them peas!" For the sake of a cheap rhyme, Zoë was denied the goodness of peas for like a year! Violet checked Dan Yaccarino's If I Had A Robot out of the library yesterday (John had to leave quickly because she couldn't be made to understand the whole "quiet in the library" thing and was repeating "I wuv my wobot!" at the top of her lungs.) It's a cute book, but the boy originally wishes for a robot so it can eat his vegetables for him, specifically, lima beans, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts. All of which are delicious! Mmmm, what I wouldn't do for some fresh lima beans--OK, rather butterbeans, but even so. Zoë has cottoned onto the scam enough that after reading it she said, "I love cauliflower. I think I'd like to try brussels sprouts sometime." Pictures below the fold.

Pigs In A Blanket

Man, some people are behind the times. My friend Kara and I hosted many fine parties waaaay back in the 1990's at which pigs in a blanket played a starring role. People would be arriving as we made them, and would often scoff about them. Especially they would scoff about the Dijonnaise. "Are you just mixing mustard and mayonnaise together?" they'd ask. "I'm not eating that." Sure, hipster guy. Sure you're not going to eat the Dijonnaise. Keep telling yourself that.

And you can be sure, as this fall’s party season gets under way, that pigs in blankets will be on all the right trays and platters. “They used to be like a joke,” said Ms. Blum, the party planner. “But everyone takes them seriously now.”

The plates would be clean long before even the jello shots ran out. I hear jello shots are making a comeback too. You know, with the homemade gelatin and fresh fruit juices? Seriously. You'll be reading about the gooseberry jello shot at fancy NYC cocktail parties any day now, mark my words.

Unrelated LiveJournalesque music note: I'm listening to the GrindLab's Ak Up. I'm not sure this is actually wise. I'm...medium on it.

Cherry Cobbler

Mmmm, cherries. This is also good way to use up any peaches or plums you've got lying around that are maybe getting overripe.

Filling:

2 lb black cherries, stemmed and halved and pitted
(5 plums and 2 white peaches--this is just what I happened to have. Anything summery along these lines you've got lying around would be good)
1/2 c sugar
juice of 1 lemon
1 t almond extract
2 T cornstarch

Biscuit Topping:
2 c cake flour
3 T sugar
1 T baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1 stick chilled unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
3/4 c half-and-half
1 egg
extra sugar to sprinkle

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Mix filling ingredients together in a 9x13 baking dish (seed and chop them over the dish too; it saves time and juice). Bake for 10-15 minutes, till bubbling.

2. Meanwhile, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together with a fork. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or knives till well distributed. Beat the egg slightly and mix it with the half-and-half. (I just break it into the measuring cup with the half-and-half and stir it in there. Saves washing.)

3. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix with fork till just combined and no more flour pockets remain. Plop spoonfuls of the dough onto the hot surface of the filling, spacing them evenly. Sprinkle 1-2 T more sugar on the top. Bake about 30 minutes, till browned and bubbling.

The secret to yummy biscuit-topped cobbler is to get the filling bubbling hot first. This ensures that the biscuits are cooked from above and below at the same time, so they don't become sodden with juice and heavy before they have a chance to become structurally stable. Also, cake flour helps. This is also the secret to making good strawberry shortcake biscuits (a lightly sweetened, rich biscuit dough made with cake flour.) This biscuit would be too tender to stand up to manly dinner-time accoutrements like pork chops, or butter and cane syrup, but is perfect for the "fainting flower of the south"-style required for dessert. The biscuits here would make a fine shortcake. Just combine with berries macerated in lemon juice and sugar, and lightly sweetened whipped cream. Mmmmm. Makes me wish I were in Oregon!

In case my Asian readers are wondering about this, yes, I paid Sing$25 for that kilo of cherries. I know, "Siao lah you!" "But very nice this one! Only now and then lah! August only have what! I try to resist also cannot."

Chocolate Ice Cream

You scream, etc.

2 c milk
2 c heavy cream, divided
3/4 c sugar
3 eggs
1/2 c dutch-process cocoa
3.5 oz (100 g) best quality dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids, chopped
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t cayenne pepper, optional

1. Beat eggs and sugar with whisk until lightened. Put 1/2 c of the cream, the cocoa and the chocolate into a heavy saucepan over medium-low heat and stir until chocolate is melted.

2. Add remaining cream and milk; raise heat to medium and bring almost to the boil, stirring frequently.

3. Stabilize the bowl with the eggs and sugar using a damp kitchen towel, or have somebody hold it. Pour the hot chocolate mixture into the egg mixture in a thin stream, while whisking constantly. Do not pour it in all at once or the eggs may scramble.

4. Rinse out saucepan with cold water; do not dry. Pour everything back into the saucepan and add cinnamon (and cayenne, if using). Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom, until mixture has thickened slightly and coats the back of a spoon. Don't overdo it. There is some temperature at which eggs are no longer dangerously raw--160 F or something? Anyway, as the custard's not stabilized, it could curdle, so easy does it. Also, I eat raw eggs, but Singapore doesn't have the salmonella problems America does due to use of more free range chickens. So I err on the side of underdone.

5. Pour custard through a sieve into a heatproof container. Cool immediately by putting container into a larger bowl full of ice water, then transfer to fridge to cool completely. Freeze in ice cream maker as directed. This is best eaten within a few days.

This recipe makes a little too much for my ice cream maker, but I think most US ones should handle it. Fill yours with water to see (while it's not cold or impenetrable ice will form), and scale back as needed. The cayenne pepper is nice, but I put 1/2 in my single cup of hot milk of an evening, so YMMV.

Yellow Cake

Today is Zoë's 5th birthday. Hooray! And when it's a birthday, only yellow cake will do. This is very quick to make and tastes like a box mix yellow cake that died and went to heaven. Don't skip the almond extract; it gives the cake an extra kick of yellow goodness.

Yellow Cake

Pam or butter for greasing pan(s)
1 stick (1/2 c) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 c sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
2 1/4 c cake flour
2 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
3/4 c milk
2 t vanilla
1 t almond extract

1. Grease pan(s) and preheat oven to 350. It's always good to line the pans with parchment paper and then grease the paper, but I often don't bother.

2. Mix butter and sugar till a bit fluffy, preferably in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, or using a hand-held mixer. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix for 5 minutes, till mixture is light and creamy and the sugar is dissolving.

3. Meanwhile, sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. Add the vanilla and almond extract to the milk.

4. Add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the milk mixture, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Stir just till combined after each addition; do not over mix or the cake will be tough.

5. Pour batter into prepared pans and bake. Two 9-inch round layers will take about 20 minutes. One sheet cake pan will take 30-35. Cupcakes (I suggest you use paper liners for ease of turning out, and also because it looks cute) about 15 minutes. In any case, the top should be golden brown and spring back lightly when pressed, and a tester should come out clean or with just a few crumbs. Let cool on rack in pan till just warm, then turn out to cool completely.

Frost as desired. I just use plain old butter-cream frosting (i.e., unsalted butter, confectioner's sugar, a little milk and vanilla, plus cocoa if you want it chocolate). This is nice split and sandwiched with fresh fruit and whipped cream. You can also bake all the batter in one round pan and then split it to make Boston Cream Pie by filling it with cold vanilla pudding and topping it with chocolate glaze frosting. Mmmm, Boston Cream Pie...

Let's Call It "Thingy" For Now

This is a tasty pie I invented yesterday, unless it's a tart. Well, now that I think about it, I guess it's a tart, because it is open-faced and cold and glaze-y. It has black cherries and white chocolate. maybe it's a black and white tart? Submit your preferred name in comments. This is very easy to make, so I encourage you all to do so.

Crust:
1 1/3 c crushed digestive biscuits (like McVitie's) or graham crackers
2 t melted unsalted butter
2 T white sugar

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. Mix all ingredients together and press onto bottom and slightly up sides of a springform pan. Bake 10 minutes until lightly browned. Let cool on rack.

White Chocolate Filling (this is the same as the tart from the other day)

8 oz best-quality white chocolate, chopped
6 1/2 t unsalted butter, chopped
2 t vanilla
2 t heavy cream + 3 T liqueur (maraschino?) or use all cream

1. Put all ingredients into a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on medium for 2 minutes or so, looking at it from time to time. When it looks mostly but not completely melted, take it out and stir till smooth. Let cool a little.

Black Cherry Topping

1 lb black cherries, halved and pitted. (This is really the most time consuming part, so if you can make someone else do it that's a good idea. Just don't tell them about how easy the rest is.)
1/3 c sugar
juice of one lemon
1 t almond extract (or if you actually have maraschino, use 2 t of that)
2 t gelatin

1. Bring all ingredients except gelatin to boil in a heavy bottom saucepan and cook for 1 minute or so. Pour into a seive or colander placed over a bowl.

2. When juice has drained through, add gelatin slowly to hot liquid, whisking all the while, and whisk vigorously until it is dissolved. Add cherries back to juice/gelatin mixture.

3. Let cool; preferably, set the bowl with the cherries in a larger bowl full of ice water and stir until it is no longer hot.

To Assemble:

1. Pour white chocolate mixture over crust and stick it in the freezer (or fridge) to firm up a little.

2. Pour cherry stuff over top and let set, at least two hours. Eat.

American Pie

Fried Shrimp

I invented these last month, and each time I cook more, and each time at the end of the meal John starts looking around the kitchen vainly. "Did we eat them all?"

1 1/2 lb shrimp
2 T teriyaki sauce
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 c coarse polenta (the Bob's Red Mill stone-ground one is nice, and if you live in Singapore you can get it at Tanglin Mall!)
2 T flour
salt, pepper, cayenne pepper
vegetable oil for deep-frying

1. Take the heads off the shrimp, peel them leaving the last section and tail on, and butterfly them. Let them marinate with the teriyaki sauce and garlic in the fridge for 40 minutes or whatever.

2. Put polenta, flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne in a bag and mix. Take the shrimp out of the fridge. Heat oil in a dutch-oven over high heat until it gets rilly, rilly hot. Let's say, until a bluish haze starts to form over the oil and a cube of bread put in is well-browned in 30 seconds.

3. Drain any extra liquid off the shrimp, and then put them in the bag with the polenta. Shake to coat. You can fry them all in one batch. I'd say it takes 1-2 minutes. More like 1 minute. Take them out with a skimmer and put on brown paper. EAT. Try not to burn your fingers too much.

Sauce:

This is pretty flexible, you could put whatever. Substituting Greek-style yogurt for part of the mayo is nice.

3/4 c mayonnaise
juice of 1 lemon (or limes)
1 T dijon mustard
4-5 chopped cornichon pickles, or go for sweet and put drained hot dog relish, also nice
2-3 serrano chilis, chopped into extremely thin rounds on the diagonal
salt and pepper and chili flakes
chopped fresh herbs, such as chives, cilantro, sweet basil, flat-leaf parsley

1. Make like Sir Mixalot.

This is really very tasty and I recommend it to you all. It would be a nice party snack, though I don't know how it would hold up keeping warm in the oven. All fried things are good party foods, but all fried things are best eaten right away; it's like some kind of paradox, man. Its the big nubbly bits of fried corn grits that make it good. You can let the oil cool completely, skim the loose polenta off the top, and then pour it carefully through a seive lined with a kitchen towel, being careful not to disturb the sediment at the bottom. It can now be re-used, but only to fry seafood. Well, okra would probably be OK too. Best to keep it in the fridge if it's hot, I think.

Giovedi: Gnocca

This article made me want to go to Nice (I've never been anywhere in France but Paris, and that on bumped-from-the-plane stays en route to or from Italy). It also made me wonder what the hell the French name for gnocchi is:

But do not, under any circumstances, skip the classic niçois version of gnocchi (its name, even in French, cannot be printed here), made with Swiss chard and served with one of three sauces: gorgonzola, pistou or tomato.

Ummm. Even in Italian (in Rome, anyway), "gnocca" is slang for, shall we say, female genitalia? A friend of mine used to make me laugh with tales of his pal who, in the manner of local Roman restaurants, would announce a special of the day involving a stay at his gf's house: "Giovedi: gnocca." But, so, what the hell is the Niçoise that it's a) so offensive and b) so transparent to the average Times reader as to be unprintable? It can't merely strongly resemble a foul French word for ladybits, since that would presumably make it past the censor which caters to the monolingual (wait, that's starting to sound dirty too). What, they're called "les cunts"? I am really at a loss, and Google is either not helpful at all or helping me in ways I kind of don't want to be helped, if you know what I mean. Not by a robot, anyway. Wait, not by Google, I mean. Well-travelled JBB readers, enlighten me.

Pork Chops

Boneless pork loin chops can be good, but they are incredibly lean and therefore prone to dry out. Really dry out, to where biting into one is much like I imagine the experience of eating one of those little packets that say "silica gel--do not eat" to be. But this recipe solves that problem. With bacon! Actually, the bacon is optional, but I happened to have some really nice bacon from an organic bacon and ham-making farmer guy. Here in Singapore, astonishingly! In "the heartland", no doubt.

vegetable oil for the pan
2-3 slices lean bacon (mine are really yummy, like little thin bacon pork chops! but good pork chops, or we would have an epicurean vicious regress!)
10 shallots, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 T fresh thyme leaves
3 c sliced shiitake mushrooms
2 cups chicken broth
flour, salt, and pepper
8 boneless pork chops (preferably marinated in a little soy sauce for an hour or so, but it doesn't matter really)

1. Slick a cast-iron frying pan with oil and cook the bacon. Cut it up, discarding excess fat if you are feeling virtuous.

2. Dry the pork chops with paper towels and dredge them in the flour, salt, and pepper mixture. Add a little more oil to the pan if needed, and sear the pork chops for a minute or so on each side over medium-high heat.

3. Remove pork chops to a plate. Fry the shallots and garlic in the pan for 2 minutes over medium heat. Add mushrooms and cook a minute or so more. Add broth, bacon and thyme and let it cook for another minute or so.

4. Put the pork chops back in the pan and nestle them under the mushrooms. Cook just a little while more.

This is best served over polenta. It's funny, I made this last night and I thought, this is so tasty, but I would never make it for company. It's too family-only to have pork chops. But that isn't rational since it's actually very good. I'm having someone over for dinner this weekend, so I can't make it again, obviously, but it made me realize I have a bias against certain foods that I wouldn't serve them to company, for no good reason. Like, I would never make blackeyed peas, cornbread and greens for company either, except for a very close friend maybe. But why not, everybody likes southern food? I would feel like I didn't put enough effort into the thing. Hmmm. Maybe I'll make that on Saturday, although I'll probably have to supplement it with fried chicken and potato salad to retain my self-respect. And biscuits instead of cornbread--you can't serve cornbread to company! I was thinking of making a four-layer coconut cake for dessert, and it would be all of a piece. But it's so plain! We should be having seviche with green mango in a martini glass!  What do you all think?

Also, this reminds me, faithful reader Anthony, are you in Singapore? You should come eat at my house. Guaranteed 100% rancid bat free. Email me.

Reverse Engineered Vindaloo

Me: "I reverse-engineered lamb vindaloo!"

John: "I don't think that's legal in Singapore."

What to do with that leftover leg of lamb? Watch, and be amazed. Hazy memories of dubious food in NYC on 6th street+leftover lamb=yum. Be sure to cut off any silver skin or grody bits; take the time to make the lamb cubes nice.

UPDATED: I forgot about the tamarind. I actually thought about it in the night when I woke up, at 3 or something. I should probably think about blogging a lot less. Corrected below. I mean, the tamarind thing; the blogging is still a problem, apparently.

1 t fenugreek

2 t cumin seeds

seeds from 8-10 cardamom pods

3-4 dried chilies

8 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

1 3-inch piece ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

1 1/2 T butter or ghee

2 T tomato paste

2 bay leaves

2 cups leftover roast leg of lamb (obviously, it could be fresh lamb cubes, but then you probably wouldn't have:

the bone from a roast leg of lamb

1 large potato, cubed

1/3 c tamarind paste with seeds, mixed with 1/2 c warm water, smooshed around with your fingers, and then put through a strainer. Or, I think vinadloo recipes also sometimes contain vinegar.

water or stock, about 4 cups

1. Roast the fenugreek, cumin, cardamom, and chilis in a dry pan until they are fragrant (or you are choking to death).

2. Pureé the garlic and ginger with a little water in a spice grinder or food processor.

3. Heat the butter or ghee over medium heat, and then fry ginger-garlic paste for a minute or so. Add dry spice powder and stir a minute or so longer. Add water or stock, lamb, lamb bone, tomato paste, bay leaves and tamarind liquid. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer; cook 15 minutes. Add potatoes and cook 20-30 minutes more, till lamb is tender and the oil floats to the surface. Salt to taste.

Pig's Ear

[Discussing Zoë's trip - see below.] How did you like pig's ear?

It tastes like rusty potato chips. But good.

That's close to life imitating our family's favorite Pogo bit: "Tastes like rusty old campaign buttons. Good, though."

He Hates Yams!

Tech blegs are boring. Let me amuse you. Belle picked up some unused labels from old yam crates at some second-hand store. [Shouts at her: "Belle, what the hell are these things?" Belle: "Some dead stock yam crate labels?" [now this is Belle typing] Stipulated John response (no actual Johns were harmed): "What?" Belle: "Shit, what I said. Dead stock. Labels. For yams. Racist labels." Hypothetical John: "Oh.")]

If I tell you that framed labels of this type are the mainstay of our kitchen decor, will you think I'm crazy? Wait, let me rephrase that--more crazy than you thought I was before? No? See John? ["They already thought you were crazy." BW: "awww, man?!"]

Baked Fish With Marjoram

Good thing Heng Heng brought us these tasty white pomfrets...recipe and more photos under the fold.

Yum

Loon really outdid himself today. Look at these teeny new potatoes:

Eating potatoes this young is actually illegal in South Dakota now. Or howzabout these tomatoes?

(Actual, unretouched photo).

Oxtail Stew

I just made this up, but it's basically Malaysian. Naturally, if you have the time to cook the oxtail one day in advance then you can cool the broth and take the fat off, blah, blah, but it's fine as is.
1 kg oxtail
salt and pepper
2-3 T vegetable oil
1 yellow onion, quartered, skin on
1 stalk celery with leaves, broken into a few pieces
1 carrot, cut in thirds
5 cloves garlic, peeled and somewhat crushed
a 2-inch piece peeled young ginger
1 stalk lemongrass, cut into a few pieces
3 star anise
6 cloves
2 pieces cinnamon
1 liter chicken or beef broth
water as needed
1 red onion, sliced fine
1-2 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1 brinjal (long asian) eggplant, sliced into rounds
200 g fine beans
chili sambal from a jar, as desired
3 T tamarind juice made from 4-5 T tamarind pulp with seeds, mixed with some warm water and strained
2-3 T finely ground toasted candlenuts or peanuts, and or finely ground roasted rice (optional, see note)
chopped cilantro

1. Salt and pepper the pieces of oxtail. Heat the vegetable oil in a dutch oven or other heavy pan over medium-high heat and sear the oxtail on all sides. Do not crowd the pan; work in batches. They always say that in cookbooks and it is irritatingly true.

2. Put all the oxtail back into the pan along with all the following ingredients up to and including the broth. Bring to a boil; skim off any foam; reduce to a simmer. Cook over low heat, skimming occasionally and adding more water as needed to just cover all the ingredients, for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours.

3. Take the oxtail out and shred the meat off the bones. Strain the broth and put the meat back in. Throw all the other stuff away. (At this point you could cool it down, refridgerate it, take off the solidified fat the next day, and then proceed).

4. Add the onion, eggplant, and sweet potato; cook for 10-12 minutes or until the potato is tender. Add the fine beans and cook a few minutes more. Now correct the flavors with tamarind juice and chili to your liking. Thicken broth, if desired. Add chopped cilantro and serve with rice.

Note: lots of Malaysian/Indonesian/Singaporean food is thickened with ground nuts and/or rice at the last stage. To get the nuts, toast raw peanuts or candlenuts in the oven till browned and fragrant, then grind up in a food processor. The roasted rice powder is just what it sounds like; you toast raw rice in a heavy pan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it is golden brown, which takes a little while--say 20 minutes? Then you grind it up. It lasts for ages. Vietnamese food calls for it as well. With both the nuts and the rice people generally seive it after grinding so that the powder is very fine.

You can see a picture of candlenuts (buah keras) here; scroll down.

Offer Good Only in Singapore

I have been meaning to post this for the longest time. It's the opposite of a bleg--a gelb! No, wait, a blog ad! Except I am not being remunerated financially; it'll all be sweet sweet karmic reward. (Although, if you do sign up you have to mention me and then I'll inssinuate I should get free stuff.) I order all my food in, so I never have to go to the grocery store unless I feel like it. This is good, because I don't have a car. Also, grocery shopping is really boring and hard to do with toddlers. What do I do? The food comes to me.

Vegetables and Fruit: Loon. It's all about Loon, man. Together with his mom, and Lily the fruit person, and one other dude, he runs FarmFresh Express. Tel: 81136719 or 64670215, fax: 67772298. Or you can go yourself, to the Holland Village wet market on Lorong Liput. But why? Free delivery over S$30! Same day delivery if you order before 12:30! And the goodness...mmmm, the goodness. The freshest herbs, no matter what. Chervil? Oh yeah. Sorrel? Tarragon? That's not even to speak of curry leaves, cilantro, various specialized malay herb mixes with daun kasom, etc. etc. The best thing is that if you order something and they don't think it looks good they will call your handphone and say "so sorry, clementines no good today." How devoted is Loon to the world of fresh produce? Yesterday he told me about these special dates from Iraq, which are exported only to Iran (and then sporadically), tiny, tiny dates no bigger than the first joint of your little finger--dates of unimaginable sweetness! Having visited Iran and tasted these dates, he is committed to someday bringing these dates to Singapore (where he will make a killing during Ramadan, when Muslim people are breaking their fast with dates). That is Loon. He is totally the man.

Everything Else: Heng Heng Food Suppliers. 40 Watten Rise, S'pore 287352. Tel: 64682593/64662543 fax: 64680179. As they say, "Provisions, Sundries, Green Grocers, Wine Liquor and Cold Storage Suppliers." Heng Heng is run by a bunch of brothers, among whom Henry speaks the best English, so ask for him. One of the older brothers has been referring to me as "Dolwin, from Gillman Heights" for so long now that I am incapable of correcting him. How do they make any money? Seriously, I don't know. I had a talk with Henry about this once and it appears to be a matter of volume, with minimal jacking up the prices all around. But minimal. I want small chickens and fresh tofu from the wet market; fish and cockles; peanut butter chips from the Cold Storage in Tanglin Mall; diapers and booze--bring them to me! Delivery twice a week. Same day service if you order before 12. Seriously, it's the shizznit. Of course, all this raises the question as to why I resupply in such an OCD fashion if they are coming here all the damn time, but that's for another day. Seriously, patronize these fine, fine establishments. I'm like some Scientologist at dinner parties, evangelizing for Loon and Heng Heng.

Chance Flavors The Prepared Mind

Definite sign I've adapted to tropical living: I was peering in the fridge just now, checking behind the capers and so on, muttering, "how the $#% can I be out of tamarind paste? I bought a huge block of it last week!" Actually, this speaks to something that my mom regards as madness (mild madness) but which I think is a great step forward in my life: the massive storehouse of food system. Fresh things I buy every week, herbs, veggies, fish. And some I buy even if they do not fit into the plan of meals I have mapped out for that week (really). But when you look into my cupboards you see serried ranks of duplicates, arranged in rows. Are you about to use that can of Italian plum tomatoes in sauce? Go on, there are three more! Putting a new jar of fruit-only apricot jam into the fridge? Just move that one behind it up, and put it on the list! My mom mocks me, but the end result of this is that I (almost) never run out of things. Pus it gives me a strange feeling of security to look into the cupboards and see cans of sardines and kilos of rice and flour and gram flour and beans and coconut milk and... If some gun enthusiasts in the states have unhealthy fantasies about how, precisely, they will kill some burgalar, I have fantasies in which I am suddenly called upon to feed 50 people! But I can totally do it! For a brief time when I was young my family really was hungry; we would eat generic box macaroni and cheese 4 night a week, and my mom would steal Lance crackers and stuff from the snack room of the place where she worked and Ben and I would take them to lunch at school. I doubt it affected me at all, though. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm, just going to rotate my sealed containers of various types of lentils so that the next time I make dhal I will use the type with the closest expiration date. [Later: looks like it's urud dhal's lucky day! It expires in November. Also, remind me to put fish sauce on the list.]

UPDATE: OMG, this is so great. The new, unopened fish sauce was just in the wrong row. Problem solved (but I'll still order a new one. See how it works?)