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Snickerdoodles and Doggy Muffins

In a very commendable display of domestic goddessdom, S, world’s coolest wife, spent part of this weekend baking goodies for both me and the always-greedy golden retrievers. Yesterday, for Sascha and Alix, she whipped up some delicious looking blueberry muffins. She made two dozen mini-muffins (pictured below, with the red muffin liners) and a half dozen big ones.

I decided to try a bit of one of the muffins myself—can’t let the dogs have them all to themselves, I figured. While they smelled great, they were a tad bland (for humans that is), and the berries, unfortunately, a tad too tart.

This morning, S wanted to sleep in a bit, so I fed the dogs. Instead of the usual dry dog food, I decided to give them a treat. I plated one of the big muffins with a small handful of the dog food and then added some scrambled eggs and toast soldiers.

Later today, since I was obviously a little jealous of the dogs, S whipped out the King Arthur Cookie Companion and asked me what kind of cookie I would like. We decided on sugar cookies, of which there’s a whole chapter. There were many yummy sounding recipes, but the one that caught my eye was Snickerdoodles. I’ve loved the word ever since I first heard it but, to be honest, never knew what a Snickerdoodle actually was. Of course, when I found out it was a kind of cookie, I was really eager to try one… only, I never got around to it. No one I knew made them and no cookie shop I ever went to had them.

So, when S offered to make them for me, I was ecstatic. Essentially, it’s a sugar cookie laced with cinnamon. Truly delicious. Especially with a cold glass of skim milk. Yum!

Thanks S! (That’s from me and the dogs.)

P.S. Interestingly enough, when we later consulted Nigella Lawson’s baking book, we noticed that a Snickerdoodle to her is something completely different. It’s more like a donut. Maybe it’s an American-British thing… the difference in definition, that is.

Risotto with Braised Pork and Peas

I’ve always loved risotto. I love the way it tastes, the rich starchiness of it, punctuated with the umami-ness of freshly grated parmesan. I especially love risotto made with home-made stock. It’s comforting in a way few other foods are. I also love making it. It’s a dish that forces you to slow down, and after a long (stressful) day at work, that is often what one needs most—except, of course, a kiss and a hug from the wife and a couple licks and wags from the dogs. Risotto requires patience, which I’m not known to have. But for this dish, in order to make it just right, I’m forced to slow down, softly stirring the just simmering rice for anywhere from 20 minutes to half an hour. And it’s something I really enjoy. I enjoy the process. I also enjoy the anticipation of perfectly cooked risotto, and enjoying it with someone (or some ones) special.

One of the sweetest people in Singapore is the chef of the Tiffin Room at Raffles Hotel. Chef Yogesh believes that food tastes better when you “cook with love.” Whether that’s a love of the food, the people you’re serving, or both, I was never completely sure. But, in essence, he’s right. Food tastes better when it’s made passionately, for people you care about. And risotto is the perfect kind of food for this. It forces you to really spend time on it, on what for many would be an annoying, monotonous task. But to the ones cooking it, as Yogesh would say, “with love”, it’s hardly a chore, but something to take pleasure and pride in.

The above is a plate of some risotto my wife and I made last night. We used pulled pork (saved from the slow braised belly pork we made a few days back) and home-made pork stock. We added some peas for color and taste, and, of course, fresh parmesan.

A Blind Tasting Wine Dinner

This weekend, my wife and I made dinner to celebrate the visit of two close friends, now living in Turks & Caicos, where they run one of the world’s best resorts (yah, tough life!). Four other friends joined us. At the suggestion of N—one half of the couple being celebrated—each couple brought along a bottle of wine, wrapped in foil or otherwise disguised. Each couple would test the other diners’ knowledge of wine through a series of multiple choice questions, things like, “Is this wine from Australia, France, or Chile?” or “Is this a Cabernet Sauvignon, a GSM, or a Merlot?”

S (my wife) and I came up with a 4-course menu and emailed it out to each couple, assigning a white wine for the first course, a red or white for the second, a red for the third and a dessert wine for the last. While we were up happy to host a blind tasting, we also wanted some assurances that the wines would match our food.

Our first course was something from Kimiko Barber’s book The Japanese Kitchen. It was a Beef Tataki rolled around cucumber julienne, topped with ginger, garlic and kaiware. With the beef, we served the white, which despite most of us thinking it was a French Sauvignon Blanc, turned out to be a Pouilly-Fume (Chardonnay) from the Loire valley (well, at least we got France right). It was the Chateau Favray 2003 Pouilly-Fume, and was excellent.

Our second course was Mac & Cheese. I’ve been enjoying tweaking Joel Robuchon’s truffled macaroni & cheese recipe over the past couple weeks, and have come up with a variation that I really like. I use mozzarella, comte, and gruyere in the sauce and then a sprinkle of parmesan (which I blowtorch) on top. Instead of fresh truffles, I mix Tetsuya Wakuda’s Truffle Salsa (available jarred at Culina here in Singapore) into the sauce. I also add a bit of bacon, which M Robuchon does not. With this, N had brought along a real surprise, a 2000 Moulin A Vent Beaujoulais by Georges Dubeouf (I later found out that M Dubeouf himself had introduced N to this wine). This is a premium Beaujoulais that actually takes to aging, but is already drinking well. As someone who hates Beaujoulias Nouveau, this was a treat.

The third course was a combination of a slow braised Belly Pork recipe by Tom Colicchio and a Lentils recipe from the Balthazar cookbook. The Pork is oven roasted in broth, first at a higher temperature for one and half hours, and then at very, very low heat for 3-4 hours. It was truly fork tender! We paired this with one of my favourite wines from a vineyard S and I had visited a few years ago in Margaret River, Western Australia, and fell in love with. Cape Grace makes incredible wines, especially, in my opinion, its Cabernet Sauvignon. We opened a 2002 (which, remarkably, was only the vineyard’s 3rd vintage) and floored everyone with just how soft, fruity, but full it was. (James Halliday rated it a 93/100.) If you have not tried this wine, I encourage you to find a way to get your hands on a bottle (unfortunately, the one we opened was the last from the case we brought back with us from our last visit).

For dessert, we had a Sticky Date Pudding with Orange Brandy Butter Sauce and a Seville Orange Marmalade Ice Cream (home-made of course). This was paired with a Torbreck’s The Bothie 2003, a deceptive but yummy Muscat. Most of us had no idea what to make of this wine, especially because it was clear in color. Of course, it didn’t help that P, who had brought the wine, was at this point of the dinner, too drunk to ask his questions properly.

Kurobuta Pork Ramen

Being Chinese, I love pork (well, there’s a sweeping generalization). So, when my wife and I spied some Kurobuta pork belly slices at our local Japanese supermarket, we knew we had to buy some. For the uninitiated, Kurobuta pork is darker in color than other pork—the color is a lovely red—and it is also well-marbled.

The pork is a Japanese specialty, but like Japanese curry, it came to Japan by way of the British (who knew they could influence food culture so much?). Kurobota pork comes from the Berkshire pig. These swine, also referred to as Japanese black hogs, were a gift of the British government in the 19th Century. What a tradition! Can you imagine that happening today?

“Oh, hello Prime Minister Lee, here’s a herd of swine, our nation’s gift to you.” It would create a diplomatic incident, and a none too positive one to boot.

Anyway, this particular pig, legend has it, was first eaten by Oliver Cromwell and his troops in Reading some 300 years ago. Since then, the Berkshire breed has been revered for its outstanding quality, texture and flavor. During the 1800s, the breed was refined and has been bred for consumption. In fact, in 1875, the American Berkshire Association became the first swine registry in American history and has maintained pedigree records ever since.

Today, restaurant chefs like to compare Kurobuta to Kobe beef. It’s rare, expensive (thankfully, not as rare or expensive as Kobe), fatty and very, very tasty. And of course, it hails from Japan, which makes it exotic to most Westerners.

We decided to devour ours with a soupy ramen dish (pictured above). We had some frozen pork stock—the leftovers of a very large pork belly braise—which we reheated with some konbu, garlic and ginger. We braised some Japanese leeks (one of my favourite veggies) in the stock as well. We marinated the pork in a combination of mirin, shiro miso, and soy and then fried it very carefully in some butter. A few hard-boiled eggs and chopped spring onions later, we had perfect Kurobuta Ramen! Yum!

Picture of the Day

It’s been a slow couple of days. My wife is down with a nasty bout of food poisoning so we haven’t been cooking anything exciting nor going out to eat. In fact, we’re missing out on a large dinner with close friends tonight at Oso, one of our favourite Italian restaurants in town.

So, this is a slightly random post. The below is one of my favourite photos, of a bowl of laksa I ordered from a small coffee shop on Liang Seah Street in Singapore.

This picture was actually one of several I had to submit in order to pitch for the job to shoot the Lonely Planet World Food Guide to Malaysia and Singapore.

A Holiday Dinner

This past weekend, my wife and I had some friends over for dinner. Weekend dinner parties are always an excuse for us to show off a bit. We both really enjoy taking the time to look through our pretty large collection of cookbooks, pull out recipes we love or want to try for the first time, work out wine pairings and also some table setting ideas. One thing I also enjoy doing is designing and printing out menus—let’s just say it allows the graphic designer in me to have a little fun.

Since this past weekend was a holiday weekend, i.e. 3 days, we had more time to prep. My wife decided to devote a good portion of the extra time to prepare crabs. After working out 3 recipes that called for shelled crabmeat, she went to the market and brought back 5 Sri Lankan crabs, which she steamed and then spent several hours shelling.

Suffice it to say the dogs were going insane, sitting at her side and drooling in hopes that she’d accidentally drop a claw or a handful of meat.

With the crab, we served three small starters. The first was a “deconstructed California roll”, inspired by a dish I had eaten at Yu’u, one of the best Japanese restaurants in Melbourne. This is a simple dish of crabmeat, avocado, ebiko and wakame tossed in a sauce made from white miso, mirin, mustard, wasabi and grapeseed oil, and topped with some lemon-infused ikura. Second was a mentaiko (spicy cod fish roe) pasta, tossed with the crabmeat and some bacon and topped with nori. The third was crab cakes, following a recipe from Chez Panisse, and served with a homemade sweet chilli-mayonnaise. We served the first two starters with a Jacob’s Creek sparkling Chardonnay Pinot Noir and the crab cakes with a D’Arenberg The Stump Jump 2004, a good and extremely affordable blend of Marsanne, Sauvignon Blanc and Reisling.

mentaiko pasta with crabmeat

For a main course, my wife tried (for the first time) a brined roasted rack of pork recipe from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon cookbook. The rack is brined for 24 hours and then roasted for an hour. I paired this with a macaroni and fresh truffles recipe by Joel Robuchon, found in Patricia Wells’ Paris Cookbook. I must admit, though, that we tweaked it quite a bit. First, we used elbow macaroni intead of the 16 large long pieces the book calls for and instead of making truffle butter using fresh truffles, we blended butter with Tetsuya Wakuda’s jarred-truffle salsa (one of the greatest products available today). We served this with a Torbreck The Steading 2001. This Aussie GSM (Grenache, Shiraz, and Mourvedre) is one of my favourite wines.

For dessert, I made a lemon soufflé, following a Mark Bittman recipe and paired it with a homemade chocolate ice cream that my wife made in her fantastic Musso, following a Maison Du Chocolat recipe.

In all, it was a good, satisfying meal. What amused me most was that for placecard holders, we used Cadbury Peeps—little marshmallow chicks put out for Easter. We created little flags with toothpicks and paper, wrote each person’s name on one, and stuck them in the Peeps, which we plated at each seat. While they were meant to be decorative, I discovered while cleaning up after dinner, that our guests had all eaten their Peeps, all except one guest who ate her Peep’s body but could not bring herself to eat the head.