Counting Down....

Only 6 hours to the Year 2006. Are you busy getting ready for the Count Down party? To all who have dropped by my blog since Boxing Day, I want to say a big THANK YOU! I hope you will continue to join me in my laboratory as I experiment with different recipes and give you my reports.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May 2006 be a healthful, fruitful and wealthful year for you!

Meme - You Are What You Eat

I got tagged by Belachan (Little Corner of Mine) for the Meme ‘You Are What You Eat’. As she tagged me just a day after I set up my blog, I had to figure out what a meme is. Now I know, it’s an idea that shared and passed from blog to blog. Well, the top 10 foods on my lists are:

1) Bread – my main source of carbohydrates. I’m a bit strange for an Asian palate, I don’t eat much rice and noodles, but give me bread, particularly european style ones, and I’ll finish them to the last crumb.

2) Cheesecake – my number 1 ‘vice’ for desserts. I just love the smooth, creamy texture as it glides down the throat. Yum!

3) Fruits - can’t do without them, for even one day. Give me a juicy apple or some tangy strawberries anytime. Great for digestion too!

4) Yogurt – great on it’s own, or in smoothies and fruit salads.

5) Fish – baked, grilled or fried. Love them all, especially teriyaki salmon.

6) Edamame beans (green soyabeans) – a great, convenient snack for the hungry afternoons.

7) Barley drink – ‘cooling’ drink that soothes the throat on days when I ate too much ‘heaty’ foods.

8) Cantonese Dim Sum – arrr.. those steaming hot bamboo baskets filled with little sweet or savoury morsels, can’t resist them. Alas, the best dim sum, I feel, are in Hong Kong. So far the ones I’ve eaten in Singapore doesn’t quite match the standards. But then, ‘no prawns, fish also can lah’.

9) Cantonese double boiled soups – simply comforting and nutritious.

10) Mochi Ice Cream – balls of ice cream wrapped within a soft and chewy glutinous rice skin. Easy to eat and yummylicious.

Hmmm… who can I pass the baton to? Seems like most have been tagged already. So.. to..

Zu’ Treats

MyCoffee’s Sweets

Craving for Something Sweet?

Using a recipe from Amelia, a member of KC, I made this dessert - Chilled Tauhu Huay (Chilled Beancurd). I'm sure most of us eat tauhu huay while it's hot. I personally like it cold, but I find the texture of store-bought tauhu huay changes after chilling, it's not as soft as when hot. So when I found this recipe on KC, I have to give it a try.




There it is, soft and tender Chilled Beancurd without addition of traditional coagulants like gypsum or lactone powder. Although it's not perfect yet(still not soft enough, probably due to my measurement error), I will definitely be making this again. 

Baking Class

Went for baking class at Creative Culinaire last night. Chef Judy Koh taught us 4 typres of cookies for Chinese New Year baking. These are the samples I brought home:

 


The cookies taste great, crisp, buttery and melt-in-the-mouth, just the way I like cookies to be. Hmm.. it's time to start making CNY goodies, the 'Dog Year' is just around the corner. 

Rolls of Labour

These hard rolls were meant to be made on Christmas eve,to go along with the soup. But I had no idea what went wrong on that day, tried two times but the dough simply could not be kneaded until smooth and elastic. Had to give up and and went out to Cedele to buy some hard rolls instead. I was so disappointed. Tried to make it again yesterday, failed again. Same problem. I simply could not believe it! This is not a new recipe and yet three times I failed! Refusing to give up, I went out to buy another brand of bread flour and tried again. Voila! Success! Conclusion: problem with the bread flour.




Wrapped some Parmesan cheese inside two of the rolls.

Aloha from Me!

Hi all, this is my very first post, since I've just set up this blog. I would need some time to get really 'blog-savvy'. Why set up a blog then, when I'm not really very 'computer literate'? Simple reason, I just hope to share with all of you, especially those who loves cooking/baking up a storm, my adventures and probably mishaps in my kitchen, as I go about playing in my laboratory.