Bento #1

Well, I couldn’t resist the prospect of making my own bento box and so I paid Daiso a visit, and gathered some gear (at bargain prices!)

And hence the culmination:

Sushi riceballs with the flaky things outside (not sure what you callthem). Salad made of dou miao (bean shoots) and local lettuce, along with two weiner octopuses which are so typical of Japanese bentos. The yellow bear contains holds dressing for my salad.

Not bad for a first try, right? I am looking forward to making more bentos!

And just in case you were wondering, I made this the night before, and leave it in the fridge. In the morning when I am about to go to school, I pack it into this thermal insulated bag with a freezer pack, which keeps my things cool for at least 5-6 hours! My classmates thought my bento box was cute, yay.

Packing lunch

I packed my own lunch to school for the past 2 days.

What’s on the menu? Tomyam tuna pita sandwich. I bought some pita bread from Giant, and made my own tomyam mayonaise tuna spread (tomyam paste + mayo + tuna steak in brine). I put in a couple of local lettuce leaves to prevent the tuna spread from wetting the bread and thus turning it soggy. I had enough pita and tuna for 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, and a midnight snack for my sister. I also have enough lettuce to make a small salad yesterday. My total cost? $6. This might not be the cheapest meals around (I think you can buy mee soto for $1 from the Muslim food stall), but I guess it beats having to go to lunch at the crowded Arts canteen. Seems more healthy too.

On the notion of packed lunch, I have been stalking this blog, The Food Pornographer, for some time and I always find myself drooling over her brilliant bento boxes. She is situated in Australia, but she comes up with the wackiest lunch items that are vaguely Asian/fusion! Very good place to just ogle at food. Looking at these sites always make me want to attempt my own bento boxes, but chances are, I’ll buy a whole drawerful of tools, and run of steam after 3 days or something. So, for the time being, I’ll stick with sandwiches and salads. Only when I am sure, only then will I try bento boxes.

Popcorn on the cob

A while a go Sarah gave me this really interesting popcorn on the cob she bought on a farm tour in the US. It looked exactly like a vacuum-packed corn on the cob except that it felt harder.

So what I did was to place the entire corn into the enclosed paper bag, seal it, and put it into the microwave oven for 2 minutes on high setting. No, it didn’t explode, and the bag soon swell like a normal pack of microwaveable popcorns.

The results : it looked like a normal bag of popcorns. Initially I thought the cob disappeared. It certainly looked that way! I had to see the cob, so I emptied the entire bag onto a few bowls and …

ta-da! There it is! With a couple of unpopped corn attaché. Amazing, huh. I think they probably freeze-dried or somehow dessicated then entire corn, like how they would process normal corn kernels for popcorn and sold it for novelty.And yes, the taste. Well, there is no taste. It was plain and horrible because it was unbuttered, and I didn’t know how to make caramel to glaze the popcorns so … eventually I told my mum to feed it to the birds or something. (On hindsight I should have given it to the hamsters.)

Fat-zel

I like Auntie Anne’s pretzels (although I prefer their lemonade). So I decided to try my own at home and … let’s just say they turned out fat. I was too generous with my dough and I didn’t stretch them out enough. I dusted them with cinnamon sugar (well, ground cinnamon mixed with sugar granules).

A close up:

Next time round, I shall stretch them out properly so they will be skinnier and less dough-y in the centre. Let me tell you, this will be the next big thing. Forget your Donut Factory or J.CO. Donuts. Pretzels in both sweet and savoury flavours will be hawt stuff. Imagine spicy moroccan spice pretzels, wasabi seaweed flavour, chocolate glazed pretzels … -yummy-

Lunch at Waraku

Well, I brought the camera out initially to take pictures of my new hair. But somehow I forgot about it and started taking food pictures.

What I had:

Some katsu something. Simply, pork cutlet with egg on hotplate. It comes with rice, a scoop of potato salad, miso soup (fill with onions and pumpkin) and pickles.

KL’s half-portion sumptuously green cha soba.

The half-portion unagi don (I think). Severely lacking in fish pieces. Tsk tsk.

And the Waraku at Central has an awesome view out the window!

I bet this is much nicer at night, where Clarke Quay is lit and booming with life.

And Waraku is now officially my favourite Japanese restaurant!

Yoghurt Cake

(Yoghurt, yogurt, however you spell it. That curdled milk with lactobacillus in it.)

My first cake ever since the exams. I followed and altered the recipe given in last week’s issue of Mind Your Body. This cake is very interesting; it uses self-raising flour and no baking powder or bicarb soda. And it uses milk and yoghurt. This is my first time attempting yoghurt cakes, and sure it split on top (oh yes I slathered some melted chocolate on trying to create a marble effect), but overall it tasted really nice. It tasted and felt like cheap cheesecake, especially the kind made by Japanese. It’s soft and fluffy in the centre and there’s a slight salty taste (from the butter). I like it.

(recipe below)

Macaron wannabes

What are these?

Macaron wannabes I suppose.

They turned out this way because I gei kiang (tried to be smart) again.

I thought I could turn the usually cloyingly sweet dessert into something healthier and something with some texture, so I proceeded to add wholewheat flour to my batter. What followed was a rapid drying up and collapse of my egg whites (which I have painstakingly beatened to a stiff peak). Nevertheless I baked them and ta-da! Macaron wannabes that refuse to shine. I sandwiched the macarons with Nutella, and really, there is only that much Nutella I can slathr on before one gets hyperglycaemia. But this is not a failed attempt; just an attempt foiled by my gei kiang-ness. Tsk.

Some “privileged” friends of mine (or really, some poor guinea pig friends of mine) will receive these cloyingly sweet sweets from me tomorrow for Valentine’s/Friendship Day. I’m certain after eating these it’ll be their sweetest Valentine’s ever. In all literal sense of the word, of course.

PS: This IS a macaron. It’s spelt the French way. The local boutique bakeries call it a macaroon, which really means another thing in the States. And not only that, those boutique bakeries sell these sandwiches at $1.50 apiece (minimum). Sheesh.

Ice3 Cafe

So I went to a part of Singapore I don’t usually set foot in - Serangoon Gardens. I went there to meet a friend and we went for dessert at this cafe called Ice3 (Ice cube? As in ice to the power of 3?) Cafe. Visit their website here.

They have this very interesting thing called Magic Potion alcohol tube, which we didn’t try. I just wasn’t in the mood for alcohol (partly because I was satiated with Cafe Cartel club sandwiches). It’s apparently ice-cream mixed in a your choice of alcohol drink. We shared a mudpie and a waffles with icecream and I have to tell you this is the best mudpie I’ve ever eaten.

It is called Alcoholics Anonymous (don’t laugh), and it’s made of rum and raisin ice-cream built on an Oreo cookie base, with sliced almonds and raisins sprinkled on top. Unlike the usual cloying chocolate mudpies we get at other eateries (*cough*NYDC*cough*), this mudpie is really delicious and addictive. The raisins in the ice cream layer is amply soaked in rum, and the rum ice cream is very nice! Here’s a picture taken from the official website:

Alcoholics Anonymous Mud Pie (taken from Ice3 Cafe website)

And we shared a waffles with TWO scoops of ice cream, one in chocobanana (choconana?) and one in … this citrus-y sorbet I don’t remember. The waffles wasn’t nice. Didn’t like it, and I didn’t like the citrus-y sorbet either. The choconana ice cream was not bad, but I only tasted the banana but not the chocolate.

Anyways I like this place, if not for the fact it’s stuck in some corner of Singapore that I visit once a year. Well, it is quite accessible for me, just 30min bus trip or so

Banana Walnut Muffins

My order for silicon bakeware came recently, and I just had to try my hands on the rose silicon muffin pan!
Pretty, no?
Alas, somehow there are pits in my rose, hmm. Can’t be helped I guess. I think these will look really great as Valentine’s Day gifts.
They are so pretty I can’t bear to eat them.

Recipe
2/3 cups mashed banana
2 cups flour
3 eggs
3/4 cup water (or instant coffee)
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar (I reduced that to 5 tablespoons)
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 tsp baking powder
optional banana extract

Well. Just kinda dump everything together, mix well, and pop into the oven at 175deg Celsius.

Hawaiian Pizza

In the true spirit of a lexicography student, a suggested entry into the English dictionary for oven:

oven /Λvn/(n.) An electrical appliance that causes the user to become fat from usage esp. in baking and eating too much food.

The picture shows it all. This is full of carb (pizza base), and fats (cheese and ham). But it also contains copious amounts of fibre (peas, carrots and pineapple), calcium (cheese), protein (ham) and whatever undestroyed vitamins and minerals in the tomato paste. Talk about a balanced meal

(And this post is also culminated from my baking-faster-than-I-can-blog syndrome.)

And the whole world seems to be done with exams except me. I have one last lexicology paper on Friday.