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Hainanese chicken rice was one of those things that I had always wished to try cooking, but never got around to it. It seemed all to troublesome. Some time last month however, I decided that trouble or no trouble, I was going to make myself some homestyled Hainanese chicken rice.
I searched around for an authentic looking chicken rice recipe, and settled on the one by Amy Beh. It can be found here. I used a smallish kampung chicken as the meat is usually leaner and more tender. If you ask me, preparing the condiments was a little more troublesome than preparing the chicken and the rice. The chicken turned out very tender and tasty, despite the fact that I cooked it slightly longer because I didn’t want it to be bloody inside. I was too lazy to roll the rice into balls but it tasted good anyway. The recipe is definitely a keeper. The chilli sauce recipe was rather good and packed quite a spicy punch. The minced ginger condiment was a little too spicy for my liking and so I added a little chicken soup to dilute it. I discovered though, that the hubby did not care much for chicken rice condiments. I can probably save some time the next round.
I absolutely adore the crabmeat squid ink pasta from Valentinos. The richness of the sauce, coupled by the sweetness of the crabmeat – simply heavenly. There are days where I actually crave for that pasta. And there was the day that I craved for it, only to find out that Valentinos was closed. Not for the day, but for the month. The only solution to ease the craving was well, to attempt to create my own crab meat linguine.
I must add here that I’ve attempted this dish before but was not satisfied with the taste. The sauce was a tad bit too watery and lacked the taste of fragrant tomatoes. This time, I made several changes and ended up with something that I was rather proud of. Of course, since there was no squid ink linguine on hand, one had to be contented with regular store bought linguine. My recipe eludes me at this point of time but I promise to come back and post it, should it slip back into my memory.
What does one do when she has four lemons leftover in the fridge? Think of a dessert to make with them, of course. I came across the recipe below as I was flipping through Alice Medrich’s Pure Dessert. The heading “lemon-basil sherbet” immediately appealed to me because I had two pots of basil growing crazily on the ledge of my corridor. They definitely needed trimming. I made some small changes to the recipe in the book. The recipe (with my changes) is shared below.
The result was a thoroughly refreshing dessert. It was very tangy of course, with some hint of sweetness. The fragrance of the basil definitely came through. A perfect treat on a hot day.
Lemon Basil Sherbet
(Serves 10)
Ingredients:
3/4 cup of lemon juice (from 4 lemons)
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 cup of basil leaves
4 cups of milk
1 tbsp grated lemon zest
Method:
- Mix together sugar, lemon juice and basil leaves in a medium bowl. Let it sit for at least one hour, up to three hours.
- Stir the milk into the lemon juice mixture. The mixture will curdle a little. Strain the mixture, pressing on the basil leaves. Discard the leaves.
- Add the lemon zest and mix well.
- Pour the mixture into a shallow tray and freeze till hard, about 4 hours.
- Break up the chunks of frozen mixture and process in a food processor until smooth.
- Freeze again till hard, at least four to five hours.
- If the sherbet is too hard to scoop, let it stand for a few minutes after removing from freezer.
Our CG gathered for a potluck dinner over the Vesak Day holiday. We were treated to a feast of chilli crab and chicken curry cooked by our beloved CGL. Of course, the others brought stuff like fried beehoon, salad, fried wontons and so on. But the star of the dinner was definitely the chilli crab. Hopefully we get to have it again soon.
I caught up with some dear girlfriends from church the other day. I picked Riders’ Cafe as the last time I visited, they were having a power outage. We loved how the place takes us away from the hustle and bustle of the city life. Staring at the greenery out of the window, enjoying the view of horses training was indeed very relaxing.
We were too late for breakfast and had to order from their lunch menu. I ordered a crabmeat pasta which honestly, was unspectacular. They were rather generous with their crabmeat and shaved parmesan, but sadly, the crabmeat was not quite fresh.
Girlfriends decided to go for the fish and chips and the calamari which tasted pretty good. They were a way lot better than the pasta. The batter used for the fish and chips remained crispy even after some time. It wasn’t overtly oily. The chips were chunky and yummy. I am definitely partial to chunky fries.
The calamari was above average. It was crisp on the outside but just right on the inside and not too chewy. The mayo dip complemented the calamari very well.
For dessert, we shared a “Death by Chocolate” which essentially was a piece of warmed chocolate cake with a scoop of vanilla bean ice-cream. The cake was very rich and chocolatey. It was very gooey but I wished that it would slightly less sticky. The vanilla bean ice cream was good. This is worth a try if you pop by this place.
Riders Cafe is located at 51 Fairways Drive, Bukit Timah Saddle Club
We had three lovely couples at our place for dinner the other night. I was racking my brains as to what to cook for a party of eight and decided that the theme for the night shall be “comfort food”. It was a fairly warm night, which was a shame because the menu would have been terrific if it had been a nice cool evening.
We began the meal with some lovely mushroom soup prepared by my hubby. The soup consisted of a mix of brown and white button mushrooms and portabellos. It was rich and creamy, and the added touch of sour cream was just about [...]
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To be honest, I was never a fan of gnocchi. I attribute it to a bad gnocchi experience at one of those pasta restaurants that claim to serve “homemade gnocchi”. The gnocchi I tasted back then was dry and bland, hardly worth remembering. Since then, I avoided gnocchi whenever I see it on the menu. My impression of it changed slightly after a meal at a pizza/pasta place in Sorrento, Italy. It was alot tastier, though it was still a tat bit dry. A week ago, I saw a cooking show on Discovery Travel and Living featuring a gnocchi dish. This gnocchi was made of goat cheese and ricotta [...]
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We had half a packet of brown rice left over from the paella attempt. I looked around for ideas on what to use it for and decided on this. It’s inspired by a recipe found on epicurious; I made several changes to it to suit my taste. The pilaf is really fragrant, thanks to the addition of porcini soaking liquid, butter and some cream. Lemon zest gave it that bit of zing needed to complete the dish.
(Serves 2 as a main) Ingredients:
3/4 ounces dried porcini 1/2 cup hot water
1 cup brown rice 1 cup chicken stock 1 red onion (chopped) 3/4 cup chopped parsley 2 [...]
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This is attempt one at Spanish Paella. The downside? I couldn’t find paella rice at the supermarket. Took the advice of one of the readers on epicurious and substituted brown short grained rice. Big big mistake. It takes twice as long to cook. I would probably use risotto in future, or head to Culina, to attempt to find the correct rice.
Even though the paella took much longer than usual to cook, and I had to change the method of cooking from oven to stove-top, it still tasted mighty good. If I had used the correct rice, it probably would have tasted alot better. Well, well, there’s always attempt [...]
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I had bought a packet of frozen spinach last week, meaning to cook creamed spinach some time this week. When this did not materialise, I decided to do something else with the spinach.
I was too lazy to roll out a crust, and so I decided that this quiche was going to be crustless. To save the trouble of having to cut it up, I decided to bake the quiche mixture in a cupcake tin. I used some aged pecorino cheese in place of gruyere cheese, the typical choice for quiches.
The quiche turned out nicely, though I think it was a tad bit salty, as I forgot that [...]
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