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:

1. Mix together sugar, lemon juice and basil leaves in a medium bowl. Let it sit for at least one hour, up to three hours.
2. 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.
3. Add the lemon zest and mix well.
4. Pour the mixture into a shallow tray and freeze till hard, about 4 hours.
5. Break up the chunks of frozen mixture and process in a food processor until smooth.
6. Freeze again till hard, at least four to five hours.
7. If the sherbet is too hard to scoop, let it stand for a few minutes after removing from freezer.

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 perfect. The mains were homely comfort food – Shepherd’s Pie and Ratatouile. I like to make my Shepherd’s Pie filling with a mix of minced pork and beef. I feel that it gives extra flavour. The mash potato was crisp on the top but soft and fluffy inside. The key to good mash is good potatoes with a generous dose of butter and milk.

The other main is ratatouille, made using Julia Child’s recipe. I’ve done ratatouille a couple of times before, but never using this recipe. Her recipe is rather tedious, as it calls from frequent basting of the vegetables in their liquids. The result however, was well worth the effort. The vegetables were full of complex flavours. Some of our friends don’t typically enjoy the vegetables that go into ratatouille (eggplant, zucchini). Nonetheless, they found this dish very tasty.

By the end of the meal, everyone was stuffed. However, no meal is complete without dessert. For dessert, I chose something that I could prepare ahead – Pierre Herme’s Tri-Creme. The dessert is essentially three layers of cream. The base layer is a coffee creme brulee, without the caramel topping. In the middle we have rich chocolate cream made with Valrhona 64% chocolate. The freshly whipped cream at the top helps to balance out the richness of the dessert. As with all of Pierre Herme’s recipes, this one was a sure winner.

I found a recipe on Epicurious that had rather good reviews and decided to try it out. Moisture, I read, is an enemy of gnocchi and hence the potatoes need to be baked, not boiled. How troublesome! Determined to succeed on my first try, I decided to take no chances. Four potatoes went into the oven for one hour. Next, I had to rice the potatoes. I didn’t have a fanciful ricer (those that looked like a giant garlic press) and so did it using a old-fashioned ricer consisting of a sieve like metal plate and a handle. After ricing, the potatoes had to be spread out and cooled till room temperature before it can be mixed and made into a dough. Here’s what the gnocchi looked after they were rolled and cut.

I made a pork mushroom ragu to go with the gnocchi. The tomato based sauce was extremely flavourful, thanks to the black pig ham, Italian sausages, porcini, white wine and a whole load of other stuff. A very satisfying meal indeed.

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 tbsp butter
1 tsp lemon zest
2 tbsp cream
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Soak porcini in hot water for 30 minutes.
2. Drain porcini through a sieve and reserve the soaking water. Chop the porcini and set aside.
3. Combine chicken stock and porcini soaking water in a pot and bring it to a boil
4. Add brown rice and simmer for 45-60 minutes until rice is tender and the liquid is absorbed.
5. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large skillet over low heat.
6. Add onions and cook till translucent and softened.
7. Add the chopped porcini and cooked brown rice and mix.
8. Add in the parsley and lemon zest. Stir to combine. Lastly, add the cream.
9. Season with salt and pepper. Serve.

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 two isn’t it?

The meats used in this paella were chicken and italian spicy sausage. The seafood were prawns and salmon (an attempt to finish using up the salmon from last week’s sashimi). Instead of paprika, I used espilette that we had bought from France. Espilette is a spanish red pepper. Here’s a close-up of the paella.

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 pecorino is saltier than gruyere, and forgot to cut down the salt.

Crustless Spinach Quiche
(Makes 10 mini quiche)

Ingredients:
1 packet of chopped frozen spinach
1 red onion, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups of cream or half and half
1 cup of cheese (gruyere/pecorino/mozarella etc)
1/2 tsp of salt (or less)
1/4 tsp of ground black pepper
1/8 tsp of ground nutmeg

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 205°C.
2. Fry the chopped red onion in olive oil until fragrant and translucent.
3. Add drained spinach until it wilts and is dry.
4. Remove from heat to cool.
5. In a large bowl, combine eggs, cream, cheese and seasonings.
6. Add in cooled spinach and mix to combine.
7. Fill 10 cupcake molds.
8. Bake for 20 minutes or until tops of quiches are golden brown.