Miscellaneous Food: Home Cooking (Chinese)

Okay, I will admit it. Remember how you used to sneak out after school to go hang out at Orchard (well, Junction 8 for some privledged students) with your friends? It wasn't that many years ago that the most cool thing to do was hang around Far East in school uniforms, eating your whipped potato of freedom at the KFC.


I must have skipped classes, practice, tuition. But I never stayed on or out until dinnertime. And this had nothing to do with my rebellion. It had everything to do being from a Cantonese family that always had a pot of good soup boiling on the stove..and with my Peranakan nanny, who was a live-in distant relative with the most excellent culinary repetoire. When my brother and I were younger, she minded us during the day and when we got older, she retired to just cooking for the family.

When I say cooking though, I mean that she made curry rampa from scratch, filling the house with a stinky and pungent aroma and the constant roaring of the blender. She dried her own peanuts and salted fish and during the New Year, she made covered jam tarts, snipping out little pineapple quills.


I wasn't allowed in the kitchen for most of my early childhood and when I was older, she watched over my work on the cutting board with more prejudice than a TV chef and made annoyingly loud declarations "Aiyah! How can, all uneven, different cooking time, lousy taste!". Sometimes I took to avoiding the kitchen door, if not, I'd be called in to slave-pick the heads off beansprouts or some other menial task.


She never once said that you cook for a man (and I don't know if you all realize how unusual that is for an Asian woman of her age and educational background), or to be a good housewife, always that I should study hard, get a good job and be famous and great one day. And that I should learn how to follow the recipes and the old traditional ways, because "who will cook for you, those dishes you like so much, when I am gone".


Going home to dinner was always a no-brainer and to be honest, I never understood why other kids stayed out that late. Dinner at my house is a big thing, always a family, friends and conversation thing and till today, I far prefer to have friends home then to deal with going out to eat.

For all the people who are away from home- including my brother in the UK and Umami in Paris (thank you, thank you!) who are missing a home-cooked meal. My family can scarce afford her rich curry chicken, sour fatty pork and fishhead curry that often these days but these are the Chez Liew dinner dishes that still make a regular appearence!

Miscellaneous Food: Home Cooking (Italian)

My cousins were due over for a simple home-cooked Italian meal and they had brought my cute baby nephew Joshua. Cooking is nothing compared to burping a baby of spittle!

For dinner, the menu was a simple olive and sundried tomato salad, lasagne, baked fish and tiramisu. I wanted to use the chance to illustrate some of the points that I highlight on the last post about lasagna here.


Firstly, dry your meat. The meat needs to be taken out of the packaging and pressed between paper towels, like so. The traditional combination of meat is 1/3 veal, 1/3 beef and 1/3 pork. I use about 80-100g for every person eating. The odori is traditionally celery, onion and carrot, grated or chopped finely. I drop the celery because I don't like the taste and use 3 carrots and 3 onions.


Heat a little olive oil and butter together. Fry the onions till brown and soft, adding fresh chopped herbs. Add the carrot, continue frying while adding the meat. Fully cook the meat before adding any stock or wine, this is so that the meat does not Broil in the liquid.

When the meat is fully cooked, add red wine, veal stock, more herbs, sea salt, pepper and whole peeled Italian tomatoes plus the juice they came in. I used almost a whole bottle of red wine (use a quality red wine, if you don't want the meat sauce to taste cheap and tannic) and also a good sea salt. It does make a difference! I also use a combination of herbs, rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, basil and parsley...but the most important ones are probably basil, rosemary and parsley. You can cook them in the meat sauce both chopped and whole.


At the start of the process, the meat sauce is very liquid, by the end of the process, it should be fairly dry and thick, almost sticky. This when you add in two small cans of tomato paste, which I feel helps to increase the tomato flavour and to bind the meat sauce together.


Assemble with layers of half-cooked pasta and bechamel sauce (which is a thickened milk sauce- milk, butter, flour and bay leaf), putting in fresh basil leaves and topping the whole, or the layers, with mozerella cheese.

I've already mentioned this about the layers but I wanted to stress that it's a Meat lasagna and not a Cream lasagna. The reason I say this is that restaurants in Asia tend to be really stingy on the meat, so you get a few crumbs of it, followed by a thick, gelatinous layer of white sauce. It makes for yucky lasagna. The quality of a home-made lasagna is really that it has adequate meat and just a thin highlight of white sauce. A weird quirk, I like using a hard cheese like parmesan within the layers and a soft cheese on the top. Bake for at least 45 min.


When you serve the lasagne, it's important that your layers are still visible.


Like so. What it should Really Not Be is that you have melted them all into each other, forming a big piece of Italian mush.


The fish recipe is dead simple. You basically buy the freshest fish you can find (and prefably you know, not a really Chinese fish like pomfret), a garoupa or a sea bass is fine, salt and pepper it and anoint it throughly with herbs. You can line the stomach with herbs and even stuff in vegetables like little tomatoes, squash and those tiny Japanese eggplants.

Soak some saffron in white wine, then pour the white wine and some garlic and olive oil over the fish. Bake but pull it out a little early to check on the texture- the fish will continue to cook while out of the oven.

My brother's posted on tiramisu (and also the entire recipe) before here, so I won't repeat it. except to say that I had a very good one at a friend's house and two things were unique. One, that it was made with a heavy splash of liquer and two that it was made in a large glass bowl with the lady's fingers pretty much vertically arranged, so that you could see the layers through the glass.


The recipe is very accurate, I just wanted to add that you should whip the cream, the eggs and everything else aggressively, because it does make a difference to the sturdiness and setting of the marscapone mixture.


There are two types of tiramisu recipes, the classic soft tiramisu like this one and the recipe that requires whipping the egg (doesn't that sound so naughty Nigella) over a boiling water bath, which will result in a much stiffer tiramisu that can be cut and which will hold its shape. The latter is often found in cheap Italian joints here in Asia because it won't spoil as quickly (think about it, you're semi-cooking the egg) and you can substitute gelatin to make the cake stand.


I am biased in favour of the former because I think the taste is fuller but even so, you need to beat the seperate mixtures well because that makes the difference between a soft scoop tiramisu and a soft but slicable tiramisu. Also, yo, there's really very little cocoa on the top, use real dark chocolate cocoa, don't make a great tiramisu, then pour cheap choking Hershey's powder all over it!

Bon Appetit!

Review: Sushi Yoshida

Righto. Since we're in the mood of giving away secrets, let me show you the one I've kept for awhile. There's not much point now, though, because the restaurant has realized that a $28 price tag on what they were offering was too silly and have now increased the prices to $38, which kind of changes the simple value equation.


I love this place because of their freshness of the fish, the friendliness of the chefs and the general moody lighting of the high wooden bar and pale green walls of this little sushi cave in the wall.


Its a place that you can sit and have a three hour dinner, just on any regular friday. In fact, the later the better, since that's when you get a bunch of happy, giggly cooks. That's also when they play the old 1930s Shanghai music of swaying dancing cheongsummed women, or U2 or some lounge-trance, depending on what kind of mood the guys are in.


I had come so often for dinner that one day when I made an impromptu booking for lunch, I got a shock when looking at their set menu. I had a coddled soft boiled egg with mirin, sake and wasabi, delightfully light and fresh, with just a hint of yuzu, a full main with chirashi, or a sashimi moriawase, or a sushi platter, two bowls of clear fish soup and rice, as well as a dessert, for just $28. I'm not sure that that covers just the sahimi, on a good day. $28 Sing dollars is like, what, $18USD or 9 UK pounds.


Of course, you can find normal bento sets in any of Singapore's ubiquitous Japanese restaurants for the same price. The reason this is different is that I love that they don't stinge on the types and amount of sashimi that they give in the set and that you can have a clear soup boiled with pork and fish bones, or a miso soup, cloudy with enoki mushrooms. Also that they don't do the cheap slice of watermelon dessert but on good days, serve a unique home-made dessert of slices of yuzu peel soaked in honey and served with julienned aloe vera.


For those who are wondering, I don't have a picture of it here but the largest choice of the sets is the chirashi (trust me, I've tried them all) but the one I like best is the sashimi moriawase.


That's because the best and probably the simplest thing at the restaurant, is the chef's garlic fried rice. I love when it's being made and the warm savory smell penetrates the large metal tin over the stove, through to the whole sushi counter and front of house. It's like the most fragrant, pungent, increadible smell ever and they cleverly pair the steaming hot rice with a bit of cold chives and cucumber. I also ask for it to substitute my white rice and I haven't yet had one dining companion who didn't comment on how yummy it was. I even dream of it when I travel. Once in a while.


On this particular occasion, we ordered some extra seasonal specials. Whitefish, whole uni, which wasn't even as expensive as I thought it'd be (or is at other places) and another time, it was steamed Japanese yam buds (I love these when they are in season) and tiny red crabs, which they plucked from the glass cage and fried till whole and crispy. I wish I'd taken pictures of those, they were cute..and delicious.

Yoshida is definitely not a cheap meal and even the lunch set is now pretty fully priced. I was pretty shocked that they hiked the lunch set price $10 at one go and the dinners can set you back a couple hundred. However, I still feel the ambience, food quality and experience makes it a worthwhile visit.

Sushi Yoshida
10 Devonshire Road,
6735-5014

Review: Wacha

I really enjoy reading blogs and part of the reason is because you get this information overload of where to go, what to eat. It's great to have such a community and that we're building one in Singapore.

This place has been written up all over blogs. It's even, I think, been written up in the papers. So it's such a mystery to me, why it isn't more crowded than the it's been the last, oh, four times that I've been there. Pray though, that it stays that way. I'm so okay with the extra space, as long as it stays open.

This is the home of the $35, beautifully presented, four course, Japanese home-style cooking, dinner set. I love, love, love this place, their decor, their chef (kisses to the chef!), the location, perched on Ang Siang Hill, behind the hot Maxwell Market and hip Scarlet Boutique hotel. I have the distinct pleasure of working in this area, so I can often arrange for dinners with friends here. It's a delight to introduce them to the homey, unique and creative space.

The shophouse is home to a little shop selling Japanese crockery, fabrics and lacquerware. The pieces are exquisite and expensive and they are displayed beautifully on the custom-made shelving, as well as draped over the limited seating. The concept is to have a shop and a restaurant, or rather a chef's space, inside the shop. You eat, surrounded by bonsai and drink tea from the matching sets of Japanese teapots and cups.


You should definitely have the proprietors recommend some teas. On my last visit, each person chose a different tea, so we all got to try the gyokuru, the sencha, the mugicha and the bitter tea, which I've forgotten the name of. (For some reason I want to say Futomaki, but it's definitely not. I have Futomaki on the brain tonight, it seems). I also have a soft spot for mugicha so I thought that was an absolute knock-out with its strong whole roasted barley after-taste, but they were all excellent and had the long, lingering, textured taste of top-quality and freshly brewed teas.


The appetizers come in a nifty little Japanese birdcage and are a two-storied variety of home-cooked goodies- potato salad, hijiki with daikon, a delicate fern-like seaweed soaked in vinegar. On one occasion, we were greedy and ordered more dishes of tempura and fried calimari and those were delicious as well.

The second course was a savory, rich broth with agedashi tofu and eggplant. I normally don't even like eggplant, but this is stewed so finely and richly that I just gulped it down. I love agedashi tofu, so I was entirely enjoying this menu. The main course was a choice of salmon, chicken or unagi with rice and soup.


I always wind up with the unagi and I usually ask them to subsitute the white rice with their green tea fried rice, which has little dried shrimp in it and is textured, flavourful and comforting.


One of the best things about Wacha is that the chef makes desserts everyday. There is usually a variety on offer as well, so you can choose something out of the set. On that particular day, it was a strawberry ice cream with green tea cookies, all home-made. Another time, it was a wonderful, light strawberry sponge cake and yet another time, it was a green tea sponge roll with strawberries.


I am really happy with this find and that the others decided to share it. Definitely pay the place a visit but book ahead!


Wacha
14 Ann Siang Road
#01-01
Singapore 069694
Tel: +65 6438 1553
Open 2pm - 11pm Monday - Saturday

Review: Les Amis

This was a very interesting question that came up a couple days ago during one of those random late broken-telephone tag conversations. My best response is that probably, magic only happens when you're not looking for it. Also that magic, by definition, is and should be, rare.

And I meant all that but it was you know, midnight jazz. And as if to express myself in a more prosiac way, I started typing this post.

One day, we should have a very contentious poll- ask the food lovers, is it easier to find magic in food...or magic in people? For my part, I wanted to write about a pretty magic meal but also about how magic in food, is often not magic at all. It's the culmination of a lot of effort. Pretty much like every other kind of magic, it's really about the persistance, the love, the dedication, the investment that goes into achieving consistency, teasing out tastes and textures and binding the whole into a seamless creation of something that is delightful yet in a way, not at all spontaneous.

This post is about a meal at Les Amis, the outlet at Shaw Center, which is the timelessly stylish first-born of the Les Amis Group. Do NOT ask about the prices (you can check the website and have sticker shock before you even get to the restaurant). It is a ridiculously expensive restaurant. That being said, everything about the food was excellent. Par Excellente. And you know, if you are the kind of person who has the luxury of living in Singapore while constantly converting in USD or better yet, the pound, then well, the upside is, it won't seem That Bad to you.


Upon seating, they serve you a small dish, with one smooth cone of butter and one bevelled cone of butter. They serve you a lovely crusty soft white bread and an olive loaf, both are excellent. They also serve you an amuse bouche, today, it was a cauliflower- truffle mousse. Les Amis's amuse bouche and starters are an institution onto themselves. It's the sort of place where you think, ah, foie gras is passe, then you have it in one of their esoteric forms, like the jellied, or soup foie gras and then you think, Holy Shit, that was pretty amazing!

It also cracked me up that, like a fashion designer, Chef Gunther Hubrechsen has dressed the restaurant with a Spring-Summer collection of menu choices.


We each ordered an appetizer, a soup and dessert. The main highlight was to be the roasted piglet. I had the carpaccio of langoustine with Oscietre caviar, light creme, chives and extra virgin olive oil from Dandaragan. I've seen Jackson Pollack paintings less pretty.


This was the crab crepe, (I'm sure it has a fancier name, but it was specially made for the table). It was pretty gorgeous too.


This was the very expensive cold angel hair pasta with caviar and langoustine. It sounds so commonplace, but I can tell you the combination of tastes was pretty sublime.


The soup was probably the most imaginative. It was a comforting hot consomme of poultry (er...chicken broth), with a warm egg yolk and fine ravioli. I loved the jiggly little egg yolk floating around in the hot liquid.


The piglet was yummy. It was lovely. But it was not even so much all those things as it was just stunning, from the way they laid out the little carcass, to the carving of all the smooth meat, paired with melted leeks and a sweet and sour sauce made from Lindemans Kriek Beer.


Before we descended from the frothy heavens of taste sensations, there was one more fluffy happy sugar-loaded cloud. You can tell yourself there's just egg white in souffle but haha, who're you kidding eh.


The souffle of the day was a passion fruit souffle, which we didn't fancy, so they made up two souffles, their traditional Grand Marnier souffle with ice cream and the Chocolate with Cherry souffle.


A tea, a canele, and we were off. I'm not a devotee of Justin Quek and generally, I seldom go to Les Amis, it's such an extravagance. The meals I've had there though, are probably the only ones that truly rival the great restaurants in the major cities and have convinced me that the experience really is pretty special. I could try to describe each dish more yeah, but we all know magic...just can't be explained.