Reluctant Salad, or, Time Flies

I'm not entirely sure time flies. I think it ninja-stealths its way past because before we know it, it's already March and my last entry was when?

Oops. Yes. I know. Life ate me again. I will attempt to be better at this blog thing.(Not, of course, that I think anyone but a handful of friends -reads- this, mind, so the lack of updates doesn't seem to be a bother.)

I have a confession to make. It's weighed at me for some time now, and since I'm trying to get my health back on track with exercise and diet, maybe it will feel less like I'm betraying healthy eaters every where.

So. Here goes.

I really don't like salad.

Maybe it's because my conception of salad has always been the tasteless shreds of wilted iceberg lettuce strewn over a plate with flecks of tired red cabbage and stumps of mortified carrots, but I've never really dug into it with any real enthusiasm, not since my university years.

Now, that's not to say I damn -all- salads to be cast aside. A wonderful Lebanese family changed my conception of green leafy salads when I was still a struggling post-graduate student in university. They had spinach salads, with tomato and cucumber and onions, and a sprinkling of lemon juice, sumac, and olive oil. All this topped off with pine nuts! And tabbouleh - parsley salad with tomatoes, onions, bulgur, lemon juice, and olive oil for dressing. Up to that point in my life I hated parsley. After two years of having lunch at their house though, I was a parsley convert. Now I love the stuff.

But since coming back to Malaysia, salads haven't been something I run out screaming to obtain. All right, so maybe the fact that I'm not a great fan of the ubiquitous cucumber either might have something to do with it.

And then you have healthy eating. And needing fresh vegetables in one's diet. And all that jazz. I wouldn't actually have done anything beyond grunt at this, except that I fell sick recently in the middle of sorting out exercise workouts, work, and streamlining my diet. Which meant that fresh fruits and vegetables were probably going to be good for my immune system...

...so I ate salad. A sort of variation on this recipe here, because I am trying to kick myself into working out and gaining stamina for advanced vocal examinations. I've had it three times already, each with a slightly different twist. The dressing, I have to admit, is lovely.



I left out the spring onions, substituted chickpeas in place of kidney beans, and bypassed the cheese because a) I didn't have any b) feta is expensive. I did add half a cup of leftover cooked quinoa and some pasta to bulk it up, as well as some wakame I had in the fridge from preparing something else. Didn't come across baby spinach so I used a pack of mixed salad greens instead - arugula, rocket, lamb's lettuce and some other lettuce varieties that actually pack a powerhouse of taste. More importantly, I like 'em, which is half the battle.

So maybe it's not quite enough to make me a salad convert, but I will admit - I'm not quite so ornery about disliking the stuff any more. Enough that I'll probably eat it once or twice a week, just to get in my required dose of greenery.

Happy Hamburger New Year

I'm not sure I was ready for 2011 either when it came, I certainly wasn't ready when it ended and now we're into 2012 for some 3 days already. Where did all that time go?

I don't make resolutions - I am a resolution. Whatever comes, I'll resolve it somehow, because life's too short to sit frozen like a deer in the headlights, seconds from the collision.

Love a little more. Make more time for things that matter, the people that matter. They may not be there for much longer. Sing. Create. Make art, even mucked-up, messy art because the imperfections are what you must learn to accept if you ever want to get beyond your stilted tunnel-vision focus on yourself.

In short - do life.

So for the first day of 2012, I had hamburgers. Haven't had one in heavens knows how long. And because of this recipe and Shauna's labour of love, and a decision to kick myself in the butt and get to making them, I sat in the kitchen at my parents' house and had my first gluten-free hamburger ever. I had to tweak ingredients, I didn't use gums, only flax seed meal, I had to improvise by weight. And it felt empowering, it felt good, and more importantly, it felt -right-. And the results were wonderful. Imperfect, but so perfect at the same time.




Take time to be quiet. Reflect. Cook. Bake. Make time to be still.

Do life. It's short.

Happy 2012, all.

Cravings, Reflections, and Thanksgiving

Hurricane Busy made landfall, stayed, and swept up everything in its path.

At least, that's what my entire month-plus has felt like - busy, stressed, busy, stressed, in a never-ending cycle.

I've been ill too, and that's probably a result of all that craziness back to back for weeks on end. I've been cooking, but on a much smaller scale than before - not had time for it, and I can't cook when I come home too late, by agreement with the Housemates.

So it's with relief that I'm finally able to breathe out a HUGE sigh and rest for a day before getting into the week full-stride. Even a day is good - I'll take all I can get because I won't be getting another chance till after mid-December.

A week ago, when I was performing with the Young KL Singers in Penang, I ran into bakeries and baked goods everywhere. This likely accounts for why I had a sudden, inexplicable craving for bread the minute I got home. Thanks to over-exhaustion, I also didn't wake up in time the next morning to do a full-bore gluten-free crusty boule like I wanted, so I had to search for alternatives.



See that herb-flecked, olive-studded gloriousness? That's Karina's amazing gluten-free whole-grain olive bread. I followed everything in the recipe, except I didn't have rice bran, so I added more quinoa flakes. Now, in the past, I've had trouble with some of Karina's recipes - the liquid content mostly, and I wasn't experienced enough to judge consistency at the time, so I was a bit worried to see how this one would turn out.

As it is, I needn't have worried. It was wonderful. It came together quickly, baked up beautifully, and it was delicious. Satisfied all my bread cravings, and now I want to make more - except that quinoa flakes are out of stock in the two organic stores I frequent!

My eating patterns haven't been particularly healthy for a while, due to production rehearsals, upcoming exams, and a crazy schedule - which is why I found myself also craving Simple, Healthy Food. Nothing fancy, or overly fussy.



Heidi Swanson's Shichimi Mushroom Rice Bowl is what I ended up with in the end, and it was exactly what I craved. Easy to put together, simple and healthy - mushrooms, tofu cubes, brown rice and lots of shichimi togarashi (Japanese 7-flavour chili pepper). I had no kale, so I used baby kailan instead, and it came out just fine. I also used eryngii mushrooms because they had nice large stems that would work much better than the usual oyster mushrooms we get here. The green of the kale was such a beautiful colour, probably my favourite part of the whole dish. One note: you -must- brown the mushrooms on both sides as the recipe specifies. It gives them a definite, delicious flavour.

Today...well, today I wanted to prepare for the rest of the week, and that got me to wanting to make bento staples, and that led to this:



That's Maki's Kinpira Gobo (minus the sesame seeds as I didn't have any) and her basic meat soboro (minus the green onions because I didn't have any on hand). I added a bit of kimchi, because I just happened to have some in the fridge and I thought it'd be a nice bit of colour. I was inspired and cookery-deprived enough to make the potato dough for potato oyaki as well, just so I could have food to take to work tomorrow and the day after.

I am thankful for food bloggers like Shauna, Karina, Maki and Heidi who give such inspiration to their readers, and who work so hard to bring us recipes and posts. I know we don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in Malaysia, but I think sometimes we ought to just step back and count the many, many things we need to be thankful for. It's the best antidote to post-illness blues.

Because it worked for me. I'm thankful for my friends, family, and the many chances I've had to do what I love. I'm thankful for a kitchen to cook in, and people who make sure I can eat safely when I meet with them. I'm thankful that I'm well enough to sing again. And I'm thankful for my choir students, some of whom graduated this weekend at their year-end concert.

When I look at it like that, there's really no reason to complain.

Happy belated Thanksgiving, one and all.

Remembering Vienna

The truffle risotto at this little Italian cafe in the Naschmarkt was heavenly. It was also right opposite a fruit and vegetable stall with produce that practically glowed with colour.





Just look at those gorgeous apricots...



...and currants...

...and there were cherries and plums and nectarines and peaches too.

Fruit in season. Possibly some of the most vibrant, beautiful colours of the summer. It makes me want to savour each and every mouthful of juicy sweetness, just to imprint the taste into my memory.

I might just do that today again, for memory's sake.

The Contentment of Simple Gastronomic Luxuries

Otherwise known as, 'Be thankful for what you can eat.'

My recent trip to Europe has confirmed one thing for me - it's much, much easier to eat gluten-free there, on relatively little cost. Given the exchange rate between Malaysian ringgit and Euros, I was immensely thankful. Two weeks' stay in Austria is no joke if one has to spend a lot on food! Just being able to -eat- without fear, now that's a gift. It's a luxury, small as it is, and who says small things can't be luxuries?

Like this:



It's pumpkin seed oil! This is a specialty of Graz where we were at. It's a dark, viscous, thick deep green oil, rather like well-cooked spinach, and the fragrance is out of this world. It makes even the simplest food (canned tuna with rice) taste like a gourmet meal. My mother loves the bottle I brought back so much she prefers it over her favourite sesame seed oil even.

It certain livened up even the most ordinary hamburger patties:



That was Jamie Oliver's Cracking Burger patties, and they are every bit as cracking as they make out to be. I used the remains of a pack of gluten-free crackers that I brought back from Europe, and they turned out absolutely marvellous. Juicy, flavourful and completely satisfying, even without buns (who needs buns when one has great burgers, really?)

Make 'em, you won't regret it. Go to the recipe, tweak it as you like to suit your taste, leave out the mustard if you don't like it and replace it with Worchestershire sauce, but make 'em. Your tastebuds and your stomach will thank you.

I also brought back three other treasures from Austria: sumac, z'aatar, and piri-piri peppers. Sumac comes from the ground-up red berries of the sumac shrub, species Rhus Coriaria. It's a tart, lemony spice that is used very often in Middle Eastern cookery. Z'aatar is a Middle Eastern mix of spices that very often include oregano, thyme and savoury, sometimes with sesame seeds and salt - it is also the generic name for a family of related Middle Eastern herbs from the genera Origanum (Oregano), Calamintha (Basil thyme), Thymus vulgaris (Thyme) and Satureja (Savory). Piri-piri peppers are used very commonly in Portuguese cookery (think Nando's). I've not been able to find any of these spices here, so finding them was an occasion worthy of jumping up and down in the Naschmarkt in Vienna, squealing with delight.

I wanted to do something with my newly acquired spices, and this recipe for Zaatar Sumac Lemon Roast Chicken, from the Ottolenghi cookbook, looked fascinating.

Of course, being me, I always forget or change something in a recipe - I forgot to put black pepper and paprika/cayenne pepper in, and I forgot to mix the chicken and spices together well -after- I'd added the water to it until oh, somewhere around 2am in the morning after I'd put it in the fridge to sit overnight and marinate. I also used chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken since I am a lazy person and don't want to dig bones out of my fowl (yes, yes, that makes me a horrible chef I know!)

That being said, the chicken came out beautifully. So tender and flavourful! And best of all, completely gluten-free and healthy. I didn't have fresh parsley (this is becoming a trend isn't it) so I used dried parsley instead and voila, fresh out of the oven:



I served it over a bed of rice with lots of marinade and chicken juices - luxury right there in a little bowl.



You will not regret trying this recipe. I can promise you that - it really is just that good, and so easy. If you don't have sumac, as per one of the comments, use more lemon juice. If you don't have z'aatar? Approximate it with this and just leave out the sumac, add lots of lemon.

That wasn't so hard now, once one is past the exotic names, right?

Really, I don't need a fancy restaurant to be contented - just the simple act of being able to eat safely? That's all I need, even if it's a slice of bread, a few crackers with cheese, or a very simple roast chicken like this one.

Sometimes it's good to go back to simple - we all started from there anyways. And when I think of the days when the very thought of eating used to depress me because I had no idea what to eat or how to eat just after my diagnosis, I breathe a quiet prayer of thanks for these precious, small, simple things that make life so meaningful.

The Saga of the Busy Day Cake and All Plugs Electrical

...also known as 'BOOM thar it is.'

So I was going to try and remedy the utter shame of not having updated this blog since April (April! Dear lord where did the time go?). I've got photos galore, all nicely categorised away, it was just a matter of writing a post and selecting pictures, and then life happened, and Austria (I went to the World Youth Choir Championships with the quartet I sing with, Caipifruta - more on that in another post some day!), and...and...well. You get the picture.

Today was my first day off in a while, so I decided to bake a cake. This cake, as a matter of fact - Shauna's wonderful adaptation of Edna Lewis's Busy Day Cake. In fact, I was even planning on making a pie of some sort to use up the rough puff pastry I had in the freezer. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Everything, it seems.

The universe had other plans, starting with the power tripping off when I woke up in the morning. This got remedied, with nothing untoward - no smoking electrical items or whatnot. So I made miso soup with thick rice noodles for lunch and started putting together the ingredients for the cake - weighed out the flour, beat the eggs, grated orange peel, measured poppy seeds and cocoa, etc.

Then I went to cream the butter and sugar in the stand mixer. And realised that it wasn't working. Now, my stand mixer is an antique - a functioning one, but an antique nonetheless. It had started making some odd noises my last batch of bread a few months back, and my first thought was, Crap it's given up the ghost. I tried another plug point - still not working.

So I transferred all the butter and sugar to my food processor, having remembered you could actually cream butter and sugar and make cake batter in it. Plugged it in, switched it on.

The expression of WTH-ness when it didn't work was probably a camera-worthy moment. My food processor is -new-. I'd not even broken in the food processing attachment yet!

I tried another plug. Still no luck. It was only after I'd tried on every single plug point in the kitchen that it hit me - the power outage in the morning was probably caused by one of those points blowing a fuse, and now NONE of them were working.

Which left me with the problem of a lot of butter and sugar still needing to be creamed. My stand mixer was also probably working just fine, all I had to do was find a working plug point.

Enter the little grey cells.



The cake right out of the oven...


Right now the cake is cooling in the kitchen, I've had two pieces already and it's absolutely HEAVENLY. Wow. I can't say enough good things about it - it isn't dense or heavy, it's...well, cake! Real cake, not the sticky, gummy slabs that often make up most gluten-free cakes. The crumb is light and airy, not heavy and over-moist. And it tastes delicious. I'll likely cut down on the sugar the next time around because even this is very, very sweet to me - but I don't often eat sweet stuff so it may be fine for other people.

I am in awe of this cake. I think I might even cry. Shauna, you are -wonderful-. Have I said that enough times yet? Cake! Real cake! It was worth all the crazy kitchen hassle, that's for sure.



...And served, with a apricot for colour! Look at that wonderful crumb!


You must make this! It's easy, it's adaptable, and it's absolutely delicious. I won't post the recipe, it's here already (and Shauna is always, always worth reading anyway.)

My only modifications were:
1/4 cup cocoa powder
Grated zest of 1 orange
2 tbls poppy seeds

These were all mixed in with the dry ingredients (ie: the flour, baking powder, cardamom) and set aside till needed.

I didn't use cardamom powder either, because I accidentally put coriander in. Yes, coriander! Thank heavens I can't really taste it in there...talk about stupid at work!


PS: I also hope no one out there has ever needed to go through the nightmare of mixing up and baking a cake while squatting on the living room floor by the front door in a decidedly fetal position, next to one's housemate's hair salon equipment. Thank God for a small oven, or I'd never have gotten it out the kitchen let alone to the plug point outside.

Pao de Queijo, Pork and Other Things Not Beginning With P

A while ago during Chinese New Year, I'd baked up a batch of fantastic Pao de Queijo but never got around to posting the pictures up. I'd promised the friend who introduced me to Elise of Simply Recipes' wonderful Pao de Queijo page, that I'd make both versions that were given there - one is a kneaded dough, the other is put together in a blender and poured into mini muffin tins. I didn't get around to the second one till much later, and life interfered so here are both photos and thoughts on both recipe versions.

Pao de Queijo, as far as I can dig up, is Brazilian cheese bread made from manioc flour, or tapioca starch. Manioc flour is apparently fermented and has a slightly sour taste to it, but that's not something I can find here in Malaysia at all. Tapioca starch however I can find in -scads-. It's also known as tapioca flour, confusingly enough, but they're both the same thing.

Elise lists down two recipes - one is the easy blender version, another involves no blender, a mashed potato, and kneading up the dough by hand.


The Kneaded Version



The first time I made this, I thought I'd made a mistake. While the dough came together fine after mixing up the milk, flour, oil potato and the cheese, the recipe instructions didn't say that the addition of eggs would turn it into a completely soggy, goopy mess that looked like a disaster area. And the dough was supposed to be very silky and mouldable! However, after a few minutes the tapioca starch absorbed everything nicely and what do you know, it DID turn out silky and mouldable.

And it baked up like a -dream-. My mother, who normally doesn't eat a lot of dairy or cheese, couldn't stop eating them. The flavour was amazingly wonderful, and so was the texture. I used a combination of cheddar and parmesan cheese for a very strong cheesy flavour, having read that the blandness of the tapioca needed it. By golly it worked! However, I think next time I would store leftover dough in the fridge rather than the freezer, because when it thawed out, there was far too much excess water and the dough became far too liquid. I'd make this again, no hesitation.


The Blender Version



The blender version of the recipe is very simple - all ingredients get thrown into the blender, whizzed into a batter, and then gets poured into a mini muffin tin to bake. It takes about 15 minutes, or less if you're faster than I am at measuring stuff.

It baked up fantastic too, rose like little puffy hats! The flavour was good - if I hadn't actually baked the kneaded version, I'd have been ecstatic with this. As it is, I think the flavour of the kneaded one is better. I'd also use a neutral-flavoured oil, rather than the olive oil - the olive oil flavour was very distinct and a bit strong.

Otherwise though, this was a very, very simple and very good recipe. I would definitely make it again, due to how little time it takes.




Another recipe that I'd been dying to try for a while was the Lisu Spice-Rubbed Pork from Beyond the Great Wall. When Leite's Culinaria posted the recipe last year, I decided to finally give it a shot but I only managed it about two weeks ago. Whoops. However, it turned out to be one of the easiest, most flavourful recipes I've ever come across. The pork was tender and moist, and all around -wonderful-. In fact, when I made it today and accidentally left out the allspice which I substituted for nutmeg (not having any), it STILL tasted amazing.




Recently a friend and colleague came back from taking the Youth Chamber Choir to Vietnam for competition (they won the category championship!) and all the talk about Vietnamese food and Banh Xeo (Vietnamese sizzling crepes) got me into the mood to make some.

I used Rasa Malaysia's Banh Xeo recipe, cutting the quantities down in half. The results? Wonderful! Crispy on the edges and soft in the centre, just like it was supposed to be. I didn't have bean sprouts or chillies, so I just used shredded chicken and some pork and the green onions for the filling. It was great regardless, and so easy - I am going to make another round of this -with- all the ingredients next time. There's a vegetarian version I've come across, which I plan to try one day - Winnie, you'd like that I know!

And yes, Banh Xeo really -is- that lovely bright yellow colour - it's the turmeric powder that does it.

I'm not posting the recipes I used; I've linked them for you so you can go read them for yourself. These cooks have done amazing work; they deserve all the credit for their wonderful recipes!

Next up, ie: when I get around to editing photos - Migas! And possibly soda bread (and a dozen other things that I really should get around to writing up eventually.)