Cravings

Am currently experiencing terrible food cravings. severe and terrible.

1) Japanese food!!!! this is all the fault of that Lonely Planet Japan book. all that talk about tofu, abura-age, miso paste, green tea and all that. oh god. i want to get my hands (and mouth) on some:
a) Sashimi from that Japanese restaurant at Chijmes—seriously the best sashimi I've ever eaten, ever. especially the swordfish. oh. my. god. firm, chewy/bouncy, juicy and creamy, and oh so fresh. mmm. the green tea here tastes excellent—the sort that has roasted rice mixed into it to give it an earthy, roasty fragrance. mmmm.
b) yakitori from Shin Kushiya at VivoCity. They serve a type of yakitori that is not dipped in the sauce when they grill it. Instead, it's seasoned with salt, so that the outsides are dry and crispy, and the insides are just bursting with juice. They also grill their skewers with real charcoal (and apparently a special sort of charcoal too, for prolonged high temp), so there is a very nice hot-coal sort of fragrance to the skewers.
c) the scallops with miso paste from Megumi at Siglap. the best baked scallops ever. really. it's lightyears better than the whole cheese sauce baked shellfish. the miso paste is salty, creamy, a litte sweet, and has this fantastic flavour that is totally out-of-this-world good. ohh boy.
d) reverse California Maki roll from that Japanese restaurant at Paragon—i just can't remember the name. this is a really really good maki roll, rolled with the rice outside instead of inside and then rolled in crushed salted seaweed and toasted white and black sesame seeds. then topped with those little orange egg roes. totally divine. the sushi chef here is very skilled, because the sushi is well rolled and doesn't fall apart, and the rice is deliciously flavoured with that vinegary taste: just right, not actually sour, but fragrant. the green tea here is also good.

2) Breakfast food!!!
a) the pancakes from New York New York: need i say more?
b) sticky cinnamon buns—chewy, sweetandsalty, cinnammony goodness. mmm.
c) scrambled eggs—the kind i make: creamy, cheesy, with lots of 'juice' because of extra milk and butter. also heart-attack inducing.
d) grilled tomatoes. the ones in my pesto pasta at the Wine Garage were fantastic. halved cherry tomatoes griled til soft inside so that they just burst into a flood of warm tomatoe-y goodness in your mouth. mmm-good.
e) chocolate chip cookies. this i am totally going to bake this weekend.

3) Cremé bruleé: for some reason i am totally craving this, completely out of the blue.

okay, i think i'd better stop here before i drive myself insane.

The best breakfasts are in the pm.

Went to New York, New York for dinner yesterday with E and M, and it was gooood. the best thing about NYNY is that they serve breakfast ALL DAY. yes, all day! no dinky 'until 11 am' shit here, no siree! *chortles*

So whilst E went for the alfredo—or was it carbonara?—with chicken, I went for the Big! Big! Breakfast. Two eggs sunny side up, half a fried/grilled tomato, two sausages, bacon, a side of sauteed mushrooms and two of the fluffiest pancakes i have ever eaten in my life.
everything was pretty good, but the pancakes were simply fantastic. thick—about 2-3 cm—and fluffy and tasting faintly of sugar and eggs, and the slightest bit cakey, they were really really excellent. mm. i'd be over the moon if i could make pancakes like those. yummyummmmmmyumm.

Banana Macadamia Pancakes

Well, after packing up the room today, came home and decided to make pancakes. Alas, there were still no apples, so I decided to make Banana Macadamia Pancakes. The basic pancake recipe
I got from here, go click recipe file, and the "inspiration" for the rather weird-sounding banana-macadamia combination was from 101cookbooks.com. The original recipe from 101 required way too many ingredients that i don't have at home, stuff like buttermilk and desicated coconut, which i don't like to eat much anyways, but i did have some leftover macadamias (from that trip to Pat's Oven..?) and we did have bananas, so i took the easy bits of the two recipes and mixed them together.
The end product(s) were toooo delicious–yes, I'm bragging, but credit doesn't really go to me, la—but boy were they ugly. but well. (which is why there're no pictures, hee)

so, i ended up making 4 variations of the banana/macadamia thing.
firstly, cos i'd eaten soo many of those yummy nuts, i figured there just was not going to be enough for the whole bowl of batter. so i poured about a third into a separate bowl and added mushed bananas to it and made plain banana pancakes.

then, in the other two-thirds of the batter, i added the crushed honey-roasted macadamias.the 101 recipe calls for the macadamias to be added to the batter, and after pouring the batter onto the pan, to add three thin slices on top, so they get nice and carmelised. sounds workable—and yummy—in theory, but the slices don't quite stick on the batter, so when you flip, they kida get scraped away. plus, they get burnt/browned before the rest of the pancake does, so after a few of those on-top kind of pancakes, i decided to stop with that.

so i made a few macadamia pancakes with the plain macadamia batter. also not bad. it's also quite cool the way the pancakes leave smudges of oil on the pan—it's the macadamias! cool, eh? haha

then, i added chopped bananas to the macadamia batter, since i was determined to get some improved banana-macadamia pancakes. this batter was by far the chunkiest, and the pancakes were shaped the oddest, cos they don't spread out to form circles, they kinda just plop down the way you poured them.

so taste-wise? i definitely liked the last version best, although the 101 ones were not bad, just..not banana-y enough, and visually the worst. the plain macadamia ones were a rather interesting pancake, crunchy, very pang; not bad at all.
so all in all, it's been a great pancake experience, and yy is happy. here's the recipe for those of you who want to try it.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup plain flour
3 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp melted butter
1 1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
2 bananas
about 40g honey roasted macadamias, crushed (I have no real idea about the weight, it's just a guess. just gauge for yourself)

Mix the first four ingredients together in a bowl. Mix the next three in a separate bowl.
Get out your non-stick frying pan and heat it up, oiling it slightly. Just grease it like you would a cake pan—use kitchen towel to rub with a bit of oil.
Mix the wet ingredients with the dry, along with the nuts and bananas. Be careful not to overmix, or your pancakes will not be fluffy and nice. Don't worry even if there're some lumps.
Pour into the pan and cook them, then eat with butter and honey/golden syrup.
yumm.

Makes many many small pancakes. I usually halve the recipe. Half would get you about..17-19 small pancakes.

limbo

Well, it's that last night before that last exam, and I cannot wait for it to all be over. Am already dreaming of the stuff I want to cook. Here's a list:

1) Apple Cinnamon Pancakes. v excited about these. was supposed to make them last weekend when i went home, but alas, there were no apples. How unbelievable is that?? but well, yes, apple cinnamon pancakes. yay.

2) A nice big, warm salad—the unhealthy kind, loaded with ingredients such as sauteed mushrooms, bacon, a fried egg, cheese, and whatever else catches the eye—and imagination— when I'm at the supermarket.

3) Cupcakes! mannn. I cannot wait. there's the candied ginger one from 101cookbooks, you can check them out here. and there's this other dark chocolate and peppermint bark one from here, although if i'm lazy, there'll be no bark, just crushed candycanes. or mints.

4) French toast! found this funky recipe and it looks funky-tastically delish.

and loads more! i don't particularly want to eat very much, i just want to cook! so if you're craving anything and want to eat, just tell me/find me a recipe and i'll cook for you! especially M and E, seeing as how i'll be seeing you guys most everyday..
yay i cannot wait for the weekend to come!

but ugh. packing. :(