Instant food

Tonight's dinner was a complete case of cooking-improv, which is what I do most often at home, when I'm hungry for real food, but tdidn't plan to cook so there's not much ready to cook in the fridge (seeing as how my mother is the Queen of Fridge Minimalists). In the past, I've made such self-explanatory dishes as Onion-Cheese Spaghetti (one colour, weird-sounding, but surprisingly ok-tasting), Potato Spinach 'Omelette', Random Vegetable and Tuna-Mayo Omelette "Crepe" and so on. The food was always made from whatever I could scavenge from the fridge, and while no one is likely to ask me for any recipes, they were tasty (to me) miracles. However, tonight's dinner was pretty unbelieveable, even by my super-improv standards.

Behold: Mushroom-and Cheese Soup Pasta, with Garlic Croutons!

yes, instant Campbell's soup powder (Mushroom and Cheese), a slice of processed cheese, water, and Carrefour brand Croutons, with $2 Daiso special pasta (special in because it's about half the length of usual pasta, making it small-pot-friendly).

I'd planned to make mushroom pasta with real mushrooms, sliced and sauteéd with butter, tossed with pasta and a some of the cooking water, but I had sadly kept my mushrooms too long and they were all wet and sticky. Not a good sign.
So, I made pasta with powdered soup.
Surprisingly, it was actually pretty good.

I "parboiled" the pasta for awhile, about 2 minutes, since the package says it takes 4 mins to cook, then drained away the water until there was about 4 cm or so of water covering the pasta. Then, I added the soup powder, and stirred in one individual sized package of butter (probably unneccesary, but I was afraid the sauce'd taste too much like soup), one slice of cheese, and stirred some more. Cooking the 'sauce' with the pasta this way made the sauce 'seep' into the pasta, flavouring it with a nice, mushroom-soup-y taste.

The finished product looked kinda boring, which is why I added the croutons. This is the only thing I wouldn't do the next time, as it made the sauce waaay too salty. I forgot to factor in the fact that the sauce was really a super-concentrated soup, which was nice in terms of texture, but rather salty. So, whilst the croutons added a nice crunch to the whole dish, they made it way too salty.

Nonetheless, I am quite proud of tonight's dinner, and I forsee many such "pasta nights". It's quite a quick way to make dinner; the longest period of waiting was for the water to boil. The sauce could have used a good dose of rough-ground black pepper to add another taste dimension, but overall, no complaints. And, I made this with absolutely no condiments: no salt, no pepper, nothing but indiviually packaged fridge-staples like butter and cheese, and powdered soup. Is it kind of sick that I'm really proud of that?

Well, this weekend was quite a food-filled one, I made Dark Chocolate-Orange Muffins, Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies, and I tasted a reallllly good cheesecake/brownie thing, and I discovered the greatest thing to snack on. All in just three days. This was one goood weekend, food/kitchen-wise.

The muffins, sadly, could have been better. Taste-wise they were really good; the orange flavour really strong, and the dark chocolate providing a rich but not too sweet foil to the zestiness. They were, however, a little tough, which I at first thought was because I'd mixed them too much, because I'd doubled the recipe to make enough for all the people my mother had "pre-allocated" them to, but then, when I made another half-batch, being careful to not overmix them, they were still tough. sigh. i don't know why. they taste good if you microwave them, though.

The chocolate bits inside get all nice and melty, and yummy. Or, if you don't have a microwave (or are too lazy to put them on a plate that you will have to wash, and walk down one floor and up again), you can blast them with a hairdryer. It works, really!

So, I guess, overall they weren't a complete failure.


The next thing I did were Cinammon Oatmeal Cookies, whilst waiting for the football match to start. These were a bigger success, although it really didn't seem so at first. The recipe called for coconut and oatmeal, but I didn't want coconutty cookies, so I omitted them, which I didn't think would be an issue. Then, the recipe said to drop rounded teaspoons on the sheet, but they expanded to a huuuge size, then flattened to wafer-thinness. I thought it might be because the lack of coconut might have made the dough too thin, so I added two tablespoons more of flour, and reduced the size of the dough balls to half a teaspoon. They didnt get so big (duh), but they were still quite thin, and they were a tad too sweet yesterday night. but today, they taste really good. buttery and chewy, and fragrant with cinnamon and butter. yumm.


So, those were what I made this weekend. what I ate, though, will be another post, because I just have to move on to my work now. buggers.

Shortbread Cookies

When I first saw this recipe for shortbread, I was extreeemely excited, firstly because they looked sooo delicious, and, more importantly, because the recipe was so simple. most shortbread recipes i'd encountered before that had called for chilled butter and rice flour and whatnot, but this one, was basically just butter, sugar, and flour. and boy, is it good. i totally lurrrve this cookie, even though some people have not seemed very impressed to me. this is totally a keeper, to me. i love the way the texture of the cookie is dense and almost velvety, because of the use of icing sugar instead of caster, i think. and although the recipe called for unsalted butter and a pinch of salt, i went ahead with my salted butter, omitting the salt. i think the shortbread might be saltier than if one were to use unsalted butter, but i love the saltiness! not that the cookie is salty per se, but it is faintly salty, which contributes to the buttery fragrance and flavour of the cookie, a deeeelish counterpoint to the sweetness. the only thing about this recipe is the huuge amount of butter used. more than 400g ok! think that's little? it's almost two blocks of butter. yeah. yes, the yield is fairly large, but, seriously, this cookie makes it unable for you to tell yourself that the butter is divided among many many cookies, so each cookie doesn't really have that much butter. this cookie is seriously BUTTERY.
which is partly why it tastes so good with fruit, and even jam. it's delicious with cherries, and plums, and i think it'd go fantastically with strawberries! and oranges. the juicy tartness of both the strawberries and the orange would be a great way to balance the richness of the shortbread. it also makes me crave hot earl grey tea, or really hot black coffee, the kind with no sugar. it's also great with a smear of apricot jam. and raspberry too, i'd bet. mm. i love it, love it, love it.
the next time i make these, i'm going to cut down on the sugar, and roll them out very thin, cut them out in fluted circles, and drizzle/dip them in chocolate. maybe if i ever decide to sell (or rather, if people ever decide to pay me
for my baked goods), or give these as gifts. i think they make verry presentable gifts. and they're fun to make. and your kitchen smells delightfully of butter and vanilla when they're baking. yay. i love this recipe.
and yes, i know that the picture of the cherries is rather random, but i was very happily taking pictures of my yummy cherries just now, and i took some very nice shots, if i do say so myself.

Sweet simplicity

Was browsing through Daiso at Vivo on Monday, and stumbled upon these:


"Sugar Crystal" candy! also known as Rock Sugar, really. Yes, I know, I paid $2 for 120g of rock sugar that costs $0.25 per 100g. But really, this rock sugar isn't totally like those you buy at Chinese shops or the 'herb' section of supermarkets. Each piece of candy is a single, large sugar crystal, not many small ones clustered together, so it doesn't disintegrate halfway in your mouth. Since it's one big crystal, it also doesn't melt as fast, and is hence less sweet than normal, granulated sugar—but this comparison doesn't, of course, mean that I, like, eat sugar. Because I don't. But whatever. The point is, I love my rock sugar sweets!
:)

Sweet nothings

For all that we slam VivoCity for being overhyped and overcrowded (for no good reason at all—see overhyped), the one thing it does have going for it is the availability of yummy candy—albeit overpriced, yummy candy.
For a long while, everyone's go-to candy shop was Candy Empire, which was all good and fascinating and expensive, with festive-looking "promo" price tags that proclaimed prices in a way that tricked many an unsuspecting person into thinking something was a LOT cheaper than it really was. still, Candy Empire had provided us with many a happy munchy, like the delish Jelly Bean Factory Jelly Beans, Freddos, and, in more recent times, these funk-tastic Skittles!

These are Skittles, in special, Limited Edition, Showtime Flavours of Popcorn, Fairy Floss, Bubble Gum, Jam Donut and Toffee Apple:

I'm not quite sure how Jam Donut is a Showtime or Carnival sort of treat, but it is by far, my favourite flavour of the bunch. It had a cinnamon-y, toffee-y fragrance to it, reminding me of cinnamon-sugar dusted Churros, that complemented the fruity, jamy part of it. This was very addictive, and veryy delish.

Popcorn was my next favourite, because it had that weird, distinctive popcorn-jellybean flavour, which I really do love. Even if it didn't really taste like any popcorn I've ever eaten.

A close runner up was Fairy Floss, because it tasted uncannily like candy floss. Yes, I know candy floss is just sugar, but it doesn't taste like just sugar. Perhaps it gets heated as it spins, so that it develops the faintest tinge of burn-sugar-ness? Whatever the reason, the Fairy Floss was quite yummy.

Toffee Apple was quite a let down, because I do love anything with toffee in it, so I was very much looking forward to this one. Sadly, it tasted all of apples, with almost no toffee flavour.

Bubble Gum, I didn't really enjoy, mainly because I don't like Bubble Gum flavoured foods—ice cream, candy, soft drinks, whatever. The Skittle tasted very much like bubble gum, so much so that the first chew was rather unnerving, because for an instant, your brain processes it as bubble gum, not a Skittle, I guess.

Still, I enjoyed these very much, not just because they were yummy, but also because they were pretty.

Vivo also has a new Candy store, but more on that in a later post. :)

The Great Granola Bar Adventure

Well, as you've probably guessed from the title of this post, this weekend's baking venture was making homemade granola bars. And, as you've probably guessed, it was something of a fiasco. Or adventure. I got the original recipe (and idea) from here, but when I got to the supermarket and saw flax seeds, I was rather turned off by the way they looked—for some reason, they reminded me of insects... Also, I couldn't find any puffed brown rice cereal—cereals in Singapore aren't so healthy, I guess—so I got rice crispies instead. To make up for the lack of flax seeds, I got a pack of dessicated coconut too. Plus, I'm not a big pecan fan, so I got slivered almonds instead.
Then, I got home and discovered that all the oats in the house would only make 2 cups. oh well, I thought, just...multiply the recipe by......two-thirds? Right. I can do that.

Not so, really...I kept forgetting to, so the mixture ended up being a study in chuck-it-in-any-old-how. As a result, there was waaay too much sesame seeds, so muuch so that it almost overpowers everything. plus, you can hardly taste the coconut. and the dried fruits were maybe a little too dried, because by the time they came out of the oven and cooled, they were quiiite hard.

Oh and then there was the issue of my granola not sticking.
This was because I added the honey mixture in a few additions, and after about 3/4 of the mixture had gone in, I tasted it, and it was extreememly sweet. So I stopped adding, since the mixture was quite wet already. Alas, it just. refused. to. stick. I got maybe 5 (precarious) bars out of the mix and a good-sized Tupperware full of loose granola.

This was on Thursday. Over the past few days, I'd been scooping out the granola and eating it as cereal, but the mix was just not sweet enough. So today, I was finally fed up enough to try again. I mixed up some honey, butter, brown sugar and salt, and re-mixed the loose granola, then baked it again.
Success!
Or, almost.
This batch held much better than the previous (not saying much, really), although some pieces needed to be pressed into bars. All in all, this was a really good learning experience, since now I know how the different ingredients work in the bigger picture of the granola bar, so in future I'll be able to play around more with ingredients. I'll probably use two different kinds of nuts next time, more rice crispies, definitely less sesame, and I'll prolly skip the vanilla and replace it with some cinnamon powder. If I'm feeling particularly rich, I might use maple syrup too, instead of honey and cinnamon. Or mix in some jam with the honey to make it less sweet..
whee, I'm already excited.

I wonder if a dried-mango (or some other Chinese dried fruit) granola bar would be nice..?

Here's "my recipe", all figures adjusted as they should be.

Ingredients:
2 cups rolled oats (old-fashioned or instant)
1 cup slivered almonds
¼ cup desiccated coconut
1/3 cup sesame seeds

1 1/2 generous cups rice crispies
1 1/2 cups dried fruit, chopped (I used apricots, cranberries and cherries)

2/3 cup honey
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Toast the nuts, coconut, seeds and oats by spreading it out on two baking sheets at 180ºC, or by tossing in a dry frying pan on low heat.

Add the toasted mixture to the nuts and crispies in a large bowl.

Mix the honey, saly, butter and sugar together in a saucepan and heat, stirring til dissolved.

Take off the heat and add the vanilla.

Toss the dry ingredients with the honey mixture, then spread onto well-oiled baking sheets and bake, at 180ºC till toasty and golden.

Let cool for a few minutes, then cut the bars, but wait till fully cool before removing from pan.

Cake

Some days I just want to eat cake. Not necessarily good cake, you know the kind: fresh whipped cream, soft, cloud-y cake base, rich, decadent flavour combinations, layers of ganache, meringue et al, at $5 a slice—sinfully good cake that you feel guilty about forking out $5 over. Cakes like that I utterly love. I've been known to stand in front of cake cases drooling, with a maniacal glint in my eyes, as I plan how best to steal all the cakes out of their glass prison and liberate them—into my stomach.
But some days I jst want to eat the cheapo cake that those neighbourhood bakeries sell—plain vanilla sponge layered with plain butter cream that's just a little oily and plastic-y.
I can just hear you asking yourself, "oily and plasticy?? why would anyone want to eat that, and pay good money for it??"
Well, I don't know. It's just good. and cheap. $1.50 a slice.
hmm. ok, maybe not cheap per se, but 'cheap' enough for you to delude yourself into thinking that it's a steal.


See? Isn't it pretty? yumm. :) this is good, old-fashioned, heartlander-type food. So don't call me elitist! (haha)