Hungarian Goulash

P: Sandy cooked a deliciously rich and tender Hungarian goulash for dinner. The cut of beef was perfect -- shin has plenty of connective tissues, or collagen, between the muscle fibres which covert to liquid gelatin during the two and half hours of cooking resulting in tender meat and a thick, flavourful soup. With paprika (and some extra chilli ... er, Malaysian goulash), onions, tomatoes and garlic, and dollop of sour cream, the stew was fantastic. Melt-in-your mouth ossobucco-style beef and rich, hot, thick soup. We ate the goulash with buttered brown rice. Two whole bowls of goulash for me, thank you very much!



And for dessert, guava with chilli powder-salt.

Garden Party

Phil and Sandy entertaining in their garden in Singapore ...



Not. Unfortunately our garden is only 2 metres square. This was a shoot we did for a catalogue cover, taken in the garden of a bar in Dempsey Road, Singapore.

full pockets

P: Just how many ingredients can you stuff into a pocket of pita bread?



We had some pita bread left over from a recent book launch party which needed finishing so I stopped by the supermarket after work and bought some prawns and more to stuff them with. Sandy was working late - etching out photos in the studio till 8pm - so I baked the prawns in red chilli and garlic, and shoved them into the pita pockets with baby spinach, spring onions, avocado, mango and feta. Hmm, deliciously messy.

Holly and Nel's bump!

S: Phil's sister is seven months pregnant! Congrats Holly and Nel. We'll see you in August.

Penang food

P: Sandy and I flew up to Penang to attend Hooi Hooi and Hashi's weddding dinner, held at Shangri-La's Rasa Sayang in Batu Ferringhi. We also managed to get some serious eating in. We were met at the airport by Hueh Hueh, Ah Ngae and mother, who took us straight for Malay lunch. We'd eaten at this stall a few years ago but it moved and we only recently discovered where its new location was.

Mother-in-law loading the table with dishes ...



Dishes of deep-fried chilli-stuffed terubok fish; ayam kicap manis (chicken with sweet black sauce); tumeric fried chicken; cuttlefish in chilli; curried squid; fish curry; stewed beef; bamboo shoots in coconut milk; mixed vegetables; and winged-bean salad. Ten dishes for five of us!



Suitably satiated, we checked in to our hotel, had a swim then fell asleep by the pool!







Hueh Hueh, Sandy and I drove into town to look for their favourite seafood hor fun stall for dinner. Unfortunately the stall was closed so we tried the same dish from another stall. Pretty good but the girls maintain that the original stall is still the best in Penang, if not the universe.



Sandy choosing the following ingredients for her soup: congealed blood cubes, fishballs, intestines and chye sim! I didn't partake ...



Penang's famous Guerney Drive foodstreet ...



For breakfast the following day, Sandy, sisters, mother and aunt really pigged out and ordered: carrot (radish) cake; char kway teow (stirfried flat rice noodles); won tan mee (more noodles); kway chap (intestines); chee chong fan; roast pork; and chicken feet lor mee.

Hooi Hooi and Hashi's wedding

Congratulations to Hooi Hooi and Hashi on their marriage!

From the left: Clarence, Samantha, Phil, Sandy, Hooi Hooi, Hashi, Hueh Hueh, Karen, Simon, Joseph and Michelle ...



Some more photos from the wedding dinner ...









hot in pink! the chick's not too bad looking either! (S: she's a former Miss Malaysia lah!)

Broccoli and blue cheese pizza

P: Busy packing for tomorrow morning's flight to Penang for Hooi Hooi's wedding so we made a quick broccoli and blue cheese pizza for dinner. We can eat blue cheese, especially Stilton, every day ... er, see yesterday's blue cheese hotdogs!

Going in the oven ...



Going in the stomach ...



S: Love it. Love blue cheese. Love pizza. Can we watch American Idol now?

Mexican-inspired roast chicken

P: Sandy wanted roast chicken for dinner and we chanced upon a Mexican-inspired recipe on a foodie blogsite from California: what we're eating. This San Diego-based foodie couple made a lime coriander pesto and stuffed it under the skin of the chicken and all over the top of the skin before roasting it. Our chicken is marinating now, I can't wait to eat it for dinner!



S: The chicken turned out fantastic but took longer than expected to cook so ended up eating very late! We finished 98% of the chicken (1.2kg) and 97% of the potatoes (1kg) — not bad at all!

P: I would have finished the potatoes if I hadn't been physically restrained. The chicken was superb too, very tender, and the flavours of the pesto stuffing so light and fresh. It would make a great marinade for a bbq. OK, enough Mexican flavours for a while, back to Asian tomorrow. Thanks Sandy, delicious!

Trece de Mayo

P: It looks like we're going Mexican today. Or Mexican-inspired anyway. Since Sandy didn't get a chance to celebrate cinco de mayo (5th May; scroll down), we're celebrating trece de mayo (13th May) instead. I'm handling brunch, Sandy's doing dinner (see post above, when it arrives). In fact I should be cooking now and not blogging but Her Ladyship hasn't woken up yet so I still have a bit of time. Brunch will be Singapore-style heuvos rancheros, the classic Mexican breakfast dish of eggs and refried beans on a tortilla covered in spicy tomato and coriander sauce. I might add some spicy sausage slices just to "beef" it up. It's Singapore-style 'cos I can't find jalapeno chillies at the local supermarket and will replace them with local red chillies! I'll also replace Monterey Jack with some mature Cheddar that Phil A brought over from UK. And, just to really upset the purists, I'm going to replace the tortilla with a healthier wholeweat wrap. So, it's probably nothing like heuvos rancheros!





P: Oh, wow, that was damn good! Delicious! I have no idea what this dish is supposed to look or taste like but this version sure works. The spicy sausage was great too. I will definitely cook this one again.

S: I like it very much! I love the egg and refried beans. Are we going to fart a lot later?

P: Open the windows and increase the fan speed.

Teochew Porridge

P: One of our favourite cze char restaurants in Holland Village recently closed down, or moved, and was replaced by a Teochew Porridge restaurant. I loved the old place for one of its signature veg dish of lettuce fried with red preserved beancurd ... delicious. We tried the new restaurant this evening and, well, it's got nothing on the old place. We chose beancurd skin, squid, roast duck, kangkong, and minced dried shrimp. The belly pork looked good but Sandy worried it would be too fatty (that's the whole point!) so we gave it a miss. Overall, passable but I won't rush back.

S: Seriously not good! If you've tried other places you wouldn't come back. The selection wasn't big enough. The beancurd skin was tasteless.

coq au vin

P: Sandy's coq au vin. That's where all my wine disappeared to. :( Fantastic though.

S: You drink too much, let me burn off all the alcohol!

cinco de mayo

Phil and Sri celebrated Mexico's cinco de mayo at No5 Emerald Hill. Cinco de mayo means 5th May and it's not Mexico's Independence Day so what is it? Who cares, it's a good enough reason to have a party.

Phil and Sri with some hot Mexican (from Ang Mo Kio) samba dancers.

fridge cleaning

My favourite omelettes are the fridge-cleaning variety. For Saturday brunch I "omeletted up" some barely edible bacon rashers, the leftover potatoes from Sandy's Galician fish dish, some ends of mozarrella and parmesan and added some more oregano and paprika. Tasty, if not very healthy. Or pretty.

Trouser leg

I felt like having pizza for dinner today so popped into the supermarket opposite my office at lunchtime for some salami, mozzarella and olives. As soon as I got home I made the dough, which had risen by the time Sandy was home. For a change we decided to make a calzone, a stuffed pizza. We put in sliced potato, salami, mozzarella, parmesan, olives, sundried tomato, rosemary, onion, oregano and chilli flakes. I can't actually make a round pizza so my calzone was rectangular and looked more like a murtabak! But it tasted goooood! I lurve pizza!

new cookbooks

We are addicted to cookbooks! There must be over 100 lying around the house. Two recent additions are The Food of Italy and La Cocina de Mama: The Great Home Cooking of Spain (thanks Phil & Susie).

Over the weekend I cooked baked polenta with four kinds of cheese (gorgonzola, taleggio, mascarpone and parmesan). I couldn't find any taleggio in Cold Storage so I picked up some fromage chaumes -- a mild, creamy French cow's milk cheese from Dordogne. After the polenta is cooked, it's then cooled in a tray, cut into sheets and layered in a baking dish with homemade tomato sauce and the four cheeses then baked until crispy on top (thanks to a sprinkling of parmesan) and it oozes cheese from within. Sinfully delicious. Except it wasn't. I hated it. It was such a pointless dish; too much cheese and flavourless polenta. Sandy finished the dish over the next few days, I kept my distance.

From the Spanish book, Sandy cooked Galician-style fish baked with potatoes, onions, saffron and paprika with a side dish of spicy courgettes. It was absolutely delicious but Sandy thought it tasteless, and that after she added more ingredients as the recipe seemed very basic.

Baked fish with paprika ...



Cheesy polenta ...




Salad of baby spinach, mango, avocado, prosciutto and spring onion ...

Twas a rough night

One of Singapore's claims to fame is that there are more thunder storms here than in almost any other country. In one year, thunder can be heard on about 171 days. The worst period is April/May ... now! According to weather stats, thunder storms occur on 20 out 30/31 days in April and May. Sandy and I were both woken by last night's storm at 3am. It was LOUD! I didn't sleep back till 6am. Mind you, that's also because I'm enjoying reading Julian Barnes' "Arthur and George", a beautiful book.

"conceptual bullshit"

It started out as a fairly typical Friday morning. I left the house at about ten to nine, Sandy still snoring away. I walked past the mosque and was invited by the bearded one to celebrate Prophet Mohamed's birthday on the 29th. I stepped over the railway tracks and made for the main road to grab a cab when suddenly I noticed a herd of cows grazing in the field. Nothing unusual with that if you live anywhere in the world apart from Singapore. We don't do cows. We have two in the petting zoo but for most Singaporeans they're as rare as zebras, penguins, kangaroos and sheep. (Actually we do see sheep once a year when the bearded one next door slaughters a herd for mutton curry.)



These cows were definitely of the Milton Keynes variety. Rather static and unusually colourful. However, the famous "concrete cows" were built in Milton Keynes in 1978 by an artist "poking fun at the preconceived notion of the new city, held by commentators who had never seen the place, that it would consist entirely of concrete pavements where once there were fields, and where its deprived children would need models to know how real cows once looked" -- the reality being that Milton Keynes was in fact very green. In Singapore, however, the citizens really do need models to know how real cows once looked! Worse, there never were many cows in Singapore in the first place. Some artist has copied an idea which even in 1978 was dubbed "conceptual bullshit". Why not use an animal indigenous to Singapore?

Update: As Ming (blogging from San Francisco) correctly points out (see her comment below), artistic expression is not allowed in Singapore. Silly me. Our herd of cows is nothing more than advertising (an ad agency advertising itself). I saw more cows on a taxi this morning.

roast myna bird

We have mynas nesting in the roof eaves and somehow this little chap fell into our spare bedroom.



Sandy wasted no time in roasting it with chillies, sage and lemon and served it for dinner with rosemary roast potatoes and French beans ...

where are we?

One of my favourite views in Singapore. Can you guess where the photo is taken from?

Stuffed bread

Just how many things can stuff into a loaf of bread?! Phil stuffed this pane farcito with roasted eggplant, feta, homegrown basil, spring onions, cured ham, cherry tomatoes and olives. We were supposed to take it on a picnic but we didn't want to miss the Malaysian Grand Prix on TV so we had a picnic on the floor of the livingroom. How sad. We should have taken in to the actual grand prix ... next year.

drunken prawns

Peter Neville, author of The Rose of Singapore visited Singapore on his way back to USA from the Hong Kong International Literary Festival at which he was speaking. Peter lived in Singapore in the early 1950s and comes back regularly to feast on his favourite cuisine. But ... he'd never tried chili crab before so we took him to the East Coast to try bamboo clams with garlic, drunken prawns and chili crab. Delicious!

The prawns were brought live to the table in a glass bowl with a lid on. The cook then removed the lid to pour in the rice wine but four of the ten prawns saw their opportunity to escape and flipped themselves out of the bowl onto the table. The cook then had to keep the lid on the bowl while chasing the four prawns round the table. Peter was suitably shocked ...



Phil, Peter and Sandy...