morocco ... japan ... singapore

Spicy pumpkin and green bean tagine with couscous


Ingredients for shabu shabu (bizarrely Sandy 'found' all these ingredients in her studio?!)



Sandy's chicken curry and spicy ladies fingers with instant roti canai (no roti canai setting on the bread machine and no idea how to make it from scratch!)

food safari

P: Phil A dropped in for a night after a business trip to Thailand so we had a good excuse for eating as much as possible. Not that we really need an excuse. In the fourteen hours we were awake we managed to put away chilli crab with fried buns, sambal stingray, prawn fritters, satay, pohpiah, fried kangkong with garlic, five plain roti prata (canai) and one banana prata, chicken curry, masala thosai, plain thosai, eggplant masala, pork rib soup, stirfried sambal chicken with eggplant, deepfried fish slices with ginger and spring onion, and chilli clams.

Eating for three

P: Now that Sandy's pregnant and I'm eating for three ... I decided Korean BBQ was in order for dinner. I think we set a record with 23 plates of food on our table.



I was just about to barbecue these marshmallows when Sandy told me to pour a little water on them instead ...



and, as if by magic ...



they sprouted into napkins!



more corny ideas for dessert ...




(And this dinner was on top of a huge, equally delicious, lunch of Hyderabadi mutton biryani and eggplant curry at a Hyderabadi restaurant in Little India)

delicious!

P: Pancetta-wrapped cod roasted on a bed of leeks, beans, garlic and pinenuts, served with tomato and onion couscous. Thank you Sandy ... delicious! And thanks to mother-in-law for this tasty sambal petai with prawns and preserved veggie.

Sichuan hot & sour soup

P: Sandy was complaining she hadn't eaten Chinese for a week and felt like eating something sour so I thought I'd try cooking Sichuan hot and sour soup. I decided against a seafood or meat version and opted for vegetarian instead. Monkey head mushrooms are pretty meaty and to these I added regular Chinese dried mushrooms, wood ear fungus and bamboo shoots. The actual soup is really just stock (turkey stock in my case; made from leftover turkeys from Sandy's Christmas catalogue shoot), black vinegar, soy, sugar, salt, white pepper, chilli oil and Sichuan pepper. And some spring onions and sesame oil added at the end of cooking. It took a lot of tweaking to get the right balance of ingredients but the end result wasn't too bad. Not quite up to Min Jiang restaurant standard but OK for a first attempt. We ate the soup with stirfried chilli chicken and stirfried baby kailan.

Our fridge is full to exploding. Sandy's been shooting Christmas catalogues for a local supermarket chain so we have turkeys, turkey steaks, roast chickens, whole hams, cheeses and fruit cakes coming out of our ears. Luckily downstairs has taken some turkey, ham, chicken and cheese. Sandy's other colleagues have also taken food back, as have the supermarket staff. They obviously can't resell this produce so at least it is being eaten and not chucked as often happens. I'm going to be taking ham or roast chicken sandwiches to the office for another month.

Chilli crab

S: While Phil was in Manila on business, my two sisters came to visit and we pigged out as usual. Here we are eating chilli crab in Geylang ...

Food @ Baxter Farm

P: I love eating at Baxter Farm! Delicious food, perfect setting, service can be a bit slack. Roast lamb (from the village) with homemade redcurrant chilli jelly and roasted beetroot for dinner in the conservatory ...











Pork pie for lunch under the pear tree ...











It's back inside with Great Great Great Uncle Amos for beouf Bourgignon and bread dumplings smuggled in from Prague ...











And when there are sixty for lunch, it's into the barn with the ducks ...

Mutton soup

P: To the untrained eye, this looks like a bowl of vomit. It is in fact the best mutton soup (sup kambing) in Singapore. Rich, hot and full of spices such as star anise and cinnamon, it's the perfect broth to dip chunks of baguette into. Full of mutton, crispy shallots and chopped Chinese parsley. Look out for it at Seah Inn Food Centre opposite HarbourFront. Sandy and I had a couple of bowls for breakfast this morning. Delicious.

Fear Factor food in the Philippines

P: I'm just back from a business trip to Manila ... with food poisoning. Note to self: don't try eating street food on business trips, stick to boring but safe restaurant food. Luckily I fell ill after my last meeting ... in fact I was eating to celebrate a new deal to get Monsoon Books' titles into the Philippines. Note to self: celebrate with alcohol, not "balut" (fertilized duck eggs with a nearly developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell). Anyway, from September, we'll be carried by the two main chains, National Bookstore and Powerbooks, which together account for over 100 stores in the Metro Manila area and environs. I visited a couple of the stores in Manila and I was really impressed. They are well stocked and full of customers ... I think Filipinos read a lot more than Singaporeans and Malaysians. All the books were in English ... and far less conservative a selection than in Singapore. All the shops had a gay and lesbian section; in fact, the retail buyers asked me if I had anything on transvestites ... I don't, and for the first time ever I felt as though Monsoon was the conservative publisher! One of my authors, Suchen Christine Lim (winner of the Singapore Literature Prize), is currently teaching creative writing at Anteneo Uni in Manila so we'll launch her latest book there next month.

I didn't get to see anything of Manila apart from the hotel bathroom, the World Trade Centre, the Mall of Asia and the duck-embryo stall but I'm sure I'll be back again soon. I did go out one night with two publishers and we had a great meal of sizzling sisig (leftover parts of a pig’s head, such as the ears, roasted then minced and seasoned with lime and chili); inihaw na pusit (grilled squid); tadyang (crispy beef ribs); and bagoong (fermented shrimp paste)-flavoured rice. Delicious! And with ten mugs of beer and a pitcher of frozen margarita, the bill came to 45 Singapore dollars (15 quid / 30 US). I couldn't have even got the jug of margarita for that price in Singapore! (I do enjoy drinking beer for S$1, or 30 pence, a mug!) Other food I ate included pork and chicken adobo; and a flavourless hotel dish of flattened eggplant with minced beed and egg on top.

I didn't get a chance to ride in a jeepney so I'll have to go back.

Japanese food, pt II

P: After my poor attempt at Japanese food, Sandy showed me how it's done with dishes of buta shogayaki (pork with ginger, soy sauce and mirin), spinach with soy sauce and katsuo boshi (bonito flakes), and miso soup with egg. Delicious!

Itadakimas

P: Never really having cooked any Japanese food before, perhaps three dishes was a bit adventurous. Sandy pretty much took over; I couldn't even find the ingredients in the fridge 'cos I didn't know what they looked like and the names were all in Japanese. Er, naturally. Anyway, I tried to cook seared beef with soba, agedashi tofu with enoki, and red miso simmered eggplant.



The agedashi tofu -- silken tofu coated in rice flour, deepfried and served with a dashi, miso, mirin and soy broth with enoki -- was delicious; the soba noodles and marinaded beef less so; and the eggplant -- deepfried then cooked in a red miso, mirin, soy sauce -- was superb but too salty. Note to self: use less soy sauce next time.

Thalia busy in the kitchen

P: Thalia, our Australian neighbour, aged 2 (almost), sent up a surprise breakfast for Sandy and I this morning! Delicious savoury muffins with feta, sausage and olives. Thank you Thalia!

Braised duck

P: Sandy's cooking tonight so all wildlife take cover ...

hangover cure

P: Perennially in search of the best hangover cure, this morning I tried frying French garlic sausages in chilli prawn sambal with shallots and eating them on wholemeal bread straight out of the oven. Not too bad ... I might still pop a few panadol but I feel a whole lot better. Try it!

Super Sport Sunday

P: What a Sunday! The British Grand Prix and Wimbledon Men's (sorry, Gentlemen's) Singles Final. Go Lewis, go Federer! We're channel hopping while feasting on lamb and couscous. Delicious.

sunday roast

(clockwise from top left) Phil and Sandy having a quick drink at Hacienda in Dempsey Village; making beef dripping and red wine gravy with caramelised onion and garlic; roast beef with coriander crust; garlic roast potatoes and mini Yorkshire pudding.

cili padi burgers

P: Sandy's cili padi (bird's-eye chillie) burger with shiitake on ciabatta ...



and Phil's 450g monster cili padi burger on homemade bread ...

Eurasian chicken curry

P: Sandy cooks a mean chicken curry ... spicy Indian chicken curry, rich Malay curry with coconut milk, fragrant Nyonya curry with kaffir lime leaf, a simple Chinese one or this one, a fiery Eurasian devil curry. Also known as curry debal, it's flavoured with galangal, vinegar, candlenuts and a scary number of dried hot chillies. This was so good I had three helpings; I think I overdid it.