An Aromatic Discovery

A couple of months ago, I was making green creamy vegetable soup with the health-giving likes of zucchini, fennel and spinach. While dreamily stirring the pureed soup, a picture of fragrant Rendang unexpectedly assailed my mind and the idea of "adding some hand-torn kaffirlime leaves during the final five minutes of simmering" floated into my head.

The result was pronounced 'fantastic' by both friends and Other Half.


You can vary the vegetables and proportions. Here I share a sample recipe with you:


Fragrant Green-Is-In Soup

2 tsp olive oil
half a medium onion, chopped
1 largish zucchini, sliced or roughly chopped
1 medium-size fennel, sliced
80g of frozen or fresh spinach
200ml chicken or vegetable stock
50ml cream or yoghurt, or 100ml milk (depending on how health-conscious you are)
2 kaffirlime leaves, hand torn many times to the spine
salt and pepper to taste


1. Preheat medium large pot to medium hot. Add olive oil.
2. Add chopped onion and stir-fry gently till translucent.
3. Add fennel, zucchini and spinach, with a minute in between additions.
4. Add stock. Lower heat. Adjust with water to just cover simmering vegetables.
5. When veggies are tender, take it off heat and let cool for 5 minutes. Puree.
6. Put puree back on low heat and add cream, yoghurt or milk. Adjust thickness with water to desired consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste.
7. Add torn kaffirlime leaves and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove leaves before serving.
8. Serve with potato croutons (panfried little cubes of potato) or chunks of sausage or cubes of bacon.







And now that the weather is getting warmer and sunnier every day, a lovely health-giving, nutrient-rich drink is simply to puree fresh or frozen (thawed) raspberries with buttermilk (add a teaspoon or two of powdered sugar, if you like).

French Kissing Tastes Better After Eating French Apple Pie

Did that get your attention? Or did that get your attention? ^_^

Fatboybakes has inspired me to put up this recipe. I found it in an old little 'French Cooking' booklet I bought years ago in a warehouse booksale.
Since my Other Half wasn't too fond of pears, I switched the pear in Berry Rustic Pear Cake (see two posts below) to apple. That, in turn, nagged me to look for apple pie recipes in books and the 'Net.

Here it is, adjusted slightly to meet the Other Half's finicky tastes regarding crusts:


French Apple Pie

crust:
2 1/2 cups flour
110g butter
4 tbs cream

filling:
80g marzipan
1 egg
3 apples, peeled leaving bits of reddish skin for colour interest
3 tsp lemon juice
1 tbs sugar
2 tbs raisins or sultanas, presoaked for 10 mins in warm water and drained

glaze (optional):
3 tbs apricot or pineapple puree (e.g. baby food)


1. Cut butter into flour with butter knife or food processor. Pour cream over it and form into ball without kneading. Cover and put in fridge for 40 minutes.

2. Preheat oven to 210 degrees C. Roll pastry out on baking paper into a round for a 25-28cm round pie tin (nice if you have the lift off the bottom plate kind) or a square (25x25cm) or rectangle to fit whatever low-rise baking tin you have, making a low 1cm wall all round.

3. If you can succeed in mixing marzipan with egg into a smooth batter, bravo! (I couldn't, so I just snipped the marzipan into little pieces and mixed them with the egg), spread it over the pastry. Bake at 200 degrees C for 10 minutes.

4. Core apples and slice into half cm thickness. Sprinkle with lemon juice as you go along, so they don't oxidise and turn an unsightly brown. Besides, the tartness adds taste. Place slices, overlapping, in baked pastry. (This will test your aesthetic patience, I tell you.) Bring oven down to 190 degrees C.

5. Sprinkle sugar over the apple slices. Scatter the raisins.
Bake for another 15-20 minutes.

(6. When pie is out of oven, brush with puree. I only had some raspberry jam, so I used a bit to add a blush to my pie.)

Tubing on Mt Titlis + Quick Herring Spaghetti!

If you live in Switzerland like I do, you need to take advantage of the numerous mountains with visitor-friendly facilities such as chair-lifts, cable gondolas and Rot-air bubble cars. Not to forget free 'tubing' runways.

On Mount Titlis at Engelberg, hundreds if not thousands of visitors swarm the place - tourists from China and Taiwan (even the cable guy has learnt some Mandarin greetings for the Chinese New Year) as well as locals and residents who want to ski and snowboard.

(above right) You feel like luggage being conveyed up a 'belt' with your tube before spinning down again.

In the snow cave somewhere on the top slopes, there's a display of buttons for you to press. One of the buttons plays 'Negaraku', the Malaysian national anthem. In the Rot-air gondola, there are greetings in myriad languages including Indonesian and Malay. The only difference between the two is how 'keretakabelgantung' is all one word in Indonesian. ^_^ Old women from China like to stick their faces in the 'face holes' of cut-out figures of extreme skiers and snowboarders -- to show their friends back home gleefully, perhaps. Not that it'd fool anyone.


If you don't ski or snowboard (those crazy gravity-loving sports!) like me, you'd appreciate tubing. You sit on an inner tube covered in canvas and push off a winding path. Soon it careens out of control and you're facing backwards and sideways. You learn to relax and enjoy the ride because it's all out of your control. At the most, you might spill over the snow bank and sprain a muscle or two. It's not likely you'd break your neck and die.


And then, when the skiing friends and family converge at the igloo bar outdoors, you can join them in the oh-so-strenuous apres-ski activity of eating and napping in the sun in a hammock or lying sprawled on the bean bags so considerately provided by the mountain ministers.


After you come down from the mountain and an hour's drive home, you'd want a quick hot meal, right? (I'm entering this in Presto Pasta Nights http://onceuponafeast.blogspot.com/.) Break out a can or two of herring or mackerel in tomato sauce, cut up some onions, boil a pot of spaghetti. Heat a bit of oil in a saucepan, cook the onions with some parsley or coriander, add a generous sprinkle of chilli powder (or sliced fresh chillies), salt and pepper, throw in the canned fish, break it up, and finally swoosh in the cooked spaghetti. Turn it a few times and voila! A hot, appetizing meal within minutes.

Tobogganing down Rigi + Ripping Rendang!

Downhill skiing seems dangerous and too fast, and requires clunky equipment. Whereas snow-shoe walking would involve a lot of uphill trudging -- my heart will not go on and on (unlike Celine Dion's).

Now how about sledding? It looks relatively safe and fun. I had always thought tobogganing was a tame sport for lily-livered wussies like me.



How wrong I was.

The tobogganing path on Mount Rigi, near where I live in Switzerland, was twisty with requisite speed bumps, which meant bumping along at hair-raising speeds while my other half tried to steer us away from the steep precipice on the left of the lane. There was no railing, just an itty-bitty bit of a snow bank, between us and the blankety-blank yonder way below. 'Braking' meant putting your heels in, and 'steering' was merely putting down your right heel if you wanted to go right.

After one particularly vicious bump, both of us fell off and my right shoulder joint was dislocated (old tennis injury, happens once in a while). After it clicked back in, we rested at the side for a bit before we continued our slip-sliding journey down the mountain.

I'm amazed Swiss parents let their wee children go down on their own toboggans. No doubt their light weight meant less momentum (unlike the hefty combined weight of my other half and me, ahem! Maybe we shouldn't have shared a toboggan, but the rental ain't cheap) but the steep bank on the left is always threatening to swallow up a few delicious, winter-fattened mortals.



Here are lovely diamonds. Bet you didn't know they grew on twigs, huh? ;-)












Anyhow, after coming down a snowy mountain, what's a welcome sight and taste is Rip-roaring Rendang. I've adapted Rohani Jelani's recipe in her 'Homestyle Malay Cooking' booklet to what's available here:

Had no dried chillies, so this Rendang Veal looks less reddish-brown (aside from unsuitable kitchen lighting).


500g lamb, veal, duck or chicken, sliced into bite-size pieces (I found beef too tough or took too long to soften)
3 tbs dessicated coconut, dry-fried on medium-low heat till golden brown
3-8 shallots (depending how big they are; they're HUGE here!), sliced (substitute: 2 onions)
2cm ginger root, sliced
2 (or more if you like it hot!) big red chillies, seeded and sliced
4 dried chillies, softened in hot water for 10 minutes (substitute: 1 tsp chilli powder)
150ml coconut cream
1 tbs sunflower seed oil or corn oil
2/3 tsp turmeric powder
3 stalks lemongrass, the fat part sliced, the remaining stalk trimmed and smashed lightly
1 small fennel, sliced or julienned (this is untraditional - for added flavour, bulk and texture)
3 kaffir lime leaves, torn
1 tbs dark brown sugar
sea salt to taste (about 1 to 1 1/2 tsp)

1. Pulse the shallots, ginger, chillies and sliced lemongrass, adding enough of coconut cream to make a thick paste.
2. Heat oil in a thick-bottomed non-stick saucepan till medium hot. Stirfry the shallot paste for 2 minutes. Add turmeric and smashed lemongrass stalks. Cook for 2 minutes.
3. Add sliced meat. Stir-fry for 5 minutes. Add sliced fennel.
4. Add rest of coconut cream. Cook on medium-low heat till meat is done and quite tender, and curry sauce is very thick (you're lucky if the timing of both coincide!). If curry is getting dry before meat is tender, add a bit of water.
5. When curry is thick and almost dry, add fried dessicated coconut, brown sugar, salt and kaffir lime leaves. Cook for another 5 minutes.
Serve hot with plain white rice. Mmmm!

:)

A jolly good 2008 to you!

Hope the new year has begun well for you. We were near Munich over the new year and went walking up Wallberg as the queue for the sleds and chairlifts was too long.

The collected snow between branches and twigs reminded me of the Malaysian ice-kacang, one of my favourite desserts.


The night before, we went with friends to the heart of Munich. I experienced for the first time the lighting of many, many fireworks by private individuals at Odeonplatz. It amazed me that people would spend so much on pyrotechnics. It was also a bit scary as 'rockets' whooshed past quite nearby, and there were lots of broken bottles in the
Marienplatz after the fireworks. 'Collective irresponsibility' I called it, as normally people would not break glass in the streets or leave so much litter for the street cleaners the next day.



Here's a toast to a year in which we achieve more than we felt we could. May your days be full of love, discernment and peace.

May everything you do and say be measured if not positively spontaneous. Be true to yourself!


P.S. There is still no snow on the ground in Cham, Switzerland, where we live. Is it going to snow in February or March?! It's six degrees Celsius today - so 'warm' for winter, no?



For lovers of Pannacotta, that smooth and creamy but not-so-calorie-laden Italian dessert, here's a recipe I adapted from German chef Schubeck:

400ml milk (can be low-fat)
4 leaves of gelatine
1 tsp of vanilla sugar with bits of real vanilla in it
4 tbs sugar
100ml cream

Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water. Gently heat the milk with the vanilla and sugar till simmering. Remove from heat. Stir in the softened gelatine leaves till dissolved. Leave to cool.

Whip the cream till thick but not too stiff. When milk-gelatine mixture is cool and starting to gel, stir the whipped cream into it. Scoop into 6 bowls. Place in refrigerator to cool and completely gel for an hour or more.

Note: You can increase the milk amount by 80ml without adding more gel leaves. Lessen the sugar if you prefer Pannacotta less sweet.


For topping, choose your fav: caramelised sugar syrup, poached peaches, rhubarb in sweet ginger sauce, thawed blueberries or raspberries.

You can also vary the flavour of the Pannacotta. I've substituted the vanilla flavour with ginger, stirring in a packet of ginger tea granules. Adding half a teaspoon of fresh ginger juice would strengthen the 'heat' deliciously. This reminded me of my late mum's steamed egg custard flavoured with ginger. Mmm...



:)

Shorter Days Call for Sweet and Sour Pickles

Winter is upon us in Switzerland. The cloudy or rainy days are between 3 and 8 degrees Celsius here, whereas in the north-west of Italy by the Mediterranean, where I was for 3 days last weekend, it was sunny and warm (up to 22 degrees).

The water level at Zugerlake is noticeably lower now - compared to summer when it was flooded for a week (see pic below).


One tries not to let the cloudy days affect one's mood. It's not encouraging to see the sun set by five o'clock - when it had hardly made a showing during the short day. Sadly, Daylight Savings Time is a thing of the past.

If you are centred in yourself, and feel happy and content wherever you are in the world, you will not be affected so much by your surroundings.

I have at least one thing to look forward to: the book 'Dark City 2' is scheduled to be arriving in my letter box soon from Xeus. Yes, I have a story published in it - yay!

To tickle your tastebuds, here is a simple recipe for you to try:


Cucumber Carrot Pickle

1 medium-size cucumber
1 medium-size carrot
1 red chilli
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
3 tbs vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
4 tbs sugar

Wash and dry the cucumber and carrot. Remove the soft centre of the cucumber; slice the rest into 2mm-thin pieces. Slice the carrot thinly with a potato peeler. Deseed the chilli and slice it as small as possible. Put all ingredients into a clean, dry jar and mix with dry chopsticks. After several hours, mix again. Keep jar in refrigerator. The pickle is ready the next day.


:

Switzerland's National Day, Gladioli and Pleasing Pancakes

August First is Switzerland's National Day. You can Wiki it if you want to know its colourful history. One interesting point is that it was neutral during the world wars and spies criss-crossed it or were based there, slipping information across its borders with Germany and France. In Somerset Maugham's 'Collected Short Stories: Volume 3', I read of British secret agent Ashenden's adventures while he is stationed in Switzerland.

Maugham's eminently readable spy stories are essentially studies of character and portraiture in words. He is a master at describing and fleshing out grey characters with little judgment or proffering merely wry comment.

Thought I should include a picture of the little town I live in, Cham. Here you can see a golden crown (at left) hanging outside a restaurant, while a double-rainbow arches over a flag.



Also, on account of the national holiday, I would like to present close-ups of one of my favourite flowers grown in der Schweiz, gladioli. (Mrs HBT, here's a tribute to you and the lovely mothers we know.)







Also, as it's still summer, it's a good time to indulge in some pancakes which you can top with fresh red currants (Johannisbeeren) and slices of banana and nectarine or peach.


World-Is-Flat Pancake

3/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup milk or buttermilk (buttermilk makes it fluffier)
1 egg
1 tbs powdered sugar
pinch of salt

Mix flour with baking powder, salt and sugar. Use a handmixer to combine flour mixture, milk and egg. Add 2 tbs water if you want a thinner pancake. Top with fruits of your choice directly after pouring enough dough into a heated and buttered pan to make a big round. Cook for a couple of minutes on medium-low heat. No need to turn over.


If the pancakes are made plain (flipped over once to lightly colour the other side), you can eat them dusted with powdered sugar and powdered cinnamon with applesauce (Apfelmus). Or with honey and a squeeze of lemon. Also tastes wonderful with some chopped mushrooms saute-ed in butter with onions, beef stock and a bit of milk.


Pancake dedicated to Lyrical Lemongrass: "Here's smilin' at you, kid!"


This one's with freckles and a hint of moustache (adolescent spent too much time in the sun?).
:

A Tale of Spice and Intrigue

A couple of years ago, when I was working for a daily, I stumbled upon the most delicious and fresh-tasting chilli side dish - at the publication company's canteen, of all places. I asked tall, strapping Raju, the canteen operator, what the reddish concoction was made from and he told me: "Pounded fresh chillies and sliced onion cooked in salt."

It was that simple. But it was also simply appetizing. You could wolf down spoonfuls of rice with just this 'sambal'. However, after serving it a couple of times, Raju stopped making it - despite my begging him to do so. He never told me why he didn't dish it out anymore, even though I talked football with him every so often. Since then I've dreamt of eating this fabulous chilli thing, but somehow or other never attempted to make it myself.

The weather these few days in and around Zug, Switzerland, has been hot, hot, hot. As Mrs HBT has said, in summer, whip up some spicy dishes to stimulate your appetite - not that mine ever needs stimulating (as it is, I must eat once every three or four hours due to 'low blood sugar' or hypoglycaemia).

A blogger from Guyana, Cynthia of Tastes Like Home http://www.tasteslikehome.org/ , has inspired me with her mouth-watering salt fish recipes. Today, I decided to break open the last pack of dried salted fish I'd brought from Malaysia and combine her tomato & onion inspiration with Raju's dream sambal into something satisfying yet low-caloried. (Who would have thought Cynthia and Raju would 'meet' like this?)


Tomato, Onion & Salt Fish Argussimo

3 or 4 pieces (roughly 50g) of dried salted fish, soaked in water for 10 minutes
2 tomatoes, cubed hugely
half a big onion, sliced quite thinly
1 red chilli, seeded and sliced thinly
1 tsp chopped or dried parsley
pinch of salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbs of sunflower seed oil

Heat oil in saucepan. Add onion and stir-fry on medium-high heat for 2 minutes. Squeeze water from the salt fish and tear into smaller pieces, add them to the pan. Fry for another 2 minutes. Add tomato and fry till the liquid is reduced by half. Add sugar, salt and parsley, and cook for another minute. Serve hot with white rice.

Bleeding Heart Muffins & Mauled Mallards

Here's another post with a multiple personality disorder. Don't say I didn't warn ya.


Wok&Spoon inspired me to make muffins with those eminently delightful dried cranberries a couple of weeks ago. To add interest, I gave the muffins a 'bleeding heart', which is a small spoon of cherry jam right in the middle. Topped with chunks of almond white chocolate and roasted hazelnuts, the muffins were ready for the oven. I almost forgot the cranberries - they were outside the kitchen by the sofa. Cranberries are great to munch on while watching the news - so I was in danger of scarfing the lot in my quest for interesting muffins.

The muffins were still reasonably soft the next day. Heat one in the microwave on low power for 12 to 15 seconds for an aromatic boost. If you want the recipe, here it is (I developed it myself):

Cranberry Bleeding Heart Muffins



150g butter
7 tbs sugar
1 packet vanilla sugar (or 1/2 tsp vanilla essence)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups of flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
a small handful of hazelnuts (or your favourite nuts), medium roasted
a small handful of white choc chunks
a handful of cranberries
4 tsp of your fav berry jam



Cream by hand the sugars into the butter for 2 minutes in a big bowl. Add eggs and mix lightly. Mix the flour with baking powder and salt, and add to butter mixture. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Butter 8 or 9 holes of medium muffin pan(s). Spoon a tablespoon of the batter into each hole. Add half a teaspoon of jam to the centre. Top with more batter till three-quarters full (a bit more if you like to bake dangerously!). Top with nuts, choc chunks and cranberries. Pop into the middle of the oven for 23-25 minutes. (Watch the 'rising show' through the glass front once every 5 minutes for added satisfaction.) Take out of oven and, after 2 minutes, remove muffins carefully with small fork and butter knife. Let cool on a wire rack. Eat two while still warm! (This recipe gives you 8 or 9 muffins.)


(Right) Isn't this the biggest cherry you've ever seen? It's labelled 'XL' in the supermarket here in Switzerland. Very juicy and sweet! Eating it is like a little spot of heaven on Earth.

The picture below is specially for Spiffy who wanted to see Scarface the duck. The Mallards seem to have lost some downy feathers from their heads. Next to these weather-worn wild ducks is a perfectly unmolested Eurasian coot, which is pretty hardy, cunning and quick.

Loco for Coconut

The other day, the other half was gently nagging me to use up the packs of dessicated coconut in the larder. "Ah," a light bulb switched on in my head yesterday, "I'll make some Coconut Barfi."



In secondary school, my fellow Rangers and I were taught by one Mrs Mona Toh how to make coconut candy with freshly grated coconut, sugar and condensed milk. We were told to watch out for the 'change of colour' towards the end of the endless stirring and turning over of the mixture. That's when the aromatic lump sticks together and the sugar content reaches crystallization point. Very dicey, this. If you cook it too long, you get dry crumbly candy. If you take it off the heat too soon, you'd end up with a soft, difficult-to-cut gooey mass.

I looked up my recipe file yesterday and decided to make Coconut Barfi, a Indian sweet similar to school-canteen-day coconut candy but mildly flavoured with cardamom.



Here are the ingredients:

1 1/2 tbs butter (or ghee)
1 cup dessicated or freshly grated coconut
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
3 tbs sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp ground cardamom

Medium-heat a thick bottomed pan, preferably non-stick. Put in 1 tbs of the butter. Add coconut. Stir fry for a minute. Add sugar, milk and condensed milk. Quite constantly stir with a silicone or wooden spatula until mixture is thick. Add cardamom. Continue cooking until mixture sticks together (duration: about 12 minutes). Add remaining 1/2 tbs butter and cook for another minute. Turn out onto buttered small shallow pan (15cm diameter if round). Let cool for 25 minutes and cut into rectangles.

Caution: This sweet is very, very addictive!

Chan-mali-chan Roti Canai

(right) Roti canai, lightly panfried for reheating the next morning.


Wokandspoon, who read about my craving for roti canai in Lee Ping's blog, told me about her 'third time successful' roti canai-making adventure and I was inspired to try her recipe:

http://wokandspoon.blogspot.com/2007/06/third-time-lucky-roti-canal.html

Since I didn't have margarine at hand, I used butter. These were what I found in my kitchen closest to Wokandspoon's recipe:

3 cups of flour
1 1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground raw sugar
2 tbs sweetened condensed milk (can be replaced with 1 3/4 tbs milk + 1 tsp sugar)
1 cup of water, or a bit less
2 1/2 tbs butter (or margarine)
1 1/2 tbs sunflower seed oil
extra oil for 'lubrication' and frying

Mix flour with salt and sugar in a big bowl. Add milk and stir with fork. Slowly add the water till you have 'slightly sticky' dough. Add butter and oil. Use hand to knead it into a quite smooth dough. Oil hand and divide dough into 7 or 8 balls. Oil them lightly and keep covered in the bowl. Let it rest for an hour.

Go read a book or something. Then you're ready for 'action':
Oil your hands and pat down a ball of dough on a clean oiled marble work top.
Press it as flat as possible. Then, using both hands, hold flattened dough with four fingers on top and thumb below, move your right hand up followed by left hand -- in a wavy 'S' motion.
The dough stretches. Move your hands to another part of the dough edge. Repeat S motion. Put the dough on the marble top and continue pulling and stretching it -- take care the edges are stretched thin too -- making it as big as possible. Fold the top halfway in, fold the bottom halfway up. Do the same for the sides.

Heat thick-bottomed pan to 'medium hot' and put in 3/4 tbs of oil. When oil is heated, carefully put in the folded dough. Try not to pinch any part of the folded dough into a lump. After a minute or two when the bottom is 'spotted' medium brown, hold your pan handle and flip the roti over. After 30 seconds, swing the dough around on the pan to ensure the 'new' side soaks up a bit of the oil in the pan. Remove from pan when the other side is brown too.

Serve hot with a dhal, lentil, vegetable or tangy fish curry.


For roti pisang (below), add thin slices of ripe banana 3x3 on the stretched dough before folding.



To accompany the roti, I made a vegetable curry with lentils, zucchini, mushrooms, turnip, fennel and onion.

Thank goodness, no dough flew off and got stuck on walls and ceiling. Phew!