Sugee cake variations

I know, I know - my blog last year was more like a Malaysian holiday blog than a Katong blog!  It just so happened I visited Malaysia more than normal last year.  But let me try and make amends this year with this post on my variations on sugee cake.

Almond-topped sugee

Now I have been making sugee cake for quite a few years now and it has been getting a wee bit tedious.  So I have been trying to tweak the recipe here and there to make it more interesting and also to see how I can enhance the original recipe.  One easy tweak was to top it with almond flakes because my family find the marzipan and icing way too sweet, and to add almond flavouring so that we don't lose the almond flavour the marzipan brings.  Now however, I'm starting to used coarsely crushed unpeeled almonds instead - gives a toasted almond flavour and the crunch of the nuts adds texture.  I'm thinking of crushing them a tad  more finely and using this to partially replace the ground almonds in the cake, for a more rustic sugee.

I have also tried making it with browned butter - an interesting idea, but whilst doing so certainly enhances the buttery flavour of the cake, the nutty-ness of the browned butter doesn't really come through.  In any case, butter should not overpower the almond flavour.

This year, I decided to try it with lemon.  I mentioned it to my mother who reacted with shock and horror.  Heresy!  Lemon in sugee cake! But there are lots of "lemon almond" or "lemon semolina" or even "lemon almond semolina" cake recipes around, for those who want to avoid eating gluten.  So why not?

In deference to my mother's feelings, however, I decided not to drop the traditional sugee entirely. 

Lemon sugee cakes (made in muffin cases)

Instead, I set aside a little batter for two lemon semolina mini-cakes.  I didn't add any almond or vanilla essence in this batch, but added maybe two tablespoons of lemon juice and a little zest.  It was hard to calibrate the amount required for the small amount of batter, so whilst I could taste the lemony flavour, it could have been a lot stronger.  But the bonus was that the cake really had a nice rise, so it is  lighter than the traditional sugee.  I suppose this was the citric acid reacting with the baking powder.

How was it received? My mother basically said that if I wanted lemon cake, to stick to Nigella's lemon drizzle cake recipe which doesn't require me to soak semolina in butter overnight.  Likely she's right but I'm nonetheless glad to have tried this little experiment.

Pot of Patchree

I have had a busy few months, going on my year-end holiday, then preparing first for Christmas followed by Chinese New Year.  Then the start of the work year meant less time for my various pastimes, including updating this blog.  Well, time to make up for the quiet few months!

I decided this year to make Patchree for our extended family Christmas meal and followed that up with the traditional curry devil on New Year's Day.

Brinjal Patchree

Patchree (also spelt patchri), it seems, is not a well known dish.  In fact I could not find many references to it online.  Fascinatingly, however, I found one, of all unlikely sources, in the archives of the Washington Post, embedded in a 1984 article about the chef from the Singapore Embassy in Washington DC!  So I am truly adding something new to the universe of information found online by adding this simple recipe here!

Anyway, patchree is a Eurasian vegetable dish, probably Portuguese in origin given its hot and sour curry base, and the complex mixture of spices which go into the dish.  It's traditionally made with pineapple or brinjals, but I suspect the pineapple one is more popular, albeit called by the more common name of "pineapple curry".  Variations on how to prepare the dish exist - one recipe from "Robin's Eurasian Recipes" fries the brinjals, and then ladles the sauce on top.   Others cook the brinjals in the gravy.  This year, since I love lots of gravy, especially with loads of chili, I decided to go with Mrs Handy's recipe, which cookes the brinjal in a tamarind-based gravy.  I was glad I did - my Grandmother used to refer to Mrs Handy quite a bit and so the flavours of this dish brought back memories of her cooking.  And I think my family members felt the same way, for the dish was mostly finished with only three small pieces left at the end of the meal.

Devil Curry

One of my aunts brought a pot of devil curry for dinner, which sort of whet my appetite for more.  So, I whipped up another pot for our New Year's Day meal.  I basically used the same devil curry recipe which I have already included in this blog, but added potatoes and tomatoes into the mix.  And since we had some rather nice expensive bratwurst (or whatever "wurst") I put that in too, rather than the tiny little cocktail sausages.

Just the memory of the dish makes my mouth water.  Which is why I've added in the photo into this post as well.

Anyway, here's the brinjal patchree recipe from Mrs Ellie Handy's "My Favourite Recipes" (I added in the English names of the spices, and quantities of the spices in powdered form):

Ingredients

4 tablespooons oil
10 shallots, finely sliced
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cm fresh ginger, chopped

Curry Paste
1 dessertspoon Ketumbar (2 teaspoons coriander powder)

1 dessertspoon jintan puteh (2 teaspoons cumin powder)

1/2 dessertspoon jintan manis (1 teaspoon fennel powder)

Piece of turmeric, size of two peas (1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder)

8 dried chilies, soaked

2 cups thick tamarind juice from 1.5 dessertspoon tamarind

2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste (I used 4!)

Salt to taste

4 brinjals

3 green and 3 red chillies, split halfway up

2 sprigs curry leaves, optional (for garnish).

Directions

1. Cut the brinjals lengthwise into half, and then cut each piece into two.  Make two diagonal slits in the flesh of each piece and soak in water for about half an hour.

2. Make the curry paste, by blending the spices and chillies together (of course you can pound it all together if you wish).  May need to add a little oil to the mixture if you are using all powders. 

3.  Fry the onions, garlic and ginger in the oil till soft.  Add the curry paste and fry till fragrant.  Then add the tamarind juice, salt and sugar to taste.  Then add the brinjals and chillies.  Cover the wok (I always use a wok) and leave to cook.  Garnish with the curry leaves.

That's it!  Simple but yummy.  If you're interested, more recipes by Mrs Handy here. 

A Few Stollen Moments

Once upon a time there was a girl called Whitney and she sang like an angel.  This post is not about her, although I could not resist naming this post after one of her greatest hits.  This year, I decided to try out my baking skills on that well-known German Christmas favourite, stollen. 

Stollen

To be honest, I did not intend to write about stollen this year.  I meant to share about my first experience creating a beautiful, iced sugee cake.  But the icing turned out a little less stiff and somewhat messy.  Certainly nothing to post pretty pictures about.  So, in the tradition of sharing a recipe every Christmas, I decided to go with the stollen.  After all, there are Eurasians of German descent too (at least I think so).  And we've gone through the pineapple tarts, mince pies, sugee, fruit cake, shortbread etc etc.  

Stollen is essentially a yeasted bread, filled with fruit and marzipan, and covered with a snow-like layer of icing sugar.  I took up breadmaking this year and frankly enjoy kneading the bread, the texture and heft of the dough, the smell of bread baking in the oven and of course the delectable goodness of freshly baked bread.  So when I found a nice-looking recipe from Paul Hollywood (of Great British Bake-off fame), I knew it was time to do a Christmas bread.

It's a straightforward recipe - prepare the dough, add the fruit and spices and let it rise, then roll it out, and add the marzipan.  Many recipes require that the marzipan be rolled up like a sausage in the middle of the loaf but Paul's doesn't - you roll it out thinly and then roll it up with the dough.  This way the marzipan is better distributed in the loaf itself.  (I used half the amount of marzipan stipulated in the recipe.... ours is not a sweet toothed family, and the dried fruit is already sweet.) Let stand for another hour, then bake.

So does it look like a babe in swaddling clothes?

When ready, it is apparently meant to resemble the baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes.  Indeed my effort did have a certain resemblance....

I should probably have left it in the oven for another 15 minutes or so, for it did turn out a little underbaked (as Hollywood would say). But it was still a tasty, buttery, fruity loaf, full of Christmas flavours. Perfect with a cup of coffee, for a stollen moment on a busy Christmas morning.

Merry Christmas to all!

Festive fruit cake

As is my usual practice, I made my traditional sugee cake this Christmas, plus some mince pies.  Plus my mother made her shortbread.  But I felt that it was time for something new.  So, I decided that this year would be the year I tackled fruit cake! Fruit cake is another Eurasian Christmas classic, a British tradition handed down to the local community in Singapore.  But, I never got round to making it even though my mother continued to get a commercial cake (normally the Lion's Club charity cake) every year.

So I started checking recipes.  I looked through Mrs Ellice Handy's book for her recipe, but was totally bowled over by the amount of fruit (almost 2kg worth) and the fact that the recipe was for 3 medium loaf tins!  Of course, I could have just divided the recipe by 3 and baked just a single loaf.  But considering that this was my first attempt, I decided to play it very safe, and use Nigella Lawson's traditional fruit cake recipe from her "Domestic Goddess" cookbook.  Nigella has generally been pretty reliable, at least for the recipes I've used.  And this particular recipe gives the different quantities for different fruit cake sizes.

And indeed, I think it turned out quite well, as the photo indicates.  There was still masses of fruit in the recipe, but I thought that the end result was quite moist, full of sherry-soaked raisins and mixed fruit.  It smelt wonderful too!

I can't seem to find the original recipe online, but Nigella has provided a slightly modified version here. The main difference, as she says, is that she upped the alcohol content and replaced some of the fruit with chopped pecans.  I can live with that :-)  On my part, I normally cut the sugar content by about one-third since I'm not too keen on sweet cakes. The original recipe also called for marmalade, rather than treacle, a substitution I'll probably stick to as I don't really use treacle for other dishes and we are huge fans of breakfast marmalade in this house. 

So maybe this is a cake to come back to again in future years.  The other good thing with fruit cake, of course, is that it has to be made in advance, so it doesn't really add to the hustle and bustle of Christmas.   

One small thing to end with.  For the first time ever, I heard about a "sugee fruit cake" which one of my colleague makes.  Coincidentally, my aunt received one from a Malaysian friend and we ate it at my cousin's Christmas dinner. I must say it is a denser, heavier cake than our traditional fruit cake.  But it interested me, this fusion between the two Christmas classics.  So I looked it up on line and it seems indeed to be quite common in Malaysia, but the origins seem to go back to that island in the Indian Ocean , where other semolina-based cakes have come from.  Here's the recipe I spotted, for anyone who'd like to give it a try and then report how it turns out so I can figure out if I want to do it too!

And of course - Merry Christmas, everyone!

Traditional Christmas Goodies

I've not put anything up for some time ... it really has been a busy time for me and I do wish I had more time to maintain this blog.

Anyway, the last week has been a veritable whirlwind of baking my Christmas goodies - my "staples" of pineapple tarts and shortbread, and my first batch ever of mince pies!  Three "traditional" Christmas delicacies, one from England, one for the Eurasian community, and one distinctly my family's own.

I really don't know why people express surprise when I tell them I make pineapple tarts for Christmas.  I tell them that this is a Eurasian tradition.  I also tell them (and am met with some polite scepticism) that there is reasonably strong grounds to suspect that the Eurasians came up with the golden treat in the first place, as mentioned in my earlier post. 

Since then, a kind reader gave  me some useful information - that the pineapple plant we all know and love came from the same place that the rubber tree did - South America.  The popular story appears to be that Columbus discovered it in 1493 and brought it back with him to Europe.  From there, it is likely that the European explorers /colonisers/missionaries brought it with them to South East Asia.  (One suspects the Portuguese, but my informant figured the French).  Whoever it was, the fruit came via Europe, the cooking techniques are more western than oriental, the very traditional Eurasian practice of eating this at Christmas together with the sugee cake...  ... whatever it is, I have enough jam left over to make a fresh batch for Chinese New Year, thus satisfying both traditions :-)

The shortbread, however, is no Eurasian tradition but my family's own favourite recipe.  I wrote about it in a previous post too, so I won't go into it any further here.

So that leaves me with my mince pies.  Now, these are indeed traditional English Christmas treats.  And, as a child I also recall my mother buying mincemeat to make these gorgeous apple pies - apple lining the bottom of the pastry base, with the mince layering the top, followed by strips of criss-crossing pastry on top.  Ah, those were indeed absolutely delicious childhood memories.

This time round, however, I decided to go with Nigella Lawson's Frangipane Mince Pies which come with a little layer of mince at the bottom of the tart and then covered with the eggy/buttery/almond-y topping and baked till beautiful and golden on top.  Ah, the divine Ms Lawson indeed deserves her Domestic Goddess status as these beautiful little pies really were quite delectable.  Alas, could only sample one piece (baker's privilege) as the rest are destined for my extended family's Christmas Eve dinner tonight, where I hope they will disappear like the hot cakes they are. 

But I still have half a bottle of mincemeat left, so maybe there is a mincemeat and apple pie in my not too distant future...

Glam up the Gammon

Christmas ham is a traditional Eurasian staple.  My grandmother would buy hers from a little shop at the corner of Tembeling and East Coast Road.  My mother remembers the ham coming in a sack, all packed in saw dust.  It would be boiled for hours to cook it and to remove some of the salt used to preserve the meat.  The first pieces would be eaten Christmas Eve, after midnight mass, together with achar,  mulligatawny soup and a crisp French loaf.

Today, we just go to Cold Storage and after removing the plastic wrapper, the ham is good to carve and eat.  But of course the challenge of eating all this ham remains.

So, the resourceful Eurasian housewife came up with a way to present it afresh to family members tired of eating the same thing day in day out.  And that's how gammon curry came about.  It's not my family tradition but I found this yummy recipe in Wendy Hutton's Eurasian food cookbook,  "Food of Love".  The whole cookbook can be downloaded so I feel quite comfortable reproducing the recipe here (for the record I bought the hard copy of the book).

I have to highlight that this is not the lemak coconut based curry but a sour, spicy curry cooked with cumin, fenugreek and mustard seeds and sweetened by the addition of prunes. Must admit that I didn't actually have *that* much leftover ham so I had to buy some cured pork belly to supplement the pieces of ham.  But the whole thing tasted great, especially eaten with rice and a cool green pea and mint salad.  The last is definitely not traditional but it goes very well. 

Ingredients
1 tablespoon toasted cumin seeds, pounded till fine
7-8 dried chillies (soaked to soften, pounded finely) - note that the original recipe calls for 8-10 chillis but I think that's a little hot
2 tablespoons oliveoil
approx 100ml red wine vinegar
500g gammon ham or cured pork belly
1/4tsp fenugreek seeds
1/2 tsp brown mustard seeds
16 fresh curry leaves (more if it is frozen or dried)
1/2 cup pitted prunes
green olives
sugar totaste

Directions
1.  Combine the pounded cumin and chilli to form smooth paste and fry in oil till fragrant. Transfer to a bowl, add the vinegar and use the mixture to marinate the meat for about 2 hours.
2. Heat oil and fry the fenugreek, mustard seeds and curry leaves quickly for about 1 minute.  Add the meat (reserve marinade) and stir-fry till brown.  Add the marinade and water to just cover meat.  Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for about 30-40 minutes.
3.  Add the prunes and olives and simmer for another 10 minutes.  Add sugar to taste.

Christmas Baking

When I went to the Peranakan Museum after Hungrygowhere's Big Eat Out, I spotted something in the "Junk to Jewels" exhibition which I did not come across in my first, rather rushed visit to the Museum. It was a nonya's recipe book - not a published cookbook but a series of recipes which she had collected and copied into an exercise book. The originators of the recipes were also faithfully recorded as well, eg "Mrs X's Fried Chicken".

I smiled when I saw that because it reminded me of my mother's well-worn "Mrs Handy's Cookbook" (2nd Edition). These cookbooks probably started off the same way, when women recorded their favourite recipes in exercise books together with the source of the recipe. Finally, of course Mrs Handy published her cookbook with its references to "Kwa's layer cake" (for eg). These cookbooks also had no photos at all (hard to imagine today), and empty pages in each section. Why? Of course, the answer is so that ladies have space to insert their new additional recipes! My mother was certainly no exception. Her "Mrs Handy's" is bristling with additional recipes, cut out from magazines (or off the backs of those soup and carnation evaporated milk tins) or copied from other sources.

I must now admit that my mother and I just love reading cookbooks and collecting recipes. But we have only ever tried out a small proportion of these recipes. One of my projects, indeed, is to cook through more recipes from our cookbooks. The problem is that the rate we acquire cookbooks seems to be far greater than the rate at which we try out the recipes in them. Having said that, there is one tried and tested recipe amongst the many my mother has copied into her "Mrs Handy's" - for Shortbread Biscuits.

I remember as a child my mother happily making preparations for Christmas - the Christmas tree, the presents, the food. She would bake trays of these shortbread biscuits with her two young children "helping out" along the way. She did the heavy work (creaming the butter and sugar) whilst we assisted with cutting out the biscuits, pricking the tops with forks or toothpicks and making little snowmen out of the remnants of the dough. And eating bits of the uncooked dough as well (it was so rich in butter and sugar). We'd then put them in the oven and the smell of the baking would fill the house. The biscuits were better than any commercial shortbread. They were a big favourite with visitors because of the way they just melted in the mouth.

For various reasons, we'd stopped baking for Christmas for a few years. But this year, I had started baking again. It seemed only natural that we should bake a batch of shortbread again this Christmas. And yes, the uncooked dough was as good as I remembered...

So here's the recipe (and you know it is pretty old because it is all in ounces). Be thankful, it is at least in weight measurements and not volumes:

Ingredients

8 oz butter

6 oz granulated sugar

10 oz flour

2 oz cornflour

Instructions

1. Cream butter and sugar till white (or light)

2. Sift the flour, and fold into the creamed butter and sugar to form the dough.

3. Roll the dough out to a thickness of about 1/3rd inch. Cut out the biscuits using cookie cutters. Prick holes on top using a fork/toothpicks.

4. Bake for about 15 minutes in preheated oven (temperature of about 180 degrees C).

5. Dust with icing sugar.

A lot easier to bake than pineapple tarts, too!

Christmas Visiting

It is the last day of Christmas - Epiphany, or the Feast of the Three Kings, hence appropriate to talk about Christmas visiting.

As a child, we used to visit members of the extended extended family over Christmas. I remember especially visiting my grandaunts. One lived in a house with a giant. The proof was the very high doorway in one corner, and the giant's fork and spoon which hung on the wall. My brother and I were terrified of the giant, but this aunt served especially delectable pineapple tarts and muruku so we would go anyway. Plus of course we did get a present or two.

The other two grandaunts lived across the road from each other. I like the idea of keeping in shouting distance from your family members. And it must have been wonderful for the children of both families to grow up together. After my grandaunts and their husbands passed away, one family sold up and moved away. But the other remained in their old house (renovated considerably) and they invited us for a Christmas/New Year's lunch just a few days ago. I shall not recount what transpired at the lunch because this has already been admirably done by a fellow guest (see Mandy's post, on Christmas Cheer). I shall only add, that I spent much time trying out my new camera to take photos of the birds, fish and flowers mentioned in her post:













The food was catered by Quentin's, the subject of an earlier post. Except for the dessert which was baked by the ladies of the house - rich, dense fruit cake and rose-flavoured love cake - a particularly sweet memory of Christmases past. Love cake is a Sri Lankan/Ceylonese dish, which is pretty appropriate as the patriarch of this household was a house-proud Ceylonese burgher. Here is a link to a love cake recipe (note, not the love cake recipe) for those who want to know the ingredients. But knowing the recipe is by no means the same as knowing how to bake the cake (and the good news is that the family takes orders!).

The Night Before Christmas

Every Christmas Eve, my mother’s family gets together for dinner. It’s a tradition which we have had ever since I can remember. Christmas is a big thing for Eurasian families. The Christmas tree and Christmas decorations are put up. Christmas goodies (sugee cake, pineapple tarts, shortbread, fruit cake!) are baked or bought. Christmas presents are carefully selected, wrapped and placed under the tree.

My mother reminisces fondly of Christmases past. Those were the days when Christmas Eve was (for Catholics) a day of fast and abstinence. But, my grandmother would prepare Mulligatawny Soup (a hot, peppery and curry-like soup) and boil the Christmas ham all day, filling the house with delicious fragrances, thus making the fast/abstinence all the more difficult (particularly for my grandmother, who cooked the food without even tasting it!). In the days without refrigerators, the ham came cured and packed in sacking. So it was necessary to boil the ham to remove some of the salt.

My grandparents would take their children for Midnight Mass every year. Everyone dressed in their best for church then and obviously for Christmas, a special effort was made. Men came in tuxedos and women in their beautiful frocks and hats. After mass, my grandparents and their family would go home and consume the soup, ham together with a crusty loaf of French bread and a glass of wine. And, my grandfather would start pouring out liquers. For children, he would prepare a special version of Creme de Menthe, a peppermint liquer which he would then dilute with water (I remember him giving me little wineglasses of this too). They would hold open house (yes, this is in the wee hours of Christmas morning!) and everyone would have a good time, chatting, talking and eating.

These days, things are a little different. There is no fast and abstinence (praise the Lord!) and so we have our Christmas Eve dinner at regular dinner hours. And, the variety of food on offer is really quite extensive. This year, we had roast turkey and lamb in addition to the ham and soup (unfortunately, I'd put in too much coconut milk - see below - but it tasted absolute scrumptious anyway). Plus vegetables, lasagna, pasta, rice (saffron and tomato) and gigantic salads. There was fruit, chocolates and cake for dessert and wine to drink. We take out our songsheets and start caroling (not too untunefully, and quite enthusiastically). Then, the kids (defined as anyone who is not earning money) get their presents and they typically put up a little performance for our benefit. Sometimes some family members do go for midnight mass - but we certainly don’t stay up till all hours of the morning thereafter!

Our Christmas tree, too, is a little different from previous years. We have stopped putting Christmas lights or tinsel on our tree. The reason? My dear little cat thinks that the tree and the little baubles, angels and santa elves hanging from its branches are there specially for her benefit and amusement. She also does not think that our arrangements of the tree ornaments are done well and takes the opportunity to rearrange them, frequently taking them off the tree altogether. The result - we have had no choice but to adopt a minimalist style of tree decor.

Here's a recipe for mulligatawny soup below. My grandmother and mother both swear by Mrs Ellice Handy's book, "My Favourite Recipes" and this recipe is modified from her original recipe.

Mulligatawny Soup
based on Ellice Handy's My Favourite Recipes, 2nd Edition. Printed by Malaysia Printers Ltd, 1967.

ingredients
6 pieces chicken breasts - steamed and shredded

2 cubes chicken stock

3 tablespoons coriander seeds
(tablespoons refers to big serving spoons here)
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon of peppercorns (but really to taste - put less if you prefer)
6 dried chillis (again, to taste)
1 small piece cinnamon
2 cloves
1 tablespoon tumeric powder
(the above to be all pounded together; alternatively just use a blender)

4 cloves garlic (chopped)
1/2 cup shallots (chopped)
1/2 teaspoon of fenugreek (or alba)
1 teaspoon of mustard seeds

2-3 teacups of cocnut milk (from half coconut)
Tamarind juice (use about 2 tablespoons of the tamarind pulp, soaked and drained - but this is to taste)
Salt
Oil for frying

Boiled rice

instructions

• fry the onions and garlic in a deep pan. Thereafter, add the mustard seeds, fenugreek and the pounded ingredients. Fry for a few minutes, until the mustard seeds pop.
• Add the chicken cubes, two cups (about 500ml) of water and salt and simmer for at least half an hour. Intent is to extract the spices and flavours from the spice mix.
• Strain the mixture, and to the gravy add the coconut milk, tamarind juice and taste. Note that the coconut milk should be thin coconut milk. If you are using a packet of coconut cream, dilute it. Add in more tamarind juice if you like the soup a little more sour. It is also good to have on hand some ready pounded spices just in case you feel the flavours don't quite come out. (Obviously this is not something Mrs Handy would recommend but not all of us are such good cooks!).
• When the soup is boiling, add in the shredded chicken. Pour on top of a serving of rice to eat, or eat with French bread.

Toppings

Soup can be topped with fried onions, garlic, and coriander. My grandmother also served it with fresh red chilli pounded with salt. Up to each person to decide how spicy and hot the mulligatawny soup needed to be.

Merry Christmas!