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.

What the Devil

Ellice Handy's Curry Devil

Devil Curry (also called Curry Debal, Curry Devil, etc) is one of those classic Eurasian dishes, for which every household has their own special recipe and their own traditions surrounding when they cook/prepare it.  But, one key characteristic of this dish is that it is cooked with leftover meats.  So, most households will make it after Christmas Day - a good way to use up all that leftover turkey!  I must admit that in my household, we don't cook this particular dish.  We normally don't have turkey on Christmas Day in the first place.  It's roast lamb and cold ham for us.  That's why I often end making gammon curry instead.  And for some reason, we just don't make it other times of the year.  

This year, however, my uncle turned up on Christmas Day with a lovely roast turkey, complete with all the accompaniments of stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce and even a lovely little cranberry and apple relish.  Of course, we could not finish the turkey.  I turned to my recipe books for a good Curry Devil. I read through the lengthy lists of ingredients (including roast pork, potatoes, cucumber and even cabbage).  But my mother had only one recipe in mind - Ellice Handy's recipe out of her 'My Favourite Recipes" cookbook.  That was the version her mother used and if was good enough for her mother, it was good enough for us.  No potatoes, no cucumber, no cabbage.  No roast pork even (my mother wouldn't have minded, but we didn't have any in the house).  It was just the leftover roast turkey meat and some sausages.  

This is a nice, simple recipe to cook.  And since the meat is all cooked up, it's pretty fast too.  I doubled the quantities in Ellice Handy's recipe since I was using far more than 1/2 pound of meat.  Also some slight variations here and there. It's one wicked dish!

Here we go:

Ingredients:

4 slices of ginger, cut into short strips

2 large onions, sliced

Leftover meats (I used about a quarter of a turkey, plus 3 sausages, sliced)

(1 tablespoon of brown mustard seeds, optional)

3 tablespoons of tomato paste (or use 2 large tomatoes, sliced)

2 teaspoons of mustard (Coleman's)

4 tablespoons vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

Spice paste

12 shallots, peeled

2 cloves of garlic

10 dried chillis, soaked in warm water till soft and cut up (add more chillis for extra wickedness!)

4 fresh chillis 

1 teaspoon of tumeric powder

1 teaspoon of belacan, toasted

3-4 buah keras (candlenuts)

Directions:

1.  Prepare the spice paste, pounding ingredients together (or use a food processor like me). 

2. Fry the ginger and large onions in a large pan till soft.  Add in the mustard seeds (cover the pan until they have popped).

3.  Add the spice paste, fry till fragrant.  Add the leftover meat and sausages.

4.  Add the remaining ingredients.  Continue to cook, adding a little water (keep it a dry curry though) for some gravy.  Ready when the gravy thickens a little.

Pineapple and Apple Crumble

Vanilla Ice Cream with Pineapple and apple crumble

Or, what to do with leftover pineapple jam when you get tired of making pineapple tarts.

I was inspired to make this rather delicious crumble by a visit to Cafe Brio at the Grand Copthorne Hotel.  Their buffet lunch happened that day to serve a pineapple and banana crumble.  As I didn't have bananas handy, I decided to try it with apples instead.

It is a very easy crumble to make.  Peel and cut apples into segments, then layer it with the pineapple jam in the baking tray.  Top with the crumble.  Bake.  Serve with homemade vanilla ice cream..

Smooth, velvety ice cream contrasts with the deep rich caramel-ly pineapple jam and the crunch of the crumble.  A perfect pairing.

Lucky Ducky

Duck with Chestnuts

After making pot roast for Christmas, was it any surprise that when I looked through my lovely new Mrs Handy, that I was immediately drawn to this Duck Pot Roast recipe?

I had a special occasion coming up, too. Some friends and I take turns hosting dinner. We each bring a dish, but it's not quite pot luck since we assign the dishes to be made in advance. Anyway, it was my turn to play host. What better to bring to a “pot luck”, I reasoned, than a pot roast? And I'd been dying to try my hand at cooking a whole duck.

I'm delighted to say that it went rather well. The duck was moist, juicy and the chestnuts were soft and tasty.  I'm pleased to say that the chestnuts were  my addition to the recipe.  They do add to the labour of making the dish though.  Whilst partially shelled, removing the rest of the shell and the outer skin of what must have been around 30 chestnuts took me about an hour. So feel free to drop the chestnuts if you wish.

Ingredients
1 whole duck (mine was approx 2.7kg and cost me $22)
2 tablespoons roasted coriander, finely pounded
1 teaspoon black peppercorns, finely pounded
1 dessertspoon sugar
Salt (to taste)
2-4 tablespoons thick soy sauce

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 shallots
2 teacups water
1 stick cinnamon
3-4 cloves

(Could add star anise as well, but I stuck to the recipe and didn't try this out).

300g chestnuts (boil  for about 20min or so, remove shell and skin)

Directions
1.  Rub the ground ingredients over the duck, together with the sugar, salt and soy sauce.

2.  Use a large, heavy bottomed pot.  Fry the onions in the oil till soft.  Add the duck, and fry till browned.  Add the spices, chestnuts and the water.  Cover the pot and cook.  Check the duck and turn over in the course of cooking.

3.  The duck should be cooked after about 1-1.5 hours. Remove duck and chestnuts, pour gravy in separate jug. Skim off the fat, and add the remaining gravy to the duck and chestnuts. (Be sure to keep the fat though. To use for cooking other dishes).

In the Pot

The thing about me and cookbooks is this:  I tend to have favourites - there are some recipes I will cook repeatedly, and others will remain uncooked forever.  I would really not be able to do a Julie/Julia thing and cook every recipe in a cookbook.  And so it is that the Pot Roast in "Robin's Eurasian Recipes" has indeed become one of my favourite recipes.  It's easy to cook, and the smell of the onion gravy filling the house in the process is absolutely heavenly.  I brought it for my extended family's annual Christmas eve dinner, and so thought it was timely to share it now.

Before I go on, a little about the book itself.  Robin is the father of Quentin Pereira, whose restaurant "Quentin's" is one of the few truly authentic Eurasian restaurants in Singapore.  Quentin's used to be on East Coast Road (see my earlier post) but has since moved to the Eurasian Association Clubhouse in Ceylon Road.  The menu is based on the recipes in this book (including this Pot Roast recipe - after eating it, had to make it!).

There's one thing about this dish though.  It is indeed heavy on onions - which means, that much time and tears are spent peeling the shallots.  Still, no pain, no gain. My mother makes it with fewer onions, but adds a mirepoix of celery, onions and carrots instead.  I prefer the oniony version (because of the wonderful aroma mentioned earlier).  But we both add cinnamon, cloves and star anise, which was not in the original recipe.  Anyway, here it is - my slightly modified version of Robin's Pot Roast recipe:

Pot Roast, covered with onions

Ingredients:

1.5-2kg beef (I use shin)

1 medium onino, sliced

5-6 carrots, chunked

4-5 medium potatoes, quartered

2packets fresh button mushrooms 

2 beef stock cubes (I've used 1 beef and 1 mushroom instead)

2 tbsp ground pepper corns

1 litre water

1 stick cinnamon

3-4 cloves

2 star anise

(Blend together)

20 shallots (or 5 medium-sized onions)

6 tbspdark soy sauce

2 tbsp pepper

2 tbsp sugar

Directions

1.  Marinate the chunk of beef in 10 tablespoons of the blended mixture, for about an hour.

2.  Fry the marinated beef in a pot, to brown.  Remove from heat and set aside.  

3.  Fry the onions till soft.  Add the rest of the blended mixture (including any remaining marinade) till fragrant.  Add the water (should not be too much, just enough to generate steam to cook the beef), beef stock and peppercorns.  Heat till it reaches a boil.

4.  Add the beef, and cook for 1.5 hours, till soft.  (Alternatively, pressure cook for half an hour).  Add the  carrots, potatoes, and mushrooms.  Cook till the carrots/potatoes are soft.  

5.  When the beef has cooled, remove and slice thinly.  Place in serving dish,and add the vegetables and gravy.  Can serve with some nice French baguettes, but my preference is to eat with sambal belacan and rice.

A Problem of Conversion

In baking, the Europeans use weight measurements; the Americans use volume measurements.  The Europeans also use metric, except for the Brits who stick by their pounds and ounces (as do the Americans).  Most of the time, cook books sold in Singapore use metric weight measurements.  So most of the time, my little weighing scale does the job for me.  And, for older recipes in old cookbooks (which are in pounds and ounces), I have my mother's old measuring cup.

So, I thought I had it all covered.  Until I looked at my grandaunt's recipe for pineapple tarts and found out it was in "katis".  Katis?  I have never cooked anything in katis (although vague memories emerged of visits to the wet market and my mother making her orders in katis).  Going down the pages, I did find a metric-based recipe (I assume my aunt updated her mother's recipe more recently), but my curiosity was piqued and I decided I would find out more about the "kati".

So I tried Ellice Handy (the doyenne of Singaporean cookbook writers).  Surely a book written in the 1960s (or so) would have kati conversion.  And indeed she did.  From katis to pounds and ounces.  Well, that was indeed useful.  So I would have to do a double conversion.  According to Handy,

1 kati = 16 tahils (what is a tahil!)
1 tahil = 1 ounce
16 ounces = 1 pound
Therefore, 1 kati = 1 pound.

Reading another cookbook, I got 1 kati = 21 1/2 ounces (!!)

I decided to check on-line.  Here I found that the "kati" or "catty" weight was used in China and Japan.  And depending on which country it was, the conversion factors are different.  For example:

1 kati (China) = 500g = 17.636 oz
1 kati (Japan) = 600g = 21.164 oz

Don't believe me?  Fiddle with the conversion here.

Going through Wikipedia, I found some more intriguing references to the kati.  First, I found out that the term "catty" is also used in Hongkong (which reinforces the Chinese linkage).  According to the Hongkong weights and measures ordinance, 

1 catty (kan) = 0.60478982 kg
1 tael (leung) = 1/16 catty
(i.e. my second cookbook appears to be more correct).

I was also delighted to come across, for the first time, a Singlish dictionary! I leave readers of this post to explore the dictionary on their own.  But let me, for the record, reproduce here its definition of the kati:

kati /ke-ti, ˈkɛtɪ/ n. [Mal. & Jav. kātī, katī; > Eng. catty] hist. A unit of weight equal to 16 Tahils, that is, about 1⅓ lb. avoirdupois or 625 grammes (more accurately, 0.604790 kilogramme).

1894 N.B. Dennys A Descriptive Dictionary of British Malaya 177 Kati. – Frequently written “Catty,” a weight of 1⅓ pounds avoirdupois; the kati contains 16 taels, and 100 katis make a pikul, or picul, literally “a load.” The tael, the kati, and the pikul are native words, but the weights they express are Chinese. 1947 Richard Olaf Winstedt The Malays, ch. 6, 112 Soon after the founding of Malacca Chinese annals under 1416 record.. that, ‘tin.. is cast into small blocks weighing 1 kati 8 tahil or 1 kati 4 tahil official weight... They use these pieces of tin instead of money.’ [1955 R.J. Wilkinson A Malay–English Dictionary, vol. 1, 516 kati. .. «catty»; a measure of weight of sixteen tahil or about one and one-third lb. avoirdupois.] 1970 Metrication Act 1970 (No. 52 of 1970), s. 5(b). Conversion of imperial standard units to metric system units. The values expressed in terms of .. the local customary system of weights and measures, may be converted into the values expressed in terms of the International System of Units in accordance with Schedule C. .. Schedule C .. Conversion of Local Customary Units to Equivalent SI Units .. 1 kati = 0.604790 kilogramme approximately 1972 The Straits Times, 25 November, 15 col. 1 The gold bars, weighing 15 katis seven tahils.

Goodness.  I am just glad that we have shifted to metric and so not have to worry about these complicated conversions.

Quiz - Eurasiana

I took down my mother's copy of "Elvis Lived in Katong*" the other day. This is a scrapbook-type book filled with cartoons, biographies of prominent Eurasians, customs and celebrations, snippets of Kristang, recipes etc. Plus a quiz on Eurasiana. I must admit I skimmed through the book quickly but spent a long time on the quiz, which featured questions such as the correct pronounciation of "bloody fool" (that would be bladdy ful"). And there was the thought-provoking question on how to define a successful wedding - where Auntie Elsie drinks Uncle Harry under the table, or when there is white wine served with the sugee cake (my colleague said "Bad question! Two possible answers!").

Anyway, I thought I would come up with my own little quiz. Here are a few questions:

1. What to look forward to after Christmas Eve Midnight Mass:
a. Roast turkey
b. Mulligatawny soup
c. Devil curry

2. Dodo and Jojo are the names of
a. two cats
b. two nuns
c. a singing group
(ok, so this is not quite a Eurasian question but it is definitely a Katong question)

3. Must haves for children's birthday party
a. Sausage rolls
b. Sugee cake
c. Green chilli sambal sandwiches
d. All of the above.

4. You would leave your shoes in the pew in church during
a. Good Friday service
b. Maundy Thursday mass
c. All Saint's Day

5. The famous Eurasian dish Smoore features these ingredients :
a. marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers
b. beef, onions, potatoes
c. beef and yorkshire pudding

The answers to some of the questions are somewhere else in this blog...

* This book and its sequel, "Elvis still lives in Katong", both by Denyse Tessensohn, are available at the Eurasian Association building in Katong together with other books on or by Eurasians.

Pineapple Tarts V2

Pineapple Tarts V2
Originally uploaded by Taking5

Someone who read my last post commented to me that I had kept my readers waiting quite some time for the sequel. Much as it pains me to admit it (pride going before a fall and all that) but the reason was because I was not quite satisfied with my pineapple tarts. The jam turned out beautifully – sweet and aromatically spicy, but with a tangy edge to it – but the pastry turned out a little too hard and not crumbly enough. I was also trying to get the hang of the pastry cutter/mould and so the shape of my tarts was not that nice; nor was my jam perfectly rounded or smooth. All in all, an amateur effort.

Fortunately I had made loads of jam so I had the opportunity to try the pastry again. This time the tarts turned out nicely shaped (I had improved my cutting techniques) and the pastry more crumbly and softer in texture. I must admit that since I used a standard shortcrust pastry recipe, it was not as buttery and rich as some other pineapple tarts I’ve eaten. Also my mother was commenting that I should have put in some salt (but I was not using unsalted butter, was my reply) and used some lard as well as butter (I’m concerned about health implications, I said). Nonetheless, I thought the pastry complemented the tarts well.

Anyway, here is a brief recipe:

Jam

(generally, do this at least one day before the pastry to let the jam cool down completely)

1. Take two pineapples, dice and blend finely in a blender. Add a little pineapple juice to facilitate the blending process – the juice adds a little zing to the jam later on. Note that traditional recipes call for the pineapple to be grated or chopped finely but this is very timeconsuming and probably the reason why I didn’t get around to making pineapple tarts for so long. It is of course possible (as someone suggested) to grate half and blend half the pineapple, for a better and more chunky texture. But for simple and fuss-free pineapple jam, I’d go for the blender.

2. Slowly cook the pineapple mixture over a low flame. Add 2 cloves, a stick of cinnamon and a piece of star anise to flavour the jam. Cook till thick (this should probably take 30-40 minutes or so), remove from flame. See picture for how the cooked jam should look like.

Pastry:
Ingredients: 250g flour; 125g butter; pinch of salt to taste; 2 eggs (beaten).

1. Sift flour and mix with salt. Rub butter into the flour till it resembles breadcrumbs.

2. Pour in the beaten egg slowly, mix together to form the dough - use hands if nec. No need to use all the egg. Put dough in fridge for at least half an hour to cool.

3. Roll out the dough to about 0.5 cm or so. Using a pineapple tart cutter (metal ring with mould within to form depression in pastry), cut out the tarts and put them on baking tray. Fill in with jam, glaze with beaten egg (now you know why you don't need to use it all) diluted with a little milk. Top with a little pastry piece.

4. Bake at 180 degrees centigrade for about 15-18minutes, when it has reached a light golden brown colour.

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!

Kacang Kelor

To my horror I find that I am writing a series of food posts. Not very balanced in what is supposed to be a general blog about Katong, its residents and lifestyle. But sometimes, things just work that way. Today's post is about an unusual vegetable called drumstick, kacang kelor (pronounced Kah-Chang Kay-loh), or the seed pods of the horseradish tree.

This is a very unusual vegetable in that the exterior (the seed pod) is horribly hard and fibrous. But when cut into pieces and then cooked for some time, the exterior can be broken easily to get to the soft, juicy interior. This is the vegetable seen frequently in Indian curries, especially dahl (lentil) curries. But it really goes well in other curries as well, eg chicken, fish curries.

My grandmother's neighbour has a horseradish tree somewhere in his garden. Every now and then, he harvests the seed pods and my grandmother gets a share of his bounty. She passes much of this on to my mother. My mother used to cook it in fish or chicken curries. Then she realised that the meat was just taking up the surplus space in the pot. So now we have our drumstick cooked in vegetable curries, so that the main attraction of the dish is just this vegetable. After the end of the meal our plates are piled high with the thick, fibrous, remnants of the seed pods, all with their insides dilligently scraped clean. So here is a picture of kacang kelor, on the outside and inside.