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.

Sinpopo at Joo Chiat Road

In Singapore's highly competitive restaurant scene, it is quite difficult to write about food because somehow they get outdated quite fast!

Fortunately, unlike some other establishments I've written about, Sinpopo is still going strong.  Although, it looks as though they expanded the menu since I went...

Sinpopo is run by the folks behind Awfully Chocolate but this is completely different in concept, serving "old style" Singaporean food with a twist.  I came here with two lady friends and we had a good gossip, over luncheon meat crisps (terribly unhealthy), deep fried wantons  (scarcely less so), the crab meat bee hoon (my fave) and for dessert, gula melaka cake and brown butter sugee cake.  Washed down with Katong Jelly drink (red agar agar jelly in a 7-Up and soda mix).

Whilst I did feel that the gula melaka cake really brought out that gula melaka flavour, I was not sure that the brown butter flavour was really that prominent in the sugee cake.  Rather, the brown butter flavour was more obvious in the thin layer of butter cream icing the cake.  I was intrigued however by the whole idea of "updating" sugee cake using brown butter and so I was inspired to make my own version of brown butter sugee cake!

First of all, I had to learn how to brown butter.  Fortunately there's a pretty good guide here on Serious Eats.  Briefly, butter is melted and then boiled over the stove till the water evaporates.  As the melted butter continues to boil, tiny little particles of milk solids emerge and as these brown, they impart a nutty, caramel flavour to the butter.  However, you need to watch it carefully to make sure that the little flecks of milk solids don't burn!

My Brown Butter Sugee Cake

Having browned the butter, I then went on to make my sugee cake, which I've written about here.  I soaked my semolina in the browned butter and then made my sugee cake as per normal.  As usual, I did not put any icing or butter cream on the cake which enabled me to taste the "natural" flavours of the cake.

The verdict?  The colour of my sugee cake was a little darker than in the past - not so much a bright sunny yellow but a slightly browner shade.  As for flavour - well, I enjoyed the buttery flavour of the cake, but again the brown butter flavour did't really emerge.  I suspect that with the traditional marzipan and royal icing, the buttery flavour would be overpowered by the strong almond flavour.  It's probably better to take it to a different flavour profile altogether, add brown sugar in place of some of the white, and top with buttercream made with browned butter.. hmmm, seems to be what Sinpopo has done :-)

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. 

Celebrating Easter

Whilst everyone in Singapore is enjoying a lazy long weekend, observant Catholics, on the other hand, spend a lot of it in church. Starting with Maundy Thursday, what with the washing of the feet and the holy hour (I skipped it this year), then the Good Friday service (2 hours long) and Easter Vigil (3.5 hours) on Saturday night.  Then we have a big Easter lunch on Easter Sunday to celebrate.  What with cooking and eating (and sleeping off the lunch), that's the whole weekend gone.  And this year, I decided to further eat into my weekend by making Hot Cross Buns on Saturday afternoon (they took me 4.5 hours, including the time for proving and baking, and tidying up).

Hot Cross Buns have always been associated with Easter, what with the symbolism of the cross, the spices in the bun and the bread, to be broken and shared.  But its first mention, according to the BBC no less, was in 1733 in that famous old ditty, "One a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross Buns". Clearly the buns had staying power as they are still around today.

I made my buns from a Paul Hollywood recipe, from his book "How to Bake".  You can however find a similar recipe here. To be honest, I had tried making them last year but they were not very pretty and looked more like rock buns.  Fortunately, appearances were deceptive as certainly the buns were fluffy and soft on the inside.  My buns still weren't that pretty this year (I decided against the apricot jam glaze) but the cross is nice and clear.  What I like about it - the inclusion of the apple - its tart flavour contrasts with the sweetness of the bun and the dried fruit peel and sultanas.  

I managed to finish the buns just in time for a quick shower and a hurried dinner before rushing to Easter Vigil.  Need to go early, to get a good seat and before the church is plunged into darkness.  

Indeed, it is a special moment, the hush (at least it would be a hush if people weren't still coming into the darkened church and others weren't talking) in the church, just before the start of the Vigil.  Outside, the great fire is being lit, and from the fire, the Pascal candle is lit before being brought into the church.  And from this one candle, all our little candles are lit.  It's really such a beautiful moment, when all the church is slowly coming alight, and each of us contributes to it.  Then, we have the glory of the Exultet (beautifully sung by our MEP priest).

Here at Holy Family, also celebrate the baptism of adults entering the church.  And we get another round of candle lighting as the newly baptised too get their own candles.  It's a joyous moment, alleluia.

P.S.  Yes, I'm late with this post.  Easter Sunday was on 27th March 2016, some two weeks ago.  I've been busy!  

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!

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.

Chicken Curry Kapitan

Chicken Curry Kapitan, a photo by Taking5 on Flickr

After my visit to Penang, I felt inspired to post up this yummy recipe for Curry Kapitan. 

This chicken dish is a Nonya/Eurasian favourite. According to tradition, the dish got its name when the British/Baba towkay (whichever it was is lost in the mists of time) was asking what was for dinner and the cook replied, "Curry, Capitan".  "Capitan" of course is a sort of derivation from "Captain" and the title was not confined just to military captains, or ship captains, but to the representatives of the trading companies and wealthy Chinese merchants.

I particularly like the recipe in my Penang recipe book, "Nonya Flavours".  So does my extended family - my aunt was even so kind as to liken it to her mother's (ie my grandmother's) version, the highest praise I could hope for.


Ingredients:

1 kg chicken
salt
1 tbsp turmeric powder.

Spice paste:
10-15 shallots
2 cloves garlic
2cm ginger
2cm galangal
2 stalks lemongrass (use the white portion of the stem)
3 candle nuts
1 tbsp turmeric powder
2-3 fresh red chillis (as desired)
5-6 dried chillis (as desired)
1 tbsp belacan, toasted

1 200ml packet of coconut cream
1/2 cup water
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp shredded lime leaf
2 tbsp lime juice

Fried shallots or more shredded lime leaves to garnish

Directions
1. Marinate the chicken with turmeric powder and salt.  Leave overnight (or for a few hours, which is what I do).  Fry till nicely browned.  Set aside.
2.  Blend spice paste ingredients, fry till fragrant.  Add some of the coconut and fry till it cracks.  Add the chicken and fry together for 5-10 minutes.
3.  Add the remaining coconut milk, water, sugar, lime leaf and cook till chicken is tender.  Add lime leaf, check the seasoning.
4.  Serve garnished with fried shallots or shredded lime leaf or both!

Celebrate with Sugee cake

I like setting myself little cooking "goals" - targets of what dishes to make and master.  For example, last year, I told myself I'd make some cheesecakes - which I did.  This year, I set my  sights on that Eurasian classic, sugee cake, the must-have dish at every Eurasian celebration.

Sugee cake has been featured on this blog before.  In fact for such an insignificant post (featuring a little picture of a half eaten cake), there have been a startling number of hits.  So I thought, that now I've got my cake-making experience to boast about, it was time to do an update.

Making a sugee cake is not easy.  First of all, the recipe.  Everyone  says their grandmother's/ mother's/ auntie's is the best.  I would never argue with any of them.  But what's important is to get the recipe for the sugee cake you like. Preferrably, one that doesn't use too many eggs (yes, it imparts richness to the cake but think of the cholesterol too!).  Second, this is not an easy cake to bake.  It is heavy and rich, and inclined to fall, as my first attempt did.  Technique and practice is important.

Fortunately for me, my cousin (the baker in my previous post) has a yummy cake recipe. She has also perfected her technique over time.  So I got her recipe.  And I got her to tutor me (this was after one previous round of doing it on my own ended with sunken sugee "brownies" rather than cakes). We chatted and baked one lazy Saturday afternoon.  Thanks to her help, I got beautifully light, golden cakes topped with almond flakes, which I brought for my granny's birthday party.  Lovely with a glass of sherry, in the true Eurasian style..

I spent some time also reading various sugee cake recipes online.  Whilst it is easy enough to search for them, I found two blogs which didn't just give the recipe, but also the story behind the recipe or a little more about Eurasian culture and heritage.  Here they are: 
- Cheryl's grandmother's recipe 
- Denise's recipe - she has beautiful step by step photos and also  a great background on sugee cake. 

Happy reading, baking and eating!

Beef Rendang for beginners

Everyone has a list of things to do; I have a list of things to cook.  For a long time, beef rendang was on that list.  Rendang is actually a classic Indonesian dish, but as my last post indicates, nonyas and babas learnt quite a lot from Indonesia - and it goes well beyond using sarongs.  At last I got started - and I have not stopped since.

I've played around with a few rendang recipes - including by Wendy Hutton (Singapore Food), James Oseland (Cradle of Flavour) and of course one by the doyen of nonya cooking, Mrs Lee Chin Koon (of Mrs Lee's Recipes fame).  The basic ingredients are of course the same, but there are differences in the mixture of spices - my own combination is given below.  But what was interesting is the new technique which I learnt for the first time whilst making rendang. 

It is quite common practice for some coconut sauce based dishes, to fry the rempah (or spice mix), and then add thick coconut milk.  The coconut milk is then cooked until it begins to "crack", in other words the oil begins to separate out of the milk.  The food is then cooked in the rempah and coconut milk, for a nice smooth gravy.  But for rendang, the food is cooked first in the coconut milk and only at the end, does the residual coconut milk "crack" and the beef "fries" in the oily gravy, and that's how you get that beautiful, rich reddish-brown colour of the rendang gravy.  I find it so interesting to see how the dish transforms along the way, from what looks like an ordinary beef curry in a rather pale bath of soup, to these chunks of meat covered in a very thick, smooth, oh so yummy gravy.

It is not for nothing that beef rendang can be found in all good nonya restaurants.  The tender beef, well flavoured with all these lovely spices goes down a treat with white rice and vegetables. 

So here's the recipe for the rendang:

Ingredients:

1 kg shin beef (or other stewing beef)
1 medium size onion (or 5-6 shallots)
500 ml coconut milk (about 250ml packet of thick coconut milk/cream, dilute with 250ml water)
1 stick cinnamon (approx 5 cm or so)
2-3 cloves (optional)
30-40g kerisik (this is essentially grated coconut which has been dry-fried/toasted- gorgeous if you are prepared to put in this extra work, but I buy mine in a packet)
1 tablespoon sugar
pinch of salt

For the rempah (all ingredients should be pounded/processed together)

4 slices galangal (also called lengkwas)
4 slices ginger
3-4 cloves garlic
14-18 dried red chillies, soaked
1 tbsp tumeric powder
2 stalks of lemongrass (white portion only, chopped fine) - note: I've swapped this with lime leaves before, when I couldn't get hold of any lemongrass

Garnishing: lime leaves, cut into thin strips

Cooking method:
1.  Fry the rempah in a little bit of oil, together with the onion, cinnamon and cloves.  Add in the kerisik and fry till fragrant.
2.  Add the meat, and cook till the meat has changed colour.  Add in the coconut milk, sugar and salt.  Bring to the boil, then simmer till the meat is tender (depending on the meat - I do it for about two hours).  Add a little more water if need be.
3.  When meat is nice and tender, reduce the liquid and cook on low heat until the coconut oil "cracks" as described above.  

Serve garnished with the lime leaves. 

Unsurprisingly, this dish is nicer the next day.

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.

Grandaunt's Pineapple Tarts

Early last year, I was blogging about my attempts at making pineapple tarts. This year, I wanted to do another batch of tarts and decided that it was a good opportunity to go back to the good old days when the family was roped in to share out the tedious work. And so I got my cousin involved with the jam and tart-making.

This year, I had also managed to lay hands on my Grand Aunt's recipe, courtesy of her daughter. The basic ingredients were similar to those in my recipe posted up last year with one small, but critical difference - the inclusion of 3 teaspoons of lard every 250g of butter. And, she used egg yolks only instead of eggs, reserving the whites to glaze the tarts and to mix with the pineapple jam to get that nice, smooth surface.

I decided to stick to my tangy jam recipe (since I rather liked the inclusion of the pineapple juice rather than sugar to sweeten the jam). I also had problems finding zero-transfat shortening (I was not going to use lard) so we omitted that for the first batch of tarts.  Anyway, we started off with the jam-making process.  My dear mother was only too happy to show how dextrous she was with her knife, as she expertly removed the pineapple skin and eyes, chopped it up and readied it for the blender.  We then blended the pineapple with the juice and stood over the stove for simply ages, stirring and waiting for it to reduce down, change colour from pale yellow to that wonderful orangey brown.  At least we could chat a bit.  Making jam alone is indeed lonely work.

The next day, I popped over to my cousin's to make the pastry (she has a better oven).  Here, we had the benefit of getting assistance from her young nephews, our bakers' apprentices.  I was amazed by the conscientious attitude displayed, especially by the older of the two.  His task was to cut out the pineapple tarts using the cutter and the mould.  It's not an easy task as the pastry mould must be pressed down just so in order to leave an imprint on the dough.  The tart must also be carefully peeled away from the mould without breaking the dough. No small feat for our young apprentice to master.  We completed a batch of some 100+ tarts, from our 500g of flour. 

I subsequently made a second batch of tarts to finish off the jam.  This time round, I got the Crisco from Phoon Huat.  I also bought a plastic pineapple tart cutter/mould for our keen young apprentice chef, which he could use when his aunty makes tarts. I thought the top of the plastic cutter was less sharp than the metallic one, and so he could cut the pastry happily without inadvertently injuring himself.

So is it better with shortening, or without?  My verdict: Go with the shortening - it really gives it a much better, more crumbly texture.  Which makes the ingredients for the pastry as follows:

250g flour; 125g butter; 1-2 tsp of veg shortening; pinch of salt to taste; 1/2 tablespoon of sugar, 1.5 egg-yolks, water.

Rest of recipe and the process remains the same as in the earlier recipe.

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.

Cooking Fish Moolie

Fish Moolie
Originally uploaded by Taking5

Fish Moolie is a classic Eurasian dish, one which probably made its way to Singapore via India.  But the recipe for this mild fish curry is not easy to find.  Most recipe books don't have it - but I found it in two - in our ancient copy of Ellice Handy's cookbook, one of the oldest local cookbooks around (probably now out of print) and another in Robin's Eurasian Recipes, a recent publication. Robin is the father of Quentin Pereira, the owner and chef behind Quentin's restaurant, and it is his curry moolie recipe on the menu of Quentin's.

My mother prefers Mrs Handy's recipe as it is the one which her mother used to cook.  And, of course, that's the recipe we've had for the longest time.  Our local daily domestic also learnt how to make the dish and today, I swear her version is the best ever.  She has long retired, and so I have to cook it myself if I want to eat it.  And actually, it is far easier than one would imagine.

Ingredients:

Fish - about 500-600g.  Can use ikan kurau (threadfin), red fish.  The photo above features sea bream.
2 stalks lemon grass or serai (white portion only),
1-1.5cm of galangal or lengkuas
4 candlenuts or buah keras
1 teaspoon tumeric powder
2 large onions
1.5cm ginger, cut into strips
250ml coconut milk
Vinegar, sugar, salt to taste; flour for thickening

Pound the lemongrass, galangal, candlenuts together (or blended together), mix in the tumeric powder.
Fry the ginger and onions till soft but not brown, add the pounded ingredients and fry till fragrant.  Add 150ml of the coconut milk, diluted with 500ml water (or so) and pinch of salt.  Gently poach fish in the coconut gravy (gravy should reach at least two-thirds up the fish).  Cover the pan whilst poaching.  When fish is almost cooked, turn it over, and add the remaining thick coconut milk plus vinegar and sugar to taste.  Thicken with flour as required to reach desired consistency.  Top off with deep fried onions/garlic/chillis as desired.  Aside from the topping, this dish has no chilli, so it is not spicy at all.

Kerabu, or Penang-style nonya salad

It has been some time since I featured a recipe on this blog, and thought it was time to revisit this theme with a post on kerabu. It is always interesting to see how people react when they see kerabu.  Many are not too familiar with Penang Nonya dishes as there are quite a few differences between Penang nonya food and the Malacca/Singapore variety. 

Kerabu is a nonya salad, it is very much influenced by Thai cuisine with its combination of sweet, sour, spicy favours all wrapped up in a good dose of umami.  There are many different types of kerabu - jellyfish, fungus, cucumber/pineapple, tau gay, etc.  For some reason or other, my family favourite seems to be kerabu made of kacang botol (or winged bean, or four-angled bean). More recently I tried making kerabu out of tunghoon (mung bean vermicelli).  Here's a quick recipe for both.

Dressing - Ingredients

The dressing for kerabu is always the same - sambal belacan, or chillis and toasted belacan (a dry shrimp paste) pounded together.  You can either make your own (adjusting for spiciness) or just buy a bottle from a reputable producer.  Roughly, the proportion is:

4-5 red chillis

1 tbsp of toasted belacan

Add salt, sugar and lime juice to taste (for kerabu, since it is a dressing, probably about 4-5 limes minimum).

Variation: If you don't have sambal belacan handy and are too lazy to make it, you can also try slicing up some red chillis and adding some Thai fish sauce to the dressing

Salad base

For kerabu kacang botol, ingredients would include :

Wingbeans/kacang botol (typically about 1 packet for 4 pax) - blanch in boiling water so that they retain that crispy texture, cut thinly (I like it  about half a centimetre), on a slant.
4-5 shallots, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons dried prawn (haebee) -  soaked, pounded
1 tbsp toasted grated coconut (kerisik) - purists would include it, but it is a pain to toast the coconut so I would call it optional.

When the ingredients are ready, toss together in the dressing.

For kerabu tunghoon,  

100g dried tunghoon - soak in warm water and it will expand

300g prawns (shell, devein, cook quickly in boiling water or microwave them)

2 shredded carrots

8-10 shallots, thinly sliced

100g taugay or beansprouts

1/2 cucumber (shredded, pulp removed)

3 stalks lemon grass (thinly sliced)

Toss together in dressing, garnish with mint leaves or coriander leaves. Can also add other things, like the kerisik, as well.

Enjoy!

Note: the kacang botol kerabu is our own home recipe, whilst the tunghoon kerabu is adapted from a recipe for kerabu beehoon found in Nonya flavours: A complete guide to Penang Straits Chinese Cuisine.  Many other yummy kerabu recipes there!

Green Bean Soup (Lek Tau T'ng)

Green Bean Soup (Lek Tau T'ng)
Originally uploaded by Taking5

I had recently been busily baking cakes and biscuits recentlly. So it seemed like time for a traditional favourite.

I mentioned green bean soup and my father started talking about how his mother (my grandmother) made it, with sago pearls amongst the beans. I checked up my Penang recipe book, "Nonya Flavours" and there it was!

Be warned: this takes some time to cook. (I've also made a few tweaks to the recipe.)
1. Soak green beans (abt 200g or so) in water for about 1h or so
2. Add the soaked beans to boiling water, together with brown sugar - abt 150-200g (according to taste) and pandan leaves. Cook over slow heat till soft (beans should break up, soup should thicken slightly). Can take over 1.5 hour.
3. Wash the pearl sago (abt 75g or so), add to the pot. Cook till transluscent (don't overcook)
4. Add about 100ml of coconut milk, or alternatively spoon a little coconut cream on top of the soup.

My father likes it as a night snack, my mother as a mid-morning snack. How versatile!

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.