Weekend Home-cooking with Moules Marinière, Tomato Galette, pan-fried duck breast and a deep chocolate with sour cream pound cake

She was talking about Moules Frites for a while now. So I proposed doing Moules Marinière (with frites of course) but I had some confusion with Moules à la Provençale which is basically Moules Marinière with tomatoes and (more) herbs.

She’d also found a nice recipe for a nice Tomato Galette (I had proposed doing David Lebovitz’s Tomato Tart but I’m easy…) The other agenda was to practice doing pan-fried duck breast for Joan’s home-coming dinner.

Posted on 22nd Aug 2010 in Dinner Book, Food and Drink, Fun, Modern European, Western | 5 comments

Sign up now for the Annual Food Bloggers Dinner 2010

Heya! Just a reminder to sign up for the Annual Food Bloggers Dinner if you haven’t done so. It’s happening on the 25th August (Wednesday).

You can sign up by sending an email to ng_ivan@yahoo.com (let me know your choice of meat or fish for the main course).

I hope to get all sign-ups by the 15th August so that the kitchen has time to prepare.

Also, Pantry Pursuits have kindly donated prizes for a lucky draw.

When: Wednesday, 25th August 2010, 7.30pm-11pm

Where: Michelangelo’s, Block44/1- Jalan Merah Saga, Singapore 278116.

Price: $50 nett.

Menu:

Starter

Crabmeat Cake with Avocado top with Mesclun Salad, Beetroot Paint & Balsamic Reduction

Pasta

Short Tube Pasta with chunks of Tuna in Homemade Tomato Sauce with Capers, Olives, Chili, Garlic, Basil, White Wine & rich Fish Broth

Main Course

Breaded Veal Scallopine pan fried in Butter glace with Veal Jus, Cherry Tomato Salsa & Lemon Wedge

OR

Sea bream blanket with crispy Brick Phyllo on Butternut Pumpkin Puree top with Tomato Salsa

Dessert

Pistachio Financier with Strawberry Salsa & Mint

Coffee / Tea

Posted on 12th Aug 2010 in Food Bloggers Dinner, Fun, Singapore | 1 comment

A visit to Freitag Zürich, Switzerland

I spent the weekend in Zürich walking around aimlessly until I spotted a lot of people carrying Freitag bags. I decided to stop a man who was carrying a Freitag bag in a Freitag paper bag and ask for directions.

Lo and behold, it was not far (just 1 train station away) and suddenly, I had purpose.

Posted on 10th Aug 2010 in Fun | Post a comment

The Singapore Food Festival – Clarke Quay Food Street

Visitors to Singapore (suggested motto: No littering, fine $500) are often at a lost on where or what to eat when they arrive. What they see in the arrival halls of our world-class airport is a sanitary – for most Singaporeans, hygiene is not a greeting – place. Unless they have a local friend, they wouldn’t have a clue to what’s good to eat.

Fret not, because true to the Singaporean habit of consolidating colonial cultural color into a centralized, convenient and, above all, hygienic location, the Read Bridge at Clarke Quay has been converted into a Food Street with stalls hawking things to eat. And because the theme this year is local dialect cultural food, you get to wade through a broad spectrum of food from the various dialect groups that have evolved into something that is truly Singaporean.

Unless of course, the Malaysians claim otherwise.

Posted on 19th Jul 2010 in Asian, Fun | 4 comments

The hardest part about making Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream is resisting the temptation to drink it

And thus, I achieved Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream

Blueberry Cheesecake, deliciously deconstructed

Ice cream mixes (the liquid that you turn into ice cream) have got to be one of the most delicious drinks ever. I can never resist the temptation to lick the spoon after scraping the remnants into the ice cream maker. Just the aroma of the fruit ice cream mixes I’ve made is intoxicating.

This Cheesecake ice cream has got to be the strangest I’ve made so far because I’ve never pureed cheese before.

Posted on 17th Jul 2010 in Baked Goods, Fun, Recipes | 1 comment

Baking Day

Of all the culinary arts which includes food science, cutting, grilling, roasting, stir-frying, cursing at imbeciles and appearing on TV, the least understood art, for me, is baking. It is a very big gap in my knowledge simply because I have no idea what to do with the resulting baked goods. And while I left it well alone, I’ve always wondered what it would be like to bake. Thus I was fortunate to have Cheryl of The Baker Who Cooks come over last Saturday and show me.

This is her account.

Posted on 29th Jun 2010 in Baked Goods, Fun | 5 comments

Long Weekend

May is nice month where we get two holidays: May Day (or Labor Day) and Vesak Day. Better yet, these holidays translate into long weekends. I love such holidays where there are no major family or religious (I’m not Buddhist) obligations to observe. It means I get to snooze till 8am and cook.

This year, instead of organizing a cook-out for friends, I decided to rethink and experiment on old recipes as well as make ice cream.

Posted on 4th Jun 2010 in Fun, Old School | 2 comments