Apple Pie : Mistakes that you can avoid...

I have been working on sugar cookies for the past few months. I have been researching a lot on it and baking trays of these cookies with different recipes. I am almost there getting the perfect sugar cookies recipe and once I am satisfied with the final recipe I will post it up and share with you my experiences.

Now the weird thing is that the more I am into this sugar cookies thingy the more I crave to make pie dough from scratch and eat home made apple pie!! Nope, I am not pregnant with number 3 and I find this urge and craving is totally absurd and unexplainable!!

So, I bought apples and made the pie dough couple days ago. The pie dough was sitting in the fridge for two days and though I have this very disturbing pain at my lower back, being stubborn I decided to bake an apple pie while the kids are taking their afternoon nap. I didn't have a pie dish so I took a risk to use a tart dish which can easily tear the pie dough (which happened) to bake the apple pie.

The crust was heavenly flaky and flavourful. I use a ratio of 2:1 for butter and shortening and that gives the pie great texture and flavour. I would love to bake this pie again using this recipe but I would put more effort to work on the dough next time.

Mistakes that I made that you can avoid...
1. You definitely have to chill the dough for at least an hour. As you are working on the dough and it turns too soft in between pls put in the freezer for 10 -15 minutes to chill it again. The ingredient to success is to be patient which my desperation fails me for this process:P

2. Do not roll the dough too thin as it can tear easily. Ensure that the dough is rolled out about 3" bigger than you dish size. I rolled it far too thin and big and when I flipped it over the tart dish it torn :( . Partly this was due to the wrong dish I used. So lesson no. 2 is to get the measurement and item correct.

3. Do not throw your dough or stop there if you ever had difficulties or problem rolling out a nice smooth dough into a pie dish. My dough torn twice (after I chilled it and rerolled it two times) and honestly I was discouraged at the point. Thank goodness, I never gave up. I chilled the dough longer in the freezer this time and yet it didn't work so well for me in this third attempt :(. So finally I used the egg tart making method to push the dough up from the centre to the edge of the tin and patched wherever was torn. Well this is definitely not an acceptable method for a prof baker but it isn't too bad an idea if you are working on a tart dish. The ingredient to success for this mistake is to be persistent.

4. More juice meaning messiness for presentation but it is absolutely tastier and finger licking good for apple pie! I chose the latter so you can see plenty of juice oozed out from the pie which I wanted. However the centre pie was dry so perhaps pouring in the juice from the centre (which I did the opposite) and let it flow by itself to the edge will resolve the problem?!

This is definitely a very delicious pie that I will make again by avoiding the above mistakes. The next time if I were to bake this again, I will try to bake it on small tart tin and see what are the results.

'Bubur Taukwa' or Dried Bean Curd Porridge

I always find this porridge rather a little too plain and lacked of 'ummpph' but I am a fan of porridge so no matter how you cook it I am able to finish up more than a big bowl of porridge most of the times. Today I finished two big bowls and was so satisfied as I have discovered a new way of enjoying this food.

Previously I would add more light soy sauce to this dish as I really felt that it somehow lacked of something but I just didn't know how to describe it!! Even after adding msg and salt, I still didn't quite satisfied with the taste and felt that something was missing. Initially I thought perhaps it was due to the stock as it used just plain prawn stock as base without chicken or pork meat/bones.

Today I am so happy to have discovered a better way to enjoy this food and I have fall in love with it now!! This is a 'Peranakan' porridge and according to my mother-in-law it has to go along with lots of green onions, cilantro and chopped chillies with soy sauce. It happened that my kitchen has run out of soy sauce so we substituted it with dark soy sauce. That wasn't good enough .... I myself by chance added some bovril to the porridge and that made tremendous difference to this simple and humble food!

Bubur Taukwa (Recipe for 4 pax)

Ingredients

1.5 cup of rice
2 big pieces of taukwa (cut into cubes and briefly pan fried)
8 pieces of prawn (deshelled; keep the skin for stock, deveined and cut into small cubes)
1 cup of slice white fish
100g of minced meat (marinate with soy sauce, pepper and sesame oil; roll into small balls)
Aboutt 1.5 ltr of water for rice
About 3 cups of water for boiling the prawn shell

Method

1. Briefly fry the skin of the prawn without oil in a pan and pound lightly to maximise the prawn essense. Boil it in the water for about 15 - 20 minutes. Drain and remove the shell.

2. Boil the rice in the water and prawn stock for about 20 minutes and switch of the gas. Close the lid and leave the rice aside for an hour. Reboil again for another half an hour or so.

3. Add prawn and minced meat and boil for another 10 minutes. Then add taukwa and fish and continue to boil for about 5 minutes or less.

4. Add seasoning.

5. Serve with green onions, cilantro, chopped chillies with a little soy sauce, black sauce, pepper and BOVRIL.

Notes:

1. The most important ingredients for this porridge is prawn and taukwa. Meat ball and slice fish are optional.

2. The tip to shorten the boiling time in cooking porridge is to freeze the rice first beforehand. This step will eventually take you less than half an hour to cook a pot of porridge! I have tired this method before and I was so amazed by the result!

My Husband's Rumbling in the Kitchen!

Today my husband insisted to spend some time in the kitchen reason being our dear girl kept on pestering the daddy to cook her favourite pork chop. He likes to do his rumbling in the kitchen once a while. If we are not in a rush to prepare a meal or the kids are napping or at least not cranky, we both do enjoy our cooking time together at the kitchen during weekends. Our daughter if were to know that we are doing a cooking project together, she would definitely try to stay awake and refuse to nap so that she could join in the fun too :). Sometimes we include her depending on what's in the menu and the plan!

We used a healthier method to cook the pork chop this time. No oil was used. We bake them instead. We marinated the pork with some soy sauce and pepper; coated it slight with whisked egg and cream crackers and baked in the oven for about 30 minutes at 180deg C. The pork wasn't as crunchy as I expected but it was so yummy to have it with the home-made tomato sauce that my husband made. He came up with the recipe and to me it is getting better and better each time.

Look at his attentive face and sometimes he looked too serious when he cooked:P.

He was busy with his pork chop while I was juggling between my egg tarts and salad. I will put up the post of the egg tarts next. This potato salad is rather easy to make. I chose to steam the potato with cauliflower, carrots and onions rather than baking them as we thought of going a little 'healthier' this weekend. Once the vegetables are soften, remove them from the steamer; drain away the residue of water; mix them with a touch of salt, pepper, cilantro, spring onions, thyme and olive oil.

We love it so much!

What should I call these soups?

My two kids and I are coughing. The kids started coughing about 3 weeks ago and still coughing a little here and there now. They passed the bugs to me and I really hope that the chain of spread will stop there. Unfortunately, we passed it to our closed friends and the whole family was down! I felt so so bad and regreted to have stayed over their place that weekend. We are recuperating and I do really hope that the kids and adults for both families will get well very soon.

Due to the illness, I search through the recipe books that I have and I found these two great soups recipes that are traditionally believed to be able to stop coughing and expelling phlegm.

Soup No 1

The recipe called it 'Eight Treasures soup' and called for lean meet. I customised the soup as I prefer to have desert rather than savoury soup. In another hand, I would really wish to use up the balance of some ingredients that I have and of course without compromising the health properties of the ingredients and the nutritional values of this sweet soup that I am going to make. I can't really tell how much of each ingredients that I used as I estimated the volume. But this is the rough guide that I can share with you.

I would like to call this soup Ten Treasures! This soup can be served as cold or warm desert. Enjoy!

Ten Treasures Sweet Soup
Ingredients
3 tbsp Sweet Almonds
Slightly less than 3 tbsp Bitter Almonds
6 Dried Figs
10 Dried Longans
2 tbsp Dried Lily Bulbs
2 tbsp Lotus Seeds
5 Honey Dates
2 Dried Chinese Pear
2 White Fungus
Half medium size Papaya (deseed)
Some rock sugar

Method

1. Soak white fungus at least for 2 hours and changing the water a few times in between. Break the fungus into small pieces and remove the central hard stem of the fungus.

2. Soak and rinse all ingredients (except papaya and honey dates).

3. Put all the ingredients in a big pot (about 2.5 litre of water)

4. Boil the soup in high heat for 15 minutes and then turn the fire to slow heat and continue to boil for another 2 hours.

Notes:

1. You may use fresh Chinese Pears

2. Buy those white fungus that are not so 'white' but yellowish a little as the latter is believed to have used less whitening agent.

3. Always used Bitter Almonds slight less that the Sweet ones.

Soup No 2

The second soup called for less ingredients and infact this soup is good for baby for who are coughing or having a lot of phlegm.

Ingredients
400g radish
5 red dates
3 slices of old ginger
Honey or rock sugar

Method
1. Soak and wash the red dates. Remove the seeds.

2. Use a small pot and fill it with 800ml of water. Bring the water to boil and add all ingredients except honey or rock sugar.

3. Boil for 15 or 20 minutes.

4. Add honey and it is ready to serve. If you are giving it to baby under one year old replace the honey with rock sugar.

Note:

1. Do not overboil as the soup may turn spicy hot due to the ginger slices and may not be suitable for young baby and toddlers.

Lauk Jawa

Yes.. this weekend we are fairly crazy with Peranakan cuisine. After all my husband and my in laws are Peranakan and we can't run away with chillies and spices in our cooking.

This is another simple dish cooked by my mother-in-law. In fact we cooked Lauk Jawa a day before the Assam Babi Masak Peria. Hence we have balance of spices and ingredients that could be rolled over for the latter. The spices used are quite similar for both dishes except that we didnt use lemongrass, tamarind juice and fermented soya beans for Lauk Jawa. These 3 ingredients to me were quite extinct in the sense that its simple combination is able to bring a dish to a total extreme of fragrant sourish and salty flavours that savour in your mouth. These flavours are total opposite of how Lauk Jawa can satisfy you. The later is creamily spicy.

Give it a try if you are keen!



(Some of the ingredients... forgot to take out the milk!! The chillies on the left have been combined with grinned shallots and candle nuts while the one on the left is sambal belacan.)

Ingredients

Long beans cut diagonally
3 Big onions (cut coarsely)
3 fresh red chillies (sliced)
3 fresh green chillies (sliced)
90ml coconut milk/ fresh milk

Spices
5 dried red chillies
2 fresh red chillies
a thumb size shrimp paste (belacan)
2 candle nuts

Method

1. Blend the spices and fry them in low heat until oil seeps out.

2. Add the vegetables and continue to fry.

3. Add milk and a little water if too thick and continue to simmer until the vegetables turn soft. If you prefer crunchy vegetables reduce the cooking time.

4. Add salt and sugar to taste.

Assam Babi Masak Peria (Pork Ribs Cooked with Bitter Gourd in Tamarind Sauce)

We had this simple dish for dinner. This is one of my favourite Peranakan foods. I had this home-cooked dish five years ago. It was so yummy that I may forget the presentation of the dish but not the smell and taste at all! It was then cooked by my late beloved grandmother-in-law. I never planned to cook this tonight but I just kept thinking about it when my mother-in-law casually mentioned this dish yesterday. So I dug out all the Peranakan recipes books and magazine that I have and was so happy to have found the recipe!

This dish is fairly easy to cook and it did not call for complicated spices. You probably would have all the ingredients at hand most of the times. You may replace the pork ribs with pork belly or chicken if you wish. My husband and I are bitter gourd fans and we love the texture and taste of this not so likable green by many no matter how you cook it :>

Ingredients
1/2 kg pork ribs
1 bitter gourd (About one and half feet long)
One bowl of long beans
4 fresh green chillies (throw away the stalk and deseed)
2 fresh red chillies (throw away the stalk and deseed)
950ml of tamarind juice (use about 5 tablespoons of tamarind paste and squeeze the juice out)
2 stalks of lemongrass (Smash the head)

Spices
10 dried chillies
4 fresh red chillies
half inch thick and about 2" x 2" width square shrimp paste (belacan)
10 shallots
4 candle nuts (grinned until fairly fine)
2 tbsp mashed fermented soya beans (taucu)

Method

1. Boil the pork ribs in boiling water for about 10 minutes, drain and put aside.

2. Cut the bitter gourd into rectangle about 3cm x 2cm each and boil them for about 10 minutes and set aside.

3. Cut the long bean about 3cm long each and set aside.

4. Blend all the ingredients for spices except the fermented soya beans.

5. Heat up the oil and fry the blended spices in slow fire until oil seeps out, about 20 minutes.

6. Add the fermented soya beans and lemongrass and continue to fry until fragrant, less than 5 minutes.

7. Add pork ribs and fry for about 10 minutes

8. Add tamarind juice and increase the fire and let the gravy boil in high heat for about 15 minutes. Transfer into a small pot at this stage. Reduce to low heat and simmer for about half an hour or more depending on how tender you prefer the pork ribs to be.

9. Add the long beans and continue to simmer for another 10 minutes

10. Add the bitter gourds, the balance of red and green chillies and continue to simmer until tender, about another 20 minutes

11. Add sugar and salt to taste.

I think everyone in the family had fairly more than a bowl of rice tonight. We had a good time enjoying this simple authentic Peranakan dish while watching the Singapore 45th National Day Parade on the TV!! I personally would give this dish 4 thumbs-up upon 5!

Notes :
1. I have blended the shallots separately with the chillies. I prefer to blend a lot of onions ahead of time and keep them in the fridge in an air tight container. This way, you may keep the blended shallots for later consumption for more than a week. I will just withdraw the required amount from the fridge whenever I need it.

2. You can do likewise for the chillies. In fact when you blend the dried chillies and red chillies, together with belacan, you are actually halfway making sambal belacan. To complete the recipe for making sambal belacan, just get a few lime leaves, shred them very finely, mix them together with the chillies paste and add a touch of lime juice. I had made this in advance also (without adding in the lime leaves and skin).

3. My late grandmother-in-law used to pound the lime leave and its skin until fairly fine and mix them together with the chillies. Do not use too much lime skin or it may cause the sambal belacan to taste bitter.

4. Cut down the spiciness of the chillies by adding some sugar. The tamarind juice will bring down the spiciness of the chillies as well. If you prefer a more spicy sambal belacan or assam babi, add chillies padi (small chillies.

5. We enjoy very tender bitter gourd and long bean for this dish rather than crunchy. So for that result, I have simmered the vegetables for quite a while.

6. My mother-in-law said that brinjal can be added in if wish, so I would think that lady fingers are suitable as well?!

Fruity Cereals

This was just a very simple yet nutritious breakfast that I had had quite sometimes ago. I love fruits and there were some balances of fruits, too little for baking, therefore decided to consume all for my breakfast cereals! Perfectly well combined with super cold milk and a dash or two of cinnamon.... yummy!