Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum

There IS a tune to those five "dums". I do apologise for your not being able to hear what I'm hearing, which is the sound FBC's musical inchworm produces when you press its nose. 

***

There is only one word to describe Chinese New Year with a five-month old: Exhausting. On 初一, we set off from home at about 8.20am and only got back around 10.20pm. And this was after reunion dinners on the Saturday before (i.e. Valentine's Day), and Tuesday and Wednesday. It took me about three days to recover fully. 

Still, I suppose it could have been worse. I was pregnant last Chinese New Year, and the fatigue was of a whole different nature. At least this year I was able to eat properly without feeling nauseous after every other bite. And thank God for the lovely, cool weather. 

***

I've been thinking a lot about being pregnant (again) in the past few days. Not that I want to start trying for another one anytime soon, as you know I have some things I want to achieve before that. Neither is it because anyone asked me when we were having our next child (my zombie-like demeanour and willingness to hand over FBC to any willing relative/ family friend, and oh were they willing! must have been clear warning signals). 

It's just that I signed up for The Kitchn's Freezer Cure, and although I haven't been keeping strictly to the schedule, I've unearthed a container full of an unidentifiable orangey-red mass which looks like frozen tomato sauce from my freezer. It's currently defrosting in the fridge, so I guess we'll find out what it really is soon. I couldn't remember freezing any tomato sauce from our Valentine's Day dinner, so I figured the sauce (or whatever it is) had to date back to when I was pregnant and went off tomatoes. Which got me thinking about how much I like tomatoes and how anything with tomato in it made me throw up when I was pregnant, which was very sad. Tomatoes (paste, canned) add such a lovely depth of flavour to braises and pasta sauces, and my homemade ketchup was so delicious, what with the tang of apple cider vinegar and all. I simply can't imagine going another 9-10 months without tomatoes. And who will cook FBC's meals if the simple act of making cheese toast makes me feel nauseous?!

I really should stop thinking about these things, lest I think myself into not having another child. 

In line with the spirit of clearing out the fridge and freezer, I also decided to finally cook the leftover somen noodles I bought when I was pregnant, ate one portion of (they are nicely bundled per portion and there were two left), then stuck in the fridge because I couldn't bear to look at them after cooking that one portion in some soup made with instant dashi, MSG free and heavily diluted. 

If it's not already evident, I hate wasting food. My mum was big on finishing leftovers, and there was a period of time she would count the number of stalks of kailan she cooked just to make sure that: (1) we all got enough; and (2) there would be no leftovers.

Which brings me to last night's dinner. I had attempted these healthy caramel apples from Kitchen Simplicity when we got home from Wednesday's reunion dinner for a healthy snack to eat in between visits, but had failed to get the caramel to the runny consistency required. I'm not sure what went wrong - did I over-boil the honey, even though the recipe says to bring the honey to a rolling boil? Was it because I used Adam's natural peanut butter, which has no added oils? (If you look at the comments section, one angry reader complains that the brand of peanut butter the recipe author uses contains all sorts of bad oils. Which may actually give a runnier peanut butter when heated, as opposed to a peanut butter made only from peanuts and a touch of salt)

I managed to coat some apple slices with the "caramel", but didn't feel much like bringing them out, so we ate them immediately. However, I'm not overly fond of the taste of cooked honey, so I ended up with about 2 1/2 tablespoons of a peanut butter and honey "caramel" which I didn't feel like putting on any more apples. Thankfully I had had the foresight to not add vanilla to it so all was not lost - I asked Google for marinades with peanut butter and honey, and because I had some miso in - you guessed it! - the freezer, I added miso as a search term.

Last night's dinner

Together with the heng chye stems I ended up with after using the leaves make heng chye and apple puree for FBC, and the somen noodles mentioned above, this was last night's dinner. The recipe for the chicken marinade is as follows:

Peanut Butter Honey Miso Chicken Marinade

Adapted from Epicurious

• About 2 1/2 tbsp of a peanut butter honey mix. Do note that I cooked down 6 tbsp of honey and 4 tbsp of natural peanut butter, so if you are making this not as a result of a failed experiment with "healthy caramel", I would say to go with about 2 tbsp of natural peanut butter and 1/2 a tbsp of honey. You can always add more honey if it's not sweet enough for you. And yes, I know it seems a bit counter-intuitive to use less honey than peanut butter when the "healthy caramel" used more honey than peanut butter, but the honey cooked down so much when it hit the pan that I think this is a more accurate aggaration 
• 2 tbsp miso (there are many different types of miso. Sunday Life! ran a feature on the different types yesterday... But I still have no idea which type of miso I'm using. It's the relatively inexpensive one, and is a pale brown and has a picture of a little girl on the front. I'm too lazy to take a picture of it. Perhaps it is shiro miso? In any event, taste a bit of it to see how salty it is and how much you would like to use. Again, err on the side of caution and start with less)
• 4 tbsp soy sauce (which is really why you should start with less miso)
• 4 cloves garlic, grated (if you scored a head of garlic with large cloves feel free to use 2 or 3)
• Half a thumb of ginger, peeled and grated finely

Taste the marinade as you go, if you feel that it's not sweet enough from the honey (not all honey is created equal) you may wish to add more honey, or 1-2 tsp of brown sugar or mirin to round out the flavours. 

I marinated a mix of  6 chicken drumsticks and 2 thighs in a Ziploc bag for around 9-10 hours (stuck them in at about 9am before we left for church, and cooked them around 7pm), then baked them for about 40 minutes at 170C (fan forced), turning on the broiler for another 10 minutes or so.

You can let your chicken marinate for slightly longer, say 12 hours, but from experience with other soy sauce and miso recipes the chicken does tend to get rather salty if you go any longer than that. If you find your chicken getting too brown - miso tends to burn easily - you can cover your chicken with foil and continue baking, or just reduce the temperature slightly. 

***

The new yoga video I tried this week was so incredibly boring I didn't bother saving the URL. I did a video I tried before, so I won't post the link again. 

No timings from last week's run because I was still recovering from Chinese New Year during the same and so decided not to go hard, but I think my form isn't too shoddy. No more pelvic bone aches during side planks either.

What Is Love?

And the correct answer to that question is: RPM 47 Track 7.

***

Happy Valentine's Day! wherever you are. I've always liked Valentine's Day, the one day of the year where I feel it's okay to get all cheesy and go overboard with the hearts and pink and red glitter and CAKE! I was originally planning to make a bunting using small pink and red glittery hearts, as well as whip some cream to decorate the chocolate cake I made, but after I was done making dinner and baking said chocolate cake (which also involved numerous checks on FBC who decided he was going to be tiresome and hangrier than usual), I was SPENT. So, no glittery pink and red hearts this year, and an unadorned (but still delicious) chocolate cake. What a pity.

***

I said to Jon last week that we've spent more weeknights at home watching TV and talking nonsense in the past few months since he moved in-house than we did when we were first married, even though that was supposed to be the honeymoon period, etc. Funny, that there was a time in the first year of marriage I felt constrained by being a wife, a daughter-in-law, and wanted so badly to just not be those things anymore. (I always have and always will be a daughter, how do you not want to be something you have always been?) Does everyone go through periods like that when they're married? When they suddenly realise that they've lost the choice to see other people, are unable to do whatever they want whenever they want, and have so many more responsibilities? 

I think, though, that those feelings were due in part to the fact that Jon was working so hard at the Angmoh Firm. We've said before that we stopped quarrelling so much after we got married, maybe that was due to that too - I could pretty much do whatever I wanted because he wasn't home most nights, anyway. And we quarrelled more in the first few weeks of FBC's life than we did in our entire marriage up to that point - along with post-partum hormones, those first few weeks were probably the most time we'd spent with one another at home at a stretch. 

Because, after those first few weeks as new parents, and many weeknights at home watching TV and talking nonsense later, I've come to the realisation that I wouldn't trade being a wife and mother, and all the attendant responsibilities of those roles, for anything.

Oh, it's not all a bed of roses, I'm sure you know that. The more I Stay At Home, the more I realise how much is required just to keep the household functioning at some basic level of cleanliness and homeliness - and my standards are already pretty low. Not that I think women should martyr themselves for the SAHM cause, I definitely do not want to become someone like that, but you know what I mean. Sorting the laundry, doing it so the part-time help can iron it; sweeping up all those strands of hair I'm losing post-partum, cooking, doing the dishes*, making baby food, playing with the baby, doing his laundry, making sure the adults in the house have enough good and healthy food to eat... The little things which together take more from you mentally and emotionally than you ever thought they would. And we're dead-set against engaging a live-in helper, even when I return to work and maybe even after we have our next child. 

If there's anything I've learnt in the past few years though, it's that you just deal, and life goes on.

*Usually, the spouse who doesn't cook does the dishes, but it's okay, there are some things I can live with. 

***

Here is the recipe for the baked malfatti I made for our early Valentine's Day dinner. There are a number of components to it which can probably be completed in a day, but I broke it up into two days because most of the active cooking had to be done when FBC was napping (or I was in the mood for some CIO action. Haha.)

I'd originally intended to make lasagne rolls, but ditched the idea when I realised that the no-cook lasagne sheets I had in my fridge were almost 3 years old, having been purchased for a pound while Jon and I were on our honeymoon Part 2 in London. Well, okay, I really ditched the idea only when I realised after boiling them that they wouldn't behave like the Barilla ones apparently do, i.e. get all soft and pliable and easy to roll. These kept splitting as I tried to roll them up.

I had already purchased the ingredients for making ricotta when I decided to test the lasagne sheets from the fridge, and neither Jon nor I like the taste of fresh milk, so I had to commit to making ricotta. It was then that I contemplated making fresh lasagne sheets without a pasta maker, but after about 3 hours of researching the intricacies of this process, I decided it wasn't something I wanted to attempt with a child prone to hangry outbursts (on that note - he gets it from his father, I think. Unwilling to wait just ten minutes more to eat) and with eggs being so dear (they have been steadily increasing in price. A carton of 10 large local eggs used to cost S$1.95 at the minimart across the street. They now cost S$2.35). 

I was resigned to buying a box of Barilla lasagne sheets and having the remainder sit in my fridge for another 3 years**, when I remembered the ricotta and spinach dumplings, "nude gnocchi", which Anne Burrell made on Secrets of a Restaurant Chef. Another three hours of research later, I decided to make a baked version.

**It's not that I don't like lasagne. I mean, I don't buy ingredients just so they can languish in my fridge only to be thrown away years later. Lasagne is just so time consuming if you, like me, want to do everything from scratch. At least chopping the vegetables finely got easier with a food processor.

The traditional way of making malfatti is to boil the dumplings. I tried with one and although it held its shape bits of it disintegrated so I decided to go with the baked version (may be a travesty, but ah well). 

I also learnt some interesting things about Italian cooking in general when I was researching the making of this dish - for instance, the difference between "lasagna" and "lasagne" (the latter is the plural of the former), and that chicken is never paired with pasta in traditional Italian cooking. Dishes like chicken alfredo only came about because, as the commenter put it, "Americans have something about chicken". 

To give it its real, atas sounding Italian name, this is Malfatti di ricotta e spinaci, or malformed "mistake" dumplings of ricotta and spinach

Overall recipe adapted from Scrumpdillyicious

A. Ricotta

Recipe adapted from Smitten Kitchen. I tripled the recipe and got about 400g of ricotta.

Ingredients

• 10.5 cups of whole milk (I got two 1 litre cartons of Hi-Low milk for S$5.15 from Giant, it was more than enough)
• 1.5 cups of heavy cream (I used Emborg whipping cream, which is 38% fat)
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 9 tbsp lemon juice

Method

1. Put milk, cream and salt in a large pot. 
2. Bring to an almost boil (I don't have a cooking thermometer. Maybe that would make a nice Valentine's Day gift?). You can tell it's "almost boiled" when there are small bubbles at the edges where the liquid touches the pot. The mixture should not be allowed to come a full boil, i.e. large bubbles form, liquid spatters up at you (I'm not sure why you shouldn't bring it up to a full boil, but don't. I think it'll affect the structure of the milk proteins and it won't curdle properly).
3. Take the pot off the heat, stir in the lemon juice and let it sit for about 10 minutes. 
4. Pour entire mixture through a sieve lined with cheesecloth set over a large bowl. The whey will collect in the bowl, leaving the curds in the cheesecloth.

As the ricotta needs to be firmish - think crumbled taupok, but a bit smoother, let it drain for about an hour to an hour and a half, or longer if you think it's still too soft. I stuck my ricotta in the fridge, wrapped in cheesecloth, for about two days.

B. Malfatti

Ingredients

• 400g ricotta (although I made my own ricotta, if you can bear to, just use store-bought. Especially if you have to clean the pots yourself. Please do not wait too long to wash the pot you almost boiled the milk and cream in, or you will have a terrible time getting the curds off. Soak in water immediately after pouring liquid to strain)
• A pack of frozen spinach, defrosted, steamed, wrung as dry as it will go. I used Emborg frozen chopped spinach, about 450+g of spinach or so per pack. Erring on the side of caution as I'd never dealt with frozen spinach prior to this recipe, I actually defrosted and steamed two packets, so I may have used about 1 1/3 packets. With the remaining spinach, I made pork and spinach meatballs.
• About 3 cloves of garlic, finely grated
• Zest of a lemon
• 5 tbsp finely grated Parmesan
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• Pinch of nutmeg
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 egg

Method

1. Mix everything together, except for the salt, pepper and egg. 
2. Taste as you go along, and add salt and pepper until it tastes nice (yes, really)
3. Add egg and mix thoroughly. The mixture should still be slightly sticky and you should be able to form balls which hold their shape from it. 

I stuck the malfatti mix in the fridge overnight, putting two paper towels between the mix and the clingfilm to prevent condensation from getting into it.

C. Olive oil bechamel

Fry 2 tablespoons of finely minced onion with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, until onion is mushy and a bit brown. Add 2 tablespoons of flour and whisk to combine. Once you get a smooth sort of paste, cook for a bit until it turns a light brown, then add about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of milk, whisking constantly.

At this juncture, I should admit that I am not quite sure how to cook bechamel. However, I just sort of let it come to an "almost boil", whisking constantly to ensure there would be no lumps, until the mixture thickened to my liking. I actually took the trouble to strain it, but feel free to leave the minced onion in.

Leftover bechamel can be frozen until you decide what to do with it. But don't take too long.

D. Marinara sauce

Fry about 3/4 of an onion, finely minced, and 3-4 cloves of garlic, finely minced, in about a tablespoon of olive oil. Add a can of chopped tomatoes (I used the Cirio brand) and simmer. Add salt, pepper, and if you find the taste too acidic, add about 1-2 teaspoons of brown sugar.

This made more marinara sauce than I needed, so I froze the remainder together with the pork and spinach meatballs I mentioned. 

E. To assemble the dish

Oil a baking dish with olive oil - just a thin layer will do. Spread bechamel on the bottom of the pan. Form slight oval shapes with the malfatti mix, mine were a bit smaller than a small egg. Place them in the baking dish - mine held about 10, and I made another pan with 16 for my parents - on top of the bechamel. Pour more bechamel over, then spoon some marinara sauce on top of each malfatti. Sprinkle Parmesan (I had a pack of not so finely grated Parmesan, so I used that instead of the one which looks like grains of sand) over each malfatti, and top with shredded Mozzarella. 

Bake at 170C (fan-forced) until cheese has melted and browned. Serve immediately. The portion I made for my parents was cold by the time it reached them, which prompted both my usually salt abhorring parents to say that it wasn't salty enough. But the next day, after my mother heated up the leftovers, she immediately WhatsApped to tell me that it was yummy and didn't need any additional salt. Pooi, I say.

***

Yoga video of the week here. If you try it, you should be able to make this chocolate cake and have it for dessert without feeling too guilty. To the batter, I added 4 tsp of the following spice mix:

• 3 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper

4 tsp was enough to give the cake a subtle, spicy kick, but you could always add more than that if you wanted more spice. 

We're at about 6:12/ km now for 10km (our fastest being 5:30 or so per km). 

Up On The Hill Across the Blue Lake

Well, we don't have many (any?) hills across blue lakes in Singapore, so I can't say that that's where I had my first heartbreak. 

***

Today is one of those days where I feel like the laundry cycle is endless - and FBC hasn't even started school yet. Have just stuck the third load of laundry for the week (bedsheets, and only half of them) into the wash, and am dreading the "beep beep"of the washing machine, signalling that it's done. 

This morning, after grouchily waking up at 5.30am for the first feed of the day, I fell back into so deep a sleep that I had the most bizarre dream involving an AC choir performance I hadn't prepared for but was involved in, and S, who wasn't even from AC, much less from choir, was there dictating what we should all wear for the performance. I was also wearing slip-on rollerskates shaped like Crocs (which definitely do not exist in real life, how dangerous would that be?) and was rollerskating everywhere, magically able to stop just before I knocked into anything or fell down, although said rollerskates had no brakes. My knees can attest to the fact that although my real life rollerskates had brakes, I was not always able to stop before I fell down.

Almost 5 months, and it still amazes me how easily children tire. FBC has just dropped off to sleep after amusing himself in his cot for about half-an-hour. He didn't do much except lie on his tummy and kick at the bars of his cot, but is out cold and looking serene and peaceful. Sometimes I feel a pang that he spends so much of this time we have together sleeping; but mostly, I am thankful for the quiet. He's a real noisy and nosey one. 

How true, that the days seem endless but the years go by so quickly.

***

Three days of dinners at home

Top row, L-R: Mini lionhead meatballs with salted fish fried egg and heng chye with wolfberries/ Pomato Soup

Middle row, L-R: Dry-poached chicken breasts on potato, carrot and sweet potato puree/ Dry-poached chicken breasts fresh from the oven

Bottom row: Three faces of no-knead bread. I discovered a hack for no-knead bread and baked the dough in a loaf tin

Pomato Soup
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Inspired by the key event in Ellen Raskin's The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), I set out this week to make Pomato Soup (potato + tomato soup. Said key event is the invention of said soup). I even invested in Roma tomatoes - so surprised was I to find them at Fairprice Finest at the relatively decent price of S$12 per kg (that's about the same price per kilo as minced pork, I think) that I decided, why not. I originally toyed with the idea of using cherry tomatoes, but the thought of having to slice THAT many of them put me off. Not that I hadn't done it before for homemade "sundried tomatoes", but that was before we had a baby. You could try it with cherry tomatoes, and will probably need about three packs or so depending on which type you buy.

In the book, Mrs Fish and Mrs Carillon "grated tomatoes, pulped tomatoes, chopped parsley, and diced onions. What they did next is still a closely guarded secret, but they fussed over the simmering pot all day long". No secrets here, or parsley, and you definitely won't need to fuss over a simmering pot all day long.

This was also the first recipe where I used my new Cuisinart immersion blender, which was my qoo10 on sale purchase that went on time sale barely 24 hours after I purchased it. Auntie skills fail max.

Ingredients 

• ~500-600g Roma tomatoes (the box I used cost about S$6.50)
• 1 1/2 medium sized Russet potatoes (I prepared three, the other 1 1/2 potatoes were mashed and fed to FBC over a few days)
• 5-6 cloves of garlic, depending on the size of your garlic cloves - the heads of China garlic sold at NTUC have really small cloves
• One largeish yellow onion 
• 3++ cups of liquid (I used a mix of chicken stock and water because I didn't defrost enough of it and I would rather make up the rest of the required liquid with water than use boxed chicken stock)
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme
• 2 tbsp or so of grated cheddar (optional) 
• Olive oil (I should add that the NTUC housebrand is pretty good)
• Salt
• Pepper

Method

1. Wrap cloves of garlic tightly in foil. Slice tomatoes in half, spread on foil covered baking sheet and sprinkle with salt and a bit of pepper. Drizzle with olive oil, tossing gently, and bake, together with packet of garlic, cut side up at 180C (fan-forced) for about an hour. Mine were done around 50 minutes. Tomatoes should be tender and have lovely browny edges. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of the cloves. Because you will probably be using cheap China garlic like me, you will not get as much roasted garlic as you wish, but it will be sufficient for this recipe and the taste is as incredible as they say. I got about a tbsp of roasted garlic. 
2. While tomatoes and garlic are roasting, dice onion finely. Peel potatoes and dice into small cubes. 
3. In a largeish pot, fry onion in about 2-3 tbsp of olive oil, adding a fat pinch of salt. Do get it nice and browny too. Add potatoes and let them cook for a bit. Finally, add roasted tomatoes and collected juices from the roasting, together with roasted garlic. Give all the ingredients a bit of a stir around, then add chicken stock. I used about 1 1/2 cups, then added about an equal amount of water. Add dried thyme. Bring the mixture to a boil, then lower to a simmer until the potatoes are tender and mash easily when a fork is used, about 20 minutes or so. 
4. Blend till smooth! You won't have enough liquid to use your immersion blender without spatter if you use a largeish pot - I had to put the mix into the beaker which came with the blender to blend it without spatter (that defeats the purpose of a one-pot soup, but what to do). If you use a smaller pot, or you scale up the amount of soup you make, you may have enough to use your immersion blender without sending drops of pomato soup all over the kitchen counter. 
5. The soup will be quite thick, so thin it with more liquid. I used water, for the reasons given above, but you really should use chicken stock. Taste as you go so it doesn't get too diluted. I found the taste of mine fine after adding about an additional cup of water. I usually bring the soup to a boil as I'm adding water, and keep stirring. 
6. Add about about 2 tbsp of grated cheddar and let it melt into the soup. 

No-knead sandwich bread

I didn't quite want to make a round loaf again, so I followed this hack from The Kitchn. All I will say about this recipe is that when they said to grease the pan, they really mean that you should grease that pan. That explains why there is no photo of the whole loaf out of my loaf pan. In any event, you can see from the half loaf or so I managed to get out of my loaf pan whole that it bakes up nicely and has a good crumb too. 

Dry-poached chicken breasts

Again, I followed a technique I learnt from The Kitchn. I adapted a marinade from AllRecipes.com, as follows.

Ingredients

• 2 chicken breasts
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 3 scant tbsp soy sauce (invest in Kikkoman, it's worth it)
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dry mustard powder
• A few shakes of coarse ground black pepper
• Pinch of dried parsley

I put about 3 tbsp of the marinade into a baking dish and stuck the chicken breasts in the same, then poured more marinade over the chicken and turned them a few times. After that I covered the chicken breasts with normal Glad brand baking paper (parchment paper is impossible to find here and this works just as well), and put the entire baking dish into the fridge for a few hours - the longer the better. Whilst the oven is heating up to about 170C (fan-forced), take the chicken out of the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for a while. Bake for about 25-30 minutes. 

Last Night's Dinner

ST commented a few weeks ago, as he ate the apple juice braised pork shoulder, that I don't really seem to cook Chinese meals. (Not that he seemed to mind more than one helping of said pork shoulder.) I said that I did - and I do! However they are generally not as "pretty" as angmoh meals so I don't photograph them. (Not that I am planning to go into food photography anytime soon, as evidenced by the poxy camera phone photos which have been and will go on appearing on this blog.) Also because tasty Chinese food more often than not involves some sort of pan-frying, and  the resulting oil spatter is too much hassle to clean up daily. 

But last night, to use up the remaining pack of minced pork in my freezer, I made these lionhead meatballs from Two Red Bowls. I only had about half a pound of minced pork, so I halved the recipe and made eight mini-ish meatballs instead. The only change I made was to omit the salt and sugar, and use 1 tbsp of mirin to sweeten the meatball mixture. I used Shaoxing jiu as well. Then instead of searing the meatballs then steaming them on a bed of vegetables, I seared them on both sides then covered the pot with a lid and let them sit for about 7-8 minutes on low heat. I let them sit for a while longer after turning off the flame so they would cook through on the residual heat. 

Am planning to make salted fish fried rice soon, so will talk about frying xian2 yu2 another time.  

***

This week's yoga video here. It was quite fun, surprisingly, and I managed to get into crow pose (somewhat).

Getting back on track with running, but my pelvic bone had a dull ache following last Saturday's run. Nothing too serious though, it was gone after a night's rest, and no incontinence (sorry, gross, but I think that's a sure way to tell if anything's wrong) so am not too worried but taking it easy.