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. 

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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.

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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.  

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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.