Blog on Temporary Hiatus Until May 09

I have registered for an exam which will require a lot of studying in my (little) free time and something has to give.

It’s crunch time and I will be cutting down on housework(hah!), home-cooking and blogging and eating out more.I don’t have any other choice.

See you when it’s all over!

Green tea

I drink green tea every day. Partly for its health benefits but partly also because of nostalgia because I used to drink 3 cups per day back when I was in Japan.  Besides containing anti-oxidants, green tea is good for dental health because it acts against bacteria. It does stain teeth, though not as badly as black tea (which I have given up drinking because I want whiter tea). The last time I went to the dentist, he said my teeth were fine but yellowed by caffeine.

I like many types of green tea, like genmaicha (nutty taste with its bits of popped rice, originally invented to stretch the green tea) etc. but on a daily basis this is what I drink. It’s a balance between quality and my budget. Not top quality but good enough. I’m too busy to make the perfect cup of tea anyway.

It is leaf sencha with a bit of matcha mixed in called “matcha-iri sencha”. The matcha tempers the fresh, grassy taste of sencha. I have a funny habit to save money on toner. After I have steeped the tea twice for drinking, I steep it one final time and use the liquid as a toner. I keep it in my fridge. Since, I drink tea almost everyday I always have fresh “toner”. I have oily skin and the tea has an astringent effect.

I am fond of matcha but I get a headache every time I attend a tea ceremony because of the caffeine. I don’t drink coffee at all because of this and also because I don’t like the coffee aftertaste. Coffee ice cream is fine though. I studied Urasenke-style chanoyu (tea ceremony) for a while but did not continue because of the expense. I love looking at wagashi though. The sense of the seasons is sublime. For eating, I prefer Western desserts for all the sugar, cream and chocolate .

If you have lots of money to burn, you can try the tea booth in the Takashimaya basement. I am a poor peasant and will stick to this. If I ever become rich though, I can easily see myself easily becoming one of those tea purists that collect teapots and drink shincha.

When it comes to Chinese tea, I like white tea. I will talk about that another day in my post about oolong.

Tip: drink tea in between meals instead of with meals because components in it can impede absorption of nutrients like calcium. This is tough for me to follow

Rooibos Tea or South African Redbush

For concentration and sleep cycle purposes, I do not drink caffeine before late morning and after dinner. This means that I have to find alternative beverages.

This is my main drink at the moment, rooibos (pronounced “royboss”) and also known as redbush. It is a traditional drink from South Africa made from a local herb. It is caffeine-free, suitable for drinking all day without side effects and reputed to protect against cancer. It has a different nutritional profile from tea so it is useful in its own way.

The brew is reddish brown and tastes faintly sweet. It comes both in the “green” and “fermented” forms like tea. The unfermented form supposedly has more anti-oxidants. Anyway, my favorite brand is this German brand with vanilla that I get from Cold Storage.I forget the name because I’m drinking the brand in the picture at the moment. I just don’t go down to Cold Storage often so I ran out and just bought something from NTUC.

As should be obvious by now, I’m a total health food nut. I normally have several types of herbal teas in the house at any one time. The more money I have at the moment, the more types. I’m broke now so have fewer types than usual.

New Year’s Eve Soba 年越しそば

I have been so busy that I had no time to post of late though I have been cooking. I may as well mention here that I often have time to take photos of my food but no time to post so something may be written about way after it has been digested.

Anyway, on New Year’s Eve, I was wandering about downtown wondering what to buy and cook. Then I heard someone greet me in Japanese. I was surprised because people do not normally talk to me in Japanese here at home. I turned and I saw a familiar-looking middle-aged women. At first I couldn’t place her then I realized she was the owner of a Japanese restaurant whose establishment I used to patronize regularly. However, since I am a poor and busy student at the moment, I have not been going for quite a long time.

I was used to seeing her in her restaurant clothes! Anyway, we updated each other and I wished her a good year and promised to drop in when I am rich. lol I just hope I can fulfill my promise soon but the economy worries me.

Then I happened to be near Clarke Quay so I dropped in at Meidi-ya which was bustling with people shopping for New Year. I had not meant to buy soba at all since I have been eating a lot of zaru soba lately and am pretty sick of it but I walked past a huge sales display of soba and it was New Year’s Eve after all!

“年越し” means to pass the year and the long noodles of the toshikoshi soba symbolizes longevity (the way old-fashioned Chinese would eat noodles on their birthdays).

Here’s some more detail:

http://www.jpn-miyabi.com/Vol.12/toshikoshi-e.html

They were also selling osechi ryori sets (お節料理) but of course I am not rich so I didn’t buy a thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osechi

Surprisingly for a Japanese supermarket, Meidi-ya has some unusual Western and organic products. I scored some interesting purchases that I will talk about in subsequent posts.

Anyway, here’s my hot toshikoshi soba.

The broth is made from scratch, I don’t believe in buying bottled mentsuyu (ready-made broth for noodles) because I don’t want MSG in my food. Even my Japanese host mother didn’t make broth from scratch though she is a pretty good cook far better than yours truly. I do use dashi granules to save time when I only need a few tablespoons of broth but I don’t use them in dishes where the taste of the broth will be evident.

I put in green onions, tofu puffs and hon-shimeji mushrooms. I didn’t have any shichimi togarashi on hand to sprinkle on top though. I stayed up to see the clock strike twelve and I tried to go to bed but it was so noisy outside with revelers that I finally fell asleep after 2 am.

La Rose: Reine des fleurs (The Rose: Queen of Flowers)

This is my favorite herbal tea at the moment: pink rose buds. Drop 4-5 rosebuds into a mug of boiling water and you get a pale greenish tea with the most wonderful vapeurs of rose as the buds slowly release their scent. The rosebuds may be steeped twice and even thrice (if you are super-thrifty).

These are pretty expensive ones that I got from Teapal as a treat, the sales person swore up and down that the place of origin is France though I can’t find it on the label. Dodgy place of origin aside, they look much fresher, pinker and smell much better than the cheap China-grown rosebuds sold in Chinese medicine halls. Indeed, I’ve been spoiled and will never drink the brownish Chinese rosebuds again.

Like most herbal teas, they are supposed to be good for health, especially the heart and the complexion.

More info from Nate

The rose is my favorite flower and in the unlikely event that I should get married I would like to have it in my wedding bouquet with white lilies lol I also like to use rosewater as a facial toner (it is said to be gentle and nourishing for mature skin. (Plant Planet in Centrepoint sells it) Though of course, Singapore Peasant is eternally 18!)

I’m currently looking for rosewater for baking and cooking purposes in Singapore but without success. Can any gentle reader advise?

The rose has many uses and the best rose oil in the world comes from Bulgaria and is fantastically expensive because it takes many many roses to distill the oil. I have looked for it in my usual haunts and even dilute it is beyond my budget but the aroma has a wonderful way of lifting my spirits. When I am rich….

P.S. Marks and Spencer sometimes sells rose oil-infused Fair Trade organic chocolate. I tried it and it was wonderful but they were out of stock the last time I went.

Recreating McDonalds’ Egg McMuffin

I’m not really fond of McDo’s lunch/dinner menu except for the fries (they don’t taste as good as in the past methinks, maybe after they eliminated the beef tallow?) but I do eat Egg McMuffins now and then on a lazy weekend morning. (I stopped eating Hotcakes after I taught myself how to cook buckwheat pancakes but I’ll talk about that another day.)

It has been my desire to recreate the Egg McMuffin at home for some time. The first problem: securing English Muffins.

The average bakery in Singapore does not sell them so I bought some commercially-produced flat, anemic-looking ones (Sunshine brand) at Cold Storage supermarket. Well and good, but the long list of ingredients like calcium proprionate was alarming.

So I decided to make my own pure English muffins devoid of anything I can’t pronounce.I followed the recipe from Pete Bakes! They came out perfect except that mine was not as pretty as his and the texture was just right with lots of nooks and crannies to catch the melted butter!

Pete Bakes’s Recipe

I ate mine with butter and raspberry jam, butter and honey and with cheese, ham and fried egg (just like McDonalds’)! It was just as good as McDo’s, if not more fragrant, just that I don’t own egg rings so I couldn’t have round eggs and the whole thing looked rather messy.

Here’s my muffin spread with butter and honey after being toasted till crispy in my oven toaster.

English muffin with honey and butter

I would have loved to do a classic Eggs Benedict except that I think that such an amount of butter will probably kill me.

Delia’s Eggs Benedict Recipe

P.S. I think I should have used bacon instead of ham. Oh well, next time…Will be some time before I bake English muffins again because I only allow myself to bake once a week to protect my arteries.

I think SwissBake might sell English Muffins because I believe they sell scones. I’ll check next time but they’re not handmade by moi!

Tamarind: The Tree of Memory

When I was in primary school, the school compound had a number of tamarind trees. If you have never seen tamarind pods before, they are brownish, brittle paper-thin pods enclosing dark brown fibrous pulp and seeds.

Wikipedia on Tamarind

The housewives in the neighborhood would pick up the pods and take them home for cooking purposes while picking up their children from school and gossiping. Tamarind is called “assam” (Malay) in Singapore and it is used in my favorite dish assam fish curry.

Here is a recipe from our neighbor, Malaysia.

Spicy Assam Fish

My mother has a packet of the pulp and seeds in the kitchen. The pulp is dissolved in water for use and adds a sourish note to dishes. Lately, she has been too busy to cook it though. For Western readers, tamarind is used in the manufacture of HP and Worcestershire sauce.

Of course, as a child,the chief delight of my friends and I was jumping onto and squishing the pods under the soles of our canvas Bata shoes! How wasteful we were!

The area where I used to live has undergone significant redevelopment like most places in Singapore and looks totally different now. I’m not sure if the tamarind trees are there anymore.

MSG-Free Furikake

Breakfast: Red rooibos tea, some cheap awful almond/sugar encrusted bread my mother bought

Morning snack: red grapes

Lunch: Rice with furikake, miso soup with tofu, shimeji mushrooms and wakame. An Royal Gala apple.

I do have Japanese shortgrain rice but I’m saving it for other dishes.

The miso paste is actually past its expiry date so I’m trying to use it up.

Afternoon snack: Matcha-iri sencha and 3 Dark Chocolate Tims Tams

Dinner:Same as lunch

My MSG-free furikake from Organic Paradise. “Furi” means to “wave/shake” and “kakeru” means “to put on top of” in Japanese and of course furikake is yummy rice seasonings to perk up and add extra nutrition/color to plain rice.

The problem with Japanese seasonings is that a lot of them are chock-full of MSG which gives me dry mouth and other nasty symptoms.Tip:When it says “amino” in Japanese on the label, it means MSG.  Yes, I know kombu has natural glutamates but it doesn’t seem to affect me the way artificial MSG does.

So I got this from an organic store. Ingredients: black/white goma, shiso and aonori. One could of course make one’s own furikake and I often do it myself.

A Peek into a Peasant’s Fridge

I am the sort of person who enjoys peeking into supermarket baskets and making inferences about the cooking and lifestyle of strangers.

Similarly, I enjoy looking at the other people’s fridges. I believe you can find out a lot about a family by looking at their fridge.

Here’s mine(or rather my family’s. There are 3 of us, my parents and I and it is arranged according to my parents’ whims).

Fridge Side Door

You can see my Waitrose organic wholemeal flour, St. Dalfour raspberry jam, natural peanut butter and my expensive bottle of rosebud tea.

Generic seasonings of oyster sauce, fish sauce, shoyu, molasses, Bulldog Worcestershire sauce and miscellaneous types of seaweed in the bottom shelf.

Creamer (we used to use real condensed milk but my mother switched to creamer to save money. It’s awful, you can’t make dulce de leche with it), grapes, papaya, a ziplock bag full of English muffins I baked yesterday, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, Australian honey and 100% cocoa powder, brown buttons.

Outside the photos but there’s also two types of cheese, butter, miso, umeboshi, eggs, milk, plain yoghurt, honey-baked ham, pears, apples and oranges in the veggie box, chilis, limes and lemons, frozen meat/fish etc.

My Cooking and Food Philosophy

I am a single female cooking for one (pretty challenging!) and a full-time university student. For budget reasons, I never eat at restaurants, seldom eat out or go out. I am either at home or on campus most of the time so I eat either my own home cooking or at one of the university canteens.I am pretty busy so I do not have time for complicated dishes such as French haute cuisine. I do use shortcuts like canned beans etc to save time when I could and I frequently eat the same thing for lunch/dinner and freeze extra portions for busy days.

I do not live near a hawker center or wet market. Food court food tastes generically awful and is expensive and I believe hawker food quality has declined since my childhood days while prices have gone up. While time and energy consuming, I believe home-cooked food is best, healthiest and most hygienic! I do admit to having a fondness for ban mian and yong tau foo.

I own a lovely Mr. Bento and other nifty bento gear but I am not using them much as the moment as I am not working outside the home.

I am a pretty good vegan cook and love to bake but my greatest weakness is dealing with meat and fish.  Though not vegetarian, I am just too squeamish to deal with raw, bloody flesh hence most of my recipes will be vegan.I am fine with huge chunks of meat if it comes to me already cooked!

As a child, my grandmother did the cooking. She cooked pretty good Chinese food and I have childhood memories of lovely smells drifting through the air on a sunny afternoon in our cramped 3-room flat as I waited for lunch in the bedroom. I used to play masak masak with my friends using plastic utensils, pictures of food I would draw, color and cut out as well as “found ingredients”  such as casuarina cones and saga seeds.However, when my parents and I moved out of my grandmother’s home, my mother and I started cooking for real.

My mother worked full-time so I started cooking for myself at the age of 15 as a blank slate. Hopefully, I have progressed since then. My mother cooks only Chinese food and is pretty bad at it so I do not cook Chinese food much. (I am sick of it)

Cuisine-wise: I like to experiment with world cuisines but you may notice a concentration of Western and Japanese dishes. I like Western food and as for the Japanese dishes, I spent some time in Japan as a student, picked up some of the local eating habits and get homesick if I do not eat home style Japanese home cooking once in a while.

However, imported ingredients such as Western herbs like thyme do drive up my grocery costs and I am very poor so I try my best to stick to local ingredients from the NTUC with a few essential imported basics thrown in when I can afford them. Though appreciative of gourmet ingredients like fine cheeses, economy compels me to make use of ye olde Australian shredded Parmesan that a true gourmet would shudder at. I believe in organic food though I can’t afford it but I do check labels assiduously when I shop and strive for the best I could get with my limited budget.

Since I am a poor peasant, expect blurry photos taken with my mobile phone, chic “table-cloths” made of newspaper and plating with cheap crockery manufactured en Chine.I like to experiment with recipes, sometimes things work out and sometimes things bomb. I make no apologies for burnt dishes because I believe in learning from my kitchen disasters.

My aims for starting this blog:

• to engage in dialogue with others
• encourage fellow Singaporeans to cook at home instead of eating out
• to monitor my diet for weight-loss goals
• to encourage myself to eat healthily and cheaply

Onward with the cooking!

Singapore Peasant