Pizza Nite

Monday has always been a challenge to get fresh food from the market, it is almost impossible to get anything from the wet market.

We had cravings for pizzas the other day, so I thought I would simply make them myself. Not many places in Singapore make good pizzas. And even if they do, they charge a fortune.

Attempted my very first Angel's Hair with Mussels in White Wine. Not particularly proud of it but it was still pretty good.
Note to self: Need more tomatoes, add a little tomato paste to thicken and flavour the white wine.

How often do we get food samples & trial samples these days?

I got a sachet of (3-in-1) latte in our letterbox, and I was so eager to make the latte immediately. Then, I thought... nah... keep it when I go travelling.

And how often do you have Wagyu beef patties in your fridge? Samples, maybe not.

Well, I have been spoilt with Wagyu beef burger for the last few days. I don't think I will crave for BigMac or Whopper anytime too soon. :)

We celebrated Mom's birthday at our place, the first party with our family. We did not have a housewarming, so this was the first time we all got together at our place.

I prepared most of the food, well... at least 80 percent of the food. Some of the items we had were:

Vietnamese Rice Roll (Pork)

Vietnamese Pho (Chicken or Pork)

Chicken kebab

Grilled Prawns

Grilled Mushrooms

Sausages

Satays (Mutton & Chicken)

BBQ Chicken Thai-style (Gai Yang)

BBQ Crabs

Otah Otah

Thai Mango Salad

Lemongrass Drink

And of course, the Mandarin & Passionfruit Cake topped with fresh fruits that Alan made specially for Mom.

Angel's Hair with Wagyu Beef.
Alan had a party last night & there's a huge tub of macademia pesto (3kg) sitting in our fridge.
I believe it is now left 1 kg, I should consider transferring to a smaller tub. :P

A pleasant surprise when I received a call from Sarah in the morning asking if we could meet. Sarah & I go way way back, we were classmates since Secondary 1, and we have remained the best of friends. I was delighted to see her, and of course her new look - after getting her LASIK done a few weeks ago.
It was about 11am, and I wasn't sure why I was so keen to make pancakes but we did. I showed her how easy it was to put all the ingredients together. We were supposed to have lunch, but we ended up eating the pancakes. Sarah asked if I would normally have pancakes for lunch... LOL... I didn't think about it till that evening, it was quite funny actually.

I hope to catch up with Sarah again, this time for a proper meal. :)

I think I have made Laksa most frequently since coming back to Singapore, I don't remember making that in Sri Lanka actually. And the reason for making it regularly is because I have a big tub of Laksa paste to use up, I mean industrial size that is kept in the fridge. It's really easy to make too, just a couple of spoons of laksa paste to boiling water, then add coconut milk... and that's it.

Note: If you use chicken broth, the Laksa has more flavour and depth.

Alan came back 7ish & was not keen to go out to the nearby food centre. So I started making pizza base, and prep all the ingredients. And using the huge prawns that Alan brought home, the pizza was piling up with so many ingredients.

It was just Yum Yum... :)

I have finally made my first homemade pizza here in Singapore. I was going to make this for Chi & Kung before they departed on Tuesday but I wasn't game enough to attempt this without first trying it.

Pictured above was a seafood pizza, and it was pretty good. But if I could add basil onto it I think it would have been better. I haven't any luck growing my own basil, I think I need to get some good soil for that.

You can find other homemade pizzas blogposts from this link: pizza

I tried buying ready-packed 8-Treasures Tea, but were less than impressed with what's available in the market. So, I went to the Arab Street market & bought these items to make Otoko's own concocted 8-Treasures Tea. Spent about $50 on these items which weighed about 3kg. Well, at least I know I am using the good quality stuff in my 8-Treasures Tea.

I brewed the first pot for Alan to try and he liked it. I tweaked slightly for a more balanced flavour, and pre-packed about 20 of these for Chi & Kung to take back to Taiwan, and also whenever I want to brew for ourselves or even when we have guests at our place.
Anyone coming over for tea? :)

It's been a really looong time since I last made the pan-seared chicken thigh with some really yummy marinate...

Well, made it today and added to the noodle soup. Wow... great taste... still has the yummilious factor.

Previously when we had this noodle soup with chicken, we always missed out on bean sprouts & coriander as they were rather difficult to get hold of in Sri Lanka.

Now in Singapore, while bean sprouts and coriander are readily available, the mint and basil tend to be difficult to source in regular markets.

Breakfast this morning:

Waffle with Rainbow Mango (Thai), Fuji Apple, Orange & a scoop of Vanila Ice Cream

Sri Lankan Broken Orange Pekoe Tea

We had Dim Sum just about 2 hours ago, we went to The Furniture Mall searching for a possible display cabinet but to no avail. So, we walked to Kampong Glam Food Centre in search of a possible pizza place that opened there. Found it!

ROC Pizza
The menu was simple, manageable on a one-man operation basis.

The owner is really young too, late-20s if I could safely say so.

We order Beef Salami, and it was simply:

1) 12"very thin crust

2) tomato base

3) 2 types of cheese

4) beef salami

Though it was good, I can definitely say that Rasika & I have done better homemade pizzas.

Current favourite drink:

Japanese Green Tea (from Sri Lanka) with fresh mint leaves from our garden.

I just marinated the salmon in sambal balacan with truffle oil, soya sauce, salt, pepper, sugar & lemon. It was nice, and the salad was simple yet nice.

But I'd say it again, wished Rasika was here as he has surpassed me in cooking virtually anything.

It was probably only a couple of weeks ago that I made Laksa. But Alan was out of town then, so this time round I made Laksa again... and I must say it was better than my first attempt.

Craving for Laksa... and so I cooked it for myself.

Amateur-ish attempt, quick & easy, add paste to boiling water, then add coconut milk, add ingredients and that's it.

One thing good about cooking your own, you can control the amount of salt, the coconut milk, the oil, & you get to choose your own ingredients. :)

Finally, a home-cooked meal in our new home.

I think I had done pretty well, considering I didn't have a proper knife (still in one of the many packed boxes).

I also haven't found our pots, so I had to improvise & use our new rice-cooker to cook this Imperial Herbal Chicken. The effort was all worth it, even though it was more costly to home-cook for 2 PAX & time-consuming & cleaning up, etc.

I wished Rasika was here cooking for us, I have been wanting to send him text messages to say that we do not have anyone cooking for us anymore, no one cleaning our place, no one doing our ironing, etc...  :(

It's always not easy to find the produce or whatever stuff I want easily here in Negombo. For instance, I have been searching for soya beans for a while now (3 years in fact).  I usually buy these back from Singapore or Thailand.

So, when I found these beans (supposedly soya beans) at the market, I was really excited. That'd mean I would only need to get gypsum powder to attempt & make Soya Bean Curd again. This is probably the one dessert that I will never get tired of. 

I have recently followed Sinner's & Mr Redneck's blogs & they have some really cool videos as well. Here's one on how to make Soya Bean Curd. I have pasted the recipe below, which I am determined to make once I get gypsum powder. I also agree with Sinner that using too much gypsum powder can cause backache. A personal experience or perhaps pure indulgence on my part. 

Recipe for Soya Bean Curd from The Waitakere Redneck's Kitchen

Ingredients

1 Litre boiling fresh Soya Bean Milk (extremely easy if you have a soya bean machine) 

Setting solution

1 tbp corn flour

½ level tsp gypsum powder (calcium sulphate)

¼ cup (63 ml) cold water

Alan's back home & he bought some much needed kitchen appliances from Germany. 

YAY... new toys for Otoko.

Mortar & Pestle is good, but a chopper/blender not only gives better consistency to the end product... it's a time saver. The chopper is definitely the one that gets abused very often. We've killed 3 sets in 3 years.

I have been searching around for a good waffle maker - particularly for making Belgium Waffle.

Alan's found me the perfect one. While I am happy with our first attempt, we will definitely tweak the recipe a little more to get that perfect Belgium Waffle.