Dad’s 80th birthday cake October 8, 2009

I made a two-tier cake for my dad’s 80th birthday last month. But this post isn’t about how much he loved it (which I’m sure he did, even though crusty, conservative Teochew men like him don’t often express their feelings), or how much my relatives loved it, or how my 23-month-old daughter E wolfed down an entire slice all by herself, this being her very first taste of her mother’s baking (we decided that we’ve deprived her the sinful joys of fat and sugar for long enough).

No, this post is about the miracle of how I even managed to make the cake in the first place.

You’ve been fooled if you think that I stopped baking over the past five months because I’m pregnant and that my apartment was under renovation. Friends, there was actually a more sinister, diabolical force at work – my husband Z.

Let me put it this way. I am married to a man who has turned my pregnancy into an oppressive in-house military camp. Much like how life in the army barracks is governed by an inexplicable set of rules that makes sense only to the sergeant who created them, so is my life ever since Z knocked me up.

Here is Z the Pregnancy Nazi’s edict:

I cannot eat instant noodles or canned soup. Zero nutrition.

I cannot eat sausages. You don’t know what goes into them.

I cannot stand near the microwave oven, let alone eat anything that has been microwaved. He gave me the reason but it was so deep it slid right over my head.

I cannot carry my 11-kg daughter. Too taxing.

I cannot reach my arms up to take anything that is taller than me. I could overstretch.

I must flee at the slightest whiff of cigarette smoke, paint, detergent or fumigation (but strangely, his noxious farts are okay).

I cannot shower in the bathtub. I could slip and fall.

Every other day, he will check if I have been faithfully taking my dietary supplements. Every time I eat an apple, or any produce that may have come in contact with pesticides, he asks sternly: “Did you wash it?”

A few weeks ago, in a haze of renovation fever, I returned to my apartment with our maid so she could glue on a piece of laminate in the kitchen. I only supervised; I didn’t do any of the work. But when Z found out that I was actually within sniffing distance of glue for 15 minutes, he refused to talk to me for one full day.

So go ahead, ask me if I’ve been baking. And I’ll roll my eyes and tell you: “And incur the wrath of Lord Z?” No, I have not been baking. Because I don’t want to whisk an egg and have him scold me for potentially breaking my hip, thereby making childbirth more difficult. I have not been baking. Because I don’t want to sift flour only to have him accuse me of triggering premature labour.

But I had a rare reprieve last month as my dad’s birthday approached. He was turning 80, a grand, celebratory milestone by any standard, and I wanted to bake him a cake, something I had never done before. It was a proposition that even Z, a complete softie when it comes to parents and family, could not turn down.

So I baked the butter cakes in my spanking new 90-cm Ariston oven back in my apartment (more about my wonder oven in another post), then completed the frosting (whipped cream with mascarpone cheese) and decorations (strawberries, raspberries and blueberries) at my parents’, where a party for 30 relatives was to be held.

The cake was a hit. Dad’s four grandchildren helped him blow out the candles, and a photo of that moment now serves as wallpaper in his iPod, our birthday gift to him. I’m just glad that Z the Nazi didn’t deny me the pride I now feel for making the cake. Because if he did, I would summon some of this watermelon belly and heavy-artillery papaya boobs to unleash some major Allied forces on him. Ker-pow!

The Worst TV Host On Earth September 9, 2009

When I watch TV these days, I am confronted with a slew of urgent, sobering questions: ‘When will the economy pick up?’, ‘Why so many natural disasters?’, ‘Can climate change be stopped?’.

But perhaps the most disturbing of all, ‘Why the heck is Bobby Chinn hosting a TV show?’

Every time I see his trailer on Discovery Channel, I ask myself: What have we, the TV viewers in Asia, done to deserve such a narcissistic, uncharismatic, and thoroughly insufferable brat thrust upon our consciousness?

Nigella Lawson shows you how you can eat a horse and still be drop-dead gorgeous. Jamie Oliver makes you want to cook. Ian Wright makes you laugh. Anthony Bourdain shows you how to travel the world with a deadpan swagger.

But Bobby Chinn? The only qualification he brings to the lifestyle TV landscape is that he has a pulse and a full head of hair. (I can’t even bear to put his face on my blog, therefore the above picture).

First of all, as a clear case of ill judgment by Discovery Channel, it has decided to put its name behind a show that has zero culinary or entertainment value. In Chinn’s first series, World Cafe Asia, he goes around Asia in search of street food. But do we really want to watch yet another angmoh demonstrate to us the wonders of food that we ourselves had grown up on? You could excuse Kylie Kwong (who cooks just about everything with gin-jah and Shaoxing wine “for depth of flay-vah and charac-tar“) for doing the same, because her faux-Chinese recipes are aimed at Western audiences who don’t know any better. But I was flabbergasted to learn that Chinn’s shows aren’t even aired in the West - they were made for Asia. To me, it’s the equivalent of going to Bologna and showing the people there how to cook spaghetti bolognaise. 

Then, there are his recipes. I’ve never been to his modern Vietnamese restaurant in Hanoi, but from watching one episode of his latest series, Bobby Chinn Cooks Asia, I’m not expecting to hear angels sing if I eat his food. His recipes are neither inventive, enticing nor authentic. Methinks that he is only using the ‘fusion cuisine’ card to get away with slapping together incongruous ingredients and calling it ‘new’.

Still, it is not all grave that his show has poor content and that he is a terrible cook. What’s really unpardonable is that Chinn just seems so obnoxious as a person. In an old episode shot in a Thai wet market, he points to an old plastic container used at a fish stall then says to the fish-seller (who obviously didn’t understand English and was defenceless): “You know we use that for toilets in the States?” In a more recent episode shot in India, he is standing by a chef who was cooking a popular dish. As she poured some oil into the wok, he asks a question that could spark an international incident: “Why do you guys use so much oil?”

Somebody burn his effigy in front of a US embassy already!

In my previous incarnation as a newspaper writer, I interviewed some of the best food/travel hosts on Discovery and found that they all had one thing in common: They have a solid, unwavering respect for people from different cultures and walks of life.

I once made the mistake of asking Ian Wright if bushwomen in Africa had ever proposed to him. “Bushwomen?” he gasped, sounding quite alarmed, and continued to answer my question using a more respectable term for women from primitive cultures. Even Anthony Bourdain, with his famous bad-boy gruffness reeking from his intimidating 1.9m frame, was remarkably polite and thoughtful in person. In one episode of his show shot in Vietnam, he was so formal and genuine in his thanks to his Vietnamese hosts that he risked looking totally uncool.

So the bottom line is, if you want to be a good lifestyle TV host, you gotta love people.

Bobby Chinn doesn’t appear to love people. Instead, he stamps his condescending, unfunny frat-boy witticisms all over them as he scratches his way to celebrity chefdom. 

He just wants to be famous. And I just want to punch his face in.

The Best Show On TV August 27, 2009

As it is with many foodies, Discovery’s Travel & Living is the centre of my universe.

It’s pretty much the only channel I watch, and I only hop out of it for cursory glimpses of the outside world during commercial breaks (or when that nauseating Bobby Chinn comes on).

Recently, I kept seeing this trailer for a new show called Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory, which looks like a cheap cooking programme fronted by this sweaty, straggly-haired Brit on how to make different types of chocolate desserts.

But just 10 minutes into watching the first episode last Sunday, I turned to my husband Z (who works at Discovery) and firmly chastised him: “Your trailer people did a very lousy job of selling this show.”

Because, instead of some throwaway food programme about chocolate , Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory turned out to be equal-parts documentary, tension-filled reality TV, and delicious cookshow shot to the same degree of gorgeousness as Jamie At Home.

It tells the story of Willie Harcourt-Cooze, a chocolate-obsessed bohemian who sells his house in England in order to buy a plantation in Venezuela to grow his own cacao beans and make his own brand of chocolate (“the best chocolate in the world”). So he transplants his young family to the grimy plantations of Venezuela, and spends 12 (12!) years cultivating his crop.

Thrown into the main narrative are yummy vignettes of Willie cooking a mind-boggling array of dishes using his very own 100% cacao — roasted pepper gazpacho, mushroom risotto, stewed fish in coconut milk, apricot injected roast pig, and a chocolate cake that promises to buckle any woman at the knees.

But his journey from plantation to the glitzy food halls of Selfridges is fraught with peril. In Venezuela, he has to contend with capricious weather, weird insect infestations, poor crop yields and a troop of workers waiting to be paid. Back home in Devonshire, he has three young children to feed, a worried wife to placate, barely enough money to keep the heaters running, and a constant stream of creditors beating down his door. This show is absolutely riveting.

I came out of it with this big question: Is there anything that I’m so passionate about that I’d sell my house for and live on mere subsistence for 12 years to fulfill a dream?

Sigh, no. Not even the pursuit of the world’s most divine strawberry shortcake. I’m the sort who can only sleep at night when I know there’s a nice pile of savings in my bank account, fat enough to cushion me against sudden unemployment or a Morakot-sized typhoon.

Which explains why I’m no headlining star of a totally awesome TV show. Damn.

 

The Mummy Returns July 24, 2009

Look who’s baaaaaaaaaack…

I’ve gone AWOL for a very long three months but it’s not without good reason, folks.

1. I was renovating! Yup. Changed the floors, hacked a wall, relined a bathroom, overhauled my entire kitchen and installed a brand spankin’ new oven which is bigger and meaner! But…

2. I lost my camera. So I can’t take photos of my lean-and-mean oven to show y’all yet. But soon.

3. Last but not least, I have not been blogging because, haha, I have a bun baking in my other oven! Details of that coming up soon, but suffice it to say that I am all pickled and sng-buayed out

Not sure when I’m gonna resume writing. But since there’s maintenance works coming up at my apartment block and the maid is going home for a month, I’m gonna stay put at my parents’ for at least two more months. Which means no baking. By October, though, I’ll be back with a vengeance. See ya then.

Pear Tart March 4, 2009

Something very disturbing is happening. The other day, I had nothing to blog about and mused aloud to my husband Z that I might stop blogging altogether.

He didn’t toss back his usual tart reply, which used to always sound something like, “Wow? Really? And I get back my wife?”.  Instead, his eyes were the size of saucers. A look of genuine alarm spread across his face as he gasped: “Har? Why?”

“Cos I’ve run out of things to say,” I said.

Then, with lips almost a-quivering, he launched into a list of reasons why I shouldn’t quit this blog, because he had spent $X buying the reflector, the flash, the zoom lens and whatever else to shoot my cakes.

“But you can use them for your other photography stuff what,” I retorted, unmoved.

Then he blurted out the REAL reason why I shouldn’t end this blog. “Because your blog is my blog!” he cried.

Oh really. Is that so?  No wonder he’s been so annoying lately. Every time he’s shot my cakes, he would sit in front of his computer for absolute ages, tweaking the resolution, the tone, the contrast and what-have-you (for example, this so-so-tasting pear tart, taken from Young Mo Kim’s A Fine Collection Of Baking). Then, when I am already half-way into dreamland in bed, he’d suddenly shout, “How about this?” And I would have to pry open my eyes, wrench myself out of bed and look at his photo.

“No difference to the other one what,” I’d say, bleary-eyed, and plonk myself back to bed.

Right when I’m just inches away from re-entering snooze-topia, he’d suddenly command again, “How about this?” And this could go on several times a night.

He doesn’t leave me alone in the day either. He would call me from work just to find out if my latest post received any comments — about his photos. On other days, he would announce quite brazenly that he intends to spend the afternoon checking out the competition in other food blogs. And by the time he’s through, “they’re toast”.

My husband, whom I married because he is one cool, laid-back, peace-loving dude, has suddenly turned into a competitive, pixel-picking monster. I started having terrifying visions that very soon, I’ll be hand-cuffed to my kitchen counter as he forces me to bake every day so that he’d have something to shoot and post on my blog.

The horror!

But this morning, as he drove me to work, he came up with a new reason why I shouldn’t stop this blog.

“Because it’s your hobby, it makes you happy, and it has given you new friends,” he said.

He’s probably just sayin’ it. But I’m sold

25 Random Things About Food February 19, 2009

For four long years, I asked this question every week for a Sunday food column I used to write: What would your last meal be? Invariably, the personalities I interviewed would give some blah answer, like Teochew porridge or their mother’s steamed egg or some such boring throwaway.

If I were asked this question, oh-ho-ho, I would say: A ginormous strawberry shortcake that I could jump into and eat from the inside out. When I’m done, I’d throw myself into a bath-tub filled with Thai chilli-and-lemon dried cuttlefish, Kettle’s honey and dijon potato chips, honey cashew nuts and sticky barbecue fish sticks. Then, I would lock myself up in a Nonya buffet.

I could go on and on. Which is why I’ve always secretly wished that someone, anyone, would ask me this question for a change, so I could unleash my long pent-up list.

Well, since we’re in the season for lists (you know,  the pandemic spread of self-love in Facebook known as ”25″) , I thought I’d just help myself and publish it for all to peruse.

Here is my “25 Random Things About Food”.

1. The best strawberry shortcake in the world can be found in Tampopo Deli in Liang Court.

2. The best French fries in the world can be found in your neighbourhood McDonald’s.

3. Nothing, nothing, is worse than undercooked red beans in ice kacang.

4. I can eat raw oysters, raw fish, raw prawns and raw beef, but never raw beansprouts.

5. If my house were on fire, the first thing I’ll grab (other than husband Z and baby E) is my Ruffles cakestand, which Z ordered from the States as my Christmas present last year. (See photos – ain’t it pwetty?)

6. If I were the Prime Minister of Singapore, I would decree that the annoyingly floppy thick noodles in laksa be replaced by beehoon. No more stains!

7. In an ideal world, all grapes and watermelons are seedless.

8. Cornflakes are best eaten at night.

9. If I were stranded on an island, I could live on canned sweet corn alone - yummy, fibrous, and no need to cook. 

10. I bear no shame for cooking with Lee Kum Kee oyster sauce. It really does make everything taste better.

11. Yes, there is something even better than Maggi chilli sauce. Its name is Lingham’s.

12. If I could choose which country I could be born in to enjoy the national cuisine, it would be Thailand, Indonesia or Japan (in this order).

13. If I can have only one accompaniment to rice, it would be sambal fishcake.

14. The Japanese do everything better – the best ribeye steak (Angus Steakhouse), the best curry rice (Tampopo), the best pasta (mentaiko spaghetti), and the ultimate best salad dressing (sesame flavour by We Love Salad! brand).

15. But if there’s one thing the Koreans do better than the Japanese, it is instant noodles (spicy mushroom flavour).

16. I have a secret weapon when it comes to stir-frying kangkong. It is called Cantonese XO sauce.

17. Three things I must always have in my fridge: Eggs, cold water, Nestle’s mango lassi drink.

18. Things I eat because of the dipping sauce: chicken rice, oh luak (oyster omelette), yong tau foo.

19. When I was on a 7-day detox fast a few years ago, the first thing I hallucinated about was nasi padang.

20. To me, the holy trinity of fruits is Mountain King durians, ‘harumanis’ mangoes from Indonesia, and ‘lor mai chee’ lychees from China.

21. Of the tiresome appetiser platter that’s served at ALL Chinese wedding banquets, I actually quite like the prawns in mayo sauce.

22. If the secret to good skin is not water, but Ribena, I could run for Miss Universe.

23. I’ve taken the dump in the toilet of Phoon Huat (bakery supplies store) in Holland Village four times – more than in any retail shop on earth – because I’m always very excited when I’m there.

24. Bovril in rice porridge is totally underrated.

25. I always wanted to marry someone who can cook. Z can’t cook. But he can dance. So that makes up for it.

PS: Okay, now it’s your turn. I’ve always wondered who you people jacking up my hit counter are. So drop a comment about your last meal (or anything at all). Just don’t say it’s Teochew porridge.

The Ultimate Butter Cake February 4, 2009

Some people eat lots of bread. Some people load up on rice. Yet others just stuff themselves full and hope something sticks. What am I talking about? I’m talking about what food to eat prior to a night of drinking so you won’t get so drunk that you wake up the next morning with your kidneys missing.

But I’ve discovered something that’s 100% resistant to the effects of alcohol and it tastes way better than rice or bread – Amy Scherber’s Simply Delicious Yellow Cake. It is buttery, eggy, moist and fluffy, easily the best butter cake I’ve ever made.

Apart from some leftover rice and steamed egg, this cake was the only thing I ate last Saturday before I went out on the town with 5 of my girlfriends.

Ostensibly, it was to celebrate 3 of our birthdays. It was also for us to catch up, now that new jobs/marriage/children have set us on different paths over the past few years.

But seriously, we just wanted to get sloshed.

We wanted to dump our husbands/boyfriends for just one night, and relive the same stupid antics we were up to years ago – you know, the kind of foggy revelry that makes dancing the conga thoroughly fashionable.

And boy did we max out our night. We started off at Overeasy, walked over to One On The Bund, popped by Bellini Grande and revisited our old haunt, Zouk. It was non-stop partying action from 9pm to 3am.

I was expected to be the first to succumb. After all, even in my partying prime 5 years ago, I was a self-proclaimed “cheap date”. I was proud of it too, because I was cost-efficient – just buy me two lychee martinis and I’ll be thinking I’m Beyonce.

And now that two years of abstinence has reduced my alcohol tolerance to almost zero, I was positively a “free date”. I could probably attempt her Single Ladies dance routine on the strength of one whiff of champagne.

So this is what I drank that night:

3 Sex On The Beach shots, 1 sundried tomato and raspberry margerita, 1 Bellini, 2 apple vodka shots, part of a Flaming Lamborghini, 2 Cowboy S*** D*** shots, and 1 Tequila shot.

How drunk was I? Let’s put it this way. I was even more sober than Obama’s bodyguards on Inauguration Day when he and Michelle were walking unshielded down the parade path.

My girlfriends? Oh, they drifted onto a higher realm. They were bear-hugging each other, happily doing the bitch-slap atop the podium in Velvet, and making up a new hybrid dance move that’s part-Vogue and part-Walk Like An Egyptian.

And what was I doing? I was doing what losers always do at parties: I was guarding the bags.

All because I ate a big slice of that cake.

Mini layer cakes December 31, 2008

Phoon Huat & Company (Pte) Ltd
231A Pandan Loop
Singapore 128419

Dear Sir,

Re: Urgent enrolment into the Wilton Method Cake Decorating Course

I am writing to make an urgent request. Can I be slotted into your Discover Cake Decorating (Course 1) class scheduled in March?

I was very disappointed to learn from your staff that the class is fully booked, and I have to wait to be informed about the next class. But I cannot afford to wait. I need to take the class AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Let me explain.

I am an avid baker who writes a cake blog at crummb.wordpress.com. As you will see on the site, I have not made any cakes with elaborate piping work because, frankly, I don’t know how to. Whenever a cake called for buttercream decoration, I always adopted the “dab-and-fake-it” method. This involves using a spatula and dabbing on buttercream in a random manner to achieve a casual, free-flowing effect.

It is a look that is popularised by many cookbooks today, and it has even earned me a few nice comments from my readers. But deep down in my heart of hearts, I know I am a fake. I can’t do the basketweave or the fleur de lis. I don’t even know how to pipe a ruffle. Not even a damn leaf.

To illustrate my predicament, I have attached a photo of three mini layer cakes I made recently. For the first, I utilised the ‘dab-and-fake-it’ method which, as you can see, I’ve perfected to an artform. For the second, I attempted a more complicated style that required greater upper-arm dexterity - by pulling the spatula upwards to create even, vertical stripes. The result was okay, though not spectacular.

For the third, I decided to bravely confront my demons. I took out my piping tip #16 and created a shell border on top of the cake. But instead of looking like neatly graduating swirls, they resembled the rounded behinds of a bunch of gorillas bending over side by side.

It was such an eye-sore that my husband, who takes the photographs on my blog, relegated the cake right to the back of the picture, where the circle of shiny posteriors could be obscured by soft focus.

As you can see, my piping skills are in URGENT need of improvement. Only you, by immediately putting me in your class, can take me out of this deep, dark abyss. My reputation, my conscience, my very sanity!, are now in your hands.

I await your good news.

Yours most sincerely,

Crummb

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P/S: Happy new year, everyone! Thanks for dropping by this past year

Hard candy December 3, 2008

Alright. Persuaded by Stef, a reader who is sweet enough to have dropped a few comments in the past (I lerv comments!), I have decided to give Nick Malgieri and his %$#!@*@!!! caramel recipe another go.

So I mixed 1/2 cup of sugar with 1 teaspoon of water, plonked it on the heat and DID NOT STIR. As it did the last five times I tried this, the damn thing crystallised into a layer of lumpy rock sugar. But I stood firm, I DID NOT STIR. After the sun went down (okay, I exaggerate, but it was a looong time), finally some bits of the sugar started melting. But it melted unevenly, and by the time all of it turned to liquid, some parts had turned a dark, scary brown. When it was safe to finally give it a good swirl, the overall colour was a dark amber (see pic).

Yes, I succeeded in making a sugar syrup alright, but the colour was too dark, and the flavour a little too burnt. 

So. Does this mean that I have maligned Mr Malgieri? No! If stirring is strictly prohibited during this process, why didn’t he say so in the book?  Plus! Between this gruelling method and say, just about any other caramel recipe known to man, I’d go for the latter. Why? Because I’m no sucker for pain! I wanna make my caramel and not have a few years chopped off my lifespan!

Therefore, I rest my case. Mr Malgieri is guilty of gross indecency for inflicting such abject pain to me, not to mention the hundreds of sugar canes whose lives were wasted on failed experiments.

*ding-ding!*

Crummb 2, Malgieri 0