My Favourite Meatballs

I used to hate meatballs. Hard, dry, flavourless balls of meat deepfried. Loathed them. Then I was flipping through Annabel Karmel's Family Meal cook book and there was a recipe for spaghetti and meatballs. Out of the blue, after years and years not eating meatballs, I had a hankering for it.

Annabel Karmel's book is indispensable for mums here. A mother herself, her recipes are tried and tested on her brood. I love the way she presented the food. Smiley face bagels, snake shaped pizza, bee shaped oat biscuits - that woman is a marvel.

So here is how to make these moreish meatballs (adapted from Annabel Karmel's)

lean lamb/beef mince , flat leaf parsley, stock cube (crumbled) , black pepper and finely chopped onion

and the secret ingredient.... grated apples makes the meatball moist!

Shape into mini meatballs. (look at the lovely green flecks of parsley!) and brown them by batches . *You can freeze them at this point

I boiled a large pot of water for the angel hair pasta and prepared the tomato sauce. Just a simple one with lots of chunky vegetables like carrots, red and orange peppers and mushroom. Once the sauce is on the boil, just chuck the meatballs inside and cook until they are done.



Viola!
Spaghetti Meatballs
with lashing of parmagiano

Chefs Galore!

Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares is back! I caught the series at the tail end of last season and was totally hooked. What's not to like? Horrible grungy kitchens serving substandard food, hapless restaurant owners running up huge debts and strode in Gordon, like a white knight to their rescue.

Each week, I watched in morbid fascination ~ just waiting for the chef on the receiving end of Gordon vitriolics to stick a knife into Gordon. He swore at them, pulled out his hair, threw food away, swore some more, rubbed his face, swore at the owner, chef, staff, cajoled the chef to cut down the menu, show them whose boss in the kitchen, cheered the staff on and viola, you have the restaurant back on its feet. I love it!

I simply simply adore the cooking shows they have here. Like Ready,Steady, Cook hosted by the irrepressible Ainsley Harriot. two chefs will have two participants working alongside them. With a bag of ingredients (sometimes less than £5-10 of stuff), they whipped out four or five fantastic dishes in about 30 minutes! Fantastic.

The other series I love is by Keith Floyd. He does series where he travel to different countries like Italy and Spain ~ he will cook outdoors most times so that you get an eyeful of both the gorgeous scenery plus the food he is cooking. He did cook in the rain, under an umbrella once in an Italian piazza. He will talked to the cameraman while on the camera "Take a big fat lingering close-up of that" or will speak unscripted dialouge which is often quite funny.

The best of the series is Far Flung Floyd of course since he travelled to South East Asia for this. Sadly, he circumvent Singapore but he made stops in Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong. I especially remember his stop in Malaysia because he cooked rendang in a kampung kitchen and served it to the family. Of course, in front of the mat salleh, the makcik and pakcik were all stiff and formal. The translator who was eating with them had to say in Malay "Sedap ke tak sedap? Kenapa tak cakap apa-apa?" to which the makcik and pakcik automatically said "Sedap..sedap.."

He also talked to another pakcik haji about ayam masak kicap and inevitably asked about how Muslim men can marry up to four. The pakcik said with a straight face "Yes, they can but for me, one already more than enough". Another time, he was demonstrating how to cook sambal crab but somehow he bought rempah curry instead. They only do a re-shoot for the sambal crab which ran during the credits.

In the series where he did HongKong, he did a demo at a small jetty just abutting a few boats. He looked seriously at the camera and said that he had to speak quite loud to drown the arguements the crew is having with one particular boat owner, who demanded payment for them to cook at the jetty.

I am also fascinated by the River Cottage Series by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. He basically moved from the city to the country to see whether he could survive being a smallholder/farmer. You'll see the full whack of country living where he grew his own vegetables and rear his own livestock. Not an inch is wasted which makes very good tv. Not only you see his adventures in being self-sufficient on the farm, you'll see country happenings like jam and cake competition, vegetable growing competition (who has the longer runner bean? that sort of thing).

And who can forget Jamie Oliver's debut as The Naked Chef and his subsequent offerings? He is a phenomenal success now and based on that, there was a Malaysian student chef whom we helped to film a cooking programme ala Jamie Oliver. Let me tell you - filming a cooking show is a lot of hard work so kudos to all the chefs and thank you for making entertaining television.

Disney Colour a Cookie

The plus side of having a day (or two) off work is I get to pick up the little one from school. She was so happy to see me at the school gate and as a special treat, we went to the Disney Store. Just to look, mind.... However, I picked up this :


Disney Colour a Cookie.

A simple cooke with icing. A Mickey Mouse line drawing and various food colouring markers. How ingenius! The markers are flavoured as well ~ red (strawberry), blue (blueberry), yellow (banana) and black (black cherry). They must have taste delicious because Alia was sucking on the markers instead of colouring in the cookie.





She was busy for a good 10 minutes which would be ideal if you are dining out. And you can promise the cookie as desserts for afters. Apparently they do serve this at Disney hotels and resorts in Florida. I didn't find any in Disneyland Paris though. I saved up the markers for future biscuit drawing plus i get to draw smileys on her packed sandwiches. Hehehehe

I'm sick today.....

It's cold. My head hurts. My nose stuffed. Sore throat. Racking cough.
And daytime tv is putrefying my brain.
I only crave this...



Sup kambing.
Hot steamy mutton broth with crusty french bread.
There is no mamak stall round the corner so I had to drag my carcass to get some lamb from the butcher. Arghhhh.... I don't have any Sup Bunjut spice so had to make do with a simple hashed up version with whatever I have in the fridge :

Resepi Sup Kambing Orang Sakit
(Lamb Broth)

Rack of lamb chopped up roughly; with its bones (think rustic!)
**Boil in a large pot with sliced up leeks and a stock cube. Let simmer**

One large onion, 10 cloves of garlic, 2cm. ginger (all whizzed up in a blender)
Cloves, cardomom and cinnamon stick

This is how I did it :

Heat oil in pan. Sautee the blended-up ingredients and the spices till fragrant. Add in the stock and meat. Throw in potatoes and carrots. Bring to boil. Put in oven at 150 deg celcius for about an hour - longer if meat is still not tender and falling of bone. Season with plenty of white pepper and salt. Served steaming, with spring onions, chopped parsley and fried onions (bawang goreng) along with a loaf of crusty baguette

I think I feel better already....

I feel like Chicken Tonight

In case, anyone is wondering ~ why do I suddenly upload recipes on this blog? No, I am not going to turn this into a 100% food blog. It would pale in comparison to the others already in existence (see the food blogs in my sidebar). The care and love they put in their photos and postings! It makes me so hungry just looking at the photos and when they posted wonderful photos of Malaysian/Singapore dishes.... wahhhh.... double whammy for me. Hungry and nostalgic.

I'm a "let's put that in the pot and see what comes out" type of cook so often I would forgot how I cook it. Yesterday, I stumbled upon this recipe Ayam Kicap Pak Said on Suria website. Hmm... sounds good and simple. OK, bought the chicken and was all out to cook this for dinner. Found out I am short of a few of the spices and worst of all, the blender died on me. So... sorry Pak Said, next time I try your chicken. Last night, I cooked Ayam Kicap Blender Rosak instead :


Ayam Kicap Blender Rosak
(Broken Blender Chicken in Spicy Soy Sauce .. hehehe)

One small chicken cut into portions
(seasoned with turmeric powder + salt, browned and set aside)

Ingredients A :
One onion, five garlic cloves, 2 inch ginger
(all sliced thin)
Ingredients B:
1 cinnamom stick
6 cloves , 6 cardomon
4 star anise
1 tablespoon of black pepper
Ingredients C:
100ml dark soy sauce
2 tbspn of oyster sauce
2-3 cups of water
2 tbspn of vinegar

Heat oil in a good sized pot. Fry all of Ingredients A until they smell absolutely yummy. Throw in Ingredients B. Once they are mixed well, carefully add in Ingredients C. Once the concoction bubbles, pop in the chicken, mix it well and cover the pot to cook the chicken. Stir it once a while. Cook it till chicken is done and gravy is thickened. Throw in some sliced spring onions + cubed tomatoes as garnish. Stir it once more time and it's ready to eat with hot white rice.

Chicken cooking in the pot. As you can see, I have a long way to go before I even qualify as an amateur food photojournalist. All that steam coming out of the pot!



I can almost hear Gordon Ramsay screaming "F**king Mucky Plate!" or something like that. The cooking smells had driven MH to distraction and I could only managed one snap before we dug in.

Roti John Recipe

Had another bash at Roti John yesterday and it turned out much better that the one I did on the weekend. Ahhh.. the delights of roti john. This true-blue Singapore Malay dish always hold special memories to me ~ after a rigourous ECA session at RGS in the 80s, we would always trooped down to Taman Serasi Food Centre (now sadly defunct) next to Botanic Gardens for roti john, soursop juice and soto pedas.

The roti john was from Shukor Stall - the birthplace of this dish. Apparently the stallholder's dad created the dish for angmoh customers living/working in the area. Little did he know it would be a legend, with mentions on the Makansutra.

I intended to take photos as I went along but totally forgot to do so. Hope to post some photos later on. So here's my version :

Roti John

Minced meat (about a handful)
Clove of garlic
3- 4 Eggs
2 long Baguette
Salt + Pepper
a tiny bit of curry powder
Chicken stock cube (can omit this)
Spring onions (cut really small)
Chilli (cut small or omit if you don't like it hot)
red onion - sliced
oil (less oil if meat is quite fatty)


Heat oil in pan and throw in garlic. Put the mince in. Season with pepper and fry the mince until quite dry. Set aside. Beat the eggs. Mix in the spring onions, chilli, onion & mince. Season with curry powder, salt, pepper and chicken stock cube.

Sliced the baguette longwise. Once frying pan is hot with a tiny amount of oil, slather the egg-mince mixture onto the baguette and grill them on the pan, egg-mince mixture face down. Press the baguette down so that the egg mixture is well cooked. Flip over to brown the other side of the bread.

Serve hot with sliced cucumber, a slice of cheese in between, sweet chilli sauce or ketchup. It keeps well for a few hours and just need crisping in a hot oven. Sedap!!!!

Primrose Hill

We had no plans last Saturday but didn't want Alia to watch tv all day long. A quick call to my mate and we planned to go to Primrose Hill; just behind Regent's Park. It had been touted as having the finest view of London but I wasn't overly impressed by it the first time I've been. It was only after a few years, we visited it again with our brand new kite and we totally fell in love with it.

There's a fab children's playground at the foot of the hill which was ideal for Alia and her friends to burn off some energy. We parents just parked ourselves on the picnic table and enjoy the little picnic we brought along.

We could have spent some more time there but decided to go up the hill before sundown. It is not a high hill but believe me you would be puffing by the time you get up. (..or maybe I was terribly unfit?)



The walk up to the peak....



People already on top looking at the view...




A poor picture of the view - you can actually see a number of London famous landmarks like the London Eye, The Gherkin, St. Pauls Cathedral and a tiny bit of Palace of Westminster.

We spread some canvas on the ground and enjoyed the view while the children ran up and down the slope (...ngeri sikit I.. takut they all jatuh tergolek..)



MH brought along his board which was a source of fun for the kids. They just love rolling down the hill with it. I voted to stay put because cannot tahan going down and coming back up again.




Sunset is much earlier nowadays so you can see the moon rising on the east while the sun goes down on the west. This is a picture of the moon, I kid you not.

This would be a perfect vantage point to see the fireworks tonight but that means that we would have to stay out in the cold for another 3 hours! so here's R's family packing up to go home.



We adjourned at R's house later for Madu Tiga, roti john and grilled chicken while the kids have fun playing sparklers and eating hot dogs.