Tea in Singapore

Now that I’ve been in this Island City for a week, I already know what I really want from back home – a decent cup of Tea!!

The hotel where I am put up has the most outrageous (well, outrageous to a tea-addict like me!!) teabags in the room – Earl Grey, English Breakfast and Peppermint Tea!!!  Of these, English Breakfast is tolerable if I add a minimum of 3 teabags in a cup.

And for breakfast, they have Lipton Yellow Label teabags – again, tolerable with at least 2 teabags. But they never have hot milk and water….it’s almost always lukewarm (probably ‘coz its too close the aircon) and I gag nearly everytime I try to drink the tea I make. Imagine drinking cold milky tea! Bleh!

Thank God for the Teh-Tarik centre near my office….atleast they have a fairly decent cup of tea – Teh-Halia being my favourite (that’s ginger tea for my non-Malaysian speaking readers). The tea in office is another story – they have this huge vending machine – a Hot and Cold Cup Machine – which lets you decide how much sugar, milk and concentration you want, but even after setting it all to the highest setting, all I got was a sugar-water syrup.

Coffee and Milo seem to the beverages of preference here in Singapore – being available in all shape, colour and size. And I detest coffee. Milo is okay, but how many times a day can one drink chocolate?

Is it just me who is facing this problem in Xing? Does anyone know where I can get a good cup of tea (sans me making it)?

 

Honey Glazed Pork

I have been promising all and sundry that I’ll pen down this recipe – ever since December. Well, finally here it is.

Ingredients:

1. Pork – 1/2 kg, washed and cubed
2. Garam Masala* – 1/2 tbsp
3. Red Chilli powder – 1 tbsp
4. Kashmiri Chilli powder ** – 1/2 tbsp
5. Turmeric powder – 1/2 tsp
6. Coriander Powder – 1 tsp
7. Green Chillies – 3 or 4, slit open
8. Garlic – 20-25 cloves
9. Ginger – a small piece
10. Large onion – 3-4, sliced thin
11. Tomato – 1, diced
12. Curry Leaves – 1 stem
13. Honey – 2 tbsp
14. Curd – 1/2 tbsp
15. Cooking oil – as required
16. Salt – to taste

* Rather than buy from outside, you can make the masala at home. Just take some cardamon, cumin seeds, cinnamon, cloves, pepper kernels and grind them up. You can even store it for future culinary ventures.

** You can even skip Kashmiri Chilli powder as it is for the colour, rather than the taste.

How to Make:

1. Rub all the powders – garam masala, chilli powder, kashmiri chilli powder, turmeric, coriander, salt – together on the cubed pork pieces.
2. Add the curd to this mixture. Rub them all together so that the meat is well covered with this mixture, and leave to marinate for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
3. Once marinated, take the meat in a pressure cooker, and it will look something like this.
4. Add the green chillies, tomato and a handful of the diced onions to the cooker.
5. Now close the pressure cooker lid, put on the whistle, and cook on low flame till one whistle blows. After that, increase the flame to medium and cook for another 15 minutes.
6. Once this is done, turn off the flame, and keep the cooker aside. Do not attempt to open it now, as some more cooking will happen as the pressure goes off by itself.
7. Next, we are going to saute the onions. Get a non-stick pan, and add oil to it. Heat it and once the oil is hot, add the remaining onions to it.
8. Saute the onions for 5 minutes, then add the ginger, garlic and curry leaves. Saute again till the onions turn translucent.
9. Now, we are ready to open the pressure cooker. You will see that the meat is swimming in water even though we had added no water during the cooking process. This is because the water content in the meat oozes out while it is being cooked.
10. Add the meat to the non-stick pan, and start reducing the water content. You can also discard some of the water to speed up the process.
11. Once the water has evaporated, then we are left with something like this-
    
12. Now, add the honey to the meat and cook for a few more minutes.
13. You can stop at this point, if you wish to have a semi-dry dish. It is wonderful served with rice or chappathys.

For those of you who wish to have a dry dish, then read on. You would need some more sauces at this point of time –

1. Plum sauce
2. Worcestershire sauce (also called W Sauce)

Making a dry dish:

1. Continue stirring the meat in the saucepan, while adding W Sauce and Plum Sauce. Caution: Plum Sauce means a slight sweetness, unless you want a very sweet dish, please use with discretion.
2. Keep stirring the meat in a medium flame. As it progresses, the meat keeps changing as shown –
3. The end product should look something like this –

The best part about making a dry dish is that the meat and the fat becomes indistinguishable and equally tasty. So, cholestrol-watchers, beware!

Enjoy with chappathy or rice.

BON APPETIT!

Paneer Butter Masala

This weekend I tried my hand at a perennial Indian favourite – Paneer Butter Masala.

reI don’t know if this is really how Paneer Butter Masala is made – but the following recipe is definitely a very tasty one.

Ingredients:

1. Paneer –  250g, cubed
2. Butter – a small stick
3. Cumin seeds (jeera) – 2 pinches
4. Tomato – 2
5. Cashewnuts – half a handful
6. Ginger – a small piece, finely chopped
7. Garlic – 5-6 cloves, finely chopped
8. Kashmiri chilli powder – 1 tbsp
9. Turmeric powder – ½ tsp
10. Garam masala – 1 tsp
11. Sugar – 2 tbsp
12. Salt – to taste

How to Make:

1. Leave the cashews to soak in hot water for 30 minutes or so.
2. In the meanwhile, puree the tomatoes in a food processor, making sure there are no pieces left. Keep aside.
3. Take a saucepan and heat it on high flame. Once hot, add the butter and turn down flame to simmer.
4. Add cumin seeds and sauté for 15 seconds before adding the next set of ingredients.
5. Add 1 tbsp sugar and again keep sautéing, till the sugar turns sticky and brown.
6. Add the chopped ginger and garlic, and sauté for a minute or two, till it starts turning brown.
7. Now, pour the tomato puree into this, and increase the flame a bit. Add the chilli powder. Turmeric powder and garam masala to this mixture and turn down the flame again to simmer.
8. Now, we need to keep stirring the mixture, till the water has almost evaporated and the oil starts separating out (as shown in the pictures).
9. Pour  one and a half glasses of water in the pan and keep stirring. Add salt to taste.
10. Take 3 or 4 cubes of the paneer and crumble it up. Add it to the pan – this is to add some thickness to the curry.
11. Now, puree the cashewnuts along with the hot water in which it was left to soak. You will get a milky liquid – again, make sure that there are no cashew bits left, else the curry will have a gritty texture, instead of the creamy one we are aiming for.
12. Now, increase the flame, and once the mixture starts boiling, add the remaining cubes of paneer.
13. Once the paneer is in, don’t stir too much, or it may crumble.
14. Pour the cashew milk into the saucepan.  Stir a bit more and finally add the remaining 1 tbsp sugar.

Your paneer butter masala is ready.

Garnish with chopped coriander leaves to add that extra fragrance. Serve hot with chappathi, roti or parathas.

Chinese Spaghetti

Yesterday, I tried my hand at cooking spaghetti – and it turned out to be pretty good, even though I do say so myself. Here is the recipe I followed –

Ingredients:

1. Spaghetti
2. Garlic – 8-10 cloves, chopped
3. Onion – 2, chopped
4. Carrot – 1, grated
5. Beans – 8-10, chopped
6. Eggs – 2, beaten
7. Olive oil – as required
8. Spaghetti
9. Sweet and Sour Chilli Sauce – as required
10. Dark Soy sauce – 4-5 drops
11. Salt – to taste

Mode de Cuisson (a.k.a How to Make the Stuff):

The Mixture –

1. Take a non-stick pot, and heat it on a stove to get it completely dry.
2. Add olive oil, turn up the heat, and wait till the oil heats up.
3. Once the oil is hot enough, put the heat on simmer, and add the chopped garlic and onions to it.
4. Stir, so that it doesn’t burn, till the onion has turned colourless.
5. Add the beans and grated carrots to the mix, and keep stirring.
   
6. Now, make a small pit in the centre of the vegetable mix in the pot, and add the egg inside. Wait a bit for the egg to start cooking, and then start stirring just the eggs in the pit till you see egg lumps forming inside. Wait a bit more and then mix it with all the vegetables. [By waiting till the egg lumps start forming before mixing with the vegetables, we can ensure that the veggies don’t go all soggy and will retain its crispness.]
7. Once the eggs have cooked well and mixed with the vegetables, add the chilli sauce. Keep stirring till this also blends in. You will start to get a wonderful aroma now.
8. Add salt to taste, and the soy sauce to the vegetables. Keep stirring to mix well.

Now you can turn off the heat, and get to work on the spaghetti.

The Spaghetti –

1. I first broke the dry pasta in half, so that the spaghetti fitted into my boiling pan. But you can also go without this step, if you half a large enough pan.
2. Take some water in a pot, and get it boiling.
3. Pour some olive oil over the water, and drop the pasta into it.
4. Now wait for about 10-12 minutes for the spaghetti to cook fully. You can test it by stirring the strands around, and trying to take a bite of it to see whether it is done. When the spaghetti is done, it will have lost its deep golden hue, it will no longer resemble a stick and will instead be limp and you can bite into it.
5. Add some salt to the pasta before straining out the water.

The Grand Finale –

 For the final act, once again turn on the heat over the pot of vegetables, and add the spaghetti to the veggies. Toss them together, till the spaghetti is well coated with the veggies and sauces.

Now enjoy with a glass of wine and some ketchup.

Mmmmmm….the aroma is quite appetizing. Let me go ahead and take my advice to enjoy it 🙂

A Little Trip to Mainland China

After seeing the ad for Mainland China on TV, Hubby was enormously excited to know that Mainland China had opened up a new restaurant in our neighbourhood. After haggling with me over visiting the place, we finally decided that we would get a take-away from there on the day preceding our Move.

The D-Day:

Finally. After a full day of back-breaking sorting and packing, the time to sample the wares of Mainland China had arrived. My cousin H and wife (S) were also joining us, so it added to the festivities. By around 9 pm, H came and we decided to go to our destination. Since, we were only going to order a take-away, Hubby and I saw no reason to change out of our dresses (that we had worn all day long and had all the dust and sweat from the packing). We wrapped up Little One against the cold and we all set forth in H’s car.