Automne 2012 #9

I haven't been updating much on this space because I am doing this via instagram more often these days (you can find the link on the top right hand panel of this blog). 

Tried tying a braided bun last week for a dinner and I kind of like the effect and miss my long hair. Though, I know I am surely not going to do this often. So, nah, no long hair, keeping it to the usual shoulder-length. 

Printemps 2012 #45

Poppy seeds which I bought from the organic store close to my place.


After several attempts in baking the banana cake here, here & here. I decided to try it with poppy seeds this time. =)



Loaded with banana & poppy seeds goodness.

Printemps 2012 #27

Food for the past week or so. What I usually do with my strawberries since they are roaring in season now. Awesomely good & sweet - in my yoghurt or at times, I eat them with nutella as a treat.

I tried recalling and counting the kind of staff welfares we've got in the office, but I gave up in the end. The best way is to click on "work" from my tags and I am counting my blessings when I looked through the history of them all. =D I'm not a habitual coffee drinker, but I like to make use of the industrial size Nespresso machine we have in the office to make café latte in the mornings. 

Proportion should always be Latte > Café.  

I'm not really sure whether this is considered as part of staff welfare, but my manager served me a plate of this during one of the mornings himself and literally brought it under my eyes. Maybe, this is going to cost me my promotion in the end. Hahaha.

Croissants, pain au chocolat, apple pies, danish rolls, all in mini-sizes. 

Talking about the weekly fruit platter we have in the office, there are always leftovers, especially the bananas. To reduce wastage (throwing them into the bin), this is what we do. #1 Me, officially the banana cake baker (I was very happy when my colleagues kept going back to the pantry area for seconds or thirds and complained to me during lunch hour that I'm a threat to their waistlines. HAHAAHAHA!!) brought them home and trying different versions of banana cake making. 

This time round - original layering on top of Vanhouten chocolate banana cake with a spread of Nutella in between.  

That was 7 bananas in total. 

#2 Banana milk shake - Bananas X vanilla ice cream X fresh strawberries, made with the blender we have in the office kitchen. P/S: You need a thick straw for this. Can you make out how moist my chocolate-based banana cake was? =D

P/S: Blogger changed my interface and blogging isn't as fast as I used to. Why are they changing the interfaces when it is already good? I've been avoiding the FB timeline thingy, hate it.

Printemps 2012 #26

Hello Kitty X ice jelly 爱玉 with honey lemon (I can't find lime here, so lemon makes the second best choice) juice and any fresh fruits you can find. I chose strawberries this time.



Hello Kitty X Banana-nutella cake.

Trying my best to create the marble effect.

My first time baking this.

Loaded with the goodness of 5 very ripe bananas.

Very moist =D



I baked 4 Hello Kitties, but there are only 3 left cos' I cannot resist myself to eat one of them.


To the office for dessert time tomorrow and intoxicating and/or traumatizing my European colleagues on Hello Kitty-everything culture again. Hahaha!!


This is a real vintage baking tin, I love the flowery imprints on it.

Printemps 2012 #14

One of the many good stuff I brought back I kinda stolen it from her fridge actually... hahaha!! from Singapore last year - dried scallops, from my mom.


Soaking them in water for a good few hours before use.


Anything plain can be good with XO sauce and extra dried scallops.


My lunch tomorrow - assorted veggies, custard egg (chawanmushi) and brown rice.

Hiver 2011/2012 #36

Plain yogurt, honey and mandarin orange.

Actually, I find plain yogurt tastes quite good on its own.



Ice-cream coloured dessert spoons.


Don't you find this symbol so meaningful?

Hiver 2011/2012 #29

After getting the 2.5litres thermal magic cooker in 2010 (as mentioned here), I bought its 5litres version during my last trip back home because it is so easy to use, so energy-saving, and simply because I am a glutton - I love to see a lot of food laid out in front of my eyes, hence, a bigger one is needed.

I haven't got the time to use it until today.

Five Spice Braised Pork Belly with tofu, beancurd puffs, hard boiled eggs and lean-cut pork.

It may not be the best looking dish, but it tastes so good with a plain bowl of rice, especially during winter.

I'm going to bring some of these for my lunch box on Monday, with some greens I bought from Chinatown today too. It has been some time since I brought my lunchbox to work.

Hiver 2011/2012 #11

One of the toys I brought back from Singapore - a small wooden rolling pin that fits the size of my hands.

I use this primarily for making the skin of my gyozas or dumplings for now. This is an excellent purchase. It is so much easier for me now compared to the giant rolling pin I was using before that were meant for men or people who likes to roll out their dough while grabbing onto the rolling pin at both ends, it just exhaust me completely at the end. With this hand-held size, I totally feel like a Ding Tai Fung expert. LoL!!

The fillings that I'm very proud of - burst of meat juices the moment you bite into it.

Yes, you are right, I was wrapping my gyozas while watching streaming tv serials/varieties from my laptop. Haha! I do them in bulk (50 of them at the end usually), so that I don't have to go through the whole session of making the dough again for the next 2 - 3 sessions.

Pan-fried versions for W.

I like mine in soups. A very versatile dish that allows you to do it in the style you prefer.

Automne 2011 #34

Food during autumn & winter.

M got me this bento box and chopsticks in its box set when she went back to Taiwan last year.

I'm still bringing my bento most of the time and I'm alternating between 2 bento boxes.

One of the most common bento lunches I bring is a vegetable side dish (in this pic: Spinach ala Korean style as mentioned here) and sushi with avocado and salmon fillings.

I forgot that I got to take a pic before putting on the cling film food wrap (cos' I hate staining the covers of my food storage containers) and am too lazy to take the film off after that - Green beans (French named it "Haricots verts") and steamed codfish with julienne ginger, Shaoxing wine and soya sauce for seafood.

Carbonara - W's specialty. The one & only dish he knows how to cook, and made perfect after multiple attempts.

One of my fav food during cold weather conditions cos' comfort food comes in high carbos & high fats content.

In Singapore, one could see mobile stalls selling fry-on-the-spot-with-stones???-chestnuts in a giant wok. Here in Paris, you see people selling them too, but they are 99% foreigners who heat up these chestnuts using charcoal in a metal cylinder with tiny holes poked at the top of the container.

I always see them right outside the exits of metro stations. I will buy a pack or two once in a while when the cold shouts for a warm packet of roasted chestnuts in your hands. They packed them in rolled up magazine pages. Honestly, I don't think they bought the chestnuts themselves, but I would like to think that they pick them in some forests in the suburbs, trying to make ends meet by selling them at 2 Euros per packet.

Automne 2011 #31

With the spinach & watercress that I bought from the marché, I used 30 mins to prepare my one week supply of vegetable side dishes, because working = (1) no time (2) not much time (3) not in a mood for cooking.

I like preparing Korean-styled side dishes because they keep well.

And, I'm preparing watercress and spinach together because I'm using almost the same seasonings (less complicated when it comes to preparation and much faster when it comes to process), the only major difference would be one is spicy, the other isn't.

Coordination is the key here. I boil the vegetables in batches because of their quantity. If you boil them altogether, there will be some parts that are undercooked, and some overcooked cos you cannot turn them in time in the boiling water.

Also, get the tub of cold water right next to the stove, so that you can transfer them quickly to stop the cooking process.

After 10 mins of mixing the seasonings, store them in air-tight containers before putting them into the fridge.


Dinner - 2 servings of watercress & 1 serving of spinach, with pork slices in XO-sauce (spicy version).


I felt really full after this, it must be all that fibre.

Automne 2011 #26

With my newly acquired toy - the Electric Milk Frother, I embarked onto another of my "kitchen experiments" in creating the unorthodox "Sado-style Green Tea" and the Green Tea Latte that I love at Starbucks.

I've got 2 types of green tea powder - I chose the one on the right this time.
No specific reasons, just feel like it.

I added 2 teaspoons of green tea powder, I'm a green tea lover, 2 teaspoons could be a little strong for some people. When I go Japan, I will practically choose green tea anything. This nation has completely optimised and utilised the properties and merits of green tea. They do the best green tea and green tea products.

Left: My electric milk frotter in action. Right: The traditional green tea you get during a Sado Tea Ceremony with a bamboo whisker (茶筅 chasen).

Truth be told, I think the milk frotter is one of the best equipment one could have in the kitchen if you are lazy like me (cos' the real thing using the bamboo whisker got my wrist aching and I still couldn't get the same foamy effect) but would want to enjoy a nice cup of foamy and light sado-style green tea every evening. As you can see from the pic on the left, I stopped right after a good 30-seconds of electric whisking. I'm not a tea expert, but the consistency and texture tasted identical to what I had during a sado ceremony. 

 Unorthodox "Modern" VS Traditional.

I was self-amusing by thinking what would happen if the host of a Sado ceremony takes out an electric milk frother instead of the usual bamboo whisker? LOL. That is such a hilarious, ironical sight that would never happen because Japanese are too much protocol-abiding to even think about this in the first place.

Subsequently, I did another glass with the previous steps repeated, but with another portion of milk added into it. I never knew Green Tea Latte is so simple with the electric milk frotter, and I felt a little bit cheated for paying Starbucks so much for such a simple cup of beverage. I made a second glass after my first DIY cup of Green Tea Latte.

Tips:

(1) A tall glass. If you can see from the pics, the foam generated can reach the top of the glass that I have, which is already not tall enough, but it is the tallest glass I have in the house. Less is more, go no more than half of the glass capacity.

(2) Water temperature is a critical factor in bringing out the best qualities of green tea. If the water temperature is too hot, the tea will be too bitter and much of its delicate aroma will be lost; if the water temperature is too cool, the full flavor contained in the leaves will not be extracted.

A number of substances in the leaf contribute to the flavor and aroma of green tea. The overall flavor and sweetness of green tea is determined by a variety of amino acids and natural sugars. Bitterness and astringency are contributed by polyphenols ("tannins"). Amino acids dissolve at 60 °C while tannins dissolve at 80°C. Therefore, brewing green tea at lower temperatures will ensure that its sweet and complex flavors will not be overpowered by the bitter-tasting flavors.

As a general guideline, green teas taste best when brewed at temperatures between 60 °C - 85°C. The grade of the tea and the time of its harvest will also influence the appropriate steeping temperature. Green teas picked earlier in the spring will benefit from lower temperature brewing due to their overall higher levels of amino acids.

Gyokuro (玉露), one of the highest grades, is best brewed at 50°C - 60°C. Spring-picked Sencha (煎茶) tastes best at 70°C - 80°C. Summer-harvested Bancha (番茶) and Genmaicha (玄米茶) will exhibit their best flavor with a short infusion at higher temperatures of 80°C - 90°C.

Automne 2011 #16

W loves Japanese curry with cripsy chicken/pork cutlet. So, this dish has been a weekly occurence (JY came to our place, ate it and named it "Curry Sunday" LOL). Recently, I decided to "upgrade" the cutlet to crispy CHEESY cutlet.

Tonight's - Crispy cheesy pork cutlet. See the cheddar oozing out?


W is trying to gain weight, this is his jumbo size version with omu rice.


This is mine, I prefer plain rice with curry.


The aftermath.