The mandatory end-of-winter / start-of-spring update

After a two week hiatus and a somewhat deflated blogging enthusiasm due to the lack of reader responses (from my own sister! tsk!), today I heard from two long-time and dear friends about how difficult it is to read our blog from China and dc cleaning my laptop. Thank you for letting me know that we’re not merely blogging for our own memories, but also to update dear friends and families about our lives with our friends here. :) It was really encouraging to know that.

So at the end of this boring IAP when we had to wake up early to go to Longwood twice a week, and once again letting our inertia prevent us from registering for truffle making classes, we had a wonderful weekend catching up with some friends we have not seen in a while and doing some major cooking. Over Fall Break Day (eh, blog to come up soon about this, but you may find pictures here), I bought Phyllo pastry thinking that I will make apple pie with the apples we picked at the farm. When we allowed the apples to be all eaten gradually, I thought perhaps I can make some new-age egg tarts with the Phyllo. And of course, I usually dream of doing lots of baking but hardly get around to doing it. This weekend, dc finally rolled up his sleeves to get the Phyllo out of the freezer, into our stomachs.

Curry puffs! *licks lips*

First you have to liberally brush one side of each piece with melted butter  so that you can stick many layers together (hence giving the nice multi-layer crispy effect!).

Then, the samosa-style wrapping begins! (I really wished I have photos, but you have to understand that I was busy wrapping the puffs too!) dc cooked up some chicken and potato curry and we snugly tucked a piece of hard-boiled egg in its spicy blanket before closing up the parcel with – what else! – more melted butter.

First batch wrapped and ready to go! It was a great lesson in primary school geometry as we revised the many different kinds of triangles that can result from disastrous samosa-wrapping. I proudly say I made mostly trianges (right and equilateral ones), while dc turned in the occasional trapezium and *gasp* square samosas!

Nice and golden brown curry samosas!

Revealing the goodness in the packet! dc did a great job of making a flavorful filling that is not too salty. Love the discernible  chicken thigh meat in there too, and the egg.. yummy!

Made up only about 20+ with that large bowl of filling (didn’t even finish half that box of Phyllo!). Gave some away, but we may make more if we get good feedback!

We ended our final relaxing weekend with two great (extremely filling) meals – dim sum at Heilamoon with old friends from Hopkins and dinner with Ying Kai at our new haunt Jo Jo Taipei. FANTASTIC TAIWANESE 小吃!! We had our first acceptable 小龙包 in the US:

The soup was thick, almost creamy, and extremely flavorful! 蚝仔煎,  金牌白玉豆腐 (tender tofu + crispy skin + garlic spicy sauce. Tofu was to die for!!), 芒果双鲜 (scallops and shrimps!). We’re definitely going to make it a point to go back often! Heh.

Making ourselves at home

We are rather food-obsessed people and one of our favorite past times is to take turns to ask each other what is for lunch or dinner. We can be eating breakfast and go "what's for lunch" and have a discussion over it. Once it is decided, we just have to ask "what's for dinner".

In part, certain foods are really soul food or comfort food. No matter how bad the day is, what problem you are facing or how cold the weather is, eating that one dish just lifts the spirits. One example is curry, which comes in the chicken curry form or the sayur lodeh form.




My mum is a Hakka and although I'm a Teochew, I actually grow up liking Hakka food more. Regardless Hakka or Teochew, who can resist painstakingly stuffed yong tau foo. Since young, I always enjoy yong tau foo, mainly because of the meat. I would finish off the toufu, bittergourd, chilli etc and save the meat to the last. (A theory says this behavior is indicative of pessimism.) By the way, meat as in pork. No fish paste please...

Healthy dinner

What do we eat on a typical day?

Let's see. Maybe tomatoes stir-fry with eggs and a bowl of lotus root peanut soup. Lots of fiber and good vitamins from all the veggies.

Haha, we wished. We did have this dinner, and I noted that it was especially colorful and healthy-looking, so much that I was motivated to take a picture of it. It would be beneficial to eat like this every meal. Unfortunately, there are simply days when we reach home late and tanah... start the water boiling and 5 min later, we have our stomach satisfied.

Chai Poh Hor Fun

I saw this dish when Kian Hong beckoned me to watch this video excerpt from a Mediacorp 8 variety show. Slightly put off by the name at first sight, it gradually seemed to be a delectable dish as I watched on. After gathering all the ingredients, I attempted the dish and to a fair degree, it's really very nice (Not to praise myself, the recipe is good)

Ingredients needed:
1 packet of Teochew Rice Noodles (aka Hor fun or kway teow)
4-5 stalks of chives
10 prawns
about 3 - 4 tablespoons of sweet minced preserved radish (chai poh)
2 cloves of garlic
4 eggs

Recipe:
1. Coat frying pan with extra virgin olive oil. Fry the rice noodles till they get a slightly burnt texture. Put them aside on a plate once done.
2. Add some more EEVO and stir fry minced garlic. Once the garlic turns slightly yellow, add chai poh and continue frying about 5 min.
3. Add chopped chives and fry till the chives turn into a dark green color.
4. Add the prawns (deshelled and deveined)
5. Once the prawns are cooked, add the rice noodles fried earlier.
6. Beat 4 eggs in a bowl and add a dash of fish sauce. Pour over the ingredients in the pan and turn up to high heat.
7. Flip after about 2 min and continue cooking for about 1-2 min.
8. Plate and serve.

dc’s 26th!

As long as we are studying, dc’s birthday will fall during the exam period, no doubt about that. Thankfully this (last) year, we finished our last exam on dc’s birthday (good for you dc!!), and he was still able to enjoy the last 8 hours of it :)

How did we celebrate the end of exams cum 26th birthday? Going grocery shopping at H Mart and having post-exam glucose boost at the Korean foodcourt…

dc’s Japanese tempura set (yum) and my Korean spicy seafood soup (double yum!).

Boring, I know. But considering you just spent your past week mugging like crazy, it’s kind of tiring to drive out for a ‘good meal’, especially since anything somewhat formal is a chore to the birthday boy. Nonetheless, he assured me that I will get to buy him his birthday dinner at Las Vegas… which both of us forgot about when we were there, LOL.

To make it more birthdayly, we drove to Harvard Square and spent ~30 min looking for a parking space just to get L.A. Burdicks’ divine (and I mean ABSOLUTELY DIVINE) hot chocolate and a cake for the birthday boy.. No picture of the hot chocolate here, because you have to taste it to know what I’m talking about!

 

And no birthday is complete with a present! Cola and I put in a lot of effort to think of three clues to release to dc throughout the day :) It’s a little crazy, but hey.. when you’ve been studying for too long, everyone just needs a smile on their face.

No telling how the clues are supposed to lead to guessing the present. Heh.

 

And of course, dc likes everything cy gives him (even if it involves three head-scratching clues in the day) – an Apple Magic Mouse! While he was not exactly lemming for it, I thought it’ll be nice to spoil him with something cool yet something he will never buy for himself. Glad he liked it!

So, that was dc’s birthday…

Or did you really think it was that boring?

A week prior, yk already called me up to arrange a surprise birthday dinner, since he was due to leave on the morning of dc’s birthday. I convinced a very annoyed dc to take a break from his revision, put on a shirt, brave the cold to follow me to a place that I wasn’t telling him. Yes I could tell he was pretty irritated. But the food and company was worth it! yk and his friend Gaya introduced us to this little Brazilian restaurant at Inman Square. The place was cramp and crowded (crowded is always a good sign!), but the food was well-worth the squeeze!

Check out the colorful array of food! We had fried plantains, pork with bean stew (national dish!), fish, shrimps and mussels stew and a very queer-sounding but absolutely delicious plantain lasagna. They also bought a beautiful cake..

… complete with the choir of the restaurant waiters and all eyes on us haha. It was all fun and dc was not annoyed at the end of the night anymore, though I’m sure he didn’t believe yk initially claiming this dinner was to celebrate Christmas. :)