Baked Golden Pomfret

This is a simple way to bake a fish and it has a tasty gravy too. The family completely finished it up.

I used a 400 gm Golden Pomfret. Scored the body with a few lines back and front.
Seasoned it with salt and pepper and placed the entire fish on aluminium foil.
I added julienned ginger slices, 2 cloves garlic sliced and also sprigs of green onions on the fish as well as inside the fish.
I added 2 tbsps each of light soya sauce, Dom (or you may want to use Chinese wine instead), sesame oil , 1 tbsp of cooking oil and 1 tsp of sugar over the fish.
I then covered the entire fish with another piece of aluminium foil.
I let the tray of fish stand for about half an hour and the placed the tray in a pre-heated oven at 190 degree C for 30 minutes.

Winter Dates

I saw a lady handling a packet of these when I was browsing at the fruit section. I caught her eyes and smiled at her and then asked her if I could just eat these dates by themselves. She replied affirmative and then even shared with me that I need to choose those which had the red skin as they tasted sweeter than the dual colored or green dates. I bought a packet and here is what I have to say about them ......

Texturewise ... they are rather crunchy like the texture of apples but the sweetness was rather mild and not at all like apple sweetness. I tried to find some more information from the web but information was limited to where they can be imported from and that is from China.
Since they are crunchy, they can be used as part of a salad dish and also in muffins and cakes too but I have yet to try using them in a salad or baking them in muffins.

I shared them with my parents and they commented that they ate these winter dates in China some years back and they were plucked fresh from the trees and they tasted very much sweeter than the ones I shared with them. They did say that when these were dried they can be use to boil soups just like the red dates we used.

The Red Dragonfruit

Found out that it is also know as the Makana dragonfruit. More information is given here http://reddragonfruit.com/

My first knowledge of this fruit was when a fellow blogger G used it for making snowskin mooncake and the fruit gave a lovely deep pink color to the snowskin. Also almost everyone who tasted this particular fruit said that it was much sweeter than the Pitaya dragonfruit ...that's the one with the light grey flesh. So during the weekend I bought a packet of two fruits from Cold Storage which cost about $3.

I cut it up into pieces so that dh and I would slowly eat them. On offering the tub of pink dragonfruit pieces to dh, he made a face on seeing the pink bleeding pieces LOL I knew straight away that he would not touch them after eating the piece I offered. So much for my presentation of bleeding pink dargonfruit pieces.



The taste of the red dragonfruit has a bland sweetness to it and there is also a tinge of sour sweetness. It doesn't have a distinctive taste and one may have to eat it often before one can grow accustom to the taste.

I pureed the rest of the fruit pieces and dumped them into the chiffon cake batter. They gave a lovely girlish pink to the batter. The black seeds also gave a bit of a crunch to the cake. However after baking the chiffon cake I would expect to see the lovely pink in the pink but the pink seemed to have disappeared and the result was a yellowish cake tinged with the pink bleeding dragonfruit pieces. Not a very nice effect to look at.

MeMe : Five Things

I got tagged by Precious Moments for this meme LOL
OK ... this was what I came up with for the Simple Me ....

Found in my room :
TV/VCD player
Dressing table with mirror
Bookshelves
Digital weighing scale
Remote control ceiling fan

Found in my handbag :
Handphone
Wallet
Red Shawl
Handkerchief
Keys

Found in my wallet :
ATM card
Notes and coins
ID
Popular card
Hairdressing card

I've always wanted to ....
... Be an inspiration for my children.
... Plan a pilgramage with good company to the Holy Land.
... Make use of interesting ingredients to cook and bake newly discovered delicious foods for my family and friends.
... Own a little piece of land by the sea and be an ecological guide there to teach children about nature and conservation.
... Exercise regularly to keep good health.

I'm currently into ...
... Blogging.
... Researching songs for Praise and Worship for children for next year's catechism program.
... Cooking the same old recipes for the family who don't seem to mind eating them repeatedly.
... Helping out at Catechism class on Sundays.
... Planning out the Christmas activities and menu for the extended family gatherings at my place this year. ( Just thinking about it gives me stress ah LOL).

So this is just about it. And I'll tag just one person .... http://www.hutofcranberry.blogspot.com/

Stash

The weekend had me and dh visiting Chip Bee Gardens. So I had the chance to visit Magic Pantry , Shermay's Cooking School and that stretch of walkway that lead all the way to Phoon Huat too. LOL At Shermay's , I bought the Valhorna Choco Powder and the dried Lavender flowers. Since I couldn't find the cookie scoop at this part of Singapore I suggested to dh to head down to Chinatown and visit Lau Choy Seng. Finally I managed to get this elusive 100 mm ice-cream scoop for less then $10. I'm one happy lady this weekend. Muack, muack to dh if you're reading this dear :-)

Total cost of stash here ...less than $30

Lemongrass Kueh Ambon

Had a chat last weekend with dh's nephew who is doing his 2nd year in the Polytechnic. Realised that he just came back from Medan after doing his Community Service there. Before we left the house he gave me a box. He said that in the box was Kueh Ambon and this kueh has a lemon grass flavour to it. That was the first time I heard about a lemongrass flavoured kueh ambon.

Back home when I wanted to eat a couple of pieces of the kueh I just needed to microwave them for about 20 secs. covered after taking them out from the fridge.

Ahhhh .... the lemongrass flavour is indeed refreshing and fragrant. It gave a different experience eating the Kueh Ambon which usually has a very strong oily coconut flavour and taste to it. I definitely liked it and here shown were the last two pieces before they disappeared into my stomach LOL. Not sure where you can buy this in Singapore though. Anyone knows?

Date and Nut Loaf

With the last 300 gm of my mozafati dates, this was what I did with them .....

The recipe was adapted from Alex Goh's Fruity Cakes and I love this loaf to bits. Almost ate the entire loaf by myself, oh greedy me! The recipe uses brown sugar and the combination of the dates with the butter and cinnamon can almost make me salivate all over again just thinking about the loaf baking in the oven.

Here's sharing the recipe with you :-)

Ingredients:

150 gm water
90 gm butter
180 gm brown sugar (reduce it to 150 gm if you want it less sweet)
300 gm chopped dates with seed removed
3 nos medium size eggs, beaten
200 gm cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon powder
100 gm chopped pecan nuts (increase this to 200gm if you want more nuts)

Method:
Boil water, butter and brown sugar together till well combined.

Add in the chopped dates and stir till well blended. Leave aside to cool.

Add into the mixture above the flour, baking powder and baking soda and mix well.

Add in the beaten eggs till well blended.

Add in the chopped nuts till well mix.

Pour into two lined and greased loaf pans till half full.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree C for about 50 minutes to an hour.

Check with a wooden skewer for loaf to be ready.

Jelly Candy Alphabets

I find these jelly candy alphabets very useful for making instant greeting words on cakes and cupcakes.

They are good for me cos' I've so little practise piping out words. I happen to chance upon these at the Japan Home shop at Hougang Point and I understand that they are also available at Sheng Shiong. I remember they cost less than $3 a bottle and you may need several bottles to make the necessary greetings for your cakes.

I noticed that these jelly candy tend to "sweat" or turn damp if you leave your cake in the fridge with them. So It's better not to leave the cake in the fridge after you've placed them on the cake.

My Thank-You Gift

The conversation went like this ....

G: I'm going to put your gal's name down to participate in the
'One minute of Fame' challenge at the Children's Day Celebration.

Me: Ahhhh.....you sure or not?

G: Yes, she must participate lah!

Me: I think must ask her first .... M ...you want to do something for the
concert?

M(my dd) : Mum, I wanna be Ariel and sing and dance.

Me: I have no Ariel Costume .

G: I have, I have ...use the one I bought ...here....(she asked her maid to bring out the costume to let her try).

From then onwards it was the point of no return cos' dd participated in the challenge and won herself two prizes ...one for being fourth in the talent segment and the other was being the 2nd best dress person for a fairy tale character. Thanks to G for loaning my dd the Little Mermaid costume my dd was a happy little girl at the end of the celebration.

So here I will be giving her a loaf of Pumpkin Pecan Quickbread as my token of appreciation. I hope she likes it .

Rocking Girl Blogger

I have received an award from Karlsfoodie ..... happy dance! And here it is .....

I didn't know about it until she left me a comment to check her blog.
It's a nice feeling to know that someone is reading my blog and that it warrants enough an award LOL I'm not quite sure what it means though, but it's always nice to receive something positive from a fellow blogger. :-)
Thanks J from Karlsfoodie :-) You've made my day for me ... Happy dancing!
Now I'll have to pass this award to someone too ....

The award goes to .... Hugbear from http://bakingmum.blogspot.com/

She's a full time working mum and a lovely lady who is ever willing to share what she knows about cooking and baking. She creates lovely dishes and bakes too for all of us to drool at LOL. So here's to you LL ...

Some More Dates

Here are some more dates that I bought from the supermarket and had eaten.
The Bio Deglet dates are a little more fibrous than the Medjoul dates and cost about the same.

The Azizi Mozafati dates below are from Iran and they look pretty plum up when I opened the box. The cost of this was almost half of what I paid for the above.
The presentation was better and the dates came with a good kind of sweetness.
There was also a date cookie recipe printed on one side of the box. So I guess this box of dates would be a good choice to make cakes and cookies with. I will definitely be tasting more of this in the coming days.