Changi Terminal 3

Here's another gigantic area for us folks to walkabout. Read all about it here in the link ...

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/310697/1/.html

First impressions ..... it's huge, it's new .... it's cold and where is the passenger crowd?

Whenever we visit airports, the viewing gallery where planes land and take off is a must to see.

I was disappointed cos' I prefer the one at Terminal 2 which is so much nearer to the planes.

Our favourite food .... we are in the middle of an inflation, so pricing at the Food court and Swenson's seem to be above the rates of their branches in the heartlands. And of course the foodcourt on a weekend is perpetually crowded.

Marina Barage

We paid a visit to the latest Singapore icon here. The Marina Barrage is the newest freshwater catchement area in this urbanised city. Read all about it here in this link http://www.pub.gov.sg/marina/Pages/default.aspx

Dd had a great time here eventhough it was a hot afternoon. The water play area is huge and of course it will be the children's paradise here. The only setback is that this place has no showering facilities for the children. Other than that it's a good place to take a walk in the late afternoon to soak in the view of the sea and feel the wind in one's face. The place however is not easily accessible by public transport at the moment.

20 Years Wedding Anniversary

It's another simple celebration this year with just the two of us after the bewitching hour of midnight. We headed down to an eatery call Kim's Place which sells seafood and had a Thai crab tang hoon supper. The eatery is located at Yio Chu Kang Road and has quite a nice ambience.
At that hour of the night there was only one other couple who looked like they were having their dinner. The crab was big and firm in the flesh and the supper was good! I don't mind having another go at this place but I believe the parking would be a challenge if you have your meal during the normal hours in the daytime. By the way this eatery closes after 2 am.

Souperlicious

Dh and I had R&R at Suntec last weekend and was surprised to see this new eatery that was just opposite Carrefour. It served mainly soup, salads and sandwiches. There were about 8 varieties of soups, 4 variations of sandwiches and salads. A combo of a half sandwich and a soup came up to about $12. I ordered the wild mushroom soup and had a tuna sandwich while dh ordered beef goulash soup and had a Waldorf salad which mainly had fruits in it. If you like soup, salads and sandwiches ...then I would say ...go for it!

This was the ice lemon tea drink I had. Notice anything that's unusual in the drink ... dh said that it's the first time he saw ice lemon tea served without ice and I didn't even noticed it LOL

Henderson Waves

I was recovering from a cough and a flu during the Deepavali weekend and was house bound for the entire week. Feeling that I needed some fresh air to cheer me up, dh suggested we make our way to the the Henderson Waves to sink in the latest and newest happening in Singapore.

Here's the link to read all about the Southern Ridges and their LINKs ....

Pasir Panjang Heritage

We parked at the Telok Blangah Hill Park and took a short walk to the bridge before the rain came pouring down. It was a refreshing walk for me to greet the wind, the rain and the sun too.

Xin Wang at Kovan

It was one of those rare weekend that the whole family of six got to eat together. So we all headed towards Kovan to eat at Xin Wang ,a Hong Kong Cafe. Ambience here is pretty good and we got to sit at a cushioned bench at the window seat. The food variety served us well enough as the variety allowed us to eat dim sum and western food together. So here you see ham and egg sandwich, baked pork chop, curry chicken, wanton mee and dim sum like har kow, siew mai, prawn paste chicken, glutinous lotus rice, spring roll and fried chive dumpling.

For dessert we ordered a mango ice cream ice kacang to be shared by three of us. The bill came up to be $90. It is a tad expensive eating dim sum here but it was comfortable and the ambience was good! The service was good too as we went there early before the lunch crowd. I won't mind going there again once in a while as a family.

Steamed Leather Jacket in Hot Bean Paste

I found this paste being sold at the supermarket recently and used this to perpare a steamed fish dish. It is really convenient to use this as I just needed to get a fresh fish , put in 2 tbsp of oil, some sliced ginger pieces and added a quarter cup water to dilute the paste before pouring the paste onto the fish. I let the fish marinade in the paste for about an hour before popping the dish into the microwave oven to be steamed. For the fish, I used Leather Jacket cos the fish is meaty and smooth and has minimum bones.

Here's a pic of the fish. It is an ugly fish but the meat is very suitable for steaming. Usually it's sold in the supermarket with the head chopped off.

Banana Oatmeal Loaves

For the past two days, I had the chance to supply some of my bakes to a food kitchen in Upper Serangoon near the Nativity Church. A friend of mine volunteered to give her bakes for the week to the charity and I became her baking associate LOL (that's what she calls me :-))

Tried out this recipe from the website Recipezaar and it was good. The two loaves here plus fifty vanilla honey cuppies made their way to the centre.





Here's sharing the recipe for a loaf ....


Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup rolled oats
1 cup mashed banana mixed with 1 tsp of banana essence
1/3 cup UHT milk mixed with 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 nos. medium eggs, beaten

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 180 degree C and grease a 8x4 inch loaf pan.

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Combine all the wet ingredients together.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently stir till the batter is well mixed.

Pour batter into the loaf pan and bake for about 50-60 minutes or till skewer comes out clean.

Remove pan and leave on wire rack to cool.

Remove the loaf from the pan and cool thouroughly on the wire rack before storing.

Vanilla Apple Cake

Here's another challenge from Sweet and Simple Bakes and here is the recipe . I found the sugar content to be too high and reduced it by 50 g. As the batter I got was pretty stiff, I added about 4 tbsp of Irish Cream Bailey's before topping the batter with the sliced apples.

Here's sharing with you what I did .....

Ingredients:

250 g unsalted butter, softened
200 g raw sugar
4 eggs, beaten
250 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla essence
4 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey's
2 green apples, cored and cut into wedges
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Method:

Pre-heat oven at 180 degree C , greased and line an 8" round springform pan.

Beat the sguar and butter together till light and fluffy .

Add in the eggs, flour, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla essence and Bailey's and stir till a smooth batter is obtained.

Lay the cut apple wedges on the top of the batter and sprinkle the cinnamon sugar onto the apple wedges.

Bake for about 60 minutes or till skewer comes out clean.

Remove cake from pan and leave to cool completely on a wire rack before cutting the cake.

Keep cake in air-tight container and refrigerate cake if keeping it for about a week.

Please click HERE for this month's round-up.

F1 Grand Prix Sunday in Singapore

It was Sunday evening and dh and I were down at the Padang this time to watch the race live in front of the big screen set up near the Cricket Club. Armed with a mini TV we were able to barely hear the commentary given live. The crowd here watched the race with the thundering roar of the twenty F1 engines blasting at the back of us. Here now to enjoy and relive the race again ....

Let me have the videos here do the talking .....


The race here began with all the cars jostling for better positions. It was great to see how the cars bunched up and then scrambled out. Massa lead the pack here.

A chance to see Lewis Hamilton face to face or should I say face to helmet LOL. See if you can spot his eyes through his helmet. He was leading the pack with 51 more laps to go.

What made the F1 race more exciting for the evening were the thrills and spills of several incidents happening which upset the top favourites and resulted in the underdog to win.
Here was the crashed car from Piquet and the stalling of Barrichello's Earthdreams car.
As a result the two were out of the race.

The Team Ferrari blunder at the Pitt Stop that dashed Massa's hope of ever winning the race in Singapore this year. When watching this I could feel the hopelessness of the driver who couldn't do anything except to wait and wait ... a good whole couple of minutes before his Pitt Stop mates arrived to remove the fuel hose. And even then when they arrived, they struggled for sometime before they could remove the jammed fuel hose. All that precious time lost and his race seemed at this moment to have stalled till the end. I felt so sorry for him.

With the last 4 laps to go Kimi lost concentration and therefore lost control of his car and crashed out of the race. This incident finally sealed the fate and dashed all hopes of Team Scuderia Ferrari winning the race here.

The winner of Singtel Singapore Grand Prix 28th September 2008 is .....
Fernando Alonso from ING Renault F1 Team

He was the underdog who started last in the grid position because during the qualifying round his car stalled and he had no timing. He went into the race saying that his race was already lost at the last grid position as chances of him overtaking in the Singapore Street Track was tough. For him to win at his position a miracle must happen in the form of the appearance of the Safety Car. And the miracle did happen for him .... three times during the race!
So do you believe in miracles? I do! I do! I do! :-)

F1 Racing in Singapore

Dh managed to get tickets for the event and mind you, they were costly. Three days walkabout tickets for 2 persons at $320 would not be affordable for people below a certain income group. Anyway, dh and I spent the Friday night having our ear drums almost blasted away. Thanks to ear plugs which we managed to buy at the gates, the noise for the night became more bearable.

As we parked our car at the Golden Shoe carpark, I could already hear the deafening sounds of the sports car blasting and screeching away. It was already a deafening experience LOL.

Here you see evidence of my existence at the race LOL. A night race with a city circuit and daylight lighting condition. Many of us just stood behind the barricades to watch the cars zoom past and I had hardly any time to make out who was driving that car.

For those who are braver, you could book a standing spot at the dangerous turns and here the drivers have no choice but to slow down their cars to avoid collisions into the wall barricades. Only at these turns did I have a chance to at least make out the color combination of these sports cars.

Here I managed to snap some cars zooming away and maybe one of them could be driven either by Lewis Hamilton or Felipe Massa or even Kimi Raikkonen. A chance to also be in the driver's seat? Just look up into the gigantic screens near the grand stands which were projecting information about the race live!

Hands up ..... steady .... listen .... shoot! Here's the most common stance of the species with cameras during the night!

The fire fighter standing and hoping that the unexpected will not happen!

And finally what is attending an F1 Race without a sports car parking next to our car LOL.

Ice Monster

This was the eatery we visited at Plaza Singapura when dh and I went for our R&R. There were many customers there when we had our dinner around 9 pm. It's a simple meal for us and the food is passable. However I find the sitting is really too close for comfort. I believe the food offered is mainly Taiwanese fair.

Taiwanese Beef Brisket Noodles ..... it was good with the meat being tender and tasty and the gravy too.

Fried Gyoza ..... the dumpling skin just had two folds over the meat and it came as a shock to me cos' I've never seen fried gyoza wrapped this way. Even though the meat was tasty I found the skin too thick for my liking.

Mango Salad wraped in egg crepe ..... the mango salad had a tangy and sweet flavour and as I ate it, the juices oozed out.

Japanese Cotton Cheesecake

This cheesecake is one of my boys favourite teatime and supper snack. I got the recipe from the book titled Fantastic Cheesecake by Alex Goh. I would definitely be baking this a couple of more times for the family.


Here's sharing with you what I did ....

Ingredients:

160 g cream cheese
25 g butter
120 g milk

40 g flour
30 g cornflour

4 nos. egg yolks

4 nos. egg whites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
100 g sugar
pinch of salt

Method:

Line the bottom of an aluminium 8" square pan and grease the sides with shortening.

Place cream cheese, butter and milk in a mixing bowl and stir over double-boiler until thick. Remove from the double boiler.

Add the flour and corn flour into the mixture above and then the egg yolks and stir till well blended.

Whisk the egg whites together with the cream of tartar, sugar and salt until soft peak is attained.

Fold the soft peak egg whites into the cream cheese mixture till well incorporated.

Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake it in a water bath at a pre-heated oven at 160 degree C for about 40-45 mins or till the cake tests firm or golden brown.

Remove the cake from the oven and then remove the cake from the cake pan immediately.
Set aside to cool. Refrigerate when keeping cake overnight.

Jurong Fishery Port

Dh and I had the chance to visit one of the two fishery ports in Singapore. The Night Tour had us reached the Jurong Fishery Port at 3 am. It was bustling with activities with people unloading crates of fish, displaying lots of fish, selling and buying fish, packing and weighing baskets of fish.

The sights and scenes were mind boggling and not to mention the purine smell of fish too LOL

Let me have the pics do the talking ....




This is the auction area where buyers and suppliers gather. We the visitors were ushered to the viewing gallery which is at the left side of this photo. Visitors walk above the hall and we had a bird's eye view of the myriads of fishes there displayed mainly on the floor and also in baskets and some in boxes too. Most of the workers here wear yellow boots :-)

A fish merchant here displaying his fish for the buyers to make an offer. See the many kinds of fish .... can you name most of them? :-)

Another fish merchant displaying his fish. See the weighing scale in the centre? It's huge! And this is the first time in my life I see this many kinds of fishes lying on the floor LOL.

Here we have the fish merchant collecting his money after a successful deal was done. See his books to record deals and his calculate to punch out bargained prices ....

It was a good experience to have seen this fishery port. I was surprised to see quite a number of foreign workers coming into the port to buy fish. Many of them go home with at least a 2 kg fish in a red plastic bag. I can imagine that if I bought my 2 kg Thread fin fish here, I would need to pay only half the price that I had to pay at the Giant supermarket. But then who will help me process the fish, clear the innards and fillet them nicely for me? I am thankful that the fresh fish section of the supermarkets exist today :-)

Rosemary

Dh and I had the chance to go on a Night Tour with our Catechist community. We arrived at the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Vegetable Market at about 4 am. I managed to get this lot of rosemary all for $3. Usually I would have to pay $3 for about six to eight sprigs of these rosemary at the supermarket.

I think I can make maybe eight roast chickens with this lot of rosemary I bought from the wholesale market LOL. I gonna keep some of them in the fridge vegetable compartment and freeze the rest.

Victoria Sandwich Cake

Here's another challenge from Sweet & Simple Bakes and the original recipe is given HERE .

I baked this for dh's simple birthday celebration at home and he liked it. I baked the sponge cake in a single 8" cake pan and sliced it into two instead of baking two sponges. I also added in a quater cup Irish Cream Bailey's for that special flavour.

Ingredients:

For the sponge:
175 g unsalted butter at room temperature
175 g caster sugar
4 medium size eggs, beaten
175 g cake flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder sieved together with the cake flour
one quarter cup Irish Cream Bailey's

For the fillings:
enough sweet strawberry jam to cover the cut surface of the cake.

Buttercream:
75 g unsalted butter at room temperature
175 g icing sugar
1 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey's

Cream the buttercream ingredients together till you get a pale, fluffy and light texture.
There should be enough to cover the cut surface of the cake.

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar till the mixture becomes pale, light and fluffy.

Add in the eggs and the flour mixture a portion at a time till all are blended in.

Add in the Bailey's till well blended.

Pour batter into a lined 8" cake pan and bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree for about 35-40 mins. or till skewer comes out clean.

Remove cake pan and cool for about 10 mins before removing the cake from the pan to cool further.

When the sponge is fully cool, slice it into two parts equally and spread jam first and then buttercream before placing the other half on top.

I added icing sugar on the cake surface to get the birthday prints and also added some red sanding sugar to make the cake more festive looking.

Please click HERE for the round-up.

Mascarpone Cheese Pound Cake

What can I do with my reconstituted frozen Mascarpone cheese? It would really be such a waste to have to throw it away as I can't possibly use it to make my tiramisu. I searched the net desperately for a recipe that made use of mascarpone cheese to bake a cake. There were not many but I did happen to chance upon one which I adapted it to make the cake you see here.

I also sprinkled some mozzarella cheese on top before baking and found that the cheese gave the cake top a rather crispy texture when the cake was eaten warm. However when I kept the cake in the refrigerator and microwaved it before eating , the cheese top became chewy. At a friend's suggestion I put the piece of cake for about a minute in the oven toaster after microwaving it for about 30 secs. This way gave the cake a crispy top as good as the day I baked it.
The cheese gave the cake a rather moist texture and it is also quite dense with the aroma of the cheese flavour. It definitely will go down well with a hot cup of lemon tea :-)



Ingredients:

250 g unsalted butter, soften
150 g raw sugar
50 g caster sugar
450 g mascarpone cheese
3 nos. egg, beaten
2 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey's
300 g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
a handful of mozzarella cheese


Method:

Cream butter and sugar together till light pale in color and fluffy.

Add in the eggs, Bailey's , flour, baking powder and cheese in three portions and stir till well blended.

Pour batter into a lined 9" round pan and sprinkle some mozzarella cheese on the top.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree C for about 50-60 minutes or till skewer comes out clean.

Remove cake from pan and cool on a wire rack.

Cool completely before storing in an air-tight container.

Macadamia Nut Choco Chip Cookie

This cookie recipe had been in my to-do list for the longest time. Finally I had the chance and baked this for Teachers' Day. So I baked this and packed them up for dd and ds J to bring to school for their Teachers' Day celebration.

Ingredients:

250 g salted butter, soften
1 cup caster sugar (225 g)
1/2 cup brown sugar (90 g)
3 nos. medium size eggs, beaten
2 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey's
340 g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
300 g macadamia nuts, chopped
300 g chocochips

Method:

Cream butter and sugars together till you get a light and fluffy texture.

Add in the eggs, Bailey's, bicarbonate soda and flour in three portions.

Add in the chocolate chips and chopped nuts and stir till well mixed.

Refridgerate the dough for about an hour before distributing them on the baking sheets.

Drop 1 teaspoonful of the dough onto a lined cookie sheet and bake them in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree C for about 10-12 minutes or till they become a golden brown.

Cool the cookies on a cooling rack thoroughly before storing them in an air tight container.

Cookies can be kept for about a week without refrigeration or for about two weeks with refrigeration.

Banana Chocolate Maple Ice Cream

I used 4 frozen ripen Dole bananas in this recipe. The maple syrup also gave the ice-cream a googy kind of texture and it's characteristic taste. You may wanna reduce either the sugar or the syrup if you find it too sweet for you.

Ingredients:

4 nos. ripen bananas, mashed
250 mls UHT milk
250 mls dairy whipping cream
50 g caster sugar
100 g bitter sweet chocolate
1/2 cup maple syrup

Method:

Blend bananas with the whipping cream and keep them refridgerated.

Heat up the milk in a pot and add in the maple syrup, sugar and chocolate.

Stir the above mixture till all have blended together.

Pour the above milk mixture into the prepared cold banana cream mixture.

Stir till all have blended together and leave the combined mixture in the refridgerator for a couple of hours.

A couple of hours later, pour the mixture into the freezer bowl with the paddle attachment running.

Allow mixture to freeze until desired consistency is reached.

Keep the ice-cream overnight.

Stuffed Portobello Mushroom

Here's another way to eat this delicious mushroom.
Wipe the mushrooms clean with a wet cloth. Cut off the stalk of these mushrooms. Lay them on a baking tray. Sprinkle some pepper and olive oil over the mushrooms. Spread some mayonnaise over each mushroom and then place a tsp of smashed up luncheon meat onto each mushroom. Sprinkle some mozarella cheese over each mushroom and then bake them in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree C for about 20 minutes. Once the cheese browns, the mushrooms are ready to be eaten.

Strawberry Yoghurt Ice Cream

Here's a yummy one which I did without the ice-cream maker. I adapted the recipe from HERE
Thanks L for sharing it in her blog.

Ingredients:

400 g fresh strawberries
400 g strawberry flavoured yoghurt (2 tubs)
100 g sugar
200 g non-dairy whipping cream

Method:

Blend fresh strawberries with the strawberry flavoured yoghurt till smooth.

Whisk non-dairy whipping cream with the sugar till thick.

Mix both the above ingredients together till well blended.

Pour the above into container and freeze overnight till the mixture is firm.

Omurice, my version.

In between chasing a couple of Korean dramas I also watched this Japanese movie called
Lunch Queen . In this movie, the dish called Omurice, when eaten by the lead character (who had a very hard life) enabled her to feel the emotions of love and she survived and existed because of the many good food she could eat.

Omurice, my version is rice fried with chicken meat, chopped garlic and tomato sauce and then wrapped with an omelet made from 3 eggs. I was game to try making it cos' it looks interesting enough.

I searched the net and managed to get a video showing me the intricacies of getting the rice wrapped in the omelet. HERE is the Japanese chef showing you how it's done. I can tell you that it's not easy but I managed somehow but the omelet was a little bit overdone LOL.

Dh tried my version of Omurice and said he liked it LOL. As for myself, using three eggs for this dish is a little too overwhelming cos' I usually use three eggs to fry a tub of rice which can feed the whole family of six LOL.

Award Time

I made some new friends when I participated in the Sweet and Simple Bakes Challenges.
There is Sowmya from Creative Saga who surprised me with this Brilliante Weblog Award.

From the title of the award, I guess it has to do with some kind of "brilliance" in the way I share about my cooking and baking LOL. Actually, I do very simple writing and recipe sharing. Anyway I do wanna say "thank-you, Sowmya" for this award.

I managed to find out the lovely gesture that's given behind this award from HERE.

I will pass this to some of the blogs that I enjoy reading .....

Peony of http://myculinaryjournal.blogspot.com/

Jo of http://www.karlsfoodie.blogspot.com/

Joyce of http://jthorge.blogspot.com/

Edith of http://www.preciousmoments66.blogspot.com/

Rosie of http://rosiebakesapeaceofcake.blogspot.com/

Ellena of http://www.ellenaguan.blogspot.com/

Zuraini of http://quickneasytreats.blogspot.com/

Banana Chocochips Muffin

This is the third challenge at Sweet and Simple Bakes and the recipe is found HERE .
When the muffins were fresh out of the oven, my dd couldn't keep her hands off the cooling rack LOL. The fragrance and sweetness of the bananas made the freshly baked muffins yummylicious and moist. This recipe is definitely a keeper.



Click HERE for the round-up.