Penne with pan fried chicken and capers

If you like pesto, this is the dish for you. First, mix in a bag, 25g plain flour, salt and pepper. Add diced chicken breast (4) and mix well. Fry the chicken with olive until the pieces are golden brown. Set aside. Add 1 sliced red onion and 1 chopped garlic to the pan and cook for 5 min until softened. Return the chicken to the pan and add 5 tbsp of pesto and 200g of cream cheese. Stir and mix well. Then add 1 tsp of whole grain mustard, 1 tbsp of lemon juice, 2 tbsp of chopped basil and 1-2 tbsp of capers. Mix cooked penne with sauce and serve with shavings of parmesan cheese.

Chickpea and chorizo stew

A Nigel Slater recipe in the Guardian magazine.

2-3 tbsp of olive oil
2 large onions
4 cloves garlic
3 chorizo sausages - about 400g
crushed dried chillies
a glass of dry sherry, vermouth or white wine
5 or 6 decent-sized tomatoes
2 x 400g tins of chickpeas
small bunch of parsley

Warm the olive oil in a deep, heavy-based pan. I use a cast-iron casserole. Peel the onions, roughly chop them and add them to the oil, stirring to coat them, then letting them cook at a moderate heat. Peel the garlic, slice it thinly and stir it into the onions. Leave to cook, partially covered by a lid, until the onions are soft and pale gold.

Cut each sausage into about four fat chunks. Mix these in with the softened onions, then add a teaspoon or so of crushed, dried chillies.Pour in a glass of dry sherry, vermouth or white wine and bring it to an enthusiastic bubble. Chop the tomatoes roughly, add them and bring them to the boil. Add the chickpeas, drained and rinsed, then pour in a can of water. Season with salt and black pepper, bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and leave to cook slowly, half-covered with a lid, for 45 minutes.

I would give it a stir from time to time, and check the liquor levels.What you want to end up with is a rich, brick-red sauce with a spiciness from the chillies and chorizo.

Just before serving, chop the parsley, roughly, then stir into the stew. Serve in shallow bowls.

Spring onion pastry

Crystal Jade Xiao Long Bao has excellent spring onion pastries, and according to l, this restaurant at Tiong Bahru has it as well. I have been there before, around eight years but I can't remember whether it's that good. I have always had the impression that it was difficult to make but thankfully it isn't. My mom came to me one day and said that it was really easy to make and that I should try it. And I did. I have to confess, I didn't really participate in most of the steps. The preparation of the dough, with flour, water and oil, I watched my mom while she did it. Neither did I season the spring onions with salt and oil. But the preparation of the pastry, I made a number of them.

It was perfect in all aspects except the taste, we added too much salt but i guess that's an easy thing to remedy.

150 g sifted plain flour. Pour slowly into the centre of the flour, 150 ml warm water, and mix well. add 2 tbsp of oil and knead till smooth. Cover with moist kitchen towel for 15 minutes. 150 grams of spring onions, add 1/2 tsp of salt before adding 2 tbsp of oil, mix well. Roll the dough

Baked salmon and mushrooms linguine

My Italian craze continues although I suspect that it might end when I visit Paris in April. First, poach salmon fillets (deskinned) in simmering water seasoned with salt and pepper for around 6-8 minutes. Flake the salmon into a dish and keep warm. Melt 3 tbsp of butter at low heat and add 3 tbsp of flour. Pour in 300 ml of chicken stock and whisk until the sauce has thickened. Pour in 150 ml of whipping cream. Pan fry chopped mushrooms in butter for around 2-3 minutes and add them to the white sauce. Pour half of the sauce into a pan of al dente linguine and spoon the pasta onto a oiled baking dish. Add the flaked salmon into the rest of the white sauce and pour over the pasta. Sprinkle some breadcrumbs and grated cheddar over the pasta and bake in a pre-heated oven at 190 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Serve with parsley.

Pork chops with apples and sage

I am getting quite tired of the crockery at my London apartment, and so it's refreshing to be using my mom's kitchenware in Singapore. My grandaunt gave her a set of rectangular dishes, the ones you see in posh restaurants and I have been using them ever since.

This is another of JO's recipes. His new cookbook is actually not too bad, there are some interesting recipes that I would like to try in the future. Pan fry pork chops, seasoned with salt, pepper and dried sage in olive oil, till they are brown on both sides. Place the pork chops in a baking dish and fry sliced apples and chopped sage for around 2 minutes. Place the apples and sage on top of the pork, season, and drizzle some olive oil over. Add a knob of butter on top of each pork chop and bake in the oven at 200 degrees for 8 minutes.

Penne with mixed peppers and bacon

These days, in Singapore, I rather spend my time at home, cooking then to venture out and mingle with the crowds. My mom has a whole lifetime's worth of cookbooks and I have been poring over them, looking for interesting recipes to try out. I do enjoy cooking for my family, and I have some friends coming over for dinner in the next couple of weeks.

This recipe is from an Italian cookbook I got for my mom from the UK, a few years ago. It's simple and the flavour of the bacon blends well with that of the roasted peppers. First, roast three peppers, yellow, red and green under the grill until the skin is blackened and blistered. Place them in a ziploc bag and allow them to cool. The skin should fall off easily. Remove the skin and thinly slice the peppers. Next, fry chopped celery, bacon, onions and garlic for 4 -5 minutes till the onions are soft. Add peppers and continue frying for 1 minute.Pour in some chicken stock and simmer for 20 minutes. Mix in cooked penne and serve with chopped parsley and grated parmesan cheese.

North sea fish soup

This is an excellent alternative to the mediterranean fish soup. Instead of a tomato base, this soup uses cream and egg yolk to give it a silky finish. First, bring 60 ml of white wine, 600 ml fish stock and 2 chopped shallots to the boil. Add in around 500 g of fish, prawns and scallops. I used salmon for this. Simmer for around ten minutes till they are cooked. Mix together 1 egg yolk and 1 tbsp of cream. Remove the soup from the heat and mix in the cream mixture. Add in one peeled, seeded and chopped tomato, chopped parsley and serve with croutons.

Baked fish with home made tomato sauce, capers, olives and mozzarella cheese

I have been really busy for the last month or so, preparing for the viva and my return to Singapore. I am now back, and instead of cooking for M, I am now cooking for my parents. I will continue posting pictures of my cooking here in Singapore, although technically speaking, they are not really appropriate for this webpage, since it's food for my parents. But I shan't be pedantic about this.

For today's dinner, I baked some white fish fillets. I am not too sure what fish it is, as it's my mom's selection and not mine. This is a Jamie Oliver recipe. First, gently fry some chopped garlic, dried oregano, chopped basil stalks and chilli in olive oil till they are fragrant. Pour in a can of plum tomatoes. Do not break up the tomatoes as according to JO, the seeds will make the sauce bitter. Simmer for around thirty minutes and add in basil leaves and 1/2 tbsp of balsamic vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the tomato sauce into a baking dish, and place the fish fillets on top. Season lightly with salt, black pepper and some lemon juice. Scatter some olives and capers over the fish. Drizzle over the the fish some extra virgin olive oil. Sprinkle some mozzarella cheese over the fish and bake in the oven at 200 degrees for around 15-20 minutes till the cheese is brown.

Chicken with paprika, garlic and lemon

Been busy preparing for my viva tomorrow, and so I was unable to cook anything complex. This chicken dish is simple and quick, it can be done in under 20 minutes. Simply fry diced chicken with shallots, crushed garlic, paprika and diced capsicums till the chicken is brown and cooked. Add in the juice of a lemon and some fresh parsley. Season with salt and pepper and serve with cooked pasta. Done.

Avocado pesto linguine

I've been sick for the last week or so, fever and cough. Thankfully, M was there and she took good care of me. She cooked sukiyaki for me and it turned out pretty well. So I haven't been cooking for quite some time. This pasta dish is probably my first serious comeback in the kitchen. It's a Waitrose recipe and honestly, they do have some interesting stuff around. For this dish all you need to do is blend 1 avocado, deseeded and chopped, the juice of a 1/4 of a lemon, 1 chilli, deseeded and chopped, 25g of fresh flat parsley, 40 g of fresh basil, 25 g of hard italian cheese, 1 garlic clove and 1 tbsp of olive oil, add it to cooked linguine and mix well. And amazingly, that's it.

Normandy pork with crusty bread

This is another recipe from the BBC website. As always, just click on the title of this entry for the recipe. I modified the recipe by quite a bit. I added fresh mushrooms and carrots to the casserole, and I added a bit of cream to the sauce before I baked it under the grill. I also sprinkled some cheese on top of it before I served the dish to M. The taste of this dish is alright, although it would be much better, if instead of condensed mushroom soup, chicken stock and porcini mushrooms or any other strong tasting mushrooms were used as the base for the casserole. I would also add more cream to it. I will experiment more with this recipe one day.

Belgos

Since I moved to London, there is one restaurant that I have been to, more often than any other eating places here, and that's Belgos, a Belgium seafood restaurant. Last weekend, we were there for dinner. Belgos is clearly a very popular venue as even though we were there at 6pm, there was a 1 hour waiting period as we were without a reservation. We had to walk around Covent Garden for a while. The starters were as unexceptional as ever. We ordered chicken liver pate, cheese sticks and a smoked haddock and potato soup. There's nothing really much I can say about them. The only reason why anyone should go to Belgos is the 1kg Steamed Mussel Pots. We ordered the Green Thai Curry, and the Traditional (white wine sauce) mussel pots. The portions were as enormous as ever, they are 1 kg each after all and the mussels were large and juicy. For 12 pounds, this is actually quite a good deal for seafood in London.

M's favourite food: Rosti

This is undeniably M's favourite food: Rosti and to be precise, creme fraiche since, as you can see in the picture, she's perfectly capable of eating a spoonful of creme fraiche without anything else to eat it with. This is, therefore, one of those recipes that M forces me to make, on a very regular basis. I think it's three times in a week so far. She bugs me so often about it that she's actually willing to make it herself when I refuse to do so. But sadly, she is not very receptive to instructions. To cook this, you have to first grate the potato and mix it with melted butter then season it with salt and pepper. Then, you are supposed to fry it with olive oil until the potato is crispy and cooked on both sides. Unfortunately, she has an unhealthy obsession with butter and so she decided to fry it with butter instead of olive oil. What happened was that the butter turned brown rapidly, burning the rosti in the process. She was quite distraught to find a blackened rosti when she removed it from the pan.

Thankfully, I can follow instructions and so it looks perfectly fine today.

Spaghetti carbonara

I have always assumed that carbonara sauce requires the use of cream, and so I was quite surprised to find a recipe that omits it. This is taken from the BBC website. I am just going to cut and paste the recipe here.

Ingredients
½ pack fresh spaghetti
¼ pack wild mushrooms
30g/1oz butter
2 egg yolks
50g/1½oz parmesan cheese


Method
1. Cook the spaghetti in plenty of boiling salted water for 3 to 4 minutes.
2. Fry the mushrooms in the butter, until they darken and release their juices.
3. In a bowl lightly beat together the yolks, parmesan cheese and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
4. Stir the fried mushrooms into the egg mixture.
5. Drain the pasta, add to the sauce and stir immediately.

I added a bit of fresh parsley as a contrast to the richness of the cheese, and also to get rid of it since it's expiring soon. By the way, M says that this is fake carbonara as there's no cream. I am just going to ignore her.

Eat Thai

We were back at St Christopher's place today to meet M's friend from Singapore and we found a Thai restaurant there that we are likely to frequent from now on. It's called Eat Thai. Click on the title of this entry to get to their webpage. The restaurant itself has a simple layout; no gaudy statues of Buddhas or monkeys on tables or hanging on walls. It's just white, minimalist decor: tables and chairs; the bare minimum. You can tell that this is the kind of furnishing that I prefer.

We ordered special seafood cakes served with sweet chilli sauce, steamed king scallops with red curry paste, coconut cream, egg, palm sugar, fish sauce, basil leaves and kaffir lime leaves and green curry with chicken. There's not much I can say about the seafood cakes and the green curry except that it's competently cooked; for me, I can't tell the difference between exceptional green curry and average green curry. I can only tell when it's mediocre. The scallops, on the other hand, were impressive. The scallops were fresh and meaty. Served on their shells, they came with a rich red curry paste. I have never contemplated eating scallops with red curry paste and I was pleasantly surprised that it was an excellent combination. Egg white was drizzled on top of the paste and I think it was to tone down the spice. The basil and lime leaves added a further complexity to its taste, a natural freshness that contrasted well with the curry. In all, it's just that one dish that really impressed me. M and I wouldn't mind going back there again just to try out the rest of its menu.

Tomato soup

Had a nice dinner with L and J in Singapore the last time I was back and tomato soup was what I made as a starter for them. Fry diced onions, carrots and celery until they have softened. Add tomatoes quartered (as ripe as possible), garlic, a bay leaf, some mixed herbs and fry for a while. Add some chicken stock and simmer for 30 minutes. Puree the vegetables and return to the soup. Serve with basil leaves and warm bread.

Udon soup

For dinner, we had Udon soup and while it may look like I have cooked a packet of instant noodles, I am happy to inform you that the soup was made from scratch. Ok fine, I used the Yamasa Konbu Tsuyu Strait Sauce for the soup, added it to chicken stock. Its the sauce that you use for dipping cold japanese noodles. Fresh ingredients, mushrooms, carrots, pak choi, pork, egg, tofu, udon noodles and thats a complete meal.

Fifth Floor at Harvey Nichols London

Three or four years ago, my parents and I had a really good meal at the Fourth Floor at Harvey Nichols Leeds. Although,I have to admit, I have absolutely no recollection of what I ate that day for lunch, I just remember queueing up at 12 noon sharp as they don't take reservations. I guess this is one reason why I am writing about my restaurant experiences so that I remember the good ones to introduce to parents and friends. Anyway, we decided to try out the Fifth Floor at Harvey Nichols London to see whether its of the same standard.

We walked in for Sunday lunch. It wasn't full, which in London is a bad sign and so I was a bit apprehensive. The decor as M puts it, was space-age like, minimalist and very white and blue. So on to our selections. For our starters, I ordered a smoked duck salad with parmesan croutons, pomengranate seeds and shallot dressing and M chose the eggs benedict. For our mains, because of a miscommunication between M and I, both of us ordered the same thing, stuffed chicken leg with truffles and mushrooms, braised lentils and a cream sauce. For dessert, we shared a pineapple cannelloni, with passion fruit, white chocolate sticks, mango sorbet and a raspberry dressing.

Verdict: Excellent meal. Not as good as the Savoy Grill but still of a very high standard. My smoked duck salad was a excellent blend of flavours, the burst of sweet juices from the pomegranate seeds, the crunchiness of the parmesan croutons and the sweet and sour taste of the shallot dressing. All these flavours complement the smoked duck and the salad well. No one flavour dominated the taste buds. The duck was lightly smoked. In all, the salad was light, natural and a good start to the meal. M's eggs benedict was well prepared as well. The thing about eggs benedict is that so many things can go wrong. You can make a mess of poaching the egg, something, which has happened to me in the past. The hollandaise sauce takes a lot of work to prepare if you are making it from scratch. Some cooks make it too rich such that it overpowers the taste of the ham and the egg. The chef at this restaurant performed all these tasks admirably (and of course she should, for the price we are paying). The hollandaise sauce was just right.

As for our mains, stuffed chicken with truffles and mushrooms, the chicken was (I think) poached for a while before placed under a grill so that the skin is brown and slightly crispy. It was poached to the point where the chicken is just cooked and slightly pink. It was moist and very tender. The only problem I had with this dish is that it's just a tad too salty. I am not too sure whether I have tried lentils before in my life but I really like it, soft and slightly crunchy, it went well with the cream sauce. Interestingly, this dish is almost identical to the one we had at the Connaught, another one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants and on checking the profile of the chef at this restaurant, we realised that she had worked with him before.

The dessert was literally bursting with fruitiness, raspberry, pineapple, passionfruit, mango but it tasted natural and I did not suffer from a overdose of sugar.

So a pretty good Sunday lunch, it's 26.50 pounds for three courses which is not so bad for the quality of the food. If you go on a weekday, it's only 17-19 pounds. The service was excellent (the waiters and waitresses smile!) and I needed that after my experience with the waiters at Sofra.

Scrambled eggs with peppers

The weather is extremely bad in London these days; wind speeds up to 25 mph and heavy rain. Last week, we were stuck at a tube station for almost an hour as we didn't have umbrellas with us. Today, we woke up to dreary skies and a slight drizzle. Also, it didn't help that the weather forecast was for heavy rain in the afternoon. So it looks like a lazy day ahead for us.

Simple food was what we needed for brunch and so I made scrambled eggs with peppers, another recipe from my French cookbook. I guess its nothing really special despite the French label attached to it but still its filling and warm, good enough for winter brunch. Sautee some chopped onions in olive oil till soft and add chopped peppers and diced garlic. Sprinkle some paprika and fry for around 5 minutes till they are soft. Make sure that most of the liquid in the pan has evaporated. Add in a can of chopped tomatoes and season with salt, pepper and some mixed herbs. Simmer at medium heat for around 15 minutes till most of the liquid in the pan has evaporated and the mixture is thick. Add in lightly beaten eggs and cook at low heat for 5-7 minutes, stirring constantly till the mixture has the desired mixture. Serve with parsley and grated cheese.

Chicken fricassee

Didn't do much cooking for the past few days as it was the new year weekend. There were people to meet up with for lunch, and generally, I was too lazy to cook when I have just spent the whole day outside, wandering the shopping streets. Incidentally, we discovered a pretty good pizza and kebab takeaway. So the only serious cooking I did was this French dish, Chicken fricassee. According to my French cookbook, a fricassee is a classic dish in which poulty or meat is first seared in fat, then braised with liquid until cooked. I modified the recipe as I wanted more vegetables in it, the celery and carrots are not in the recipe itself.

Anyway, to cook it, first sear chicken portions with butter over medium heat till they are golden in colour. Sprinkle with flour and turn the pieces to coat. Cook over a low heat for around 4 minutes. Pour in white wine, bring to the boil and add chicken stock. Push the chicken pieces to one side and scrape the base of the casserole, stirring until well blended. Bring the liquid to the boil and add bouquet garni and some fresh rosemary. [At this stage, I added the chopped carrots and diced celery] Cover and simmer over a medium heat until the chicken is tender. During this time, fry mushrooms with butter and 1 tsp of lemon juice over a medium high heat in a separate pan until the mushrooms are golden. Remove the mushrooms and add water, sugar and onions to the pan. Mix well. [The recipe actually requires small white onions but I am not a fan of eating whole onions so I decided to just dice a shallot for this] Simmer the onions, water and sugar for 10 minutes and pour the mixture over the mushrooms. When the chicken is cooked, remove it from the pan and discard the bouquet garni. Add the cooking juices from the vegetables to the casserole. Bring the boil and whisk cream into the sauce and cook for 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and onions and cook for a further 2 minutes. Adjust the seasoning and pour the sauce over the chicken, sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Instead of having this with pasta, M made dumplings (from a packet mix) and added them to the casserole while the chicken is simmering. Thats the four lumps you see in the picture.