Dainty Bites

With primary schools closed for the whole of last week, I took time off from work to stay at home with our little princess. During the week, we did a some revision but mostly we had fun either cooking or just playing games. I don’t like study week. I dread it, in fact. Ask any JC/poly/Uni student. And if I were to call it that, I am sure our princess would come to dread it too. So we kept things light-hearted and generally just enjoying time with each other. We started off the week by making these buns for dinner. She had initially asked for pan-fried buns (生煎包) but there was not a scrap of minced meat to be found in the fridge. So I created my own filing based on whatever I could find. I had used the same dough in my previous post on Nikuman . I love the texture of this dough. The buns were light, soft, springy and the dough was easy enough for a beginner to handle. And the beginner in this case was our little princess. She was tasked to man the mixing in KitchenAid while I did

Despite cooking and eating miso soup for innumerable times, I have to confess that there are still a lot that I don’t know much about miso. So one day at the supermarket, I decided to give the yellowish looking white miso a try. You see, I have been buying brownish looking miso since my very first pot of miso soup. And then disaster struck! Having a quick taste before adding to the soup, I found that the white miso tasted a tad too sweet for a decent pot of miso soup!  Frustrated at being denied a bowl of soup and bewildered at what exactly I ought to do with this packet of this white miso, I went digging for some answers. As it turns out, white miso is sweeter and lighter in taste, colour and texture. It is said that it is more suited for use in salad dressings, glaze and marinades! Argh … Moral of story: do your homework beforehand. Well, there is no use crying over a packet of sweet miso now. So I made a salad dressing out of it, as the first attempt to run down this 1 kg pa

Since we moved to our new place, my KitchenAid has been sitting idle in the corner of my kitchen waiting for me to pay it some attention. Recently, I have been reacquainting myself with my old kitchen friends. I dug out the food processor to make Cheez-it-ish Crackers . And now I dusted the KitchenAid and dump flour into it to take this recipe from Dan Lepard’s Short and Sweet . And since I haven’t turn out a bread for so long, it is always a good idea to check if the yeast have all but given up on me. I have no intention to turn out another brick and going into another emotional tailspin . To test if the yeast are still well and alive, stir the yeast and sugar into a cup a warm water. Let it sit for 5 – 10 minutes. These yeast are good to go! I believe I did a little happy dance in the kitchen when I saw these bubbles. Is it normal for an adult to be this happy with bubbles? No? Okay, I will try to restrain myself next time. The dough came together pretty quickly in the mix

These days I can be heard saying that after walking this earth for a third of a century, I have had enough sugar to last me for a lifetime. In the past, … Whole chocolate bars? … No sweat. A tub of ice-cream with syrup and sprinkles? … Barely satisfying. Dressed up cakes? … Piece of cake! Candies? … Don’t let me near them. If I had known earlier that how people in the west celebrate Halloween, I would have convinced my mom that she ought to put us all, or at least me, on a packet heading there. Then recently, I was watching Wreck It Ralph with my princess and I thought to myself, I would have loved to be in such a land during my youthful days. But as years go pass, I found myself turning away from sugar land. Sugary bites which were once my main reason to live, have totally lost their appeal. I even skipped the dessert section in a buffet often. These days I seldom pick up baking books any more. Most books feature sweet bake goods prominently on their cover and/or their conten

I am still suffering withdrawal syndrome from my recent bout Korean drama serials. After watching more than sixty episodes of Dong Yi, it is hard not to feel otherwise. I need another distraction. Something to occupy my mind and soul. So I went back to my most favourite thing to do in this world – reading cookbooks. More precisely I was researching on more Japanese recipes in hopes to bring my cooking skills to the next level. T hrowing myself into learning to cook something new is always exciting. I can never know what I will like eating tomorrow. And it did help reduce the withdrawal syndrome. Sort of. I was digging around my fridge the other day trying to figure out something to make for dinner. Until I chanced upon a piece of baked salmon which was left over from lunch earlier. I said chanced cos I don’t do lunch duties these days. So in order to avoid doing dinner duty that night, or rather minimal dinner duty, I thought of making ochazuke since there was minimal prep involv