Belated Cooking Spree Afterthought

Despite suffering from flu doesn't impede my spirit to cook, as I need to clear some of the offer food items that I stock up during to Hari Raya Holidays as I can't resist.those huge discount given out by the major supermarkets. For this week, I decided to whip a quick & easy Butter Chicken, Butter Garlic Naan Bread accompanied by Dory Fish Herb Nuggets with Salad to satiate my craving for buttery curry.

So far, most of my recipes are highly influence by the weekly food product discounts offered by the supermarkets.  This is the only way you can enjoy good food while the savings from the discount is transfer to you directly as supermarket have tendency to mark up the price many folds in order to earn profit from the general consumer. Sometimes, I even go to the extent to purchase quick sale products from supermarket as the discount given is half of it actual price due to the product is nearing expiry. For example, a low fat mozzarella 1kg cost $19.90 but after quick sale the price is half to $9.90, Therefore, you can enjoy some of those relatively expensive food products without the need to break your piggy bank.

However, not all quick sale products I will consider as products like eggs, milk and sauces tend to go bad as it's near end of shelf life as I encountered before milk curds in those quick sale milk.Those quick sale product that I've normally purchase are cheese, crackers or honey as it is known fact some cheese are known to age for many years and still consumable, while honey being high in sugar content basically doesn't turn bad if it fully seal airtight and crackers if you consume immediately doesn't poise any health risk. I hope this small nugget of cost saving advice prove usefully for those who want a taste of epicurean while avoid burning a hole in your pocket.

Chili Cheese Wedges

Why eat chili cheese fries from Carl's Jr when you can made your own no hold bars - Chili Cheese Potato Wedges LOL. My rendition is 2x more meaty, 5x more spicy and 10x more smoky that made Carl's Chili Cheese Fries pale in comparison. Enough blabbering and on to the recipe.

Chili Cheese Wedges

• Tex-Mex Chili - Singapore Style
• Potato Wedges
• Mozzarella (cheddar preferable as it melt easier)

Fried the potato wedges till golden brown and drained on Daiso tempura paper. Heat up the Tex-Mex Chili in the microwave oven for 2 mins. Then top the potato wedges with hot chili and mozzarellla. Serve it while hot.

Pan Fried Cajun Dory Fish

Sometimes it's hard to cook fish as you need to heavily marinate it with sauces or spice to mask the fishiness that comes naturally in them. Recently, I found a way (as recommended by Babette) to remove or reduce the fishiness by pre-marinate in herbs & spice infused water. The end result is the fish have a tint of the herb/spice infused water while still retaining it natural fish flavour.

I decide to do a light cajun pan-fried dory fish to test out Babette's theory. True to her words, the pan fried dory came out quite good as the fish do not have the usual predominant fishy taste which I decide to share with everyone.

Pan Fried Cajun Dory Fish

• 2 Pieces of Dory Fish
• Cajun Spice
• Salt
  

Fish Marinade

• Water
• 1 Green Chili Sliced
• 1 Quarter Lime Juiced
• Few Slice of Juliene Lime Skin
• 1 Chopped Garlic
• Dash of Ground Black Pepper

The dory fish available in Singapore is normally frozen solid. Rather than thaw it. You can made use of the fish marinade to thaw and flavor the dory fist at same time. Get a tupperware about the same size and put the dory fish in. Fill the tupperware halfway with water and squeeze the lime juice into the way. Add in the juliene lime skin, garlic, chili and ground black pepper into the water. Give the fish marinade a good stir to let the spice distribute even in the tupperware and seal it with a lid and marinate for 2 to 3 hours or overnight.

Drained off the fish marinade. Drain off excess marinade from the dory fish with a kitchen towel. You can smell the dory fish no longer have the fishy smell but a tinge of spices from the fish marinade. Sprinkle lightly salt and cajun spice on each side of the dory fish. Panfried both side for 10mins or more till it browned then serve it hot.

Tex-Mex Chili - Singapore Style

Tex-Mex Chili is a spicy meat stew made from chili peppers, meat, garlic, onions and cumin in Texas with its root believe to originate from Mexico. I like the spiciness and beefiness of Tex-Mex Chili brought by the minced beef and chili peppers. Tex-Mex Chili is very versatile as you can serve it over tortillas, nachos, fries or as a topping for hot dog or sandwich.

Cooking Tex-Mex Chili is a challenge in Singapore as Chili spices are not readily available so you need to really substitute with local ingredients in order to made it as close to the original Tex-Mex Chili. Unlike those Carl's Jr chili, my rendition is smokey and beefy as I request the butcher to have the beef coarsely ground.

Tex-Mex Chili - Singapore Style

• 300g Mince Beef
• 1/2 Canned Cooked Kidney Beans
• 1 Medium Tomato Chopped
• 1 Medium Onion Chopped
• 17.5g Old El Paso Chili Seasoning (available in Cold Storage)
  
• 1 Tablespoon of Ketchup
• 1 Drop of Wright's Hickory Liquid Smoke (available in Cold Storage)
• 2 Tablespoon of Habanero Hot Sauce (1 Tablespoon of Chili Padi Paste)
• 1 - 2 Drop of Da Bomb Ground Zero Hot Sauce (Optional)
  
• 1/2 to 1 Cup of Water
  
• Oil 
  

Warm up a non-stick pot with 2 tablespoon of oil. Add the chopped onion until it start to turn color or soft. Add in the tomato for another 10 mins. Add in the mince, kidney beans and EL Paso Chili Seasoning and fried until the oil start to separate. You can add 1/2 to 1 cup of water if you find the chili too dry. Add in the Habanero Hot Sauce or Chili Padi paste as replacement into the chili to spice it up. Next, add in the ketchup to moderate the beefiness of the chili. If you found your Chili too wet, try mashing some of the kidney beans will help thicken the chili. I prefer my chili to have tinge of smoked flavor, so I add in a drop of Wright's Liquid Smoke. For those who like to scale the scoville, you can add in 1 to 2 drop of Da Bomb hotsauce to further hot things up.

Oden - Japanese Yong Tau Hu (Fish Cake Soup)

Oden is a Japanese winter soup dish serve with multiple cooked ingredients like radish, konnyaku(jelly made from seaweed), processed fish cake and tofu stewed in a light soy-based broth. The ingredient might varies according to what is available. Oden is the most easiest dish to made as most of the cooked ingredients could be bought off the shelf in the supermarket or asian grocer.

Oden is similar to Singapore Yong Tau Hu  which is also a soup dish that serve with similar ODEN cooked ingredients but with slight difference. In Singapore, we serve it either dry or with soup and serve with sweet bean sauce. As I got a busy working week ahead of me, so I decide to cut corner and cook Oden for my lunch.

Oden

• 4 Fish Balls
• 2 Crab Sticks
• 4 Mushroom Pork Balls
• 4 Vege Balls
• 1 Pack Oden Dry Soup Stock (available at big supermarts or Japanese Grocer)

Boil 1 to 2 cups of water. Add in the Oden Soup Stock into the boiling water. Make sure you do a taste test to ensure the Oden soup don't get too salty. If you cannot find Oden soup stock, you can replace with chicken broth or vegetable broth whichever you have on hand. Add in the fish ball, crab stick, mushroom pork ball, vege balls into the Oden soup stock. Cook for 15mins and it will be ready to serve with rice or eat plainly.

New VS Old - City Square Mall VS Mustafa Centre

It been quite a while since I visited Mustafa Centre to acquire unique indian spices, so I decide to made a trip today so as not to waste the hard to come by long holiday weekend. I decide to bring my PSP camera along to take some shots of my trip. I decided to take the MRT despite it is longer route to Mustafa as I prefer constantly under "aircon". The MRT trip didn't took that long about 15 - 20mins and I drop off at Farrer Park and exit at Serangoon Road.

As I walked out of the MRT station, I'm surprised to see a new Shopping Mall (City Square Mall) is greeting me on the left as I've no idea a mall is in the midst of construction since my last visit to Mustafa. In the year of recession, it seem like new Shopping Malls is popping up all over Singapore and I wonder what this mall have to offer and decide to deviate my itinerary a bit to see what this new mall have to offer to shoppers.

City Square Mall is a mall that market heavily on being "Eco-friendly" with Metro as their major tenant. You will find adequate fashion house, consumer electronics and F&B evenly distribute on each level. As usual, I'm more interested in the F&B so I took the trouble to capture (Link1,Link2,Link3) the F&Bs that will be gracing this mall.Due to most of the retail space not taken up, I decide to cut short my trip in City Square and proceed to Mustafa Centre.

As usual, Mustafa Centre are still bustling with shoppers. It is only of shopping centre in Singapore to house the most products one could imagine from clothings, medicals, electronics, jeweleries to foodstuffs despite limited floorspace. Therefore, navigating thought the level could be daunting for first time shoppers.

The foodstuff section is the most popular section in Mustafa Centre. This is the only photo I manage to capture as the section is so pack with people any moment you get shove or push to one corner. For Indian culinary artist, you be awe by the type of spices sold in Mustafa Centre. It is a mecca for spices, you can find basically any spices needed for Indian cuisine here. For this trip, I bought saffron, curry leaves powder and mustard powder as I got some recipes need this few spices. It still early to say if City Square Mall will poise a threat to Mustafa Centre as both of them are catering for different market segment with City Square Mall targeting up market while Mustafa Centre targeting general populace.

Hari Raya Cooking Spree Afterthought

Seeking solace in cooking different kinds of cuisine is the only remaining simple pleasure I could afford nowadays with everything go up like nobody business. This Hari Raya holiday cookout was a bit of a rush as I need to juggle between a few cuisine all within the same day - Lok Lok Hotpot (for my friend coming over), Le Grand Sandwich (as lunch for my mum) and Chicken Korma (for my workday lunch).

Overall, I enjoyed the cooking experience immensely except for the internal family strife happened yesterday that mired any of the little joy I've collected over the holidays. I don't intend to air dirty linens here as I believe everyone more or less have their own that they wish they can bleach away with Clorox. This is Life and family strife bound to happen. Life is really tiring (for myself I don't imply those who read this blog lol) nowadays with constant tussle in the corporate world and struggles to make ends meet to let alone let family strife to erode away your last haven of happiness. I hope my current feeling of moodiness will subside soon as life still needs to go on. I will still continue to cook more exotic cuisine as "Food is the chicken soup for the soul".