Kway Teow Soup

In my life time, there have been many times when I have been right. For example:

When you go out without bringing an umbrella, it is 98.3% guaranteed to rain.

When you are in a rush and mumbling "excuse me" scrambling your way up the escalator to the train platform, it is 96.2% likely that the train doors will have just closed when you are 0.1 steps away from it.

When you are conducting an interview with someone very important and who you want to impress, that it is 99.7% likely you have visible dried up snot peering out of your nose. You will realise this only after the interview is over.

Not only do I try to be right, I also try to be precise about it.

But I am also grateful for the times when I have been wrong.

Such as, my belief that I hate vegetables 100%. I have been wrong once, and I am happy to be wrong again. Perhaps the advancing years have changed my taste buds, and vegetables on my plate have become less offensive. My 100% fondness for cakes, chips, and ice cream, unfortunately, have remain unchanged.

Still searching for simple recipes, I chanced upon The Little Teochew's Kuay Teow Soup and it seemed 94.7% doable for The Failed Chef.

Kway Teow Soup

3/4 cup chicken stock
3/4 cup water,
150g Kuay teow noodles (or other noodles)
100g vegetables (if you are vegetable-shy like me you will probably cut the leaves into smaller portions)
Fillings (meat, fishball, egg, yong tau foo, prawns etc - I used sliced mushrooms and peas because that is all I have)
Fried shallots (garnishing)

1. Boil water.
2. Pour some of the boiling water into a bowl and soak sliced mushrooms. I have no idea why I do this but I've watched my mom do it in the past. Probably to get rid of mushroom smell. Anyone?
3. Since I have just taken the kway teow noodles out of the fridge, I blanch it for 30s first in boiling water. Drain and set aside. I would prefer not to mix it with the soup in case I cannot finish eating the serving at one sitting.
4. Leave about 3/4 of boiling water in the saucepan, and boil it combining with the chicken stock.
5. Once your soup comes to a boil again, bring the fire on low.
6. Blanch the greens and fillings until cooked, set aside. Turn off flame.

By now I will have
(a) a colander containing the kway teow noodles
(b) a plate of vegetables and fillings
(c) a saucepan of soup.

This is a one-bowl dish but I have three separate dishes because I try my best to make things complicated 23.7% of the time. When I am ready to eat, I'll just take the appropriate amounts of fillings, vegetables and noodles and top it up with the soup.

For such a simple dish, this was really tasty! I ate it with 0.5 chili padi.

Oh, and by the way, I was wrong again.

This recipe...

Turned out to be..

100% doable!

What would The Failed Chef do next time?

• Stick with the basic formula and try out different fillings and meat.

Belachan Fried Rice

What...

a) looks like belachan fried rice?
b) smells like belachan fried rice? and

*burp*

c) releases gas the odor of belachan fried rice?

But doesn't taste like belachan fried rice?

Anyone?

Because I don't know either, but I'm open to suggestions.

But don't feel too badly for me though. This is the first time I am making belachan fried rice without using a mix so I'm happy enough that (a) and (b) above are achieved (though I'm a little ambivalent about (c) truthfully).

Here's the recipe from Rasa Malaysia, and below you will find the steps as to how I made it.

Leading leftover: over-(several)-nights rice

Belachan Fried Rice

1/2 onion (or shallot), sliced
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
3 large chili, cut
2 chili padi, cut
1/2 teaspoon toasted belacan
1/2 teaspoon sugar
8 oz. overnight rice
1 egg
2 tablespoons oil

Presenting: the ingredients.

The main star!

 

1. Before you follow this recipe, play 'Spot the Difference' between Bee's original recipe and what I did.
2. Then, if you must, shake your head at the audacity of The Failed Chef.
3. Next, ensure that the rice is at room temperature and not clumped together.
4. In a wok, toast the belacan on low heat until it becomes dry and aromatic. It should appear powdery-like, like tiny granules. I have no idea what this means but this is what I did anyway.





5. Using a mortar and pestle, blend the onion, garlic, chilis, and toasted belacan. Try your best to keep the paste from kissing the floor uneccesarily.
   
   
   
6. Heat up a wok and add oil. Add the flavoring paste and stir-fry until aromatic.
7. Add most of the rice into the wok and stir well with the flavoring paste. If some paste remains on the mortar, add a bit of rice to mop it up before transferring the rice to the wok.
8. Create a well with the rice, add oil and break an egg in the middle of the wok. Make scrambled egg. When egg is almost cooked, stir and toss with rice.

9.   Add sugar into the rice and continue to stir-fry and make sure that they are well blended with the rice.
10. Sprinkle with salt to taste.

But here's what I'm really proud of. Get closer.

Slightly to the left. And zoom in.

Perfect!

There. See the green beauties? I got the idea of growing spring onions from noobcook except I grew it in glasses of water.

At least something worked out, eh?

What would The Failed Chef do next time?

• Try harder to find sweet soy sauce and palm sugar - baking sugar and light soy sauce just doesn't cut it as substitutes, I'm afraid

Garlic and Rosemary Potatoes

After a week of doing yoga regularly with a one-hour meditation session to boot, I can feel an aura of calmness enveloping around me. I can sense peace in my soul. I feel utterly cleansed.

So cleansed that I felt I had the permission from the universe to start clogging up my arteries again.

Sorry, I'm still working on my self-resolve. These things are a work in progress.

But the good news is that my unfounded fear of potato skins has left the building.

And all it took was grease and garlic!

Remember the aspirational recipe after making potatoes with rosemary? Being garlic-holics, it's very likely we'll be having this again.

Garlic and Rosemary Potatoes

Potatoes, steamed
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
2-3 tbs olive oil (as long as pan doesn't dry out)

1. Add olive oil in a preheated pan.
2. Place potatoes in pan with the cut side down over medium heat. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Wait until the cut side starts to brown.
4. Once potatoes start to brown, flip over and allow to brown for few minutes.
5. Add in dried rosemary and garlic.
6. Stir continuously over medium-low heat until garlic starts to brown. Do not over brown the garlic; otherwise, it will become bitter. Turn off flame.

What would The Failed Chef do next time?

• Why does browning of the potates seem to take forever - need to have bigger flame perhaps?
• Also, good gracious, woman, lighten up on the grease, please! (and you know I totally meant that to rhyme)

Garlic and Herbs Beer Bread

My mission to purge the fridge continues.

Some of the obstacles (or second chance recipes opportunities) are the cans of beer taking up semi-permanent residence over the last year. B is more a wine than beer drinker (he bought it for guests) and I don’t really drink unless I want to try something.

I have been itching to make beer bread for some time. It seemed easy to make – and since B had recently gifted me with a KitchenAid that has a dough hook, I’m set to go. The main reason why I am ‘set to go’ a lot instead of being defeated by many of my failed attempts at cooking, was that B had been so supportive in my journey. There are places he won’t go – for example, the man won’t touch squid. But he’s been very encouraging and although he is bemused by my cooking decisions being governed with what ingredients are left over or what is on sale rather than what I feel like eating, he generally laps up the dishes and desserts and complements me when they turn out well. In fact, the reason that I am writing the blog posts on the dishes I’ve tried was his idea to begin with. And taking the time to write out the dishes I’ve tried, I can see that I have become more confident in cooking and willing to try – and most of the later dishes turned out well. His support is the single most important reason why I have cooked and baked more in these six months than I ever had in more than three decades.

Okay, back to regular programming.

When the Farmgirl says making beer bread is beyond easy, I'm sold!

True to her word, the bread that comes out of the oven smells so good and I am so amazed I made it. Who...me? Yes...me!

For those of you who are not too keen on beer, don’t be too quick to dismiss this recipe. I took a quick swipe of the beer and decided it is not something that would go down my throat willingly. But with the garlic, cheese and herbs, I didn’t taste the beer much. This bread is very hearty, good to eat it on its own or with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, which is how I usually eat bread.


You may want to pair it up with soups too.

The next morning, I spread my alfredo sauce on the slices and had it microwaved on low for a minute or so, and it was still scrumptious.

Here's now I made it:

Leading Leftover: Beer

Garlic and Herbs Beer Bread

3 cups flour, mixed (self-raising and wholemeal)
12 ounces liquid (beer and whey)
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
2 chopped cloves of garlic
1/4 cup finely grated parmesan

Heat the oven to 190 degrees celsius.

Sift 2 1/2 cups of self-raising with 1/2 wholemeal flour and combine in mixing bowl.


Add the parmesan and garlic to the flour.


Add the herbs - dried basil and dried oregano.

Slowly stir in the beer and mix just until combined.

Spread in a greased 8-inch loaf pan. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Serve warm.

The results:

Look at how hearty the bread is! The texture is divine...


It's crunchy crust...

Crunch, crunch!!

Line the slices up in a row if it makes your day.

Get up close and smell the bread...it will make your day too!

I know there are so many different ways to make beer bread so going to experiment with that, and may even try it with the ginger ale. One can down, 5 more to go!

What would The Failed Chef do next time?

• Bake at a lower temperature for a longer time of 175 degrees for 50 for 60 minutes
• Add in the tablespoon of sugar since I've omitted it, just to see what sugar does to the bread. Taste-wise omitting sugar was fine - never missed it.
• Pour 1/4 cup (wow, that's a lot!) melted butter over mixture to see what it does to the crust. Or pouring it into the batter to see what it does to the bread inside.
• Because the wholemeal flour doesn't have its baking powder/ soda or yeast, I may bother to add some next time. The whey doesn't have its own yeast as well, so I may either add yeast, or open another can to make up the 12 ounces.

Oreo Cheesecake

With the remaining cream cheese in the fridge, I knew I wanted to make an oreo cheesecake. B goes to McDonald’s fairly often to buy the oreo cheesecake so I wanted to try baking it, especially since I have only made the no-bake versions before.

The two things that I have learnt before making cheesecake:

1. I needed a water bath for even temperature (a lesson I learnt from failed crème brulee) so the cheesecake doesn’t crack.
2. Leave the oven door ajar after turning off the oven and leaving the cheesecake in for an hour so that it is allowed to cool slowly. This was so that when I put it in the fridge to cool, the cheesecake won’t sink.

I followed this Oreo cheesecake factory copycat recipe and baking tips and it resulted in a complex (B’s word, not mine) yet sinfully decadent (mine) uncracked, even-levelled cheesecake. Cheesecake is time-enhanced food so have it only a few days after you chill it.


Here's how I did it:

Leading leftovers: Cream cheese, Oreo Cookies, Pie Crust, Chocolate chip cookie dough

Oreo Cheesecake

375g cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 cup flour
4 ounces drained yogurt
7 coarsely chopped Oreo cookies ( for the batter)

1. Make sure that all ingredients are at room temperature before beginning.
2. Beat cream cheese until light and fluffy, keeping the mixer on a low setting.
3. Add 1/3 of the sugar at first, beat the mixture for a short while, add another 1/3, beat again and then add in the the and continue beating cream cheese and sugar until mixed through.
4. Add the eggs one at a time and continue to beat until blended.
5. Stir vanilla, salt and flour into cream cheese and egg mixture.
6. Add the yogurt
7. Turn off the mixer and gently stir in the 7 coarsely chopped Oreo cookies with a spoon.
8. Pour mixture into ready-made crust.
9. Place pan on top rack and in the middle of a preheated oven at 165 degrees celsius and bake for 55 minutes.
10. Turn off the oven, prop the door open several inches and let the cheese cake stay in the oven for one hour.
11. Cool on wire rack.
12. Resist the temptation to eat the cheesecake.
13. When cool, refrigerate overnight or longer
14. Resist the temptation to eat the cheesecake the next morningfor breakfast.
15. After at least 24 hours, EAT. Drink (water, it's healthier). Be merry! (you might as well because you are consuming an insane amount of calories!)
    

What would The Failed Chef do next time?

• Nothing different. Yay!

During my "research", I chanced upon this heavenly (or maybe sinful!) confection of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Filled Oreo Cheesecakes. Do I have cream cheese? Check! Do I have chocolate chip cookie dough? Check! Do I have oreos? Check! All systems go!



Oreo and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecakes

Cream cheesecake mixture (before adding the oreo cookie chunks)
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (recipe used here)
Double stuf oreo cookies

and here's what I did:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Place 1 oreo cookie sandwich each into the muffin cakes and set aside.
3. Squish some of the chocolate chip cookie dough on top of the oreo cookie sandwich if you are me. If you are not me, you will head over to the link above where she rolled the dough into a tube the size of the muffin case and cut equal sizes to be placed on the Oreo cookie.
4. Spoon 1 heaping tablespoon of cheesecake mix over each cookie stack and spread on top and around cookie.
5. Bake for 20 minutes or until cheesecake is set. You can cool to room temperature and then refrigerate until completely chilled.

Here's what it looks like just out of the oven.

Surprise inside!

What would The Failed Chef do next time?

• To have a smaller amount of cookie dough in the stack

I was a little disappointed that unlike the cookie dough vanilla cupcake, the cookie dough did become a cookie. While the cookie dough would be relieved because it finally fulfilled its life purpose and lived up to its potential, I was hoping that it would stay soft. I am probably projecting my insecurities about my life purpose on the cookie dough.

I will share this insight with my therapist.

Another insight that I am hoping my therapist can share with me is why everyone else's cheesecake is white, while mine is yellow.

No, I am not being racist.

Sorry I said the word racist.

Why am I so defensive about colour?

Yet another thing I need to talk to my therapist about.


Oh! And lastly I also made these portion-control oreo cheesecakes because the amount of oreo cheesecake batter was too much for the crust. I baked this alongside the oreo cheesecakes. For a bona fide recipe of the following, you can drool over the photos at Grace's Sweet Life.

Oreo Cheese Cupcakes

Cream cheesecake mixture (after adding the oreo cookie chunks)
Double stuf oreo cookies

and here's what I did:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Place 1 oreo cookie sandwich each into the muffin cakes and set aside.
3. Divide the leftover batter and spread it on top of the oreo cookie.
   
4. I baked it alongside the Big Oreo cheesecake. You can cool to room temperature and then refrigerate until completely chilled.

That at times I have the uncontrollable urge to make several combinations of the same type of dessert at one time troubles me.

Alright, it's confirmed then. There's no doubt that I need help here.

Therapist, please!

Brown Butter Wholemeal Roasted Banana Crumble Cake

I had been attending yoga class which was run by a mission group and felt like I wanted to bake something for them as a gesture of thanks. Since I thought that yoga teachers are a health-conscious lot, leftovers won’t do and I need to start from scratch. I don’t know if I can do chocolate or really decadent dessert (after all, it is not for me to eat!), so I opted for banana cake.

Having tasted banana cake in Singapore, I know most varieties are light and fluffy. I wanted something more substantial, so I decided on a crumble. Deriving my inspiration from Baking Bites and Guilty Kitchen, I decided what would be better than brown butter banana cake and brown butter roasted banana bread would be...brown butter wholemeal roasted banana crumble cake! I've either become bananas or a genius!

Here’s how I did it:

Brown Butter Wholemeal Roasted Banana Crumble Cake

The cake:
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 very ripe medium-sized bananas
2 cups self-rising flour
3/4 cups wholemeal flour
3/4 cup drained yogurt

The crumble:
1/3 cup flour
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tablespoons melted butter

The topping:
Butterscotch sauce (recipe here) mixed with melted white chocolate

1. I made the crumble first by combining the sugar, flour, cinnamon, and butter, and mixing them until it resembles coarse crumbs. Set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 175 degrees celsius.
3. Place bananas (whole with the skin) on an aluminium foil on a baking tray (because when the bananas roast, some parts of it bubble out) for 15-20 minutes in the pre-heated oven.
4. In the meantime, grease a 9-inch tube pan.
5. In a small saucepan, melt the butter in a saucepan over the stove on medium-high heat until the butter boils.
6. Turn heat down to medium. You will see that the butter start to bubble or foam, but just keep swirling the pan but do not stir.
7. As the butter begins to turn brown, you will see specks of darker brown develop at the bottom of the pan, then stir these up. When the butter has turned into a nice and even dark honey color, remove from heat and transfer to the mixing bowl to cool for about 10 minutes.
8. Check on the bananas, they should be roasted by now.
9. Peel off the skins from the bananas and mash them.
10. In the mixing bowl with the browned butter (which should have been cooled by now), add sugar gradually.
11. Beat in the eggs one by one, waiting until each has been incorporated to add the next.
12. Add in vanilla extract and mashed bananas.
13. Add half of the self-raising flour to the butter mix and stir to combine. Add in the yogurt, followed by the remaining flour mixture.
14. Pour batter into prepared pan.
15. Sprinkle the crumbles over the cake.
16. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean and the top springs back when lightly pressed. If at any time you feel the crumble is starting to brown too much, cover it with aluminium foil.
17. Allow cake to cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then place cake out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
18. Put the butterscotch sauce in a small plastic bag or Ziploc and cut the edge of one end off. Squeeze the bag and make loops on top of the crumbles, both for decoration and helping the crumbles stay on the cake when you cut the cake later.

What would The Failed Chef do next time?

• If I were to do it again, I need to remember the steps were quite laborious (can we say making it made me go bananas?)! This is really a labour of love - resulting in a very satisfying and tasty result though.
• As I only had self-raising flour, I wonder if next time, I should get baking powder for the wholemeal flour that I used. I felt using wholemeal flour made the cake a lot denser although it lends a more complex texture.
• It is better to add the crumble with the cake batter and then cover with aluminium when needed, rather than half-way through baking because it seems to stick to the cake better.

Pan-fried and Baked Squid

Having never cleaned any dead or living creature before, I felt like a superstar after cleaning squid – I even managed to harvest the ink sac! I was thinking of making squid ink sauce before I realised that I would need to harvest the sac of a lot more than the grand total of two squids that I have.

Here's one of the most useful videos I've watched on cleaning squids.



Here’s what I did with them.

Squid 1:
I had saved some butter that separated from the butterscotch sauce when I heated it and I thought about using it for the squid. It was some recipe that made me think that I can marinade it with butter. But then doubt filled my mind as to whether to mix in the herbs, because I was using no ordinary butter. I was using butter that is already sweet (coming from the heavenly butterscotch sauce). My question is - would butterscotch butter and herbs make best buddies?

As with all moments of indecision, I turn to my one of favourite quotes which is “When in doubt, do nothing.”

So I left the squid and the butterscotch-butter in the fridge to work out their issues.

Then I came across another recipe for pan-fried squid so I adapted that.

Pan-fried Squid

1 whole squid (cleaned and cut up into bite-sized pieces)
1/2 cup of flour
1 tsp white pepper
3 tablespoons canola oil

1. Add the white pepper to the flour placed in a bowl.
2. Dredge the squid pieces in flour, then shake off the excess flour.
3. Heat oil in wok on high heat. When oil is heated, place the floured squid pieces in the wok.
4. Fry each side for 1.5 minutes.
5. Transfer to paper towel to soak up excess oil.

What would The Failed Chef do next time?

• I followed the recipe but I really had trouble with the flour . Apparently it was the flour and the squid which had issues with one another. The flour expressed its unhappiness by deciding to stick to the pan instead of the squid. The squid turned out well pan-fried, though, with its white flesh - oh so succulent. The flour I’d have to have a talk with. Maybe next time I'd leave the squid to brown before turning it and keep my hands to myself for 1.5 minutes instead of turning it over and over.
• Or maybe this is all an illusion - squids in flour need to be deep-fried, not stir-fried?
• What does pan-fried mean anyway? Deep-fried as well as stir-fried?
  

Squid 2:

Baked squid

I had some leftover sauce for the scampi and since there was another recipe that called for the squid to be baked in some white wine sauce, I decided to just cut up the squid into pieces and stick the whole thing in the oven.

1 whole squid (cleaned and cut up into bite-sized pieces)
Shrimp scampi sauce enough to cover the squid pieces (recipe for shrimp scampi here)

1. Preheat the oven to 190C.
2. Arrange the squid in a gratin dish. Cover the squid in scampi sauce.
3. Cover with aluminum foil and bake 10 minutes.
4. Remove from the oven, discard the foil and turn the squid. Put the gratin dish back in the oven and bake another 10-15 minutes, until squid is tender.

Pretty happy that for $2.77, I got to experiment with 2 different methods of cooking squid – baking and pan-frying it.

What would The Failed Cook do next time?

• Well, it's obvious if I don't like the scampi sauce, it wouldn't taste any better even with the squid simmered in it!

Aspirational recipe for another time:
Thekitchn's Healthy & easy calamari