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Saturday, May 8, 2010

Cooking with Gilmar

I teach Gilmar English and apparently how to cook fried rice as well. Now let him show you how it's done.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Nasi Lemak

Last Friday saw, once again, our attempt to recreate the taste of home while in a place that has neither the comfort of a hawker centre nor the convenience of a wet market. Culinary haven the Hendon Camp cookhouse may never be, but at least it served Nasi Lemak once every two weeks. [Sam, can consider leh].

Mr Pang and Mr A Lim kicked off the process by making batch after batch of Nasi Lemak -- rice cooked in coconut milk and pandan leaves -- fragrant, rich, and extremely tasty.

Mr B Lim started the ball rolling by preparing our homemade Nasi Lemak sambal belachan. The translation "chilli sauce" just doesn't do this intriguing dish justice: a combination of shrimp paste, dried shrimp, chillies, lemongrass, galangal, ginger, garlic, shallots and some tinkering with lemon zest, lemon juice and sugar, this is the epitome of the Middletown fireman's conception of cat piss, and is sure to antagonise any angmoh living in the house.

The most technically-challenging dish done, Mr C Cheong and Mr B Lim then proceeded to prepare the following: fried luncheon meat, fried egg omelette, fried ikan bilis (anchovies) with roasted peanuts, while I sliced cucumber and pottered around looking busy. Meanwhile, Mr I Chow proved himself an asset in the kitchen by lending a helping hand whenever, well, help was sought.

The result -- an authentic Singapore dish we are proud of, but which was labelled (wrongly, of course) by someone as "disgusting". I leave you, dear reader, to make your own judgements.



Sunday, May 2, 2010

the best meal yet

Today's lunch lasted for about three hours, by the end of the seemingly endless stream of food, we were all feeling a little light-headed, not from the wine but from all the glorious fat that went into the meal. The meal was meant to celebrate some birthdays in the house, but it was really an excuse to eat good food. Mr Pang, Lucky Lawn's MVP, was at the helm of this food adventure that led us to eat a whole zoo of different animals in one meal. So here goes....


Initial preparations. Notice the duck confit gleaming in their own fat and the bowl of duck fat that the duck legs were sitting in for at least a week - it doesn't get any more sinful than this. We also had beef marrow as a starter, spread on toast with a capers, lemon, and cilantro dressing.

Duck confit with lettuce and watercress.

Seared scallops with risotto. 16 scallops!

Pan-fried duck breast and lentils.

Lamb chops play along.

"Grass-fed beef is vegetarian" - Jeff

Roast chicken, quite possibly the best I've eaten. Marinated with thyme, salt, pepper. Pan-fried till brown before throwing into oven. The flavor was very clean and the meat was incredibly tender. The crisp of the skin was amazing. This is one where technique really makes all the difference, since we were using cheap stop-and-shop chicken.

Leftovers and dinner later in the day consisted of excess food from lunch with the addition of lobster with risotto (with more lobster than risotto), and the very incongruous but still very tasty phoenix claws and peanut soup.