American? Me?

Yesterday during lunch, a newcomer said my accent sounded "American".

I got sound American meh?

Bake extravaganza

What would I do without these recipes?

One way to really get to know your kitchen is to have a big bake extravanganza. That was the inadvertent result over the weekend when I had to bake a couple of tarts to bring to a Monday work meeting*. The original plan of making a tart turned into a marathon 10 hour fest, where I spent all of Saturday and Sunday ensconced at home poring over my books, deciding on which recipes to make, nipping out for a quick trip to the shops to get supplies, and knuckling down and getting my hands dirty.

Nutella cupcakes
I hadn't done any baking since Aug last year (at least, I think it's been that long), and I had never tackled tart dough before, so I figured I'd start with something easy on saturday, like nutella cupcakes (I used a Martha Stewart yellow cupcake recipe and simply swirled Nutella in). It was also a good way to test out the newly installed oven. They turned out pretty good, so I was confident enough that I hadn't quite lost my baking mojo to start making tart dough on Sunday .

Sweet tart dough
After spending hours flipping through all my books, I eventually settled on Jamie Oliver's Sweet Tart Dough recipe from his Naked Chef book, as it seemed the easiest, and also I hadn't got any almond powder to make Pierre Herme's recipe. Also, this one looked like a no-brainer as it didn't involve any rolling. I'm really such a lazy cook.

All I can say is, now I know why the books tell you the dough can be made in advance and reused at a later time. Because of the refrigerating and freezing of dough before the tarts could be baked, it wasn't until past dinnertime that I was able to make the filling for the tarts.

Pavlovas with lemon curd
In between the waiting, I got really ambitious and decided to make use of the leftover egg whites from the tart dough and make pavlovas. I consulted Marie Claire's Sweet for a recipe on pavlovas with lemon curd, and almost killed my arms whipping up the meringue. My landlady was really sweet and helped, so we took it in turns to beat the eggs into shape. They turned out pretty well, with delicate crisp shells and soft marshmallowy interiors. Can't quite say the same for the lemon curd though.

Either I didn't follow the recipe quite so well, or the recipe itself isn't too great, because I came up with some eggy tasting, lumpy looking curd, which I felt was rather yukky unless eaten directly with the pavlovas. Luckily we had some ripe kiwis in the fridge, so I sliced them up and let the tart sweetness hide some of the egginess.

Nutella tart
I was rather seriously stressing past dinnertime, because it dawned on me that unlike previous baking ventures where I could taste-test my creations before unleashing them on the public, I couldn't taste-test my tarts OR fillings. Furthermore, this was to be presented to a work meeting. Argh! What was I thinking?!

To make matters worse, I accidentally overnuked the butter for the nutella filling and it turned out too oily to swirl in nicely with the melted chocolate. It was getting rather too late to just throw it all away and start a new batch, so I cheated and sort of drained out the butter, spread it over the tart and hoped for the best.

The next day
I had baked another tart shell as a reserve, and being the stress bunny I was, brought the baked Nutella tart and the empty tart shell to work. Once at work, I filled the empty shell with strawberries, blueberries, clotted cream, and sprinkled some sugar over it.

Thankfully, the Nutella tart turned out fine. Jamie Oliver's tart dough really works a treat, and tasted just nice: buttery, slightly sweet with a crumbly texture. The chocolate & Nutella filling, while looking rather unappetising, was actually quite good. I never managed to get a bite of my fruit tart, as all my greedy colleagues polished it off by lunchtime, but I guess 2 empty pans are the best compliment one can get.

So there you go, 4 desserts in one weekend: nutella cupcakes, pavlovas with lemon curd and kiwi, nutella tart and strawberry tart.

* Every month, it's a bit of a tradtion for someone from the team to bring in a homemade pie during our regular Monday morning meetings. I was volunteered for this month's pie session.

Hi 5 Meme

It seems only a meme can take me out of a blog drought. Thanks Kierra! :)

5 things found in your bag:
1. iPod
2. Oyster card (sort of like the Ezylink card)
3. Company swipe pass
4. Hot pink Coach wallet
5. Keys to temporary apartment

5 favourite things in your room:
As I'm going to be moving over to my new place next week, I'll reference the things in my new room
1. My shoes
2. New black two-seater sofa
3. My PC with its ah beng-like casing
4. New minimalist desk lamp
5. Moon & stars rug from Blue Moon

5 things you have always wanted to do:
1. Travel Europe (ooh, I'm close to doing it!)
2. Have tea at Laduree
3. Lose 5 kg
4. Visit Seoul and see if the men and women are really as hot as in the dramas
5. Be more assertive

5 things you're currently into:
1. Top Gear
2. Monitoring the weather & tube links very closely everyday
3. Settling in to my new home
4. Finding a good (and hopefully not too expensive) gym
5. Exploring restaurants in London

5 people you want to tag:
Anyone who wants to do this!

Seeing double

(L) Kate Winslet in Ben de Lisi, 2002 (R) Anne Hathaway in Marchesa, 2008

Hachi

Quick comment: I visited Hachi a couple of months ago, but never got round to blogging about it. Now that I've moved to the UK, it's becoming a challenge to find a good Japanese restaurant that serves fresh sashimi, so I have to rely on my memory for those yummy Japanese meals I used to have.

The great thing about eating omakase, is there's this element of "ooh I wonder what's next", which may not sit well with melancholic personality types who like to plan ahead. I think it's great, as I don't have to guess what's good on the menu, and then stress about making the wrong decisions in picking food.

Hachi is one of those Japanese restaurants which doesn't have a menu. You go in, sit down and tell the chef if there's anything you don't eat, and he takes it from there. This place had been on my "to-eat" list for the many months, but I never got round to it until the night I met up with an old friend as part of my goodbye dinners.

This particular menu was very light, and the individual dishes have kind of blurred into a nice hazy memory, but I do recall some of them:

• Mashed potato, veggies
• 3 kinds of sashimi, one of which was pufferfish
• Sashimi
• Soup
• Pumpkin & tomato

Since it was quite light-going at this point, we were in no way ready to throw in the towel just yet, so when the the chef looked at us and said "More?", we requested for the wagyu beef (because my friend said it was divine), and finished off with a ochazuke and pickles. By this time, we were well and truly full, but not quite full enough not to end the meal with some green tea ice-cream.

From what I've heard, Hachi will be closed at Orchard Emerald and moving to Tanjong Pagar sometime this month. I'll admit Hachi is not exactly cheap and definitely not the kind of place you can visit every week, but I do think it's worth visiting just once to taste some excellent Japanese food.

Cost: $130 per person (the wagyu beef was $30 per person)

Train pain

I've always maintained that we Singaporeans are a very spoilt lot and have taken many things in our lives for granted, but I've never fully appreciated Singapore's efficiencies until quite recently. A simple example of this is the tube.

The tube's been around for more than 100 years, and from what I've been told, hasn't been upgraded properly for many years. Now that the olympics is going to be held in this city in 2012, I think they've finally started upgrading their system. What this means is that every weekend, when upgrading and maintenance works are being done, I have to check that the lines I normally take are running (so far, the Circle line has been closed on weekends), and if not, plan alternate routes to get to the places I want.

That's not counting the unplanned delays, like trains stalling at stations, or like what happened today, some happy vandals having fun at the Gunnersbury station. I'm still confused about this, how can graffiti stop a train? As a result, my District line train to Richmond was suspended, and I had to take another route to work. Painful, it was.

I'm getting smarter now. I've learnt to check the tube website for updates on all lines now, so I don't get any nasty surprises.