Here I am, sitting at Tim Horton’s in the Halifax airport which is apparently so commonplace in Atlantic Canada, there was a day when we had food from there thrice in the SAME morning. If you need recommendations, the BLT sandwich is pretty decent. I like bacon.

In 15 hours, I’ll be flying to Montreal where I have about 12 hours before leaving for New York. It’s kinda exciting, that I’d be pretty much alone wandering the streets with no accomodation - nor any planned for that matter - and no booked passage to New York.

The Appetite Decends.

I’ve here a list of food places I should really visit when I’m in Montreal. I’d agree though with Mike (who made the list) that you need to have poutine when there. It’s like how Nova Scotia wasn’t complete without lobsters (which regrettably we had but one). Or McLobsters for that matter which have proven thus far to be elusive. We’ve seen them all around Annapolis, Cape Breton and we can’t find them in Halifax.

Speaking of fast food, A&W here is awesome. Their burgers taste like meat and their onion rings are great - nothing like the processed breaded onion-flavored pieces we have in Burger Kings in Singapore.

It might actually be a good thing I didn’t go for that teeth-cleaning procedure before the trip…

I bought an Egg cookbook the other day because there’s always lots of eggs in the house (eggs are cheap anyway) and eggs are always good breakfast food.

So I tried out some of the stuff in there this weekend. First up, Eggs Ben.

The hardest part supposedly is to get the sauce to be of a thick enough consistency. The recipe called for white wine vinegar or lemon, none of which I had in my house BUT I did have malt vinegar so I used that. The black bits aren’t flies or morsels of the saucepan that I’ve managed to scrape off. They’re pepper bits that I had to add because the concoction was tasteless. Salt wasn’t mentioned in the recipe you see.

I like how the poached egg looks and it would have been perfectly runny if I didn’t get a 17 minute phone call in the midst of cooking. It would also have been perfect if I had ham or muffins in my house but well, if you squint real hard…

ANYWAY.

There is a cup of cream left in my fridge after my rather bad attempt at creme brulee some weeks back. So I made creme brulee again. Sort of. Creme would be more accurate.

I screwed up the last time by adding too much sugar (in my defense, what i was referencing called for more than what I added) and then overcooking it (because my oven doesn’t have temperature dials but rather numerical heat settings). But like the saying goes, two wrongs do make a right (I never paid much attention in school) and because there was too much sugar and heat, I didn’t have to go through the whole blowtorch ritual to get the top layer burnt.

Today’s dessert was much more palatable but I couldn’t get the top to burn through numerous creative methods that people without blowtorches and other pyrotechnics would resort to. That’s after I kept my oven so I couldn’t try to caramelize the sugar by subjecting it to the grill.

All I want for my birthday’s a flamethrower. That’d solve the problem.

The other day I found some cupcake wrappers (I don’t know what they’re called) and thought it’d be a great idea to bake cupcakes. I used this recipe with a bit of variation - more cocoa was added and I used a ganache top (or what faintly passes off as that) instead of the recommended chocolate rum cream cheese frosting.

It’s actually pretty decent. You can’t taste much of the rum and cola though (I think I overloaded on the cocoa) but the lime provided a pleasant contrast to the richness of the cocoa. You’d probably want to eat them fresh from the oven because after a day or two, the piece of lime needed a facelift.

This was sold at one of those health supplement shops around town. Not very surprisingly, it’s for men.

Cream would taste nice with rose syrup.

Spray a dose of whipped cream in a quaint little see-through glass mug; a shot glass would be nice too. Then douse it in rose syrup.

One morning, my dad made breakfast. I thought I’d share the pic.

That’s butter by the way, not cheese.

There’s a supplement in this week’s newspapers on the 100 best dishes around Singapore. The writing team’s apparently quite established (ie. they’re not new writers) but the writing’s so bad I thought I’d reprint some of it here.

On Almond Cream Dessert.

“I know of people who cannot bear almond cream because they say it smells funky.

I used to think that too. But that was because I was introduced to it at less discriminating restaurants which make it from an instant powder that smells of bed bugs.”

On Fugu (pufferfish) hotpot.

“One always gets a thrill eating fugu or the poisonous puffer fish because of tales one hears about people dying after eating it.

 Actually, no one in Singapore has died from it as far as I am aware of because only licensed chefs who know how to remove its poison are allowed to prepare the fish for eating.”

On the pork in katsu don.

“Sprinkle some of the pink Himalayan salt on the slices of pork - it enhances the mild flavour of the pork.

And while slurping up the delicious pork miso soup that comes with the meal, marvel at how an ancientbreed of English pig made it to Japan, only to make waves all over the world, including in Singapore, where it is served with a little pile of pink Himalayan salt imported from Japan.”

 On Braised Pork Belly

“The amazing thing is that the pork does not even feel fat because of a slightly vinegary gravy that cuts the oil.

All you taste is the fragrance of fat and meat merged into a heavenly sensation.” 

I’m better than this. If anyone needs a food writer, I’m game.

I tend to buy a LOT of stuff from supermarkets because I’m greedy as hell.

I had a pack of couscous left in my cupboard. Then I found that I had a lettuce leftover and some tomatoes and olives. And I conveniently had a bottle of blue cheese dressing that said that it tasted well with fresh onions. Which was when I found onions in one of the shelves. And I had oregano in the fridge and chicken. And there was cream soup (not pictured because we then got hungry and soup’s just so easy to devour).

And after the photo, we ate everything.

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I’m starting to pack lunches to work along with breakfasts. Usually this would consist of random stuff from the fridge that I can dump in the pan to heat up over the span of 5 minutes. There was a period of time where I had avocado/cheese/scrambled egg sandwiches. They were great. There was the ham/egg/cheese sandwiches period which was also great. This week is Ewwww Gross! week so I’m having peanut butter/banana/cheese sandwiches. They look pretty normal in the mornings but when they get all squished up in my bag, come lunch, they’re slimy and moist.

I like eating.

I found this entry very intriguing.

http://ideasinfood.typepad.com/ideas_in_food/2007/09/sparkling-salt.html 

This being the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Asian (specifically chinese) part of the world, I really should get some pictures of mooncakes up here. For the uninitiated, mooncakes are pastries traditionally filled with lotus paste with optional salted egg yolks that you eat on the 15th of the 8th lunar month (when there’s a full moon). If you’re into the whole atmosphere and tradition deal, you’d probably enjoy them out in the balcony while sipping tea and chatting with family or old friends. During this period of time, kids would also be out with lighted (candle-lit or battery-fuelled) lanterns for a walk around the neighborhood. The older kids (ie those without sensible adults following them or ARE senseless adults themselves) would later set fire to their lanterns in a mass bonfire. Very fun stuff that I’d really indulge in if I had the company… hmm come to think of it I should get to calling some friends up.

ANYWAY, mooncakes. Marketing mooncakes is a whole creative exercise in itself. I’d wager that promotions are won or lost based on the marketeers’ success in selling their mooncakes. They now come in pretty little boxes (photos tomorrow) and have all sorts of interesting additions to spruce up the package - tea, cake, pieces of fake jake ornaments, anything that can be thought of!

Apart from that, mooncakes also come in all sorts of strange shapes and sizes with all sorts of fillings as well. I saw chocolate-coated cheesecake in the standard mould of a mooncake the other day and Haagen Dazs has a chocolate-coated  ice-cream version with a sherbet center to imitate the egg yolk. Today, I had a strawberry yoghurt flavored one that, though authentic and made from real strawberries, didn’t taste as good as regular yoghurt. My personal preference is really for snow-skinned mooncakes with a yolk in it. Preferably the mini versions because you can eat the whole damn thing in one gulp and NOT have to lick your fingers clean (I don’t like the feeling of wet fingers from slober).

And really, I would have gotten photos of everything if I weren’t so greedy and ate everything before I had a chance to. My mom called me up at work one day to ask if  I was fine - apparently, one of the mooncakes I ate the day before was mouldy all over.

Tomorrow I will have photos.

Popcorn Workers’ Lung

Otherwise known as bronchiolitis obliterans. Apparently, it happens when you inhale too much of the artificial butter flavor inherent in popcorn.

Wikipedia Link 

‘Nuff said.

Why stop at a mere candybar?

Tags: chocolate, candy, recipes, cadbury crunchie

Recently, I’ve developed this soft spot for nice tableware. In fact, I’m on the lookout for nice coffee cups to make pretty lattes in (you’d have thought this day would come where I’m using ‘pretty’ to describe a bland drink). I don’t want just any coffee cup though; those are common. I want quaint yet minimalistic see-through glass mugs where I can see the layers of milk, coffee and froth as I pour them in. Heck, speaking of froth, I was actually scouting around for a ‘manual’ milk frother the other day - an electric one costs >$20 which, despite my Martha Stewart ways, is very pricey.

I’m still drinking my coffee from your everyday ceramic cup now.

Anyway, I was out window shopping the other day when I actually recognized these really gorgeous double-walled glass cups.

In all earnest nerdiness, I cooed something along the lines of “Pavina glasses! SO BEAUTIFUL!” before noticing the price tag for the smaller versions (as seen here) stating $23 for a set of two. Alas.

You know you’re getting a little too into food-related sites when you can identify glassware from sight.

I chanced upon this blog post some time back and have been meaning to bake a batch of biscuits since then (this sounds very Martha Stewart I know). So since I had the day to myself yesterday, I did that.

Sad thing is, I think I added too much flour so they became bastard scones instead of nice brown biscuits with moist centers.  And there wasn’t a temperature setting on my oven (there were only 1-10 markings) so I probably have it on to some wrong temperature too. Will try making them again once I get rid of the ones at home. They taste pretty decent though so that’s a good sign.

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There was a food fair a bus ride from my place and I was there today. The place was packed and most of the vendors were selling uncooked food so it was really a food fair and not a food festival as some people might assume. There were some rather interesting sights though. This one booth was selling bread and had someone in a costume prancing around.

Another booth was selling drinks called Anything and Whatever.

The idea is to have the cans contain a mystery beverage (one of six different kinds) and no one would know what he’s got til he opens the can. Just last week, one of my friends was just remarking that someone should set up a food stall called ‘Anything’ because Singaporeans have this habit of replying that to questions on what they’d like to eat.

Well, yeah, whatever.

Tags: food, baking