american pie (SYTYCB Part 3)

O HAI PEOPLE!

I just came back from my 3rd course organised by PA. After going for an exercise class and a make-up class, this time, I opted to go for a cooking demo class! This time, it was Gourmet Cooking with Chef Yong at Serangoon CC which is in Ang Mo Kio.

Sounds like a condo, but this is the CC!

As can be expected, it was a really popular class and the majority of participants were women, but I did spy two men as well.

However, I have to say that it was a really enjoyable class due to the friendly and patient Chef Eric Low aka Chef Yong, who answers every single question (and believe me, there were many!) and took time to impart handy tips while he prepared the dishes.

Because it was a cooking demo class, it was like attending a live taping of a cooking show, complete with pre-prepped ingredients! However, the cooking was mostly done live. The difference was that you could stop Chef Yong at any point to ask him a question.

At one point, he recounted his experience cooking for an Arab family, when someone asked him if Muslims could consume red wine vinegar, and even talked about the difference between an Shiite and Sunni Muslim! This man is really knowledgeable.

On the menu for the day was Pulled Pork Sandwich, Cobb Sandwich and lastly, Walnut Pie. What I found really nice was that Chef Low apologised for not being able to offer me halal food. But he was very considerate to have prepared a portion of salad for me without the bacon! I was very impressed with his tact in handling the situation.

According to the chef, Cobb Salad is often a healthier alternative to Chef’s Salad which he says is just a salad made with leftover ingredients. In comparison, Cobb Salad uses vinagrette as a dressing, instead of the yucky, yucky, yucky Thousand Island dressing (which I think should be made a crime to consume!).

The class seemed more like a friendly cooking session at a friend’s house, as participants could just walk around near the Chef, stop him to ask questions and take photos while the class was in session! There was a very casual atmosphere and the participants were really friendly, stopping to ask me what I was taking photos for, and whether I enjoyed the class.

I also liked that tasting the dishes was part of the experience! According to Chef Low, tasting is strongly encouraged for a better understanding of the cuisine. Let’s just say that I got a good dinner out of the class 🙂 Some of the participants also brought tupperware to “tabao” the food home.

Overall, I felt that the class was really helpful to teach you some new recipes as well as to clarify with the Chef any questions that you might have. The friendly atmosphere is evident and some of the participants seemed to be good friends with the Chef!

He also gave handy practical tips such as where to get the best ingredients. He even shared that bottled bolognese sauce bought in the supermarkets usually only contain 30% beef! The rest is apparently just vegetable gluten, and hence he recommends making your own sauce.

And learning isn’t confined to the classroom either. The Chef encourages participants to email him if they have any questions, though during the class one of the ladies asked him to post it on his Facebook Page, hehe.

According to his file, Chef Yong has over 20 years of experience and used to be an Executive Sous Chef on the world’s largest privately owned luxurious super yachts. He’s even cooked for private parties and events attended by Sir Elton John, Sharon Stone, Denzel Washington and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones, to name a few. Impressive eh? He’s even trained at the Culinary Institute of America or more awesomely known as CIA hehe!

To find out more about this course or other courses available at the CCs, do check out PA’s new portal, Ourcommunity.sg. The portal is super easy to use and you can search for courses based on categories or by CC.

This entry is made as part of the So You Think You Can Blog challenge organised by the People’s Association. 6 bloggers, including me, are in this challenge and stand to win an Apple iPad for blogging about our adventures at courses and events organised by PA. I would be SUPER GRATEFUL if you could support me by leaving a comment, which earns me one point per person.

Do also support my friend Sherms, who went for a super cool mahjong class last week! Who knew that the PA offered mahjong courses?

veggie may veggie might

Couple of weeks ago, my friends and I found ourselves in the unexplored terrain that is the North of Singapore, or more specifically, Neo Tiew Road, where we had a truly fun afternoon at Bollywood Veggies.

We were celebrating our dear friend Shal’s birthday, and the yummy food made with ingredients all found on the farm, coupled with the amazing service by Dhillon Singh and the owner, Ivy Singh-Lim, truly made it a memorable experience for us. Dhillon even broke out the guitar to sing us (mostly old bluesy rock) songs. It’s just that kind of place, you know?

Contrary to popular belief, they don’t just serve vegetarian food (their philosophy is more of a sustainable farming type). In fact their Masala Burger was pretty damn good!

And yes, Ivy is one heck of a personality. Clad in her safari gear complete with at least one knife on her, she regaled us with stories about herself and how she fought her way to get the farm started. At one point while talking about what she would do to an unfaithful man, she brandished an unsheathed knife, much to the fear of one of our male friends and to the amusement of the rest of us.

I’d totally recommend that you go there for group outings! Due to the rainy weather there were not many people at the bistro that day and we were even treated to a mini tour of the garden where there were more herb and fruit plants than I can even remember.

We even got a glimpse of Ivy’s villa – she lives smack on the farmland and has a mini lake of sorts outside her house! The Great Danes are protecting her house and we heard that they have 20 more dogs guarding the farmland!

And some other photos from the day:

It was truly amazing, do visit if you have a chance!

Chocolate Cake in 5 mins, Anyone?

Hey there! I’m today’s guest blogger, Z, but most of the times I’m ovenhaven, or [z:six]. Big shoutout to Nabby who sounds like she’s having a great time in the land down under!

Being a full-time baker, one of the questions I get asked quite often is how I do it. I get readers telling me that baking is difficult, much too time-consuming, or just too confusing. Well, now that the weekend’s here (everyone go ‘Wheee!’), I thought what better way to celebrate five days of hard work, than with a five-minute chocolate mug cake. And psst, no real baking required.

Five-Minute Chocolate Mug Cake
(adapted from here)

50g dark chocolate
3 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons plain flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk

1. Melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler. Set aside to cool.
2. Add flour, ground cinnamon and sugar to a small mixing bowl, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and mix well. Add the melted chocolate and mix again.
3. Pour the mixture into a large microwavable coffee mug. Microwave for 2 minutes on medium, 1 minute on high. It should be cooked (skewer test comes out with moist crumbs), but still a lil moist. Remember, it will continue to cook while standing.
4. Allow to cool a little, give yourself a pat on the back, and indulge!

recipe: pasta dinner

hello my name is Nicole and i’m blogging for this Tuesday while Miss Nabby is away! haha so if you are looking forward to a (kind of a) midweek relaxation time at home, having a slow dinner and just enjoying the night with no stress then i’ve got the simple dinner recipe for you!

ingredients you need: spagetti pasta, cherry tomatoes, anchovies/tiny sardines, mushrooms, parseley, an egg yolk, milk, pesto sauce (it’s green, barilla brand), rosemary herbs (or any dried herbs you can substitute with), garlic, onion, a little bit of butter & olive oil and mixed salad leaves.

instructions (here goes!):

1. boil the pasta for the suggested time minus 2 minutes. which means you’d want your pasta a little undercooked
2. heat up the olive oil & a little bit of butter (or no butter if you’re healthy) and fry in the garlic, onion and dried herbs.
3. when the onion starts to go soft, add in the anchovies and let it “melt”. (this is a trick i learnt from jaimie oliver, so you don’t have to eat the fish literally. but you get it’s salty taste as a sauce)
4. now fry in your tomatoes and mushrooms and parsley (or you can skip parsley if you don’t like it)
5. now add in your pasta! and to that add an egg yolk, pesto sauce (add in teaspoon by teaspoon, taste testing as you go) and a little bit of milk (about 2 tablespoon). stir the mixture together
6. add salt and pepper if you’d like (remember taste as you go!)
7. now serve and tumble a handful of salad leaves
8. sprinkle with cheese and red chilli peppers if you’d like

Dinner is served! Cooked this for my dad and i. You can also put in some ground beef that goes in before the tomatoes and mushrooms. this is a basic pasta dish and the best part is you can swap the ingredients around for a new dish! lol. hope you have  a good day and dinner 🙂

love,

nicole

Homemade Salsa

Hello everyone! I’m guest blogger no. 2 Sarah! I wanna share with you a salsa recipe for the salsa I randomly decided to make for today. 😀

• 6 to 8 tomatoes
• 1/2 medium red onion, minced (1/2 cup)
• 1 chilli (seeded if u don’t want it too spicy)
• 1 small garlic clove, minced (more if u like it garlic-y… hehe)
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh chinese parsley
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
• Pinch of salt

Mix it all together and Ta-da! I used a hand blender to make it mushy, but obviously if you like it chunky. Then you just have to chop everything finely. 😀

That’s all folks! Enjoy your salsa!

Thanks Nab inviting me to do this guest entry. hehe. Happy Holiday!

hediard – a slice of paris in singapore

A week ago I had the pleasure of seeing the filming for a new online tv channel, Almost-Famous.TV together with blogger Dawn Yang and Bobby Tonelli.

We were at a French cafe, Hediard, a gorgeous place which emulates the feel of quaint French cafes in the streets of Paris. Here are some photos of the place!

Ideal location at Tudor Court.

The cafe adjoints a retail store that sells food products like fruit syrup…

fruit jams…

milk jams…

liquer…

tea (and coffee) in an assortment of flavours…

sugar sticks…

I loved these sugar sticks when I saw them in the Viennese cafes and I thought I wouldn’t have found them here in Singapore, so I’m happy I found these!

chocolates and sweets…

The sweets make me feel like a kid again – I spy soft nougat, praline-filled milk chocolate, sugar coated fine almonds, coffee bean coated with dark chocolate – yummers!

even salt and pasta (and soups, pasta sauce…let’s just say they sell a whole lot of things!)

The decor is deliciously red and black.

The founder of Hediard.

Lovely table setting – coffee with cookies, truffles, macarons, madeleines, chocolate-covered preserved oranges…mmm. And I didn’t even take photos of the warm chocolate lava cake!

Desserts here are to-die-for. Seriously.

Lastly, a photo with the two of them and the owner of Hediard, Verena!

Definitely gonna drop by Hediard again soon – if anything for the desserts! Hediard will be having a promotion in May for a 3-course lunch set for just $30++, as part of the VOILAH French Festival. I think I might just go check it out!

[disclosure: I’m helping to do publicity for Voilah but all reviews are my own, of course!]

everything with fries (yes please)

Now seriously, does this make you wanna eat a burger or what?

We just moved into a new office on Joo Chiat Road which makes us officially right next to Everything With Fries. Or more specifically, next to and above, since EWF is neighbours with a slightly dodgy KTV pub, and that’s certainly not us!

Everything With Fries is located at 458 Joo Chiat Road, open Tues to Sun from 12-10pm. They also just opened a new branch at Lorong Mambong, good for them!

And did you know that it’s brought to you by the same people responsible for the good stuff that is Awfully Chocolate? Cool stuff!

So after having many people telling me to go try EWF, we finally had lunch there yesterday. (Not that I needed any persuasion really!)

First off, I fell hard for the all-white, clean interior. It matches our all-white office too!

The food was gooood.

I had the cheeseburger, which came with fries and either coleslaw or a salad. Since the focus of the place is on their fries, you get to choose the flavour you want (mine was curry) as well as the cut (shoe-string or straight-cut).

I am pleased to report that their curry straight-cut fries were yum! And my colleagues liked the normal shoe-string fries, which came crusted with a generous amount of granular salt. I choose the salad which was great, though I could do with a bigger portion. My colleagues ordered coleslaw which I thought was good too, considering that I don’t really fancy coleslaw.

The plate was bigger than my head, and I have a humongous head!

As for the cheeseburger, (oh, the cheeseburger) – it was excellent! Highly recommended as the meat was moist and very flavourful. Very filling too, I couldn’t finish my fries and had to doggy-bag it!

My colleague, Juli, had their King Salmon.

IT.IS.TO.DIE.FOR.

Tender, tender, tender salmon which melts in your mouth. I’m definitely going to order it next time.

Next up: Dessert!

We had a strawberry cupcake to share, which was really the only thing I had room for after the filling burger. There were 3 flavours – strawberry, coconut and peanut butter. The peanut butter cupcake was recommended by our waitress but I had eaten PB&J sandwiches the night before so we opted for the strawberry.

It did not disappoint. The butter cream topping is just the right amount of sweet, and quite light, unlike some other cupcakes I’ve tried. The cupcake itself was spongey and alright, and at the bottom was some strawberry jam which helped to balance out the mix of dry and moist elements in the cupcake.  Does that make sense? I hate it when cupcakes are dry so this is important to me!

Check out their dessert menu: I’ve heard many good things about that Nutella Tart!

Overall, we had a really good lunch at EWF. Plus, it was Friday so everyone was in a happy chippy mood! 🙂

I’m already looking forward to my next visit! Seeing their desserts in the window everyday is surely not going to be good for me and my waistline. But oh, I guess a little bit of indulgence now and then ain’t gonna hurt nobody, would it? 🙂

proud peacock

We were supposed to go to Fika again today for a meeting, and I was mighty excited because it was a breakfast meeting and I love me my breakfast. (They have pancakes! I die for good pancakes!) They weren’t open yet at 10.30am though, so we settled with another cafe nearby called B’s Bakery which was pretty good too.

Anyway, I am in love with this outfit.

So nice isn’t it? It’s handmade by British designer Nadia Izruna aka Nadinoo. I love her stuff, they’re all kinda pixie-ish and sweet sexy. I went to her blog as well, it’s pretty cool and I was pleasantly surprised that she’s having a November giveaway for her pixie’s blouse dress! Contest ends November 29 and you can check it out here.

Also, I am addicted to this song. Are you? Her crazy eyes are kinda freaky though!!

Selamat hari raya haji and happy long weekend to everybody!

in a fika state of mind

Went to Fika yesterday for lunch. No photos because it was a business meeting.

The decor is lovely, white, Swedish design (or at least what I think is Swedish design since I’ve never been there). Their website is cute too. I just love that moose!

Verdict is, great food but be prepared to spend $20-$30 if you order the mains. And you should, I had the grilled chicken which was quite divine, I was trying to sop up as much of the yummy gravy as was humanly possible. The potatoes that came with my chicken were soft and just perfect.

The owner, Tasneem, came out to say hello as she knew some of my lunch companions. And then she sweetly gave us complimentary Pea Soup and Tomato Soup with bread! (Trust me when I say that the pea soup is AWESOME) But then again, I’m very biased towards soup.

The meatballs were nice too. Honestly speaking, they weren’t mindblowingly fantastic, but for someone who can’t eat the famed IKEA Swedish meatballs, I guess this is a good alternative. That, or making my own.

After that Tasneem offered us some tea and coffee too. I got English Breakfast, which was kinda bitter. I don’t even know why I ordered it, I tend to do things like that when I don’t have time to think. In the end I put like 4 tsp of sugar in it (!!!) in order to make it sweet enough. I read on someone’s blog that they have Chai Masala tea? I’ll gladly try that next time.

I’d definitely go there again. Maybe not everyday, but it’s definitely a nice place to have a treat. Plus they have great service too. The next time I go, I’d love to try their breakfast and their cakes! Anyway, check out their website, it’s pretty sweet. Oh, and they recently opened Fika Upstairs, which seats 80-100 and would be perfect for a private event.

Now I wish I had taken some photos! Oh and they had some IKEA furniture too! (or at least their glasses, hehe!)

Ooh, I found this on the Fika fb page, and turns out it was taken by talented sherms! 🙂 Let’s go there together soon shermie!