Braised Pork Belly Rice Bowl (SGD18) with green tea (can’t remember the price)
What: Modern Asian CBD resto with fairly expensive food (mains start at SGD12 bucks) that is actually worth it. Also they have a lunch special – if you add SGD3 you get a drink and salad.
Pros: The restaurant is beautiful – my lunch mate and I were surprised and concluded it would make a lovely intimate wedding venue. It’s filled with light, it’s clean and crisp and I’m even into their unexpected marbled tables. The rice bowls (she had Butter Poached Cod (SGD18) and I had Braised Pork Belly (SGD16)) were delicious and fresh and the hefty meat serving made me happy.
Cons: Their Liu Shia Custard Donuts AKA salted egg yolk donuts (SGD7 for three), though beautiful, were fairly ordinary and a bit too sweet. Skip them!
Verdict: I think it’s a good place for an overdue Friday lunch catch-up or a lunch meeting with clients.
Details: May May
65 Tras Street
Singapore 079004
+65 6221 4698
What: A newly-opened whimsical cafe housed, somewhat unceremoniously, at the base of the Park Hotel and next to Ikea.
Pros: The staff are fantastic, the decor is charming and for the most part I really liked my food (coffee, ham and cheese croissant and the choc tart get full marks).
Cons: It’s small so it may be tough to get a seat and I didn’t really like their lemon tart – it was all curd and too light to pack a punch.
Verdict: Oh I loved it! I want to go back and eat ALL THE THINGS.
Bread pudding!I have what you can call an interesting relationship with food.
As a kid I basically ate everything which meant I was a little soft around the edges.
This meant A LOT of teasing in primary school and as I grew older, I grew heavier. Finally, in high school there came a year where I ate very little and exercised very much.
That year changed my relationship with food – it became an enemy and something to fear. Weirdly enough I also started thinking about it a whole lot more – despite not consuming very much.
Fifteen years later I still have a very intense relationship with food but don’t think I will ever fall back into the pit of unhealthy deprivation. I eat specific things that I think are healthy and nutritious and give me a lot of energy. I also make sure I have an allotment of chocolate everyday for, you know, #health.
Still sometimes, when I want to make and eat a desert all these old feelings of trepidation rush back – is this is a good idea, will there be too much, do I really need these extra calories, but I CAN’T BE EATING CAKE FOR BREAKFAST FOR FIVE DAYS!!!!
This past weekend all these confusing feelings and thoughts flooded my brain after I decided I had to make bread pudding (I mean I had a leftover baguette, what’s a girl to do?). That was when I had a bit of a “check yourself, before you wreck yourself,” moment.
Eating a bit of bread pudding is not going to kill me. It might even make me happy (in that moment, I know food is not the solution to all things). And while I don’t advocate eating cake and bread pudding and generous mouthfuls of refined white sugar everyday, it’s important to let myself eat the things I want and love, sometimes.
It’s irritating, but also true, that moderation might be the only way to approach food and also life.
*The bread pudding I linked to is the recipe I used and it was GORGEOUS. Skip the sauce though – eat with maple syrup/honey instead!
The motivation behind the coconut lemon curd – was a lack of tastiness.
Let me rewind.
So, Saturday last week, I awoke, slightly worse for the wear after… let’s call it, an enthusiastic Friday night.
The only solution was – brunch. And grocery shopping. Because I had to make food. And get on with my day. Because no matter how you feel – you gotta get shit done. Coz you’re an ADULT. See here for inspiration.
So, in my mind I had a game plan. I was gonna go, get the freaking groceries and get a donut from Starbucks. A glazed old-fashioned donut with a cup of black coffee. And life would be beautiful.
After getting all them groceries and ambling over to Starbucks, the semi-polite barista informed me they were out of donuts.
WHAT???
Since my entire plan for happiness, that Saturday, was precariously hinged on whether I not I ate that donut, I left said Starbucks knowing that all hope was lost.
I had nothing else to do but make butter cake.
Also I bought a lot of eggs. Butter cake requires many eggs.
All the batter
I would like to tell you that after I hate-baked this cake I discovered that it was quite dry. This may be because I baked it like 10 minutes more than the recommended time. The batter was still jiggling – OK? The only thing I could do – obviously – was to then make lemon curd to go with it.
The curd!
When life gives you lemons…
Butter Cake
250g unsalted butter, at room temperature – I used salted because I didn’t have unsalted. Don’t judge.
1 + 2/3 cup / 200gm all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup / 200gm castor sugar
4 eggs
½ tsp salt
4 Tbsps yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 190C/375F.
Grease a loaf pan with butter, line with parchment paper, and grease that. Foolproof dudes. Use this method when baking.
Sieve the flour and baking powder together, stir in the salt.
Use an electronic mixer, unless you want to hate your life, to cream the butter and sugar together until pale yellow in color.
Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
Add in the vanilla extract and mix well.
Fold in the flour. I did this by spooning the flour in and making a “figure 8” shape with my spatula. Mel told me to do this. It worked.
Add in the yogurt and mix.
Pour mixture into the baking pan and smooth down with a knife.
Bake until golden brown and no longer jiggly! About 40 minutes. Use a cake tester to see if cooked.
Reading this recipe properly now, I realize I baked it at the wrong temperature, so 40 minutes might actually work.
Coconut Lemon Curd
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (approximately the juice of 1 lemon)
2 tsp finely grated lemon zest (approximately the zest of 1 lemon)
1/3 cup / 70gm sugar
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup / 60g unsalted butter, cubed
4 Tbsps coconut milk
Measure out the lemon juice, zest and sugar into a saucepan. Cook over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves completely.
Whisk egg yolks in a medium heatproof bowl until frothy and add the hot lemon mixture slowly. Whisk continuously to combine. Strain the mixture through a mesh sieve.
Return to the heatproof bowl and place over a saucepan of simmering water. Cook, stirring continuously, until the mixture sticks to the back of a wooden spoon. Do not allow the mixture to boil.
Remove from the heat and add the butter cubes, whisking until fully combined.
Finally, add the coconut milk and whisk to combine.
Set aside to cool. Should keep in the fridge for about a week.
Funny thing about this cake and lemon curd was, I really thought it was just kind of blahhhh but my flatmates ate it all. I guess one person’s butter cake can be another person’s chocolate chip cookie.
Hi friends! I’m back with the third installment of ugly food I cook and for some reason, you can’t get enough of!
I cook a couple of times a week and many times I look to the Internet Gods for guidance, advice and of course – recipes.
This installment is the longest I’ve ever done and features heavily on desserts… Clearly I need to stop pretending I live in a cold country and need sustenance in the form of sweet treats.
Because I live in Singapore and my ass needs sustenance in the form of raw green things. And some lean protein. But you know #details
SO. This time around I changed up the format. See the pretty pictures first and the ugly AND REAL pictures later.
This dessert, like so many others, was born out of a frenzy of denying my body sugar for days. Actually it might have been 24 hours. But as they say, same-to-same. I found the lemons in my fridge, stole my flatmate’s flour and baked these babies up. They might look questionable but I can actually say I pretty much ate ALL of this, by myself.
I always REALLY regret making Indian-fusion food or anything with the word curry in it. Why? It’s always insipid and then I crave my Mom’s food and then I crawl into a fetal position and cry. True story.
I have featured these babies before here, but before the editing and amateur “food styling” I attempted, they looked like this. They tasted friggin AMAZING though.
Goat Cheese and Blackberry Jam Grilled Sandwiches – Aamupalalla
Stunning Goat and Blackberry Jam Grilled cheese
Off-putting morning goat and jam grilled cheese sammies
I saw this grilled cheese, I had some left-over goat cheese, Hoi had just given me a mini-pot of strawberry jam – and I knew, it was meant to be. Stinky, cheesy and yummy, this baby was intense. Would I make it again? No. But do I regret it? No.
I made these nachos for a girlie dinner and it went down like a hit. Looking back at these pictures makes me realize though that man – I have got to learn how to style food! Or accept that having a food blog might mean not eating the food you present on the blog. ANYWAY, this was very tasty and Molly Yeh’s original post on it is beautiful. I recommend taking a look.
I saved the best, err ugliest, for last. A questionable textured breakfast that tasted pretty yummy, this baked oatmeal looked like the stuff of breakfast dreams, but in actuality looked CRAZY TERRIBLE. UGH.
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