Chik's Crib: October 2019

27 October 2019

Daytrip to Pulau Ubin (WWF)

Travel October 27, 2019 0

Pulau Ubin isn't one of those places in Singapore where Singaporeans commonly go to. It's a small island located off the east coast, and transportation into the island can be a little spotty. And like all outdoor activities in tropical climates, the weather can be challenging. I love a good trek or two in cooler weathers when I’m overseas, but here, where people sweat from the heat even while indoors, it takes a rare occasion to pry me away from the comfort of air-conditioning.

So, when WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) held a campaign to clean up the mangroves in Pulau Ubin one Sunday, no one is as surprised as I am to find myself there. We went much earlier than the appointed time, so we can watch the sun rise over the rest of Singapore (or at least we attempted to! - We couldn't find a proper vantage point). Ultimately, we had a more satisfying time at breakfast over in the nearby Changi Village Hawker Centre.

The boats ferrying passengers to-and-fro at the ferry terminal only leaves when there is a dozen passengers, so smaller groups may have to cool their heels a little at the ferry terminal. Our sizable numbers meant that we boarded quite easily and were soon on our way.

As we made our way from the harbour into the island, it feels like we had been transported out of Singapore. The quaint structures seem right out of a set from a period drama, or from a bygone era of history. Despite being a sleepy town, the great outdoors beckons to travelers. There's kayaking, mountain-biking, and trekking around the wetlands or quarries. Adventurous 'uns can even go camping. WWF had liaised with a local adventure company for our expedition into the mangroves. A quick rundown of the basics of kayaking after, and we were off!

Our fleet of budding kayakists set off together, shepherded by capable hands from the company. We stopped every so often, as our guides, intimate with the area, named the wildlife and shrub, and explained their role in the mangroves. The waters were a deep murky green, which progressively lightened as we proceeded into the deeper areas of the mangroves. We rowed past a section of the coast, where the now-defunct resort of Pulau Ubin stood.

It was a beautiful day for a row, and it was a side of Singapore that I hadn't appreciated before. Items we picked out of the mangroves ranges from small water bottles to big barrels, which were likely discarded in the surroundings waters and swept into the mangroves by the currents. Not all of the larger items could fit into the kayak, but we fished out as much as we could.

A few hours into the expedition, we headed back to shore, and had a leisurely lunch at Season Live Seafood. There was prawns, steamed fish and fried yam. It was sumptuous! There was a smattering of rain as we ate, but luckily, the winds begin to shift towards the end of our meal, and a bright spot of clear sky opened, and just in time to catch the bumboat back to the mainland.

Fall colours in Pulau Ubin, or did someone forgot to water this plant?

***********

Pulau Ubin is a beautiful island, and slightly rough around the edges. The efforts of WWF in preserving the environment here is admirable, and especially considering the lengths that they had gone through to make the lives of volunteers a little easier, from organising shutter transportation to the Changi, to buying lunch for the volunteers. I appreciate how a tour group (Asian Detour) was charted by WWF to bring us around the mangroves. We went home afterwards, now a little wiser about the mangroves of Pulau Ubin.

Despite my copious amounts of sunblock, I had a good sunburn situation going on and consoled myself by lapping up a well-deserved ice cream at Birds of Paradise. It wasn't as close to the ferry terminal as I had envisioned, but it's good enough to warrant a detour!

18 October 2019

Karen's Chocolate Mousse Domes

Recipe October 18, 2019 0

Years ago, back when I was studying in university and all of us were staying on campus, my friend Karen brought a few of these dainty confectioneries to us, and asked us what we thought about them. It was a delicate chocolate mousse, coated with a shiny layer of glaze and sitting atop a crunchy biscuit base. I dug a spoon into the dessert, and peeping out of the chocolate mousse, was an inner filling of caramelised milk, or dulce de leche. It was simply exquisite. We could scarcely believe that they were home-made. Within a few bites, the plates were swept clean, and not a crumb remained.

It's been a few years since. Despite the intervening years, I still remember her mousse cakes, which had been singularly the most impressive dessert I had seen a home baker made. And I hung out often with a pretty large group of baking enthusiasts. I'd seen similar confectioneries in various fancy cafes, usually little showstoppers named after the cafe. This recipe was so spectacular, I finally gave in and bought some of those silicone molds just so I could make these mousse cakes.

Karen was generous enough to share her recipe, and I started tinkering with various components of the recipe over the last few months, starting from when I visited my sister in California for a holiday, and continuing on when I returned to Singapore. I think these pictures were from batches number six or seven? I'd changed a couple of things, like substituting the sweet dulce de leche filling for a tart-er raspberry filling, and various means of getting the glaze to be a little more reflective. I think I tired out the voracious chocolate appetites of even my family (on both continents) at the end of it, but it was well worth the efforts.

A common theme in my baking experience is to jerry-rig some sort of baking equipment together, and over here, for example, is my niece's Hello Kitty cookie cutter in lieu of a circular cookie cutter for the chocolate base. Which actually did a pretty good job.

Karen's Chocolate Mousse Domes
This is a four-part assemble, and is more complicated than the usual recipes that I post up. However, if you stick with it, it's well worth the effort. I've listed the parts in the order of which they should be done, to minimise waiting time. Otherwise, it could be spread out over multiple days. This recipe requires a roughly-circular cookie cutter, and silicone molds. Silicone molds can be picked up online or in specialty baking stores. The portions here has been adjusted to make 12 mousse domes.

RASPBERRY FILLING
Fills 12 mousse

INGREDIENTS
40g granulated sugar
1/8 tablespoon lemon juice
40ml water
A dash (1/16 tsp) vanilla extract
75g frozen raspberries

STEPS
1. In a medium saucepan set over medium heat, combine everything and cook until mixture thickens into an almost-jam-like consistency. Remove from heat and let cool completely. Refrigerate at least 4 hours before use.

CHOCOLATE MOUSSE
Makes 12 domes (2.5" each)

INGREDIENTS
4.5g (1.5 tsp) of gelatin
100g dark chocolate, about 70% cacao
20g brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
50ml + 250ml heavy cream

STEPS
1. Stir the gelatin into 30ml of cold water. Allow to sit for 5-10 minutes.
2. In a small saucepan, set 50ml of heavy cream and the chocolate over the lowest possible heat, stirring constantly, until the chocolate has fully melted. Remove from heat. Add brown sugar, and vanilla essence. Allow the mixture to cool, and then stir in the gelatin.
3. Whip the remaining 250ml heavy cream to soft peaks, and fold into chocolate mixture until just combined.

4. Scoop the mousse into the dome molds, leaving about 1cm space from the top. Create a slight well in the middle of the chocolate mousse, to make space for the raspberry filling.

5. Add a teaspoon of the raspberry filling (as above) into the mousse. Smoothen out the surface of the mousse as best as you can. Place in the freezer for at least an hour. (You may find it helpful to slide a cutting board under the flexible silicone mold for structural support.)

CHOCOLATE BISCUIT BASE
Makes enough for 12 mousse cakes. Digestive biscuit is widely available, though I’m planning to try using feuilletine in my future batches.

INGREDIENTS
150g digestive biscuit
50g choc
50g butter

STEPS
1. Preheat the oven to 160C
2. In a medium saucepan, melt butter over the lowest heat setting over a stove, and then add chocolate and stir constantly, until the chocolate just melts and combines with the butter. Remove from heat.
3. Using a rolling pin or the flat surface of a kitchen hammer, pound the digestive biscuit into small even crumbs. Mix the digestive biscuit into the chocolate mixture.
4. Find a circular biscuit cutter which diameter is about the width of the base of the silicone domes. On a flat baking tray lined with parchment paper, use the biscuit cutter and compress about a tablespoon of digestive biscuit mix into a circular shape. Aim to get the thickness about 1cm. Aim to make about 12-13 bases.
5. Bake at 160C for 5-10 minutes, and then let cool. When at room temperature, top each frozen chocolate dome with the chocolate biscuit base. Push down to remove air pockets. Place in freezer again, for at least 2 hours, until the mousse and base are frozen solid. (It is common for the biscuit to be crumbly and break apart. Just push them together again, and add more crumbs to fill up the gaps.)

CHOCOLATE MIRROR GLAZE
Makes enough for 12 mousse cakes

INGREDIENTS
5.7 grams powdered gelatin
30ml cold water
60 grams water
90 grams sugar
60 grams condensed milk
15 grams of cocoa powder
105 grams dark chocolate
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

STEPS
1. Bloom the gelatin in cold water by stirring them together thoroughly. It should be a thick slurry.
2. Over medium heat in a saucepan, combine water, sugar, and condensed milk, and let it come to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. When it has cooled a little, add in the gelatin and stir until it is fully dissolved.
3. Place the chocolate and cocoa powder in a large bowl and pour the hot liquid over it. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes, then gently stir until the chocolate is fully melted. Using a handheld blender (alternatively, you may pour into a blender), process until the glaze is homogenous mixture. Be careful not to introduce too many bubbles since every minor imperfection will show on the surface.
4. Strain the glacage through a sieve to remove any stray particles and air bubbles.
5. Let the glacage cool for about 10-15 mins. If using a thermometer, aim to get it about 32°C, which is the optimal temperature to pour over your frozen desserts. Set a metal rack over a plate or bowl, and gently pour the glaze over the desserts. The excess glaze that drips off the dessert can be reused, after straining it through a sieve to filter out stray crumbs.
6. Leftover glaze can be stored indefinitely like this. If otherwise left in a well-sealed tupperware in the fridge, it is best to use it up within 3-5 days. To warm up the glaze in future recipes, I place a required amount in a small metal container, and submerge the container in a larger vessel filled with boiling water. Stir gently, as the glaze is heated up by the hot water and melts into a pourable consistency.

Serving
Once glazed, transfer the domes to the fridge and allow to defrost fully, about 3 hours. Once defrosted, the biscuit base will soften, and is best when consumed within a day.

Variation

8-inch cake

The recipe can be adapted for an 8-inch cake. Build the biscuit base in a cake pan with a removable base. Cover and freeze. Subsequently, add the raspberry layer and return to freezer. Then add the mousse, and return to the freezer. Finally, loosen and release the cake from the walls (you may find using a cloth dipped in near boiling water useful to warm up the side of the cake pan to aid the release of the cake). Glaze the cake and top with chopped nuts or cacao nibs. Let thaw in the fridge several hours prior to serving.

Cream substitute

When you're running low on cream, you can substitute some parts of it with full cream milk in a pinch. Under the CHOCOLATE MOUSSE portion, use milk instead of cream to melt the chocolate in. The less cream you use, the icier the final product will be. You'll still need about 200-250g cream for this recipe (to whip to soft peaks).

11 October 2019

Roasted Strawberry Ice Cream Recipe

Recipe October 11, 2019 0

We may have been a little overzealous snapping up all the berries that are on sale, but could you blame us? It's the end of summer and the supermarket was overflowing with fresh berries. We heaped boxes of of blueberries and raspberries into our cart, and just when we were about to leave, we couldn't resist buying these sweet-smelling strawberries.

There was many of us, and we (my nieces) ate as much as we physically could. But 3 kilos of strawberries is still hard to plow through, and so just when the final box was starting to get a little soft, I decided to roast the strawberry and make some ice cream.

We had visited the Original Farmers Market in LA on the previous week, and came back with a particularly impressive bottle of apple balsamic vinegar from Temecula Olive Oil Company, which I drizzled over the strawberries. Because of the young 'uns at our dinner table, we stuck to the conservative side of ice cream making, and omitted the more adventurous miso flavour found in the original recipe, and used a quick squeeze of lemon to balance the sweetness.

The strawberry ice cream was brightly flavoured, and is so creamy, it's scoopable straight out of the freezer. It was the creamiest ice cream I'd had! Unlike the blueberries ice cream which we tried earlier in the month, where the blueberries were blended, we love how the chunks of macerated strawberries were mixed in with the ice cream.

Roasted Strawberry Ice Cream
Original Recipe from David Lebovitz

INGREDIENTS
For the roasted strawberries:
1 pound (450g) strawberries
3 tablespoons golden syrup, maple syrup, or light-flavored honey
1/2 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
a few turns of black pepper

For the ice cream custard:
1 3/4 cups (430ml) heavy cream
1 cup (250ml) whole milk
1/2 cup (100g) sugar
5 large egg yolks (4 jumbo egg yolks*)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
A few drops of fresh lemon juice

STEPS
To make the roasted strawberries:
1. Preheat the oven to 375ºF (190ºC).

2. Destem the strawberries and cut them in quarters. Mix with golden syrup, balsamic vinegar, and black pepper, and arrange them in a single-layer in a wide shallow baking dish with high sides.

3. Roast the berries on the upper rack of the oven, stirring once or twice during roasting, until they are soft and the juices have thickened, about 60 - 90 minutes. Remove from the oven and transfer to a small bowl. (Taste and adjust the sweetness with caster sugar or more honey, if your strawberries are not sweet.) Let cool to room temperature, and then refrigerate. These roasted strawberries can be kept up to three days in the fridge.

To make the ice cream custard
4. Pour the cream into a 2L bowl, and then place the bowl in an ice-bath. Set a strainer over the inner bowl over the cream.

5. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together. In a saucepan, heat the milk and sugar.

6. Gradually pour about half a cup of warmed milk into the yolks, whisking as you pour. This tempers the eggs and prevents them from scrambling.

7. Scrape the warmed yolks and milk back into the saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly as you do, until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula. Remove from heat immediately, and strain into the bowl of heavy cream. Stir over the ice until cool. Add the vanilla extract and refrigerate to chill thoroughly, preferably overnight.

8. When ready to complete the ice cream, mix the roasted strawberries with the custard, then stir in the lemon juice. Churn in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

*I've noticed that USA large egg yolks are pretty small in comparison to Australia's or Singapore's. If in doubt, the egg yolk from one large egg should be 18g.

03 October 2019

Reverse Searing

Western Food October 03, 2019 0

One of the highlights of living in Melbourne was the Costco, and one of the perks that I'd missed when I left. Costco's a celebration of good ol' American excess, with eye-catching prices from fuel to food to liquor. I wish Costco would come to Singapore!

We had a chance to get reacquainted recently, when I visited my sister in California during my holidays. We spent an inordinate amount of hours wandering up and down the aisles and (me) grabbing everything in sight. Despite my enthusiasm for all things Disney, I skipped Disneyland this visit (Costco is my wonderland!). We went a little crazy in the meat section of Costco, but the upside was we had a lot of practice with newfangled cooking methods.

Kenji from Serious Eats explained the reverse-searing concept in much greater details than I could, but essentially, the traditional process of cooking meat is 'reversed': the meat here is cooked over low heat first, and then seared over high heat. This replicates the effects of sous-vide, and with the additional benefit of the steak having a dry surface when it's subsequently seared on a hot frying pan. Steaks cooked this way are evenly cooked inside, with the cross-section going from the seared surface to an even pink interior, with no overcooked layers (which can be seen as grey-colored band).

The guideline below is a good way to estimate cooking times in the oven, but a meat thermometer takes the guesswork out of the equation. A ruined steak costs way more than a thermometer, so get one! With a little prep work, the resultant steaks were as good as any in fancy steakhouses, and at a fraction of the price.

Approximate cooking guidelines - from Serious Eats

Reverse Searing
Thinly sliced steaks cook too fast in the oven, and for reverse-searing, each steak has to be at least one-and-a-half inches thick.

EQUIPMENT
Rimmed baking sheet, which fits in the fridge
Wire rack, to be placed within the baking sheet

STEPS

1. Season your thick-cut steaks with salt and pepper on all sides, and then transfer to the wire rack set set in the baking sheet. Place the set-up uncovered in the fridge overnight, or at least 8 hours. This dries out the exteriors.

2. When ready to cook, preheat the oven between 95 to 135°C (200 - 275°F). The lower you go, the more evenly the meat will cook, though it'll also take longer. Be aware that the timing estimates in the picture above was for 120°C, and that some smaller ovens may not hold temperature consistently below 100°C.

3. Place the set-up in the oven, and roast until they reach an internal temperature close to the target temperature.

4. Over the highest burner in the stovetop, set a frying pan and add a tablespoon of vegetable oil. As soon as that oil starts smoking, add the steaks along with a tablespoon of butter. It'll take about 45 seconds til the steaks are nicely browned on the first side. Flip the steaks and brown the other side, and then hold the steaks sideways to sear their edges. Serve the steaks immediately, or, if you'd like, let them rest for at most a minute or two.