Feeding 50 at an 'Open House' Party - PFB #3

Clockwise from top left: Johor Laksa, Eggless Chocolate Mouse, Tabbouleh, Curried Rice with Cashews and Raisins

Imagine you were to stumble - God help you - into a dinner party that lasted for 10 hours, where the 50  guests were free to arrive (not necessarily at the same time), to eat, mingle and leave at any time within those 10 hours. Chances are, that would have been our Open House party last Friday when we quite literally opened up our house to the people who have filled up our lives throughout the years and made them meaningful. For those unfamiliar with an Open House concept, I had introduced this cultural phenomenon in one of my previous posts. What I'd failed to mention, however, was that in allowing other people into our personal living spaces and intimately sharing our food with them, we unknowingly open our hearts up to them as well.

Clockwise from top left: Johor Laksa, condiments for laksa, satay pizza slices

When I found myself pleasantly thrust onto the 3rd round of Project Food Blog where our challenge was to host a Luxury Dinner Party, my first thought was, how on earth was I going to pick my guests for this party? Living in a country with a TOTAL population of only around 300,000 people, word would get around pretty quickly about my scant number of invitations and neighbours/relatives/friends would be out picketing in my front yard in protest! Totally insane, but true (the protesting part, not the parading-with-pickets part).

I consulted with Diva D on how to resolve this and she suggested we hold an "Open House" party where we could invite many guests to our house in celebration of Eid. It's a month-long festivity after all. Only thing was about this dinner party was that it would begin before sunset, at 3pm to be exact. And it would end, as per the usual practice, at whatever time the last guest decided to walk out of the house (ours, it turned out, was at 1am). A 10-hour party? Definitely exciting.

Tabbouleh

Aromatic Curried Rice with Cashews and Raisins

Diva D came up with the magic number of 50 guests, comprising our family and close friends. Apart from having to concoct a luxurious dining experience, here was the real challenge - I would be cooking everything all by myself. For 50 people. With 50 empty stomachs and a gazillion discerning tastebuds to their name. You see, I had no help, and yet I was foolish and very driven. Somewhere along the line, I forgot this was even a PFB challenge because once we'd pressed the proverbial button to send the invitations out, the only voice echoing in my head was that of Tim Gunn's to "Make It Happen"!

Local biscuits served on the coffeetable:

L- Pineapple Tarts, R - Kueh Mor

A buffet seemed the most sensible plan because how else would I be able to serve and host 50 guests for an amazing sit-down? For one, I do not have a dinner table the size of England and two, I am not lucky enough to have a best friend named Gayle, who can organise my bash, complete with seating arrangements and then invite 50 of my "closest friends" to it (think Oprah). So buffet it was. Two dining tables that could seat up to 12 people at a time were dressed up with fancy table-garments. No one at my party had to resort to unceremonious behaviour and tackle their food standing up. The buffet stations ensured that the guests could help themselves to the spread, which in turn left me free to mingle with our guests, filling up glasses and generally having a ball.

Our guests!

For me to be able to pull all this off successfully, with deceiving effortlessness, I'd had to be very well organised, efficient and strategic. Here, I'd like to share with you some organizational tips for party planning for a big crowd: 

1. Get Some Party-Guests!

In order to firm up your guest attendance, invite everyone well ahead of the event. When you have 50 people to invite like we did, you wouldn't want to leave it to the last minute (people have lives too, you know) nor would you want to waste money on buying stamps and end up with sticky tongue syndrome. Would you?Technology is a gift from the heavens because it allows us the luxury of real time notifications and RSVPs, so use it. 

2. Plan Up To Your Eyeballs

There's no such thing as too much planning when it comes to executing a successful party. For a luxury do, just triple the effort you would normally put in to planning a standard party!  Our planning actually started two weeks ahead of the party. With the invitations out and menu finalised, I drew up a shopping list and buffet-setting plan, cleared the tables where I wanted to place the buffet stations, and washed, dried and plastic-wrapped the cutlery, crockery, glasses and all serving dishes/implements (to keep dust out), then finally ironed the tablecloths and napkins. Oh, not to mention mopped the floor, dusted all surfaces and generally became obsessed with plumping up cushions. In order to make the party look like it was thrown together effortlessly, the gargantuan effort had to take place beforehand.

One thing people often forget to plan ahead for is storage space in your refrigerator or stove for all you will be cooking, and also to keep leftovers. Large crowds mean large dishes, which means they need space! We had to purchase an extra fridge in preparation for this party, and were we glad we did.

All wrapped up and ready

Call me whatever but I'm one of those annoying people who likes to writes a To Do list every night before I go to bed, even while on vacation. Of course, for a party this large and the fact that I was on my own and well on the way to my own kamikaze, creating a checklist was even more critical. There were simply too many things to remember and my poor little brain required some extra support. Here's a sample of my To Dos related to the tasks of food preparation:

2 days before:
Make pizza dough and freeze
Make satay sauce for pizza
Bake lemon ice-box pie and freeze

1 day before:
Prepare fish for laksa sauce
Prepare chicken for chicken curry
Cook lasagna
Make chocolate mousse
Bake mango and fig torte
Bake cempedak and marang torte
Bake apple coffee cake with butterscotch glaze

Day of event:
Prepare condiments for laksa
Cook laksa sauce
Cook spaghetti
Cook chicken curry and potatoes
Assemble and bake satay pizzas
Cook curried rice
Skewer fruits
Make tabbouleh
Make fresh orange and lime juices

What's most important is to be realistic about how much you can do by yourself. I broke the whole prep session down into little tasks to be done over a span of several days so that I could manage on my own. If you don't have the stomach for all of this, then enlist some help and delegate the chores.

Do It Safely
Obviously the most important consideration when feeding a crowd this big is proper food safety measures. I did not want to be eaten up with guilt if I were to make anyone sick, so cleanliness was paramount. As I also had to cook large batches of food, it was important that they were cooked thoroughly all the way through. Once they were cooked, I made sure that hot foods were kept at the proper temperature so that bacteria didn't have a chance in hell to begin to grow. This was especially important for my chicken curry dish and Johor Laksa sauce, both of which contained coconut milk, a potent ferment-inducing ingredient.

Choose A Guest-Appropriate Menu

Despite the higher than average number of guests, ours was not planned as a cocktail party and everyone would get to sit down and eat their meals. In my mind, no one would be walking out of my house hungry. So when I was brainstorming the menu, I had to think about several things:

1. The level of difficulty and length of time it takes to makes each dish. I wanted to make sure I could handle all the food preparation on my own and not be overwhelmed right in the middle of things. What good would it do the guests if they had to pick me up sobbing off the floor in the middle of a mountain of spices I needed to prep and cook, but just couldn't?

2. Since we were inviting whole families with children, parents and grandparents, as well as the unattached, engaged or dating, my food selection had to cater for the palates of the young, the hip, the old and the wise, plus everyone in between. I'd wanted to focus on familiar favourites, while adding a few new tastes and flavors - at least, as far as my guests are concerned. On feature were several local fares reflecting my Southeast Asian Malay heritage (Johor Laksa, Satay-flavored Pizzas, Cempedak and Marang Torte), plus I  wanted to showcase a melting pot of influences that included Italian (Lasagna and Pizzas - for the kiddies!), Indian (Curried Rice, Chicken Curry), Middle-Eastern (Tabbouleh) and Western (Lemon Ice-Box Pie, Chocolate Mousse - for me!) dishes. This was my final menu - click on it to enlarge:

As you can see, we didn't have appetizers in the buffet line-up because where I come from, the tradition is not to have any. We normally dive straight into the main courses! You may also notice that there were as many desserts as there were mains and I was completely at fault.  Firstly, I have a ginormous sweet tooth and assume others do too and secondly, my main passion in the kitchen is baking and sometimes I forget that people need to eat savory meals too. So when I saw that my dessert list was starting to overtake the main dishes, I cut back on a few and balanced out the numbers. My guess is that only another sweet-toothed creature would probably be able to understand this rationale!

Another point I'd like to highlight on this menu concerns beverages, or rather, the lack of it. I'd read somewhere that a luxury dinner party would not be complete without wine. However, our beliefs dictate that we do not take wine or any other alcoholic beverages and honestly, our meals do not seem less complete because of it. I'm sure any committed vegetarian will tell you the same reasoning about not taking meat. So for this party, we served fresh fruit juices instead courtesy of Diva D's squeezing prowess and really, no one seemed to complain.

                       L: Lemon Ice-Box Pie                      R: Skewered Fruits and the dessert table

Seeing Double
Standard recipes are usually meant to feed smaller crowds, so when you have 50 guests, you think it's safe to assume that these recipes can be multiplied accordingly. Right? Well wrong, I found out that not all ingredients needed to be multiplied. For example, oil or fat for sauteing need not be multiplied, as long as you have a proper amount to cover the bottom of the pan. Cooking times may also vary as some dishes may take less than double time and some may take even more, depending on the size of the dish. Something else I'd learnt through this experience was that a recipe to serve 4-5 that I had multiplied by 10 could have actually served more than 50 people. Way more. I also had to bear in mind that since there were 12 dishes altogether in the buffet, people would only tend to eat a little of each so there was no need to cook each dish as if it alone was to feed 50!

Now when I said 50 guests, I hadn't meant that all 50 will have come at the same time. Normally what would happen is that about 5 to 10 guests would be at the house at any one time and stay for at least an hour. Then they leave when another batch of guests arrive at the doorstep. It's almost like an unspoken code of conduct that open house guests adhere to, and strangely enough, I'd never even thought about or articulated this in any form or manner before the writing of this post!

The party was enjoyed by all and even though I was exhausted by the end of it, I knew I had thrown myself wholeheartedly into organizing this party. The genuine experience of "luxury" for me was not in the settings nor the meticulous preparations (these were all good, but easily forgettable). No, the luxuriousness was in seeing the guests enjoy the food I'd prepared, enjoy themselves in my house, and us having the pleasure of their companies throughout the whole 10 hours. Yes, 10. Those are the kind of things that make me infinitely happy.

This has been a rather long post, and I hope I hadn't lost you way up there at 10 hours and 50 guests. If it makes you feel any better, I'm as exhausted as you are! Before I sign off, though, I just wanted to let you know that voting for this challenge will begin on Monday, October 4. If you'd like to see what I'll be cooking up in the next challenge, just click on my widget on my right side-bar. My little space in Project Food Blog is determined by you, so use your powers well. *winks*

Here I share are a few recipes from my party I think you might like. I'll be posting the others soon!

Johor Laksa

My pièce de résistance was the Johor Laksa, a rich, spicy seafood noodle soup. The number of compliments it received from guests far outnumbered those received by my bright orange outfit. Heck, even my mother liked it and she's a professional perfectionist who's NOT easily impressed!

Clockwise from top left:
Spices to make Johor Laksa, giving my fish sauce a whirl with my blender, the assembled dish, and the serving hot-pot.

Laksa is a cuisine derived from the Peranakan culture, is a merger of Chinese and Malay elements found in Malaysia and Singapore, and to a lesser extent Indonesia. Unlike say, Penang Laksa, Johor Laksa uses coconut milk, resulting in a creamier texture and more rounded flavours.It also contains kerisik (grated, toasted coconut), dried prawns, lemongrass, galangal and spices akin to curry. The garnishing comprises slices of onion, beansprouts, mint leaves, Vietnamese coriander or 'daun kesum', cucumber and pickled white radish. Sambal belacan (a kind of shrimp chili paste) is placed on the side. Finally, just before eating, freshly squeezed lime or calamansi juice is sprinkled on the dish. Unique to Johor Laksa is its Italian connection - spaghetti is used instead of the normal rice noodles or vermicelli. This recipe may be challenging for beginner cooks as it involves a plethora of ingredients and is therefore more complicated to make. Okay, I'm not even a beginner and I found myself stretched making this dish! I've bracketed the Malay translations of some of the ingredients below.

Johor Laksa
Serves 10

Ingredients:
125ml vegetable oil
2 litres coconut milk
500g fresh prawns
300g Indian mackerel (ikan kembung), boiled and flaked
1 kg wolf herring (ikan parang), grilled or boiled and flaked
100g salted fish (ikan masin)
2 small packets meat curry powder, mixed with water to form a paste
1 cup roasted, pounded desiccated coconut (kerisik)
1 cup tamarind juice (assam juice), mix tamarind pulp with hot water and strain
15 laksa leaves or Vietnamese mint (daun kesum), finely chopped
5 mint leaves, finely chopped
Salt and sugar to taste

Seafood stock:
Prawn heads/ fish bones (optional onion, dried shrimps, lemongrass and fresh herbs): fry till fragrant, add in water and bring to boil. Blend all ingredients well and strain.

Laksa paste:
1 ½ inch galangal, peeled
1 inch fresh ginger, peeled
8 lemongrass (serai), sliced
5 garlic cloves
½ cup dried shrimps, soaked in cold water and drained
1 ½ inch fresh turmeric (kunyit), peeled
30 dried chilies, soaked in boiling water and well drained
125ml roasted shrimp paste (belacan)
25 shallots, peeled
1 cup water

Ingredients for condiments:
2 packets spaghetti, boiled until cooked
2 cucumbers, peel, discard seeds and slice into thin narrow strips
250g bean sprouts
200g long beans or snake beans, sliced thinly
15 basil leaves, finely chopped
10 calamansi limes, sliced into halves
1 tablespoon pounded chili and roasted shrimp paste

Method:

1. Heat vegetable oil in a heavy pot. Add in the laksa paste and render the paste slowly. Fry till fragrant.

2. Add in meat curry powder (mixed with water), and cook over moderate heat until fragrant and oil begins to appear on the surface.

3. Add in all the flaked fish, dried fish, prawns, coconut milk and seafood stock. Add in fresh herbs (chopped), tamarind juice and roasted, pounded desiccated coconut. Add in salt and sugar to taste.

4. Simmer over low heat for 20 minutes until gravy thicken, then serve the laksa gravy together with the condiments stated above.

Lemon Ice Box Pie
Who doesn't love lemons? In a frozen pie at that!

 Makes one 9-inch pie

 Ingredients:

14 whole graham crackers or Digestives, broken

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Two 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk

1 1/4 cups fresh lemon juice, plus 2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest

8 large egg yolks

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/325°F. In a food processor, pulse the graham crackers with the sugar and salt until finely ground but not powdery. Add the butter and pulse until the crumbs are evenly moistened; transfer to a 9-inch springform pan and press into the bottom and two-thirds up the side. Set the pan on a rimmed baking sheet.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk the condensed milk with the lemon juice. In another bowl, using a handheld mixer, beat the lemon zest with the egg yolks until pale. Beat in the condensed milk mixture until smooth. Pour the filling into the crust.

3. Bake the pie for 25 minutes, until the center jiggles slightly and the edges are set. Transfer the pan to a rack; let cool for 1 hour. Loosely cover the pan with plastic wrap and freeze the pie for at least 6 hours.

4. Wrap a warm, damp kitchen towel around the side of the springform pan to release the pie; remove the ring. Using a hot knife, slice the pie, transfer to plates and serve.

Tabbouleh
This tart, parsley-dominated Levantine salad made of nutty cracked wheat or bulgur mixed with wonderfully ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, and green onions, and lots of fresh mint is easily one of my favorites.

Serves 8
Ingredients:
1 cup bulgur wheat
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (2 lemons)
1/4 cup good olive oil
3 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 cup minced scallions, white and green parts (1 bunch)
1 cup chopped fresh mint leaves (1 bunch)
1 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley (1 bunch)
1 hothouse cucumber, unpeeled, seeded, and medium-diced
2 cups cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Method:
1. Place the bulgur in a large bowl, pour in the boiling water, and add the lemon juice, olive oil, and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Stir, then allow to stand at room temperature for about 1 hour.
2. Add the scallions, mint, parsley, cucumber, tomatoes, 2 teaspoons salt, and the pepper; mix well. Season, to taste, and serve or cover and refrigerate. The flavor will improve if the tabbouleh sits for a few hours.

Seswaa: A Taste Of Botswana In My Kitchen - PFB #2

My first experience of Botswana came in the form of a person. She was my lab partner at University and her name was Evelyn. Gentle, soft-spoken and shy, Evelyn was a genuine introvert, while I was anything but. We worked as a team conducting scientific experiments, thrown together out of necessity more than a natural desire to be with each other. Something inexplicable, however, happened along the way - we grew fond of each other and became protective of one another. Or rather, I protected her from the harsh realities of student life in a foreign land while she protected me from uhmm, myself.

We were just two girls from countries that began with the letter ‘B’, who hung out often but oddly never cooked together nor for each other. Well, maybe it wasn’t really that strange as we were students then and we hardly cooked for our nutritional sustenance, anyway. But now, how I wish we did. All those years ago, I’d missed the chance to experience authentic Botswanan food when I could’ve easily had it. Fast forward to now, I find myself wanting not just to eat it, but having to cook it as well!


When I enrolled in Project Food Blog, I’d already envisioned the type of cuisine I wanted to feature in my second challenge, that was, if I were to get through (which I did - thank you, oh thank you, voters and judges!). Having globetrotted a fair amount for both work and leisure, I consider myself lucky to have been able to sample a vast array of global dishes, at times Smörgåsbord-style. Yet, there are places I still haven’t been to and the region of South Africa is one of them. Thinking about this brought to mind memories of sweet Evelyn from Botswana, so I thought, why not attempt a traditional recipe from that culturally-rich, diamond-laden country?

Unfortunately, Botswanan cuisine is not easy to find in Southeast Asia, and I don’t really know if there are even restaurants serving dishes from Botswana on this side of the ocean. This was to be my first experience cooking up an classic dish from a faraway land, and something that’s not universally well-known at that. I wasn’t so much afraid of the cooking part as I was of trying to find all the right ingredients that will make the dish authentic, right here, in Brunei!

Not having the helpful opinion of Evelyn on tap (sadly, we’d lost touch after graduating), I did a bit of research and picked out a few classic African recipes I'd wanted to try from the sparse selection online. Stepping out of my comfort zone didn’t seem enough, I wanted to jump out. Botswana food recipes that called for mopane worms (aka caterpillars!) and locusts as their main ingredients really piqued my interest. Regrettably, our local stores didn’t stock these, and I wasn't about to scour my garden looking for live bugs (as totally out of my comfort zone as that would've been). And so I ended up making a far less creepy crawly dish called Seswaa. Also known as Chotlho, Seswaa is in essence boiled meat (beef or goat) which is pounded beyond recognition. Oh yes, who doesn’t enjoy a bit of enthusiastic pounding after a hard day? It’s the ultimate stress reliever!

      The best part of the process!

Seswaa is usually accompanied by a cornmeal or sorghum porridge called Bogobe and maybe some boiled leaf greens like spinach or cabbage. The essential starchy side-dish Bogobe got me worried because wherever I searched, I couldn’t find any cornmeal or sorghum flour on sale – quite simply, these are not our staples. As for looking in specialty food stores, this is Brunei, and seriously, we have none! But I did magically find this… Multigrain Corn Thins. It contained maize, millet, sorghum, brown rice and buckwheat - everything I'd wanted (plus some) to make Bogobe. I felt as if I’d struck gold, which is not as ridiculous as it sounds had you been as desperate as I was! My scheming mind planned to turn these crispy discs into multigrain meal, and then cook them with boiling water to make the thick porridge. Not thoroughly authentic, of course, but pretty darn close.

Traditional cooked cabbage and carrot would be the third component of this dish. Embellished with ginger, thyme, red chillies and tomato, this vegetable side-dish added extra color, flavor and crunchiness to the whole ensemble.

So here it is - it's my honor to present you with the exotic (for me, at least) classic dish for my second PFB challenge, Seswaa from Botswana! If you think my fervent meat pounding efforts merit me going forward onto the 3rd round of challenges, then go on, live a little dangerously and vote for me here. Voting begins on 27 September and ends 30th September, which coincidentally is Botswana's Independence Day!

Evelyn, if you’re reading this from wherever you are, I just wanted to say how much I miss those days when we used to fool around with pipettes and petri dishes full of colonius horribillis. Please do write and tell me that I didn’t somehow manage to botch up your national dish!

Seswaa

Ingredients:

• 450g or 15oz beef

• 1 large onion, chopped coarsely
• salt to taste

• 1 tablespoon flour

Method:

1. Into a large pot, place the beef, onion and salt.

2. Cover the ingredients to a height of 2 inches above the meat with water.

3. Turn burner to medium and cook the dish for 2-2½ hours until the meat is soft. Add more water when it cooks down, to just cover the meat until the last 15-20 minutes and then let it cook further down.

4. Remove from fire and drain, save the liquid to use for gravy.

5. Put the meat into a sturdy and clean plastic bag (otherwise, you'll get meat bits all over your kitchen), place bag on a clean counter or wooden board.

6. Now the fun part! Pound the meat with a meat mallet or pestle until it is flattened and flaky. Remove the bones, if there are any.

7. Put it all back in the pot and simmer to reduce the liquid. Add about a tablespoon of flour, mix it in well, to thicken it. Season to taste.

8. Serve the dish with cooked vegetables and Bogobe (recipes below).

Traditional Cabbage and Carrot

Ingredients:

1 medium tomato, finely chopped

½ onion, shredded as if it were coleslaw

1 carrot, shredded

1 teaspoon each of ginger, thyme, and dried chillies (crushed)

1 small head of cabbage, shredded

vegetable oil, for frying

Method:

1. Heat a frying pan and add frying oil, then heat the oil.

2. Fry the tomato and onion for 5 minutes.

3. Add the seasonings and stir.

4. Add carrot and stir, then add shredded cabbage and stir again to mix.

5. Reduce heat to simmer and cook for a few minutes, half covered, until cabbage is soft but not discolored.

6. Serve with Seswaa and Bogobe (recipe below).

Bogobe

Ingredients:

750g or about 26oz of cornmeal or sorghum flour

1½ - 2 litres of water

Method:

This one you can vary depending on how much you want to make.

1. Basically, all you do is boil water, and add the corn or sorghum meal, and stir frequently.

2. Cook for 20-30 minutes, stirring frequently until it reaches the desired stiffness, not too runny, but not too dry. Serve topped with Seswaa.

This Gift Of Ours - PFB Challenge #1

A few weeks ago, I introduced you to this series of challenges called Project Food Blog organised by Foodbuzz to discover the next "Food Blog Star" (whatever that means). Below is my entry to the first challenge. I hope you enjoy it, and please, vote for me only if you think I deserve to go on to the next round!

"I once read somewhere that to recreate something in words is like being alive twice. If only I am able to live parts of my life over again simply by telling you stories about my food adventures in a way that will make your mind spin, your heart do somersaults and your throat clamp up as if a large piece of chocolate fudge is stuck in it when you try to swallow. But I'm not that talented a writer, and I cannot evoke those kinds of emotions in my readers, even if I oftentimes want to.

 

Local round eggplants, purple Sōmen noodles in capsicum bowl, exotic-colored chilli peppers

   

There is, however, something I can tell you with absolute confidence and truth. And it is this: the act of pouring over old recipes and revamping them to create exciting new ones is a deeply reassuring, even spiritual, act for me. It convinces me that my and the legacy of those before (and hopefully, after) me will live on forever. Why do you think so many people connect their best moments and favorite recipes to their favorite people, their favorite relatives? So they are able to keep the memories, the essence of those loved ones alive in their hearts for as long as those recipes are being passed down, shared and savored.

Tamarind pasta with muscovado chilli sauce      Red dragonfruit and matcha cheesecake

My well-thumbed, well-floured, well-coffee stained recipe notebook

Food to me has always been linked to distinct memories, some vivid ones being at:

Age 4: Eating my first cotton candy during an airshow. I was amazed at the pink fluff of sweetness that melted and disappeared in my mouth as quickly as if I’d performed a magician's trick. I was as equally amazed a few seconds later when a strong gust of wind from an airplane blew the cottony fluff right out of my hand and into the sky, leaving me with only the wooden stick and the memory of that first taste on my tongue.

Spicy tomato dip for Indonesian corn fritters         Pear and cashew cream sorbet

Ages 12 -16: Contributing my youthful energies towards peeling sacks of onions, garlic and chillies for the weddings of relatives back in the days when wedding banquets were 100% homecooked, never catered. Everyone in the family and neighborhood was expected to chip in and help prepare the food. I remember the watery eyes and smelly fingers from handling too many spices. Oh yes, I still do.

 Sago with palm sugar and coconut milk          Pomelo and vanilla-green tea cooler

Age 19: Preparing and savoring food in a small, French village in a manner I'd never before experienced (Asian cuisine was more my thing growing up). The French hosts with whom I was staying had generously taught me how to prepare their rustic cuisine, breads, biscuits and tarts, how to sit and enjoy 5-hour feasts at the family dining table, how to shake apples fresh off a tree and pick grapes in a vineyard, and eating them on the spot. All for free.

 Apricot tarts with coconut-rose custard       Pear tart with coconut-treacle custard

Age 20: Learning to eat with a pair of chopsticks in an effort to impress the guy I was with at the time. I can't even remember his last name now, but I do recall the sensuality of having his fingers wrapped over mine while I was being taught how to grip food properly with those two tricky, wooden sticks. It took me a while to master the technique because obviously, the lessons were quite enjoyable!

             Nancem coconut iced lollies                  Black rice sushi              Homemade naan with hummus dip 

      Crusty avocado treasure balls                   Fennel-anise-caraway meringue           Dragonfruit raspberry quencher  

German apple cake                                         Grapefruit syrup cake

                Red durian quick rolls                           Apricot tarts with coconut-rose custard 

Age 20+: Baking my first cake from scratch (it contained more flavors and colors than a Häagen-Dazs collection) and bringing it into the office all excited-like. Enthusiastic colleagues took their first piece, then stayed well away the rest of the day... it tasted that awful! After that humiliation, I started a collection of favorite cake and dessert recipes that I'd aspired to master because by golly, the next time I was to bake a cake, there better be a stampede because people would all want their precious piece - or two!   

 

Now: Cooking up a storm in my (imaginary) hot, red kitchen really formed the basis of this blog - adventures in my Haute kitchen. Having recently given up my job, I suddenly had plenty of time to indulge in my passion for crazy kitchen chemistry. No, no molecular gastronomy just yet, but more the creation of familiar dishes with a new twist such as the dragon fruit and matcha cheesecake, Asian-flavored churros, sweet tomato muffins, pink and purple scones, purple cabbage lasagna noodles, tamarind-flavored pasta, roasted capsicum gelato and purple sweet potato pie. I’m still not quite sure what possessed me when I decided to turn these doodling daydreams into reality!

                 Red dragonfruit granita                            Roasted capsicum gelato                        Purple sweet potato pie  

If I have to take a stab at describing my type of cooking, I think quirky wouldn't be far off the mark. As would colorful, flavorful, unusual and yes, utterly fun. Because that's the essence of who I am. My family and closest friends will all tell you that without batting an eyelid.

When I started this blog, I'd wanted a physical dimension to store the mental volume of recipes (and stories associated with them) over the years I'd accumulated them. What I ended up having, however, was a place of adventure I could escape to daily, a place to be with friends of the same mind, a place to be myself where I can create and share my crazy recipes without fear of being ridiculed. Well okay, sometimes I do subject myself to some form of judgement, especially when I participate in events or roundups organized by fellow bloggers (eg. Foodie Fights, International Incident Party, Yeastspotting). But honestly, the fun and camaraderie overrides everything else, so it really does not matter to me if I get the odd rolling eyes or comment now and again.

                                          Fruity Il Gianfornaio                           Cinnamon-chocolate filled buns     



The recipes I've featured so far are a mix of healthy and sinful. I can never stick to just one or the other, that would be too predictable and dull for me. There are different facets of my personality, which I hope have been captured in the food and posts I've presented. Healthy or rockin', one thing's for sure, I try as much as possible to use fresh and good quality produce. Whenever I see great local (and sometimes, not-so-local) produce in the market, I’m already mentally forecasting our next meals or the baked goodies to be served up to family and friends. In other words, the prospect of creating something amazing on a plate just excites me to the core! Tell me I'm not the only one?

                      Chocolate flax seed "bomb" cakes              Cucumber rambutan salad with baked lotus chips     

   Capsicum eggs benedict                                 Purple cabbage lasagna noodles

Working on this blog and watching it take a life of its own feels very close to falling in love. That’s not as whimsical as it sounds, because I know whatever I put out here comes from some deep source. The same thing when I put food on the table for family, friends and occasional strangers - what I’m really doing is spooning up a big dollop of myself onto the platters, whether they know it or not. People think they are just eating my food, when what they're really having is a piece of my life experience, my soul. There is no greater gift I (and also, you) can offer than that.

 Longan dulce de leche tartlets   Green tea and adzuki beans churros    Ketupat (savory rice cake)

Whether I make it far in this PFB series of challenges or not, I know it will be fun stretching myself. There is still so much to learn! All I ask from you is this - enjoy the journey with me."