Bananas Foster on French Toast

(serves 6)
Bananas Foster is a version of Cherries Jubilee using Bananas instead. It’s actually a very easy dessert to make, requiring little in the way of expertise or special ingredients, and it doesn’t take too much time either. In this recipe I’ve added French Toast to the line up; the two are a great together if you don’t like your desserts too sweet.  

Ingredients

1. Bananas (500g)
2. Bread (Half a Loaf)
3. Eggs (2)
4. Butter (100g)
5. Dark Rum (1/4 cup)
6. Sugar (3T)
7. Golden Syrup
8. Vanilla Ice Cream
9. Powdered Cinnamon

Preparation

1. Beat 2 eggs in a shallow dish.
2. Cut two 1.5 inch thick slices of bread from a whole loaf and further cut each slice into three equal portions. Soak the bread, on both sides, in the dish until all the egg is gone. This will take several minutes.
3. Melt 1T of butter in a pan. Pan fry the soaked bread on very low heat, flipping occasionally until the egg is fully cooked. Leave the resulting French Toast on a wire rack to cool.
4. Place 100g of butter, 3T white sugar and 1/2 t of salt in the same pan. Dissolve the sugar in the butter under low heat.
5. In the meanwhile quickly slice your bananas. Cut diagonally across the banana to get oval shaped slices. The slices should be 1/2 inch thick.
6. When the sugar has fully dissolved, add the banana slices and turn up the heat.
7. Stir fry gingerly. When the butter and bananas begin to darken, drizzle on 1T of golden syrup followed by a sprinkle of 1t of powdered cinnamon. Finally pour in 1/4 cup of dark rum.
8. Continue to stir fry. Stop and turn off the fire when the sauce thickens sufficiently.
9.  Arrange the French Toast on one big plate or many small plates. Pour the banana caramel mixture over the French Toast and top off with small scoops of vanilla ice cream.

 Notes

• There are many varieties of banana, and the one that you choose is important as it will determine the texture of the dessert you end up making. In my opinion small is better than big.The standard Cavendish (i.e. the big ones on the left in the photo below) get mushy more easily when cooked. I find smaller varieties like the Emperor Banana tend to retain their structural integrity better under heat. You’ll have a better chance of finding them at a fruit store as opposed to a supermarket. In all cases, the bananas should be at the threshold of getting ripe and definitely not over ripe with black spots. 500g is 3 large or 8 small bananas.
• To add some flair you can serve your Bananas Foster as a flambé. The best way to do this is to preheat the rum in a metal ladle directly over the fire at the stove. Tip the ladle such that the rum is about to spill onto the fire to ignite it. Pour the burning rum over the rest of the dish at the dining table. While this is entertaining, it does impair your ability to control the viscosity of the resulting sauce, so be aware of this.  
• Banana liqueur is one of the traditional ingredients of Bananas Foster but I find it is superfluous, and besides you’ll end up with a bottle lying the house for years with little other use. It’s infinitely more important to add the pinch of salt which is left out in many recipes. If you do decide to add it, just add 2T to the rum.
• Most recipes specify brown sugar. I don’t because it burns more easily and I find caramelizing white sugar actually works better in exchanging flavour between the bananas and the sauce. I believe that’s why I haven’t a need for banana liqueur. 
• To my knowledge, Bananas Fosters was first created in New Orleans, which makes sense since there are plenty of banana plantations in the Caribbean.

 

Oven Baked Nonya Otak-otak

(serves 8)
Otak-otak is a terrine-like grilled fish delicacy from South-east Asia, an exotic spicy dish that works as a western appetizer. There are many varieties of Otak-otak from Thailand all the way down to Indonesia; this version is of the Straits Chinese style featuring coconut milk, popular in Singapore and Penang. Otak-otak is usually grilled in banana leaves and contains other ingredients uncommon in the Western kitchen, but I have worked out a modified recipe that resolves these issues.  

Ingredients

1. White Fish Fillets (500g)
2. Yeo’s Minced Prawns in Spices (2x160g tins)
3. Coconut Milk (160 ml)
4. Onion (0.5)
5. Egg (1)
6. White Sandwich Bread
7. Lemon
8. Cucumber
9. Sherry
10. Lemongrass
11. Tarragon

Preparation

1. Dice half an onion and pan fry the pieces on low heat in a pan with a dash of oil. When the onion begins to get limp turn up the heat and add the two cans of minced prawn to the pan and continue frying until you see bubbling. Sprinkle on 2t lemongrass and 1t tarragon and transfer the contents of the pan to a large mixing bowl when it has cooled down.
2. Make a brine out of 1T salt, 1t sugar, 1T of lemon juice and 2 cups of water. Cut the fish into chunks and put them in the brine them for 20 minutes (and no more). Rinse and place the fish pieces on a tea towel to dry. You can do this concurrently with step 1.
3. Cut 2 slices of plain bread into small cubes. If the bread is fresh and the crust is still soft you can keep the crust, otherwise trim the crust off. Pour in 160 ml of coconut milk over the diced bread followed by 1 egg, 1T of sherry and 1t of sugar. Mix well, then add the fish.
4. Place a quarter of the fish and bread mixture in a food processor and give it a 2 second pulse (and no more) on low power. Transfer the resulting fish paste to the mixing bowl with the shrimp and onion. You want the fish paste to be coarse but even, so you cannot blend too much at a time. Repeat another three times to use up all the fish and bread. Stir  everything in the mixing bowl until you get an even colour.
5. Preheat your oven to 150oC (300oF).
6. Pour the seafood mixture into a medium sized casserole dish. The casserole dish should be big enough such that the thickness of the seafood is no more than one inch. Cover the casserole dish, if it doesn’t have a cover you can use aluminium foil snugly crimped over the top.
7. Place the casserole in the oven. The idea is not so much to bake the fish but to steam it. After 40 minutes, remove from the oven and allow to cool. There will be bulge in the centre initially but this will flatten over time. What you have now is a seafood terrine of sorts.
8. When the terrine is cold, and this can be several hours later or even overnight (in the fridge), put it back in the oven, this time uncovered, for twenty minutes at 200^oC (390^oF). This will boil off most of the free liquid, refine the aroma and give the Otak-otak a nice crust – as shown here.
9. While still hot, cut the Otak-otak into slices and serve on untoasted plain white bread with some thin cucumber slices.

Notes

Yeo’s Minced Prawns in Spices

• As the fish is cooked for an extended time, there is no point in using fresh fish. I typically use frozen pangasius fillets myself , they are cheap and readily available, but really any kind of white fish is fine. The important thing is to dry the fish (draining on a colander is insufficient) properly after brining as the Otak will end up too wet if you don’t.
• Yeo’s Minced Prawn in Spices a.k.a. Prawn Sambal is a key ingredient that contains in a single tin every ingredient you need for cooking Otak you won’t find in your kitchen larder. Last time I checked, you can order it from Amazon. Its not the perfect solution, but its better than looking for weird ingredients like candlenut and galangal.
• If you don’t like your food spicy, you can use just one tin of the minced prawn instead of two (the child’s version I call this), but you’ll need to add salt and sugar to compensate.
• To bring your Otak-otak to the next level, you can add chunks of whole seafood. For example you could brine a few scallops along with the fish, dice them and add them in step 6. Canned or bottled clams would work well also. If you bake cakes and have pandan essence around, a few drops will also do wonders. 
• Instead of on bread, you can also serve Otak-otak with some white rice cooked with coconut milk.
• The Thai version of Otak-otak has a different name, which is Hor Mok Pla.  

 

Caviar Egg Salad Amuse-Bouche

(serves 8)
The combination of the intense savoury flavour and crunchy explosion of caviar just can’t be beat, but caviar can be a tad salty. In this recipe, this saltiness is perfectly balanced by the mild taste of egg salad to make the perfect amuse-bouche. There are just 5 simple ingredients, making this little package of tastiness incredibly easy to make. You can easily scale it up to serve several dozen guests if you need a dazzling canapé for a party.        

Ingredients

1. Caviar (1 bottle, 80g)
2. Eggs (4)
3. Shallots (1)
4. Brioche (8 mini slices)
5. Mayonnaise

Preparation

1. Hard boil 4 eggs (i.e. 12 minutes or more). Allow the eggs to cool in cold water and then de-shell them. You can boil the eggs anytime before and keep them in the fridge.
2. Put the each egg through a wire egg slicer three times. On the first pass, slice the egg as per normal but hold on to the ends of the eggs to keep the egg together.
3. On the second pass slice the eggs lengthwise. It will be harder to keep the eggs together so do the slicing carefully.
4. For the third pass you also slice the egg lengthwise but after rotating them 90 degrees. Hold the slicer over a large bowl to catch the falling bits as the egg will basically fall apart after you are done. The idea is to end up with little cubes of egg white. The yolk will disintegrate but that’s fine.
5. Finely (and I mean finely) dice one shallot. You can use a quarter of an onion if you don’t have shallots.
6. Add 2 heaped T of mayonnaise, the diced shallot, 0.5t sugar and a generous sprinkle of pepper to the diced egg and mix until the yolk has melted into the mayonnaise.
7. Add half the caviar to the egg salad and mix some more. Place the bowl into the fridge for about an hour.
8. Divide the caviar egg mixture onto the brioche. The brioche can be lightly toasted, or left untoasted if fresh.
9. Decorate each amuse-bouche with the remaining caviar and serve while cold.

Notes

• Caviar is not as expensive a delicacy as you might think, all you need to do is use a caviar made from a fish other than sturgeon. The cheaper varieties taste perfectly fine and in any case you might not want to use top grade caviar as a flavouring ingredient. The bottle I used (pictured right) was made from herring roe and has a retail price of under ten dollars, as will many other varieties.   
• Besides brioche you can use any number of other things as the base. Be it a pastry or bread, just make sure it is not of the salty type. The Blini (essentially a mini pancake, second photo) or a Yorkshire Pudding are some alternatives.
• The amount of caviar you reserve for decoration will determine the colour of your amuse bouche. If you mix the whole bottle of caviar in you will get a darker look as per the Blini photo.
• For some colour you can add some chopped chives. The stark green specks will make the amuse-bouche look even more attractive. I really should have done that for the photo.
• In case you were wondering, no that is not a giant ball of caviar in the top photo. It’s an optical illusion. It looks like a large slice of bread on a regular plate but its actually a slice of a mini brioche loaf on a small plate.
•  

 

Caesar’s Salad

(serves 3-4)
If there is one salad that everybody likes, it’s Caesar’s Salad. The Caesar is the salad for people who are not into salads; it’s got the taste of bacon, the taste of fish and also cheese. At the same time the Romaine lettuce doesn’t have the bitter taste of the greener leafy vegetables while the dressing is beautifully creamy. Everything that can be done to make a salad less like a salad defines the Caesar. In my version I incorporate the super salty slivers of anchovy that often catch you by surprise into the salad dressing itself.  

Ingredients

1. Romaine Lettuce Hearts (2)
2. Cherry Tomatoes (8)
3. Bacon (4 rashes)
4. Bread (2 Slices)
5. Anchovy in Oil (10g)
6. Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese (40g)
7. Mayonnaise
8. Mustard
9. Vinegar
10. Minced Garlic
11. Vegetable Oil

Preparation 

1. Slice 4 rashes of bacon into 1cm squares. Fry the bacon in a pan to render their oil. Turn off the fire when three quarters of the bits are hard and crispy, allowing the residual heat to brown the remainder. Spoon out the bacon, leaving the oil in the pan.
2. Dice 2 slices of bread into 1cm squares. Stir the bread cubes in the pan to soak up the oil from the bacon. To make them into croutons, toast the bread pieces in the toaster oven for 15 min at 120^oC to harden them and a further 3 min at 180^oC to impart some colour.
3. Mash 2 slivers of anchovy in their oil in a mixing bowl. You should end up 2t of anchovy oil suspension. You may need to heat the anchovy in the pan for them to disintegrate – see notes below.
4. Peel and mince a few cloves of garlic.
5. Add 1t mustard, 2t minced garlic, 2t vinegar and a pinch of sugar to the bowl and mix well.
6. Add 4T of mayonnaise and mix well. Then add 3T of vegetable oil 1T at a time, stirring the oil in each time before the next spoon. This is your Caesar’s salad dressing.
7. Cut each of the Romaine lettuce hearts into 5 equal sections. Open up the sections into individual pieces and place them in a large salad bowl. Cut each cherry tomato into half and add them to the salad. Spoon in the salad dressing and toss well.
8. Separate the salad into plates at this stage if you are serving the salad individually.
9. Top off the salad with the bacon bits and croutons.
10. Grate your cheese and sprinkle over the salad.
11. Finish with some black pepper.

Notes

• Anchovy from a can will fall apart easily. Anchovy from a bottle is of a higher quality and requires heating before it will disintegrate into a suspension. I typically just heat the contents of the whole bottle of anchovies in a pan, mash them and pour everything back into the bottle after its cooled. This makes it really convenient to spoon out the anchovy suspension whenever I need it.
• Add 1T of water to the salad dressing if you are not rinsing your lettuce.
• Do not use extra-virgin olive oil as you don’t want the taste of olives in your Caesar’s salad. Use any kind of vegetable oil, or a light olive oil is fine too.
• Follow the sequence given for making the dressing. If you add the oil before the mayonnaise, it will be impossible to get a smooth mixture.

 

Provençal Style Lamb Casserole

(serves 4)
This is a minimalist Provencal Lamb Casserole which is easy to prepare and its hearty ingredients are perfect for cold weather meals. The lamb is braised in a white wine and anchovy stock while the gamey flavour of the meat is tempered with lots of garlic and herbs. The other main ingredient of this rustic Mediterranean dish is eggplant.       

Ingredients

1. Lamb Belly (500g)
2. Eggplant (1)
3. Shallots (6)
4. Garlic (2 bulbs)
5. Anchovy In Oil (25g)
6. White Wine (3/4 cup)
7. Bread (2 slices)
8. Flour
9. Worcestershire Sauce
10. Mustard
11. Pesto
12. Oregano

Preparation 

1. Peel the garlic bulbs into cloves and peel the shallots but leave them whole.
2. If your lamb belly doesn’t come as cubes, cut them into cubes. Put the lamb into a zip lock bag and spoon in 2T(heaped) of flour. Shake until the lamb is evenly coated in the flour.
3. Heat up a frying pan with 3T of oil. Brown the lamb in the pan a few pieces at a time and then arrange the pieces of meat into a casserole dish.
4. Push half the garlic cloves and all the shallots snugly between the pieces of meat as shown.
5. Pan fry 25g (about 1T) of anchovy in its own oil, in the same pan you used to brown the lamb without washing it. Mash us the anchovy until it is a fine suspension and deglaze with 3/4 cup of white wine. Add 2T of pesto, 1t of worcestershire sauce, 1t of sugar, 1t mustard and 1t of oregano. Pour in 1/2 a cup of water. Bring to a simmer for 1 minute. This will be the braising liquid.
6. Preheat the oven to 200^oC (390^oF).
7. Pour the braising liquid into the casserole.
8. Slice the eggplant and arrange the slices over the lamb in the casserole.
9. Cover the casserole and place it in the oven for 2 hours. After half an hour reduce the temperature to 150^oC (300^oF).
10. Lightly toast 2 slices of sandwich bread. Cut the toast into mini croutons.
11. Mince the remaining garlic cloves in a garlic press.
12. Fry the minced garlic in a pan with 3T oil on low heat until it stops clumping together. At this stage add the bread and stir fry until the croutons are crispy and a nice shade of golden brown as shown. Leave to cool in the pan.
13. With 10 minutes to go on the baking time, take the casserole out and sprinkle on some black pepper and all the garlic croutons. Return to the oven uncovered for the last 10 minutes.
14. Serve the lamb in the casserole dish directly from the oven to table.

Notes

• This lamb casserole is not meant to be eaten by itself. You should serve it with a separately cooked staple, like potatoes or polenta.
• While the Provencal Style is French, it has some similarity with Italian and Greek cuisine because they all share the same Mediterranean climate.
• You can consider crushing the croutons into breadcrumbs after they cool. Its a trade off. You will lose some of the crunch of the bread, but it give a nice appealing look to the casserole. To accompany this look you can also slice the eggplant thin and arrange the slices in a ratatouille style overlapping spiral.

 

High Tea Sandwich Rolls

(serves 6)
The sandwich roll is simple yet elegant way of making canapés. There are several advantages to the sandwich roll.  Sandwich rolls are easier to make than fancy tower canapés. They don’t dirty your hands eating them. However you hold them you don’t have to worry about bits falling off. They are bite-sized. Less bread is exposed to air, reducing the amount of bread that dries as your sandwiches sit there waiting to be eaten. And you know what? Sandwich rolls just look nice.         

Ingredients

1. Eggs (3)
2. Smoked Salmon (100g)
3. Anchovy in Oil (Small Tin)
4. White Bread (12 Slices)
5. Red Onion (1)
6. Cucumber (1)
7. Cream Cheese (200g)
8. Guacamole (150g)
9. Dill Weed.
10. Nori Sheet (1, optional)
11. Maple Syrup
12. Cumin
13. Mayonnaise

 

The Basics

1. Use white sandwich bread or yellow bread. Brown bread is harder and less malleable, not meant for rolling.
2. As you can’t roll bread with crust, its best to use bread that is perfectly square or rectangular.
3. Use bread that is fresh, that you just bought from the supermarket, not bread you have kept in the fridge for a week. Dry bread will be too brittle to bend without cracking.
4. After you have cut the crusts off, flatten each piece of bread individually. This is the secret to the rolled sandwich, squashing it with a rolling pin. You can also press down sequentially using the cheek of the blade of a large knife to achieve the same effect.
5. Whatever you choose to put inside your sandwich must include a creamy spread like mayonnaise, Heinz sandwich spread, tahini, cream cheese, peanut butter, jam etc. as the binding agent. This will hold the roll in place.
6. The simplest version consists of just a simple spread which you cover the entire piece of bread with – like the Curried Egg Salad Rolls below.
7. For variety you can add slender sticks of cucumber or cheese for texture – like the Anchovy Infused Cream Cheese Rolls below.
8. You cannot use whole sheets of meat or cheese and this will completely nullify the effect of the binding spread, unless you rolled them up and have them as the core. This method is shown in the Smoked Salmon Avocado Rolls at the bottom.
9. The 3 varieties explained here are savoury, but you can make sweet sandwich rolls too. Dried apricot or fresh bananas can be used as the core for example.

Curried Egg Salad Rolls 

1. Boil 3 eggs for 15 minutes. Begin with cold water so the eggs don’t crack and begin counting the time only after the water starts boiling. Peel after the eggs have cooled.
2. Dice half a red onion and fry on low heat with a little oil till the onion is limp.
3. Cut each egg in half and spoon the yolk into a bowl. Mash the yolk with 3T of mayonnaise.
4. Add 0.5t cumin, 0.5t pepper and 2 pinches of salt.
5. Dice the egg white and mix it into the bowl with the onion bits.
6. Cut the crust off and then flatten 4 slices of bread.
7. Spread the egg salad onto the bread as shown. You’ll need to leave one end empty as the whites make the egg salad a bit lumpy.
8. Spread some plain mayonnaise onto the empty part to seal the roll.
9. Roll the bread tightly (from the right in this picture).
10. Slice each roll into 3. Use a gentle sawing motion and don’t press down on the knife.
11. Rest the rolls on a plate with the edge at the bottom for a while before standing them up.

Anchovy Infused Cream Cheese Rolls

1. Allow 200g of cream cheese to warm to room temperature. You can also use a short burst in the microwave oven.
2. Dice the remaining 1/2 red onion into fine bits. The bits should be smaller than for the egg salad rolls, since you’ll be eating them raw. Reserve half of this for the smoked salmon rolls.
3. Peel and cut a cucumber into thin strips as long as your bread. Try to avoid the seedy core as it is less crunchy. Slice more strips than you need as you’ll be using some for the smoked salmon rolls as well.
4. Mash 2t of anchovy in the oil they came in.
5. Mix the anchovy emulsion, 2t maple syrup and half of the onion bits into the soft cream cheese.
6. Cut the crust off and then flatten 4 slices of bread.
7. Spread the anchovy cheese mixture onto the bread. Add a few cucumber strips as shown. Be sure to leave one end empty.
8. Roll the bread tightly (from the left in this picture). Slice each roll, following the instructions as per above.

Smoked Salmon Avocado Rolls

1. Cut the smoked salmon into long strips and marinate with a little bit of oil, some black pepper and dill weed.
2. Mix the remaining diced raw onion with 150g of guacamole or avocado dip. Avocado is soft even when cold so there is no need to let it warm up.
3. Cut the crust off and then flatten 4 slices of bread.
4. Spread the guacamole evenly onto your bread.
5. Arrange pieces of smoked salmon with a few cucumber strips on one end as shown.
6. Roll the bread tightly using the salmon as the core.
7. Slice each roll, following the instructions as per before.

 

 

The Professional Look 

1. Even the best made sandwich rolls following all the rules of sandwich rolling might unroll a bit at the loose end.
2. One way to prevent this is to apply a few bands of Nori (Japanese dried processed seaweed) before you cut your rolls as shown below. All you need to stick the ends of the Nori strips to each other is a dab of water. You can see the final result of banding in the photo right at the top.
3. You can also cover the entire roll with Nori to create sandwich sushi, as shown on the right.
4. All the your rolls will look alike if you cut them the same way. Slicing the rolls diagonally will give some variation to your sandwich rolls. This will help your guests distinguish between the different varieties that you made.
5. Yellow bread is another option for differentiation.
6. You can also give some colour to your sandwiches by dusting (the outside surface, and do this before you apply the spread) them with some fine coloured spices. Paprika for example will result in a light orangey coat.

 

 

Breton Fish Stew (Cotriade)

(serves 6)
This is my version of a classic from Brittany, the fish stew that Breton fishermen enjoy after a hard day at sea, the Cotriade. Unlike the more popular French bouillabaisse which relies on tomatoes and crustaceans for a base flavour, the Bretons prefer their fish stew au natural. Its harder to achieve a flavourful seafood stew that is white but when you do it right, the pure unadulterated flavour of fish makes a world of difference.  

Ingredients

1. White Fish Fillets (500g)
2. Black Mussels (500g)
3. Canned Sardines in oil (2 x 120g wet weight)
4. Canned Anchovies in oil (50g wet weight)
5. White Wine (1 cup)
6. Minced Garlic (3T)
7. Onions (2)
8. Celery (2 cups chopped)
9. Carrot (1)
10. Bread (3 slices)
11. Thyme
12. Dill Weed

Preparation Part I

1. Leave 3 slices of bread in the open to dry overnight.
2. Cut the crust off the bread and cube the bread into 1cm pieces. Cut the crust into small pieces as well, but separately. Toast the bread cubes till they are brown and then crush in a zip loc bag with a mallet.
3. Dice one onion. Place the onion bits into a large pot. Partially open one of the sardine tins and pour its oil into the pot. Turn on the heat and occasionally stir fry the onions.
4. In the meanwhile, spoon all the sardines and anchovies including their oil into a bowl with 3T of minced garlic. Mash everything up with a spoon.
5. When the onions are soft, turn up the heat and add the fish and garlic mash. Stir fry for a minute, continuing to mash up the fish. Next, add 1 cup of white wine, wait a further minute and then add 4 cups of water and 2T of chopped thyme. This is the stock for your stew.
6. While the stock is simmering on low heat, cut an onion into 6 wedges, dice 2 cups of celerey and 3/4 cups of carrot. Add this to the stock together with the bread crumbs.
7. While the veggies are cooking, soak your mussels in water for a few minutes. Also, cut your white fish into chicken nugget sized pieces. You can leave the skin on. Marinate with 2T of oil and a light sprinkle of salt and pepper. Do not put either the mussels or fish into the pot yet.
8. Continue the simmer until the onion wedges turn into soft individual petals. Then turn off the heat.

Preparation Part II

1. This is the part you do about fifteen minutes before serving your stew.
2. Bring the pot up to a full boil.
3. Add the clams and continue boiling for 1 minute.
4. Next add the marinated fish making sure all the pieces are submergedand. Continue boiling for 1 minute (less if you fish pieces are not thick, but never more).
5. Turn off the heat but leave the pot covered for 10 minutes while the fish continues to cook .
6. Taste and season with salt and pepper to bring out the full flavour of the stew. Garnish with a sprinkle of dill weed or chopped parsley.

 Notes

• When I first decided to come up with my own cotriade recipe, I was confronted with a typical dilemma. Fish gets hard and then flakes up if it is boiled for more than a short while. But, any kind of stew needs to be simmered for a long time for it to develop its full flavour. Many fish stew recipes get around this by using tomatoes (or worse bacon) for the base flavour, but that is the easy way out. The solution was to use canned fish and wine to form the base flavour.
• The next challenge was to get rid of the fishy smell and taste of the canned sardines. After some experimentation, I found that the combination of onions, garlic and deglazing with wine at a high temperature did the trick. When you see the stew frothing up a bit after adding the wine, don’t worry, this is normal. Its just the fishiness going away.
• The sardine stock in turn allows us to just par boil the fresh fish right at the end, so it remains intact and tender. A fish stew is supposed to have 3 types of fish for variety so I recommend you use 2 types of fresh fish. Cod I find is one of the best choices, and I also like pomfret and sole, but basically any kind of fish white fish would do. The most important thing is to not overcook the fish.
• Besides tomatoes, the other ingredient I didn’t want to use was potatoes, which would make it more like a chowder (or worse, like beef stew). This presented another problem: how do I give the stew some body? Then I got to thinking, well you eat French stews with bread, so why not just have the bread already boiled into the stew? That worked out well.
• For the white wine, the oaky tones of a chardonnay is a perfect fit with the stew.
• If you want a North Sea taste don’t use olive oil as it imparts a Mediterranean feel. I use sardines in sunflower seed oil for this stew.
• Instead of using salt at the end, consider ‘cheating’ and using Hon Dashi pellets instead. It will bring out the best in your fish stew.
• If you like French seafood stews, check out my bouillabaisse recipe.  

 

Baked Scallops on Pesto Gratin

(serves 5)
This is my take on the classic French dish, Coquilles Saint Jacques, with an Italian twist. I have devised a quick thrice-baked routine which makes the recipe extremely easy to execute. Scallops have a nice texture but it is hard to infuse flavour into them. One common way to given them additional layers of taste is to use a gratin. This is what I have done, using a simple breadcrumb mixture containing 3 complimentary flavours: garlic, pesto and parmesan.  

Ingredients

1. Large Scallops (500g)
2. Bread (3 slices)
3. Minced Garlic (3T)
4. Pesto (3T)
5. Parmesan (1T)
6. Olive Oil (1/4 cup)

Preparation

1. Leave 3 slices of bread in the open to dry overnight.
2. Cut the crust off the bread and cube the bread into 1cm pieces. Cut the crust into small pieces as well, but separately. 
3. Prepare a brine of 1T salt, 1t sugar, the juice of a wedge of lemon in two cups of water. Place the scallops in the brine for twenty minutes. Do not go beyond twenty minutes or the scallop flesh will become too salty.
4. Rinse the scallops and wrap them in a tea towel for a few minutes. Allow the scallops to dry on a few sheets of paper towel for another few minutes and then transfer them to a bowl.   
5. In a large mixing bowl mix 3T pesto, 3T minced garlic with 1/4 cup of olive oil. Spoon 2T of this mixture onto the scallops, mix well and leave to marinate.
6. To the remainder of the mixture add a light sprinkle of salt and a heavier sprinkle of pepper and stir.
7. Preheat the oven to 200^oC.
8. Place the bread pieces on a casserole dish and bake in the oven. When the bread is crispy and dry, this will take 5 minutes, take it out of the oven, but leave the oven on.
9. Allow the bread to cool for a short while on a wire tray. Then crush the bread on a piece of foil using the spiked end of a meat mallet to turn them into fine crumbs. Add the crumbs into the mixing bowl with the pesto oil and sprinkle in 1T of powdered parmesan cheese. Mix well and then put the flavoured crumbs back into the casserole dish and back into the oven, this time for 8 minutes.
10. When the gratin has formed, take the casserole dish out again, and immediately arrange the marinated scallops into the dish evenly spaced, and not touching each other. Spoon any left over marinade over the scallops. This goes back into the oven for a further six 6 minutes or so, depending on the size of your scallops.
11. Serve immediately, from oven to table, while the gratin is still crispy.

Notes

• It’s fine to use frozen scallops as long as they are thoroughly thawed.
• There are two types of scallops on the market. The more common and cheaper ‘wet’ scallops are bloated from soaking in a STPP solution, making them bigger than they actually are. 20 minutes in brine draws the extra water out – they would otherwise keep exuding water as they cook, making them rubbery and impossible to sear.
• Personally I believe the higher quality dry scallops are well worth their higher price, since they don’t shrink. You can buy them fresh or when frozen they usually come in a paper box (as opposed to a plastic bag).  
• ‘Wet’ scallops are very white while dry scallops are ivory in colour, so it’s easy to tell them apart. 
• Although it is more work, you may alternatively sear your scallops in a very hot cast iron pan, turning them over once with a pair of tongs. You can serve these individually plated with the gratin crumble as shown in the top photo.
• Scallops should not be overdone. They are best when they have shrunk slightly. Look for the right moment and take them out of the oven immediately. If your scallops have shrunken noticeably, then they are overdone and will be tough and hard.

 

What is Kaya?

 

         1. Hainanese Kaya        2. Nonya Kaya(Home)      3. Nonya Kaya(Store)        4. Hybrid Kaya

Kaya is a custard made with coconut milk that is popular in Singapore and Malaysia. Like regular jam, it is most often used as a bread spread (its technically not a jam since it is not made from fruit) at breakfast and afternoon tea. Because of its sweet taste, Kaya is also used as an ingredient is various local desserts in Southeast Asia from Thailand to Indonesian. If you are from outside the region, think of it as something like creme brulee in a bottle.

The recipe for making kaya varies from household to household but typically involves cooking a mixture of 10 eggs, 500g of sugar and 500 ml of coconut milk over a double boiler, stirring frequently. Its pretty much the same as making a sabayon or custard, except you stand there cooking and stirring for a very, very long time.

There are two main types of Kaya. The more original variety is Hainanese Kaya (bottle No.1), Hainan being a large island of China. Many Hainanese ventured into Southeast Asia during the hey day of the British Empire. A lot of them worked as cooks (and tailors) in commonwealth cities and aboard British merchant ships where they encounted a thing called jam on toast. Over time, they invented their own ‘jam’, which became Kaya. That’s the reason you won’t find Kaya (or Hainanese Chicken Rice or Hainanese Pork Chop to name a few more examples) anywhere in Hainan today, they were invented by overseas Hainanese. The term Kaya was probably coined by the Malays, who refer to it as Seri Kaya. Hainanese Kaya is made with brown sugar which results in its distinct orangy colour. Some modern commercial formulations use honey instead.

There is another version of Kaya that is green; this is called Nonya Kaya (bottle No.2). How did this originate? Its another complicated story, also related to the Chinese migrants. When early Chinese migrants inter-married with the locals in Malaysia, they formed a sub-community called the Nonya. The Nonya add pandan leaves to a lot of their cuisine and when they learnt to make Kaya, they also added pandan to that. Their varierty of Kaya uses white sugar, but compensates for the loss of the caramelized taste by adding the juice from pandan leaves. This gives Nonya Kaya its unique flavour and fragrance. Commercially, food dye is added to Nonya Kaya (bottle No.3) to give it a darker green colour. Nowadays you can also get a hybrid Kaya (bottle No.4) that is made with both brown sugar and pandan leaves.

Besides spreading it on toast, how else can Kaya be used? Being very sweet, Kaya goes very well with salted butter and you can use it in place of syrup or icing sugar on pancakes, waffles and french toast. Kaya also works well as a filling in a Danish type pastry (for example you could replace the sesame paste of my Sesame Swirl Puffs with Kaya). Finally you can experiment with Kaya in those savoury dishes that require a touch of sweetness, such as in pan fried foie gras.

 

Maryland Muffin-tin Crab Cakes

(serves 5 =10 mini cakes)
My friend Reiko made me some Maryland Crab Cakes a few years back and that’s when I discovered this is one of the best ways to eat crab. I’ve been struggling ever since to come up with a crab cake that tastes better than hers. By jove, I think I have finally done it, by flavouring the crab meat with chinese wine in a pan-fry and mixing in a tad of curry spices. Do try it.     

Ingredients

1. Crab Meat (450g)
2. Dill Mayonnaise (1 cup)
3. Bread (5 slices)
4. Garlic (1 bulb = 12 cloves)
5. Shallots (6)
6. Egg (1)
7. Vegetable Oil
8. Basil
9. Dillweed
10. Chinese Wine (or Cognac)
11. Woustershire Sauce
12. Djoin Mustard
13. Coriander Seed Powder
14. Cumin

Pre-Preparation 

1. You will first need to make some mayonnaise according to my Dill Mayonnaise recipe. You can do this just before the crab cakes, it doesn’t take long.
2. You will also need to cut the crust off 5 slices of bread and leave them uncovered in the fridge for a few hours to dry it out.
3. While fresh is best, in this case I think you can get away with using canned crab meat. If you plan to use fresh crab meat, you should boil or steam the crabs ahead of time, and then deshell them (450g of crab meat = 1 pound = 2 cups tightly packed = 3 cups loosely packed). Try to use bigger crabs as they have firmer meat and the crab meat will be in larger chunks.           

           Canned Crab Meat                           Bread Crumbs                                   Muffin Tin
               

Preparation 

1. Peel and then halve the garlic and shallots. Use a food processor to mince them (together). Spread half of the minced mixture evenly onto the bottom of a large bowl and keep the other half for use later.
2. Dice the dried bread into crouton sized pieces and then given them a two second pulse in the food proccessor to crumb them. Zoom in on the picture above to see the desired texture. Place the crumbs into the bowl with the garlic and shallots. Add 1T Dill weed, 1T of chopped basil and 1t salt and mix well.
3. Brown the remaining minced garlic and shallot in a pan on low heat with 3T of vegetable oil. Next, add the crab meat and gently stir fry with the heat turned up. Do your best not to break up the chunks of crab meat.
4. When the pan is sizzling hot, sprinkle on 1/4 cup of chinese wine (for cognac, see below). Gentrly stir fry again til the liquid has dried up and then turn the heat off. Season with 1t of white pepper.
5. In a small bowl stir together 1 egg with 3T mayonnaise, 1T woustershire sauce, 1t mustard, 1t cumin and 1t coriander seed powder.
6. Mix the crab meat into the bowl of bread crumbs. Next, spoon the egg mixture into the bowl, mix well to bind all the constituents. 
7. Preheat the oven to 175^oC (350^oF).
8. Brush the muffin tin with vegetable oil. Spoon in the raw crab cake, filling each hole to the brim before moving on to the next one. Press down firmly with a tea spoon to make sure the crab-bread mixture is compact. Next push the raw crab cake away from the rim of each hole to give the crab cakes a rounded top.
9. Bake for 13-15 minutes depending on when your crab cakes reach a light golden brown. After you remove the muffin tin from the oven, allow it to cool for a bit so the crab cakes can firm up. The colour should continue to deepen.
10. Serve with the rest of the mayonnaise and some mixed greens. 

Notes

• What if you don’t have a food processor? You can mince the garlic and shallots manually easily enough. For the bread, toast lightly, dice and then smash in a zip lock with a meat mallet.
• Cognac has a high alcoholic concentration. If you are using cognac instead of chinese wine, start off with 3T of the brandy in the measuring cup and top this up to the 1/4 cup mark with water.
• Crab Cakes can also be served for breakfast, they go very well with fried or poached eggs. See =>
• Instead of 10 mini-cakes, you can also form you crab cakes into 5 mini-hamburger sized patties. Just shape the cakes by hand and use a regular baking tray.
• Don’t use butter or olive oil as they don’t cook well at high temperature.