Recipes, port wine chicken and toast

After 4 long years, I finally made my favourite port wine chicken dish again. To celebrate with me, the sky poured down soothing rain when it was being served.

I really missed eating this dish. It was another winter favourite and I know when I first made it, I was just starting on the cooking journey so to me at the time, this was a "hard" dish. It involved ingredients I wasn't sure of (like port wine) and flavours new to me. Prior to this, my repertoire was mainly chinese stir frys and easy grills.

When I made it again last night, I was surprised by how easy it was.

A couple of notes:

You can't really find cremini mushrooms in Singapore (in fact I never found them in Melbourne either although the farmer's markets might have had them). Swiss brown mushrooms are the best in this dish. The normal white button mushrooms just don't add as much flavour.

I use chicken thigh meat instead of breast. It helps with the sauce - just because it is oilier. Plus, this dish serves four so I always had leftovers and I find that thigh meat reheats better.

In general, marinating the meat for a couple of hours in salt, pepper and a bit of olive oil ups the overall tastiness of the dish.

Also, use the very best tomatoes you can find. I loved using really good plum tomatoes to make this dish but all I could find were insipid cherry tomatoes at the supermarket so I had to go with that :(

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Recipes to try

Double battered apple doughnuts (I KNOW RIGHT?)

French toast

Banana bread with bourbon (!) and chocolate

Blueberry boy bait

Almond olive oil cake 

Finally, this is the prettiest food blog I've ever seen - My Food Diary - with a recipe for latkes that I may try in the future.

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I bought the brown sandwich bread from Simply Bread yesterday and there is only half a loaf left in the kitchen today. Mr Grey and I ate slice after slice while listening to an awesome YoYo Ma bluegrass album and just couldn't stop. It is really the perfect everyday bread and covered with sesame seeds so when you toast it, the fragrance is just indescribably lovely.

I am now planning a weekend wherein I buy that bread and eat it with this strawberry jam :)

A side of memories

I've cooked this really awesome pork chop recipe for Mr Grey twice so far and I had to blog it; it's that much of a winner.

I was a law student when I first started learning to cook and especially in the beginning, my criteria for a winning recipe were: a) cheap; b) easy (i.e. no more than 3-4 steps) ; c) effective.

(Here, effective obviously means it has to taste good.)

This pork chop recipe is all of that BUT.... my caveat on it is that for the recipe to really work, you have to get good quality pork. I've tried it twice and what it does is that it brings out the natural flavour of the pork but the lemon juice cuts the richness enough so that it goes down really easily. With good quality pork, this is a fantastic dish but with low quality frozen pork, it's not so great. Still good but less delicious.

I love my meals with Mr Grey and I love standing in our kitchen manning the stove with him.

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Does anyone ever feel overwhelmed with guilt whenever they cook a certain dish?

I do.

One winter in Melbourne, the boy I was dating was homesick for his mother's roasted chicken wings and called home to ask her for the marinade recipe. She duly emailed it over and I'll never forget how happy he was when I made it for him.

I still have the recipe - I pretty much memorised it after the second or third time I made it. It's now my go to marinade for barbequed / roasted chicken wings and it's crowd favourite every time. But every time I stand over the bowl of raw chicken wings pouring in the sauces, I feel enormously guilty - as though making it is somehow a betrayal of those happy winter nights eating chicken.

Still I make it. It's a really good recipe and I try to make it for the people I love. But well, I guess the price I have to pay are the sides of guilt and salt tinged memories that go with it.

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At the same time, I wonder what recipes will one day call up these lovely early days of being married to Mr Grey. I wonder if one day, maybe 30 years hence, I'll make pork chops for people and tell them about how Mr Grey and I experimented in the kitchen all those years ago, adding truffle oil and balsamic vinegar bought on our Italian honeymoon and going crazy over the resulting flavours.

Then we can sit together and marvel at how simple dishes can be made and eaten with so much joy and thanksgiving.

中秋节

It's been ten years and I still miss the celebrations we used to have at my grandad's place.

No whining though! I had a weekend of lovely dinners - first with the church family then with mum, dad, my sister, Mr Grey and my two funny roly poly little cousins. Well ok, my cousins were once little and once roly poly but now they're two strapping teenagers who play tennis weekly.

around the corner

But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.

Gen 50:20 NKJV

The last two weeks have been a really strange ride. There have been job things and a couple of heart breaking discoveries.

I'm waiting on God. Not so much to produce a miracle but I'm waiting on God because He has never yet failed to bring such good out of what seems so dark and evil. I'm waiting on God and looking back at the past, at the dark times when I couldn't see my way forward. Looking at my past used to depress me and now... now it gives me hope. I have been amazed at where God has taken me and I remain shocked that I have the life I live now.

Waiting on him for so many things and I think my heart will ache every step of the way. But at the same time, I'm strangely excited to see what God brings about.

R, I will attend your wedding one day and I think it will be amazing. Not because it will be some grand affair, but you and I will be astounded - methinks - at how it all came about. Thanking God for you and your courage.

Until then, we can only faithfully pray and wait upon God.

老地方

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The green field and small woodland stretch near my home is going to be developed and I'm heartsick with sadness about it.

I grew up in a much less urbanized part of Singapore and I never minded my long commute to work or schools because my housing estate was just so incredibly green and quiet.

The area where I live is (roughly) bisected into north and south by the train line. I live on the southern side where there is still a tiny stretch of woodlands on a small hill and a large green field surrounding the estate. The enormous green field on the northern side was developed about 5 years ago and it's now all shiny new condominium projects. When the north side was being developed, the public response to the new condominiums was huge - people actually stood in line to get in and buy a unit. I knew then that the woodlands on the south side of the train line were doomed.

What can we really say? We need space. People need homes. And apparently, Singapore needs more people.

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But I was surprised by the community response; people in my estate actually started an online petition to try to hang on to the woodlands. They took photographs of the woodpeckers, squirrels, kingfishers and palm civets and posted them online in a bid to try to keep the green space. They didn't succeed but at least I'll have the photos. Plus it's nice to see people try - gives us some hope for Singapore civic society.

It's too late for that big green field on the north side of the estate though. I wish I'd walked around and taken some photos - it was that big. There was a stream that ran through the middle of it with a tiny concrete bridge and every day, I'd peer over the bridge to check out the fish. My favourite memories of high school are of walking through that field, the sky a constant blue and the stream sparkling in the sun.

(I wasn't nuts, it's just that my school sat on the other side of the field and that path through the field was the shortest route home)

Once - and this is one of my favourite memories - one of my classmates, a short spunky girl, S, came up with the plan of following the stream to see when it ended. That was one of the best afternoons. We  stepped off the path and started walking by the side of the stream. Further along, we alternately waded and walked on the side of the stream, stopping to peer at fish and birds and got thoroughly dirty. I don't remember if we managed to find out where the stream ended (or began) - it was probably inaccessible but it was so fun trying.

Royston Tan has directed a film - Old Places - and I think it has come at the right time. The kids of the 80s are growing old up and realising that the remnants of old Singapore that they knew in their childhood have gone or are going so... this helps preserve the memories at least.

There must be progress - so help us God - but least we'll hang on to our (green tinted) memories.

Oh Singapore. You make it so hard for us to love you.

not good at all

photo above is of a spray of carnations i bought (they were the cheapest) about a month ago. yes i am the kind of foolish girl who buys flowers because they're pretty.

Anyway, i've always wanted my own home and my own space and i'm loving the odd freedom of buying flowers whenever i like. Mr Grey makes a great house mate - the best i've ever had  and we've somehow arrived at a fairly equitable distribution of housework based on the chores we like best. So none of this having to grind your way through the chores you hate just because its your turn.

In other news,  I'd planned to post about the lemon cake we baked but....the brother is awfully sick and in the hospital now so .... no, the week isn't going well. blogging is a great distraction though.

lamentations 3

In between the last post and this one, my sister graduated (yay!), Mr Grey and I went on our honeymoon (double yay!!) and we came back to reality and lots of laundry (ugh).

i kept meaning to write about all that and more but ... the last two weeks have been .... not so great.

But lamentations 3 helped.

trying to remember that there are lots of things to be thankful for and that God is so good still.

trying not to be mean or to be overly grumpy

trying not to lose one's temper and also trying not to swear too much (not really working)

but its Friday so mostly i am so thankful that the run of ... not so great stuff has mostly slowed to a trickle of nothing and i get to go home soon...

and also Mr Grey has promised to cook me a steak dinner tonight :)

(plus i bought dark choc ginger and pear biscuits from marks and sparks and they're really good)

*For clarity - the photo is not of steak cooked by Mr Grey. It is one of the steaks that Mr Grey and I ate a couple of weeks ago to celebrate something else. Actually, it was of MY steak. Ahem. Mr Grey ate his before I could take a photo.