Chicken Feet Dim Sum Style

This is my Mum's recipe and she makes it for us everytime she comes over becoz hubby loves chicken feet, the dim sum type that is. Usually I'm pretty lazy to make it myself because it traditionally calls for marinating the chicken feet in salt and some chinese wine and then deep frying them in hot oil. That's a pretty scary process in itself because the oil really splatters. We had also experimented with cooking the chicken feet in the oven, not quite the same but a heck of a lot healthier, unfortunately creates a lot of smoke in the oven too.

I have recently found pre-fried soy sauce marinated Chicken Feet in the freezer section of the Ang Mo Supermarket at Toa Payoh. This makes everything so easier! You just need to soak them in water to make them 'bloom' till they've basically doubled in size. This process is the same even if you fry them yourself. Then drain them and put them aside.

Fry off some garlic and star anise in a pot or pan large enough to hold all the chicken feet. Add oyster sauce, salted black beans (dried/canned/bottled), Chinese wine, chopped chilli, sugar, plum sauce, light and dark soy sauce and add enough water to cover the feet. Cook until the chicken feet are tender and until the sauce thickens. You can also thicken the sauce with corn flour slurry. Season with chicken powder and pepper and add a drizzle of sesame oil.

To get your chicken feet tender faster it's best to use a pressure cooker or thermos pot.

An interesting Wedding

Tonight we attended a rather messy wedding which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Weddings can be very draggy, with guests waiting endlessly for the banquet to finish (I'm talking about the Chinese weddings here). But tonight I attended my first buffet style wedding in Singapore held at Changi Golf Club. The wedding venue is quite small, but romantic as it was by the beach. The wedding solemnisation and the party supposed to have been held outdoors but unfortunately the weather turned for the worse with rain pouring down. So the outside area had to be diverted to indoors, tho there was space available, there didn't seem to be any staff from the club available to help move everything indoors. So everything was really really messy. The wedding party had to be split up into two separate rooms. I guess it was just a little poor planning and poor implementation of any back up plans they had. It's times like this that I think the experience and services of a wedding planner would have been helpful. I could tell how upset the bride was and I really felt for her, to watch her wedding day get all messed up by the weather. The poor lass.

Having the dinner in buffet style meant that the guests could eat and leave early rather than having to wait for all the guests to arrive and wait for each course to be served. We were out of there by 7.30/8pm rather than the usual 11pm! And the funny thing was they didn't have a tea ceremony (it was hubby's relative), I guess maybe things were too messy and they decided to skip it.

There's one thing that irks me about weddings here. Guests here don't seem to bother getting all dressed up. Jeans and t-shirts can be seen or worse, cargo shorts! Eventho today's venue was a little bit more casual I think that it's still important for the guests to make a little effort to dress up. I think it's just a sign of respect to the couple. In Australia you'll see the men wear suits and the gals in nice outfits. In Jakarta the girls really dress up for weddings (sometimes going overboard till your guests resemble a fashion parade), the men will usually wear batik shirts. And you should see the bride's and groom's mothers, they're usually in evening gowns. Maybe in Singapore people just can't be bothered to dress up becoz it's too hot or maybe because they have to take public transport sometime making it a little uncomfortable to be dressed up.

Caelyn's Birthday Cake and Our 6th Wedding Anniversary

We bought a cake to this week's family dinner so that Caelyn could have her Happy Birthday song. She'd been singing Happy Birthday all week since she saw the video from her 1st birthday party so we thought it would only be fair for her to have her 'moment' and have us record it (every year hopefully). Her cake was rather yummy, chocolate with blueberry filling. It wasn't too sweet which was great for the littlies and the oldies...hehehe. On the downside her cousin got jealous and all through her birthday song video in the background you can hear him shouting nooo noooo nooooo. He has this thing where he thinks all birthday cakes are 'his'.


The 16th Dec, which was Caelyn's actual birthday, was also our 6th Wedding Anniversary. So we went off and had our own little celebration. We would've left her with the in laws, but unfortunately one of hubby's Uncles passed away so his parents were at the wake. Too bad, but here are the photos.

I really love the Sourdough Bread Bowl

Caelyn's Spaghetti frm the kids menu...it was lot! And cheap for only $6 at Swensens, came with child sized Orange Juice.

BBQ chicken wings...finger lickin good.

Thai Savoury Pork Ribs with Snake Beans

This recipe although requires a number of ingredients and a bit of prep work, is well worth it.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

• 675g Pork Spare ribs or Belly of Pork (Time saving tip: in the frozen pork section there is a pack of frozen pork labelled Sweet and Sour pork, basically it's pork with some fat on it that's been pre-cut. Use this, it's quite tasty and tender.) If you don't like pork, sub with chicken.
  
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tbsp palm sugar
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 150g snake beans, or fine green or runner beans, cut into 5cm lengths
• 2 kaffir lime leaves, finely sliced
• 2 red chillies, finely sliced, to garnish.

For the Chilli Paste

• 3 dried red chillies, seeded and soaked
• 4 shallots, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
  (For the above 3 ingredients, you could get away with bottled minced chilli that already has shallots and garlic in them. And then add a couple of extra fesh garlic/shallots if you wish)
• 1 tsp chopped galangal (if you cook a lot of thai food, keep some sliced galangal in the freezer, ready to use).
• 1 stalk lemon grass, chopped (lemon grass also freezes really well, I always have some in the freezer).
• 6 black peppercorns (just sub with ground black pepper)
• 1 tsp shrimp paste/belachan
• 2 tbsp dried shrimp, rinsed
  

1. Put all the ingredients for the chilli paste in a mortar and grind together with a pestle until it forms a thick paste.
2. Slice and chop the spare ribs (or belly pork) into 4cm lengths.
3. Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan. Add the pork and fry for about 5 minutes, until lightly browned.
4. Stir in the chilli paste and continue to cook for another 5 minutes, stirring constantly to stop the paste from sticking to the pan.
5. Add the water, cover and simmer for 7-10 minutes or until the spare ribs are tender. Season with palm sugar and fish sauce.
6. Mix in the snake beans and kaffir lime leaves and fry until the beans are cooked. Serve garnished with sliced red chillies.
   

Steamed Chinese Meatballs with Black Pepper Sauce (Bottom of the jar recipe)

This is a good way to incorporate fish into your family's diet if they're a bit picky or iffy on eating fish.

I basically get some skinless, boneless fillets of fish and either mince them by using a cleaver or mince using a food processor. Or you can even let them stay a bit chunky if you want. Combine with some minced pork and some minced garlic and season to taste. Add a dash of sesame oil. At this stage, with wet hands, you can shape the meat mixture into round balls. For variation I stuffed the balls with a small square of seafood stick and chopped shiitake mushrooms.

In a small bowl, combine some bottled black pepper sauce with some oyster sauce, tomato sauce, worcestershire sauce and water. This is my own concoction, of course you can just use the black pepper sauce on its own. But I only had a little bit of the black pepper sauce left, hence I call it my 'bottom of the jar recipe'. Pour the sauce over the meatballs and let steam for 20 minutes. If you're afraid your kid won't eat the black pepper sauce, you could steam the balls first then take one or two out for the child and pour over the sauce and steam till warmed through.

My version of Cattypant's Kimchi Chigae

I recently tried Miss Cattypant's Kimchi Chigae recipe and it was very nice, the hot and sour broth was very comforting. For mine I added some glass noodles or mung bean noodles and instead of sliced pork belly I used some ready sliced frozen shoulder butt which is a very tender cut of meat with some fat running through it. I liken this cut of pork to the beef rib eye because of the fat marbling. I also had some left over so I saved it in the fridge and the next day reheated it, adding some more water and some extra soy sauce and gochujang and some dried instant noodles and dried seaweed. And it tasted great then too, I was surprised at how much it tasted like those Spicy Korean Instant Noodles.

Caelyn's 2nd Birthday Celebration at Harbour City Restaurant

We celebrated Caelyn's birthday this year at the Harbour City Restaurant (3rd Floor PSA Building, Alexandra Rd). We had the a-la-carte buffet. The buffet wasn't too bad, but also wasn't 'terrific'. The price was reasonable but unfortunatley drinks weren't included. And u know those peanuts they serve at the table just like any other Chinese restaurants, well those were also charged separately, along with the wet towels. So if you decide to eat there, be forewarned, although the price is cheap for a buffet, the plus plus plus soon adds up. Would I go back there again? Hmmmm.....most likely not. There's no reason to go all the way there just to have an 'average' type of buffet that you can have in other parts of Singapore and even Chinese restaurants at those mid priced hotels.

Caelyn at least seemed to enjoy herself...running around with her cousin that is. She's usually very good when we take her out to eat when it's just us, but put her together with her boistrous cousin, she follows suit with whatever he does. Unfortunately her cousin has a maid to look after him, so his parents can eat in peace even if he's running around like a kid on a sugar high. We have always insisted that Caelyn sit with us during dinner. I am very against taking her out for walks during meals at restaurants, I think it's a very bad habit.

Here are a few pictures of just some of the food.we had.

Chilli crab, limited to one serving per table. The crabs were small and troublesome to eat and the sauce wasn't tasty. We didn't even finish it.and left it there tilll the end.

Champagne Fried Chicken

No idea what this is

Some kind of meat rolls with a creamy tangy dressing. This one's nice.

With Grandparents (my MIL & FIL)

Edmund's face was waaay too blown up - too close to the camera.

Bintan Island Getaway

As hubby has been working endlessly and spending less and less quality time with our little family, we decided it was time for a quick break to Bintan, a place we hadn't been before.

We had to take a 55min ferry ride from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal. Little did we know how sea sick we were gonna get. The sea was just so choppy and rough and the two storey speed ferry was just rocking away. I had a hard time keeping it together (and keeping the contents of my stomach in). Luckily Caelyn fell asleep not long into the journey without much of a fuss, I think the swaying lulled her into sleep. Unfortunately coming back was worse! And poor Caelyn felt the affects of sea sickness. She put her head on my chest and started to sob quietly then grew louder and eventually cried herself to sleep. Poor thing. When the ferry reached Singapore on the way home, as it docked itself at the jetty, it started to rock so bad that I was just praying that I wouldn't chuck all over everyone while waiting to get off the boat. It was a really horrifying experience for me and I hadn't felt this bad of a motion sickness in a very long time. I could even still feel the rocking well after we had left the boat. Sadly, because of this experience, we vowed not to go back on a trip where it requires a boat to travel to (as much as we can help it).

Anyway, we had booked ourselves into the Bintan Resort Hotel which is part of the Nirwana Gardens group. This was a very last minute trip and I had tried booking thru a travel agent who told me that there was no rooms available left at this resort. So here's a lesson I learnt, just because a travel agent says a place is fully booked, it really doesn't mean so, maybe just the block they had reserved had all been snapped up already. So I went home and got online to wotif.com and surprisingly got an even cheaper offer than the travel agent. It helped that there was also a HSBC credit card offer. I then booked the ferry tickets online separately. .Here's a tip, if you want a particular timing for the ferry and it says it's all full, keep on checking because I guess like flights, there are people who drop out last minute.

We had booked for a King Standard room which was supposed to have a garden view. But we had reached there earlier and the King bedded room wasn't ready and they asked if we minded a double room - we could push the beds together so we didn't mind. Turns out that I think we were also bumped up to a Deluxe room with a nice view of the front garden and an angled view of the beach!

The rooms themselves were ok, and I think were newly renovated. But I did have 3 gripes: 1) the aircon wasn't very cold, luckily they had a ceiling fan, 2) the tiled floor was rather dirty and full of sand - tho I guess it can't be totally clean since the beach is just behind. But still, it felt like they didn't vaccum it at all, 3) for 2 guests, I think it was a little stingy of them to just provide one set of shampoo and lotion. In Desaru the place we stayed at provided 3 sets of everything for triple share. But on the upside, Bintan Resort Hotel provided toothbrushes and a razor which you don't often see being provided in hotel bathrooms these days.

Everything at the resort is priced in Singapore Dollars and you can choose to pay SGD or IDR. But if you pay by credit card it will be paid in Indonesian Rupiah. The food on the property weren't cheap but they also weren't excessively expensive thank goodness. For our stay there we managed to try 3 restaurants on property, two meals of which were buffets. Not terribly fantastic either, but edible. We were thinking of going to the Kelong restaurant for dinner but we had to wait 20 minutes for the car to pick us up and as we perused the menu displayed at the hotel, we realised it would be cheaper and turned out to be more worth it to eat the buffet at the hotel.

The staff there are all very nice. The best thing tho would have to be the infinity pool which looked out over the beach. It was just fabulous and Caelyn loved every minute she spent swimming in it.

The beach was somewhat clean because it gets cleaned everyday by some workers. They take away the washed up seaweed and wood. The sand was surprisingly very fine, however the water isn't exactly turquoise as described in the ads, but I must say it's definitely nicer than Desaru beach and much calmer than Kuta beach. The day we arrived we were lucky enough to have gentle waves which allowed us to sit in the shallow water. But the next day we saw they had put up a red flag I think to indicate rough water with bigger waves. But that didn't stop people swimming in it. The only downside to the beach was the water had big rocks in it, which made it difficult and a little scary to walk on.

All in all, it was a great getaway, just too bad about the rocky boat ride.