food – retrospectif: a notebook

strawberry & cream biscuits

June 11, 2012June 11, 2012 julesLeave a comment

When you stumble upon a recipe that promises to fill your house with the warm scent of strawberries and cake, and berry-stained fingers afterward, you can’t say no, or pretend to be uninterested and click on to the next page. I definitely couldn’t. These strawberry scones lingered in my memory for two whole days and by saturday evening, I had a block of butter and a punnet of strawberries in the fridge waiting to be elevated into something even more glorious.

This isn’t the first time I’ve shared a recipe that a recipe that marries berries and pastry, but what can I say? Some things don’t change, especially when they are very, very good.

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The Happy List #5

May 5, 2012May 5, 2012 julesLeave a comment

1. Feasting with friends.

(photo by tan wan lin)

We had the mezzé at cafe le caire before languorously sipping on beers elsewhere, and it’s $16 for plentiful portions of hummus, tahina, olives, salad, babaganush, chickpeas and feta to be scooped up with flatbread. Also, the fluffiest falafel I’ve ever had! This incredible photo is by my talented friend wan lin, who is ace at capturing sunsets with practically any kind of photographic equipment.

The poached eggs at Group Therapy cafe were perfectly smooth, covered in hollandaise and crushed black peppercorns and served on light, thick toast.

2. A georgette blouse I want to pair with dark denim and gold accessories every day

3. The gift of words

Sam bought me this book I’ve been stalking at Kinokuniya for years — a collection of (love) letters exchanged between Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé. Here is a section that made me melt:

Now I am closing my manuscript folder: the Visions are in it, the 12 novellas, many of which I will some day read to you, letters, pages filled with notes, and Ruth. Did I not myself write these lines once in some dream filled with presentiments?

“…until the whole world dropped away from me
And nothing of all that life remained
Except a boundless gratitude
And a love stretching on forever!…”

If they had not existed, I would have written them now. How wonderful that they do exist. For hence this strange exchange: I can express my happiness in your words. –And thus you in turn will understand my happiness. Is it not so?

He caught me sitting on the floor by the shelf, swooning and lost in its first few pages, and I felt like a guilty voyeur. I’m not very far into the book, but my favourite little detail so far is how Rilke signs off — it starts off formally with his full signature, but by his third letter he is René Maria, and then very simply, René.

5. My parents, Lauren and I are headed to Malacca tomorrow for what’s left of the weekend! I haven’t been there for ten years, but I’m looking forward to trying satay celup for the first time, visiting a man who restores antique jewellery, a popiah skin maker and a red paper cutter, and just wandering around with my dusty but trusty camera!

burrata / galbiati gourmet deli

April 23, 2012April 23, 2012 julesLeave a comment

Detoxing with plenty of fruits, vegetables and soup today after a semi-indulgent weekend, but there’s no denying what has top-of-mind prominence in food memory today…!

The burrata appetizer at Galbiati Gourmet Deli — plump pillows of fresh burrata, resting atop strips of prosciutto di Parma, green and black olives, ripe tomatoes, artichokes and toasted olive foccacia. Be still my beating heart.

Galbiati Gourmet Deli, 400 Upper Bukit Timah Rd, Singapore 678050

Pumpkin Croquette

March 13, 2012March 13, 2012 julesLeave a comment

About to finally head for dinner after a grueling day with microsoft word, so I’m celebrating with a photo of pumpkin croquettes. On Sunday, Lauren and I tried our hand at food styling & photography for a marketing project and this is one of my favourite pictures from that day. Want to hire us? We are available as long as you give us a good meal and let us keep the pretty plates afterwards ;)

elephant seal baby dinosaur

March 4, 2012 julesLeave a comment

The last two weeks saw my life in its most unrecognizable form — a flurry of opportunities and unexpected grace, but paid for with non-stop 5am nights, a work table strewn with academic journal articles that never got put away, sundays in school. On wednesday, I got fed up, took a gamble with my good-girl self, sent in an incomplete thesis draft for review and rushed off to the theatre for a few hours to see cooling off day. Yesterday I took a whole day off, ate tokyo bananas, made the trek to katong to collect reserved magazine back issues with my mother. It was glorious.

Today is another sunday and I am still in school. Most of the time it feels like my mind has been buzzing non-stop, but with what? It’s a blurry, prickly, nameless feeling. My thoughts are tangled up and I’m too tired to unravel the knots, and where word clouds once existed in my mind, all there is now is…static. Static, and a longing to stay in bed just a little longer. On the bright side, almost everything tickles my funny bone lately (have you seen pusheen or the new despicable me 2 teaser?), kenny brought us milk pan buns, and we are moving forward to a new future every day!!

when i told you i loved you, i knew that you would break my heart

February 15, 2012February 15, 2012 jules4 Comments

When suppertime in Singapore rolls around, my thoughts always go back to 3am dim sum nights in Hong Kong — stealing out of the HKU dorms past the sleeping receptionist, dizzying cab rides down the slopes of Hong Kong island, and into the fray of Sun Hing at 10 Hau Wo St to gobble down salted egg yolk custard buns glinting with so much goodness. I can taste it in my mouth just looking at that photo!!

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Malaysian Food Diary

January 10, 2012 jules1 Comment

Sorry I haven’t been here in a while, school and thesis work has kicked off hard and heavy! I spend most of my days staring at ‘Reply Email’ text boxes, so the wordpress post editor is not high on my list of preferred sights, but rest assured I am still alive, thinking and feeling, loving and enjoying life intensely, as always ;) Please accept these photos of Malaysian culinary treasures as penance?

These pictures were collected as my family and I ate our way through Malaysia, starting from Penang, up to my dad’s hometown, Alor Setar. I loved every bite, but if you’re ever in Penang, you need to go to the hawker centre on Lebuh Presgrave and hunt down the ice kacang and hokkien prawn noodles in the last two photos. Ask for frozen-peanut-butter-flecked vanilla ice cream on your shaved ice and pink syrup, and extra pork ribs in your noodles, and you’ll be on your way to happy rumbly tummy days.

Have a Delicious Day

September 26, 2011September 26, 2011 jules4 Comments

The breakfast at the Business School cafe could not get worse — thin coffee and a sandwich that fell apart in the bag. In order to save my appetite, I retreated to my photo archives and looked at pictures of deliciousness I’ve been enjoying lately. This should tide me over till a lunch and coffee date at the Arts canteen at 12pm.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” – Virginia Woolf

‘Tow Kwa Pop‘ from Tiong Bahru Market — beancurd puffs stuffed with thinly sliced cucumber and beansprouts, served alongside apple and guava slices, fried dough fritters, coated in luscious prawn paste and chopped peanuts

The BEST Hainanese chicken rice set, Tiong Bahru Market. When I went vegetarian for a short while last year, my father surprised me with a takeaway portion of this Thai-style tofu on day one. I was so touched by his sweet show of support and have loved this even more since :)

Tapoica flour cubes for bobo chacha, a sweet milky dessert with yam, served warm. Mum made this two weekends ago as one of the many desserts that followed our massive popiah feast…

Popiah is well-loved in our household. We can eat this for three, four meals in a row and still sing its praises every time. A rainbow medley of vegetables and good things, wrapped in a delicate flour skin, smeared with sweet sauce and peanuts.

Friends, my morning is cured. Are visual buffets are the new frontier in culinary joy? Have a good monday, wherever you are! Extra hugs to friends overseas I love and miss.

When the going gets tough..

August 16, 2011 jules2 Comments

…keep calm and have a sandwich. The start of school, episodes of ineffective communication, drilling and paint fumes from the neighbours’ renovation made me very grumpy, but I took a chill pill, made a mug of coffee, and had this alfafa, olive and feta cheese sandwich for lunch/tea. I crumbled a bit of bleu cheese on top too, since it felt like my day needed a good ass-kicking. There are no simpler kitchen joys than these mini French loaves that go for 35 cents apiece from an old-fashioned bakery near my place, and my mother’s set of square tupperware plates in all sorts of retro colours. Kitchen zen.

ps. the key to kicking these rustic veg & cheese sandwiches up a notch? drizzling a bit of olive oil into the loaf and again later when the filling is assembled, and a gentle sprinkling of salt as a final step.

Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way

August 10, 2011August 11, 2011 jules2 Comments

My wednesday was started with a ton of sweetness, courtesy of my adorable friend Dil and mixed berry pancakes with gula melaka syrup at Food For Thought. This stuff is incredible, I want every day to start with a bite of these pancakes. Dil couldn’t resist the homemade ice lemon tea on the menu, and I couldn’t snap out of sleepy-eyes without an iced latte! Later on, a lady at an optical shop broke my sunglasses, and Dil patiently plucked potential replacement sunglasses off a rack and into a shopping basket for me. We also shopped and bought the same dress (again). In between all that, there was also a lot of laughing and love — I couldn’t ask for a better friend!

We waited till 12pm to have our second shared course, the Crispy Curry Chicken. It was fragrant and well-cooked, but ridiculously huge!

Genius reservation placeholders — TISSUE PAPER PACKETS THAT SAY “CHOPE”!

We also Posed With Friends..and Walter the Bunny (an excerpt from the information plaque “…most children in Japan believe rabbits live on the moon where they make Mochi” — really?)

..and hit up Cat Socrates, where I spied mine & sam’s toes in their current photo exhibition “Stand On Your Own Two Feet”! I responded to a call for photos of feet from Cat Socrates a long time ago, post-HK/China trip number one, when I was still fresh from days of dipping our toes into the river. Had forgotten all about it till I saw our photo (first row, fourth from right) on their wall today amongst some instagrams and very stylish shoes. The new university semester begins in two days, and this was a lovely chance* reminder to hold on to the feeling of being free — school + work can be physically and mentally stressful, but feelings and memories are ours to own forever.

*I suppose it can’t be called chance since I was the one who sent it in and there was a high likelihood of me sharing this cute space with my dear friend, but it’s nice to believe in kismet, isn’t it?