cooking rice

Watching the re-run of Daejungkum (Jewel of the Palace), and the scene of the cooking rice competition made me think of the way I cooked rice. Rice is very important to Asians and it is the main staple especially for those coming from Southern China. The habit of eating rice transmigrated to Korea and Japan (who highly value rice).

Rice is also highly valued in other parts of South East Asia - in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

I like hard and chewy rice, while my grandma (when she was around) liked rice that was softer and sticky. In the show - Daejungkum, a method of cooking both hard chewy rice and soft rice in the same pot was shown. I'll be trying it later, and I'll do a second post to tell all of you about it. Is this really possible? Can we do it in our electric rice cookers?

Stay Tuned.....

Spring Cleaning of my office

My office has been in shambles recently, as I've been trying to get my staff to input in notes, recipies and cooking ideas that has been accumulated by myself, my grandma and all my Peranakan relatives, who have contributed age old snippets, newspaper cuttings, hand-me-down scrawlies on yellow and spotted paper. Some of these are so old that I might even suggest getting the museum curator to take a look at them.

I managed to stack all the sheets and old books into a corner and managed to clear up some of my assistant's desk. Phew it is a tough job clearing up. My own table isn't so great either, with cook books, scribblings, invoices and payment vouchers, and notes for my new and latest food and drink portal, which I'm working on.

Tried making apple pie 2 days ago using a cider based champagne. It's called champagne because the producer says they had used the same type of yeast used for french champagnes. He can call it champagne because he's not selling it in Europe. He can call it whatever he wants, is not a problem. To me it's just a wine cooler, but a damn tasty wine cooler anyhow.

I had poured out half of the 330ml bottle for my apple pie, and downed the rest of this mildly alcoholic (7%) beverage - and used the rest to flavour my granny smith slices simmering in a mixture of cinnamon, brown sugar and orange peel. While my pie base - which I'm using a graham pie base (which is basically made up of cookie/shortbread), is baking nicely in the oven, while my apples are simmering, I'm preparing the final ingredient - corn syrup which is the thickening agent for the apple juices.

When cooled, the apple mixture became thick with large slices of apples still apparent. Pouring this into the cooled pie base, and covering the pie with a thick layer of vanilla flavoured cream. Now it's ready for serving....boy was it yummy.

Wine For Asia 2005

it was a really hectic week the whole of last week. We had a exhibition - Wine For Asia 2005 and the Singapore Food Manufacturers Association Exhibition...all in the same week.

To top that off, we had to organise food for 2 events, my cousin's wedding (which was an elaborate 180pax at his parent's house).

And we catered for 120 pax for a launch of a Bobby Brown event. These were the two large scaled functions we were involved in last week.

Phew thank goodness it was over. This week is slightly less hectic, we just need to catch up on all the things that got left behind not done last week. (Frown). I don't like this, I'm just in time to catch my food editorial for a foodie forum. I'll tell you all about it another time.

Anything interesting food ideas over the week? Actually I had wicked thoughts of combining grilled pumpkin with seafood. I've not tried it out as yet. I'm working on this idea of how to do it.
I think it should provide a very good combination of a sweet base with something salty - like either Tuna or Salmon (which are both oily fish). It could be an appetiser or as a main dish.

It would also present lots of interesting display methods, as Pumpkin is a very diverse and versatile melon. Excellent. I'll keep all of you posted.