20 facts about myself

I was actually tagged by two people to do this- Sawee (aeons ago) and more recently Ja. Though Ja only asked for 7 facts, I shall do 20 since that was the original request (from Sawee), which will also overlapped with Ja's tag. I've been tagged.

20 (10 actually) facts about myself:

1. I love to eat. I have many various passions too but eating is the only one that has stuck with me for this long. So I guess it will most probably stay.

2. Which is why I am enrolled into Le Cordon Bleu, to learn how to turn the passion for food into something more exciting and practical. I am a soon-to-be patisserie graduate, whoot whoot!

3. I have a orange belt in Karate, which is probably moldy and faded.

4. I was in the school choir for 4 years, which won a gold award in my senior year. :D

5. I have a dog, who will make the perfect family dog, except that she attacks other dogs, refuses to eat dry dog food, sometimes jump on my bed and make a real big mess with her severe hair loss condition and uncontrolable saliva drooling, etc etc.

6. I have a pretty good grade in electone, except that I don't play like one. I think it was all a fluke. haha. Right now, I am bent on mastering piano. Huhwahwa.

7. I like to be happy. I really do. And I know I will be. Correction. I am, will be, will always be happy. (with minor exceptions here and there, otherwise, people might think me as positively unsound.)

8. I am learning French right now. Level 2. Ah merde! Je oublie mes devoirs!

9. I have a super cool mum, whom I love and will always love.

10. J'ai 19 ans et je suis celibataire. haha.

Wheww, I can't go on anymore. I don't have so many words about myself. This should be enough. I suppose I am to tag other people to pass on the good deed. Nah, I won't. haha. I would most probably tag the same people Sawee tagged. (I don't have many blogging friends) So yup, that's it. :D

Afternoon Tea

Okay! The high point of Superior patisserie: Afternoon Tea. It is an exercise that every patisserie student must go through. For this week, we made crepes, savarin, all kinds of petit fours for an afternoon tea service, served to real customers. In the ambassador room, tables are set up, food displayed prettily on platters, and us, we became front of house, kick-ass members. 2 of the girls went behind the bar to churn out coffee and cold beverages, 2 made crepes suzette as an open presentation (you can totally see the flames going up high when the grand marnier goes into the pan), the rest of us became the waitstaff.

"Those who can smile go behind the buffet counter." I volunteered. Haha, I figured it was the easiest job out of the three. Well, it was, until I found out how lonely it can be. Most customers are just eager to get the food on their plate rather than stopping to hear you lecture on about the cake. (I am sometimes like that too, so I can understand.)

We had tons of leftovers. I really really tried to sell my gateaux but no amount of coaxing can give the (miserable turn-out of) customers a second stomach. In the end, our class tried to polish the pastries off the trays either by insane, vengeful eating or take-away in makeshift doggy bag made out of disposable towels and plastic boxes. I had no appetite for either. There's something about leftovers just puts me off. o_o

Before the service, each of us had to make a crepe suzette each. First you melt sugar on the pan, on its own, until the sugar turns liquid. Then you add the butter. Very quickly, orange juice goes in. With a wedge of lemon, you clean the pan with it to dislodge any stray sugar. Next, add the crepes to soak in the nicely caramelised orange juice mixture. Now, the most important grand marnier is added to the edge of the pan, so that it can catch the fire. If you tilt the pan a little backwards, then you add the grand marnier to the top and quickly catch the fire, a tall flame will erupt. Spectacular. I reckon this is how I got my A. Because, frankly speaking, standing behind the counter, smiling blandly, won't get you many points. ._.

The crepes, made two days before the service. We've got many complaints for this one. Mr. Ivan said they were too thick to be French crepes. Thus during practice, we ate the thick ones ourselves. haha.

Savarin. It is a yeast product which is just plain weird. Good weird since it tastes so good. It has got the texture of a bread, sweetness of a cake. My brain cannot make the connection. Luckily, my brain knows my tongue likes it. Finished like a cake with creme chantilly and fruits.

Les Macaroons et Les chocolat- contributed by the various Chefs.

Danish pastries- donated by Intermediate patisserie.

Sable boutin (I hope I got this right) and lemon meringue tartlets- made by us.

Sugar showpiece by Chef Herve, to impress our customers he says.

Thank god it is over. Sure it was fun but trying as well. I didn't pee for long periods.

End.

Fluffy, very banana-y banana bread.

Banana bread.

Aileen: You know there's this banana diet in Japan?

Me: Huh? How? Eat banana all day?

Aileen: You go google it. It's damn popular everywhere now.

Which explains why I have 16 bananas sitting on top of my fridge.

Then my mum called and told me about the recent article in the paper about the banana diet craze. It explains that only certain variety is suitable for this diet. The long, green (even when ripe) bananas from Philippines is the worst type of banana to eat on an empty stomach, as the diet suggested. Coincidentally, the 16 bananas I bought happened to be of that variety. Sigh, what to do. Bake banana bread.

Even though it is called banana bread, the taste and the texture is more of a cake. But unlike the normal banana cake, this recipe has got alot of banana in it, thus it has got an awesome banana flavour. A very banana-y fluffy cake. I got the recipe from Professional Baking, and modified it to my logic. haha, I didnt follow their instructions to make. Therefore: use this recipe at your own peril.

Banana bread- makes 1 20cm round tin, and 2 ramekins.

250g plain flour
150g cornflour
10g baking powder
2g baking soda (i don't think it makes much of a difference)
pinch of salt
150g brown sugar
100g butter (melted)
3 yolks
3 whites
350g (4) ripe bananas (the more ripe it is the better)
50g sugar (what colour, brown, white)

1: Preheat oven to 190 degrees celcius. Grease and line tin.

2: Mash the bananas into puree with 50g sugar. You can do a rough mash or a ultra fine mash, depending on your preference. Rough will give you banana bits in the cake. I did mine medium. Set aside.

3: Whisk yolks to pale and light. Add sugar and whisk to thick and creamy.

4: Sieve flours, baking powder and soda, and salt together. Fold 1/3 into yolk mixture.

5: Add 1/2 melted butter and fold.

6: Add rest of the flour mixture, fold and add the rest of the butter. Fold until all the flour is incorporated. The batter should be quite thick, almost like a very wet dough.

7: Stir in the banana mixture. Mix till homogeneous.

8: Whisk whites to stiff, fold it through the batter. Take care not to overmix, we don't want to
loose any of the aeration. It is crucial for the fluffiness of the cake.

9: Pour into tins, bake at 190 degrees celcius for 50minutes or till the cake springs back when pressed.

Tadah!

I used the sponging method for this recipe, whereby you whisk whole eggs to ribbon stage, and I thought myself very stupid. Whisking whole eggs to ribbon stage by hand is very hard work. Though I have never tried the above method, but I suppose it works as well and it is easier to execute. haha, you guys can try then you tell me. I had a shock while folding in the flours with the whole egg mixture. I didn't realise there was so much flour to fold! When the batter became so heavy, all I could think was shit.... So after I added the banana, I whisked two whites to stiff peaks and folded them through. Therefore, I thought it would be better if the eggs were whisked separately. Anyway, if it doesn't work, you can always come back to do the sponging method and break your arm at the same time. haha. just kidding.. :D

Bon appetite!

End.

Tonton by Azuma

I found another good ramen stall! Tonton by Azuma. Stella and I found it by chance while walking home from mamak. So we decided to lunch here after French class. J'ai tres faim!

Our appetiser, haha. Roast pork inside-out sushi. $4. It's good! I like the generous spicey powder on the top and pork filling, well seasoned! They also have that Japanese soda where you have to push the marble down into the bottle to drink it. Reminds me of my kuku veggies days where we'd definitely go crazy over this stuff.

Tonton ramem, Tonton's special, $9.90. It has got a thick broth with sesame overtones and a small gathering of chilli oil. Generous givings of wakame and spring onion as well. :D This reminds me of the pork ramen I had in Hokkaido. ahhh... the char siew is not as good though, far from it. Still, I will come back for the soup.

Stella ordered sukiyaki udon, $8.80. Similar to Makoto, though Stella prefers Makoto's sukiyaki udon. I had a taste of it. I do think it is quite good.

End.

Mamak

This is my second time to mamak now. Together with Sam and Stella, we ate $75 worth of prata food. Hias... it's sooo expensive compared to Singapore but we still go because it is sooo good.

I have never tried the satay, so we ordered half dozen of chicken satay. It is good as usual, not dry, nicely seasoned. The best part of it is the peanut sauce. Generous roughly chopped peanut in a nicely balanced curry sauce (not too sweet, not too spicy). Though it is painful to admit, Mamak does it even better than most of the satay hawker in Singapore.

We also ordered Maggi Goreng, something you will only find in Malaysia. This is also really good. The maggi is cooked to al dente, then I guess it is stir-fried in belaccan chilli. Even after stir-frying, the noodle still has got a bit of crunch, I was really impressed.

Kari kambing, lamb curry, Sam's choice. Though I have eaten better (in Malacca), mamak's version is not bad at all. I like.

As for prata, we had 2 plain prata and 1 egg and onion prata. I don't know why Singapore and Malaysia have different names for prata. In Malaysia, they call it cenai, therefore it is also called cenai here, since Mamak is a Malaysian restaurant. Prata is here is a little disappointing. It is not crispy, and I do think they could have cooked it abit more. I want Singpore, Jalan Kayu prata!

Heh heh, we are super full. But, ofcourse, we can't leave without having...

Desserts!

Prata kaya with ice-cream. Normal tasting, though I wonder where they got their kaya.

This one's special and quite popular, thats why we ordered it. This prata had margarine and sugar enveloped in within, then it is cooked for 20mintues. The end result is a super caramelised prata. The entire prata is crisp with caramel sugar. By the time the prata came, I was too bloated to fully appreciate it. I shall have it the next time. :D

End.

Another failed blood donation

Morning 11:30am, I spent half an hour tying my hair into 2 french plaits but I was fifteen minutes early since Kimmy came 1/2 an hour late. We, more accurately I, are going to do a super good deed. We are going to give our precious blood to someone in need.

We arrived at the blood donation venue after lunch (according to 3 times donor Kimmy, we have to go on a full stomach, and we got to have lots of sugar flowing in our blood, so she bought the super sweet bubbletea for the extra boost. But according to the failed Biology student, me, a full stomach is more than sufficient, I don't want to be mistaken to be diabetic) to a full house event. The wait was 1 and 1/2 hours. No thank you, I will come the next day. So off we went to the city~

Christmas is coming! We found a 3 storey high Christmas tree inside of QVB. Nowhere as extravagant as Singapore but very christmassy all the same. We've only manages to fit the tree trunk with our faces.

So Kimmy and I met up with Stella in the city and went for another round of eating in Chat Thai, this popular Thai restaurant in the city. Banana fritters and cendol! If I swap the current banana diet rage for banana fritters and cendol every morning, I bet I will go in the other direction with a very possible diabetic condition.

After the erm.. tea break, we went for a fruit gathering at paddy's market where $2 pineapples and hoards of bananas are. Stella and I swept 10 bananas, 6 golden kiwis, a bunch of grapes and a $2 pineapple with us. Hooray.

In the space of time we had before dinner:

We competed for the lamest facial expression.

And guys, I hate to break this to you, I grew fatttttttt. haha! I have no idea why I feel so happy about it but the thought of being able to tell people that I have grown in mass makes me very happy. :D Time to loose some weight girl.

Dinner. Gule rice at Joy cafe (Indonesian cafe) is super yummy! Fatty mutton is stewed in a curry like soup until soft and is served with a dash of lime on the top. The thing with the weight can wait.

End.

Feuille D'automne, Buche de Noel, L'exotic Charlotte

CONGRATULATIONS BARRACK OBAMA FOR WINNING THE ELECTION!

Yeah, I am super happy for America, and the world now. It is funny, and equally as scary, how one man can affect so much. Well, Mr. Obama, thank you.

Okay, this week is happiest week in Superior Patisserie. We got to make gateaux! hahaha! Sustainable, edible stuff at last.

So this is the Buche de Noel (Christmas Log Cake) demonstrated by Chef Herve. It tastes quite nice though it is different from the Singporean version. Here, a cointreau mousse, chocolate mousse and the almond dacquoise are used in the log cake instead of the swiss roll. Therefore, it gives a lighter texture and is much sweeter. Though I like both versions, I do prefer the swiss roll version because it gives more substance. Airy stuff, blahhh.

This beautiful cake is feuille d'automne, which translates to autumn leaves in French. It is made with 3 discs of almond meringue, sandwiched with chocolate mousse. The outer decorations are constructed entirely with chocolate, tempered and untempered, to give the different effects. It is so chocolatey that my mind went blank, all I could think of is to sink my teeth into that velvety chocolate mass. -But Chef Keith wants to keep it for the afternoon tea session. No tasting...

L'Exotic Charlotte. It is a complicated cake with many conponents to prepare. First, Chef Herve made the stenciled joconde, which is the green wave pattern you see. Then he made 2 discs of hazelnut and almond meringue. Next, a ring of mango jelly, followed by coconut mousse and the chocolate shavings. Oh ya, and a chocolate ganache. A container of poached pineapple and mango was made the day before. Below, a plated dessert version of the charlotte with Chef Herve's signature chocolate shavings.

L'Exotic Charlotte. Doesn't taste like much though. Mango jelly hasn't got enough mango, coconut mousse is drowning in whipped cream. But at least I got to try it. :D

Presenting my cute Buche de Noel! Mushroom and snowman complete! This is quite easy to make, though time-consuming.

My feuille d'automne. My chocolate "leaves" are so ugly!!! Now I know why we have to temper chocolate. Untempered chocolate is so hard to work with! But I will conquer them all, haha!

End.