Blargh. This week has been ROUGH. All you can do is power through, dust yourself off, say a prayer, hope for the best, and stare at the pretty pictures you bought in Australia last week.

As always I have no respect for chronological order and am doing my posts in a timeless disarray. There’s a point though. These pretty pictures are bringing some peace and contentment to a rocky week. For all yous peeps out there suffering from the ugh-what-else-is-gonna-suck-this-week blues, my heart and my wombat go out to you.

I had most of Saturday to myself in Sydney last week. Since I was going in a completely different direction on a different airline, my flight times were way off of the homies. After they all went California-bound, I had 7 hours all to myself to mosey around and see Sydney before my own jet plane took off towards the equator. I roamed Darling Harbour, checked out the Sydney Aquarium, and then continued on my quest for art.

I’m by no means an art collector. I mostly buy stuff so that my future home will be filled with the memories of my past travels. In Cambodia I bought a watercolor of an elephant with the Bayon temple in the background. In Vietnam I grabbed two pieces of paper art just because I had never seen anything like that before. In Bali I bought a water buffalo with a mangosteen on its head and a frog with a watermelon on its head painted on sandpaper.

Yes, that’s right. A frog with a watermelon its head. That’s the kind of girl I am.

Anyway, where was I? Quest for art. I considered some pieces with the Opera House, a kangaroo, a koala, the Harbour Bridge on it but I didn’t looooove any of them. I even tried the Contemporary Art Museum which btw has the dinkiest store ever. My roaming eventually led me to the weekend market at the Rocks and to StudioOat.

I love these like I love my wombat.

StudioOat is an Australian illustration and graphics studio. All of their prints come with an accompanying story or poem. I can’t really explain why I like them so much. I just do. I saw them and decided I would like to gaze at them foheva. This one is called “Sun Light”. The peach background kinda reeled me in first. Look a little closer though…

There’s a sun growing. It represents hope.

The cage is open because hope sets you free!

Hope and freedom give you bliss. Cute, huh?

This one is called “Freeing Love” and it’s super simple.

Just you on the top of lil’ mountain releasing lots of lil’ paper cranes into the universe.

Last one is called “Autumn Birds” it’s part of a series. I picked this one because of the story.

Most of the birds are facing left – lookin’ towards the past. The print is supposed to represent autumn as the time in your life that you’re happy with all of your experiences and the person that you’ve become. Kinda like embracing the path you’ve taken in life.

One bird faces right. Love looks towards the future. Cute again!

Each of these prints are limited edition and were AUD100 (including the matting). They are each 11 x 22. You can catch StudioOat at the weekend markets at the Rocks, Bondi, and Paddington. They also have a few prints up for sale on their website as well as pictures of previous limited editions on their Facebook page. Check them out if you’re in the neighborhood.

If you’re wondering, the wombat’s name is Wombat and he’s from the souvenir shop at Blue Mountain in Katoomba. He now resides in Singapore.

I’m back from Sydney and taking all of Sunday to recuperate from the fun times and the red eye flight. I came home to a super clean apartment courtesy of the parents and aunt who visited last week (we both left last Monday – them to the Philippines and me to Sydney). It was so nice of them to tidy up my lil’ crib.

Sadly, I only have a few Sydney posts (one of which is not food related) lined up. Certainly less than what I had thought I would come back with, but it was a fun trip nonetheless.

Let’s start off with the flights, yes? I took Malaysian Airlines because they had a deal for Singapore to Sydney for SGD600 – even less than the budget airlines.

My first impression of MH (the airline code for Malaysian Airlines) was ho-hum. They flew a small Boeing from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur which was quite old. All of the seats were different colors – orange, blue, red, green. The result was more fiesta than anything else.

I had one regular meal and one snack sized meal on each journey. From KL to Sydney they offered up chicken and rice  or fish and pasta. By the time they got to me they were chicken-less so I ended up with the fish. It looked gross. Two big chunks of fish plus some squidgy looking pasta with some pale veggies. As airplane food goes this was surprisingly not bad.

The sauce was creamy but had enough lemon to not make it too heavy. The fish was not overly fishy either. The side was a chicken salad and for dessert were three Ferrero Rocher bonbons. They also served the tastiest ginger ale I’ve had in awhile.

Before I get into the meal on my return flight, I have to tell you that I was super confused for a hot minute. The e-ticket that I have says that my flight goes SYD-KUL-SIN. When I got to the airport, all of the monitor showed Brisbane as the destination of my flight. Say wha?

Apparently, my flight was transiting through Brisbane. We flew for an hour, deplaned, sat around for another hour, then got back on for the rest of our flight. That’s so weird that they can do that. This is made more annoying because this means my trip was sandwiched with two hour long flights on each end. Tack that on to the fact that you’re flying in the middle of the night and you have the most inconvenient red eye in the history of the world.

The meal on Brisbane to KL was solid though. Simply cooked chicken, potatoes, and veggies in a light gravy, a pesto pasta salad, and some crackers and cheese. For dessert, a mini Cadbury milk candy bar. I really prefer airplane meals that are straightforward like this. Again, more tasty ginger ale.

On both flights the small snack was breakfasty – granola bars, yogurt, and, on the return leg, a buttery white chocolate and raspberry muffin.

The service on MH is alright. Not super noticeable nice like on Singapore Airlines (although they wear similar outfits – MH’s are not nearly as snug fitting and, like their planes, look a bit on the older side) but more pleasant than your average American airline. On the longer hauls everyone had personal entertainment systems. It says ‘Video on Demand’ but it’s an older system that play all of the movies on different channels so you end up catching some movies midway through.

My flight to Sydney was on a larger plane with a 3-4-3 seat configuration. My area of the plan was about half full (on a Tuesday night) and plenty of people had entire rows to themselves (me included). My flight from Sydney to Singapore was on a smaller plan with a 2-4-2 layout. It was about 90% full on a Saturday evening.

I wouldn’t mind taking MH again but having to fly through KL is a bit of a pain so unless they are rockin’ a good deal I’d stick to other carriers.

I have enjoyed the extensively modified potato chip that is the Pringle for many years. My favorite flavor is a toss up between sour cream and onion and salt and vinegar. Imagine my amusement when my cousin and I were cruising Carrefour and saw these babies on sale for SGD4.80 for 2 cans.

At first the grilled shrimp and seaweed flavors didn’t phase me too much since I’ve had seaweed flavored things before and I love a nice salty bag of shrimp chips. Then my cousin explained that the real kicker is that all of these flavors would be on top of that distinctive crispy crumbly Pringles chip.

Then I got a little worried.

But I bought two cans anyway because hey you gotta live a little.

I settled on the soft shell crab and the grilled shrimp. The shrimp for sure was coming home since the chip was straight up pink. The seaweed stayed behind since, like I said, I’ve had plenty of seaweed flavored things before. My cousin was hoping I would forget about taste testing them when we got home. But I thought of all of you dear readers and journeyed onward.

The grilled shrimp ones are in fact pink and in fact taste shrimpy. Not as shrimpy as, say, shrimp chips but nearly. They are not as salty and the chip itself is not as crispy. Not sure if this is due to the ridiculous humidity, an older tube of chips, or the flavoring they use.

Sadly, the soft shell crab was not interesting looking in the least. Typical plain looking chip without even a speck of fake herbs or seasoning. I don’t quite understand why it’s specifically soft shell crab but it actually tasted like dried squid. You know the kind that you get in the bag from the grocery store that is kinda stringy. That’s the aroma and the taste you get.

If I had to eat one of the two I think I would eat the soft shell crab even if it is poorly selected flavor name. And that concludes our trip down Pringles lane.

I am so fatchin’ tired. There are about 80 other things I should be doing – cleaning my house, paying my cable bill, ironing some clothes, sleeping since it’s well past midnight – but here we are blogging. Yay for messed up priorities.

I just got back from a few days in the Philippines and unlike most of my trips I got to actually stay in Manila for awhile. My dreams of moving to Manila to work have slipped off the radar since I moved to Singapore but were sorta kinda resurrected by the 3 days I spent exploring and enjoying the city life rather than the usual weekend of hanging out in the bahay kubo all up in the province.

In the middle of what I like to refer to as Meeting Marathon Tuesday (not to be confused with Meeting Fun Times Monday), Lianne and I had time to grab a real lunch at Greenbelt 5.

Lianne let me pick between Travel Cafe Philippines  and another Spanish restaurant whose name escapes me. TCP won because we found it first and because I was not feeling the urge to revisit my people’s colonial oppression. Kidding. I was also wearing 3 inch heels and carrying my stupidly heavy laptop so really finding it first meant sitting down sooner which was the idea overall.

PTC is pretty cute inside. A bit dark with slightly unflattering track lighting but I suppose it gives it a cozy type of atmosphere. The place itself is supposed to be some amalgamation of a cafe, coffee shop, and travel agency.

I’m not sure why it has to be all of those three things but at least the food is good.

Lianne ordered munggo cream soup in a pandesal bread bowl. I took a bite and thought it tasted mostly like bacon. I love munggo though so I would have appreciated more of the straight up munggo flavor. No comment on the pandesal bowl since I didn’t taste it.

I ordered their signature salad which was yums. Those are adobo flakes on top which basically render the entire dish a success from the start. Scattered around are hard boiled quail eggs, shitake mushrooms, tomatoes, and quesong puti (literally, white cheese – a very very mild, basic, super common cheese in the Philippines). The dressing was slightly citrusy with a base of the quesong puti – not super creamy though which was nice.

Because I’m easily susceptible to the power of suggestion, I had to have some pandesal the minute I read the word ‘pandesal’ on the menu. It wasn’t the best one I’ve ever had but I wouldn’t turn down another if I met it again on the street especially if it brings it’s friend, melted butter.

I ate a salad. I deserved some dessert.

This was called suman sushi. Suman is the name for the sweet glutinous rice cake thingy that the cherries and mangoes are sitting on. It’s also part of the rolls in the background that are wrapped in crepes. From the back left – ube, melony sago, langka, cherries, watermelon (thanks Captain Obvious), and mango.

I ate most of this because Lianne wasn’t very hungry and I have no shame. The entire meal plus hot tea and water was pushing P1000 which is SGD30 or USD21 depending on how lucky you get on the foreign exchange.

Travel Cafe Philippines: 2nd Level Greenbelt 5, Legaspi St, Legaspi Village, Makati, Philippines

Not to excite you too much but the weird flavored Pringles post is coming up tmrw. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sad that we’re not Twitter friends. I warn you that my tweets are often not food related but instead are gripes about missed buses, bad hair days, shopping predicaments, annoying people and weird Singaporean signs.

Awww it’s the second to the last Palate Sensations Western Basics class!

Having been to other cooking schools I appreciate the kitchen at PS even more these days. It’s so organized, homey, and well stocked. You feel like you can really cook anything in there. It’s fun puttering around the kitchen all day especially when you don’t have to do the dishes (thanks Loretta!).

The last 2 classes are all about desserts and this lesson we covered cakes and tarts. Two words for you today: sugar headache.

Two other words: worth it.

We had a huge 3 kilo bag of high quality chocolate (Valrhona, I think). We melted these over a bain marie with chocolate’s best friend, buttah. Actually, I think peanut butter is chocolate’s best friend. Butter is more like it’s friendly neighbor.

Melted chocolate is a little bit hypnotic.

So is watching the Kitchenaid turn the egg whites into meringue.

Not hypnotic? Whipping up cream by hand.

Fold it all gently to make the chocolate mousse.

For the cakey part, we made a genoise. The directions called for whipping eggs and flour until it comes to a sabayon texture. Thick, creamy, ribbony, but not like a custard. We sifted flour and cocoa powder into it and plopped it down onto the always welcoming Silpat.

A few minutes in the oven and you are greeted by a chocolate field.

We cut out pieces to fit into our little individual cake molds, plopped in some of the chocolate mousse, and gently plopped in another layer of cake. Looks like a hamburger patty in the pic though.

One more layer of mousse and a little chocolate glaze later you get the starting picture from above.

So now we have a cake and we need a tart (or two). Flour and buttah and shugah and cream come together to form the short crust. There’s a specific method to it. You start with a sandy texture and little by little it will start coming together to form the now familiar dough ball.

Lazy dough rests and then tortures us as we lay it ever so gently into the tart molds. It breaks and falls and laughs in our faces but we patch it up and move along. The crusts are prebaked. Half of them are filled with sliced apples and a light custardy filling. This was my favorite of the 3 desserts we made.

The other tarts were filled with a thicker custard, topped with blueberries, and finished with confectioner’s sugar.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the dentist.

Filleting a fish is not easy  kids. There are sharp knives and bones and fins and a few scales involved.

Sigh, I’m gonna miss spending my Saturdays in the PS kitchen. Here fishy fishy fishy…

We started the class with no time to spare – olive oil is warmed in a pot with coriander seeds and crushed garlic. This will be the dressing for our prawn salad.

Seed and chop tomatoes, slice up some basil and chives and a little bit of onions. Add your salt, pepper, and strained olive oil and set the whole shebang aside.

Have you ever had fish mousse? It sounds kinda gross but came out delicious. We used salmon and threw in some of the sea bass we had filleted earlier. We threw in some ginger and – what I think made it yum – some lime zest. This all went into the blender and then wrapped up in the rest of the sea bass, roulade style.

We wrapped those up sausage like and put them into boiling water to cook. Once again my fears of plastic warp fumes were pushed to the wayside.

Mise en place for teriyaki sauce made from scratch. Apparently, you can do that. From the top row: soy sauce, garlic, carrots, ginger, sugar, onions, mirin, sake.

Bring it to a boil that has the sauce wafting around you like a warm blanket.

Everything but the sake goes into the pot to bring to a simmer. When the sake goes in, you set it ablaze with the stove flame. It seems that this step isn’t *super* important since our sake wouldn’t even light. Chef drizzled in a little bit of dark soy sauce and then added some flour slurry to thicken it up. Strain it and then ta da – teriyaki sauce.

Next to the teriyaki is the beurre blanc which is knock-your-socks-off-slap-your-mama-put-it-on-everything GOOD. Wow. To think all we did was reduce down some white wine, add butter (in chunks – I was whisking and one of the butter pats flew into the air and fell on the floor heh), salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Love you beurre blanc.

These are NOT ninja weapons. These.

Are for these. We learned how to shuck oysters. Then we slurped ‘em down.

The teriyaki was brushed onto cod pieces that were baked in the oven. They came out cooked perfectly with a nice glaze.

Some of the sea bass was sliced, battered, and fried up. Chef used San Miguel because he’s down with the Pinoys. One of the poor guys in class was relegated to deep fryer duty.

Avocados and tomatoes on the bottom, prawns on top, and the tomato-olive oil dressing drizzled all over. There was something slightly bitter in the mix but overall the result was fresh and tasty.

The sausage lookin’ things are unwrapped and then sliced. Yah they look a little weird but…

… slap on the beurre blanc and who cares what it looks like.

Daaaaaang. So good.

Look it rhymes. It never rhymes so that’s kind of  big deal.

You know what else is a big deal (in Singapore, anyway)? Chicken rice. Most everyone is a fan of chicken rice. My last few run ins have been just eh. I mean steamed/boiled chicken and some rice. How good could it be.

Apparently, pretty darn good if you get lucky.

This plate was the first plate of chicken rice that made me go ‘mmmmm’.

The chicken was tender and flavorful. No gumminess or blandness in these parts. The rice was garlicky almost fried tasting and not greasy or oily. The ever present chili sauce and dark soy sauce on the side rounded out each bite. Finally, I know what the fuss is about.

Tiong Bahru, you never fail me.

Guess what we learned in Week 5? You got it right lurkers (I see you lurkers, all 150 or so of you who visit everyday but don’t say a word), it’s PASTA TIME.

Another day, another dough ball sistas and mistas.

You’re gonna need some semolina flour, an egg, and a wee bit of water. The dough ball will just barely hold together that’s how dry it will be.

After resting (dough is always freakin’ resting) you can roll it out all flatsy. Then coax it through the pasta machine inching up on the setting until you’re at 7 or so. Then you start up on some ravioli. The ones pictures above are spinach and goat cheese (ugh I hate goat cheese). Alternatively you can stick the dough through the other pins and make regular ol’ spaghetti or fettuccine.

Lightly flour a kitchen towel and lay ‘em down until you’re ready to work with them.

We made some pesto to go with the ravioli which came out tasty but the pictures look NOT CUTE so I’m not gonna bother posting. Ravioli is hard to make, yo. Little pockets of air get stuck and the darn things float in the water like unwanted pool toys. Then when the Chef says ‘take them out when they start floating’ you’ll think ‘er, what if they never stopped floating?’

In other news, we also whipped up a tomato based sauce which will make an appearance later with the fettuccine.

Alrighty, onto the mighty risotto. The pasta that plagues so many. We started with sauteeing some mushrooms.

You set those aside and get ready for some stirring.

Hi bay leaves!

A splash of white wine, a pat of butter, and some spinning right round gets you this.

Al dente, dudes. Keep it all dente.

In another pan heat up some garlic and chilis. You know what’s coming right?

Aglio olio. Dressed up like it’s Christmas.

Too plain for my liking but nice dressed with some other goodies I’m sure.

Now back to our fettuccine friends.

All homemade and delicious.

I’m gonna need a pasta maker.

I told you I was on a cooking class kick.

I had 8 hours of cooking class this weekend. First, of course, was my weekly basics course at Palate Sensations followed by a breadmaking class at Creative Culinaire on Sunday. This was my first class at CC although I had heard great things about Chef Judy Kho who runs the school and the adjacent cafe. She is nothing if not passionate for baking. She is also super nice and super patient and while 5 hours of baking seem crazy long it goes by in a flash.

Hello there, little dough ball. I like you and all of your friends.

Unlike the classes at Palate Sensations (PS), Creative Culinaire includes theory which is good and bad. Good because it’s good information, bad because sometimes you just want to start making stuff already and the theory stuff makes you antsy.

Today we made pandan red bean buns, sausage buns, ham and cheese buns, almond twists, and chocolate horns. I made up some of those names but you get the idea. Since this was our first class, Chef Judy had to do a lot for us. She made 2 of the main doughs we worked with including the dough for the ham and cheese (foreground) and the pandan dough (background).

Keep an eye on that pandan back there.

We learned two types of doughs – direct and indirect. One of them all the ingredients go in at once. The other has several stages. Both involve lots of saran wrap, some crazy active yeast, and some punching.

Any self respecting baker has some good toys. In addition to the monster proofer they also have one of those gigantor mixers. It’s the press conference to your KitchenAid’s conversation.

Did you like the Mariah Carey reference? No?

I told you to keep an eye on that pandan dough. Look at it. It’s downright beastly.

After some hacking and rolling we got things back under control. Rolling things into balls is my favorite part. Take that giant dough ball. These are all 60g because baking is precise like that.

You let ‘em grow a bit more and then flatten ‘em and add a ball of red bean paste (16g if you’re paying attention).

At this point Chef Judy shows us how to make them pretty. Here’s the obligatory chef shot of the day.

You can laugh at this point as most of my buns looked CRAZY. Mine are the four on the right including the one that looks like a slug in the middle and the other that looks like… um I dunno what it looks like but it’s ugly. The two round ones look okay. To whoever has to eat them, the ugly ones taste the same as the non-ugly ones. This picture, btw, is what they look like after their second rise (aka proofing).

We added Italian herbs to the dough that Chef Judy made (the one in the foreground in the beginning) and rolled them up with some chicken ham.

I added chilli sauce and cheese to mine and opted to leave out the mayo and mixed frozen veggies.

The first picture in this post is me and my baking partner, Sheryl’s, dough. One important step in the breadmaking process – after the first rise and before the shaping – is the punching. You gotta evenly distribute the air and relieve some of your pent up rage. Here we are beating the ever living crap out of our dough.

Afterwards you shape it into pretty knots and wrap hotdogs in it.

Ha ha it looks like a face. A not amused face. I forgot to take a picture of the inbetween phases but here are our plain dough buns. They are a little bit over browned because ours went into the oven first. The two on the bottom left were later filled with chocolate custard.

We did some crazy cutting to the wrapped up hot dog.

And then we sprinkled pearl sugar and almonds onto the knots (note that these are sans hotdogs on the inside). These knots are not easy but fun to make after you figure it out.

The red bean buns came out nice after a little egg wash and a sprinkling of sesame seeds.

I was starving after 5 hours of baking so I ate one of the ham buns as a reward. Yum.

Here’s a full picture of the bounty we took home.

We each took home an even dozen which I will take to work to share tomorrow.

If you’re interested in taking a class check out the Creative Culinaire website. This class is the first class in the Hands On Art & Science of Breadmaking – Foundations series. It’s around SGD370for 4 classes that are each 5 hours each. Next round is happening in December.

Creative Culinaire: 17 Eng Hoon Street #01-03 Eng Hoon Mansions, Singapore 169767 (right down the street from the Tiong Bahru hawker center)

During our first Basics class Lynette introduced us to a few folks from Wine & Dine that she said were doing a story about Palate Sensations. This past Saturday Chef Francois said that the article had been included in the November issue which was already out on newsstands.

I had always hoped my first foray into the glossies would be me looking chic on the arm of some Hollywood up and coming star. Not so says the universe.

Ta da! That’s me on the right in the white shirt and doofy smile. I look like my apron is about to choke me.

There I am again in the black and white photo looking serious as the Chef share some words of wisdom. That’s the rest of my team including Charlotte who very nicely gave me a ride to church this week, Lina who you can barely see to Chef’s right, and Jens who is about 2 feet taller than me.

It’s a 2 page spread plus 1 page of recipes from the dishes we made that day. Recognize the soup?

Fun, huh?  Anyway, I hope my next run in with a magazine includes something cooler than a red apron. Pls don’t forget the Hollywood hottie.