Tis the Season - Durian Galore

It's durian season again. I am surrounded by durian lovers - my father and my father0in-law (FIL) are avid durian lovers.
So chances of multiple durian sessions are inevitable during this period of time.

My dad picked up durian picking off some forrest in the vicinity last couple of years and during the season of the spikey fruit, he will have a bountiful harvest.
However, as these durians are not farmed, there is a high chance that these durians pulps are not that great, meaning to say they may be not too ripe and lack the creamy and rich taste. When this happens we try to make some derivatives from these pulps.

Since I have recently developed a love for baking, I decide to make a durian quickbread to "get rid" of them. I used the Banana Quickbread recipe and replace the banana with durian. But alas, the mashed durian pulp proved to be too much and I used too much in the 20cm square pan that the whole cake ended up too dense. There were still leftover durian so I baked another with a tube pan.

Surprisingly, there was a lack of durian fragrance during the baking which I anticipated. But overall, this durian quickbread was very dense and moist and tasted like almost like those brown durian paste (in stick form) pple get from the stores. And this is a taste that I do not take to. So I guess I will not be in a hurry to bake this again.

Another baking failure......

Banana Quickbread

The same day I made the healthful muffins, I proceeded to make this loaf of Banana Quickbread.

I got the recipe from Happy Home Baking, a baking site that I frequent due to the detail instructions from the author.

This was really quick and simple to make. I could not get any over-ripe bananas so I just went to NTUC and bough some ripe looking bananas. My MIL later told me that I shoulg get those that are small in size as those will taste better and have a strong aroma to the baked products.

Mr HB says that these tasted very bland and that the texture of the loaf is really coarse. But I think the taste is ok, packed with banana flavour and moist enough though the texture is really full of holes.

Blueberry Muffin

Unduanted by my last baking failure, I went ahead and tried a different recipe for muffin.

I came across a recipe for this blueberry muffins that are really heathy, no butter nor oil is used and in replcement, it uses yogurt.

I decided to give this a shot. The preparation and baking process was quite smooth this time and in about 30mins time, the muffins were in the tray and into the oven for baking.

I had 1 muffin the following morning and it tasted OK but lacks the usual buttery richness found in "normal" muffins.

Something to keep when one is on a diet.

Of Muffins and Cookies

I had to wait a week before I had the chance/time to bake again.

On a Saturday night (after a long day zipping around in JB) with a headache, I made my first batch of muffins.
After a long decision making process, I decided on chocolate chip muffin since I thought anything with chocolate ought to be a hit with most people.


Couple of glitches along the way. The first being not leaving the butter at room temperature for long enough, this causes the creaming process to be more difficult and the result is a not-so-fluffy tasty muffin. The second being the muffin cup was too small and this makes the muffin looks smaller and not as delicious without the dome. Other than these, the chocolate chip muffins turn out ok.


The following day I continued my baking stint and made some chocolate chip cookies. The whole process was quite disasterous. The cookie batter was relatively eacy to make but the baking was puntuated by difficulties. The recipe called for a 8-10min baking time but the total baking time for this batch of ccokies ended by close to 30 mins with 2 consecutive bakes as the centre of the cookie was uncooked!

So the outer rim of the cookie was very crispy and was browned out but the rest of the cookie was somewhat limp if you ask me.

I brought some for my colleagues and they finshed it up and most of them even commented that they were delicious! Talk about differences in standards.

My First Baking Entry!

I finally baked something!

I decided to start my baking adventures with scones for 2 reasons
1. I H.E.A.R.T them
2. They are easy enuf for me to attempt them.

I made them over the weekends, consecutively for 2 days.

Here, some illustrations of my hard-tolled products.

Ever since my SIL moved out, we have been void of a proper oven. What's left behing is a microwave oven that I use for my baking (mis)adventures.

My first recipe called for baking in the oven for 8-10mins but I ended up baking them for 20 due to my unfamiliarity with the microwave oven. But the scones turned out ok though my family commented that they tasted salty (could be due to the salt and/or the salted butter?).
The scones were quite dense probably due to the amount of milk that I used. The recipe called for 90ml and I think I ended using 200ml as the dough simply doesn't seem to be able to hold with flour falling off. And in the final stage I have poured in too much milk resulting in the dough to be sticky and hence the density of the scones.

The next day, I baked another 2 batches (with raisin this time) and tried with a higher temperature (230 degC) instead of the 180 the previous day. Again I made the same mistake of pouring too much milk. As a result the scones were browned on the outside and not totally cooked on the inside. I had to bake them at a lower temperature once more.

Not wanting to give up, I baked yet another batch of scones. This time round, I got the right dough, something that binds but does not stick to the hands. I was very happy when I managed to achieve that.
They turned out to be pretty tasty (by my standards).

Btw, I had scones for breakfast consecutively for 3 mornings after that.

Manhatten Fish Mart - Fishy Biz

My buddy will be jetting off to UK for a year come Sept08 so I promised her that we'll meet up more before her departure.
So yesterday we made plans to meet up for lunch with another good friend of ours.
Apparently all of us have a very bad concept of time and ended up meeting at 1245 instead of the arranged 1220. But anyway, after some quick brain stoming, we settled at the Manhatten Fish Mart for lunch and gossip.

Settling into a comfy sofa bench, we leisurely glanced thru the menu and decided to order the Seafood Platter meal to share after checking that it comes with 3 sets of soup and drinks.
One of the girls wanted the Clam Chowder after being seduced by the delicious looking picture on the menu so we checked and were told that we can top up a dollar for that as the "soup of the day" was originally cream of mushroom which was wat we did.

The soup and drink ( we all had peach tea by the way) came pretty fast. The clam chower came with fair amounts of baby clams but tasted just like those from the cans, extremely ordinary.
After waiting for about 20 mins, our platter came.
Here. See that whole fish?

That took me a little by surprise as I was expecting a fried fish fillet like those from Fish and Chips. And calamaris were missing too, replaced by fried ikan bilis. I felt a little cheated.

But well, we were famished and made no delays tucking into our food. The mussels were the first to make it's way into our growling tummy due to it's strategic location. Topped with buttery sauce, they were ok. Then I discovered everything else is topped on some like of buttery sauce, be it the rice, prawns, mussels, fries or veggies. So needless to say, everything tasted just like the other. However, the butter sauce was quite good so that in a way is a plus and the fish was quite fresh. So overall, the platter was ok.
The rice and butter sauce was a good combi and I kept feeding myself one mouthful after another with that. The fries was crispy but would be better if it was hotter and a little spicy.

I would rate this place as average and unless u are looking for butter sauce, not somewhere I would be in a hurry to return.

Mayim - Value for Money Chinese Food

Finally managed to bring my parents out for a meal after talking about it for quite some time.
This time it happens to be lunch at Mayim.
I've always enjoyed eating at Mayim ever since I was first introduced to it by my sister a few years back.
Firstly, they serve decent chinese food with variety and very importantly they are really value-for money.

We got there about 12pm on a weekday lunch and already it is >50% full.
We were seated promptly and given the menu. The ordering process here is very similar to the Cha-chan-tengs where you are given a slip to write down your orders.

We ordered the following
1. Roast duck noodle for dad
2. Porridge for mom
3. Cha siew noodle for yours truly
4. Bo luo bao (2pcs)
5. Chong You Bing (2pcs)

Dad's grub was the first to arrived followed by Mom's porridge. Sadly, Dad's roast duck noodle looked barely impressive with a few "hardly-any-meat" pieces of duck on top of a mattress of tossed noodles. Dad said the noodles was OK on a whole.
Mom's porridge was a different story. With an assortment of colours, it looked appetizing enough for me to take a sample. It was tasty and packed with flavours from the fish and peanut. The little crisp adds crunch to the porridge.
My char siew noodles was the last to arrive but well good things are worth waiting for. See the generous portion of sweet marinated char siew? It was delicious, well charred with bite factor and drizzled with the sweet char siew sauce. My perennial favourite order in Mayim.

The Bo luo bun used to be packed with char siew like those in Crystal Jade's My Bread and oh-so-tasty but now, it's been replaced by custard and peanut as filling instead of char siew. It was good too but I definately prefers my char siew to custard. But nothing beats buns fresh off the oven.
Chong Yu Bing are my mom's favourite. A deep fried little chinese pastry filled with turnip slices. Not really something I look forward to but was pretty tasty as well.

Absolute Haven - Affordable European Fare

This marks my second visit to Absolute Haven. We were in Absolute Haven for a "parting" meal. For a formal introduction of the dear colleague who will be taking over my accounts and the customers he will be dealing with.
Absolute Haven was located along Prinsep Street among a row of shophouses that have been converted into restaurant.
It's a modest seize place with a seating capacity of approximately 30 odd pax including a al-fresco dining area.
The interior spots a chic and modern setting with string curtains that can be "drawn" for partition purposes. It is apparant that this restarurant rates privacy highly.

It was a Wedneseday afternoon when we visited. The place was empty except for another 2 tables other than ours and there was only 1 wait staff.
I had a Pumpkin and Orange Soup to start followed by Pan Seared Seabass with poached egg and Olive Pilaf Rice for my main.

The starters took ~15min to come.
The soup was quite interesting with an ever so slight tinge of orange taste to the pumpkin packed flavour. It was tasty.
I was slightly disappointed as no bread was served this time as opposed to my first visit (or did I recall wrongly?)

The mains then followed after another 15mins. This was an interesting combination. I never had poached egg with meat for main course previously.
The egg was poached to perfection with a runny centre and the fish was adequately cooked not under nor over. I especially liked the Olive Pilaf rice. It was creamy and flavoursome. I wished this had been a bigger portion.
I then ended my lunch with cappucino, this come with a small cookie by the side.

The service is attentive, glasses were topped up relatively quickly despite the fact that it is not surrounded by servers.