40 days and 40 nights – Homemade salted eggs

My laziness contradicts itself. When people hear that I make my own kimchi, they usually respond with “Wow! You make your own Kimchi?? I just get mine at the asian shop because I’m too lazy.” The irony is that I make my own kimchi because I’m too lazy to make the trip to the asian grocer’s. Hah! When you live in the countryside and the next Asian grocer’s is a train and bus ride away, you learn to either do without some things or you learn to make your own. Like kimchi and salted eggs. Even egg tofu! But that’s another post for another day. It’s about the eggs today.

Salted eggs are traditionally used in mooncakes, rice dumplings or even steamed by itself and eaten with porridge or congee. In the last couple of years though, there’s been a salted egg craze in Asia. I THINK it started with Liu Sha Bao, a steamed bun filled with a salted egg yolk custard and you can find it on most dim sum menus. While it wasn’t exactly a new dish, it suddenly got A LOT of attention and that’s when things started going out of hand. Salted egg dishes started popping up everywhere. From salted egg prawns to salted egg potato chips  and salted egg croissants! There are lists of salted egg dishes for the brave and curious to try out.

The cure for homesickness – Opor Ayam (Chicken in coconut gravy)

You ever get those days when you have the biggest craving for a dish you haven’t had in forever? Just out of the blue for no reason. And it’s almost always something you used to have all the time as a child. This was one of those days.

Opor Ayam is magic!!!

One could describe it simply as chicken in an aromatic coconut gravy, spiced with coriander, cumin and some other not-so-secret ingredients. But that wouldn’t do it justice. What it is, is rich and savoury and freaking addictive; it’s comfort food at its best; it feeds the soul and chases away the blues; it’s me when I was eight and running circles around my mum and walking hand in hand with my dad; it’s the dish you need when it’s cold and wet outside and you’re feeling that all too familiar ache of homesickness.

Botanophowhat?? – Perkedel Kentang (Indonesian Potato Patties)

I hope you’re all having a wonderful Easter weekend. I stuffed myself silly this Easter, as I have every Easter. I think it might just be my favourite holiday. It’s like Christmas minus the stress of picking out presents.

So, in my last post I told you how weird I am with fruits. Get this, I’m weird with vegetables too. Say whaaat??  Kinda makes sense if you think about it.

I have a liiiiiiiittle tiny bit of Botanophobia (self diagnosed of course). Basically, Botanophobia is the fear of plants. *cough*weirdo!*cough* I don’t know where it came from but I’ve never felt comfortable around plants for as long as I can remember. I don’t have any recollection of any bad experiences involving plants; The only thing I can think of is how my grandmother used to tell me, when I was a kid, to not walk on the grass barefooted because the worms might burrow their way into my feet. To this day, I still can’t go barefoot on grass.

Pet peeves – Almond Jelly

We all have pet peeves; we all do, but if you were to randomly ask me what mine were, I wouldn’t have been able to think of one to save my life.  I was, however, recently reminded of a couple of them and I thought, let’s share it with you good people out there, for absolutely no good reason. Why not?

I absolutely hate it when people misspell Voilà. The two most common examples of such blunders are Viola (I call Cello on that) and Wala. To be fair, I can’t really fault the people who think it’s wala. Singapore is predominantly Chinese and French isn’t usually spoken there. So couple that with the Chinese accent, I can see how Voilà  becomes Wala. The other is a freaking instrument though!

My other pet peeve is fruits in food. Yes, I’ve heard how apple and pork go beautifully together and I’ve heard how Duck à l’orange is simply heavenly but I am one of those stubborn cows who firmly believes that fruits should be eaten on its own or in a dessert. Please leave your pineapples out of my curry.

Going Numb – Szechuan Chilli Chicken 干锅鸡丁

A friend of mine recently made a major discovery. She found a restaurant that serves a very spicy Szechuan chilli chicken. She loved it so much it was all she talked about for weeks and insisted that I go and try it out myself. So we made the two hour trip (yes, you read that right) to Zurich to have this chicken dish. After all, there is no distance too great for good food, am I right?

Usually when we think Szechuan dishes, we think Ma La; which is that numbing spiciness typical of Szechuan dishes and it’s Szechuan peppercorns that give it this flavour. Most Szechuan dishes you find in Europe are barely spicy, let alone numbingly so. So it was very satisfying to finally have a Szechuan dish in Switzerland that actually had the Ma La factor.