Salmon Teriyaki – Feed the Brain

I'm sure there're lots of important things happening around the world, like . . . Ricky Martin coming out. Sigh . . . what a waste. But they're things I can't do anything about, mostly. So let's talk about things I can, like making a good Salmon Teriyaki.

Some people don't eat salmon skin but I love it. To me, that's the best part of the fish, whether it's grilled and charred or steamed and slimy. Sob! How could Ricky Martin be gay? Tied in first position with the skin would be the belly, which is soft, tender, and dripping with fat. All good omega-3 fat, of course, that improves brain function.

In fact, my brain has improved so much that I had a brain wave yesterday. Instead of adding sugar to the teriyaki sauce, I added maltose, aka malt sugar. NOoºoO! Ricky Martin couldn't possibly be gay! It wasn't authentic but I didn't care. As Deng Xiao Ping said, 'It doesn't matter whether the cat's white or black, so long as it catches rats!'

I used to make teriyaki sauce with sugar but it was rather thin. And I didn't really like thickened with corn flour. Ricky Martin is gay?! I thought malt sugar would make it, you know, nicely gooey, and I was right. It was gloopy in a way that a sauce thickened with corn flour wasn't. Aaaargh!!! It's not fair! I also liked the balance of sweet and savory better with maltose. It's all very technical, isn't it? Obviously, food science is my forte.

Oh god, what a waste. Ricky Martin is gay.

But I guess it's good that there's one person less living a lie. On that note, I leave you with one of Ricky Martin's greatest songs, Livin' the Crazy Life:



Check these out:

Creamy Black Pepper Chicken Chops	Minimalist Ribs with Tangerine Peel	Scrumptious Wonton Soup	Tangy Tamarind Pork (Babi Assam)

SALMON TERIYAKI (For 4 persons) 4 pieces salmon, about 150 g each 4 tbsp mirin 4 tbsp sake 4 tbsp Japanese light soya sauce 6 tbsp malt sugar Heat all ingredients except salmon in a pot till sauce coats the back of a spoon. There should be about 180 ml. Leave till cool. Use 4 tbsp sauce to marinate salmon for 30 minutes. Do not refrigerate. Preheat grill. Remove salmon and wipe off excess marinade. Discard marinade. Place salmon skin side down on a grill tray. Set aside 6 tbsp sauce reserved earlier (to avoid cross contamination). Use the rest for grilling. Brush cut side of salmon lightly with sauce. Grill for 4-5 minutes. Turn over and brush skin side with sauce. Grill for 4-5 minutes till charred. Adjust grilling time to avoid overcooking or undercooking fish. Remove to serving plates. Drizzle with sauce set aside earlier. Serve.

.

A for Apple, B for Brown Betty

There are many different types of apple desserts. If masochism and self-torture is your kind of thing, you could make your own paper thin strudel pastry, then create multiple layers of spiced apples and pastry. However, if you think the average human life span of 79.4 years is too short for apple strudel from scratch, Brown Betty is a far better option. An apple dessert is like life. You can make it as simple or complicated as you like.

Brown Betty is my favouritest apple dessert. It's so fast, so easy and so good – the way I do it, ahem! ahem! – it's almost criminal. Brown Betty is traditionally made by baking apples interlayered with bread crumbs. Done this way, it takes almost an hour, and the bread crumbs are soggy. There's a much better alternative.

What's my secret? Mix fresh bread crumbs – made with as much crust as possible – with butter and light brown sugar. Then, instead of baking the bread crumbs with the apples, bake them separately. This allows the butter and sugar coated crumbs to reach a higher temperature, caramelize better, create a richer flavour, and crisp up really well. Once you try this method, I guarantee you'll never think bread crumbs are boring. Hand on heart, I swear I'm not exaggerating. I also swear I have a life, and bread crumbs aren't the only excitement I get.

Ok, back to Betty. Since the bread crumbs are browned separately, why bother baking the apples? It's much faster to cook them on the stove. If you're pretty nifty, a hot fruit dessert for four can be ready in 15 minutes instead of an hour. And there's no fanciful plating to muck around with. Whack the apples and bread crumbs in a bowl, add a dollop of sour cream or some ice cream, and you're done. Sit back and enjoy the sweet, buttery, apple-y, cinnamony, creamy, crunchy fruits of your labour. Life is short, remember?

Check these out:

Skinny But Curvy Carrot Cake	Dark and Rich Chocolate Lava Cake	Dateless Sticky Prune Pudding	Tall, Dark and Handsome Chocolate Soufflé

Asparagus with Sesame Miso Sauce – Encore! Encore!

Asparagus again? Yes! But, before I talk about another asparagus dish, I must tell you the Silkie Chicken Super Soup (post here) I had last Sunday is really, really effective. Before drinking the soup, I had very bad eye strain because of several late nights on the computer. But now my eye strain is all gone! Is it the carnosine in the Silkie chicken? Or the goji berries which are widely regarded as a superfood for eyes? Well well well, I would have to make more chicken soup to find out, wouldn't I?

This is the first tonic I've taken in yonks and yonks. And it's the first time I've noticed a tonic making a difference. Perhaps when I was younger, tonics didn't have a noticeable impact because every body part was in tiptop condition? Meaning . . . I'm falling apart now? Aaaaargh . . . !!!!

On a brighter note, I can maybe slow down the inevitable! I'm definitely having black chicken soup again when my eyes feel strained, to see if it really works. Hmm, perhaps I should be less skeptical? Most Chinese swear by these homemade tonics. Something that's been passed down for thousands of years can't be all hot air?

Ok, on to asparagus, which I had with Hollandaise sauce the other day (post here). It was so good, I went for an encore yesterday. Used a different sauce though, Japanese instead of Hollandaise. The mix of white miso and white sesame seeds – aka goma miso aé – had a lovely, nutty fragrance, and a pinch salt brought out the sweetness in the miso and asparagus. Very good . . . but the Hollandaise sauce was better, to be honest. Hah! It had better be, considering it had four times as much fat as the sesame miso sauce.

If you want something vegan and light, sesame plus miso is very good. If you want something creamy and unctuous, go for Hollandaise sauce. I'm not telling anyone what to eat in case I end up like Jamie Oliver. He reportedly broke down in tears in the US (story here), where he was dishing out his eat healthy advice, when an American told him: We don't want to sit around eating lettuce all day! Who made you king?

Ha . . . ha . . . ha . . . . What were you thinking, Naked Chef? Food and diet is the new religion. You don't march into American homes and tell people their religion is wrong. You're not famous enough in the US to do that! Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart can do it but not you.

Check these out:

Black Silkie Chicken Soup	Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce	Cold Spinach with Bonito Flakes	Claypot Fish Head

Silkie Chicken Super Soup – Black is Beautiful

After totally discrediting my mother's stir fried liver in a previous post, I thought I should salvage her reputation by featuring something else from her repertoire. Something that has curative powers instead of making someone sick or dead.

The immediate dish that came to mind was a soup made with black chicken, aka Silkie chicken or 乌鸡. My mother, like millions of other Chinese mothers, made it with ginseng when it was exam time, or dang gui (当归) when it was 'that time of the month' for girls.

Before I post a recipe, I usually read up about the dish and ingredients used. So, I googled 'black chicken' . . . and . . . wow, it looks like there's some scientific basis for Silkie's curative powers. It might not be just an old wives' tale that black is better than white after all. In fact, good old Silkie is a superfood like blueberries and pomegranates!

My mother didn't know what superfood was. To her, black chicken was just '补'. Long before the word 'superfood' became popular, the Chinese knew that some foods were better than others or 补. These foods with superpowers have been used, for thousands of years, to improve energy levels . . . and whatever else that need improving. You know, important things like virility, fertility, intelligence, hair colour, hair quantity, complexion, wound healing, hormonal balance, stamina, eyesight and ultimately, life expectancy! Whoa, life expectancy? Surely that's stretching it a bit too far? Well, maybe not, if you read the research on carnosine, the antioxidant found in abundance in black chicken.

Carnosine is a protein found in animal products such as chicken, pork, beef, milk and eggs. It's a powerful antioxidant which prolongs cell life span by slowing down the damage that cellular proteins suffer over time. As a result of this effect, which has been demonstrated in rats and cultured cells, health supplement peddlers claim that carnosine is good for anything from cataracts to Alzheimer's disease, autism, diabetes, wrinkles, building muscles, etc. Heheh, they would, wouldn't they?

Some doctors are using carnosine for cataract patients. As for treating other ailments, the research isn't conclusive yet. However, we do know that black chicken has twice as much carnosine as regular chicken. Animal brains are also packed with carnosine. Does double-boiled pork brain soup with ginseng – which my mother also made me drink! – really help get good exam grades because it's loaded with carnosine? Maybe the Chinese are right about brains being a superfood?

I have more faith in Silkie's curative powers now that I know it has lots of antioxidants. Hah! I'm sure my mother would be most happy to hear that. I have one last question though: is black chicken white or red meat?

Check these out:

Drunken Chicken and Soft-Boiled Eggs	Pork and Garlic Chives Dumplings	Roasted Peppers and Mushrooms	Stir Fried Crocodile

Sexy Banana Cake

'Sexy' and 'banana cake' don't usually go together. To be honest, the banana cake in the photo above looks anything but sexy. But, being sexy is about presenting the most alluring part. There's no need to be perfect head to toe. If the top isn't appealing, hide it! And shift the focus to . . . the bottom, which looks like this:



Does it look better? Here's a closer shot:



The black bit isn't burnt, by the way. It's beautifully caramelized dark brown sugar. Maybe it's just me but I think this banana cake oozes sex appeal . . . at least compared to other banana cakes.



Some people make banana cake when they happen to have overripe bananas. Not me. My banana cake was a 100% premeditated effort. I bought my bananas three days before, then I waited patiently for them to ripen till they were just right. At the same time, I scoured my cookbooks and the web for an ultimate, no holds barred banana cake.

I agonized and deliberated over three days – hey, making banana cake is serious business, ok – and decided to cherry pick the best bits from three sources.

I started with Angela Nilsen, whose recipes are usually very dependable. (click here and here for her carrot cake and sticky toffee pudding recipes). I liked the light muscovado sugar – not too much so that the cake wouldn't be too sweet – and pecan nuts in her banana cake. Two thumbs up!

Next was Chez Pim. She said a splash of rum and coffee (or sprinkling of coffee granules) would add complexity to the flavour. A splendid idea!

Lastly, I used the bottom part of David Lebovitz's upside-down banana cake. Sliced bananas baked with dark brown sugar underneath the cake? Genius! Pure genius! I toned down the dark brown sugar slightly, though, since I don't like it too sweet. How about his advice for a sprinkling of chocolate chips? Bring it on! Anything to sex up grandmotherly banana cake.

If two heads are better than one, four heads – not forgetting me, myself and I – would be better times two. My montage banana cake looked and tasted wicked. The next day, it didn't dry out at all, and tasted just as good.

Warning, though: the shiny caramel sauce lost its lustre overnight and darkened to an awful looking muddy goo . . . . I'm sure there must be a life lesson in there somewhere.

Check these out:

Chicken Feet, Trick or Treat?	Chinese Men Ambushed by Hungry Dogs!	Big, Black Coke	Pork Blood Plasma, Anyone?

Onde-Onde (Ondeh-Ondeh) – Let's Celebrate Again

If you look hard enough, there's bound to be a festival everyday somewhere in the world. It was Honen Matsuri two days ago (click here for the post). What's today's celebration? Ladies and gentlemen, it . . . is . . . St Patrick's Day!

Festivals are very useful for deciding what to cook. Pineapple tarts during Chinese New Year is a given. Mid-Autumn Festival? Bring out the mooncakes, please. Festivals really save a lot of agony for those who can't decide what to eat or cook. Run out of Chinese festivals? No problem. We're a global village nowadays. I'm not Irish but I can do St Patrick's Day . . . in a small way.

St Patrick's Day is a great occasion for an Irish stew with Guinness. I hear the Irish are very fond of stout. Potatoes maybe? The Irish are also very fond of spuds. Naah, I hate being predictable. Let's go for something green but local instead of Irish, shall we? There're tonnes of bright green dishes in Singapore, like Kueh Dadar, Pandan Chiffon Cake, Onde-Onde, Kueh Sarlat, etc.

St Patrick's Day's associated with green because it's a celebration of spring. It's a tradition to wear green for the festival but why stop there? The crazy people in Chicago dye their river green. I go for Onde-Onde. Wear green, and eat green! Way to go!

Check these out:

Teochew Sesame Duck	Celery Stir-Fry with Pork & Yellow Peppers	Ayam Sioh (Chicken with Coriander Seeds & Tamarind)	Crocodile Stir-Fry