Negitoro Ikura Don.

This is a very simple and quick one dish meal to prepare provided you stock up the ingredients in your fridge like I do. I almost always have ikura in the fridge, and I recently ordered 2 packets of Negitoro from Zairyo.sg, so when I was lazy to cook I have something to make for a quick meal.

Negitoro is essentially sashimi grade tuna made from the scrapings and odds and ends around the bones, usually around the belly area, with added spring onions. It is very affordable and it tastes really good. I really love it. One time I went to a restaurant and ate a negitoro gunkan, and found that there was something special about the taste, it was extra creamy. It was then that I realised they had added in mayonaise. So that is how I make mine, with added mayo. I am not sure if this makes it ‘less authentic’ but I love it so that’s how I eat it. Recipe here is for just 1 person with a big appetite.

Sake Steamed Clams

I’ve been stuck on a clam loop ever since I started making them, consuming 1kg per weekend. Every time I try to break the rut, I see the clams in the market and feel compelled to buy them!

Today I didn’t want to go buy white wine from the store for clams because it takes me 3 batches to clear out a bottle of white wine, so I decided to try steaming it in sake instead, because my cooking sake hasn’t been moved in a while, and I would like to finish it soon. 

Teochew-Style Fish Cake With Pork.

If you have had Teochew Porridge, then you will certainly be familiar with the fish cakes that they sell as one of the dishes. It has always been one of my must-order items, and sometimes I even just buy them alone to go with the other food that I have. One of the reasons I adore them is because pork meat is mostly mixed in and I love the texture and taste that it imparts. I have always wanted to attempt making my own, and finally decided to do it today. I certainly liked the result of this attempt, enough for me to blog it.

Clams In White Wine Sauce

I love clams. In fact, I love almost every common bivalve mollusk that you get, but the problem was, that I could never bring myself to make my own, because it would mean that I would have to “kill” them myself. Clams are one of those things that need to be alive when you cook them, and the pre-boiled ones are really just not great. So there is this couple at the Tiong Bahru market that sells ONLY clams and I have been walking past week after week, ogling at the clams but never buying them. But one day, someone told me to think of it this way, by ‘killing’ clams, I am ‘rescuing’ them from further suffering a slow death at the market, which made sense to me (others may not agree), so I decided once and for all to do it, and boy, was I hooked!

Before you start cooking them, you will need to de-grit them. First wash the shells under running water and rub off any gunk with your hands. Then make some cool sea salt water. Use ONLY sea salt. My purpose is to give them a nice little spa and treat them well since I will be killing them, that’s the best I can do. Taste the water to get it salty enough to mimic sea water to a certain point (ie. Not too bland – you can see the amount of salt I add to the water in the picture). You need to make enough to cover the clams but not too deep (I keep it at about an inch above). Then, drop in your clams gently into the sea salt water, you will see that some will start to open up and spit out gunk within just a minute or two. I love watching them.

IMPORTANT: Do not de-grit them in unsalted tap water, it will kill them. Also, if you can, use filtered water (yes, nothing but the best for these little babies!). The water needs to be cool, not warm, so you can opt to drop in a couple of ice cubes if you like.

Chilled Truffle Angel Hair Pasta with Ikura

I have recreated cold pasta with caviar for some time now, after I sampled the ones made by either Garibaldi or Gunther at the Savour Event that I went to years ago. Then I forgot about it for a while until I went to an event for an Uni Pasta that was similar in nature. Because I was totally peeved off by the latter event, I went home and decided to make a cold pasta that weekend just to satisfy my anger, and came up with this. I enjoyed eating it because it tasted good and was so easy to make! Best part is, you can several variations which I will list at the end of this page.

The basic components are simple: angel hair pasta, salt, truffle oil, spring onions, roe.

Baked Seabass With Herbs And Lime.

When watching the first movie of The Amazing Spiderman franchise, I was intrigued when the character Gwen Stacy invited Peter Parker to her home for dinner and said: “We’re having Branzino.” What is that?! I thought to myself. Later on I would find out it was a whole grilled fish, and it intrigued me, because I have always wanted to try making one for myself, grilled the ‘western’ way.

Tomato Lemon Crab Pasta

This blog post is a continuation from my previous recipe for Crab Cakes. Because I had some leftover crab mixture and didn’t want to eat crab cakes 2 days in a row, I decided I would turn it into a simple pasta. It worked pretty well. I would not recommend you make this pasta from scratch as I will explore a better crab pasta recipe for next time, but if you have some leftover crab mixture from crab cakes and don’t know what to do with it, you can give this a try.

Quick and Easy Crab Cakes

I bought some canned crab from Zairyo.sg to try recently and used half of them on some crab cakes. I have tried another couple of crab meat sources previously and have been disappointed, but I think this one from Zairyo was pretty good. They carry 3 tiers of crab meat, and I bought the claw version, which is the cheapest of the lot.

Simple Tomato Herb Pasta

I wanted a quick dinner the other day and started thinking about what I had in my fridge that I wanted to finish up and came up with this simple pasta. There was about a 1/3 bottle of leftover pasta sauce from Prego’s and some grated parmesan which I had from making my Eggplant Parmagiana. Then there was this onsen egg (slightly overcooked) which I had made a couple of days before and a small bottle of anchovies in oil which has been sitting in my pantry for a while now.  

Chinese Chicken Herbal Soup.

I’ve been reading up on the kinds of foods to eat to help with strengthening women in general, partly because I think I need it, and more importantly because I love chinese herbal tonic soups.

Angelica, otherwise known as Dang Gui (当归) in Chinese, is a well known herb used to strengthen the female body to deal with the monthly assault. But I love Dang Gui mostly for it’s aroma, and have in the past, made the mistake of adding too much, resulting in a broth that is very hard to drink.

To be honest, I am no expert at combining the herbs on my own, but I love doing it because it makes me feel very pro. You might be better off going to a chinese herbal shop to get them to pack a set for you. But if you want to try it for yourself, please note that you will need a few tries before you will get it to the taste you like.