Sunday, September 18, 2011

Living Room Talk #2: Of Two Dips and A Slip

I prepared 3 dips last night for our second living room talk, none of which I have pictures to show. Two of the dips received good feedback and drew a couple of I-must-try-this-at-home which I like. The third left much to be desired.

Dip number 1 is a guacamole and as it turned out, I found out by chance that yesterday was National Guacamole Day according to the LA Times. Is there even such a thing and where? We should have a National Curry Day in Singapore. I mashed an overripe avocado - you can tell it's overripe by the purplish colour on the outside and it feels soft if you press it gently. Add a hard boiled egg, spring onions, mayonnaise, and lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Ten minutes end-to-end. No need for a blender. This, everyone liked.

The second is a classic Middle Eastern humuus consisting of a can of chick peas (drained and rinsed), tahini or sesame paste, pictured here, olive oil, a tad of grounded cumin, some lemon squeeze and a pinch of salt. This also seemed also popular given that I had a pile and it finished before the night was over.


The third and last item was more of a slip than a dip. I tried for the first time an eggplant mash. Grilled it at 275C till the skin blistered. This took about 15 minutes. Apparently, this was not long enough to have eggplant soft enough to be mashed. I resorted to blending it which I was told later was a mistake and you don't do that to eggplants. So the taste was somewhat bitter and raw. I tried to salvage it with some expensive sea salt flakes. It helped somewhat but came nowhere near the success of its 2 partners.

As for the talk, Dennis shared openly and with candour his past 6 years' journey as an entrepreneur in building www.hungrygowhere.com and focused his story around 3 main themes - Uncertainty, Humility and Being at the right place at the right time. I can relate to these even in my culinary venture. He must have taken some 50 questions from the group and we saw our last guests leave at 1am! 

An insightful speaker, a deeply engaging group, 2 good dips and one happy host. Look out for the next session on October 8. 






2 comments:

  1. Hi
    i recently made fresh peanut butter from scratch n after this, i'm not ever going to buy those from supermarkets! So your tahini paste just give me a good idea that i can try making it too :)
    Very encourage by your sharing during your journey in Sunrice. I am wondering if Sunrice take student who is housewife for 20 yrs and still give them the 90% subsidy course fee?
    May

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  2. Hi May, thanks for dropping by. I heard there's no butter in peanut butter - isn't that just wonderful? Would love to see a picture of your peanut butter. Post it here if you have a pic - www.facebook.com/extravirginchef

    Yes, the 90% subsidy is for Singaporeans and PR 35 yrs old and above regardless of your occupation. I had grandmothers in my class. Call their Recruitment Department to find out more.

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