Living Room Talk #4: We Exist Because We Think

The bamboo charcoal bread was interesting.
But her father's warm apple cake was better than the bamboo charcoal bread.
The raspberry cheesecake ice cream was better than the apple cake.
The wine was better than the ice cream.
The conversation was better than everything put together.

I had the privilege to invite Tong Yee, one of the founders of School of Thought to speak at my fourth Living Room Talk. Check him out here when he spoke at TEDx Singapore. I've since interacted with him a few times more and have found him to be an extremely progressive thinker. Every interaction with him has been thought-provoking, and I wanted to share this experience with some friends.

We spent more than 3 amazing hours sharing ideas, listening and learning. I could have gone on for another 3. There's just so much to squeeze out of his brain, and he keeps giving you more food for thought every time a question is asked or a challenge posed. The group was equally engaging and the conversation took priority over filling empty glasses. I have so much to learn from this young man. Life is one big learning journey, and the conversation on learning excited me because, you see, I have sentenced myself to learning and this is what this blog is all about!

Bamboo Charcoal Bread - My Black Beauty. Almost a success. Almost a disaster.

My Black Beauty baked on Black Friday

Ta-da! My virgin bamboo charcoal bread. What a coincidence that I made this on Black Friday. Yes, the universe conspires with your passion. I remember making guacamole on the last National Guacamole Day, completely by chance. 

I first wrote about bamboo charcoal here. I also ate bamboo charcoal crepe at the Culinary Institute of America in Singapore. After researching several sites on this interesting ingredient, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to give it a go on a basic soft butter loaf recipe. 

It has detox and many other health benefits.

I added 2 tsp of charcoal powder to my regular mix 

Have you seen grey flour before??

Stark black before proofing

Dark grey after 2nd proof

I decided to throw in some pecan and walnut for added colour and crunch.

Is this gorgeous or what? Do you think Rebecca Black will like this? Or maybe King Kong?

I'm going to cut them into cubes and steam them and see how gastronomically adventurous my guests are tonight. I am having my next Living Room talk tonight - which will also be my next post!

The Morning After
My black bread got nicknamed the Chewing Gum Bread 'cos it turned out to be rather chewy in the middle! In all the blogs I read on baking with Bamboo Charcoal powder, no one mentioned these  important observations which I have now made:

1. Recipes that say "bake till golden brown" is not applicable to black breads since you can't see any change in colour. Which means you have to be sure of the baking timing. In my case, my bread was actually not completely baked yet after 12 minutes but I had no way of knowing till I cut it. As it turns out, the inside was too chewy for a bread texture. So while the taste was good, the colour and texture felt odd.

2. The charcoal powder may stain your cloth or utensil, or at best, it's not easily washed off. So, do be careful when handling it.

3. You won't know when it's gone stale just by looking at it.

So, my overall verdict on this baking feat? Almost a success, almost a disaster.

Ignorance is bliss, truly

Just read in a cookbook - "To produce good quality cold-smoked fish requires a high degree of skill because it is difficult to get the flavour and texture just right."

Oops, sorry, too late! This extra virgin chef already did it many times. And my verdict in the first post on smoked salmon was: "Highly suitable for virgin chefs. No culinary skills needed." Wah ha ha!

Moral of the story? Don't allow the few elite in the world to SMOKE you and cloud your idea of what you can or can't do. Beware, the Ides of March.

Living Room Talk #3: Getting to know Middle Eastern cuisine & culture

Eli shows a prayer shawl used on Sabbath to pray and bless the little children at home.
As a child, it always made him feel secure when his Abba tucked him inside the shawl.

This is the third Living Room talk I've held and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this one with Eli, my friend from Israel leading the conversation. 

Eli started the evening with a demonstration on how to bake pita bread, za'atar bread and how to prepare labane. Then he gave a presentation on Israel - geography, history, politics, tourism, agriculture, and shared with us his beautiful photos of the land.

As always, I got busy and didn't make time for good photography. Still, I want to show you whatever I managed to shoot.

We baked some 8-10 pita breads. I enjoyed watching them puff up in the oven. One secret is to dab some water
on the dough before popping into the oven. 

I prepared again some humuus but this time, I learned to add pomegranates on top of the dip for an extra crunch.
That added texture and sweetness to a dry dip. I was happy to see an empty bowl at the end of the evening.

Za'atar - mixed herbs of wild thyme, oregano, and a few other things. Look out for the next Word of the Week.
Next to it is some Atlantic kosher sea salt

Not exactly picture perfect to say the least, but I want to show you this interesting dish called Labane -
traditionally using goat's cheese but here we used yoghurt. This is how it's made...

Yoghurt, dill, salt. Mix them and place them in a cloth bag to strain liquid in refrigerator.

Keep for 2 days for soft cheese and 4 days for hard cheese.
Discard liquid.  Labane is yummy!

I want to go to Israel and the Middle East, just to eat! Meanwhile, I will make do with a visit to a Moorish restaurant this week, and I will of course blog all about it.

And now, let's see who I should invite for my next Living Room talk...

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. 

Living Room Talks

I organised our first living room talk more than a month ago with Esther as the speaker. Esther had just scaled the Everest and she kindly agreed to share her experience with us in the comfort of my living room. We opened the forum to youths - just our nieces, nephews, friends' children - and received very positive feedback on the session. It attracted quite a few serious athletes and extreme sports enthusiasts as well.

The second talk will be this Saturday, 17 September 2011 by a successful local entrepreneur who has spoken to hundreds of restaurant owners in the past 6 years in the course of bbuilding his own business and  knows well what it takes to succeed in the F&B business here in Singapore. Check out his website www.hungrygowhere.com which you may have been a user of or have heard of it before.

A third talk in the line-up will be by Eli, my Israeli classmate from the culinary school. Besides doing a hands-on demo of how a typical Jewish pita bread is baked, Eli will also share more on Jewish culture and history. We'll keep the politics out. We are looking at 8 October for this talk. Hands up, those who are interested and can make it on that day.

I can't promise this will be a regular feature but am going with the flow of opportunities for now. If you know of anyone who has an interesting, inspiring story to share, do send them here!

Blogging - a celebration of friendship

In the same way that I have learned to bake, so too have I been learning about how to blog. In the past few weeks, I have learned what a widget is, who is blogspot and wordpress, and how to incorporate a facebook badge. I still don't fully understand the difference between a label, a category and a tag but it's ok.

Every blogging tip I read on the internet dates between 2006-2009 so I thought I must be, not just a late adopter but a real lagger on the technology of blogging. But then, my memory got jolted and I suddenly recall writing about my mother-in-law in her final week before her body yielded to cancer. I had 3 blogs back in 2007 which I completely forgot about in the last 5 years. How is that even possible? I suppose it is, since we've also had incomplete diaries lying around in our school days.

For weeks, as I write passionately about my restaurant internship, my enrolment as a student in a culinary academy and my reluctance to learn food photography, I also muse about why I should blog. There are millions out there who can cook better, boast award-winning shots, write more wittingly, they are more famous, more beautiful, more whatever, and the world would soak up every detail. So why bother to write about my little life and my muffins no matter how puffy they get?

There are also many people who guard their privacy like a lion would its cubs. You can't even see a recognisable profile picture of them. They are smarter than to pour their entire life details to a scheming world. Unmanaged digital footprint comes back to haunt you with your next prospective employers, they've been warned. At this age, I need more hair than credentials, so because these future bosses don't matter, I don't mind.

An interviewer once said he googled my name before I walked into the room. I've never loved myself so much to google my own name! I smiled calmly and responded politely, Oh, really. My head screamed, What are you, a perverted stalker? He then played back to me what he found. He told me I holidayed in Switzerland in 2006 with my 12-year-old daughter, we cycled in the valleys and camped in the mountains. After an hour of listening to someone telling me about my life, I walked out with distaste at the interview and of course, my pathetic acquaintance with him ended there and then. Thankfully.

On the other extreme, there are bloggers who shout from the mountain top, Read all about me and my awesome life! You know the toothpaste brand they use and you are even allowed to peep into their bedrooms, if you care to.

I don't need to build a brand or manipulate it so my blog shows up in search engine algorithms or earn some miniscure revenues by shoving annoying advertisements into the faces of my readers, most of whom are friends. Would I blog even if no one read it? Yes. If I stopped and no one noticed, would it hurt me? No. If I didn't get comments on my blog, would I feel discouraged? No. Fast-forward 50 years later, when my great-granddaughter reads this, would she be amused that she had an opportunity to connect with me even when I'm no longer there? A resounding yes. On this basis, I have chosen to blog.

Just in the past weeks, about a thousand people have peered into my fridge to see how I store my food in a safe way to avoid cross-contamination and 3 people from Croatia, Latvia and Romania have read about my restaurant internship as they consider becoming chefs. Technology facilitates cross-border learning amongst strangers.

More importantly, I've re-connected with ex-colleagues from 2, even 3, jobs ago, made a new friend in Connecticut who switched careers at age 52, a fellow blogger from neighbouring Malaysia passionate about baking, and just very decent and sweet people who follow the blog to share our culinary experiences or who motivate each other on moving our own cheese as we go through this midlife phase. None of them seem to give two-hoots if they never gained an ounce of fame, they just want to learn from others to cook well for their families. Love is their motivation, and their passion drive their profession.

So for me to blog is to celebrate love and friendship, old and new. Cheers, my friends!

See my first anniversary blog post.

Living Room Talk #1: Virgin American carrot walnut cake, my little everest

A mountain scaled.

I've wanted to try this for a long time and finally got to it yesterday. We had invited Esther who recently conquered Everest to our place to share her experience together with 20 other friends and their young adults. This was a good occasion to conquer my own little everest with a small e. I wanted to do a step-by-step photography but that proved too much to handle so I gave up on the photos and focused on getting the cake right.

"Sliced thinly", so the recipe says. These here are not thin enough. You should be able to almost 'see through' the slices, otherwise, they affect the cake cutting later.

Cook with cinnamon and brown sugar. Leave to cool, then mix in raisins, grated carrot and ground hazelnut 

This was when I gave up on the step-by-step photography and focused on getting the cake right instead.
Here's how it looked just before going into the oven.

I got busy and it overcooked by about 6-7 minutes or so and caused some cracklines, the crevices of my little everest

It should be given more time to cool but I didn't have that much time and it felt a little too soft to handle. I learned later you should always make a cake a day before you need it.

I've seen my sous chef do this and was excited to try on my own.

The topping is cream cheese, icing sugar, Kirschwasser and pistachio. I did not know what K was, so I googled and saw images of cherry brandy. I happened to have some cherries in the fridge so I poured some liquor I had bought in Frankfurt and soaked the cherries for a couple of hours, then scooped 2 TBS and mixed into my cheese topping. It worked rather well!  

So here's the final product. No pictures of the sliced cake as I got too busy chatting with friends by then. (Update: click here for a picture of the sliced cake taken the morning after.)

Not enough cheese topping, was one of the feedback. I think she's right! I like to get specific honest constructive feedback but not too harsh to scare me from trying again!

Overall, a rather nutritious cake I think - 2 carrots, 3 Granny Smith green apples, a good pile of raisin and 3 types of nuts (hazelnut, walnut, pistachio). Esther was awesomeness packed into a petite body. We all went away inspired by her amazing story of life and death, humility, imagination, courage, and her closeness with God Almighty. I also enjoyed catching up with friends I'd not seen for a while, and listening to their stories of overcoming the mountains in their own lives. It was a very lovely evening indeed.

Click here for the morning-after look of the cake.