MY FIRST SOON KUIH

I finally got down to my attempt on Soon Kuih, a Teochew (dialect) food made using turnips as the main filling.

(Kuih is a Malay word for bite-sized snack or dessert foods commonly found in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia – Wikipedia.com).

DS and I like Soon Kuih.  We miss the ones we used to enjoy in Batu Pahat, Malaysia where we came from.  Unlike the Singapore version, the ones in Batu Pahat use only turnips (but nothing else) as filling, and the turnips are cut in small cube size (instead of being julienned).  They are served in watery chilli sauce and red sweet sauce whereas over here, Soon Kuih are commonly served in black sweet sauce which is a little thick.

In Alexandra area, there is one kuih stall (named Poh Cheu) selling pretty good Soon Kuih, probably the best we have tasted in Singapore all these years.  The skin of the Soon Kuih is soft and not too thick, and the filling compact and tasty.  There are probably better ones on this sunny island but we haven’t come across yet.  We enjoy eating the Soon Kuih from Poh Cheu as dinner on some Friday evenings when I don’t cook dinner.

So, I had been entertaining the thought of making my very own Soon Kuih. I imagine it would be nice and very satisfying if I could just produce them with my own hands whenever I feel like eating them!

The making of Soon Kuih involves two parts of ingredients – the wrapping skin made using flour and the fillings.

For the fillings, which was the easy part, I added garlic, carrot, black fungus, mushrooms and dried prawns to the turnip, and stir-fried them till soft with salt and pepper added as flavouring.  Traditionally, as the name of the food implies, bamboo shoots (pronounced as Soon in Teochew) was one of the main ingredients.  But I wonder if people actually use bamboo shoots these days.  Fresh bamboo shoots are more expensive than turnips, and it requires quite a bit of steps to treat them in order to get ride of the bitter taste or weird smell, as I have read about it from a cookbook.

The real challenge for me was the making of the wrapping-skin which I was actually not sure of what type of flour and the ratio to use.  Thanks to the convenience of internet, and after some online searching, I decided to use the Soon Kuih dough recipe from this food blog called Guai Shu Shu, hosted by a gentleman by the name of Kenneth Goh.  I was amazed by not just the large amount but also the varied categories of recipes in his blog!

Dough using 40% of rice flour and 60% of wheat flour as per Guai Shu Shu‘s recipe

Oh mine, the rolling and wrapping were no easy tasks at all.  The skin tended to break easily, hence I had do it very carefully and slowly.  Too thick the skin will not be nice to eat.  So, it requires a bit of skill but it is a skill that can be improved with practice, as the saying goes, practice makes perfect! Excluding cooking of the fillings, I ended up spending close to 3 hours to prepare the dough, and produce 12 considerably decent-looking Soon Kuih for dinner and also breakfast the next day.

First batch fresh from steam oven.  They looked a bit dull before being coated with a thin layer of cooking oil

Garnished with sesame seeds and spring onions

I am glad that I have tried this and thanks to Guai Shu Shu’s recipe!  I was satisfied with the skin, but I did not get the taste of the filling quite right.  That can be improved.

However, given the time spent, I concluded that it may be too much the trouble and time spent to make a few just for the two of us.  It will be better to just get DS to buy them back whenever I have a craving for it 🙂

HELLO KITTY TURNS 40!

Hello Kitty turns 40 today!

Surely, it is quite a milestone for Hello Kitty to still remain so popular and strong after 40 years.  This speaks of how successful this cute character/icon (not a cat, though!) has attracted the hearts of many (young and old) worldwide!

I would have love to take part in the Hello Kitty Run Singapore held in Sentosa island this morning but it looks like I have made the right decision not to, after my big disappointment with the registration.  The weather was not good this morning (rather unfortunate for the 17,000 participants) and it also seems that the event was not well organised, based on many negative comments I have come across on the Hello Kitty Run Singapore page on Facebook.  I was also considering a day trip to Sanrio Hello Kitty Town in Johor but after reading that they were attempting a record largest gathering of Hello Kitty fans, I gave up the idea.  I am just too afraid of the crowds.

So I am glad to have saved up S$140 for not participating in the run with DS.  Instead, I have used about S$50 (after some discounts) to buy two 40th Anniversary items (below) from the Sanrio store in Takashimaya recently, and keeping the balance to buy more Hello Kitty souvenirs in my next holiday trip in Japan next February. 🙂

Love this reusable stickers set that records the 40 years’ of Hello Kitty journey, and I intend to frame it up!

Stainless steel water tumbler

This morning, I kicked off my day with a big treat for my two Hello Kittys.  No, they didn’t get a big birthday cake, neither did they get their favourite red tea or pancakes.

Hello Kitty’s first experience with Singapore local food, laksa!  😀 😀

Of course, this was just for play-play only!  It was actually my sinful breakfast.

Earlier this year, when touring Japan again with DS, I was glad to have finally visited Puroland, the Hello Kitty indoor amusement park located in Tama, after quite a number of trips to Tokyo.  That was a timely visit given that it is Hello Kitty’s 40th anniversary this year. We were so impressed with the interior which has been designed like a fairyland, and there was not a single moment of dullness throughout our time spent there.  There were very entertaining shows and parade to catch, rides to take, and also photo opportunity with Hello Kitty.  If you are a fan of Hello Kitty, or have little young kids, I would highly recommend this as a not-to-be-missed destination when you are in Tokyo.   In fact, DS and I would consider going again in future.

Slideshow of photos taken in Puroland (February 2014)

Arigatou Everyone – Hello Kitty 40th Anniversary Parade (February 2014)

And of course, to me, a trip to Japan is not complete without bringing home some Hello Kitty souvenirs.  This last trip I bought even more than previous trips. Perhaps, it was the 40th Anniversary mood!

Love this tie with the subtle print of Hello Kitty’s face.  DS has won it on two special occasions – our niece’s wedding and also an award ceremony event in his company – but no one has taken notice of the details! 🙂

Crystal ball with light and music,  from Tokyo Skytree

From Puroland, Gift Gate @ Shinjuku and Tokyu Hands

DVDs from Puroland

A 40th Anniversary watch

Oh dear, I wonder if I would ever stop loving Hello Kitty?!

ONDEH ONDEH

Another attempt from my to-do list over the past weekend.

Ondeh Ondeh

Ondeh ondeh is a common sweet food (or kueh, in Malay word) in Malaysia and Singapore.  They are small green soft and chewy balls with palm sugar (gula Melaka) as filling, and are coated with grated coconut.  As I had learned during my school days, traditionally the ondeh ondeh dough is made using sweet potatoes and tapioca flour (thus the chewy effect), and infused with home-made pandan juice to make them green in colour.  Today, artificial colouring is readily available in supermarket.  There is also a variation of recipes available online. Some do not even use sweet potatoes but tapioca flour or glutinous rice flour only, or a mixture of both.

I have chosen to use pumpkin instead of sweet potatoes and this explains why my ondeh ondeh were orange in colour.  This saved me the trouble of preparing pandan juice and I don’t like the idea of using artificial colouring.  As it has been so long since I last made them and I never kept the recipe, I made references to a recipe found in one of the cookbooks I have.  That recipe calls for the use of sweet potatoes, glutinous rice flour and tapioca flour.

My steps :

Steamed grated coconut that was mixed with a small quantity of salt and 3-4 pandan leaves for about 10 minutes, and then set aside to cool.   Pandan leaves enhanced the aroma of the grated coconut

As I couldn’t get fresh grated coconut from the nearby mini wet market, I settled with this packed grated coconut sold in supermarket.  It is good enough but I would have preferred to use fresh coconut, if available.

Cut pumpkin into small pieces and steamed with 3-4 pandan leaves for about 15 minutes

Grated palm sugar.  I used a peeler to do the job

Mashed the pumpkin while it was still hot and then mixed with glutinous rice flour and tapioca flour to form the dough

I used a proportion of 320g of pumpkin (before steaming), 300g of glutinuous rice flour and 50g of tapioca flour with 100ml of water to make the dough.  Love the natural colour of the pumpkin

As my mashed pumpkin was quite wet after steaming, I decided to use only 100ml of water which was just half of the actual amount on the recipe.  But I think I should have used even less water as the dough was a little wet and really soft, so soft and it became a bit challenging to shape into small balls.  Or perhaps there is something not very right about the ratio of the ingredients that I used for the dough.  So I ended up with jumbo ondeh ondeh which were about double the size of the usual ones sold! 😀

Boiled in a small pot until they floated up to water surface, and continued boiling for another two minutes

Coated with grated coconut

Done!

Despite the slight difficult in shaping the dough into balls,  I was satisfied that they turned out pretty well – soft and a little (but not overly) chewy.  I have chosen not to add any sugar onto the dough (as in the recipe), so the sweetness which came from the palm sugar was just right for me.  I love that nice flavour of the melted palm sugar that oozed into my mouth when I ate them!

Ondeh ondeh are not difficult to make but I wonder why it has taken me so long to make them!

The next time I make again, I will go back to the traditional recipe of using sweet potatoes and tapioca flour, and perhaps using Japanese purple potatoes! 🙂

HELLO KITTY RUN SINGAPORE

Yet another Hello Kitty fever in town!   This time, it is the inaugural Hello Kitty Run Singapore which will be held on 1 November 2014, in commemorating Hello Kitty’s 40th birthday.  This is said to be the only Hello Kitty birthday bash in South-East Asia.

Taken from the website of Hello Kitty Run Singapore

The 15,000 slots allocated for pre-registration were all snatched up in 24 hours, as reported!  Not surprising at all, given the extreme popularity of Hello Kitty!

Since I got the news about this event too late and missed the pre-registration (at S$65 per person), I decided to sign up today when the registration was open to public (at S$70 per person) at 12 noon.  The response was so overwhelming (which was not unexpected) that many could not even gain access to the website.  I was one of them.  Soon the Facebook page of Hello Kitty Run was flooded with messages from people expressing their problems in registering themselves.

And by about 40 minutes after the registration was opened, the organiser had to announce the closure of their website.

This only speaks of how unprofessional and ill-prepared the organiser is!  Does the organiser not know the popularity of Hello Kitty? Has the organiser not read about the online sales hiccups with MacDonald’s Hello Kitty Bubbly World Series Collector’s Set in April?  And has the organiser not learned from the MacDonald’s experience?

Not wanting to give up, I decided to try again from 2pm but no luck at all.  Just look at the error messages I got each time I hit the registration button!

This was the best I could get but the redirection did not work at all.

There was still no luck by 6pm.  I decided to give up!

Extremely frustrated and disappointed, I concluded that it is not worth me spending my time and money for this event!  If the organiser can’t even handle the online registration well, I will have no confidence that the event will be a smooth one on that day.

Now, let me think of how I can celebrate Hello Kitty’s 40th birthday with the S$140 I didn’t spend!

SINGAPORE GARDEN FESTIVAL 2014 (2)

Singapore Garden Festival 2014 (1)

Two of my friends whom I spoke with after the event shared their views that the SGF 2014 lacked that wow factor and I kind of agree with them.  Undoubtedly, there were interesting and attractive designs but if I were to compare SGF 2014 with the past events since 2008, I felt that the past events were indeed more spectacular.  At least there were some that have left an impression on me then.

Floral Windows to the World (participated by 14 designers)

The Ice Queen’s Spring Breath by Annette van Einem (Denmark)

See the difference in the visual effect when viewed at different dimensions.  One uncle who was taking photos of this design did not realise it and was very happy when I pointed it out to him 🙂

Reflection of Autumn by Kathy Ong (Malaysia)

Applied Art Meets Floristry by Bjorn Kroner (Germany) – Gold Award

Magic Golden Cloud by Bea Beroy (Spain)

Home by Richard Mock (Singapore Hortiflora Association)

Passion by Lowdi Kwan (Hong Kong)

Where there’s smoke, there is fire.  Where there’s passion, there’s unlimited dreams and desires!

Turning Darkness Into Light by Jennifer Murphy (Ireland)

A Design in Expression of Life by Chang Sung Won (Republic of Korea)

9th International FDSS Cup Floral Designing Competition 2014

Going through the floral designs, it was not difficult for one to spot that the themes for this year’s competition focused on the use of plastics in the amateur category, and papers in the professional category.

Amateur Category

The Nature of Acry-Fluer by Khoo Ghee Boon (Malaysia) – 1st Prize

By Ku Weng Tong (Macau) – 2nd Prize and the Most Innovative Design award

Plastic “Fluer”tastic by Rainbow Li (Hong Kong) – 3rd Prize

Climbing Expectation by Sandra I Taslim (Indonesia) – 3rd Prize

Nice work using plastic straws

By Rostiana Jo (Singapore) – Merit Award

Professional Category

Books are stepping stones of human progress by Pan Lei (China) – 1st Prize

Recording (记载) by Liao Wen Hao (Taiwan) – 2nd Prize

Words record the memories of mankind.  Papers accumulate the civilisation of memories.  We flip through the pages, searching, reaching, thinking, imaging.

By Lam Chun Yu (Macau) – Merit Award

珠玑满堂能光善地、凤凰来仪始于正道

A place can be brilliant and beautiful if it is posted with beautiful articles around,

A country will be prosperous and peaceful if the citizens are on their best behaviour!

Well said!

Books in Bloom by Lim Li Jun (Malaysia)

The journey of a lifetime starts with the turning of a page – Rachel Anders

The Help from Aliens by Nguyen Phi Minh (Vietnam)

By Maria T.L. Robles (Philippines)

By Sharen Tantarica (Singapore)

Floral Table Series

Miracle Dining Table by Tan Han Xiang @ Han Ashworth – Gold Prize and Best of Show award

Enchanted Night by Winston Chin – Gold prize and Best of Show award

Dining in Mangrove by Law Guek Chu – Silver prize

Gazebo Exotica by Thong Weng Seng

I had to give Miniature Gardens a miss after spending too much time on the above sections.

I realised that I actually didn’t have many shots taken at the Fantasy Gardens.

Fantasy Gardens

This design at the entrance to Fantasy seemed like a popular spot for a souvenir snap by the many visitors

A Garden of Hers by Damian Tang (Singapore)

Concept : A garden that embodies the love of an angel; someone he loves and someone he sees as an angel.  This is a garden dedicated to her.

Winter Illusion by Kate Hillier and Dan Rutherford (New Zealand).  Winter Illusion is a garden within a garden, created with a combination of optical illusion and fantasy

Back to the Wild by Michael Petrie (USA) – Gold Prize and Best of Show award

The event ticket booths were all quiet when I walked pass after 530pm.

I was curious if the event had received a good attendance this year, and if the hot weather had actually stopped some from attending.  I searched online but didn’t seem to find any reports about the estimated number of visitors, not even on the website/Facebook of SGF.

Although I didn’t find the SGF 2014 as spectacular as the past ones, and I  didn’t enjoy it as much as before, overall it was still worth the visit, considering that the entrance ticket was very affordable.  I paid S$8 after a 20%-discount with my Friend of the Gardens’ membership.  If not for the weather, I would be interested to go back on another day to cover those sections which I missed.

Hopefully Singapore Garden Festival 2016 will be a fully indoor event! 😀