Cor blimey, it's a fish pie!

I was aimlessly browsing the Internet for new Western recipes to expand our very limited repertoire when I stumbled across this BBC Good Food recipe for fish pie. Fish pie is the quintessential British dish, arguably as emblematic as fish and chips or bangers and mash. Just the other day, I was at Marks and Spencers and noticed that they had a new selection of ready freezer foods, including several types of fish pies (and a very yummy looking sticky toffee pudding but I digress).

It was the picture on the website that convinced me to try it. My family loves practically anything with a cream sauce like pasta and gratin. Plus it was a one-dish meal which is always attractive for busy people like us!

So I gave it a go two nights ago, adjusting the recipe to suit our tastes (and ingredients that I had). Usually, I'll need to repeat and alter recipes a couple of times to get them just right but amazingly, this one turned out to be practically perfect the first time. Lesley-Anne and Andre loved it, even Kenneth, the biggest critic, declared it "very credible".

So readers, here you go - my fish pie recipe, complete with pictures. Please note though that the ingredients and method I've listed are only for the pie filling. For the mashed potato topping, check out my shepherd's pie recipe.

Ingredients

400g skinless white fish fillet (I used frozen sutchi fillet)
400g skinless salmon
500ml milk
2 stalks celery, roughly chopped
1 small onion, quartered
2 bay leaves
small bunch parsley, leaves only, chopped
50g butter
40g plain flour
50g cheddar , grated
paprika
black pepper
salt

Fish pie

1. Poach the fish. Put the fish, celery, onion and bay leaves in a large pot. Add paprika, salt and pepper to taste. Pour the milk over the ingredients and bring to the boil - you will see a few small bubbles. Reduce the heat and simmer for 8 mins.
   
   
2. Lift the fish and celery onto a plate and strain the milk into a jug to cool. Flake the fish into large pieces in the baking dish. Add the celery.
   
   
3. Scatter the chopped parsley over the fish.
   
   
4. Make the sauce. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour and cook for 1 min over moderate heat. Take off the heat, pour in a little of the poaching milk, then stir until blended. Continue to add the milk gradually, mixing well until you have a smooth sauce. Return to the heat, bring to the boil and cook for 5 mins, stirring continually, until it coats the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat, season with salt and pepper, then pour over the fish.
   
   
5. Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius. Pile the mashed potatoes on top of the fish mixture, leaving no gaps. Sprinkle with cheese.
   
   
6. I love the extra zing of paprika so I usually sprinkle some on top.
   
   
7. Bake for 30 mins or until top is golden brown.
   

The result is a very creamy, succulent and hearty pie. It's also relatively healthier than its meat cousins because it's all fish and I added celery for the veg. Although the original recipe calls for full cream milk, I used low fat milk and it was still tasty.

Fish pies are extremely versatile because you can substitute many of the ingredients. You add use prawns or scallops in place of some of the fish to have a seafood pie, similar to what some cafes here serve in individuals portions. Some recipes I've seen add carrots, peas or corn, basically whatever you like!

Chinese New Year in pictures

Chinese New Year is tradition, festivities, noise, colours and celebrating the fullness of life in all its glory. And because a picture is worth a thousand words, here's several thousand words' worth of what Chinese New Year is like in our household.


























A big part of Chinese New Year in our household revolves around food, largely thanks to the fantastic culinary skills of my mother-in-law. It involves feasting so major that it is customary to stagger away from the dining table feeling extremely tight around the waist.

The pictures are but merely a small sample size of the spread that was offered during the first three days at my mum-in-law's place. Other unsung, unphotographed delicacies included butterfly prawns, yam basket, kung ba pao, lotus root soup and stir-fried bamboo shoots, all greedily lapped up before the idea to take photographs could surface.


A rip-roaring Year of the Tiger to all my readers and may your plate of blessings never be empty!

A crabby celebration

I love, love, love crab. Well, lobster too but crab is the cheaper alternative.

Anyway, it used to be that when we went out for a crab meal, I'll have the best part - the claws. That was, until both my kids started loving crab too, then it became a fight for the precious claws. And I almost never win.

We used to have crab at Long Beach Seafood or occasionally, Jumbo Seafood, until we discovered this place - Big Eater at Simpang Bedok. The crabs here are just magnificent and the other dishes aren't too shabby either. It started out as a modest little place the size of a coffee shop and quickly expanded to three times its size within a few years, a testimony to its popularity. On weekends, this place is packed - you'll be hard pressed to find a table if you don't make a reservation.

Kenneth decided to celebrate my birthday over the weekend and I wanted just a quiet dinner, so we ended up at Big Eater.

We ordered just a couple of other dishes, one of them was hot plate venison. Unbelievably tender, melt in your mouth quality.

Simple pan fried beans with minced meat, very fresh and even my kids love this green dish.

And the main attraction - the crabs! We ordered one chili crab with mantou (I think we walloped 16 mantou among the four of us). The chili crab here is not too spicy, and the gravy is thick and creamy, just the way we like it.

That's not all - we had another crab in salted egg. This is Big Eater's specialty. We've tried salted egg crab in some other restaurants and none of them even come close. This one has a sweet, eggy sauce flavoured with laksa leaves and a light sprinkling of chili.

Andre and I adore this crab. Before we left the house, he'd resolved to give me the claws since it was my birthday but let's just say, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. He just cannot resist this! I did manage to get half a claw though and lots of the other parts. The taste is just undescribable, you'll have to try it yourself.

Here's a picture of the shell with the roe.

By revealing one of my favourite haunts, I probably risk aggravating the crowd situation there. But all good things should be shared, so there you go! For all crab lovers, I would rate this place as one of the best kept secrets in Singapore.

Chocolate cake... not from a box!

I've not made chocolate cake from scratch for years, although this seems like a basic recipe for folks who like to bake. The reason for this is that the recipes I've tried in the past have not been satisfactory. They tend to have the cocoa powder taste which I'm not fond of, never even close to some of the moist, true chocolate flavours that you get with store-bought ones.

So whenever the occasion calls for chocolate cake, I've always copped out and used the cake mixes by Betty Crocker. Still, they're not wonderful by any standard so I usually just end up making banana or yellow cake and compensating for my chocolate obsession by topping it with chocolate frosting.

This changed when I stumbled across a recipe for a chocolate layer cake. Honestly, it was the photo that did it. Wah, when I saw the cake, I wanted to eat it there and then. So when a few of us mothers decided to arrange for a meetup, it was the perfect opportunity to try out the recipe.

It turned out better than I expected. The true test is Andre - he has a habit of eating only the frosting on cakes that he doesn't like, so when he finished his portion, I knew this cake had potential. It's still not like the store-bought ones but it's a credible alternative, certainly better than other chocolate cake recipes I've tried.

I didn't want the cake to be too sweet since I was going to use chocolate frosting instead of cream cheese frosting in the original recipe, so I adjusted it slightly. The batter also turned out to be quite substantial since it's for a layer cake, but I found that it makes exactly two pans of 12 muffins each (I prefer making muffins instead of a whole cake, for convenience).

Here is my version of the recipe. If you want the recipe for the chocolate frosting, click here or for cream cheese frosting, click here.

Ingredients

250g unsalted butter, softened
2 cups plain flour
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup granulated suger
4 large eggs at room temperature
¾ cup (6oz) unsweetened melted chocolate (or semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted)
100ml sour cream
¾ cup buttermilk (or add 2 tsp white vinegar/lemon juice to ¾ cup milk and let it stand for 5 mins)
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla essence

Recipe:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.
2. Sift flour, mix together with baking soda and salt in a bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
4. Add eggs one at a time until combined, then add chocolate and mix until well incorporated.
5. Add flour mixture in three parts, alternating with buttermilk and vanilla, and beat until smooth.
6. Stir in sour cream (you'll get a thick, chocolate milk-like batter).
7. Pour into greased pan or muffin tray.
8. Bake for 25-30 mins (cake pan) or 20-22 mins (12-muffin tray) or until skewer comes out clean. Do not overbake.
9. Cool completely before icing.

The mums gathering was such great fun. Lilian, Elan and I met up at Slim's place and bonded over Nespresso, bak chang and chocolate muffins (the piping was done by Lesley-Anne since I was too lazy). It was also my first time meeting Elan, long-time reader of my blog, and it was so great to finally put a face to the name. The fun part about meeting readers is that we often feel like kindred spirits in no time!

Thanks for the fun time, ladies. Let's do it again soon!

An evening in December

We love Christmas parties but this one held at our place is always one that is extra special to us and our kids. We started holding a Christmas party for a few close friends to celebrate together even before we had kids, and since then, it has become somewhat of a tradition. Some years, the guests vary, depending on whether friends are away and last year, we skipped the annual celebration since we made a last-minute trip to Beijing.

So our kids were doubly excited this year, even more so because for the first time since 2005, we managed to get the core group of friends back together again. I must say it's really wonderful to be close to families and see the children grow up together. I didn't quite realise this until I was browsing through old Christmas party photos - this fellowship brings not just us adult friends close together but also our kids, which is pretty special.

Although the kids haven't met each other for at least a year, they were so at ease with each other and got along like a house on fire in no time. Here are a few "see how they've grown!" comparison photos:





Daenia, my friend Hooi Ming's elder daughter, and Lesley-Anne have always been great pals. Christmas 2006 (left) and 2009 (right)




Typical of boys, Andre and my friend Lim Nah's son Martin, bonded over trucks and Lego. Some things don't change even with time. Christmas 2005 (left) and 2009 (right)

Here I am with my dear girl friends. No comparison pics. We don't like to be reminded of how young we used to look, thank you.



And of course, no food, no party! Christmas parties at my place is always Christmas fare - that's half the fun of celebrating the season!

Appetizers courtesy of David and Hooi Ming. A super duper cheese and pate platter, with dips, apricots and walnuts. These were wolfed down so quickly the adults had to physically restrain their kids with unheeded cautions of "Leave some room for dinner!"

Dinner was roast turkey, crispy roast pork, shepherd's pie, mashed potatoes and salad contributed by Lim Nah and Remy. Before you assume that I'm Jamie Oliver in disguise, let me confess outright that the roast items were ordered from NTUC's festive menu. So all I can lay claim to is that I'm adept at heating up food, which is a whole lot less glamorous.

Here's Martin (who incidentally is an aspiring chef) tossing his mum's famous salad. I say famous because Lim Nah's salad, a recipe passed down from her mum and improved through the years, is a much requested dish in our circle. This is coming from a family which generally looks unfavourably on greens.

The salad filled two of those gigantic green salad bowls and by the end of the meal, there was NONE left.

Don't let the quiet demeanors of the kids feasting fool you. They were like bottomless pits. We were taken by surprise when we found that there were hardly any leftovers, even though we had provided about the same amount of food as previous years. We then realised that we now had to cater for pre-teen appetites, which is waaaaay different from feeding little kids.

After dinner, we had a little musical session. This is also a tradition in our parties. Kids who play the piano are invited to play something. It's an initiative to give the kids a mini platform for performance, something that's very lacking in Singapore, unlike in the US where music students often have the opportunity to play at recitals.

Lesley-Anne, Andre and Martin did the honours and it was very enjoyable. I took videos of the performances but the sound quality didn't turn out to be great. So instead, here's a video of an earlier session I took of Lesley-Anne and Andre practising the piece they performed. It's a jazzed up version of O Come All Ye Faithful. The score was provided by Andre's teacher, Uncle Peter. I thought it was a terrific idea of his to make them play a duet. Christmas lah - time for peace, even among siblings!



Followed by dessert! Log cake thanks to Molly.

And home-made Christmas cookies by Hooi Ming. Nigella Lawson recipe some more, don't pray pray. Lovely touch with the decoration. As you can see, the jar was already half empty by the time I remembered to take the picture!


Then the kids' absolute favourite part - getting presents!

Only noticed this when I was going through the pictures... the blue jeans brigade.

A time to remember, to celebrate friendship.

Let the celebrations begin!

It's the Christmas season and our partying has started!

We had our first Christmas dinner this year when our good friends Isabelle, Joon and baby Maxime came over for dinner last night.

Lesley-Anne drew a picture for Isabelle just for the occasion. Isabelle is an avid fan of sting ray collectibles, hence the water theme.

The last time we saw Maxime was probably about five months ago, now he's walking on his own and cute as a button. He speaks his own Maxime language, gives smiles and high-fives all around - he's the darling of the infant care centre he goes to and I'm sure you can see why:

Awwwww!! He has the perfect blend of his father's Asian eyes and his mummy's European colouring. This one is going to be a total heartbreaker when he grows up, mark my words!

Dinner was Christmas champagne ham with apple sauce, quiche and an apple salad. A quick note on the apple salad: we're not big on greens so this salad sits well with us. I learned the recipe from my sister - basically, it's two apples diced, 1 can of garbanzo beans, 1 can of sweet corn kernels, 1 head of butterhead lettuce. You can also add some cashew nuts if you like. Squeeze a lemon over the combi, toss and you have a tasty salad that even kids will eat.

You can find the quiche recipe here.

And to show you how seriously Maxime takes his food, his devoted parents even towed his high chair along! (What's a feast if you can't share it with baby, right?)

Isabelle and Joon contributed a fab French red wine and apple strudel, which ended the meal on a sweet note.

Wonderful dinner, wonderful company, as always.