Here’s an adapted Buttermilk scones recipe from the BBC Cakes and Bake 101 recipe book.We made all 3 batches of them and they turned out pretty awesome! They didn’t taste as good the next day though, so I’ve upped the butter portion as well as the cheese and bacon – you can never have enough of all 3 key ingredient anyway, right?

For a batch of 20 Bacon Cheddar scones
Ingredients:
350g self raising flour
100 caster sugar
100g (recipe says 85g) of butter cut into small pieces
175ml of buttermilk (or low fat yogurt)
500g of smoked bacon chopped into fine pieces
500-700g cheddar cheese grated

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 200ºC, mix together flour and sugar in the bowl, rub the butter in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.
2. Pan fry the bacon bits until crispy, drain
3. Mix in grated cheddar and then the bacon bits
4. Make a well and pour in the buttermilk, mix well. You should get a wet dough consistency
5. Tip the dough on to a lightly floured surface and knead briefly with the ball of your palms
6. Press the dough out to about 2.5cm thickness and start using the scones cutter (I used a champagne glass)
7. Gather up trimmings and knead gain. Repeat with scones cutter.
8. Transfer the scones to a baking tray lined with baking paper spaced apart and bake for 12-15mins, depending your oven, check on it and rotate the tray to make sure they cook evenly. Leave on and the cooling rack and ready to serve!

Bon Appétit!

Technorati Tags: bacon cheddar scones, baking, BBC baking 101, recipe

I love his books and his shows, but Parts Unknown takes Bourdain’s food and travel adventures to a new level!

Here’s a series of teasers on Tangier and an amazing episode on Myanmar. On the bucketlist, but in the meantime, I’ll have to make do with exploring the Burmese quarter in Macau and eating all that delicious food.

They are not broadcasting them on our side of the world yet, but you can watch them on youtube.

Technorati Tags: adventures, anthony bourdain, Food, myanmar, parts unknown, tangier, Travel, yangon

Shot on an antique round marble table my mum inherited from an old friend.

This recipe post is a tribute to my awesome mother who gave up her youth and adventures for a life of housewivery mothering 3 kids. There was always freshly made food on the table, breakfast, lunch, tea snacks, kueh kueh, dinner, supper, soups, desserts, fruit platters – she tirelessly fed us homemade goodness every waking hour. I grew up watching my mother slaughter chickens (she used to hate doing it, slitting their throat and watching them struggle), kill crabs by using the motar pounding tool to knock a chopstick into the heart of the crab and I cleaned out the lungs – those fluffy things she explained worked like aircon filters – beautiful way describe that to an 8 year old.

I miss the delicious smells that permeate our open kitchen in Serangoon Gardens and how curries were always made with freshly grated coconut, put in a cloth bag and fragrant milk and juice wrung out of it.

Note the classic floral table clothes in the background. My mum loves flowers and while I used to think they were jarringly ugly, I kind of appreciate the vintage charm of them now. Loving the mismatched old saucers from the 1970s – the same patterned ones I find in Macau’s vintage stores chipped and full of character, filled I’m sure with so many bygone food memories.

Ngoh hiang (Ngor hiang, Ngo hiang spelt various ways) (Chinese: 五香; pinyin: wǔxiāng; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: ngó͘-hiong) is a hokkien dish she made often and we loved, served alongside a generous amount of kechap manis (sweet black sauce in malay made from red dates/jujubes).

Here’s her recipe. Go easy on the crushed biscuits as they were used as fillers because meat was expensive, but it also indirectly adds a texture to the 5 spice meat rolled in beancurd skin. The star of the mix is really the water chestnuts, you get the crunchy sweetness and flavour mixed in with the well seasoned minced meat.

Ingredients:
500g minced pork
prawns, cooked and shelled
15-20 sheets of beancurd skin
carrots (grated)
Diced water chestnuts
Five spices powder
Shaoxing rice wine
Oyster sauce
salt
pepper
corn flour
cream cracker crusty bits (for texture)

Directions:
season the minced pork with oyster sauce, shaoxing rice wine, salt, pepper, a sprinkle of corn flour. throw in the grated carrots and diced chestnuts to marinate overnight.

Then carefully spread them on a sheet on bean curd skin and roll them up. My mother’s rule is to steam the rolls in a steamer pot until you smell the fragrant spices. Turn off the fire, allow the rolls to cool before deep frying. Keep the rest in the fridge and deep fry the rolls when you next want to indulge.

Technorati Tags: hokkien, ngo hiang, ngoh hiang, ngor hiang, nonya, recipe, singapore

Revisiting one of the older videos I initiated and produced for Swire Hotels social channels. Fun times with chef Gray Kunz at Saiyingpun wet market, my old neighbourhood.

Videos edited by a group fresh Hong Kong Poly U graduates that I had the pleasure of working with on their student – corporate client project. Took some handholding, but these young talented students are alot of fun to work with!

Café Gray Deluxe
49/F The Upper House, Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Admiralty
金鐘金鐘道88號太古廣場1座奕居 49樓
+852 3968 1106
www.cafegrayhk.com

Technorati Tags: admiralty, cafe gray, chef gray kunz, Hong Kong, hotel, pacific place, saiyingpun market, the upper house

The giant poop “Complex pile (of shit)” by Paul McCarthy has been making headlines on several design blogs, but given all that hot air, it really just is an inflatable giant poop right in front of the world’s tallest hotel- the Ritz Carlton whose bar Ozone has equally potty service – that made me giggle.

M+ is becoming one of my favourite spaces for out of the box pieces – last year, I went to the Cantonese opera in the same pop up setting, which reminded me of the old days when my late grandmother would go to the opera on the streets, with snack vendors on the side peddling their wares.

The inflation exhibition opened last week, featuring Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller’s Stone Henge “Scarilege” – a lovely sight as the kids treat this as an inflatable castle alternative – subtly meeting the objective of getting British history and cultural heritage across in a fun way.

My personal favourite is Guangzhou artist’s “House of Treasures” giant suckling pig, inside, filled with inflatable cushions of pork done several ways – roasts and grills, so deeply rooted to the culinary history of Southern China.

Also featured alongside is an inflatable lotus by Choi Jeong Hwa, the orange one also seen at last year’s ARTHK 2012, with an esoteric philosophical name “Emptiness is form, Form is Emptiness”.

On display is also Chinese architect Liu Jiakun’s “With the Wind” installation that reminds me of the scene in Cinderella where the birds help her with her chores by lifting a white sheet with exactly the same and distribution of weight. They quite recently designed the stunning MOCA in Chengdu.

Finally, another odd existential piece by Tam Wai Ping featuring a cockroach and man that fell from the sky in enormous proportions entitled “Falling into the Mundane world”

I’m looking forward to follow the direction that the West Kowloon Cultural District will take. Here’s an extract from the press release:

Inflation! is a part of Mobile M+, a series of pre-opening ‘nomadic’ exhibitions curated by M+ that aim to engage the public ahead of the opening of the museum, scheduled for completion in late 2017. By initiating and realising projects that would not be possible in a single museum building, Mobile M+ seeks to turn the perceived disadvantage of being “rootless” into a strategic advantage by organizing events that embrace a multi-disciplinary approach.

Technorati Tags: art, cao fei, Hong Kong, house of treasures, inflation, jeremy deller, M+, stonehenge, turner prize, west kowloon cultural district