I could get used to this – unseasonably warm weather on weekends, as recompense for crappy weekday weather when I’m in the office with an unlimited supply of hot tea anyway, hanging out with one of my oldest dearest friends as if time had hardly passed, going out for yummy food (Jamie’s Italian at Canary Wharf is every bit as good as the one in Oxford – though i have to disagree in principle with the idea of serving bucatini carbonara – it just does not taste right for some reason), walking the streets of London aimlessly once more – something I haven’t done for a while.

In between hanging out with Wanyun and Andy this weekend I spent an afternoon baking coffee walnut cake for an office birthday tomorrow, as it had been brought to my attention that that was said birthday-person’s favourite cake, but it is strange baking something you don’t actually like (I don’t like walnuts). I feel like I can’t tell if the cake is good because it tastes… well, like something I don’t like! Not repulsive, or horrendous, or anything like that, but just not my thing. And as I am still pretty rubbish, sadly, at dealing with layer cakes, I wound up having to carve my cake up into a funky hexagonal shape so that the sides would be even. This problem is mostly caused by the annoying fact that my two cake tins, which purport to be 9″ and were bought from different stores, are in fact of slightly differing sizes, meaning either Tesco or the little cookware store in Brixton are liars >:O

Also, how does one transport a whole cake on a 1.5 hour public transport commute without a cake box/cake stand/device made to transport a cake? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Red Velvet Cake is one of life’s great mysteries (to me). It has an unpinpointable taste that makes it impossible to describe what kind of cake it is. I don’t think it’s chocolatey enough to be chocolate, and it’s not a butter cake, nor a sponge cake, nor a pound cake. Also, it owes its renown pretty much entirely to red food colouring, which is ridiculous considering that you could red-food-colour almost any other cake you want. You could even have a red cheesecake if that floats your scarlet-loving boat. And as Deb of Smitten Kitchen (where I got this recipe) points out, red velvet cake could be any other colour you want, so this red thing is really kind of mindboggling.

But, as is also observed by Deb, people loooove red velvet cake. I freely admit to feeling an inexplicable attraction towards it, even when I know that this is an attraction borne entirely of artificial colouring. People especially love it when it is baked in cupcake form. Here in the UK, I suspect this is due to the famed Hummingbird Bakery’s version of it (they do do a cake form but I far more often hear people talk about their red velvet cupcakes). And as I was after an impressive dessert recipe for my colleagues to commemorate my last days of work at my current theatre, I decided I should finally give red velvet cake a go. I shan’t reproduce the recipe here because I pretty much used the one from Smitten Kitchen word for word (except for some quanitity adjustments for a smaller cake), but I shall have a good long rant about the painstaking process that is cake-baking…

Which segues nicely to how not to bake a cake, point 1: when a recipe tells you to lump some butter in the bottom of your pan and place pan in oven “for a few minutes until butter melts”, don’t let your butter burn, as I rather stupidly did! If you, like me, associate the smell of burnt butter with popcorn and movies, this will make your cake smell of popcorn and movies. And taste a little like it too (the bits of it that came into contact with the burnt butter bottom, anyway). Point 2: when the recipe says to line your pan with parchment paper, there’s probably a reason for it… it would’ve made my cake NOT taste like popcorn, at the very least >__>

I also struggled almightily with the components of the recipe itself. Who has 3 cake tins lying around? Seriously? Well I don’t… and on top of that, the UK doesn’t contain cake flour, canola oil or white vinegar. Cake flour I can understand because I’ve never heard of it in my life, but canola oil and white vinegar definitely exist in Singapore (the oil at least I’m sure of!), so what gives, London? I wound up reducing the recipe by one-third and making it one fat layer instead of a few, then slapping all the frosting on top of my one fat layer, and using vegetable oil in place of canola, the latter of which turned out to be an icky mistake :/ it’s not as disastrous as it could’ve been. But there’s definitely a strange, lingering, oily aftertaste to the cake. Argh! Next time I shall try it with rapeseed oil instead, which is apparently the closest thing the UK has to canola (and I didn’t bother doing this research before going out grocery shopping, because I had no idea canola oil didn’t exist here… annoying country differences).

In the absence of a standing electric mixer with a bowl that the recipe called for, I had to make do with a handheld mixer instead. I don’t think it really made a difference in the end, but I did find myself having to juggle a lot more things at one go. Oh and I had no white vinegar. Did I mention that already? I highly doubted that malt vinegar would be quite the same, so I substituted lemon juice, which… I suspect wasn’t strong enough because the expected tangy taste is barely there at all. I suppose it is quite possible that my lemon juice, being Tesco house brand, is of substandard quality.

And then! After all was done and the cake was in the oven, and I had washed up and wiped the table and was feeling good about it all, I realised to my horror that I had forgotten to add vanilla to the cake. Cue panic removal of the cake pan from oven, throwing in vanilla, and mixing it up in the pan itself, totally ignoring the fact that it had started to bake and bits of crusty top were forming. Alas. I don’t know if this really affected the cake much, but I would rather advise that you not do it if possible to avoid…!

Happily, it didn’t turn out all disastrously – the middle of the cake (i.e. everywhere that didn’t touch the popcorny burnt-butter sides and bottom) actually tastes pretty good. If you, erm, try to ignore the faint oily aftertaste. And the cream cheese frosting is golden. This is hands down the best frosting I have ever made in my life. Not that I’m very experienced at frosting, but this is really, really good, and so easy; I’m definitely nicking the same frosting for other cakes!

My last day of work at the current place isn’t till next week. I had deliberately made an early trial run of this cake with the idea in mind that I would definitely screw up and need a second run to perfect it for my colleagues T____T I can’t decide whether I’m happy or not to have been proven right. But at least it doesn’t taste so terrible that I can’t eat it. And now that you all know what not to do when making red velvet cake, you can all have a good laugh at me and hopefully go off and make lots of lovely red velvet cake yourselves with Smitten Kitchen’s fantastic recipe, which I can sample in future ♥

Working life is apparently having to do all (or most) of your timewasting internet stuff in the morning before work because after, you’re too tired… granted maybe this only applies if you’re a morning person (we’re a dying breed!) and your office doesn’t start work till 10am (decadence!).

saturday was
The Bridge Project’s The Cherry Orchard at the Old Vic with Wenqi and her sister, who happens to be a good friend of my sister’s, which was very pleasant as I have a tendency to ramble about my siblings and it’s nice having someone who knows who I’m talking about :) Play-wise… I’m not the hugest fan of Chekhov, but parts of it, especially the premise of having to move out of a house you’ve lived in your whole life, really resonated. And the acting and production itself – superb. Though, and I say this as an Ethan Hawke fan, the British actors outperformed the American ones by a mile! Rebecca Hall especially really impressed, I hadn’t heard of her before, and now feel like I need to see all her movies.

sunday was
Dinner with Charmain at a sublime Randall & Aubin (thanks to Wey Ren for the introduction to this place) and a good long chat over walks round Soho and dessert in Chinatown. We had some very thought-provoking conversation – amidst conversation over fluffier topics like how all the Harry Potter kids grew up looking weird – about elitism in Singapore schools, and anti-elitism. Neither of us feel we’re particularly elitist, but we can sense a hostility from people who think we are… and does our consciousness of this other group of people make us elitist already? In a “us and them” mentality sort of way?

monday was
Post-work dinner with Jane from Japanese class, who is from Taiwan and as much of an Asian foodie as I am, which makes for very enjoyable food-related conversation over a dazzling array of dishes. We went to Kiasu at Bayswater which is newly re-opened after a period of apparent closure (heard from many sources it was closed for good so very surprised it was still there) – sadly the standard of food has plummeted so dramatically since I was last there that I can’t really recommend it anymore. Unless you’re going for carrot cake. Their carrot cake is absolutely tops ♥

akan datang
A trip to York tomorrow to watch another generation of kids graduate, La Cage Aux Folles, and the First Night of the Proms on Friday!

Flu sounds so trivial, but when you have it full-blown it is the worst feeling ever. I spent the entirety of this morning and afternoon in bed (waking up briefly to have a bowl of soup for lunch, use up all my tissue and Lemsip, and then go back to bed). It was pretty surreal. I wonder where the day has gone, and I am suffering mild panic from having only done one (ONE) job application the whole week because I have been ill/lazy/unable to find a lot of jobs to apply for in the first place.

It was a rare low point for me today… I like to think I’m pretty upbeat, and I don’t often get despairing sorry-for-myself feelings of being a failure and wanting to throw in the towel, but today they briefly hit. I don’t really know why. It was probably a combination of having been idle almost the whole week, feeling physically dreadful, and not having much to look forward to jobwise.

In the spirit of thankfulness, however (inspired by Steffy’s blog), yesterday I had a very enjoyable dinner at Tokyo Diner with the unlikeliest bunch of old acquaintances :) and I’m looking forward to next week – long, long overdue night out with ex-colleagues Hannah and Vanessa, some front of house volunteering, meeting up with Eunice, dinner with Charmain, and Oxford over the weekend! Excited.

And now, carbonara recipe time!

I wanted to post this anyway because it was so fantastic, but I’m glad there is popular demand for it. As a bit of background: authentic Italian carbonara does not contain cream. I’m not even sure if it contains egg whites. I suspect it doesn’t, and it’s only meant to be cooked with egg yolk – which is why I avoided it for such a long time (I don’t like separating eggs, I always end up throwing out the unused half cos I don’t know what to do with it). But the other day I came across this recipe which didn’t involve separating eggs, and I tried it out immediately.

As I never measure anything, these proportions are taken from the link above:

600 grams spaghetti or bucatini
120 grams guanciale or pancetta — diced or cut into strips
1 clove garlic
2 medium eggs (very fresh)
100 grams mixed Parmesan and pecorino Romano (or all pecorino) – grated
olive oil
salt and pepper

1. Boil your pasta till al dente. Drain. Save some of the pasta water.
2. While the pasta is boiling, beat eggs in a bowl with a pinch of salt and some cheese.
3. Peel your garlic clove and fry it with the guanciale or pancetta in a pan till the meat is on the verge of becoming crispy. You don’t have to add oil to the pan if there is enough fat on your meat. I never do.
4. Add the drained pasta to the pan and toss with the guanciale/pancetta.
5. Lower heat to minimum. Add the egg mixture and toss well. Be VERY careful not to let the egg set or cook because you will have scrambled egg with pasta if you do so. If it looks too dry, thin it with pasta water.
6. Remove from heat and add the rest of the cheese plus salt and black pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Some notes

My proportions were all out of whack, but essentially they were: 2 servings of pasta, 205g pancetta (which was too much, but that was the amount my pack contained and I didn’t want to have like 2 tablespoonfuls of pancetta sitting in my fridge), 3 medium eggs, and a lot of cheese. I like cheese.

I didn’t have pecorino Romano, so I only used Parmesan. I think it makes a difference, so the next time I will try it with both cheeses. Also I had run out of garlic, so I skipped that. It turned out fine, though I adore garlic and I’m sure it would’ve been better with.

For extra droolsome flavour, turn down the heat before you add the pasta to the pan, and throw in a generous splash of white wine while your guanciale/pancetta is still sizzling. Let this reduce till you get a delicious syrupy winey liquid, then add the pasta. I didn’t do this in this recipe because I had no wine in the house (sob), and it is probably grossly inauthentic anyway, but I usually do it when I make carbonara and the wine imparts a terrific kick. I’m not enough of a gastronome to properly put it into words, so all i can say is it tastes really good.

This recipe does not reheat well. Obvious on hindsight, but I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, so I reheated it the next day and wound up with exactly what you’re not supposed to (scrambled egg pasta).

The bottom line… carbonara typically feels too heavy and sickening after a while because of the addition of cream (an American adulteration). The egg way produces a much lighter, more palatable dish. And it was really the best carbonara I’ve ever had, ever. I tend to serially order carbonara at Italian restaurants because it is by far my favourite pasta, and I’ve had a lot of carbonara, but I feel like I can’t have it with cream any more after trying this.

Let me know how you get on with it if you try it out!

tori karaage – picture from bento.com

Tori karaage is one of my favourite Japanese dishes. It’s one of my favourite dishes, full stop, actually; there’s just something about the taste of the chicken that renders me a salivating mess every time a plate of it appears in front of me. Thus it is – naturally enough – a dish I have been trying to replicate in my kitchen forever, with varying levels of success.

Until today, when I had the most amazing homemade tori karaage ever, I am not even kidding. And it is SO simple – all you need is light soy sauce, ginger, and some kind of cooking wine (I used shao hsing jiu, which makes an acceptable replacement for sake when you’re a poor student in a pinch). The recipe I used was this one, from Just Hungry, a wonderful food site which I will definitely be patronising much more often in future.

I wanted to take a photo of my tori karaage, but it was so good that I literally completely forgot about it once the first piece came off the pan and I gobbled it up like the greedy karaage-loving monster I am. I just wanted to eat more. It isn’t often that I find an online recipe so good I have to blog about it and share the foodie love and goodness with everyone else… this one is a keeper for sure. Try it!