Josh Bdae~

Well, then again its not really purely a birthday thingy since its a day after his birthday. But then, i made a cake for him though, so...

So it was a nice n hot sunday. I invited Sean, Xiaomei and Big bear and little "big" bear aka asher jivan Zheng aka my Godson, over for dinner. My god son have milk only though. Mmm... is it his mother's milk???

So the day started with a long sleep... lol i woke up at around 10 though to start preparing the feast/dinner (not so fantastic = dinner, not feast). Actually i had this idea quite long ago le. Since usually i go over to josh's place whenever he whips out a good dish and i am always proudly the one being named by him to test out the food. (Although not always they are fantastic la~ :P Wait, they are not fantastic, doesnt mean they are lousy right? they could be "good"~?) So in order to appreciate all those meals that he made, i decided, crazily, to prepare some thing too. :)

I started with the easiest to get me started. Also because it needs to be chilled to taste better. TIRAMISU~ Pick up the recipe by Jamie Oliver from the internet. I remembered seeing him on my flight to New Calendonia the other time. My impression of his cooking, Messy Chef. lol. Which makes me think of another chef that i know of... Err... better dun mention names. Wahaha~ For me, i feel i am pretty much a messy chef too. But i actually dun like it to be messy. If you were to see me cook, i tends to make a mess out of everything, but that is purely due to the fact that i am not familiar with the cooking jus yet. Things jus dun in order when you are not experience. But i always make it a point to clean up the unnecessary in the sink whenever i can. Not like the other chef... lol

Ok, stop "swaning" him liao, so the easiest dish was made within 1hr. Mascapone, Tia Maria, Dark Choco and butter fingers. Mix them together = TIRAMISU!!! Previously i wanted to prepare the Oreo Cheese cake one. But because Josh already guessed it on friday. So i tot i should surprise him with another dessert. Coincidentally, he was craving for Tiramisu, so i tot y not? Turn out he was looking forward to my Orea Cheese cake. :(

Next up is the French Onion Soup. I have to confess, i nvr ask if he like onion soup. But i was interested in cooking this, esp when i saw the podcast from cook illustrated. lol. This is the most difficult dish, Difficult to prepare, and uses the most odd stuffs that unless u cook another pot of French Onion Soup, you probably dun use them. Cooking this took me more then 5hrs. Excluding the part where i have to bake the soup with crutons and Le Gryuere cheese. (Damn exp Cheese $8.++ per 100gm) The soup also calls for beef broth, which is not commonly found in the supermarket. I subsitute with a beef stock cube. This turns out to be the disaster as i didnt knwo the protion to put. Or rather i choose not to believe the advise by Josh and Sean n choose to believe in my tasting. Wahaha, as usual the are "heavy" in flavour and turns out the soup is damn salty. Not nice, and even cooking the next day with additional portions of water didnt help. End up half that pot went into the rubbish bin.


The most tedious part is to cook the onion until it turns brown with a very nice caramelise smell.


Together with the broths and bayleave and thyme.


Chief Chef in the preparation of the French Onion Soup.

The disaster aside, at least there was one dish meant to be commented after a whole days of hard work. Le Pizza~

The Pizza was not that difficult to make, especially its the second time i am making it le. Next week gonna make some more. lol

U bascally need bread flour, some yeast n water, together with some olive oil and salt. I didnt use the machine to kneed coz i always felt nothing beats the likes of a hand kneed. At the end of the day the dough looks like this~


Dough after expanding.

This portion is enough to make three huge pizza. Josh brought over some smoke duck too for the pizza and they taste great! Other halves were Hawaiian and Mushroom supreme.



My sis loves the pizza so much and asked me to prepare for her in her coming friend gathering. But she was so excited that she even wants it this week! That explains my cooking today...

After a whole hard days work, the guest came and we ate and take. We even played Guitar Hero inbetween!~ Gosh, i so wanna play the game together with Janice and Sew!

Lastly, the day end with cutting of the Tiramisu Cake. Turns out the Jamie Oliver is not tat accurate here. The additional coffe should not be thrown into the bowl. They butter fingers should be dry to improve the texture of the cake. But overall, i felt the cake was nice. (The $16 Mascarpone makes a difference loh!) I actually bought the second portion of the mascarpone le. Ready to make the second Tiramisu anytime!

Pics on the day:


Sous-Chefs of the day, pre[aring the toppings for their fav pizza.


The Birthday boy with the "wat are you trying to do huh, wanna steal my pizza is it?" look.


Josh with the "Argh, i wanna stab that cake look"


Josh again with the happily recieving the cake look. lol. Looks fake though. T_T


Josh painful look after trying the cake while Big bear watches behind. (THEY TURN OUT NICE HOR!)


Finally, Josh with the smile of approval and satisfaction!

YEAH~ Mission accomplished!

Family Sunday

Spent the whole day today with my family today.

From the late morning which i woke up to the late night return from a shopping trip at various places.

Jumped out of bed at 9.45 as i was planning to make pizza. This is my second time making this, last week i was making this for Josh on his birthday. Mmm... i think i forgot to blog about that, see wat i can do later.

This time instead of the normal plain pizza dough, i opt to put some Italian herbs into it. But i was a bit cautious, didn't want to put too much to spoilt the taste. Turn out we could hardly taste the herbs. Think next week, coz my sis friend is coming, i shall put more herbs in it. :P


This is the dough after the yeast have successfully doubled in the dough.

There was too much water this time round too as the last time i tried to knead it, some yeast mixture spilled out of the flour well that i have created. Turns out the crust is a bit wet the first time round i tried to bake it. The second one i baked both side till dry before adding the ingredient.


KK' styles pizza halves. Hawaiian/Mushroom supreme.

After baking, we had to rush to the photo studio. Today, we had a appointment with Serangoon Broadway Studio to take a family portrait and personal graduation portrait.

Didn't know this company is actually that popular!!! There were easily 6-7 families in the huge studio when we entered. And we were greeted with lotsa china ladies (Customer service la...) After picking the correct graduation robe (Turn out they dun have my uni original NAME hood. T_T. If only i didn't missed the local graduation ceremony due to work.). But the service was pro. The ladies were around to help you make up (Ladies nia la) then they will put the hood with pins all over the body. To properly secure the hood in place, unlike the one in UK where our hoods were all messed up! The cameraman was pretty good too. Although the poses were a bit systematic and also a "look-a-like" with all other photos around the studio, except for the faces. lol

We finish off the photo taking with almost 1K++ burnt from our pocket. Oh wait, i think its my sis pocket. Wahaha~

Went to AMK hub right next. Initially wanted to explore the new Serangoon Shopping Centre that was in the newspaper, but silly me, didnt get the address, hence we went to AMK hub instead. My sis and mum seldom explore this part of Singapore, so i tot it might be a good suggestion. Turns out, its not that fantastic. With not that much shops for the ladies to shop. Plus the limited number of restuarant option, cause us to end up with Ichiban Sushi. Which turns out to be a disappointing place.

Firstly we had to queue relatively long for the seats. But queueing is not a problem, unless when there are actually empty seats around when we enter... WTF?!?
Next, imagine drinking hot japanese tea out of clear tall glasses? Hello? They served us two porcelain cups and one glass cup for our hote tea. When questioned, they say there are not enough cups... -_-" Finally, when the food comes, they were pretty disappointing loh. Only the lobster salad inari earn praises.

AMK hub was quite a boring place to shop in, i should say, after being spoilt by the likes of JP2 and IMM, i think such small scale shopping mall dun really attract me anymore.

While on the road back, we stop over at West Coast Plaza for a cup of coffee. Since both my sis frequent the place and was recommending the coffee and toast similar cafe on the three floor. To me, they are all the same la... Coffee and toast, toast box, Ah mei, Ya Kun, they jus serve small cups of coffe at premium prices. Only the Ya Kun earns my recommendation coz i find their coffee are more flavourful. Too bad my office dun have ya kun, only coffee and toast... T_T.

Bought black olives for my pizza tml. Think the supreme would be great with the olives. Yeah~