Png Kueh 饭桃

Recipe for Png Kueh from these 2 website ( Asian Eats and Roseskithcen)
Ingredients - Dough
300g rice flour
50g tapioca flour
Boiling water, about 2 rice bowls
A few drops of red food coloring

Ingredients - Fillings
300g glutinous rice, washed & soaked for 3 hours.
Soy sauce to taste
100 g dried prawns, washed and soaked
4 dried mushroom, soaked

Fillings
For the glutinous rice, add enough water (I used the water from the soaked mushrooms) and steam until cooked.
Cut the dried mushroom into strips and stir fry it together with the dried prawns until fragrant.
Add the cooked glutinous rice.
Add Soy sauce to taste
Mix well and set aside.

Kueh
Mix the flour together, add the boiling water until dough is formed and mix with a wooden spoon.
Add the red food colouring
Mix well and leave for a few minutes until the dough is not hot to touch. In the meantime, you can prepare a small bowl of water with some oil (water-oil solution).
Grease the plate for steaming and the mould for the kueh.
Knead the dough using the water-oil solution.
The hardest part of the task - Wrapping the filling and make the mould.
Pinch out a small round of the dough, flatten it and placed it over the mould, like a bowl.
Put about 2 tablespoons of fillings into the "bowl" & wrap the dough by pulling the dough together to cover up the fillings.
Press the wrapped dough into the mould. Knock the moulded dough out.
Place it on the greased plate and steam for about 15 mins.
Pan fry later when ready to eat.

The above recipe makes about 15 png kueh. I think it's possible to make more than 15 as I kept pushing the filings in and the skins are thin. Some leftover dough, thus likely to make more than 15 if you go easy on the filings.

Sam comment : Too light shade of pink!

Weekend trip to Madrid
We booked a trip to Madrid, arriving in Madrid last Sat and depart on Tues. The weather was simply too hot for us, feels like back in SG!!

Flew via BA and stayed at Hotel Praga, all booked via Expedia. The Madrid airport and the city are very well connected, we travelled everywhere via metro.

On the way to our first stop, we got lost and found ourselves at the Atocha train station.
Large plants and a pond full of turtles in the centre of the station.

First stop = Reine Sofia Museum
Modern art museum, not our cup of tea. Anyway, the entrance fee was free at the time we were there, thus worth the trip to see-see-look-look.

Realised that restaurant serve dinner late, thus we had a drink at Hardrock Cafe and walk to 25 Juan Bravo for dinner (as recommended by Telegraph).
There's not even a word of English on the menu and dinner is only serve from 9pm onwards!! However, we decide to order drinks and wait for dinner plus the waiter was very patient and tried his best to describe the menu to us. We can only guess and hope for the best for for what we ordered. The dishes were a plate of jamon (which is ham,really good), baby squid with chick pea (taste like chick pea so assume so as we can't read spanish!!) and goat cheese with crystallised onion (we thought he meant lamb stew, how wrong we were!!). The waiter was far to nice to us and we tried to finish off everything, although the cheese was just too cheesy to finish off!

Sunday
Had previously booked the bullfight online, thus need to arrive before 12.30pm to collect the ticket from Plaza del Carmen near Gran Via. Interesting building on the way.

Realised that the ticket price was only 24.70 euro each but we paid 32.40 euro each online.... At least we don't have to queue for the ticket at the entrance and had got the seats we want (first row of Category 2 and in shade).

Plan for Sunday is sight-seeing/ shopping and watch bull fight in the evening.
On the left : Plaza Mayor
On the right : Mercado de san miguel Not within my plan, but it was a great find and stop over for lunch here.

Oyster is Sam's favorite, thus a MUST have!
The smoked salmon was good.

Bull fight

The stadium was located near one of the metro station (Ventas), very easy to get to. At the stadium, you can rent seat cushion. The salesperson informed us that the fee is 2 euro each, we declined as I remember reading the forum that it cost only 1 euro. After we walked nearer to our zone, we saw the the cushion were rented for 1.20 euro, the previous salesperson were trying to cheat us (luckily I had read the forum!).
It's damn hot in Madrid, good thing Sam insisted on buying the seats in the shade, thank goodness for that!
The event consist of 6 bull fights, the first 2 were interesting, after that it gets abit boring and repetitive. However we stayed on, not wanting to miss out on anything. Our seats were fantastic as there's a father and son seated above us with the son kept asking questions (questions which we also like to ask) and his father seems to be very knowledgeable and explained all of them, with us tuning into their conversation.

Monday
The main purpose of our trip was to visit Segovia for it's suckling pig!! We saw a TV programme in UK which feature the restaurant cutting the suckling pig with a plate (see link for info), thus have decided to visit Segovia eversince. There's a fast train from Chamartin train station (Medrid) to Segovia-Guiomar, half an hour journey and a shuttle bus from train station to Segovia centre (about 20 mins). However the frequency of the train is about 1 and a half hour and we just miss the 10.30am train, thus we waited at the station for the next train at 12pm.

The restaurant we booked was Mason De Candido. We ordered a portion each and it was very delicious, juicy and the skin was very crispy. However I was very disappointed as they don't show the cutting of the suckling pig using plate.

After lunch, we need to walk the fats off!!

The Aquaduct, a heritage site. Magnificant!
Streets of Segovia and Cathedral.

Alcazar (Castle) of Segovia and we managed to climb the 152 steps in the tower of the castle.

We were back in Madrid at about 7pm and walked from Sol metro station to Plaza de la Independencia.
We wanted to take some night shots using our newly purchased Nikon D90, however we forgot to bring the tripod plus the sun sets at about 10pm, too late for us as we are too tired!

Tuesday
Slept till 10am and packed up to go back home.

九层糕

Steamed the kueh today using this recipe, however I'm using creamed coconut pack, thus it's abit more oily than usual.

9 layers and a red top layer as requested by Sam.

Photographer

Save my last post re wedding for the photographer (save the best for last)!! As per my previous post, we signed with AMPM and CS Lim was our photographer for the wedding day. Met up with CS Lim a few days before the wedding and was shown the different albums available. We were impressed with the 8R album and decided to upgrade our package and top up the extra.

The photos taken were amazing, all were very natural and definitely capture the moments of the day!!

Fetching the bride
A bride in waiting(Left) My sisters for the day. Friends and families we had been to my parents' flat were impressed that the flat looks much bigger and spacious as the sister had hidden the fridge and sewing machine behind them.
(Right) Sam arriving in the wedding car.
(Left) Sam finally managed to pass through my sisters' tasks and was pleased to see me.
(Right) Under the red umbrella and on our way to Sam's parents place.

Arriving in Bishan
Love the greens behind us (taken at Bishan HDB carpark)
(Left) Parents were impressed with this picture as they thought it was taken at some park. In fact, this was taken at Bishan HDB carpark.
(Right) Sam taking out my veil.

(Left & right) On our way back to my parent's place. We were amazed that these 2 pictures turn out so well and they were taken at HDB void deck.

Photo taking in Goodwood Park Hotel
Lovely picture of us in hotel
(Left) Both of us were very tired by the time we reach the hotel, but got to finish the shoot before we can rest!
(Right) Taken by the small pool in hotel
(Left) Taken in hotel's restaurant area.
(Right) A classic picture in front of the hotel.

Evening dinnerUs waiting to walk in
(Left) Both of us standing at the reception greeting our guests.
(Right) Cake cutting
(Left) I love this photo to bits!! Lovely shot of me in my evening gown and my hairdo.
(Right) Toasting with friends.

Hokkien Prawn Noodles
Found a recipe for Hokkien Prawn Noodles in the diary received on Singapore Day which I thought was achievable. Receipe as follow, modified by me (to serve 3) :-

Stock - about 20 prawn heads, some pork (should be pork bones), half ikan bilis cube, 1 dried scallop, 1 tbsp sugar, some light soy sauce (add to taste), 1 bulb garlic (separated and peeled), some white peper and water. Bring this to boil and simmer for an hour and need at least 4 ladles prawn stock.
4 eggs - beaten, fried and cut into small pieces
Pork lard - fried
6 small squids, sliced into rings
12 prawns
Some fish cake (none at home, so didn't put this in)
Bean sprouts
5 sprigs of spring onions, cut into about 5cm pieces
Bee Hoon (1 pack from Tesco)
Yellow noodles (1 pack from Tesco)
Limes (forgot to buy from Tesco!!)

In the wok, heat the oil and fry the garlic. Add the prawn and squids for about 1 minute. Add been hoon and 1 ladle of stock, ensure that the been hoon absorb the stock. Add the yellow noodles and add in 2 ladles of stock. Add the rest of the ingredients except for the lime. Add chili (sambal blachan) if you want. Add the ladles of stock. Add water if you want it abit more watery.

That's it, delicious!!

Singapore Day in London

Had been looking forward to the Singapore Day in London, all the food...... can't wait...

The event was held yesterday at Hampton Court Palace, took us about 1 & a half hours to drive there. The place was easy to find and well signposted.



The weather forecast wasn't too good and there were dark patches of clouds around, but it stays bright throughout the whole event. The entry of the event was the ERP, however no payment required for this event!!



Map of the event but there wasn't a need for the map cos we can see and smell food!! The event opens at 10.30, we reach the place about 12pm and it was packed with lots of people queuing for food!



First stall I queued was the Hokkien Mee, took me forever to get a plate but it was worth it (so good!). All the food are free, with the stall holders flew in from Singapore, authentic hor. Needless to say, we queued for other food too and dapao some (Curry puff).... The Kwak Chap was very nice too (all the way from Toa Payoh!)




Of course, there's a stage for performance and entertainment. But we too busy with food, so only sat down for abit. Mark Lee and Jack Neo was fantastic at making us laugh.



The desert was serve from 2.30pm onwards and we queue for Pulut Hitam, too full afterwards for anything else. Some of the stalls were closed by this time, finished. Overheard that the Old Chang Kee Curry Puff was closed at 1pm, well it was the shortest queue among all the stall and very easy to re-queue, thus we dapao-ed! The event was scheduled to end at 4.30pm but we left early at 3pm to avoid the rush.

So what did we bring home?

The Goodies bag

Which contains :-
- a mat to sit on for the event, very handy!
- a rain cost in case in rains, be prepare!
- a pack of wet tissue (to clean ourselves after eating, how thoughtful)
- a packet of Muruku Dhall cracker, to make you miss tibits in SG
- a paper ball, to make you miss your childhold in SG
- a packet of kuti kuti, to make you miss your childhood in SG
- a puzzle , to pass time if you need to
- an eraser, to??? to make you miss SG as you work?
- a 10% discount coupon from Charles & Keith (valid till 31 Dec 09). What is this any good??
- a booklet on Information on registration of overseas electors (a very good way to distribute info)



Another goodies bag from Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA).
Includes :-
- Singapore tote bag (great for containing our dapao-ed stuffs!)
- A t-shirt (Of course, there's always some mention of SG on the T-shirt and this time, it's a Singapore flag on the back. See below for the 2 front design to choose from)
- a 18-month planner cum recipe book (I think it's too big and bulky for a planner)
- Singapore Swing, 12 familar Singapore songs in this jazz instrumental album. (Had not listen to it yet, but would if I miss home)
- Singapore flag pin (Errr, great for a souvenir).
- Stikfas lion, a toy (I'm too old for this)
- Roar for Singapore, need to punch out the pieces on this postcard to make this cute lion stand proudly on your desk. (Err, doubt I would!)



There's 2 design of T-shirt included in each goodies bag, you can only choose one and the size you want (S, M or L). I got the M and Sam got the L but the size different isn't huge, doubt Sam can fit into the L, guess both T-shirt are mine!!


The left t-shirt says "I want my laksa, teh tarik, nasi lemak, chicken rice, prata. Now."
The right t-shirt says "My heart lies 137km above the equator on a little red dot."

Lastly the items we dapao-ed.
- 17 packet of Yeo's Green Bean Soy Drink. There's free bottled water and Yeo's Green Bean Soy drink at the event and the drinks stalls are more than willing to give you extra. Before we left, the stalls were eager to distribute out the drinks, thus we gladly receive.
- 3 Old Chang Kee curry puff, had them for dinner yesterday night, delicious.
- 5 bottle of Satay Sauce. You need coupons (which is in your goodies bag) to redemn, but again they are more than willing to give out extra, hence we got 5.



According to ChannelNewsAsia, the cost of the event was S$6m!!! About 12,000 people turned up, that's a cost of S500 for each person..........