Ondine

I have been advised recently by the doctor that I need to severely curtail the amount of wheat in my diet, as well as yeast-based products. This is due to recently discovered food intolerances. It's not anywhere near life-threatening, but does significantly affect quality of life (bloating, skin conditions, etc). To that end, I was wondering if anyone could help give me suggestions as to what I can have as staples. Obviously my breadmaker is going to be chugging away for the housemates now, not me. And there is only so much in the way of rice, noodles and rice/bean starch-based noodles I can stand. I have never been much of a candidate for the Atkins diet. On a related note, I would like to ask rather sheepishly as to exactly how to cook polenta. I have done websearches and have gotten lots of different answers and just wound up terribly confused. How do I end up with those wonderful firm golden cakes, or that luscious pile of cheesy mush... I have a bottle of white truffle oil, and I'm not afraid to use it! Many grateful thanks in advance.

There is also another unofficial Singapore foodie site, here. I like it as the actual link takes you to their "Hall of Fame", where the members have nominated what they consider the best places for particular dishes. http://www.makantime.com/best.htm It's worth noting that the restaurants regarded as really high end in Singapore are not really that spectacular. You'll pay very high prices for above average food. In my experience it's more likely that the truly transcendent meals will be at local/hawker eateries. Good luck experimenting!

Dinner was something we call white chicken pasta thing. Small cubes of smoked bacon were rendered slowly until crispy, then set aside. Homemade garlic confit was added (with the fat) to the pan and used to cook off a pound of inch-cubes of free range chicken thigh, which were also set aside. White wine to deglaze, then added finely chopped mushrooms and a double handful of minced parsley to the pan. When that soaked up the wine and started to stick, we poured in some single cream and let it boil a little. This was mixed, together with the bacon and chicken, with some leftover boscaiola sauce (white wine and mushroom) and a little parmesan. Served over fresh fettucine and a green salad.

Having grown up in Singapore in the materialistic 80's I have fond memories of the wild frenzy of mooncake variants that various enterprising bakeries tried to make money with. Many of them were quite frankly awful. I particularly remember the durian variant that was just....terrible. And I looove durian. Who remembers the crystal skin varieties? I don't know if they even sell them any more. THe idea was that the pastry wrapping was not baked, and remained white. They were also called 'snowskin'. There was even a type of crystal skin where the skin was flavoured with pandan (screwpine). I was never keen on the redbean or meat fillings, let alone the mung bean paste fillings. I guess it was mainly the texture, as the various bean or meat fillings were crumbly, reminding one of the texture of a stale moon cake. I hated the nut ones as a child, but would be willing to give them another try now that I am older. I find myself a traditionalist when it comes to mooncakes. I only like the common, lotus-seed paste, burnished golden mooncakes. Whether they should contain yolks tends to depend on my mood of the time. The creamy saltiness of the yolks tend to point up the sweetness of the lotus seed paste while reducing the heaviness of the mooncake. The appeal for me lies on the unctuous smooth richness of the filling, which is never overly sweet in the high-end moon cakes. A tiny wedge of sliver of the cake is perfect with a cup of strong, potent chinese tea - Ti Kuan Yin for preference - as a teatime snack. The most perfumed cakes were made with lard in the filling instead of vegetable oil, rendering the addition of melon seeds in the paste unnecessary. The deep brown pastry tended to add bittersweet notes to the gentle sweetness of the paste, and the aroma of the tea just brought it all together perfectly. And then we'd wonder where the mooncake went, shrug, and unwrap another with a grin. I guess that mooncakes easily turn people off if they are even slightly stale, as the filling or even the cake itself begins to weep oil and gain an almost plutonium-like denseness. Unlike fruitcakes, which are prized more the longer they have sat steeping in brandy (or if you are my aunt, cognac). Luckily I like both! Dryden, I think it's great that you are using little mooncakes for wedding cake favours. Nice change of pace from the interminable not-very-good wedding fruitcake chunks. One of my aunt's colleagues gave out tiny (2-3 inch diameter) mooncakes for her wedding too. However, as she was marrying a Japanese fellow they opted for the red bean filling as a very apt statement on the blending of cultures.

Lovely to be of help, Titus! I do confess as a rather junior member of the eGullet forums (in age as well as experience) I often feel as if i have little to add. Who would've thunk that my childhood memories would be so useful? And I had no idea that the salted-egg-steamed-pork dish even had a name! Mind you, there were always arguments in the family over whether it was better to use coarsely minced or finely ground pork. Shiewie's 'Triple-Egg Custard' conjures up visions of an almost chawanmushi variant. Would it be possible to post a recipe, Shiewie? I have had a rolled omelette cooked with roughly diced salt duck egg and century egg mixed in. It was very tasty!

Sorry for taking so long to reply to you Titus, expecially as it seems that Shiewie has largely answered your question about the chye poh. Our family always used the minced, salted variety. It would be soaked for a few minutes (depending on how salty you like it) before getting blended in with the beaten egg. We liked it fried in a sort of middling thickness, about a 1/4 inch, that could be easily cut into portions for the family. Sometimes if my grandmother was dining with us we'd add a little sugar to the mix. The tiny red shallots I have only ever seen in Asia. They ranged from hazelnut-sized to about quail-egg sized. The golden shallots I see in Australia where I live now are 2-3 times the size and nowhere near as intense in flavour. Once fried, the shallots were never drained too well (the infused oil was as fragrant as the shallots themselves) and kept almost indefinitely in the fridge. I myself have a containerfull stashed away in the freezer that is no less than 3 years old, but is still wonderful. A great simple dish you could try with congee, Titus, is one that my grandmother used to make when we were kids. For 4 people, you need 2 salted duck eggs and about 500g (just over a pound) of minced pork. Separate out the whites of the eggs and blend them with the pork, a clove of minced garlic, salt and pepper. Spread this mixture out in an even layer on an oiled plate that fits in your steamer. The salted raw yolks are thick and malleable, like dough. Cut each in two, and flatten each half. Arrange the yolk halves on top of the pork patty and steam the whole until done. Don't worry about the thickness of the patty as this dish is very forgiving of an extra few minutes of steaming. It's wonderful with congee!

Got some nice thick (about 2 inches! ) baldchin groper fillets, cut into cute rectangular chunks, seasoned with sea salt and cracked pepper, then wrapped in fresh rocket leaves and a couple pieces of schinkenspeck. I then rolled each little bundle in a mixture of beaten egg and minced fresh garlic. These were then wrapped into parcels with filo, glazed with the last of the egg and baked for just 20 minutes. Served with sliced good tomatoes (a miracle in late winter). Delicious and weirdly filling - is it the filo? I've never had it before though I have cooked with it...and it made everyone really full...

Got my butcher to stuff a good 1.5 kilo (3lb) pork neck with some fresh hot chorizo sausagemeat, which I roasted/braised in the oven in foil for 2 hours, with 1/4 bottle of Cabernet Sauv poured over and dotted with homemade garlic butter. For the last hour I opened up the foil and scattered handfuls of tiny unpeeled garlic cloves all around the roast. (You know the tiny not-really-worth-peeling cloves you get in heads of garlic? I saved them up from the garlic butter making.) When the roast was done I set it aside to rest while I mashed the garlic cloves and fished out the skins, before pouring the pan juices off for gravy, as there was very little fat. For goeswith, I had blanched broccolini, tossed with a little light soy and some sesame oil, and heaps of mashed potatoes, made with half Royal Blue and half Ruby Lou potatoes, cream, butter, milk and sea salt. Oh, and a smidge more garlic butter. Well, it's late winter here and stormy outside, and the whole household is down with a flu, so I thought garlic would be the way to go. When sliced, the chorizo stuffing showed through in a pretty star-shaped pattern - I love my butcher!

I can think of a couple from the last time I was in Bangkok a couple years ago. If you are going to be having a few upscale eating experiences I can definitely recommend the traditional Thai restaurant in the Grand Hyatt Erawan. Admittedly it is a little pricey, but the last time I heard they were doing an all-you-can-eat deal. A set price (can't remember how much but not unreasonably high) and they bring you a multi-page, beautifully bound menu which you can order anything from, as many times as you wish. The red roast duck curry with pea eggplants and the dry-fried catfish salad were my favourites. I think they are still doing this as a lunch special. Although I can't recall the name of the restaurant, it is the one on the same level as the hotel's swimming pool. There was a tiny, faded-gentry type of place called 'The Lemongrass Restaurant' in Soi 24 on Sukhumvit Rd, where we lived in the mid 80's that was still there on my last trip, though I didn't eat there. It was an exquisitely converted private home full of antiques and flowers, with a bilingual menu (english and thai versions on facing pages ). I can't guarantee it's still there now, but the food was quite good. I particularly remember a dish where a chicken tenderloin was pincered in a bamboo stick split lengthwise, spread with a swwet-hot paste of tomato and birdseye chillies, and grilled over charcoal until smoky and juicy. (Edit: I think Robert Brown posted about this one in another thread on May 29, oops!.) For a slightly kitschy and more basic experience, if you like seafood, the "If It Swims" restaurant on Sukhumvit Rd is a good place. I can't remember which Soi it's in, but all the taxi/tuktuk drivers knew it as it had an absolutely GIGANTIC neon signboard (bigger than Coke's!) with a rock lobster on it, with "If It Swims, We Have It" written on it. It is an aeroplane-hangar-sized space with a fresh-food market all down one wall. You grab a shopping cart and a buch of plastic bags and choose what flopping-fresh fish or fish parts you want, which dewy, bloom-fresh vegetables you want, what perfumy tropical fruits you would like for dessert, or even if you want any of the huge selection of sushi varieties or assortments they offer. The other side of the counter is an enormous kitchen filled with people wearing chef hats (20-50+), all serving, prepping, cooking or making sushi. Next you take your cartload to the checkout and pay for your food. The rest of the space is taken up with rows of dining tables. As you leave the checkout a waitress excorts you to a table and offers a menu stating a list of ways your raw materials can be prepared for your dinner, and the small cooking fees charged. Everything is impeccably fresh - one of our regular favourites was always fried rice prepared with a scoopful of freshly-shelled raw crab meat that we kids were allowed to select. Sigh. Now I'm hungry.

Hi guys! As a bit of a chicken rice nut I pine after my fix and thank my lucky stars every time I get to go back to Singapore as it means I will be flying home wearing my "special pants" - you know, the ones a size up from usual. (teehee) I found a site that purports to hold up a number of the best chicken rice places on the island; here it is: http://www.makantime.com/quest.htm If you guys ever get to Singapore, you'll have to try a few/some/all of these I always order some of the chicken liver on the side, and plenty of the special chilli sauce - the liver is so smooth and flavourful after being poached with the chicken!

Growing up the variety of congee we always had was Teochew style. It was quite watery, with still identifiable (if very soft) grains in a thickened but still soupy plain liquid. Sometimes a handful of shelled peanuts (still in their red skins ) were boiled with the rice. We often had it with sides like hard-boiled salted duck egg (split lenghtwise and scooped out piecemeal with eating spoon), dry-fried salt anchovies (ikan bilis) and chye poh omelette (gold fried sheets of omelette embedded with bits of chopped preserved salt-sweet vegetable). Maybe a few shreds of toasted nori. Sometimes maybe a little red-cooked or soy-stewed (loh bak) pork leg or belly, stewed with hard-boiled eggs, spongy tofu (taukwa) and unpeeled garlic cloves. The plain congee was most often eaten as a light meal (possibly after a few days of heavy restaurant meals) with leftovers. Teochew-style (ie, slightly watery) is best made with leftover cooked rice boiled in more water. Boiling raw rice in water results in a much thicker, pastier congee, without separated grains, as the rice grains absorb far more of the water. The dry-caramelised onions mentioned earlier are an institution of my childhood as they are tiny red shallots (the size of fat garlic cloves), peeled and thinly sliced, then painstakingly deep fried until they are not quite on the point of burning. They were intensely fragrant and crumbly, and doled out to be scattered over clear soups and congee. They were terribly labour-intensive and only ever made at home. The commercial varieties were regarded as little better than pencil shavings in flavour and texture. Oh dear, now I am getting so very nostalgic.

Not to be terribly inflammatory, but my family have always reckoned the smell of frying belacan to be more than just pungent. We always used to fry it outdoors as the point of readiness was reached, as my mother once told me, " when your eyes are watering but before they overflow." Mind you, we always fried the chilli paste in together with the belacan when making sambal, instead of one after the other. Trust me, all your neighbours will be able to tell you're frying belacan. And the neighbourhood cats, too.

Yes, and kangkong/kangkung has the toughest hollow stems known to man! I remember going to slightly shonky chines restaurants as a kid and having my dad yell at the chef for giving us a dish of elderly kangkong - so tough that the whole tangled mass lifted off the plate with a single tentative pull of the chopsticks. Mind you, my brother had an unfortunate experience with this vegetable once in Thailand..... We were dining in a darker corner of an open-air or garden restaurant, and he grabbed a chopstickbiteful of kangkong, only to find that tangled up in the leaves and stems were tiny green birdseye chillies. Which are frankly incendiary. The rest of us made sure to throughly shake each bite of kangkong before inserting in mouth.

Hello everybody! Just to add my two cents' worth, vegetables in Southeast Asia too were/are traditionally fertilised with night soil, to the point that even in modern-day Malaysia and Thailand one can be caught unawares. Having grown up in Singapore in the late 70's-early 80's(where many vegetables were imported from neighbouring Malaysian market gardens), I still have a deap-seated aversion to raw vegetables of any kind. I have had to forcibly educate myself in Western-style salads (like the traditional Caprese of sliced tomatoes and basil) and still prefer cooked veges or composed salads like Caesar or Cobb. Also I was always discouraged as a kid from eating too much (read, any) raw vegetables like lettuce or cucumber on the grounds that they were too 'cooling', or 'yin' and would unbalance my 'yang'. P/S: I have been away from eGullet far too long, I've missed it so!

Thanks for the welcome guys! Miguel, I guess I described the 'do' as a smallish party, it was with the usual flock-of-students-with-beer party in mind. You often get more than 65 people at those. I don't often entertain - just this holiday bash once a year, between Christmas and New Year - and when I do I like to take care of my guests. This party is has cost me close to $250 already, which is why it happens only once a year! (Remember, poor student here! ) I was thinking of driving to the local ice cream factory and buying tubs of their vanilla seconds, and maybe getting some fruit. The mango season is in full swing at the moment, with no less than 4 varieties making their way from up north. (I'm in the southwestern corner of the country.) Some nice plums out, and the peaches are starting to really smell up the supermarket, and battling it out with the mangoes! Vivremanger, the mangoes here are the equivalent of about US$3 each for fruit weighing just over a pound each. A little while ago we had a glut and the price dropped to 3 for about US$2.70. Unfortunately the price went back up. Due to a longstanding local drought however, our citrus isn't doing too well. My supermarket carries Californian lemons! And currently we have watermelons the size of sheepdogs going for about US 0.25 a pound. I wish I liked watermelon I really appreciate the advice, everybody. I'll try to keep up with all of you, I promise. There's just *SO* much to read...... Hugs!

Hi everyone! After lurking and reading the eGullet boards for close on a year now I have finally bitten the bullet and registered. I must say that I am terribly envious of everyone in the US and the UK, with all those wonderful markets, provedores and nifty restaurants. I live in Perth, Western Australia, which is somewhat *far* from all of these places. (I can only dream of dinner at the French Laundry!) I'm a 26 year old, impoverished fresh graduate and food obsessive - nice to meet all of you! On another note, I'd like to ask for advice of some of you dyed-in-the-wool entertainers out there, if I may be so bold. I am having a smallish informal party this weekend and was wondering if I could get someone to give me some advice on the menu arrangements? There will be about 15-20 all up, kinda informally from the barbecue (grill), served in the semi-wild backyard. (Remember, it's a scorching summer here down under.) The Menu To Start: Various dips with Turkish bread from a local Turkish family-run restaurant, with veggie sticks, to include cucumber, carrot and cauliflower. Meats: I've managed to persuade my butcher to dry-age a whole 3kg rump (5 and a bit lb I think), which will be chargrilled and served sliced. A couple of free range chickens (size 18, or 3 and a bit lb each). These will be bake-roasted in the Weber. One will be Western-seasoned, with lemon, garlic, parsley and thyme, with a slice of speck under the breast skin. The other will be Eastern-seasoned, with lime, garlic, lemongrass and soy, with grated ginger under the breast skin. A couple kilos (2lb each) of Pork and sage, and spicy garlic and herb sausages from my favourite Croatian butcher. A variety of mustards, tomato and hot sauces for goeswith. Veggies: A variety of grilled veggies, including eggplant, capsicum (red peppers), big flat mushrooms. Maybe sweetcorn in the husk if I can find good ones. Also grilled haloumi for vegetarians, along with hard boiled eggs in shell. Salads: A sliced plum and cherry tomato (homegrown) salad, with sliced bocconcini, chopped basil and EVOO A potato salad dressed simply with sour cream and spring onions A green salad (assemble-your-own) of buttercrunch, sliced red onion, sliced cucumber and avocado, with a bowl of red wine and EVOO vinaigrette on the side. An Asian-seasoned salad of pasta spirals, spring onions and cashews; dressing of sesame oil, soy with a tiny bit of tomato paste and sour cream. And both fresh Turkish bread and fresh breadmaker loaves for staple starch. What do you think? What should dessert be? Should I even have dessert at all? I was thinking of maybe handing round bought icecreams or popsicles. It's going to be quite hot so things like cheesecake will probably be out. Thanks!