Happy 2006!

Hope is often rented by the year.
A ceremony helps ensure the signing.
People like transitions to be clear,
Preferably at moments when they're dining.
Yet as a rental flat can be a home,
No one wants to terminate this lease.
Each thinks hope too poor a risk to own
While needing its bright arc for inner peace.
Years therefore start with hope again renewed
Even as the old year's wishes die.
After all the books have been reviewed,
Ring in the New Year!--with a gentle sigh.

By Turlough O'Carolan

Wishing all my friends (and others!) out there a very blessed and hope-filled 2006.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

Jeremiah 29:11-13

I Love Penang!

This was a really quick trip to Penang, mainly to visit my ailing granny (90 or 91 years old!) who had just been moved to a nursing home to get better 24 hour care. Food obsessed significant other (who had rashly arranged to do his IPPT the day after the trip) dragged us off on an island wide food sampling tour. The very first day, we landed (4 of us) in Island Hawker Center and S.O. actually ordered 9 dishes:
Penang Char Kway Teow
Penang Laksa
Chicken Rice (putatively for the kids!)
Satay
Sharksfin soup
Salted fish fried rice
Tomyam fried rice
Battered fish fried beehoon
Fish head beehoon soup

Reeling from that, we went on the next day to the 2 Sister's Char Kway Teow (see picture), Hokkien prawn noodles, yam cake and braised chicken feet, followed after shopping by a road side stop for Penang Road laksa and chendol. Apparently, the 2 sisters are not the ones frying the char kway teow, but their mother, this tiny little lady that fries each plate individually, so at peak hours, you may end up waiting for your food for about an hour. The char kuay teow comes with shredded crab meat on top. A little different from the Penang char kuay teow of my childhood. I remember eating this lovely kuay teow fried with chives (instead of bean sprouts) and served on these glass plates. I wouldn't know where to go to find that lovely combination now. A taxi driver told us, "In Penang, cannot starve one. Even the beggars are very choosy!"Even the chendol was phenomenal. A tiny little cart in a small alley, but with about 20 - 30 people surrounding it and slurping up the icy gula melaka-laden desert under the hot sun. Absolutely delightful, but by the evening poor Steffi was vomiting and my own eating frenzy was curtailed (although Ben went out that night for roast suckling pig!).


The next day was pool and beach day, and the kids had a grand time horse riding, jet ski-ing and making sandcastles on the beach. We met a boatman who had witnessed the Dec 26 2004 tsunami, and described the waves as 9 m tall, and how everybody just "lari" to get away from the giant waves.

Around midday, I rashly volunteered to accompany Ben on his quest to dig the deepest trench in the beach. He dug so deep that he hit a layer of water underground. Thank goodness he didn't find more than that. Probably since then, someone has fallen into the ditch. Anyway, I didn't realise that I was wearing a regular swim suit and he was wearing a full length suit and we happily laboured in the midday sun until I suddenly discovered that I was burnt to a crisp. Now I have 1st degree burns on 50% of my body. Ouch. Not to mention Steffi's GI bug that hit me on the way back to Singapore, but at least it's slowed down my eating spree and will help me to segue into my new year's resolution to EAT LESS AND EXERCISE MORE.

Christmas Flog

This past week has been an endless array of feasting - starting first on Christmas Eve, when we had a party of 12 at home, celebrating Christmas as well as one of our guest's 35th birthday. Followed of course by 3 days in Penang with non-stop sampling of local food. So now I have major food poisoning symptoms (on top of bad sunburn) but it was worth it!!!

"Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do."

Ecclesiastes 9:7.

Took a day's leave prior to Christmas Eve, just to run around and get ingredients. Swiss butchery ran out of prime rib more than 2 weeks before Christmas and I had to run to the Butcher instead. More expensive, but quite worth it since I had my heart set on doing a rib roast this Christmas. Plus my grand saga of The Chicken Livers - sent significant other to buy 500 g of chicken liver from market, and true to form, instead of 500 g, he bought 1 kg, and then pops it into the freezer...exactly what I had told him not to do. So the next day I had to trundle off to the market myself to get the fresh liver and to make the XO chicken pate...anyway here is my menu for that night:

Appetizers:
Grilled shrimp and baby spinach salad with truffle oil vinaigrette
Home-Made XO Brandy Chicken Liver Pate on Crostini
Smoked trout with crème fraiche and lumpfish roe
Mozarella and tomato stacks drizzled with balsalmic vinegar
Pears and Parma Ham

Main:
Rosemary and Thyme encrusted standing rib roast
Truffled mashed potatoes
Green beans sautéed with shallots and slivered almonds

Dessert
Cheese platter
Haagen Daz Ice cream cake (courtesy of ENT surgeon friend)

Wines
French Cabernet Sauvignon 1998
Canadian “sticky” dessert wine


The next day, made a thyme roasted turkey with caramelized onion and balsalmic dressing, mushroom and celery stuffing and spiced cranberry sauce. Turkey took a little long to cook, and actually, I preferred my maple syrup roast turkey recipe from last year and will probably go back to that next year. The cranberry sauce and the balsalmic dressing were quite snazzy, however. At least I am not cooking for the new year. Significant other is closing clinic and giving his staff a treat at Hanabi, which amazingly has not jacked up the prices over the festive season ($300 a head buffet at the Lines!!!). So I will lay low this weekend. Just have a cell group party tonight, where I'll finally make my toffee date pudding with my little pudding bowl that I got in Sydney.

What is Christmas about anyway?

This morning on the way to work, I was listening to 2 DJs plugging a hip new mobile phone - "what you really need this Christmas..." and "I have therefore I am!". In the midst of the breaking NKF scandal, it is all the more stark that having is a deep-seated need. "I have therefore I am!" is a subtle word play on ownership, and even the phrase "I am" seems to hark back to the original name of God Yahweh, meaning "I am". The subliminal message being sent out is that these physical pleasures are the key to the ultimate existence of self sufficiency and supremacy. And it is all the more evident that there are people out there who are willing to bend the rules to gain power, material wealth and an edge over others. Gold taps, 1st class airline travel, unlimited corporate spending, fat pay packets...there is something that baulks at these blatant excesses, but truth to tell, we are all guilty of it in some way or another.

If we want to look beyond the glitter of wealth and having this Christmas, we have to journey to a gritty turn of the millenium setting. Freezing desert cold, a young, inexperienced woman heavy with child and cloaked by the scandal of unwed motherhood. A dark and dank stable, redolent of the waste of animals, and an unseen (but not unanticipated) birth in the grimiest and starkest of settings. No gentle glow surrounding this couple and baby as depicted on Christmas cards. Just the lonely birthing process, the beginning of a life planned from the beginning of time as a sacrifice. So what does Christmas mean today?

Salvation is free but is not cheap. "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" Romans 8:22. Heaven and earth was poised for the birth and death of Jesus, and the salvation we receive by believing in Him is real and life-transforming. Just last week, my mother visited her natural father in Kuching, and he, by all accounts, should have been dead 2 months ago from perforated sigmoid colon due to cancer. But he was miraculously kept alive and lucid, to the time my mother was able to share Jesus with the old man. His behaviour changed overnight, to the astonishment of his daughters - there was a clear transformation from his salvation experience. A few days later, he passed away, demonstrating conclusively God's amazing timing and mercy.

So what is Christmas about anyway? I have been obsessively preparing for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners to the point that last night I actually dreamed that my kampong chicken lady said that she had stayed up to 12 midnight to chop liver for me! I have been up to my eyeballs with buying and wrapping Christmas gifts and decorating the house. Friends in New York are fuming with the transit strike because they can't get their pre-Christmas chores done. But Christmas is not just about giving and receiving, celebrating or enjoying. In the middle of the busyness of the season, take a moment to stop and think of that astonishing occasion more than 2000 years ago, when immortality, omnipotency and eternity came into this earth as frail, tangible, touchable humanity.

Christmas Cooking

And here is Steffi, my faithful kitchen companion. Very elated at having her very own apron from Ikea. Got dragged up early to start making Christmas cookies - since significant other had bought a giant bag of rolled oats, we decided to try out this recipe called "Oatmeal Lace Cookies" which turned out really well; a little sweet for me, but that is probably also because Steffi really packed the brown sugar for me.

Then I decided to try making my own hard sauce for Christmas pudding that we were bringing for our cell group party tonight. Here's my twist on the traditional Brandy sauce. Tastes pretty good (if I say so myself). Of course, the ingredients are a little eclectic, dug out from store room, etc. Granulated palm sugar came from Cambodia, courtesy of Mee Hua, one of the missionaries to Cambodia who is trying to build up the local industries so that the village women can be financially independent. XO cognac - I still can't believe that I have it in the house, but since significant other hangs out with this bunch of golfing kakis, but has no alcohol dehydrogenase to speak of himself, so the cognac must have been a gift and has been sitting there for umpteen ages. Of course, I was a little intimidated by the heavy cut glass, and the sleek silver cover - I don't dare to think how much it costs - and here I am sloshing it around with my pudding sauce...

Et voila, mes amis...

Asian Hard Sauce for Christmas Pudding
1/2 cup of granulated palm sugar (from Cambodia, but I am sure our regular gula melaka finely chopped would do)
4 tbsp XO cognac
4 tbsp orange juice (freshly squeezed)
1 tsp grated lemon peel
1 tsp grated orange peel
1 tsp grated young ginger
250g unsalted butter (President's, no less!)
1/2 cup of icing sugar

1. Gently heat the palm sugar, cognac, orange juice, lemon peel, orange peel and ginger in a pot. Stir constantly till sugar melts.
2. Cut butter into cubes, then cream with hand mixer till light and fluffy
3. Add icing sugar and continue beating
4. Add palm sugar and cognac mixture, and beat
5. Return to pot and gently heat, stirring constantly till sauce is shiny. Take off heat quickly and serve immediately with warm plum pudding.



The only problem is that instead of a robust yellow custardy colour, the sauce is a little brown, which would horrify the traditionalists out there. I don't think it really matters, although I must say that with the very dark brown pudding, the overall effect is a little drab. Probably need to liven things up with a branch of holly!

Chocolate Decadence

So I booked into this chocolate workshop with great enthusiasm and little knowledge. Never knew that chocolate making was such an art - well, of course I knew it had to be a little hard given how much Godiva and the like charge per 100g - but this was an eye opener.

The key to choc making (tempering) is apparently the very careful heating and cooling process that will melt the sugar crystals in the chocolate and give a lovely sheen to the product. Am not sure that I got everything right given that I was being called incessently by Children's Emergency about a relative's kid who needed to be admitted to hospital. The fun was in the making, and we chucked the low carb lifestyle out of the window and had our fingers in the pot half the time. Anyway, we packed away our little packages of Valrhona chocolate and trundled off happily in a Grand Marnier high. But somewhere between going back to the hospital, setting plug, going home, them little chooks rolled out of their container into the bag which, fortunately, being black, did not show the liberal dusting of Valrhona cocoa powder. So I didn't really get to show off the handiwork as most of the chocs were squished and had shed half their coating, but the family appreciated it anyway, especially Steffi, my genetic clone for chocoholism.

So the class probably gets a 3.5/5 rating on my food porn meter. Somehow this time I didn't get the overwhelming urge to try it out on my own. I guess in the end it boils down to having enough time and $lolly$ (to buy that freaking marble slab to cool the chocolate on!)

C'est Moi!

Jia Zua

The reason why most employers are upset about blogging as a whole is because American surveys have shown that one quarter of the workforce visit blogs and spend 3.5 hours on average reading blogs a week. While 25% of people spend their time reading work related blogs, 75% read non-work related blogs. Blogging is "jia zua" activity...and should remain that way as long as we are chained to our computers as slaves to technology.

Last minute comfort food

This weekend has been a rollercoaster type experience, fortunately I was not flung out abruptly like the 2 poor teenagers recently at Downtown East. First, Sunday School carnival, with kids frothing out of the seams of the church, followed by a manic birthday party at Explorer Kids indoor playground. Am so way behind on my Christmas shopping, not to mention the regular mommy-type chores that I do. Yesterday evening, the kids were so bushed that they didn't want to go out to eat and on top of that, I found that my cupboard as bare as Old Mother Hubbard's. So I scrounged around and came up with a really weird soup dish and threw in mee sua, and the wonder of it is that they ate it - with seconds! I still shudder at the travesty of a dinner I cooked, and this on top of reading Ruth Reichl's delectable Garlic and Sapphires where she as the New York Times restaurant critic, has to disguise herself to visit restaurants because her picture is up on every kitchen wall. An entertaining read, with insight on the power play in the restaurant industry clashing with an old boys' newspaper empire. So far away from my little kitchen and my appreciative clientele of 2. Anyway, last night was definitely comfort food night, so here is the strange mish mash that appeared on my table at dinner:

Very last minute Vegetable stew
1 radish cut into chunks
1 carrot cut into chunks
3 leeks, cut into 1 1/2 inch lengths, omitting the green parts
1 chicken thigh - deboned and cut into chunks
Handful of enoki mushrooms
4 - 5 leaves of Napa cabbage
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 pkt bonito powder
Noodles - ideally japanese Udon, alternatively glass noodles (definitely not mee sua - ewww!)

1. Place radish and leeks, bonito sauce and soy sauce into a clay pot with 3 cups of water and bring to boil. Simmer for about 15 minutes.
2. Add leeks and simmer another 10 minutes
3. Add chicken, enoki mushrooms and napa cabbage and boil for another 5 minutes.
4. Throw in noodle of choice, bring to boil for few minutes till noodle is cooked.

Life Goes On

On Wednesday, I was called by a patient's mummy whose son had just passed away. This little boy was a medical conundrum, and those of us who were involved in his care did take a little pride in solving the puzzle of his congenital illness. Nonetheless, we were unable to save his life, a short period of 2 1/2 years. He did outlive his requisite 2 years - children with his rare condition rarely live beyond 2 years of age, but his days were punctuated by repeated hospital admissions, frequent venous cannulation, blood draws and excruciating abdominal discomfort and infections. It is times like these that I look at my profession with resignation. This is the reason that so many doctors don't want to be paediatricians. It is such a rough ride for parents whose kids have chronic illnesses - it must be like losing a part of yourself in the process. When you see a family whose greatest joy is that the child has spent a week away from the hospital, you realise that your framework for normal life is a complete parody. Yet this is the very reason that I would never regret being inadvertantly shunted into child neurology as a specialty. Yes, there is my "veggie garden" as some of my crueler compatriots will put it, where there are children who will never be able to get out of bed, or maintain any meaningful eye contact, thought or speech. But I draw great strength from the parents of my patients. Their strength and determination, and ability not just to grit their teeth and get on with life, but to actually put a smile on it, gives me the impetus to go one step further for them. I also get frequent "reality checks" when I see my patients. The little things that bug me in life, like my kids' grumbling, or multitudinous demands on me are put in their place as the truly little things of life.