As Light As Air

In our second lesson at Creative Culinaire, we learned how to bake chiffon cake — a cake that was described as “as light as air” by its creator, Henry Baker. Henry had created this recipe in the 1920s and then sold it to General Mills. The lightness of the cake comes from using beaten egg whites and oil instead of butter.

We were determined not to repeat the same disaster as our first lesson (read our blog “The Art of Mixing & Folding”). For our first cake, the Orange Chiffon Cake, we cleaned all the equipment and make sure that there is no hint of egg yolk in our egg whites mixture. All went well and our instructor, Chef Judy Koh, was quite impressed with the result. We even earned her compliment “This cake is good”.

However, our second cake, Walnut Chiffon Cake, did not go so well. Perhaps we had not cleaned the egg separator and our egg whites did not stiffen at all. It was a terrible feeling. My heart sank just looking at the mixture and willing it to rise, but fully knowing that it wouldn’t. At that point, we had to make a decision whether to go ahead or start all over. We decided to re-do our egg whites even though it may mean we do not have enough time to bake our third cake. It was well worth it. Although we over-beat the egg whites in our anxiety and the cake did not turn as as fluffy as some of our classmates’, it tasted delicious and we were happy with the way it turned out. It wasn’t FLAT :)

Somehow, we managed to find time to bake our third cake, the Pandan Chiffon Cake. It was the best of all the 3 chiffon cakes we baked that day. It was very fluffy and light. Everyone loved it and a friend even complimented that “it’s as good as that sold at Bengawan Solo”

As Judy mentioned at the start of the class, ” the difficulty in creating the perfect meringue will come back to haunt you”. It certainly did. However, knowing that it is not an unachievable task, as exemplified by our Pandan Chiffon Cake, serves to only spur us to perfect this elusive and exacting task.


The pandan in foreground, Orange Chiffon Cake on the right and Walnut Chiffon on the left

Les Artistes Bistrot – A Review

A few months ago, we came across a newspaper review about Chef Nicolas Joanny and his restaurants Nicolas Le Restaurant and Les Artistes Bistrot. The review mentioned the chef’s career in Michelin star-studded restaurants and compared the cuisine at his restaurants to the other French restaurant in town. Piqued, we jotted it down in our memory and waited for an occasion to try Chef Nicolas’ cuisine.


Les Artistes Bistrot

On May 11, with much anticipation and excitement, we went to the Les Artistes Bistrot for lunch. The restaurant serves only a-la-carte set menu priced from $34++ for 3 courses. The previous day, we had looked through the menu posted on their website (http://www.restaurantnicolas.com/thebistrot.html) and were impressed by the range of items available. With some difficulty (as all the items seemed so delicious), we selected the items that we would be having so that we could try as many different items as possible.

As it turned out, the menu was quite different from the online one. The starters on this menu did not appeal as much to me. As for the main course, the pork belly & cod fillet as posted on the main menu were missing. Most of the items cost an additional S$8 to S$10. Even the dessert list was disappointing. It was very frustrating. For me, if any business has a website, then the information should be up-to-date. This is simply basic internet etiquette. If this cannot be achieved, then it is better not to post it all at.


Complimentary Starter
Salami, duck and garlic toast


Porcini Mushroom Soup

For starters, I selected the Porcini mushroom soup while W tried the Millefeuille (photos shown above). The soup was neither too creamy nor heavy. However, on the taste department, I would rate it as average. The Millefeuille was delicious – delivering harmonious flavours wrapped in the thin and crisp “wanton-like”. The complimentary starter (the middle picture) comprising salami, duck and garlic toast were pretty good too, with the slightly salty salami balancing the more delicate taste of the shredded duck.


Millefeuille


Leg of Lamb


Zingari IGT


Beef cheek

For the main course, I ordered the braised beef cheek while W (my companion) ordered the leg of lamb (photos shown above). The portions were generous. The beef cheek is very flavourful and tender. I love the presentation of this dish too. The mashed potato was served in the cup. The leg of lamb, on the other hand, tasted rather bland. We will definitely not recommend this dish at all. The toscana wine that we ordered matched well with the beef cheek but overpowered the lamb rack. The wine is made in the new world style with plummy and jammy flavours – a rather ordinary wine at S$65 for a half-bottle.

The bistrot has a good selection of wines, although in my opinion, they are somewhat over-priced. The wines are priced close to 3 times retail price. One interesting find is the Didier Dagueneau Silex 2005 at S$390. What was commendable though was that no questions were asked when a customer returned a bottle of seemingly corked / oxidized wine. The waiter simply opened another bottle of the same wine for the customer to sample.


Sugar bowl


Choc Island


Crepe Suzette

Finally, for dessert, I have the Chocolate Island while W ordered the Crepe Suzette. The other desserts are meringue-based and I am not a fan of meringues. My Chocolate Island is a single piece of warm milk chocolate in a bowl of cold white chocolate. A simple but delicious combination. The crepe suzette however is really ordinary. Poor W.

We certainly have expected a lot more from the food by a chef with such an illustrous career as Chef Nicolas. While we applaud the idea of changing the menu to keep regulars happy, we feel that it is important to load the lastest menu online. We are not sure if we will return to the restaurant. Perhaps it is time to try the other French restaurant in town that also serves a-la-carte set lunch and dinner.

The Art of Mixing and Folding

Inspired by the delicious banana cake baked by a friend, we asked for the recipe and tried our hands at baking it too. Our first attempt was acceptable – the cake tastes good though it has a burnt bottom and sank slightly in the middle. Our second attempt a week later fared better – the cake was more delicious (we used riper bananas this time), no burnt bottom nor sagging middle but it was a little dense at the bottom.We thought some professional advice would be timely, so we signed up for the Cake Baking Foundation Course at Creative Culinaire. The first class was on baking butter cakes. Judy Koh, chef cum teacher, taught the class different creaming methods and showed the right way of mixing and folding ingredients.

We couldn’t wait to start baking our first cake – a Walnut Butter Cake. The creaming went well, but our egg white just wouldn’t stiffen no matter how long we whisk it. As a result, our walnut cake did not rise much. Well, it did become a star though — it was used in the post-mortem to show the rest of the students what watery egg whites do to cakes.

We are quite proud of our second cake – a Marble Butter Cake. It was moist and delicious — attested by friends whom we shared the cake with. Our partners (4 of us shared a working table) baked the Sunflower Cupcakes while we were still labouring over our walnut cake. When the cupcakes have cooled, we have fun dipping them in molten chocolate and dressing them up as beautiful sunflowers.

While we were busy baking, Judy cut her walnut cake into pieces for us to try. It was the lightest and fluffiest walnut cake that we have ever tasted. We are now more inspired than ever to perfect the art of mixing, whisking and folding. While we are still some light years away from that, we are keeping our fingers crossed that our cake will not again be the “star” in the next class.




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Unusual Chinese Character - 傩

Well I have not been reading chinese materials much these days - it is unfortunate that despite having learning the language for 13 years and at some stage was pretty proficient - read+write+speak. Apart from Hong Kong/China/Taiwan/Singapore TV shows/movies in Chinese, there is really very superficial contact with this language - which is an amazing language. There is little opportunity to really use it since everyday life is mostly carried out in English. I find that I can hardly write any chacracters these days - after almost 13 years since I write any decent length material in Chinese!! Real Pity!

Recent years I still read a little news and articles on the web, like on tom.com, sina.com - mainly for sports related stuff.

I have some "fanciful" chinese book - some are novels and some compilations of short novels which I bought over the years, read a few pages and put aside. I like books but not neccessary going to read them.

Anyway I picked up one of them and started reading a little lately. Compilations of short essays and travel related on places in China - 余秋雨 (yu-qiu-yu) -简要读本。It was an interesting book and introduced me to places I have not really come across. e.g. 月牙泉 - a spring surrounded by sand dunes!! How did it ever not get buried????? (from article 沙原隐泉)





In another article （贵池傩）there was a character which seems so easy but then I never come across 傩. I cannot even pronounce it. Looks like 难 (nan) or is it closer to 滩 (tan) . I cannot find it in the "limited" dictionary I have. Took some effort to google phrases and finally I found it！！

傩 (nuo2)

I found the term 傩戏 (nuo2 xi4 or Nuo Opera) - and jog my memory to the movie 夜宴 where Daniel Wu was putting a mask and in some form of perfomance. A very old form of folk opera it seemed - wiki says "nuo ceremony was first recorded on bones and tortoise shells during the Shang Dynasty (16th-17th century BC), and flourished in the Zhou Dynasty (11th century-256BC)."

An interesting character and I am going to read the rest of the article. I got stuck at the title of the article .. 贵池傩 (the 3rd character) ....

You can find similarities with the Japanese Noh art form - the type of masks, theme of the performance etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noh

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