Category: food fascination

Living in Italy, where not every ingredient are accessible, I brought back some instant food-hauls from Singapore in January. (food haul? I should be a food video blogger like those mekap gurus on youtube!) And so far, I’ve used up quite a bit of my rations. All the maggi mee are gone, I’ve used up pretty much all of the Kara Coconut milk, my Lingham Chilli sauce is almost finished and that took a lot of willpower not to finish in the first few months!

Here are a few that’s left.

One of the food that I’m most pleased about is the mini instant ketupat.

Traditionally, ketupat has to be made by hand out of coconut leaves. I remember my aunt trying to teach me how to weave one, but my hands keep being in knots – its very confusing! And it takes hours just to cook them! But its worth it in the end. I love to tuck in and eat them with gusto.

Here in Italy, it’s abit tough to find fresh coconut leaves (to my liking) for sale. And obviously, I don’t want to go through manual weaving. So the instant mini ketupat was perfect! All I had to do was to take out the individual sachet out of the pack.

Boil it for about an hour till the rice grows and expands into fat sachets. Drain and leave it to rest and cool down.

And soon you can have a nice plate of ketupat eaten with your favouite accompaniment like rendang, ayam masak merah, kuah satay and the likes.

Or Ayam Masak Oren

The instant ketupat tastes almost as good as a traditional ketupat!

There are some misses though, like this instant rendang pack.

Rendang is another popular Malay dish made of beef, spices, coconut milk and toasted coconut. I remember my tiny mum using her immense superhuman strength to cook this with portions enough to feed a public school.

Not to say that this instant rendang is not flavourful. But it just doesn’t taste as intense or very homemade nor captures the magic that I remember from eating it. But what to do, its instant. And because I’m in an Ang-Moh country where not every ingredients are acessible, I just have to make do (or make without!)

I think next time I’ll go cook from scratch.

P.S Yes, yes I’m in Italy and there are a plentiful of good food here. But sometimes you just want a piece of home every now and then

Blog readers Jannah, Oharlie, Brad and Xinyun has asked me to blog about typical food that is eaten during Ramadan. So this post is dedicated to you all.

While the types of food consumed during Ramadan differs from country to country, the one thing that I always see being eaten during the fasting month is dates.

Dates are the fruits of a type of palm trees. These are the staple food in the Middle East, but you’ll see various types of them being sold out of Egypt such as in Singapore, Malaysia and even Rome especially during Ramadan because of the high level of potassium in dates, making it a perfect food to have after fasting for long hours.

When I was a young girl though, I remember that one of the first times seeing it, it was very daunting for me.

It doesn’t look very appetizing with its insect-brown colour and wrinkly skin, it looked quite scary for a 6 year old. And I’ve always had a mini phobia with dried fruits because of how they looked like. But with my parents persuading me on, I gave it a try and thought that it didn’t taste bad. In fact, it was peculiarly sweet.

I still think that eating dates can look very unglamorous, with the spitting out of the seeds but all in all it wasn’t so bad to eat.

Another item that I see very frequently during Ramadan in Singapore is the Air Kathira.

This is a peculiar looking milky-drink that has black seeds which resembles tadpole eggs. Those are actually basil seeds and I love having this drink because of the nice, satisfying feeling when chewing the soft seeds.

It can come in various flavours from plain milk, avocado, mint, rose … It’s a pity that it’s not sold during non Ramadan days.

But for Rome though, with the majority of the population being Roman Catholics, Ramadan feels more nondescript. I didn’t really notice any particular special food being made. I see kebabs, and Arabic sweets and such, but you could get them any time of the year.

So far, here are some the food that we’ve prepared for Sahur and Iftar :

This is Farro

The main ingredient is wheat grain and its soaked, boiled and drained and you could mix it with anything you like. Cart likes his with chopped boiled egg, tomato, and cheese, drizzled with olive oil. While I like to add mine with tuna and corn.

It’s best eaten cold and its a wonderful summer food.

This is Piadina

Piadina is a type of flatbread which is good to keep in the fridge for those days when you want to have something quick to eat. Just put it on the hot plate, sprinkle some stracchino cheese, some sliced tomatoes and some rughetta and a few minutes later, you have a decent meal.

This was a couple of samosa and salad that we quickly cooked since Cart wanted to go out and pizza afterwards.

So it was just a simple, light meal to tide over till the pizza. By the way, the samosas were bought in a Bangladeshi shop not too far away from where were live! For 3.50 euro for a pack of 10, it was a bit expensive though.

Here is one of my favourite thing to cook, Veggie Lasagna.

What’s strange is that I love this veggie lasagna better than the one with beef even as it’s tastier. Made of a mix of ricotta cheese, spinach, mozzarella cheese, zucchini in tomato sauce, I just love eating it. Here is a video I made on how to make one 🙂

Finally but not least, here is the Couscous that Cart made yesterday

This is one of Cart’s favourite food to eat – couscous with vegetables and chickpeas. It was quite a hassle making this though, with the long amount of time taken to prepare it. But it was worth it in the end to tuck into a bowl of couscous.

And with that, I’m going to end this post abruptly because its such a torture writing a food entry when I’m fasting.

Cart and I were at Castel Romano, a designer outlet, mainly looking around for nice things that we could get as presents, taking advantage of the sale season. We were just browsing around the kitchen shop where I saw an ice cream maker and suddenly, it was as if the entire store was illuminated by a shimmering, bright halo.

It could be that I’m influenced by Wati’s recent posts of ice cream or that I’ve yet to see an ice cream maker being sold in the malls here in Rome, or that it was still a heatwave going on, but impulsively, I grabbed it and squealed, “Want!” It wasn’t too expensive anyway, like 30 Euro which is equivalent to one dinner for two in a restaurant.

So we took the last set home, and we couldn’t wait to start to make our own gelato!

Our unit was the Krups ice cream maker. And there is a jug which needs to be placed in the freezer in advance, for at least 12 hours.

And here the jug is making friends with my pack of samosa. Oh! Speaking of which, Cart and I found an alimentari thanks to our Singaporean friend, Lajay who recommended it and we found quite a few Asian stuff there like banana chips and halal samosas! I’m totally gonna stuff my face with that for the next few days.

Ahem. Anyway! While waiting for the jug to freeze, we could start to prepare the ice cream mix. The basic ingredients are, to mix whole milk, sugar, and eggs together and warm it up in a saucepan without boiling it. Let it cool down to room temperature and add cream. You could change the recipe accordingly as to how sweet or how creamy you like it to be or add vanilla or chocolate chips or whatever you like. And then put the mix in the refrigerator to cool down.

When the jug is sufficiently cold, its time to take it out of the freezer and assemble the ice cream maker. This is how the parts look like unassembled.

And this is how it looks like assembled (with an ice cream already being mixed) Careful not to touch the insides of the cooling jug, its cold!

And then slowly add the cold-end ice cream mix from the open lid above. And in about 20 minutes you’ll see your mixture slowly turn into ice cream!

And now that we’ve been so patient all these while, finally its time to dig in!

This is a very nice honey frozen yoghurt Cart made 😀

So far, we’ve made vanilla ice cream, blood orange sorbetto, lemon frozen yoghurt and honey frozen yoghurt on the ice cream maker. Its too bad that the machine only makes a litre at a time because that’s only about 2 servings each for the both of us!

This is the blood orange sorbetto I made. Its as easy as combining sugar water and orange juice!

Some might be wondering, what’s the need for an ice cream maker when I can just make the mix and stuff it in the freezer. I think the biggest difference is the texture. While the one stuffed in the freezer will be crystallised, the one made by an ice cream maker will turn out soft and creamy.

While the gelato that we made might not match to San Crispino or Tony’s Gelateria, there is something very satisfying about making your own ice cream

This is an additional incentive for friends to come over, yes?

Sidenote : It’s Singapore’s National day today! Happy birthday Singapore! By the way, does anyone has a minus-one for the Corrinne May song? I really like it.

It has been a while since I’ve blogged about our last gelato adventures, so I thought that I’d blog about one of the most famous gelateria in Rome, Il Gelato Di San Crispino.

This gelateria was founded by two brothers, Giuseppe and Pasquale Alongi when they were studying in university and discovered a gelateria. Having liked it so much, they decided to create their own gelato. And after much experimentation and years later, opened their gelateria which stands till today.

Entering the gelateria, the place looks clean and almost spartan. Instead of seeing the rows of colourful gelato as how you’d normally see in a gelateria, the gelati are covered by a metal lid so you cant see underneath how it looks like. And the only indication of the flavours are by the labels underneath it.

From the gist of the website, it is not necessary to know how the gelato looks like anyway, because the gelati are made from scratch and there are no preservatives or colourings used whatsoever. Hence the appearance might look muddy or weak as what we normally know them.

You can buy them in cups and here are the prices for the gelati here. 2 euro for a small cup, 2.60 euro for a medium and 3.40 euro for a large cup. Personally, I find the prices a bit high compared to the size of what you get. But I think its worth trying out once in a while. My only qualm is that the lady serving us seems to always be in a bad mood (that was not my first time going there by the way) to the point of throwing the lids roughly.

Notice that there are no cones? You can’t get cones here as the founders believe that cones contain colourings and affect how the taste is like.

And here were our gelati! Aren’t they pretty?

I had the San Crispino and lampone while Cart had the Pistacchio and San Crispino. We both had panna (cream) on top.

Of course as pretty as they were to look at, eating them was even better. The San Crispino flavour is a basic white ice cream with honey but it tastes delicate and lovely and tastes like springtime and I recommend this flavour to anyone who wants to comes here. The pink part, the lampone tasted lovely and fresh and sour, as how real raspberries should taste like.

I like the gelato here because of how light the ice cream tastes. You don’t get that cloying, thick feeling in your throat with this gelato.

Its also nice to know that the gelateria also has flavours according to season, like Mandarin Oranges for Winter and Strawberries for Spring. There are even rumours of a porcini flavoured gelato, although I’m not sure how true that is.

The one that we went to was in Via Acaia 56, but there are also other branches in Rome.

Related link :

• Il Gelato Di San Crispino official Website

If you liked this post, you might enjoy these cold treats too!

• Tony Gelateria
• Island Creamery

Sidenote :

I noticed this lady biker while on our way to the gelateria

I watched in horror when I saw this video being posted in facebook.

In the video, children as young as and even younger than 14 are kidnapped or sold to become slaves for the harvesting of cocoa. They were forced to work from dawn to evening, working with machetes, which is extremely dangerous in a child’s hands and just as dangerous when not used with care by an adult. At the end of the day, they are then locked in a shed so that they could not escape. Those who try to, are beaten up severely.

None of these children are paid, nor given an education. Many of them are forced to work in the plantation for years. I cant imagine being deprived of my tween-teenage days like that, days when we would be complaining about homework, hanging out with friends and just having a carefree life.

You know, as much as I love chocolate, I don’t condone slavery in any part of the making of chocolate and I’m quite willing to give up eating chocolate by companies who are guilty of using non fair trade chocolates. There are quite a number of well known brands such as Hershey’s, Nestle and M&M’s.

I tried to find a listing of free trade chocolate online, but haven’t been too successful in finding a comprehensive one. This particular site seems revolved around the USA.

Regardless, I was pleasantly surprised when I spotted this out yesterday (Cart wanted to make a semifreddo) in the chocolate section in coop, a brand of cooperative hypermarket in Italy.

What this means is that, similar to the Body Shop, the company trades from countries to utilise their resources for the communities to meet their own needs.

I bought a box of these candied orange coated chocolates. Which, by the way, tastes quite as good as the ones that Jerrick and I bought at Valrhona some months back.

At the back of the package, printed in a maroon box on the right said, “Made without discrimination nor labour exploitation”

I’ve always liked the idea of a cooperative where everyone gets a fair share and profits be divided equally.

I was reading an interesting post about how living in Italy has changed this blogger’s diet. While I’ve not been living here that long, there has been quite a lot of adjustments that I had to make.

Starting with …

Breakfast

While I was still living in Singapore, the choice of breakfast that I preferred was filling food such as Lontong, Nasi Lemak, Epok-epok and the likes. Thus I was stunned for the longest time when I had to make do with food like cereal and a couple of toasts with jam and juice for breakfast. And that’s pretty much it.

While the typical Italian breakfast is quite simple and is supposed to keep you just full enough to tide over to your next meal.

Meals

For lunch and dinner, Italians have this set of dishes called the primo piatto, secondo piatto, and the contorno. Which simplified means, after they’ve eaten their appetizer, they eat a pasta dish, then a meat dish, and then a vegetable dish. The was quite odd for me, since we Asians lay every dish on the table to be eaten together.

Italians are very particular about food times and would drop everything that they do for their meals. Lunch is always from 12.30 – 3.30 and dinner is always at 8.30 – 1030 pm. In the less touristy areas, you can forget about being served in a shop or in an office since everything will be closed.

That took a lot of adjusting to as I didn’t have a definite time to eat. I’ll just eat when I’m hungry.

Food portions

While my American counterparts would think that their food portion is smaller in Italy, personally for me I think it’s huge! Have you seen the size of a personal pizza for example?

Back in Singapore, a pizza this size would be shared by 2 people. While here in Italy, I’d be struggling just to try to finish one and I’d look in amazement at Italian kids smaller than me who are able to finish one by themselves.

Food acessibility

When back in Singapore, it was easy to take for granted at how accessible eating was for me. You could walk practically anywhere, and a huge chance that there will be at least one Halal eatery in front of you.

Not so much in Italy.

Apart from several kebab shops, practically almost every Italian restaurants serves non Halal foods so we have to be very careful in what we order and be very vigilant in asking what every single ingredient in the food had. Forget about halal certification here. So normally when we eat out, I’d just have seafood or go vegetarian. For those who are still doubtful, it’s not difficult to buy your own meat to cook at home.

Halal Meat

The first few months in Italy was agony for me. I craved for a lot of comfort food like burgers and I got all emotional when I spotted out a McDonald or a Burger King in the vicinity but they were unfortunately not Halal.

After several months, I learnt about the location of halal butcheries where I could buy my chicken and beef among others to make my own food. Like Pollo alla Cacciatora and Polpette Al Sugo which are divine by the way.

And the irony is, when Cart and I was on our way back to Singapore, I ordered a burger and instantly felt repulsed. Maybe my taste buds has changed since it detected the processed meat taste.

Coffee

Prior to coming to Italy, I’m not so into coffee mainly because I keep getting bouts of migraines when I drank those instant coffee that my dad buys.

Hence, I was a little apprehensive when Cart offered me some freshly brewed moka. But since it was just a tiny little cup, I gave it a try. Some hours later and still no dizziness, made me more confident enough to try other types of coffee like Marocchino, Macchiato, Cappuccino, Espresso and others.

I’m still not that big with coffee though. But I can appreciate it more now.

Snacking

I love to snack. Its somewhat therapeutic for me when watching TV, when in the office, when waiting for the bus, or when in the bus. The amazing thing though, is that I’ve never seen any of my Italian friends snack in between meals. Ever!

But I still like to munch on stuff anyway every now and then. And while I don’t have my vegetable keropok, now I’m crazy about patatine!

This was the happiest day of my life, the day when I got this giant pack of potato chips in Bomarzo.

This for that

Of course, the biggest change I suppose is that instead of rice being my staple diet, it is now pasta. I love eating pasta be it the egg pasta or the wheat ones. And being married to an Italian, has made me more competent in the sensitivities of cooking Italian pasta.

But sometimes there are days when I get tired of eating pasta and cook some rice and ayam masak merah or daging masak kicap. It’s my comfort food and it reminds me of home.

Apart from pasta, I got to experience different vegetables that I’ve never encountered before in while in Singapore like Radicchio, Carciofi and cool looking Cauliflowers.

And last but not least is cheese. While there are some types of cheeses that I really can’t stand, like Gorgonzola and will absolutely not kiss Cart after he consumes it. But there are some cheeses which I found out that I like, like Maarsdammer, Mozarella and stracchino.

By the way stracchino is a slang for tired and the cheese is said to be made from the milk of tired cows.

I think that’s all for now, there could possibly be more, but I can’t think of any at the moment so maybe I’ll update again later. For now, Cart made some Lenticchie for dinner and I’m going to give it a try 🙂

Katie-Lucie was asking me if I’ve heard of a strawberry ketchup in my strawberry risotto post. I haven’t but for today, I’m going to show you, Banana Ketchup!

Banana Ketchup is a Filipino invention during the world war two. Tomato was scarce during the time. But there was an abundant supply of bananas. Hence, instead of making tomato ketchup, banana ketchup was created as a replacement. And since then, it became very popular in the Philippines.

Basically its made up of bananas, water, sugar, vinegar, salt and starch. A red dye was added to make it look like ketchup. I think that it would be better if it wasn’t dyed. Its kind of deceiving to be something that it’s not.

Nevertheless I spotted this in the Asian grocery in the mercato some months back and it intrigued me so much that I had to give it a try.

Visually, it looks kind of tomato ketchup even with the lumpy banana bits in the sauce. Taste wise, it was not bad. But it does takes a bit of getting used to as it tastes sweet. Not really the type of condiment that I’m used to.

I’ve still more than half a bottle left. I’m not sure what to do with it.

Its strawberry season here in Italy.

And I love strawberries. I could eat them practically every day, be it with lemon juice and sugar or just with cream on top. Which is probably why I went a little overboard buying strawberries the last time I was at the market – 6 punnets of strawberries for 5 freaking euro. Who doesn’t want?!

Unfortunately, strawberries are highly perishable, and wont last for too long before they start to get mouldy. So Cart and I were wondering on what to do with them apart from strawberries and cream.

And then Cart suggested. Lets make Strawberry Risotto!

Strawberry? In risotto? Sounds like a wierd combination since strawberries are usually used in desserts. But I’m game to try it out.

First melt some butter in a pot. Add some chopped onions and then some chopped strawberries.

And then add some rice and stir it in the mixture to be infused with the strawberries. You know, same technique as to how biryani is made.

Arborio rice vs Long Grain rice

In this case, we used Arborio which is a type of Italian rice which is short and thick. I don’t know if you could use long grain rice like Basmati or Thai rice but for sure, the end texture would be very different because they are not as starchy as Italian rice.

Then Cart added some balsamic vinegar to enhance the taste. Typically, the recipe asks for wine like 1/4 glass of prosecco or champagne. But we don’t drink though.

Now add in some vegetable stock and put enough to cover the rice. And leave the risotto to cook.

As a sidenote, while editing the pictures, I was marvelling at how clean the stove looked. Till I saw the the picture below of some spilled stock. Haiyah, clean again … *shake head*

And when the risotto looks just about done, add a bit more chopped strawberries and a bit of butter to make the risotto smoother.

And then you are done!

Tada! Risotto alle fragole. And its actually not bad! But you have to remember, this is not a sweet dessert type of dish, but more vegetable-ly type of risotto. I think its a matter of perception to get over with.

Sidenote :

Zoori thinks that Suria should give me a spot on tv for a cooking show

I feel very honored! But if that were to happen, people would probably switch off the tv. Yeah?