Hub is in Bed

The Head of the Family is rarely sick. I have never seen him take any day off work in the years we've been together. Last night, he went to bed early coughing and complaining of being cold and hot at the same time. At 1am, he woke me up asking for paracetamol etc. This morning, he couldn't get out of bed and was whimpering about wanting the doctor to pay him a visit.

I've always queued up at the doctor's. Will the old man want to come to our house? I asked around and they said I'll have to call and ask. I don't even have his number, I just know how to get to his clinic...

Anyway, this is to say that men when they finally fall sick, they can be worse than 3 children combined. Though I must say that he looks really bad. In fact, I'm beginning to doubt as to whether the kids actually were ill last week because unless they hadn't suffered the same symptoms or had hidden them well, in comparison, they hadn't looked half as sick as their father. Will they catch fever and the works again?

Now I am waiting for my turn to fall sick. I have seen my children fall sick one after the other. Now my strong, steady husband is sick. I have kissed everyone even though they were coughing in my face - because I think that when they are sick all the more they needed physical contact with me.

I am starting to have an inkling of what it must be like to be old and just waiting around to go. You know you'll fall sick and you are waiting for it to happen. It's an irritating wait.

Update @ 11:30 am : Doctor as predicted, wouldn't come so I drove the Hub to the clinic. Days like this, or when there's a public transport, public school etc strike, aren't you glad that you're not working? Doctor announced that Hub has bronchitis and wanted him to rest for 5 days. Hub said are you joking? I have alot of work to do...

Then the Doctor said he could vaccinate me if I want. Believe it or not, I am therefore vaccinated against both the seasonal flu and H1N1. Just like that. Should see Baby Boy's eyes when he saw the Doctor with the 2 needles.

Grade 2 Moms' Lunch

This afternoon I received 8 moms in my home for a home-cooked meal. One of them is new to the school and she is from Argentina. Lovely lady who has lived in many different countries from Switzerland to Lebanon to the USA...It is always a pleasure to find other families like ours who have moved around abit.

I felt bad that I have waited this long to formally meet this new mom and introduce her to the rest of the class (and to one of our moms who is an importer of Argentinian beef!). My last 2 attempts to organise a meeting didn't fall through very well, that's why. Luckily she has lived in different countries and therefore has good instincts about surviving in a new place. I will not need to bring her around etc as I should as Class Rep.

I kept things simple and offered just a choice between Beef in Red Wine Sauce or Chicken in Thai Green Curry to my guests. Though almost everybody ended up having both. It's a pleasure to see my guests eating and not dieting when they were at my place.

Conversation flowed in this group like it always had, and it was a really nice afternoon. There is a good mix of locals and expatriates and almost everyone meets often anyway after school for activities and other events. There, without my asking, they started to ask me what they could bring to the Winter Fair Buffet and when we were discussing birthday parties, several volunteered to transport those children whose families do not have their own cars. A good bunch of ladies.

Baby Boy had a friend to play with. She used to beat him up whenever she saw him, but now they couldn't bear to leave each other because they were playing so well together. I was telling him to stay away from everyone because he is still coughing (but no fever for more than 48 hours now), but the girl's mom didn't seem too worried about them being together so I relaxed too and left the poor girl to her fate. The problem with kids in the IBO system is that they don't like to miss school unlike kids in the other school systems. Baby Boy thinks staying at home is boring when he could be at school with his teacher and classmates learning and playing at the same time.

Hub called home to ask if there was leftover green curry for his dinner. Thank God I managed to salvage a bowl from whatever's left in the wok. They all seem to prefer the curry to the red wine sauce. I wonder why...

To Catch a Virus or Not to Catch One

I've been blogging about my children being sick, meaning that I am not out to hide this. In fact, we have known for a while that November is going to be a difficult month where the flu (any flu) is concerned. Life goes on as usual for us, and we do not particularly try to avoid crowded places or people we think may be sick etc. I may even have been trying to expose my children and myself to the circulating viruses, hoping to catch them and be done with being sick before the Christmas holidays begin. The important thing is to be informed about available treatment and to have some faith in the existing health system. So I wasn't complaining when they fell sick last week, and am certainly not out on a witch hunt to find out where and how they got sick.

My children, like Hub and myself, rarely fall sick (touch wood). I am not a paranoid parent. I am not very strict with hygiene. I do not recall having sterilised milk bottles when they were babies (just rinsed them in hot water) and none of them had colic or whatever. We eat quite local when we travel (without taking obvious risks, of course) and I've fed them curries since they were in the womb. I don't rush to the A&E for nothing and I don't go crazy over homeopathy. When there is a fever, I administer paracetamol and lots of vitamin C, towelling the patient down if necessary and above all, I give him a bottle of water and advise him to sleep, play, watch TV with it. If he feels up to it, he can eat fries, drink coke and eat ice cream. I don't have a problem with that. I probably subscribe to the belief that half of any illness is psychological.

Thus far, the kids have always been good sick patients. They don't spend their time when they are sick feeling or acting sick. They recover quite quickly most of the time and they stay healthy more often than sick. I am probably just lucky, but I think that my non-smothering attitude towards illness has some part to play in it.

So I guess I wasn't too sure how to act/react when I had a few mothers interrogating me in the last few days about my children's illnesses. I thought it was done out of goodwill, but subsequent remarks like "I wouldn't send him on the trip if I were you" or "If you don't call the teachers to find out how he's doing, I will" led me to suspect that they were really more worried about whether my child would pass on some virus to theirs than the poor child's actual state of health. Or they thought the teachers wouldn't know how to call me if he's sick.

I do not want to play down their concerns, and I certainly wouldn't deliberately let my children out to spread disease, but even if the Teenager still has something to pass on to his friends, they could ironically catch it from someone else, after all there were people at the train station, in the train, at the hotel, in the streets etc. For all you know, some of those kids could be at the tip of a coming illness (without knowing) when they set out for Munich. And while he wasn't 48 hours free from fever, he had been well for at least 36 hours and as far as I know, he was fine the whole of yesterday. Plus they are not in Africa, they are in Munich - the richest city in Germany. I'm sure they have good hospitals there. And if you think about it, Baby Boy was well for more than 56 hours before he fell sick again.

What I would like to know is what the etiquette is for dealing with that? Do I play along, apologise and act worried when I'm not so that I can reassure them in their need to worry? Or do I, like Hub suggested, just tell them to have a life and leave the poor children to their fate : to catch a virus or not to catch one?

PS : By the way, we do not know if any of the children had flu. I only mentioned they had fever and 2 coughed. The doctor said they don't test anymore for H1N1. It could be just a cold for all you know.

Madeleine Coeur de Nutella

Left = Madeleine, Right = Madeleine with Nutella Heart

When I was studying Proust at University, I often associated Madeleines with total boredom, no thanks to the author spending pages and pages reminiscing about some moment from his childhood as he dipped his madeleine in a cup of tea. Then Madeleines became some sort of staple food when I was travelling 5 weeks through Western Europe in 1991, since it was cheap and easily available in most supermarkets or petrol stations.

This afternoon, on Day 2 of being grounded with Baby Boy, I made some Madeleines with Nutella Hearts. He doesn't have fever anymore and is up to alot of mischief most of the time (a good sign), though he is still coughing quite a bit. He is a little sore from having to miss the school excursion to the Vignola Fortress and finds staying at home boring. Well, that makes the 2 of us.

Madeleines with Nutella Hearts (makes 25-30) :

150g Self-raising Flour

150g Butter

150g Sugar (mine has been infused with real vanilla pods for weeks)

2 Eggs

1/2 non-treated Lemon and its zest

Nutella

Heat the oven to 220°C.

Melt the butter and set it aside to cool.

Beat the sugar and eggs till thick and creamy.

Slowly fold in the flour, followed by the lemon juice, zest and butter.

Pour into madeleine moulds. First one layer of the batter, some nutella and then cover with more batter.

Bake for 3 minutes at 220°C, lower the temperature to 180°C and bake for another 10-12 minutes. The edges should be golden brown.

In France, madeleines are often eaten by children in the afternoon for tea. It supposedly originated from Commercy in Lorraine, France. Named after a Madeleine who used to make them for a Duke named Stanislas.

Matcha Sugee Cookies

Matcha Sugee Cookies

Sugee Cookies are among the many things that I gorge myself on during the Chinese New Year. And they were also one of the first cookies that we learnt how to make during Home Economics (but the no-semolina flour sort). Very easy, melt-in-the-mouth and fattening stuff.

Today, I sent off the Teenager on his school trip to Munich, but am grounded for the week as Baby Boy had taken a turn for the worse this morning after seemingly having recovered from his flu (?) over the weekend. He seems to be down with a secondary infection that usually occurs after recovery from influenza and truth be told I'm quite nervous as I've read that this is what usually kills after a flu.

To take my mind off this for a while and calm down, I decided to make a batch of Matcha Sugee Cookies as the boy took his nap. I love green tea and this recipe that requires little manoeuvre and cooking brings out the refreshing taste of the powdered green Matcha tea. Zen...and you either like it or you don't. Hub and the children don't. Matcha is an acquired taste.

Matcha Sugee Cookies (makes 50) :

200g Plain Flour (sifted)

100g Icing Sugar (sifted)

100g Powdered Matcha

1/2 Tsp Baking soda

1/4 Tsp Salt

130ml Vegetable Oil or Ghee (clarified butter)

Preheat oven to 150°C.

The dough

Mix the flour, icing sugar, baking soda, salt and matcha powder together. Pour in the vegetable oil or ghee (ghee would be richer and tastier and one can simmer butter to obtain the ghee if you cannot find it in your local store) and knead e.g. with your hand till you get a uniform paste which is almost instantly. Once the oil touches the flour mixture, the green intensifies, it's quite lovely to watch.

Before baking

Roll the dough into small balls and bake in the oven (at the lower shelf) for 15 minutes. I love the powdery green colour of the matcha cookies and also the cracks that appear in them when they are baked.

After baking

Cool before storing in airtight jars.

It is the time of the year when I go around asking the other moms for food donations to the Winter Fair buffet. One has to be quite thick-skinned about it, though I am lucky that the majority of moms usually quite nicely reply that of course they would love to make something for the buffet. Then I have those precious wonderful few who actually contacted me before I even contacted them, asking if they could make me a dish or 2! Finally, there is that minority who actually rolled their eyes or shudder when I approached them, though they usually wouldn't say no either, so I'm still grateful, I guess. I will probably make at least 2-3 dishes as usual. One has to lead by example.

SQUID * INK & PASTA

Spaghetti alla Seppia Nera

We stopped going to Modena centro to shop at the covered market and lunch at Aldina when the kids were having golf lessons on Saturdays. Then the lessons stopped when the weather turned cold and we found ourselves driving into town yesterday like before.

Almost everywhere you turn you see bottles of expensive balsamic vinegar on display. Christmas is round the corner and I suppose they imagined that we would want to be giving those away as presents.

At the market, we shopped for organic bread, beef, cheese, vegetables...and then I saw the seppia (squid). If you remember, just last Saturday I was at Margi's in Bologna and she cooked me Spaghetti alla seppia nera. I toured the 3 stalls selling seafood a few times and finally decided to buy 2 seppias, Hub not being too keen on them.

My 2 squids were white. Margi's were covered with black ink. But the Chinese girl selling them told me they contained ink. I started cleaning them and they were still white. Hub said I should never have trusted the Chinese girl. That she would tell me anything to sell me her squids. I didn't bother to answer him.

Then I saw that one of them had a little round pocket that looked as if it had something black inside. I put it aside and started to prepare my dish.

Squid, Ink and Pasta :

Spaghetti for 1 or 2 persons

Olive Oil

2 Squids (about 250g each, with their ink)

3-4 large Garlic cloves (diced)

4-5 Cherry Tomatoes (quartered)

A handful of fresh Parsley (chopped)

Red Chilli (optional)

White wine

Salt and Pepper

Margi's Hub Enea was the one who taught her how to make this dish and she has been cooking it for them since. I saw her posting pictures of her dish in Facebook and drove all the way to Bologna insisting that she cooked it for me. Very thick-skinned as usual.

It's a simple, ugly but delicious pasta, though watch out for the black mouth that you'll get at the end of your meal. And it's a fishy dish, you have to like the smell and taste of fish to go for it.

Heat up a generous amount of olive oil in the frying pan and fry the garlic till fragrant. Add in the diced chilli and chopped tomatoes and squish them a little with the spatula.

At this point I added the squids and coated them with the fragrant oil. Poured in some white wine and then the ink from the little round pocket. Then I added in the parsley and the cooked spaghetti (al dente, of course), gave everything a good stir and ate it for dinner.

Black is beautiful, it is amazing how much black ink that little round pocket contained, I was really happy.

Pao di Queijo (Brazilian Cheese Bread)

Pao di Queijo

No, these are not Madeleines. Believe it or not they are Pao di Queijo or Brazilian Cheese Bread. Made in madeleine moulds.

I can't remember when and where I first ate this bread, but it was certainly love at first bite. Apparently it is usually made with cheese from one part of Brazil, which is why many Brazilians would make it out of a mix - but substituting with parmesan and cheddar cheese works quite well as well.

Know why the bread is so chewy on the inside? Because it's made of cassava (aka tapioca) flour. And it will rise on its own steam so there is no need for yeast. Bread is crispy on the outside and soft/chewy on the inside. Colour should be just pale yellow (from the cheese and eggs).

Pao di Queijo (makes about 26 little bread) :

1 cup Tapioca or Cassava Flour

1 Egg

1/2 cup Milk

2/3 cup mix of Parmesan and sharp Cheddar Cheeses

1/4 cup Vegetable oil

1/2 Tsp Salt

Bring the milk and oil to a boil. Set aside and let it cool a little.

Stir in the tapioca flour.

Add the egg, then the salt and grated cheeses.

Mix well and pour into small moulds.

Bake for 14-16 minutes in an oven heated to 180°C.

Ideally, the dough should be consistent enough to be kneaded so that you get nice little round pieces of bread. And this probably could be achieved by doubling the volume of flour used, maybe add in some wheat flour as well. But I'm quite pleased with the result of this batch of cheese bread (but 1 cup cheese was too much) though I wouldn't eat too many of them, it's too rich. Plus I am supposed to be intolerant towards parmesan cheese.

These cheese bread are best eaten freshly baked, but mine, I thought, were actually better the next day. Probably just needed to be heated up slightly.

Cocotte Staub

Cocotte ovale Staub

If MIL is not too broke this Christmas, she will normally offer me this beauty. This is the first time in more than a decade that I have blatantly asked for such an expensive gift.

Normally I am a Le Creuset fan, but since they are not replying to my email about the holes in the enamel of my current cocotte (and it is supposed to be under lifetime waranty), I am ready to embrace Staub.

This pot can feed 7-8 persons. 37cm, oval, blue, 8L. I may need a bigger stove for it.

Lychee Meatballs

Lychee Meatballs

The Teenager also has fever and was recalled from school. I now have 3 kids at home, I guess it's a question of time before I fall sick too. And who will look after me then?

They are all happy to have escaped the fish at the school's canteen today and since I have to feed 3 sick kids, I thought I'll make them Jaden's Lychee Meatballs. It's comforting, easy to make (slightly less work compared to what I usually do to make sweet and sour pork) and will please any sweet and sour sauce lover.

Anything sweet & sour has to come in a huge quantity in this family

Lychee Meatballs :

1 can Lychees (drained and syrup reserved for the sauce)

1 Red Bell Pepper

1 Zucchini

1 Red Onion

1 Garlic clove

1 Red Chilli

The meatballs :

500g Minced Pork

1 Egg

1/4 Tsp Salt

1 Tbsp Flour

The sauce :

100ml Lychee syrup

65ml White Wine Vinegar

3 Tbsp Brown Sugar

2 Tsp grated fresh Ginger

65ml Tomato Ketchup

1/4 Tsp Salt

Ground black pepper

Marinate the minced pork for an hour. Form into balls with your palm.

Mix the ingredients for the sauce and bring it to a boil stirring all the time. Then simmer for 5 minutes. Set aside.

Lightly oil a frying pan and grill your meatballs on all sides till they are browned. The inside could still be pink as you would finish cooking them in the sauce.

Heat some oil in the wok. Fry the onions, garlic, peppers, zucchini and red chilli. Add in the meatballs and stir-fry for a minute. Add in the lychees, then pour in the sauce, stirring well to coat the meatballs in the sauce, cover the wok and simmer for 4-5 minutes.

Serve hot on steamed Jasmine rice.

Tomato Bufala Tartlets

Tomato Bufala Tartlets

Brisée pastry dough, Cherry Tomatoes (ripe), Mozzarella di Bufala (good quality), Sage or Basil Leaves. Olive Oil, salt and pepper. 200°C, 20 minutes. Yummy.

Indonesian Layer Cake (Kueh Lapis)

Indonesian Layer Cake

It is Baby Boy's turn to have fever today. Now I have 2 kids at home and had to cancel today's Grade 1 lunch. Can only cross the fingers that the Teenager doesn't catch the fever as he will be going to Munich next week.

Baby Boy loves Kueh Lapis, so I've decided to bake him one today when he's feeling miserable - from not being with his friends and from having to endure the suppositories for the fever. I felt quite queasy whenever I gave him a suppository, couldn't help thinking of how horrible it must be for those children who were sexually abused. I do not know about other children, but mine really hate having the suppository stuffed into their rectums. But they do not know how to swallow a pill and dislike swallowing syrup either. Meanwhile, I find the suppositories quite effective in reducing fever quickly.

Kueh Lapis :

10 Egg yolks

190g Sugar

1 Tsp Vanilla essence

220g Butter (softened at room temperature and beaten)

1 Tbsp Brandy or Rum

2 Tbsp sweetened Condensed Milk

130g plain Flour to sift together with

1 Tsp Mixed Spice (ground cinnamon, cloves, cumin, coriander, nutmeg & allspice)

6 Egg whites

Grease springform pan and line with greaseproof paper.

Heat oven to 175°C.

Whisk egg yolks with the sugar and vanilla essence till creamy. Beat in the butter and brandy, then stir in the condensed milk followed by the sifted flour and mixed spice.

Whisk egg whites until just stiff. Pour egg yolk mixture into the egg whites and fold gently.

I heated my grill to moderate with fan when the oven is hot and placed my empty tin under it for 1 minute. Then I removed it, pour in a ladleful of batter and spread the batter evenly by tilting the tin. Grill for 5 minutes, remove tin and repeat operation until the batter is used up. Then return to bake mode and bake at 160°C for 10 minutes. Cool before eating.

As usual, whatever I bake or cook doesn't ever come out looking remotely nice. And from the look of things I can't even cut straight either. But this cake is quite edible and will require more adjustment to the oven settings, probably I will also cut down on the number of egg whites, use something to press down on the cake and remove the bubbles, and use a smaller cake pan (so that I can have more layers). In any case I'm on kueh lapis overdose. Have experimented with 2 lapis in 4 days...