Fresh Herbs and Prawns

Fresh Herbs and Prawns

I do not have a green finger. I actually manage to kill cactuses. But I can be optimistic and hopeful and I sometimes believe in miracles.

As such, I continue to try growing a few things in my garden. Not in the soil as I'm only renting the house plus nothing really grows around here. The land's not fertile. No, I grow them in pots. Some died as expected while others unexpectedly lived and bloomed. Many were on the verge of death and when they revived, they actually continue to grow and do so better than before. What does it tell you about life?

I tried growing tulips and lilies from bulbs. 1 out of 2 survived. I've killed a few pots of roses, until I realised that I should keep them in the shade half the time outside and prune them now and then. I gave the cactuses another shot. And one of them made my year by growing to 7 times its original size! What have I done (right)? I still do not know. My orchids have done well but I need to learn more about how to look after them. One of them is growing a new plant where the flower should be and I have no idea what to do with it. I'm also trying out grapes and an olive tree.

The Super-growth Cactus

Finally, my herbs are doing nicely : basilic, thym, parsley, mint, laksa leaves, red chillies...So I decided this evening to make us some Fresh Herbs and Prawns.

Basilic, Mint and Parsley

My Chilli Plant (new batch of chillies coming out)

Raw prawns peeled and slit at the back

Garlic (minced)

Red chillies (diced)

Olive Oil

Salt & Pepper

Fresh Herbs (e.g. Coriander, Basilic, Curry Leaves, Laksa Leaves, Parsley, Thym, Mint...)

Cherry Tomatoes (if you so wish. Halved)

Lemon juice

Marinate the prawns at least for an hour with the olive oil, garlic and red chillies. I was often told not to add salt to prawns before cooking as it would drain the liquid from them, but in Chinese cooking, this technique helps to make the flesh firmer when you cook it so it's up to you whether you add salt or not to your prawns at this stage.

When you're ready to cook the dish, heat up the wok or frying pan and dry roast the fresh herbs. Just as they're starting to wilt, add in the prawns followed by its marinade and stir fry for a few minutes till the prawns are cooked. If you haven't added salt and pepper, do it now. If you wish to use cherry tomatoes, add them in now. Squeeze some lemon juice over the prawns before serving.

PS : One could eventually cook herbs like curry, laksa, coriander and thym leaves first and then just before serving stir in the basilic, mint and parsley.

Cascate della Bucamante, Serramazzoni

Cascate della Bucamante (w/o the water)

Hub was really encouraged by the fact that the Babies seem to hike well and suggested that we do another one last Sunday. This time round I chose the place.

The entrance to the park

The Cascate della Bucamante is a waterfall on the Bucamante river near Maranello. You go on the Nuova Estense past Torre Maina towards Serramazzoni, turn right at 13km before Pavullo and you'll reach its parking after a pebbly drive up a narrow slope. The hike (or at least the trail we chose) is a short one though it can be a little steep at parts and if it has rained it would definitely be slippery.

The trail

At the end of Summer there was of course no water at the waterfall, though there was water running in the stream. A few families laid towels on the ground along the way for a picnic, you shouldn't expect to do any suntanning though as little sun would manage to penetrate into the forest.

The beginning of the way back

A lovely walk, something you could do in just one morning or afternoon, probably best in Spring when the snow in the mountains would have melted or in Autumn after it would have rained a little.

A Summer Day at Cimone

On the way up to Cimone

MIL wanted to hike a little in altitude. Which we could oblige since Modena is surrounded by mountains. Though we wanted to find somewhere near our place and ended up driving (unwittingly) all the way up to Cimone - where you could ski during winter.

I'm the travel agent in the family but decided to let the Hub organise the hiking trip thinking that it couldn't be difficult, he just needed to ask his colleagues etc. Some smart guy recommended that we visit the Lago della Ninfa and lunch wonderfully at some lakeside restaurant there, and so we set out last Saturday to do just that.

Lago della Ninfa

To start, if we had known that the Lago della Ninfa was the lake that you find up there in Cimone (it was frozen the last time we visited), we would not have taken the Nuova Extense. This route up and down the mountains is a killer. Baby Boy vomitted along the way, I nearly did and if Baby Girl hadn't been sleeping she would have done so too. It'd be better to pass by Vignola and go through Fanano to reach Sestola and then Cimone.

And you can't do much in this dirty lake except fish. And there are only 3 restaurants up there, all of which serve really basic Italian food, so if there's a correlation between taste for food and capacity for work, that guy wouldn't be getting any promotion soon.

Up there

However we did have a nice hike and the exercise did much to improve our blood circulation and general sense of goodwill. There are several ways to walk up there, we took the one leading from the Rifugio della Ninfa (where we had lunch) and came down the path parallel to the luge track.

View from up there

There are actually quite a number of things that a family can do up there at Cimone in the warmer months. For example, one could fish in the lake. Do some Nordic walking in the forest. Jump on the outdoor trampoline. Sled (luge - looked like steep and fast fun). Snow toob. Mountain bike (not for the weak or faint-hearted). Climb trees.

The Luge

The track for the luge

Yes, that last activity looked pretty good as we walked under the tree climbing installations and they even have a course open to young children (1m-1m40). It costs 15 euros for 3 hours and parents will need to stay below and supervise their own children as they climb. The older kids and adults have of course tougher and higher courses and that will cost each person 22 euros for 3 hours. The Tree Climbing activity is open from 10-7 on weekends from Spring to the end of Summer.

Tree Climbing

Lago della Ninfa

www.lagodellaninfa.it

Sole Meunière

Sole Meunière

I've not been blogging much about my own cooking lately but it doesn't mean that I've not been slaving in the kitchen since I came back from my Summer holidays. It's just that I've been making the usual stuff, stuff that I've already blogged about. Though each time that I make the same dish, I believe that I actually do it differently from the last time and each time an improvement on the last. Or so I hope.

School started for the kids last Thursday. And with it my social calendar. Coffee mornings, lunches, outings, meetings, play dates etc. The beginning of the school year is also synonymous with hunting for extra-curricular activities for the children and this year instead of activities for just one kid, I have to plan for 3. Swimming lessons, tennis, golf, dance, guitar...In addition, Eldest Son will also be working privately (with me) on his French since the school will only be providing 60 minutes of French (culture) each week which though better than nothing is not going help stop his French from going downhill. From my experience, to better learn other languages, it helps if you know your own well enough to start with. I will just have to look upon this as an opportunity for me to revise my flailing French.

I also need to work out some support for Eldest Son's therapy needs. I will expand on this in another post, but suffice to say that he had undergone 2 months of therapy in Singapore (Occupational Therapy and Dynamic Assessment) this Summer and while not expecting miracles, I have hope that he has come back a calmer, more organised child and could hopefully enjoy a better school year ahead.

For myself, I will continue with my flute lessons, do a bit of gardening, work on my piano playing, improve my cooking, maybe learn how to play golf, read up more on how to modify the brain - and try seriously to lose some weight. I'm a good 17 Kgs over my pre-Babies weight and this is starting to weigh on my morale. Not just the bones.

Talking about bones, this is one bony fish that both the Hub and Eldest Son actually like and which is both easy to make and delicious to consume. A French classic - Sole Meunière.

A few good-sized Soles (gutted and with skin removed)

A few pinches of Turmeric (optional)

Enough Flour to coat the fishes

Salt

Pepper

Olive Oil

Salted Butter

Lemon juice

Prepare the flour by adding some turmeric, salt and pepper to it and mixing well. Wash then pat dry the soles with some kitchen towel and coat both sides of each fish gently with the flour.

In a non-stick frying pan, heat up some olive oil. Slide the soles into the oil. When one side is nicely grilled, turn it over to the other side for grilling. Add some salted butter on top of the grilled side and it will slowly and gently start to melt over the fish. Squeeze some lemon juice over the sole and serve it hot.

I served mine with some spinach in garlic-scented olive oil.

Poulet aux Girolles

The Girolles in a white wine, garlic and cream sauce

On one of my recent trips to the supermarket I found some Girolles (or better Chanterelle for the anglophones) and proceeded to make a Poulet rôti aux Girolles whose recipe I've actually posted ages ago in this blog.

Fresh girolles

Only difference being that I used a whole chicken this time instead of chicken filet. And the whole chicken I roasted in a Le Creuset cocotte (takes a shorter time to cook, doesn't dry out the meat and keeps all the juices in the pot) with some olive oil, Herbs de Provence and white wine. And just 15 minutes before the chicken is ready, I added in the cleaned girolles, some chopped garlic and parsley, cover the cocotte again till everything is cooked through.

Nothing exciting, just the chicken

Remove the cover, take the chicken out for carving. Then add some crème fraîche to the girolles and chicken juices remaining in the cocotte and stir well, reducing the sauce if necessary over a slow fire. Serve hot over the chicken pieces. Goes well with garlicked fried potatoes and some white rice.

In the cocotte

At times like this I really miss my open markets in Paris where when the mushrooms were in season I would find them easily and be able to decorate my salads, steaks, toasts, pasta etc etc with girolles and other mushrooms in season.

Cousins at Costa Sands, Singapore

The Cousins

One of the regrets I have about being away is not being able to spend time with and getting to know my nieces and nephew. Like myself, my younger sister has 3 kids. Wonder if the little brother would be equally fertile.

On my last trip back, I booked a few nights at the Costa Sands chalets (at a discounted rate thanks to my dear friend One Wheel) in Downtown East and Sentosa Island with the smart idea of being near Wild Wild Wet and Siloso Beach respectively. In Singapore, if you're not careful, you could unwittingly lock the kids up at home so I had to make sure that I plan something at least every other day that would take them out of the flat when we're there. Get some sunshine and burn a few calories etc.

Siloso Beach, Sentosa

They call us a "concrete jungle". Didn't mean it in a flattering way, of course, but if you ask me, they weren't off the mark with the term inspite of themselves. I love the way trees, plants and grass grow so beautifully everywhere in Singapore. You can't miss the concrete, of course, but once you've been to places where when you have the concrete you don't usually also have the jungle, you'll appreciate what we have at home. I've read it somewhere that we also have more species of flora and fauna on the island than in the whole of North America. So there.

Costa Sands Downtown East

Be it at Downtown East or Sentosa, you know that National Parks has been hard at work and if you look around carefully, you may even find signs on trees, at the bottom of plants etc with the name of the species - like in the Botanical Gardens. Our chalet at Downtown East was situated in a garden with pavillons, BBQ pits and exercise parks, has a large common pool with view of Wild Wild Wet and gave us access to restaurants, a cinema, 2 supermarkets, the beach...If you book the deluxe room, it comes with a DVD player and sleeps 4.

Sentosa

The chalet in Sentosa is perched on top of a little hill (take the Siloso line beach tram) and has a large pool and a mini games arcade. Each room only sleeps 2 (so we had 2 rooms) unless you go for the kampung rooms (without en-suite bathroom though). It is just a few minutes' walk away from the beach and within walking distance to almost everything else (e.g. Songs of the Sea which if I may say so was a total rip-off as you pay 8 bucks per head to watch something i.e. Musical Fountain that used to be gratis).

Costa Sands Sentosa

Back to what I wanted really to say, mom had the smart idea to bring my eldest niece along with us to Downtown East so that she could play with her cousins. It also gave me the chance to see how though 6 months younger than Baby Girl, she knows how to count, read and spell already (unlike Baby Girl). Meimei and her family also joined us at Sentosa and I got the chance to meet my other niece (aka The Dancer) and of course the crazy nephew.

Mr Chicken Rice's Chicken Rice Set

Finally, the guy who used to cook the award-winning Chicken Rice at Chatterbox in the Mandarin Hotel has opened his own Chicken Rice restaurant at Downtown East (in the building where the cinema is). So though I had already eaten lunch, I gobbled down a Mr Chicken Rice set meal just so that I could say that I've been there and done that. Verdict - didn't understand the fuss. But well worth the money, less than 4 bucks for the whole thing.

Banana Leaf Apolo, Singapore

Banana Leaf Apolo, Singapore

Anna is probably my oldest friend today. From way back in Secondary 1 in PLMGSS. She did my makeup on my wedding day in Tours (France) and each time I return home for a visit, she would bring me out for dinner. On my last trip, I asked to dine at the Banana Leaf Apolo in Race Course Road (Little India).

I love going to Little India, looking at the saris and Punjabi suits for both adults and children only I didn't buy any as I know nothing about their quality and prices. I also love the smells and colours (e.g. from the garlands, spices, titbits...), the music playing in some of the shops reminding me of the dancing-round-coconut-trees Bollywood movies I used to follow as a kid in Singapore...And of course, I just love Indian food and we were lucky to be able to grow up with it, have it everyday and everywhere if we so wish.

On that occasion, I had so desired to eat my curries on a banana leaf. And smell curry leaves (incidentally I have tonnes of it now courtesy of my 3rd aunt who grows them in her garden). And meet Anna, of course.

She doesn't look a day older from the last time I saw her. Actually I suspect that she belongs to those women who look better than ever as they age. My favourite buffet kaki from my lost youth is now 20Kgs lighter than me. So no more buffets together, she wouldn't be able to eat enough to make it worth the money.

South Indian Sri Lankan Crab Curry

I ate a portion of Curry Crabs all on my own. Boy, have I missed the good ole South Indian stuff. We shared pappadums and a Mutton Curry. Downed all the yummy stuff with 2 glasses of fresh lime juice. She had some fish cutlet thingy. And took the opportunity to practise her Tamil (her dad's family's from Puducherry I was to find out during this meeting) with the waiters and since I couldn't understand a word I can't tell you if it was as good as my Hokkien :-).

After dinner we took a walk in the neighbourhood where you could see groups of foreign Indian workers watching TV in public or just hanging around relaxing after a day's work. And I was quite surprised to see Mainland Chinese waiters everywhere. Even in Little India!

There are many interesting Indian restaurants (from different regions in India) in the area and I made a mental note to return another time with the Hub to try them out. As for Anna and myself, we had an Indian coffee (bru?) to round up the evening. Till the next time, old school friend.

Baby Boy Can Cycle!

Baby Boy inherited his sis' old bike and repeated her feat

It took me at least a week to learn how to cycle when I was 11. I remember riding into trees, having bruises all over and being the laughing stock of the kids in the park - though I should be kissed for perseverance. And to make up for it, whoever is up there has given me 3 kids who - believe it or not - all got on their bikes and cycled almost immediately. First time right. I honestly am awed.

Baby Girl on her new bike

Eldest Son did it when we were living in Andalucia and he was 5. Baby Girl did it last year when we were living in Stuttgart and she wasn't even 5 then. And this Spring, it was Baby Boy's turn, just after he turned 4! And it wasn't easy since we only have uneven grassland surrounding the house. But he's a very determined little boy.

Isn't he the most wonderful, intelligent and gorgeous Baby Boy on earth?

And to prove it further, here are some pics of his last presentation at school before we broke for Summer :

Showing me a book on animals

"Animals Meet"

Baby Boy's version

Chocolate leaves made with their teacher

Singapore Day Zoo

No, not Ah Meng, she died in Feb

I like to bring the kids to the Zoo in Singapore. It is wonderful having a chance to erase memories of animals in cages. And I can still see myself as a kid in a Zoo T-shirt with my name printed on it - for I am my mom's eldest and was her only love a very long time ago. And Ah Meng was still pretty young then.

Plus it was one of those days when I had a few birds to kill with the same stone.

I've always known the Singapore Zoo as the Mandai Zoo - since it is situated in Mandai. A few years ago, they built an important Cemetary in Mandai with some army training ground nearby since you can hear rifle shots when you're there. They probably thought it was a good idea since there is little chance of waking up the dead (and cremated).

I have almost all of my ancestors there. Lined up in Block ? Level ? Unit ?. In Singapore, dead or alive, you usually live in a flat.

And so duty called, asking me to bring my children to pay our respects to those who lived and died before us. Besides they have made it quite convenient for us to visit both the Cemetary and the Zoo - by bus (less than 30 minutes) from Ang Mo Kio.

Right before us

I love this Zoo. Orang Utans now swing freely above us as we walked. You can get really close up to many animals and those who tend to be a little dangerous you are separated from them by a little stream or glass panel - not cages.

They were still constructing the children's play area during our visit, but I'm sure that once it's ready it'll give us one more reason to bring our kids to the Zoo. On our last visit 2 years ago, we learnt that we should have brought along a towel and swimwear for the kids as they could play with water when they were there.

4 bucks per kid per round pony ride

Those with a lot of stamina could finish visiting the Day Zoo and continue in the evening with the Night Safari. We had loved it too the last time we were there.