Tea for Two

This wonderful setting is at Simunovich Olive Estate in Bombay - south of Auckland, that is. I used to go to this place quite often in the past – sometimes just for coffee and dessert at their Bracu restaurant. Once we had very lovely dinner for Bob’s birthday at their kitchen's table and then retreated to the Wine Library – very nice and memorable. Since then they have gone through many changes. Chef comes and goes over the past 10 years.

Last time I was there must be 2 years ago – the food was nice, the waiting staff was good but the maitre d’ put me off a bit so did not go back for a while.

Bob took this picture there two weeks ago in one late afternoon – it is so simple yet elegant and you can replicate this at home. You will need to find a white table cloth and a pot of flowers to tart up your garden table. White china will also do nicely.

Let Sleeping Critters Lie

Seriously – let them. The dog is my brother’s and her name is Shinee. You may remember my posts about her over the past two years. She’s a fully grown dog and weighs 17 kgs. This girl is full of energy and wants to play all the time. When I was in Bangkok last month she was happy to have another victim to play with and she pestered me quite often.

Pipi is sort of half asleep here. I should let her sleep on – this one will be pestering me for attention as well.

Easy Pad Thai

Pad Thai is Thai street style fried thin rice sticks – it is now quite well known internationally and I don’t think it needs any introduction. I cook Pad Thai from time to time at home. My way is easy and the ingredients are not that difficult to find.

For 2, you will need:

100 grams Rice Sticks (the thin ones but not as thin as vermicelli), soaked in warm water until soft
250 grams pork or skinless chicken, cut into thin strips
100 grams prawn meat
½ cup chopped red onion or shallots
½ - 1 teaspoon red hot chilli flakes
25 grams shaved palm sugar
1 tablespoon tamarind juice or rice vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce (substitute with soy sauce if you don’t have fish sauce)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
¼ cup roasted unsalted peanuts, coarsely ground – use toasted pine nuts if you are allergic to nuts
2 cups bean sprouts
2 spring onions (if you can find garlic chives, use garlic chives) cut into 5 cm long, halve the white bits
Oil for frying

2 wedges of lemon or lime, more chilli flakes, more bean sprouts, more ground peanuts, soy sauce and white sugar as garnish on the side

Add oil to a deep pan or a wok and heat over medium high – add onion or shallot and fry until soft. Add chili flakes, fry quickly and take care not to burn, then add palm sugar, tamarind juice or rice vinegar and fry a bit further about 2 minutes. Add soy sauce and fish sauce. Spoon half of the sauce into a bowl and set aside. Add chicken or pork, fry until cooked through then add prawns. Remove cooked meat from the wok and set aside.

Add a little bit more oil in the wok – add rice sticks and about half of the reserved sauce. Fry until rice sticks are soft – I myself like my rice sticks well cooked and soft so I always add a bit of water at this point but not too much. Push the rice sticks to one side and add eggs to the wok on the other side – when the eggs are half cooked – stir the rice sticks into the eggs. Add meat and the remaining sauce – turn to combine. Add peanuts, bean sprouts and spring onions. Fry quickly and remove from heat.

Divide onto two plates – it should be ample for second serving. Serve warm with a bit of fresh bean sprouts on top – you can adjust the taste with your garnish on the side ie. lemon, sugar, chilli flakes, etc. just like in Thailand. Enjoy!

Kindle Upgrade

Bob gave me new Kindle Paperwhite as my belated Birthday pressie when I came back home from Bangkok.

This new kindle (in black) is smarter and easier to read than my old one (covered in red leather). It has a touch screen just like iPad. And although I also have Kindle app on my iPad – the battery on iPad does not last as long as on Kindle. It is also much lighter and smaller with thin frame on the sides (without a cover, you might find it a little bit tricky where to hold them in your hands as the screen will move if you touch it especially when you read in bed like I do!)

But he also gave me a smart cover in black leather so it is on and off when you open or close the cover just like iPad and I have something to hold on to while reading it. One downside of Kindles is that they are not compatible with Auckland eBook library platform – only Kindle Fire is. In this case iPads from 2nd generation upwards that run iOS 6 or higher will become very handy.

Saying that, I love this Kindle – small and light enough to put in my handbag and the paperwhite screen with built-in light enables me to read either in bright light or in the dark although I have not yet tried the latter. My old first gen Kindle, as much as I love it, will have to stay in the drawer as a spare.

Sticks & Carrots

We got Bonnie when she was 5 months old. I have always dreamed of having a dog that we could take for a walk without a lead and she’s that dream dog.

That is not without any work although her good nature and temperament have made it a bit easier to train her. The fact that she is so food driven has worked and still works so well with the reward system (preferably with real treats more than carrots). We took her to puppy school to let her socialise with other puppies. She was the only puppy in her class to be able to rollover on command back then.

After that, we took her to obedience class and basic agility classes. All of these pay off and we can take her places with us without trouble. In the park, we cannot help feeling sorry for other dogs that are on leash as we can let Bonnie off leash to run. We will only put her on leash when she is naughty and trying to push the boundary  – something like lagging behind too far or not coming to us at first command – and she knows it. We have been teaching her that freedom comes with responsibility to obey us at all time we are outside our own home.

More than 4 years on and we still keep checking with her to make sure that she still obeys – it’s an on-going process. I think she’s happy that way to have us a leader of the pack and she knows where she stands. And she still likes chewing on a piece of carrot (which is better than nothing!)

Texas Style Sheet-ish Cake

I honestly cannot remember if I had ever eaten this cake when I was in Uni in Texas while the memory of having my first pumpkin pie and first spoon of Haagen Dazs is still vivid. However, I just tried making this cake last weekend – put together form many recipes on the net but somewhat astray (as usual).

Cake
110 grams butter
½ cup hot water
2 tablespoons of good quality Cocoa powder (Dutch ones are best)
1 cup high-grade flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup caster sugar
1 egg
¼ cup sour cream

Frosting
20 grams butter
¼ cup cream
A pinch of salt
1 teaspoon sugar
50 grams dark chocolate
50 grams milk chocolate (I used Whitaker’s for both for its high content of cocoa)
1 teaspoon+ espresso coffee (1/2 teaspoon espresso coffee granule dissolved in 1 teaspoon boiling water)
1 tablespoon pine nuts, toasted and crushed.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Grease 20X20 square tin and line with baking paper.

Sift flour with salt and baking soda and set aside. Place putter, cocoa powder and hot water in a saucepan on low heat until butter just melt. Stir to combine and transfer to a clean mixing bowl. Leave to cool a little bit and then beat (with electric beater) in sugar, egg and sour cream. Add flour and beat until combined. Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan and bake for half an hour.

While the cake is be baked, prepare the frosting by chopping chocolate. Place cream, butter, salt and sugar in a glass jug and microwave on high for about 20-30 seconds. Add chocolate to the warm cream mixture and stir to combine. If the chocolate is not all melted put n the microwave for another 5 seconds.

Wait until the cake and the ganache cool down a little bit about 20 minutes or so before pouring the ganache on top of the cake (do not remove cake from the pan). Sprinkle with crushed pine nuts and leave to set. Cut into squares or triangles and enjoy!

Dad

My Dad passed away three weeks ago and I had to grab a seat to fly back to Thailand at short notice. That’s why Wokarella has been out of action for a wee while.

He was an amazing Dad. When he had not yet been ill he was very witty and very funny and most of all – family was his number one priority in life. Dad catered to our needs before his own. He had helped a lot of people in his life and was much loved by the relatives – many of them had attended the funeral and mourned for him – I have never realized we have that many.

Before retiring, he worked in forestry industry and was away from home very often. For years when we were growing up he stationed in the country but he tried to come home as much as possible at weekends (imagine those long coach rides or those long drives and those hours spent at the airports before flights). We the children, my brother and I, stayed with him on and off in the provinces he was being posted but mostly spent our school holidays with him.

Dad made sure that we did OK at school. Dad always told us that he did not have much money for us to inherit but he would provide for our education for as long as we needed – when we were in Uni.

When he retired, he and Mum travelled to stay with me in Holland where I was working at the time and spent a few years there. It was their happy time together – just like a couple of Honeymooners in their 60’s. My first apartment was on the top floor of a small shopping plaza and the baker and shopkeepers seemed to know my parents – these Asian Opa and Oma - a lot more than they knew me.

In his mid 70’s, Dad was diagnosed with voice box cancer and had to undergo an operation and numerous radio-therapy sessions but sadly, the cancer kept coming back and the only treatment his oncologist recommended was a major operation to remove his voice box altogether. He also had Emphysema, although not yet severe, as a result of being a heavy smoker for so many years when he was younger. I worked in Australia at the time so didn’t have a chance to talk to the doctor. He had that operation – the cancer was gone but his health deteriorated from that point onwards. I flew home when his health (both physically and mentally) was at its low after the surgery. I learnt that the oncologist recommended speech therapy so that he could learn to speak by swallowing air. He had to be at the hospital every week for this. I was so appalled – I might have agreed with this for him to try if he was 10-20 years younger – but at 76, it was too difficult for him to learn this then new-ish technique (and the therapist admitted a lot of much younger patients had failed). Honestly, they should have recommended a psychologist to help him cope with speechlessness to start with. I suspected the hospital just had started this speech department and needed funding based on the number of patients! Not only that, with limited means to communicate Dad had also developed a delirium and was very confused. I ordered a handheld Electrolarynx on spot before lecturing the therapist on how to discriminate patients for this kind of therapy (couldn't help it). I also got him to see a neurologist about his symptoms of dementia.

With his Electrolarynx and medication from the neurologist, Dad got better and could function well with everyday routine by himself. He had been quite lucid for a few years and could enjoy going out again. He made jokes and told stories like he did, although not as good. Dad took to bed when his Emphysema got worse about 5 years ago. We had installed an oxygen machine in his room and he also had a 24 hour care giver for his comfort and convenience. Dementia also got a firm grip on him as well over this time. I was visiting in 2011 and he did not even recognize me when I bid farewell – for me it was much sadder than the farewell itself. For the past two years, Dad was bedbound – never to get up again.

On quiet Monday morning, the 3rd of February, Mum sat by his bedside and noticed later on that his chest no longer moved. Dad passed away peacefully in his sleep – at home that he built and loved. He was finally set free from his illness and all that fuzzy cloud that marred his cognitive ability.

I flew home in time for the last few days of his funeral. My darling big brother had arranged a much respectable 7-night Buddhist funeral service for Dad. We cremated him on the following Tuesday and on Wednesday we took his ashes to the Naval Base in Sattahip, 2 hours southeast of Bangkok. Out in the boat, with a beautiful and peaceful ceremony we laid his ashes to rest in the nice blue sea, along with roses and jasmines. Dad loved beaches and seas – he would be happy and smiling down at us from somewhere in heaven. 

Dad, if there were such thing as next life, I would definitely want to be your child again.