Bitten: M&M Almond

NOT an advertisement.

As an adult, I do not condone the consumption of lurid candy produced en masse, dyed in technicolour, and marketed by menacing cartoon characters. Unfortunately, I do possess an infantile appreciation for brightly-coloured distractions. And look! M&M Almond!

Lately I've been hitting up a range of nutty M&M products, having recently been introduced to M&M Peanut Butter (not simply peanut) by a friend (bad friend, bad!). M&M Peanut Butter is only available in specialty stores, but I found M&M Almond in the city Woolworths last weekend, which makes it a significantly more economically viable treat. These taste like regular M&Ms (i.e. far from the best or worst chocolate in the world) but with whole almonds within. Not a bad result.

Plus the red ones double up as excellent cosmetics. Well I remember rubbing them vigorously into my cheeks and lips until I learnt to raid mum's make-up drawer like a normal pre-teen. The innocence of youth indeed.

A more mature post will materialise within the week. In the meantime, did you ever have a favourite colour M&M?

Announcement

This is a post digressing temporarily from the cupcake warfare to announce the painfully obvious: a new blog design!

To be honest, I had no intentions of changing the look of the blog at all - this is the happy accident of a design-happy euphoria induced by some industrious business card-making! As for the card, here is a sneak preview of the current work-in-progress:

I think I may have been bitten by a bit of a luscious-lush-lady bug spawned by an excess of cupcake gluttony and Katy Perry tunes. I may wait a bit to see if I still like it after the girly-girl superpowers have faded away. In the meantime, I am restraining myself from painting my apartment over with glorious pink stripes. And running around town with a pink power ring and matching lantern.

Other exciting things are also happening in this space, the results of which will take some time to filter through. Let's just say it involves a spanking new no-nonsense N---n!

Recipe: 'S-crab-tacular, 's-crab-tacular!

Crustaceans in the vernacular.

If there is one thing I’ve learnt from my shameless indulgence in a glut of reality cooking shows (ranging from Masterchef Australia to Masterchef-across-the-Tasman-and-every-other-continent-but-Antartica), it is that the mark of a successful amateur chef lies in a canny culinary ancestry. Never been to cooking school? Doesn’t matter when you’ve been generating gnocchi with nonna since the nursery — or if Junior Masterchef is anything to go by, since your first lip-smacked “Nyum nyum!”. Been working in an utterly-unrelated industry for yonks? Who cares when your produce-producing parents taught you to churn cheese with your right hand and sweat shallots with the left? As far as the cameras are concerned, it’s been time well-spent nurturing the blooming bud of your inner inheritance.

Wok Fried Black Pepper Crab

It is therefore to my endless envy and annoyance that I had the genetic misfortune of being born into a family big on the consumption end of the meal, but with limited interest in the creation side of things. It is a thin tin of recipes that I have taken from the family home, mother having happily surrendered stove duty to my aunt for the first 18 years of my life, and my aunt in turn being of the philosophy that a half-pound of pork plonked in a pot of boiling water is fab feed for a family of five — a powerful propensity for motion sickness means she hasn’t ventured outside the home in almost three decades and is still waiting for the price of pork to fall back to “five cents, maybe seven a catty”. This perhaps explains my ardent adoration of Mr. Gordon Ramsay and Ms. Amy Beh, my kitchen god-parents.

Every now and then however, I am caught by a wind of food nostalgia and it whips me back into the child hungrily watching from a safe corner in the kitchen, wielding a Barbie distractedly and unconsciously scraping tidbits onto the table of my memory. Such was the case last weekend when I spied with my little eye a delectable blue creature that swims. And I don’t mean Hayden Quinn in his Cronulla budgie smugglers.

Blue swimmer crab

Wok Fried Black Pepper Crab

(Recipe adapted from Matt Moran’s on Masterchef)

Ingredients

4 whole blue swimmer crabs
3/4 cup vegetable oil for frying
4 tablespoons black peppercorns
8 cloves garlic, sliced
1 big chilli, sliced (or 2 if you are spicily inclined)
8 tablespoons soy sauce
4 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 teaspoons castor sugar
500ml water
1 bunch of spring onions, finely sliced on the diagonal
1 bunch coriander, leaves picked

Method

1. To prepare the crabs, twist their claws off. Prise open the shell from the back.

2. Take out the gills and mustard. Cut the crab bodies into two.

2. Heat up the vegetable oil in the wok (I used a large pot) until smoking. Add the crabs and sauté quickly until their colour turns to orange. This should take 1-3 minutes. Remove the crab immediately. Some small bits of crab may have fallen in the oil. Leave them in there as this will add flavour.

3. Putting the crab aside, add the black peppercorns, chilli and garlic to the wok/pot and cook for 1 minute until fragrant. Speedily mix in the soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, and water (hence the need for a mise en place).

4. Return the crab to the wok/pot. Bring to the boil then simmer for 5-7 minutes. Mix in the spring onion in the last minute.

5. Serve with coriander sprinkled on top.

The stuff of ‘nyum nyums’! This was a great and very easy recipe.

Oddly enough the lessons I’ll never need again are the ones I savour most. Like how to stand squelching my toes in muddy slippers squinting into a Styrofoam box of caught crawling crabs. How mum would poke them with a stick to find the feistiest. How to tease a wily escapee out from under the piano by hooking onto its raffia-bonded claws with a rolled-out wire clothes hanger. How aunt would kill them by stabbing a chopstick quickly into the flap underside. How she hated being the one to have to end their lives.

How I never thought I would one day miss the taste of tasteless pork soup.

Luck be a Pink Lady

Or two.


Not quite the fruits of my labour; my mum planted this apple tree mid-visit to Melbourne way back then, and just as I have been informing her for years, her offspring are perfectly capable of flourishing free from worry and wear. (Although I acknowledge a little organic love never goes astray.)


Was so chuffed to see these that I traipsed barefoot into the mud to get a good shot. If only mum was here - though I know she wouldn't have appreciated as much that I had to saunter back through the kitchen after en route to the tap.


Ah mum, sure I don't deserve these, nor thee.

Love Through the Ages

A lifetime obsession with the edible.

Quick intermediary post between reviews - I was rifling through the archives of the blog I maintained in high school (I know! How trendy was I?) when I came across a poem I wrote at 17 - entirely dedicated to my favourite foods at the time. By the way, 17-year-old-me, who lists Subway as one of their favourite foods of all time?! Loser. No wonder no one ever asked you out.

Oh alright, you got asked once. Congratulations...you're an even bigger loser now for pointing it out.

Maybe if you cut your hair? Considered plastic surgery? Too bad Heidi Montag wasn't around to be your role model. You could've done with ten separate procedures.

Anyway, enough awkward bullying through the space-time continuum. It wasn't my/her fault. From the ages of 0 to 18, Mum bought all my clothes two sizes bigger to save money because she thought I'd grow into them. I stoppped growing at 14.

Yeah.

So anyway, here is the poem I wrote, replete with its original title and byline. And just for fun, my 'live reading' of the poem (recorded this morning), with a picture of how I looked at the time I wrote it, in the World's Most Ghastly School Uniform - product of a Malaysian governmental plot to prevent teenagers from flinging themselves at each other in hormonal frenzies. Public school tables were less sturdy back then. In my case, the scheme was very effective.

Rapture

- A poem extolling the virtues of the loves of my life -

You are the most tender, most juicy and sweet,
Oh lamb chop, oh lamb chop, you fine piece of meat,
A medium-grilled oily and fatty prime cut,
In more ways than one, you choke up my heart.

A fresher and healthier lunch I confess,
Is the turkey Subway sandwich, and to give it more sass,
Add green lettuce, black olives, a ripe red tomato,
And the bread, it can only be P. Oregano!

Ladies and gents, no seafood is better,
Than a fresh catch of squid all coated in batter,
Or emulate me and preserve its light taste,
Swallow it raw, it won't be a waste!

Would you exchange a crisp five hundred yen,
For a pastry instead of souvenirs for friends?
I would and I did, and the Tokyo Cream Puff,
Is well worth the loss, and full of good stuff!

I have also a palette and penchant for culture,
Escargot! Foie Gras! And then, like a vulture,
I devour octopuses, pig intestines and liver,
And who could resist a fresh New Zealand oyster?

My appetite, its never failed me before,
There are joys to be found behind every door,
So before you turn in to bed for the night,
Lock up your house, and lock it up tight,
If I sniff and I find a tasty perfume,
Well, I won't be responsible for what I consume!

Yeees. Next review up by Sunday I promise as I'm getting quite seriously backlogged in posting (and in life. *cue tragic music-of-the-sort-that-plays-in-the-background-when-people-on-TV-stare-out-into-the-ocean-and-think. Because-it-means-so-much-you-know-to-think).

Yes, I too am hoping to have expelled all the gawkiness I'm channeling by next post. Wish me luck!