NaCl

I have an obsession with salt in my food. Yes, even after all the lies I tell my patients about hypertension and salt, I'm still salting my food quite liberally. See King Lear, where Cordelia announces that she loved her father as fresh meat loves salt! I'm not going to nag on about the political (Ghandi and his Salt March to Dandi) or cultural (Magick and salt offerings) aspects of this humble mineral, but just to give a brief introduction to the various salts available for culinary use.

Benedict Salad

Eggs Benedict is a lovely breakfast item, pity that we don't get it very often on the menus locally. It's made up of English muffin, poached egg, Hollandaise sauce and bacon/ham. The one I've tried at Jones' The Grocer over at Dempsey was sufficiently good, however. I suspect the problem lies with the relative complexity of the dish - out of the ingredients, 2 of them (poached egg and Hollandaise) require a fair bit of skill to prepare, and must be done fresh. Here's my re-interpretation of this classic breakfast dish, in salad form.

Time for Protein

 In a desperate bid to masquerade a poorly-done salad, I decided to do some fish instead. That, and I've been itching to do up some home-made food foam ever since I saw a feature article on Cuisine & Wine Asia a couple of years ago.

Favourite Haunts

Now to let out the locations of some of my secret larders. =) I'm a firm believer that good food starts from good ingredients themselves. Witness the difference between a bunch of wilted, ill-treated greens versus vegetables that have been well-grown, transported properly and stored well. I'm not saying that everything in a dish needs to be top-notch; I must confess that I tend to buy my generic ingredients from savings stores. Stuff like ginger, onions and beef for stewing. The real difference can truly be appreciated if you cook simply. Also, for fresh seafood like Indian Ocean fish and local vegetables, you really can't beat the wet market. But still, sometimes you'll be out wondering where you can get that elusive white asparagus or creme fraiche.

Here I share some of those favourite haunts to get good stuff, or hard-to-find stuff.

Roots, Shoots & Everything Good

Mom, Yanxian and I are rapidly taking up this whole eating-greens-for-dinner-is-good-for-you idea, so here I am, with yet another salad recipe. Beetroots are officially my favourite vegetable for salads now. If you haven't tried roast beets from the previous recipe, you are seriously missing out. So I set off today to procure even more beets to stock up and roast. And as things would have it, we now have a roast root-based salad in the making.

Gastronomia - Reborn

What is this - a new food blog? Didn't you just announce that you were going to stop cooking regularly??

Yeah I know, I know. But men can be fickle too, sometimes. I just thought I'd start on a more wordy and narrative food blog, rather than the previous one, which looked more like a standard recipe book with the occasional comment thrown in. In any case, I'm using a different URL purely for sentimental reasons (yes, don't look at me like that - I can be sentimental!) The previous blog was started during my stint in Glasgow, when I was forced to do some very creative cooking using the only method of cooking I had - a small, dingy microwave. Nope, I didn't even have a stove. Yeah, I just wanted to keep the original Gastronomia as it is, for a keepsake.

But I digress. I'm starting this off with a salad that I came up with today, which received some nice comments from guests today. Yanxian and I actually visited this mushroom farm over the weekend - Mycofarm, over at Seletar Farmway. They had about 20 temperature-controlled greenhouses where they produce a variety of fungi, including Shiitake, oyster and willow mushrooms. I was actually a tad disappointed, as I was looking forward to buying one of those grow-your-own-mushrooms kits (which they didn't have), and was crossing my fingers for white buttons, portabello and morels (fat hope, I know). Either way, I found myself involuntarily grabbing a small pun of white willow mushrooms and racking my brains on what to do with them...